#758: Jamie Foxx and Jacqueline Novogratz

0:00 Okay, this is gonna be part confessional, as some of you know. I am recently single and navigating the world of modern dating. What a joy that is. Sometimes it's fun, but it's mostly a goddamn mess, as many of you probably know. I've tried all the dating apps and while there's some slick options out there, the most functional That I have found is the league. Why did I end up using the league? First, most dating apps give you almost no information. It's a huge time suck. On the league, you're starting with a baseline of smart people. And you can then easily find the ones you're attracted to. It's much easier. It's like going to a conference. where everyone is smart and then just looking for the people you think are cute to go up and speak with. So more than half of the league users went to top forty colleges and you can make your filters really selective. So if that's important to you, then

0:51 Go for it. It does work. And that is one of the reasons that I use it. Second, people verify using LinkedIn. So you can make sure they have a job and don't bounce around every six months. It's a simple proxy for finding people who have their shit together. It's infinitely easier. than trying to figure things out on Instagram or whatever. Third, you can search by interest and in multiple locations. I haven't found any other dating app that allows you to do this. So for instance, I usually search for women who love skiing or snowboarding. Have those as interests. I like to spend say two to three months of the year in the mountains. I'm a rivers and mountains guy. The UI is a little clunky, I'll warn you, but it's incredibly helpful for finding good matches and not just Pretty faces. So you can search by interest and specify multiple cities. So to summarize a few things that I think

1:38 Make it stand out. Features available in the league include multi city dating. LinkedIn verified profiles, ability to block your profile from co-workers, bosses, family, et cetera. That's very easy to do. You can search by interest. You can get profile stats and there is a personal concierge in the app. So you there's someone you can text with within the app as a personal concierge to get help. So what am I looking for? I am looking for a woman who is well educated and who loves skiing. Or snowboarding. Or both.

2:06 These are, and I've used this word already, proxies for like 20 other things that are important. So just I'll leave it at that for now. Someone who's default upbeat. Likes to smile. Smiles often. class half full type of person who would ideally like to have kids in the next few years. Her friends would describe her as feminine and playful and she would love polarity in a relationship. She's athletic and has some muscle. I like strong women. Not necessarily bodybuilders, but you get the idea. It could be a rock climber, dancer, whatever, but has some muscle, loves to read, and loves learning. If this sounds like you.

2:37 Send hashtag date Tim. So hashtag dateTim in a message to your concierge in the app to get us paired up. So these are all reasons why I was excited when the League reached out to sponsor the podcast. They even have daily speed dating where you can go on three three minute dates with people who match your preferences all from the comfort of your couch. So check it out. Download the league today on iOS or Android and find people who challenge you to swing for the fences and who are in it. I found it to be Super fascinating. You can really get good matches instead of just looking at pretty faces and kind of rolling the dice over and over again. Much better. So download the leak today on iOS or Android and check it out. Message hashtag Tim to your in app concierge to jump to the front of the wait list and have your profile review.

3:24 First. Check it out. The league. On iOS or Android. I don't know about you guys, but I've had the experience of traveling overseas and I try to access something, say a show on Amazon or elsewhere, and it says not available in your current location, something like that. Or creepier still if you're at home and this has happened to me. I search for something or I type in a URL.

3:50 incorrectly and then a screen for ATT pops up. And it says, you might be searching for this. How about that? And it suggests an alternative. And I think to myself, wait a second, my internet service provider is tracking my searches and what I'm typing into the browser. Yeah. Yeah. I don't love it. And A lot of you know I take privacy and security very seriously. That is why I've been using today's episode sponsor, ExpressVPN, for several years now, and I recommend you check it out. When you connect to a secure VPN server, your internet traffic goes through an encrypted tunnel that nobody can see into, including hackers, governments, people in Starbucks, your internet service provider, et cetera.

4:29 And no, you are not safe simply using incognito mode in your browser. This was something that I got wrong for a long time. Your activity might still be visible, as in the example I gave to your internet service provider. Incognito mode also does not hide your IP address. Also with the example that I gave of you can't access this kind or that content wherever you happen to be, then you just set your server to a country where you can see it and all of a sudden, voila, you can say log into your normal Amazon account as opposed to being routed to dot UK or whatever, and uh everything works. So ExpressVPN protects you and enables you because it encrypts and rerouts your network traffic through secure servers. So even though your traffic is still passing through your internet provider, now they can't read it. ExpressVPN is so fast also doesn't bog things down at all. I usually forget that I even have it on. I can stream High quality video with no lag or buffering, even on servers thousands of miles away. Gives me access to servers in a hundred and five countries around the world, which is very helpful. as I am constantly traveling and love to do so. It's easy to use. You just choose a server location and tap one button to connect. You do not need to be

5:36 technologically savvy, you don't need to know anything about how it works. It's just one click. And it works on every device. Phone, laptop, tablets, even TVs. ExpressVPN has really changed the way I use the internet, and I can't recommend it highly enough, so check it out. Right now you can go to expressvpn.com slash Tim and get three extra months for free when you sign up. Just go to ExpressVPN E-X-P-R-E S S VPN.com slash Tim for an extra three free months of ExpressVPN. One more time, expressVPN.com slash Tim. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. And I'll do personal questions. No, it is.

6:21 My cybernetic organism living tissue over metal mental skeleton. No Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job to sit down with world class performers. From every field imaginable to tease out the habits. routines, favorite books, and so on that you can apply.

6:47 And test in your own lives. This episode is a two for one, and that's because the podcast recently hit its tenth year anniversary, which is insane to think about. And past one billion downloads. To celebrate. I've curated some of the best of the best, some of my favorites.

7:05 From more than seven hundred episodes over the last decade. I could not be more excited. To give you these super combo episodes, and internally we've been calling these The Super Combo episodes. Because my goal is to encourage you to, yes, enjoy the household names, the super famous folks.

7:20 But to also introduce you to lesser known people I consider. Stars. These are people who have transformed my life and I feel like they can do the same for many of you. Perhaps They got lost in a busy news cycle, perhaps you missed an episode.

7:35 Just trust me on this one, we went to great pains to put these pairings together. And for the bios of all guests. You can find that and more at Tim.blog slash combo. And now, without further ado Please enjoy.

7:50 And thank you. For listening. First up. Jamie Fox. Oscar Bafta and Golden Globe Award winning actor.

8:00 Grammy Award winning musician. Stand up and improv comedian And the owner of BSB Ultra Smooth Flavored Whiskey. You can find Jamie on Instagram At I am Jamie Fox.

8:13 And in his upcoming films. Tin Soldier. And back in action. So one day. My boy Breon brings in this kid. He has a backpack on.

8:24 His jaws a little busted. His name is Kanye West. And I say Yo, yo, who's who's that? They said, Yo, that's a new kid, Kanye Whessie coming on. I said, Really? What he do? Say he rap. I said, Well shit, he gotta perform that shit,'cause everybody that comes to this to my house, they gotta perform. So I said, yo, man, they say you the shit. And he was really quiet.

8:43 I said, man, let me hear you rap. You need your beats or whatever? He said, I don't need no beat. Chopped everybody's heads. Just amazing. I said, dude, I don't know where you come from. But you are going to be one of the biggest stars. Ever. And he says, I actually have a song for you. I said, Me? The song? Like, what you mean? He said, I got the song. He says, I want to record it. I said, well, you happen to be in luck because I got a studio in the back.

9:09 So we go on the back. And my studio at that time I call it the Porsche. It was a lot smaller than this. It was really like nipp. It was like a layer jet. It was compact. It was compact. The sound was toasty. I had uh engineers from all over the the city. Dial it in so that when real artists come, they don't think that oh this is just comedian fucking around. Some real shit. So we go in and and Kanye, you know. Quiet.

9:31 But at the same time. He knew what he wanted. He says, okay, the song goes like this. She says she wants some Marvin Gay, some Luther Van Jose, a little I said, I got it. And I started going, she says she wants some Mar. And he said, What the fuck are you doing? I said, Well, see, young man, you don't know nothing about R and B. See, I'm a R B motherfucker. See, I I got to give him the shit, you know, I got to put the shit on it. And he goes really politely, he says.

9:56 Hits the the button, he says don't do that. I said, but you don't know what you're talking about, but uh that ain't how the song go. You gotta sing it this way. So in my mind I'm thinking You know what, I'm a single shit. The song is whack.

10:09 It's not gonna make it. 'Cause I'm thinking Old school R B. But he was teaching me the simplicity of hip hop. Which I didn't know. I was like,

10:18 Cool guy. Great rapper. I don't think it's gonna happen for him. So I'll go off and do a bad movie and when I come back My voice says, Remember that song you said was whack? I said, Yeah, it's number one.

10:28 In the country. You, Kanye and Twister, Kanye's first record. And it was actually Twister's record. I said, oh shit. So I'm at a club. He said, You don't believe me? I said, No, I'm we're in Miami. They played it, everybody ran to the dance floor.

10:42 I grabbed the mic, said that's me, that's my song, I'm I'm on that, you know. And so the music that's how I got into the music. Now the reason the story is significant is because the same brains that we use that same hard drive That we use. I brought it to this studio. Oh no. So that hard drive is is magical because we also did just to give you a history on the on the music, Brian found

11:05 That song Slow Jams, it went number one. And then as we started getting into music There was a song that Breon brought in. Brian would call me, like he said, You want to be in the music business. It's like, you know, two or three in the morning. He called me, says, You want to be in the music business? I said, Yeah. He said, Then wake your ass up. I said, What? He said, I got this song you gotta hear. So I drove all the way from my house in the valley to this

11:27 Little studio. He says, You ready, motherfucker? Are you ready? And Breon always says everything three times. Are you ready, motherfucker? Are you ready? Are you ready? I said, Yeah, yeah, man, play the shit. So he plays it. And the song was Blame It On the Goose. God's feeling loose. Blame it on the a I stopped it.

11:43 I said listen. First of all, please tell me that's my song. He said, Yeah, it's your song, but you gotta record it right now because a lot of people are listening to this song and they don't know if it's a hit or not. He said, But I know it's a hit. We did blame it on the alcohol. That night I sung an exactly like your record, which goes way in contrast to my R and B roots. 'Cause it was out of tune and everything like that, but we wanted to sing it exactly like the demo.

12:04 So we wouldn't lose the essence of it. I don't wanna be like blame it on the alcohol you know, some corny shit. So we did that. And then we went from every the way we broke that record is that we went from Every club. We went to the strip clubs first. Went to the strip club. Strip club. We went on we w we did a East Coast run. So we we're gonna break the record in the East Coast. So we went to the strip. We went to New York.

12:27 My man Pecus took us around. And I will go into the club and use my comedic you know, vernacular to get the song off. I said, Fellas, you ever been At the club, you meet a girl, you've been drinking, you think she look like Hallie Barry, you get her back home, she looks like Hallie Scary, you know what you gotta do. Blame it on the goose, got feeling loose, blame it on the a Stop the record. Ladies, you ever meet a guy, you get back to the house with him and you've been drinking too much and you say, I usually don't do this, but you do it anyway, you gotta blame it on the ah ah. So we took that and we went all the way down from New York all the way down to Miami. This is like two thousand eight.

13:03 And then the song took off. And so Long story longer. Blame it on the alcohol was done here, slow jams was done here. So this studio has

13:14 But Essence to it that you just You don't throw that away. And just the building itself? Natasha Bettingfield's been here, she's cut, Kelly Roland's been here, she's cut, the game has been here, he's cut.

13:26 Right here on this floor. For you guys listening. I'm pointing to the floor to the carpet. A young man by the name of Ed Shering. Slept on this carpet for like six weeks.

13:38 trying to get his music career going. He came from over from London. He heard about a a live show that I do in LA. So really wanna uh do your live show if it's possible. Uh, you know, because I have some music to that this kid with this red hair. I'm like, Man, you do my live show and it's all b it's mostly black, you know what I'm saying? But it's really like music people, like really hardcore music people. The very finicky. You know, people that have played for Stevie Wonder. People would come there to I mean, I had Miranda Lambert one night. I had Stevie Wonder on stage. I had Babyface. I said, So this is the real shit you talking about. You know, you can come here, I don't care about the London and the accent.

14:13 You gotta really come with it. So I I think it'll be okay. Right. So taking to my live night. Eight hundred people there.

14:20 People's plan. Black folks. Wait. Just Didn't it You know what I'm saying? I mean people singing and you know, they would tear American Idol up, you know, so and these people

14:29 Haven't necessarily made it. So all of a sudden the Air and gets up with a ukulele. Walks onto the stage. And the brother that was next to me was like, Yo, Foxman, who the fuck is this dude right here, man, with the red hair and shit in the fucking Ugulele? I said, man, his name is Ed Sharon. Let's see what he does. Within 12 minutes, he got a standing upation. Wow.

14:48 From that crowd. And I said, Bro. You're on your way. So This studio has a uh Like I said, a lot of history.

14:57 And it has that magic. Yeah. How do you think of Teaching confidence with your own kids because you're you're clearly a very confident guy. Uh, grandmother was very bold, very strong woman.

15:10 How do you try to teach that to your kids? Well what you do with your kids is like with my daughter is I there's a the phrase that when you see Anna Lisa my daughter, my oldest daughter. I would always ask them. What's on the other side of fear?

15:23 And it'd be like Huh? I said, what's on the other side of it? Meaning like if I stood in the middle of this floor right there and just yelled, What's on the other side of that? Or if I stood on the in the middle of the floor and went, uh What's on the other side of meaning like

15:36 Either you do or you don't. But there's no Penaldy. There's No reward. It's just Just be yourself.

15:44 So I taught them what's on the other side of fear. Nothing. People are nervous for no reason. Because there's nothing no one's gonna come out and slap you or beat you up and then you're just nervous. So why even have that? And so

15:57 That's a building block that they can use. Not just about the entertainment business, because that's the other thing. You don't have to be an entertainer, but whatever you go into, whether you be a lawyer or school teacher or Texas. Guy or whatever, or girl, whatever it is. There's nothing on the other side of it.

16:15 What's on the other side of fear? Nothing. I like it. When people say, Oh, I'm so nervous, what are you nervous about? Reminds me of this quote that I I sort of r recite to myself and I'm gonna paraphrase it because I have it written down, but it's from Mark Twain. It says I'm an old man who's known a great many troubles, most of which never happened. Yeah. Exactly. Because all of it is in our head. When we talk about

16:35 Fear or Lack of uh being aggressive or it's just it's in your head. So not everybody's gonna be super aggressive, but the one thing that you can deal with is a a person's fears. So if you start early If they are a shy person. They just won't be as shy if you keep instilling those things, so

16:53 The mimicry, the impersonation. Yeah. How early did that start? Because I read and and maybe you can tell me if this is off Or not because you never know at the internet. Uh that your second grade teacher used to reward the class if they behave by letting you tell jokes. Yeah, they will let they will let me tell jokes'cause I would get in trouble. Miss Re is my

17:14 I think it was my third grade teacher, Miss Reeves. 'Cause I would like talk, but I was very smart. My grandmother had a school. I sh I lived in a school. So I I'd already knew that from like first to eighth grade, I already knew all of the lesson plan. So you know, a kid like me sitting there with nothing to do, I'm gonna get in trouble. So she would um Let me do stand up comedy on Fridays. For the kids. And all I would do is my grandmother would watch Johnny Carson and the only

17:40 room that had the television was my room. So I had to watch Johnny Carson too as a kid. So nine years old, seven, eight, nine years old. I would just take the jokes that were being told by David Brenner and Steve Allen and

17:54 A young uh David Letterman. Who else would be on there? Franklin A J. Uh you guys when you when you're hearing this, go Google these guys. A young J Leno. These are like sort of like

18:06 You know, Richard Pryor, what so I would take those jokes. And tell him at school'cause those kids wouldn't watch it. Please tell me he used Richard Pryor on Fridays. Well I guess it was on Prime Time. Richard Prior on Prime time you couldn't you couldn't he couldn't really say anything on Prime till he was clean. But like rich little. Google Rich Little because Rich Little was the first person that I saw do impersonations. This had to be like seventy six, nineteen seventy six. So like fifth grade for me.

18:34 The joke was uh Jimmy Carter. Which was the president. At the time. Singing You Light Up My Life.

18:43 And at that time his brother Or was getting caught drunk all the time. Like uh Billy. So it was a Jimmy Cardigan's. Uh so many nets. Oh, me and my brother Billy. Oh we'll sit by the window.

18:54 Waiting for somebody to bring some peanuts and beer. And so that was my first attempt at an an impersonation. And then it went on from there to do a retroduction I am not a crook. So you know Who else would I do? Reagan. But here's it, Reagan came later, but Reagan came like in the eighties when I was actually like twenty one.

19:12 And I was the first black guy. doing the Reagan impersonation, probably the only one. So I would be uh on stage doing my impersonations and go into Ronald Reagan, people are like, No, it ain't no way. Well Well, as a matter of fact, I uh Oh no.

19:27 There you go again. And so that being being young and and and that teacher Miss Reeves and Miss Miss Dowth and all those Teachers allow Miss Cole allow me to be myself. you know, help me hone in on what I was gonna be doing. for the rest of my life. Like literally my friends from Terror go like How the fuck did you do that?

19:47 This is the shit you used to do. You turned to thirty. It was literally the same shit. I'd be like wow. Millions of people are watching this shit. It's the same And now Doc Rivers from uh the Clippers.

20:00 Hey you know. We're gonna try! You know what? It's not Blake's fault. You know, next year we gotta

20:05 We gotta do better. You know, it's so I'm working on like The new impersonations now. And the way you do an impersonation is usually about it's musical. Like um say Kermit the Frog, right? So Kermit the Frog is

20:19 So it's sort of like where you do your Yeah, to you. You know what I'm fine and Mm. Mm, mm, mm.

20:30 So the actual Voice tone is in the key of G for current fraud. Uh uh.

20:40 Hurry the fur here here with the C So that and then once you get the voice tone, it's how you manipulate your mouth to get the sound. Did you know it was So it's it's sort of constricting. And then and then and then it's and then it's asking the character to come sit with you. Kermit the Frog here. Here were the three little pictures. So you know it's but the key is this. And at the same time, Kermit the Frog, who else sounds like that? Sammy Davis Jr. a little bit.

21:07 Yeah, because she knew man. So now Kermit the Frog is One way, but if you just twist your voice or twist your mouth to the right. And grab some swag now, you're Sammy Davis Junior. Come with you figure out because, man, you know it's the same Voice. That's sort of like the mechanical way of getting to the impression. So you would start with not the visual because obviously those people who are listening can't see this, but

21:33 The uh mannerisms are also very much on point. Like I I do an a LeBron James impersonation, which is really not A voice it's more of his mannerism, this the jaw. No, it's the look.

21:48 That's Go Row. You know, just go ro you know the game of basketball, you know, we just try to you know, you know, it's that. You know? No, it's right it's right after it's right after playing. You know, when it comes off the off the the court, they catch me still tired. You know, uh you know the game of basketball we just try to you know, do the best we No, so it's the the mannerisms so people will appreciate the mannerisms first. The physicality of of someone like Uh LeBron or you know Different. Different personalities bring about bring about different things.

22:15 What is your birth name? Eric Marlin Bishop. And how did Eric Marlin Bishop become? Jamie Fox. Man.

22:24 I was Eric Marlin Bishop. Graduated high school, eighty six. I get out to California and I start doing I'm I'm in college in in in uh Doing the music.

22:35 But I will go up. On these Open Mic nights for comedy. So I go I do really well. Did I g get like standing ovation. And then I came to LA got a stand in ovation.

22:46 And then when I came back every week I wouldn't get called up. I was like yeah what What's going on? How does the open mic work? What does it what you do is you put your name on a list. Put your name on a list and they pick from the list and they say, Okay, these are people that are going up.

22:59 So I went up and had a great set then for the next three or four weeks. I didn't they never call my name. I said, Yo Money, did you see my name? Yeah, yeah, you weren't on the list. You were on the list, but we we we got other people. But I found out that the comedians Or actually running the list. So the comedians that had been here for a while was like we we don't want him on here'cause he's showing us up.

23:16 So I was like fuck. So I ended up going to this Evening at the improv. The improv like in Santa Monica.

23:25 And so I had never been there. So I wouldn't notice that a hundred guys would show up. Five girls would show up. The five girls will always get on the on the show because they needed to break up the monotony. So I said.

23:39 I got some. So I wrote down on the list all of these unisex names. Stacey Green, Tracy Brown, Jamie Fox. And now the guy chooses from the list. He says, Is uh Jamie Fox is she here?

23:54 She'll be first. I was like, No money, that that's that's me. Uh. Okay. All right. Well you you're gonna you're the fresh meat. I said, what's that? They were shooting evening at the improv, this old sh old comedy show back in the day. See, you'll be the guy that will just throw up to see if you get a laugh or two.

24:09 You know, it's gonna be a tough crowd. Fresh meat. Fresh meat. I said, cool. So I go up in between two of the guys get a standing ovation. People like, Who's the kid? Is he on the show?

24:20 Am I sure? So then they started yelling my name, Yo Jamie. Yo, Jamie. Hey Jamie, but I'm not used to me So now they think I'm arrogant. This motherfucker thinks she's not even listening to us.

24:33 So I I I took that name. In a stuck. And then I started building everything out off of it. I uh back in the day people used to wear jackets and put names on the jacket. So I had Sly as a dot dot. Coming to the foxhole, foxhole, you know, things like that. By the time you got to

24:51 Doing the open mics. Getting up on stage. Were you nervous? Were you afraid or were you over it? First I looked at it first. I went to open mic night and saw the guys, I was like, Man, these dudes are terrible.

25:04 Mm-hmm. So when you go on stage And your whole life is not I wanna be a comedian. I went on stage like yo, I'm gonna just

25:13 Fuck around. So if I hit, cool, if I miss, I wasn't trying to be that anyway. You know, I wanted to do more music, but But when I went on stage it was just like it was just natural. It was uh uh I you know, I I belong here. So I think that's the thing too, when it comes to w entertainment. there's a certain like, oh I belong here. This is what I'm supposed to do. How successful I've Will be or won't be

25:37 that's something out of my hands, but I do know that this is where I belong. And that's with anything and anybody. Like when you can sort of listen to that voice in your head or what's in your heart. And you get a chance to do something that you really feel like you're supposed to do. That alleviates A lot of the fear.

25:56 surgeon or lawyer or something, you know, so you know, if something that I'm not versed in or something like that, then maybe there will be more Fear but with this. I don't have those types of fears. As I've gotten older in the business I sort of simplify things.

26:11 Like Now I just Execute. I have to ask people like

26:17 Ricardo, just the Justin. What should I execute? So the fear of a celebrity or an artist now is how do I get my art off? In a world where it's

26:29 The social media driven ridicule and criticism. Like I always say like this, like a person like Prince or person like Michael Jackson could have never survived in today's world. Because in the day of the internet and where everybody has a voice, most of the voices are hateful voices. Or not understanding like if you saw Prince with

26:51 A guitar and a bandana and the way he dressed. You know, people would meme the shit out of it. You know. So Now it's not a fear, but it's just a

27:01 A question that I have to always ask them, like Yo, is this is this the cool shit to do or not the cool shit to do? And so What I learned is when it's just executing something. When it's either executing a song or executing a joke or executing

27:16 Things within the Entertainment is cool. But then you have to wonder like How do you get it off? Like how do you Like even now when you talk about the Bill Cosby joke. Back in the day we just tell the joke. Now you gotta be like, Okay, I gotta tell the joke in a way

27:31 That it's still funny, it still keeps the bite on it, but you know, so those are the Different like For Me as a uh entertainer. Where there's not fear, it's just like, you know.

27:45 Questions. Does that make sense? Make sense. No, it does make sense. The considerations. Have you bombed on stage before? Oh yeah. Two. When you are bombing, what is your internal dialogue or response and then second. Mm.

27:59 Well you bombing. I bomb and it it wasn't a lot. I only bomb like Twice. Do you remember your first? Yeah, yeah. I I did this this show For this guy named Lattimore.

28:11 Old Blue Singer. I'm twenty one. What was his name? Lattimore. Lattimore. Sounds like Voldemort. Yeah, Latimore. Lattimore. So This guy saw me at this other club and say, Hey man, you know Lattermore's performing round the corner, man, won't you come and open them up Whatever

28:25 I said how much you pay. He said, Pay fifty dollar. I said, I'm there, fifty bucks, I need it. So this is like Eighty nine ninety. So

28:34 I get there. And I don't know who Lattimore is, I just know it's a lot of older people. Like I mean like oh I'm like oh shit What are the people that these other people. So I'll go up.

28:45 And the setting was different. It was like the chairs and stuff were way in the it was like a banquet setting. And it's in the middle of the hood, you know, Crenshaw. And like the tables are like from here to where, like twenty feet away. thirty feet away from me, so I don't have that And I Oh you didn't have that proxy. And I hadn't been doing stand up comedy that long. I've only been doing it for like a year.

29:06 So I had If I'm funny, I got an hour. If I'm not funny, it's about ten minutes worth of shit,'cause I would just take a joke and just keep Spinning it, spinning it. So First joke they didn't get, second joke they didn't get. I said shit, I'm damn all the jokes.

29:20 So I said, Well let me do this before I do anything. Let me just talk about people in the audience. So I looked and I saw this guy with this sort of suit on with a butterfly collar. Like oh shit, I'm gonna talk about him with the butterfly cotta, but before I could say that, I looked around Everybody has a butterfly collar. This is what they really want to look like. And so uh

29:43 I just said, Hey man, I you know, I don't know what else y'all want. And Pretty soon Latimore's gonna come up. You guys ready for Latimore and I just so do not say I'm gonna take a break. So I get off stage.

29:56 And the dude that was Washing the dishes. Takes his apron off and goes, man, I got it. Mike. I have you.

30:04 And he started doing these old stock jokes. Kills. And so I said, okay Now know what it is. You gotta have jokes that are appropriate for your audience. So I learned on how to tell jokes for everybody because at first my jokes was geared towards women, it was singing and So what I started doing from that day on I would go to like

30:25 Des Moines Iowa. Davenport, Iowa. Boys of Idaho. Where it's all white, Gunnison, Colorado. All white.

30:34 And I would go do like Forty minutes of all black material. To see what they understood what they didn't understand. So if I go to these all white places, if they understood fifteen minutes I logged that fifteen minutes. I can go to any place where it's just all white.

30:50 Or I would ask, Y'all know who this is? Uh and so I would tell the joke if fifteen minutes they understood it, I can go to any place in the world. It's all white and they get it. Then I will go to my chocolate city, Chicago, D C Florida.

31:06 Political highbrow. Stuff and see what the black folks understood. Man, what the fuck you talking about, dog? Now they understood fifteen minutes. Now I got fifteen to thirty minutes to forty five minutes that wherever I go. No matter what age.

31:21 They'll understand, no matter what gender, no matter what race, they'll understand this forty five minutes. So I had to learn how to Use the formula. In order for you to be Funny.

31:32 And then once you got your comedy license, once you've been seen by enough people. In the highest way. Like if you look at the arc of a Kevin Hart. Like Kevin Hart. Takes that art. Takes the same formula. I'm not for sure how he put it in his mind, but he's doing the same thing to where he's

31:48 Going to all of these places. All over the world. Implementing his comedy. And if they get it. He's gathering all that so that now

31:58 When people see Kevin Hart no matter where in the world They're gonna laugh. Becoming a great comedian is also having that formula going on in your head because if you paint yourself into a corner like you're only the black comedian or you're only the

32:12 Whatever that is, then It's hard for you to become universal. I mean, Eddie was Eddie Murphy was great. He had an opportunity Through Saturday Night Live to get it to everybody. But uh it's definitely a a formula to not bomb it.

32:24 So that's the first bomb. You mentioned two. Yeah. Was it second? If it's hard to recall that Follow up question is gonna be.

32:31 What is the post game analysis when you step off the stage after bombing. So the second time. Well, you gotta when I bombed the second time was way later in my career when I'm working out jokes. But I don't like to work out jokes. And tell people I'm working out.

32:46 I like to actually do a show. Come and do the show. So when uh No. I think that's cheating and I think you you get bad habits. So I I do a show in Irvine, California.

32:59 First show I kill. It was just ready for him. I'm like, oh man, everything works. Second show. Bom. Because I didn't take time to dig out the jokes and that So but when you bomb you go like okay, all right, let's go, let's check it out. So I got a team of my my guys, I say, Let's go. Okay, that didn't work. No, you gotta put this in front of that.

33:21 You gotta put that behind this'cause that's gonna kick this off. People didn't know what that was, so maybe we don't say that. So you know, you have the when you take the bomb when we take the L It's not like you're not funny. What's the L? Like you take the loss. Oh okay. When you take the loss, it's not like you're not funny. It's just like okay, you just didn't put the shit together. So that's the other thing, too. When you do become funny,

33:41 It's gonna be harder now. To make people laugh. Because you set the bar. So watch this. The hardest part

33:50 For Chris Rock. Was after He had done something great. And stand up. Because now

33:58 You gotta top that. The hardest part for Eddie Murphy. 'Cause he wants to come out and do stand up is. How do I top That.

34:08 In your head. The hardest part is coming. For Kevin Hart and the fact that You smashed him. Now

34:16 You know what I'm saying? You gotta know how to you you gotta know how to refresh. When you do something like I would look at my stuff and go like I gotta quit doing that. Because that shtick that I'm doing, people are catching on. And they're like, Okay, motherfucker, we don't already seen that shit. So that's the other thing. You gotta have great material.

34:36 And you gotta know how to move,'cause like right now is the perfect time for Eddie Murphy to come out and do stand up. Because it's been so long, it's nostalgic. It was thirty years ago. So now you can catch a new young You can still excite the older, you know? So being a stand up comedian is tough. And you've seen a lot of Funny guys.

34:53 Not be funny anymore. Why? Because you can't top what you did. You look at the Jim Carrey, you go like okay, man, where you at? Where you at? You know what I'm saying? You know? Don't give up the funny, uh Oh, you look at Chris, I always look at Chris Tuck and be like, motherfucker, where you at?

35:07 Don't leave us. Because Being a stand-up comedian is an interesting thing. Most stand-up comedians want to look good. In what way? We just wanna look good.

35:17 Think about this, when Eddie Murphy started doing stand up He was funny. But then he started doing, you know, wear the leather suits and it was the fly shit and the rings and They don't want to look good. Joe Piscopo. Started working out.

35:30 But the muscles. You know what I'm saying? So As a standard comedian, we gotta be careful. Not to look too good. Because people start going, What the fuck are you doing?

35:41 You ain't cute, nigga. We just wanna laugh. You know what I'm saying? But when we start getting into our shit That's when we look'cause I did that. Like I got to uh my thing was that After and living color. The show Call to Live of Color that it did.

35:54 I felt like I had made it. So I wasn't necessarily on the good looking ship, but I was on the I've made it jokes. I went on stage and was doing rich jokes. Just got that range over.

36:05 Anybody else? It's crazy out here. You know, they're so finicky, right? Motherfuckers is looking at me like, what the fuck is you talking about? And then uh uh I said, you know, the square footage of the house, man, when it gets a certain square feet, man, that shit is crazy and maintaining, you know? Motherfuckers is like, motherfucker, if you don't get off the goddamn stage, I'd lost it. I lost it and I walked off stage and all of a sudden Th I I walk on stage. They give it up for Jamie Fox and I'm thinking they're going crazy. Yeah, yeah. Oh thank you. Thank you so much.

36:32 And I'm standing outside the club and I hear the crowd going crazy. I'm like, what the fuck they doing? I just went on stage. What the fuck are they laughing at? And I opened the door and there was a kid. Skinny. Little tank top on, barely fit. His name was Chris Tucker.

36:46 He was m smashing. He was No one has been that funny within fifteen minutes. I've never seen and I watch them all. I've never seen a stand up. Well people were laughing so hard like I said he's gonna kill somebody. Like when he says last night, how was you I killed? It's gonna be true, somebody gonna have a fucking heart attack. And I sat down and said and I went, I can't do that.

37:10 I lost that. So I left, went to another club at night, bomb. Like it wasn't just you know So finally I went over to Okinawa where the troops were. I started doing stand up over there for the troops to sort of get back. It was my rocky moment, like you know, I started running up the steps chasing chickens and shit. Trying to get back. For a stand up comedian, that's the one thing you can never let go. You can never stop being

37:35 Excuse me, a certain goofiness to you. And so and like when you talk about fear or when you talk about bombing It's a different when you've done it for a long time. You know and when you do bomb. You just gotta get right back up and you gotta acknowledge it. Okay, I stunk, nigga.

37:48 'Cause they're gonna let you know. Like today's world, it ain't you can't do nothing in today's world without somebody letting you know nigga, you fucked that up. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement. And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me. On the road. So what is AG1? AG One is a science driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system.

38:34 So take ownership of your health and try AG One today. You will get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free AG One travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. go to drinkage one dot com slash Tim. That's drinkage one, the number one. Drink AG1.com slash Tim. Last time, drink AG1.com slash Tim. Check it out. I And now

39:05 Jacqueline Novogratz. The founder and CEO of Acumen. A global force of entrepreneurs, investors, Philanthropists and social innovators working together to break the cycle of poverty. The New York Times best selling author of

39:21 The blue sweater and Manifesto for a Moral Revolution And one of the world's one hundred greatest living business minds, according to Forbes magazine. You can find Jacqueline on Twitter and Instagram. At J Novogratz.

39:37 Jacqueline, welcome to the show. It's great to be here with you, Tim. Thank you. I'm going to just go with the layup. I'm not gonna say lazy question. It's really more of a Setting of the backdrop.

39:50 For people who don't know you, could you please describe your childhood, your parents. Just give us a little bit of color there so we know from where you have come. I was Raised in a Four bedroom house with seven siblings, the seven of us.

40:06 Amazing parents. Dad was in the military. My mother was a force to be reckoned with. I would say it was a noisy, chaotic Loving House full of Cowboys who are also expected to somehow be good. Number of your siblings have also gone on.

40:24 To do great things. very much on a national and global scale. To what do you attribute that? Is it just inheriting good software? Yeah, it's environmental are there any particular inputs or

40:40 habits that your parents have, anything that comes to mind, I'm sure you've been asked this before, but What was in the drinking water, so to speak. I think it was a funny combination of one constraint. that when you have so many kids on a military income.

40:56 You gotta get entrepreneurial young fast. And that was probably A very important piece. Number two. My mother is one of the great mythmakers of all times. Mythmakers. Mythmakers.

41:08 I remember when we were little, Bob, Mike and I All we really wanted was Levi's genes. There weren't a lot of things to differentiate us. So my mother made a deal with us and said, Look I'll buy you the dungarees, which is what they used to call jeans from the post exchange. Unless you can earn the difference for those Levi's, but I have to tell you I'm really disappointed in you guys. Why would you need brands? You're Novogrates. And we we laugh now. We're like, what the hell was a Novogratz? But she

41:37 Had the sense. That this was who we were. So two Kind of a driven myth making mother. Three this

41:45 Big extended immigrant Catholic family. And so this idea that to whom much is given Much as expected was also reinforced, and so I guess In a funny way, Tim, we grew up

41:57 In a tribe? But also Allowed to be Wild individualists who had to be entrepreneurial, and here we are. So you're known for

42:08 Impact investing. Social impact. And all the things that we Or I should say I mentioned in the bio that I just read. But That's not where things began from square one. You weren't just hatch out of the egg as this Imminent.

42:23 world change or maybe you were on some level. I mean, uh your brother Mike Novograds, who's been on the podcast, talked about How you have had this very clear North Star. for seemingly a much of your life. But that wasn't the first step. In other words, you didn't just graduate from high school and start acumen.

42:40 Could you Just walk us through your first professional decisions. Where did you go after school? And why did you go there? I think I did always want to change the world from the time I was six, and I guess that was part of the

42:55 Both the positive and the The pressure. And so there was always that idea that I had, but To go through college certainly as the first we had to pay for school. And so I worked

43:08 Two three jobs the entire time I was at the University of Virginia. What were your jobs? What types of jobs? Well mostly I was a bartender. Mm. And in the summer I work a hundred hours a week as a bartender, which was actually quite something.

43:21 When I graduated I told my parents that I'd really never had a proper vacation and that I was gonna take a year to just explore the world. Never really gone outside the United States or anything like that. And my parents being very wise said

43:36 We think that's fine. But at least go through the interview process. And so I agreed quite reluctantly, and And I threw my resume without thinking into the boxes for Foreign Affairs econ majors, which were my majors. And Chase Manhattan Bank called and said, We'll take you in as an interview. And so I go into the interview and there's this cute guy sitting across the table from me, and he says,

43:59 Tell me, Jacqueline, why do you want to be a banker? Which was of course the only question I wasn't ready for. And so Actually, my mom and dad are making me do this. I don't want to be a banker. And he said, Yeah.

44:14 Yeah. I mean I'm not going to be able to do it. It's probably the only answer he wasn't prepared for. Something in here was prepared because it was like, well, if you got this job, you would be in 40 countries the next three years and you would be understanding the economic and political situation in each of those countries and of course is this kid that always dreamed Of knowing the world, loving the world.

44:37 I was like oh God so I said, could we start this interview over? And he let me literally leave the room. I knocked on the door, I introduced myself, I sat down, he was like Tell me. Jacqueline, why do you want to be a banker? And I said.

44:51 Ever since I was six years old, all I ever wanted to do was be a banker. Of course there were interviews after that to make sure I had a brain, but I got the job. Ha. Ha. And sure enough, for the next three years I

45:06 was in forty countries at a really extraordinary time when the financial systems were also Imperil in the early nineteen eighties. That was my first job. Now how did you end up traveling the world. I suppose thinking back to my own undergrad experience and the recruiting on campus by

45:23 investment banks and so on, although this may not have been in the investment banking category, but when I think The promises of various recruiters. I associate the you're gonna travel the world, meet fascinating people. learn various A, B, and C about X, Y, and Z industries. I associate that with the management consulting pitch. So what was the job that you ended up getting that allowed you to travel like that in banking.

45:48 It was an extraordinary job. It was called credit audit where The bank hired primarily liberal arts. Majors I think Young people who Вinkер сумніс.

46:01 And they literally would send us around the world a month at a time. I think I was in New York Three weeks, one year. And you would just get this note on your desk that you had to be in Kuala Lumpur

46:15 Three days from then and a package of travelers checks, which was the way that we would get money. And a reservation and hotel and we would go. And so it's one way the world has really changed. Because I remember talking to my boss because I had a reputation for unwittingly getting people fired by asking the really dumb questions.

46:33 And then uncovering. I can't let that go without asking for an example. How does that happen? What would a hypothetical or real type of question or or actual question be that might get someone fired. The biggest one for me was in Switzerland. When I was Pretty much a solo act to look at this whole suite of Swiss banks.

46:54 Which Everybody just assumed We're safe. Because of Swiss banking.

47:00 And Tim, I kept looking at the numbers and the spreadsheets for this one Thank you. And nothing added up to me. And so I went to the the head of the division, the office And I was incredibly nervous because I wasn't that confident that I

47:17 was that great at all these spreadsheets, and I pointed out what I saw as real flaws and real vulnerabilities and He essentially told me I was too young, too naive, didn't I understand Swiss banking and that the bank was completely protected. And I scratched my head, I went back, the number still didn't work.

47:36 I called my boss, he yelled at me. And I just knew. That I might be wrong. I might be all those things he said.

47:45 But I could only tell my truth, and I literally had to hold on to the chair. Cause I was so afraid. And I turned it in. I gave it. in those days a seven, which put it on a big warning list, which meant it went all the way to the top of the bank. And it turned out that I was right.

48:00 The bank failed. But I learned really young, Tim. That I went from being seen as kind of scared and

48:10 Not that serious. Overnight. to then being seen as this whiz kid I was the same person. Nothing had changed.

48:19 And how ephemeral The way the world sees you became To me. Uh,'cause I know that I was exactly the same. Women.

48:28 the morning after that I was the morning before. So I guess learning really young sometimes just speak that truth even through trembling lips. Yeah. Wow, what a story. I mean it's it's something that so few people, especially new hires, would actually Dare to do. It just strikes me

48:47 as uh unusual. that you would have the conviction to potentially and I don't know the Politicing. Or the power dynamics inside of that bank, obviously, but to piss off your boss by giving it a seven, which then sh flip up the flagpole.

49:03 After getting reprimanded. That's quite a move. It sounds like that wasn't a first though, that you'd sort of cultivated this speaking of truth. Coming up to that point. Is that accurate?

49:16 Yeah, I think it probably was and in fact God, you're already making me get emotional, but I think I saw myself as less courageous a voice than other people experienced me as a great gift of my latest book. Where I talked about the need to learn how to use voice. Was that one of my colleagues At the time.

49:35 Civil. you know, hadn't seen in more than thirty years. You were always the one that was standing. And I think I always stood for The underdog, but I also just

49:47 Couldn't tell a lie. And They hired me for a particular purpose and I felt like that was my duty. That was just my job. As a kid I was the one that would fight for the underdog. In fact, I got thrown out of trigonometry.

50:02 For standing up for what was right. What were you standing up for? Was it the answer to something or was it a person? No, the teacher, he was a great pop quiz guy and he had promised us that we wouldn't get a pop quiz that week. And one of my friends had been sick and she was very, very insecure when it came to trigonometry. I said you don't have to worry about it because this teacher

50:24 told us that we weren't gonna have a pop quiz and promised us. And then of course he gave us the Pop quiz and I just felt such a need to protect my friend. That I stood up, I made a big deal about it. And that was the end. That was my last day of trigonometry for that year. And the worst of it is I had to do home economics for the last six weeks of the

50:44 Yeah. Just imagining how happy you were about that. But I think it's worth really underscoring that You develop this and reinforce this Truth speaking.

50:58 You take some lumps. Of course you're gonna take lums. Along the way, but ultimately. Not to attribute all of your successes to that, but I think it's no small thing. One of the

51:10 aspects of your story that has stuck out to me as I'm doing homework is the power of Asking. I wouldn't say dumb questions, asking the questions, right? Asking questions and speaking truth. And it's just how You talk about patient capital. We might

51:29 Talk later about how that's differentiated from just long term capital and long term investing and how you differentiate the two, but If you're making a long term sort of patient investment in yourself, like over the short term, you might get reprimanded for truth and asking. questions or seemingly naive questions, but They seem to be really good long term bets. Uh and I suppose there's not a question so much in that, but does that resonate with you as

51:56 Being true. How does that land for you when I say that? Am I missing anything? I've actually never thought about it for myself personally, but it deeply resonates that I I'm not comfortable and it's hard sometimes both for people who work with me and for the people who take our courses online. at lay out a roadmap because the world is too complex for a step by step guide to how to solve poverty.

52:18 But what we Do have as a compass a moral compass. And that speaking of truth and s standing for truth not only builds a sense of courage, but it Deepens. I think one's and certainly my own understanding of where lines are.

52:34 So yeah. So thank you for that. Yeah, also I know this I'm getting on a caffeinated soapbox here for a second, but we're gonna cover a lot of ground, so we have space for my caffeinated soapbox, and that is to say These things don't manifest out of the ether. when you need them most necessarily, right? You were

52:53 Practicing and conditioning yourself to tell the truth. And you had a choice. to stuff or to speak in that moment, you made the decision. To speak rate it a seven. And that

53:07 gave you the positive reinforcement, I have to imagine, and more confidence to continue doing the same. But it's a skill. I mean, it seems like a practice that you need to reinforce. Let's come back to this banking. In your retake. Ever since the age of six, I've always known I wanted to be a banker. Clearly. You're no longer a banker. So what happened?

53:26 What happened? You're doing these audits. Where does the next chapter Enter the picture. So it started Again, having always dreamed of travelling around the world and knowing and loving the world, in fact.

53:41 Now I'm in Brazil and Chile and Ecuador and And truly Columbia falling in love with the vibrancy, the color. These stories that As a young American kid, we didn't ever get

53:54 about the developing world. And it struck me. In this era again, Tim, when The banks were falling apart. They had been making All these bets based on relationship and long term debt.

54:08 And suddenly the the the markets were in crisis and they wanted to call all their loans and and they lost hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars at that time. So I would sit inside the bank. Looking at loans that should never have been made. Often money that was

54:23 Actually never even put into what it said it would be put into. Meanwhile, on the weekends I would just be Drawn to the favelas and into the slums and into these parts of the cities that were so full of life and vibrancy and work. intelligent people and I would talk to people about their businesses

54:41 And realise that This was a group of people that could not even Walk in Through the doors of the bank. They had no confidence.

54:48 with the banking system. And so I Again asking Dumb questions. Which may be a Theme of my life. Went to my boss with all good faith.

54:58 And said that maybe we would Do better for the country, do better for the people, and actually get our money back. do better for the bank if we actually made smaller loans to local people doing what they were doing and he literally gave me a book called The Innocent Anthropologist. And it became very clear to me that

55:18 The bank. Wasn't ready. To pivot. In that way. And so I had to go outside.

55:25 Which is where I've stayed. trying to disrupt systems from the outside, not the inside, which I think I'm better at. So the innocent anthropologist, I assume, was a very formalized way of giving you a book that basically says, Listen, kid That's adorable.

55:40 But Also very naive. I mean, is that the thrust of that gift? Yeah, I mean he gave me two gifts actually. That was the first gift. And then when we were Talking a little bit later and he was trying to convince me to stay at the bank. He's like look

55:54 you're one of our top producers and performers, but culturally You don't really fit. You dress like Linda Rothstead and you laugh too much. Which now I think may have been code for You're not actually acting enough like you know an elite one of us.

56:09 And I realized in that moment. That not only did I want to see how we could actually use the tools of banking. to solve poverty. But that if I stayed That he was essentially asking me to be a completely different person.

56:23 And that helped. Make the decision. What was your next move? You know, some people will get to checkmate in one move, but it's often an evolution. Where did you go from there? Well the next move was telling my parents

56:35 That I had to make the decision. Oh yeah. Tell us about tell us about that. Giving up on. You know this. Middle class immigrant family saw as the job of lifetime and to make it worse, the COO of Chase, Turn Utreciano, who just Such an amazing man.

56:55 was giving me an opportunity then I think he liked that I was the scrappy bartender girl. And not the more refined version that might immediate boss wanted, he really gave me an opportunity that could have changed

57:08 would have changed the direct trajectory of my life. My dad Uh I was giving up that opportunity and my mother thought I would never marry. Both had truth in what they were saying. And so I think that was incredibly hard because uh we were all raised to quote unquote do the right thing.

57:25 I was looking for an opportunity to get to Brazil. But I found one that would Bring me to West Africa, which was absolutely not on my playbook. But I realized that this was a chance to pursue a different kind of dream that was looking at taking the tools of banking and reaching low income people.

57:42 I read about Mohammed Yunis and the Grammy Bank and Another heroes of mine. And I wanted to try it myself. And so I went And as you said, it it was sort of a next move I I met with absolutely

57:55 Crashing Failure. made all the worse because I turned on this really big job offer. So we're we're going to definitely roll up our sleeves and get into the crushing failure. But before we do, maybe we'll We'll get into another failure I've no idea because I don't know the details of this, but

58:13 How did the conversation with your parents go? Did you deliver it in a way that they were able to hear? If so, what was that way? Did you try it? And they were just like Terrible idea. Time will tell. Watch us. You know, this is the end of the that was the end of the conversation. I mean, how did it turn out and how did you approach it, or maybe the other way around? Well, I just told them what I was going to do. So you didn't say I'm thinking of X, you were just like, This is what I'm doing. I'm giving you guys a heads heads up.

58:37 Heads up. This is Really. You know, it's not such a request, it's a this is what I'm gonna do next time. My mother is like you are out of your mind. She could be very forceful then. And what she will say now Is that she

58:50 kind of understood by then that I had a very strong Well When I decided something. I don't think I quite understood until much later how afraid.

59:00 They were. This is pre internet, pre Cell phone pre real understanding. Uh What this big continent was about.

59:11 they had of Africa was a as almost as a single country rather than fifty four All looking like Ethiopia during the famine of nineteen eighty three. Probably the worst thing that she said to me was, You know, I could understand if you were a nun. And I was like, What are you doing? I think there was a lot of fear.

59:33 I think there was a lot of fear. What's been so thrilling is to watch them along the journey. Not only feel deeply proud. But get more and more excited. And that happened fairly quickly, as long as we had a few rules. If I went to a war zone, I didn't tell them till after I got back.

59:49 Because communication was too hard. It was not fair to them. I think those are Things that parents don't have to deal with today because they can Be it more constant.

59:58 contact. So before we get to the crushing defeat. Which I definitely want to spend a little time on. How did you find the next opportunity? Because I think many people listening Well

1:00:09 Have They will have some experience, maybe it's a current experience, of doing something that generates income, but that is not Deeply rewarding to them on some level. and they want to have a greater impact. They don't know what to do. And I'm not asking so much for prescriptive advice yet. We might get to that. But how did you at that time, especially this is pre internet, how did you find

1:00:32 This next lily pad to jump to. And then please tell us about your crushing defeat. Again, we had far less tools than And so I had read one tiny article about Grammy Bank, which was still very obscure. I sent a letter to P

1:00:50 Mahammed Yunus. That probably never reached Bangladesh. And then I heard From a young woman who also was at Chase. That her aunt.

1:01:00 Had started an organization called Women's World Banking. And that there might be an opportunity. So I just went there and offered myself To go to Brazil. And as I said.

1:01:11 She said we don't have any opportunity there. We do though in West Africa. And I just took it. It was super risky. It didn't come with health insurance. It just was an opportunity.

1:01:22 I knew that if I were waiting for the perfect, I wouldn't have done it. I also knew I might lose my nerf. And it was the only thing that was on offer to really test out my theory that the tools of business and banking. could actually serve people who had been

1:01:37 Fully left out. And I don't think it was until I was actually on the plane listening to Joni Mitchell's blue album over and over and weeping that it really hit me. That I was I was on my own.

1:01:50 Why were you weeping? Was it fear? Was it something else? I think it was loss. Everything I left behind. No understanding of where I was going.

1:02:00 Fear. A lot of Loss in transition. And then the minute I landed Both excitement for being there and yet almost immediate confrontation.

1:02:11 With B First bank. True failure of my life. Which was that

1:02:16 I had been told that I had this opportunity to be an ambassador to you know African women and I was gonna help build all these microfinance organizations across The region. And I would say the arrogance underneath was that I was going to save the world. At least this.

1:02:33 Part of it. And what The confrontation helped me understand. Pretty quickly. Was that most people don't want to be saved.

1:02:42 And certainly not by a twenty five year old. White American girl. Who's French? And And who had very little understanding whatsoever.

1:02:52 And so I hung in there for a number of months. It was very hairy. Hairy in what way? Everything from just a kind of a daily rejection where I would go to my little office in the African Development Bank and the door would be locked. Or I was

1:03:09 supposed to do this big conference and I would ask people for help and they'd be like, Ce n'est pas mon travail, that's not my job. Okay, I didn't really know where to go. And then this one Nigerian extraordinary woman befriended me. And she's like, You know, they really want you out. the powers that be. And so don't eat anything in front of the women who didn't want me in the country. And I said, What do you mean don't eat anything? She said, Well, they're

1:03:32 They're gonna poison you and they're also talking about Vucle. Holy shit. Jesus. And you know, I don't believe in voodoo, but I will tell you when you are stripped down to nothing And you're afraid to eat anything in front of people and you're being locked out of your office and You don't really have much of a safety net, nor do you know a single person except for this incredible Nigerian woman who's befriended you. I would lie in bed at

1:04:00 Oh. Is anybody here coming to get me? And um and then I got Unbelievably sick with food poisoning.

1:04:09 Like Deathly sick. Did you think it was poisoning or did you think it was food poisoning? I mean, after hearing that story, my God, I mean I would imagine I couldn't go there. I couldn't go there.

1:04:21 She thought It might be poisoning, but I didn't remember eating anything in front of anybody. And I was a little thing to start off with. And so

1:04:31 After about eight days of just I decided it was enough. And told the The women.

1:04:40 Trying to be respectful but also clear. Uh I I got what they were saying. I really heard that they had not asked for anybody like me. And that we don't

1:04:52 We shouldn't be Just parachuting in to go and Build things. without doing it in real partnership. And that that was a mistake.

1:05:01 On every level, including mine. And Nobody should be treated. the way that they treated me and that both were true. That said, I left everything that I owned in the boxes that I had in

1:05:14 in the Abbe Jean Hilton. Goodness knows whatever happened to them. And I moved to East Africa. Where I kind of start it again, hopefully with a lot more humility and maybe a different kind of courage.

1:05:25 Was it with the same organization? Mm-hmm. I have to ask because I'm sure I'm wondering and I'm sure people listening are wondering. I've heard stories of resistance and conflict when people parachute into different places, whether it's with an NGO or with other organizations. I have never heard of Possible poisoning. I mean that is a next level.

1:05:47 How do you explain that? I mean with the intent be to Make you sick to kill you? I mean that's I don't know how to make sense of that degree. Of

1:05:58 kind of counter attack. Again, I think it's really dangerous to assume, but I think that What I've learned and And when I used to you know, and I used to read novels About

1:06:12 The mystical and the magical. That in cultures including the United States. That were very orally based. Storytelling, myth making Can be

1:06:24 As powerful and potent. As the rail things. And so There was particularly in those years a lot of giddy giddy, you know, people believed in and wearing Different amulets and medicines.

1:06:38 In a way, you see the guys at Silicon Valley kind of replacing that with new things that we do to give us a sense of strength. And so the way I always attributed it to, which is why I would never accuse anyone of having done it, but But the threat of it I might

1:06:54 Um Fear and isolation. A may have been made manifest. And this. Literal purging.

1:07:03 that I did. The threats were Not That unusual. Again, I and I see it in places where

1:07:11 There's often insecurity. And deeply oral based Society. And you gotta remember too, Tim, it was thirty years ago. And

1:07:21 The world operated in very different ways. Then. And I just was caught up in this. And of course is now a place that I'm deeply in love with and

1:07:34 And love all of its different layers. And see the reflection. In our own societies, we just make manifest in different ways. At the time. Though you had just

1:07:45 Suffered this. defeat of sorts had really met with tremendous opposition. What was your first meaningful win? After that. In your mind.

1:07:56 Could be small or big. Or the first time when you're like, okay, this this isn't a fool's errand. Like I'm actually onto something. I'm on the right track here. That's such an interesting question. I had another crushing failure right after. Where I I analyzed a bank portfolio of a microfinance organization and saw that I was excited by seeing all of the problems in the portfolio and

1:08:16 And the CEO rather than sharing my excitement that now we could actually fix the problems. Burned my work. And didn't want to work with me after that. And so I I had to learn a whole new approach. That was in that was in East Africa. That was in Kenya. So I had a second big failure, the little wins.

1:08:34 Were that in my everyday life The relationships that I was building Including with the person who served tea. With drivers. were quite real. I kept going back to this

1:08:47 human potential that I was seeing all around me. And starting to understand the crushingly complex systems. That were in their way. that nobody really wanted to confront. Including

1:09:00 The supposed good guys. The NGOs, the nonprofits, the leaders who were also arbitraters. Of who got resources and who didn't, and it actually reinforced for me. Why I believed in the power of business of entrepreneurship. Because I was in this other world where who got control of the resources.

1:09:20 Meant everything. The first real win for me was when a woman walked into my office in Nairobi and said that she was from Rwanda Which was a country I was completely unfamiliar with at the time. In fact, I thought she said Uganda, and they had just Nineteen eighty six. They had just

1:09:39 passed a new law that abolished Napoleonic Code. Under Napoleonic Code, women were put in the same category as children and the mentally Impaired. And Until that moment were unable to open a bank account without their husband's signature.

1:09:56 And she asked me If I would go to the country to do A study, if you will, a for whether it might be possible to create some kind of financial institution specifically for women. It was the first time

1:10:09 An African woman. had asked me to help. Five A problem. I think I was so beat up by then.

1:10:17 And yet Really did feel this sense that if we could get markets to work for poor women, they would have so much more dignity than what I've been seeing. that I probably went for a three or assignment and knew somewhere inside of me that I wasn't leaving till Wait Belt.

1:10:33 A bank. So Presumably that's what that's what happened. What happened? So that's what happened. I mean a couple of things happened.

1:10:43 Again, I had learned For my own lack of humility. That It would have been really easy to go in there and be like I I I I But that w if we were going to build a an enduring institution and I deeply believe in enduring institutions.

1:10:59 Yeah. I had to be a minor role. Even if I was doing a lot of the legwork. And so I was really lucky to find A small group of Rwandan

1:11:09 Powerhouse Women. Who are my co founders, and we did everything. Together. uh reinforce the African adage that if you want to go fast, go alone if you want to go

1:11:20 Far go together. And it became one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life because I saw that You really could change a little corner of history. with the right people, the right kind of capital. The right value system.

1:11:35 And certainly a lot of hard work. I want to Just put a bookmark in that for a second. And Ask from that initial plane flight.

1:11:45 Crying. Listening to Joni Mitchell. To that. Rwandan woman walking into your office.

1:11:54 How much time had elapsed? Roughly. Roughly Probably seven months. Okay. So over that seven month period

1:12:05 What were the ingredients? That kept you going. Was it that you'd said to yourself, Come hell or high water, I'm sticking around for a year, had you made that kind of commitment, was it I cannot go back to the US with my tail between my legs and let all these naysayers Prove themselves, right?

1:12:22 Was it something else? I'm just wondering what kept you Kind of slogging. Away. over that period of time. I would say that the whole first year and a half was that slog.

1:12:34 I would say a combination of of this man Tony Treciano. When he had given me this job offer and he was a You're gonna go to Africa?

1:12:45 instead of do this. And I was like Mr. Treciano, don't you understand if I don't go I might never do it. That moment kept coming back to me and it's like, how could I go back to him as a complete failure? I have to like show him that we can do something.

1:13:02 But also, Tim. I saw the vibrancy. I saw beauty and this world that I had never imagined existed with people who were so

1:13:13 Eminently capable But who weren't really given a chance to be everything that they could be. And it didn't seem like rocket science to me. Two build different kinds of systems that actually allowed their capability to flourish.

1:13:28 And so I think it was a mix of Hubris. And A desire to be used to In ways that I felt that I

1:13:36 I had something to offer. So coming back to the bookmark of Rwanda. And you finally start to In close collaboration with these co founders, these these local women. Create something.

1:13:50 Meaningful. You start to chalk up. Some marks in the win category. How do we go from there? Two.

1:13:59 Acumen. What is the timeline or the series of events? That leads. And I know we're covering earlier chapters but I I I like really looking at these things closely because it shows the development before you reach escape velocity. And I think that's

1:14:17 Makes for at least for me a fascinating study because people get to see sort of how you got to the point where you could self perpetuate and kind of build success on success.

1:14:28 So Rwanda to acumen. So we wanted to acumen. Sa both the power of using markets. With the with the microfinance I learned that It wasn't enough that giving women just small

1:14:42 loans was amazing that you could give them access to credit at say twelve percent a year rather than four hundred percent a year, which is what they paid the money lenders. That you could build community. My assumption that if you gave women small bits of credit that it would be enough for them to create jobs Was wrong.

1:14:59 Most people aren't entrepreneurs. And that's probably a really good thing. I could say it as an entrepreneur married to an entrepreneur. We need We need the builders. We need all these other personalities around us. So I also started a little bakery with twenty women to really understand what it would take. To build a

1:15:21 Entities that gave people good jobs. And that was a whole other learning point in the apprenticeship, if you will, before acumen. But

1:15:29 Access to markets is important without the capabilities. Of actually Using those. That access. We're only halfway there.

1:15:39 I think because I was Begin to understand that I wanted to build companies. Not just make small loans, but That I wanted new skills.

1:15:50 Also in the context of East Africa at the time Degrees and other markers of success, particularly for women, seemed really important. I was often called in Shitanakidogo, which means little girl. even though we actually created a very successful lending operation So I applied to Stanford Business School. It was the only school I applied to, but I thought well if I get in good if I don't

1:16:11 Doesn't matter. Why Stanford? Besides the pretty trees on Palm Drive. It was really, really hard to get an application anywhere. We only had word processors, we didn't have computers.

1:16:25 It took ten days to get a letter to Stamford or wherever And then another ten days after they sent the application to you, um, and then you had to write on that little Airplane paper. Send it back. It was a nightmare. And that particular year. Harvard.

1:16:42 And it Annual report. had a picture of all of the Graduates. with dollar signs on the back of their

1:16:50 Cats. And I thought, well. I think I might be a misfit, given that I really want to solve poverty. That is so bad. That is so bad. And I have like close friends who have gone to Harvard, but oh God, that's terrible. But put yourself back there, right? Nineteen eighty seven. That was the height. That was the Mike Millican. That was like the height of market belief. In fact, market fundamentality. Gordon Gorgon Gecko. Gordon G Gecko, exactly. And so Stanford had a public management program that I thought

1:17:23 Fit more. with what I wanted to do with my life. It was very clear that I didn't want to go back to just make money. I I wanted to go back to g build the tools to build companies that could employ and serve poor people and so At Stamford I met an extraordinary mentor.

1:17:38 Name John Gardner. And I think he shaped my life as well in terms of getting me focused on the United States as rest of the world. and talk to me about the importance of leadership, which I hadn't really thought about as much, Tim. Then I went to the Rockefeller Foundation. Where I really saw the power of philanthropy. So by the time I was nearing forty.

1:17:58 I had worked in the private sector with banking. I had built several institutions, but most notably Dutempere, the microfinance organization. And this And then probably the other critical thing that happened was the Rwandan genocide.

1:18:15 So suddenly Having worked on a social justice institution. by then that had been in existence for seven years. And seeing. A country explode into a

1:18:27 Light bath. losing many of the people that I loved and that I worked with. And seeing my co founders play out every role of the genocide from being murdered to watching their families be murdered to

1:18:42 I think that was probably One of the most important things. Not experiences because God forbid I'd watched it from afar. But Both an understanding of patient capital that the work of change is so often

1:18:58 A couple steps forward and sometimes the whole thing blows up. That societies are are highly complex. And again that at the the heart of my work. had to be a redefinition of what poverty was. that we so often look at poverty and we think

1:19:13 The answer is income. Answer's jobs. What I had seen by now, both in banking and in development, and certainly with the genocide. Is that the opposite of poverty is dignity. It is

1:19:26 Having a a choice. having opportunity. Having agency over who you are in your life. And what you're capable of doing. And we miss that.

1:19:37 And that was really the beginning of Acumen. Oh. We have all these tools. We have the superpower in capitalism. But when we raise it to the rank of religion.

1:19:49 And everything goes around one. And Profit. We can do amazing things, but we exclude A huge

1:19:58 chunk of the world and we create great inequality. We're seeing that today. Not to mention Not consider the environment. If government decides everything or top down approaches to aid, it's just too easy.

1:20:12 Close to you or for reasons that have nothing to do. with anything but Power And so the question I started asking myself is What if we looked at capital as capital, understand it exists on a s a spectrum

1:20:26 Take The power of business and capital. But rather than let it control us, it Control it. in service of creating a world where we can actually solve our problems.

1:20:37 Acumen was born in Two thousand and one. With that idea in mind. We're gonna spend. Fair amount of time on Acumen.

1:20:44 No big surprise there. But I I want to spend just a few more moments on the One in genocide. Because

1:20:52 I think it Maybe. Helpful. In exploring the tendency that we all have to

1:21:01 oversimplify things. And The example that comes to mind. And this is based on on reading and prepping for this conversation that I'd love to hear you speak to. is the tendency to separate the world into monsters and angels. And how

1:21:18 Unhelpful. That Can be. And I I think you you you alluded to it. With your description of

1:21:25 co workers and people you knew or certainly people you had exposure to. being on all sides of this genocide. Victims, bystanders. I'm sure you you had interacted on some level, even just going to the market or otherwise with people who are on all sides of this.

1:21:41 Could you speak to that? Because I I wrote it down because it seemed important not just within the context of a genocide, obviously, but just in the within the context of Life in general.

1:21:54 I'd love to hear any of our thoughts. First thought is absolutely that I didn't just know people in the market, our first executive director. was jailed as being one of the highest ranking. Or the highest ranking. Planner at the genocide.

1:22:08 Before the genocide she was co creating a liberal party based on multi tribal Democracy. with another one of our co founders. But when it was clear that power looked like it was going to

1:22:21 Who to power or the. The genocide regime, she switched. And so early on I saw Those who seek power.

1:22:30 And those who seek. Purpose. And that Power can be very Tempting.

1:22:37 And I also saw How in a time of real insecurity and we're in one again. It can be very Easy.

1:22:46 For Demagogic leaders at all levels of society to prey on insecurity. And sometimes make us do terrible things. And that's where monsters and angels came in. I was literally sitting In it.

1:23:00 In a prison. with Agnes, the woman who was the major perpetrator, need any. asking her how this could have happened. And there she was, Tim, In a pink dress, the the prisoner's uniform, her head shaped bald, with a freckled face, you know, she looked like a young Limited.

1:23:20 She didn't look like a monster. And we had Found it. This institution together.

1:23:27 We're taught that there are bad people and good people, monsters and angels, and yet The truth of the matter is that monsters and angels live in every single one of us. Monsters are our broken parts. They are our petty fears, our insecurities, the grievances that that grow. And it's just too damn easy.

1:23:47 To pull into those parts. When we as a society feel insecure, we blame other people. We other them. And that was very much at the heart. Of the genocide.

1:23:59 And that That has very much informed the way I see the world and the way it acumen, even the way that we Talk about and inscribe our values. It's always intention.

1:24:11 It's always recognizing The light and the dark. In almost any choice that we make. So that we're much more cognizant. That there is no system that's all good.

1:24:21 Nor is there any human being. That is all good or all bad. I worry sometimes when I hear conversations in the social media moment that we are in. that it's capitalism's fault. It's socialism's fault. It's stakeholders, it's shareholders rather than could we focus on the values here?

1:24:38 What are we trying to solve? And then can we Pull back? And find ways to use the best of the tools. that we have at our disposal and actually solve that problem.

1:24:49 Everything you just said, I I think is so It's always been important. I think it's exceptionally important when you have technologies that are in a sense designed to polarized. because the incentives are such that that becomes sort of a driving design and engineering imp imperative in a sense. Yeah.

1:25:07 And Just to comment a bit further on that. I would encourage everyone out there to the work of Darren Brown. So Darren Brown is a a mentalist performer.

1:25:22 also an incredible artist from the UK and he has a number of of specials, including one called The Push. He has another I can't recall the name of, but the the objective, putting ethical considerations aside, the objective is to show how you can mold people. who are otherwise upstanding. moral people to do terrible things like push someone off a building or to shoot someone and The sad reality is

1:25:49 that it is very much possible. And that It's easy to to sit on a moral high horse and levy judgment against others and to say I would never have participated in in a Rwanda genocide or I never would have been

1:26:05 a member of the Nazi party, and so on and so forth, but It's not quite that simple. Right, and I think to simplify it down. to uh the black and white. people being all one or all other is

1:26:19 not in service of solutions. I uh Really appreciate you expanding on that. Let's jump to Acumen. acumen. How'd you choose the name or how is the name

1:26:29 Decided. Acumen. stands for perspective insight Well, we started Ocumen, I was focused on revolutionizing philanthropy. And too often the way we think about philanthropy is soft.

1:26:41 This was saying Again, the hard and the soft. You've got to bring an edge. start with business, start with insight, build from there. And bring the same level of accountability that you would expect from a financial investment into the world of social change.

1:26:57 Therefore acumen. So could you just Recap for people. I know we mentioned it in the bio. But a lot's been discussed so far. What

1:27:05 does acumen do. Agreement does three things. First we invest the long term patient capital. This is ten to fifteen year. investment. Backed by philanthropy.

1:27:17 So equity and debt. into entrepreneurs that are going where markets have failed. Healthcare. As a close room. Energy.

1:27:24 Agriculture. We uh will invest Not only for ten to fifteen years, but We accompany those entrepreneurs. With our social capital.

1:27:34 Or access to networks to supply chains. to knowledge. Sometimes to talent. Any money that comes back gets reinvested. As you said, Tim, to grow these companies and scale is at the heart of everything that we do.

1:27:48 we then need to tap into more traditional forms of capital in the impact investing space. So we also have a management company that runs it several for profit impact funds. The second thing we do is Don't

1:28:02 A community of builders. through the World School for Social Change, Acumate Academy. And that is not only trying to identify link Inspire the talent that exists, I believe, in every corner of the world, but also to offer Rules, tools, blueprints.

1:28:20 So that anyone anywhere who want to be on the path of Social change. Using this combination of head and heart. Hard skills. And uh

1:28:29 what I think are the even harder skills can be part of it. The third is to measure what matters. If you're going to say that you invest for impact, you better be able to measure what that impact is. Uh a couple of years ago we spun off. A company called Sixty Decibles that uses

1:28:49 An approach to measuring change that we created. Called lean data. Which we can talk about in essentially upholds one of our our main values, which is listening. And it

1:29:01 measures impact not from the perspective of the giver or the bestor, but from the recipients, from the customers themselves. So that we can actually serve the poor in ways that we Hope to. Does the lean data. And uh I I may ask some follow up questions just to

1:29:17 Sure I'm clear on How it works. Does that apply to the for profit. investing as well, the for profit impact funds. Yeah.

1:29:28 And in fact, the reason we spun it out. Is a number of other non profit and for profit funds. Asked us if We would essentially provide them with lean data.

1:29:39 consulting and we thought that again going back to our mission, we want to change the way the world tackles poverty, we would serve that mission better if we spun it out. Let it grow. And that sixty decibels, which has been really exciting to watch take off. I'd love to see BlackRock using it, frankly. All right, BlackRock. I'm sure there's somebody listening. Comedy involved with BlackRock. Let's just assume they are listening, and also for my benefit and for listeners. Could you just reiterate what lean data

1:30:09 R I'm gonna be a pompous Princetonian. What exactly is or are lean data? Because the the question of measuring impact is one that at least in my circles comes up a lot. Like how do you actually Do this. How do you Try to invest not just for ROI but for good for impact, but how do you do that without just waving your hands around and claiming that you've done a lot of good?

1:30:33 I'd love to hear you expand on On on uh We invest in entrepreneurs that are trying to build markets where they haven't existed for people who make two or three dollars a day. Where there's no infrastructure, there's no trust. There are very few skills. Add talent. There's a lot of corruption and complacency.

1:30:48 And so it would be really easy for us to Essentially say that anything we do in a difficult environment is impact. And so we decided that we had to hold ourselves. Accountable to a higher standard.

1:31:02 that at the end of the day what really matters when it comes to dignity is to record and understand the voices of those you are there to serve the poor. For many years Tim our Impact measuring was fairly mediocre because we didn't have the tools. Once you had cell phone.

1:31:19 technology and you could text. Customers. Suddenly you had a One on one. communication where you weren't in the room.

1:31:29 Where people aren't always as likely to tell you the truth because they don't really think you want to hear it anyway. But in this case the more anonymity. they had the clear people would give. So Imagine a solar light company. We're the largest off grid.

1:31:45 Solar investor for the poor in the world. So we have a lot of them. We could go to a company like D Light. and text five six thousand customers simultaneously. Ask those customers a series of questions from which we can deduce What matters to them.

1:32:02 How many more hours of light? do they have when they buy a solar home system that gives them? Three lights, a radio, a television. What is the quality of that light? We could measure.

1:32:14 Carbon offset, that's easy. Has their health changed because they're no longer using Dangerous noxious carosine. Are their children doing better in education? Which was an assumption we had when we first went into it. Then we collate all of that.

1:32:29 And suddenly we can Help our entrepreneurs understand whether they're serving people. Which is sometimes shocking when they find that they actually are not the way that they thought they were. But equally we can start to look across a sector. Like solar. Electricity.

1:32:45 And we can see which companies may have the best product, but it's reaching people with the highest income. And so you've got a trade off. Which companies are doing the most to displace carbon. But they may have another

1:32:59 Trade off And which companies have the happiest customers? Then we can decide. More effectively where we want to allocate our dollars for impact. Not only for

1:33:10 A financial returns. It not only has held us more accountable, Tim, It's allowed the entrepreneurs A much deeper understanding of who their customers are. It allows us to see are we actually reaching the poor, which is our mandate? And it's shown us where we were wrong.

1:33:25 When it came to off grade energy, we assumed As I said that kids would do better in school, they don't necessarily do better in school. If you want kids to do better in school in really, really hot areas Get him a solar system that includes a fan.

1:33:41 Because with the fan The air moves at night, bugs are kept away, the kids sleep. They do better. It's a lean approach because you're not doing a three year Randomized control trial

1:33:52 And it is a deep approach because you are hearing from the perspective of those Who actually most matter. Yeah, the three year randomized controlled Approach has its place, but honestly, I mean, and this is speaking as someone who is very involved with financing scientific studies.

1:34:09 It's not the right tool for all jobs. And particularly when you are outside of a laboratory. With lots of Uncontrolled variables. It's just Trying to hammer screws a lot of the time.

1:34:21 I Think there's a real place. For This Lean data.

1:34:26 Approach and I have a question about How this is used. So here's a hypothetical. Maybe it's not hypothetical. I I would imagine you've run into this. If you are acting as a nonprofit and you're investing in various enterprises.

1:34:42 you can apply this data or offer this type of tool. across the board, I would imagine With the underlying belief that a rising tides raises all ships. Once you are a consultancy and you are providing

1:34:59 lean data to for profit companies. Would you not say in a given sector? run into someone who wants you to avoid conflicts by providing them this data which could help their businesses. or business and they might say, Hey, I I know that you have this valuable data.

1:35:18 We would like to be the only one to receive it in the X, Y, and Z category. Otherwise it doesn't really give us a competitive advantage, so why would we pay for it? Do you ever run into anything like that? Much like a law firm would have A conflict check? No, I mean

1:35:33 When there's conflict then you know you're on to something and I'm looking forward to that day when we do have that conflict. I would say the more internal conversation that we have as a board. Is How transparent to make it.

1:35:45 So that we start actually taking seriously. the level of impact that different investors around the world actually are getting. You mean transparency in terms of like what you learn, how much to make publicly available. Yeah. And it goes to the ethos at the beginning of Acumen Event.

1:36:02 And I guess it goes to that girl we were talking about. I just wanted to know the truth ourselves. So even if the world didn't care, we would always have a forced ranking of our investments. And if you just sat there trying to defend your investment. as an investor, that was a way you could get fired. If you were the one Who

1:36:21 talked about everything that was wrong with it and what made you worried. That was a way you could become more of a hero. And now we're we've grown quite large. And I think we have a different set of questions that we ask. But I think it was that ethos.

1:36:36 ten of Holding ourselves to account for the kind of impact that we are trying to create in the world not protect. That allowed. Acumen to partner with just incredible market makers like the guys who founded D Light, which has brought Clean solar light and electricity to over a hundred million.

1:36:53 People And really Launched an energy revolution. And taught me that the kind of investing we need to think about right now at scale. Doesn't only reward the building of a single company.

1:37:05 But those Companies. who ultimately create entire markets. I think that's the next frontier in so many ways. So you gave, you know, an example, just one example of many of just the scale, the large scale.

1:37:19 impact that Acumen and these these various spin-offs and for profit funds have been able to have in the world. But If we go back to two thousand one. Circa 2001.

1:37:32 Acumen. You know, I always like to to ask, aside from Acumen, did you have any other names that were On the short list for consideration that you remember? Do you remember any other rough drawers or was it I do. Of course I do. In fact we had a you know, two thousand one, just to put us back again. It was the dot com craziness. Well, two thousand. Two thousand one. By t by by the time I

1:37:53 pick document and we started, there was a bust. But um You could not get a URL. Um And no names were working. And so why had this night at the uh Rockefeller Foundation where I was working in

1:38:06 And we came up with Really, really great names including Ain't Your Grandma's Philanthropy. That's great. I think that was my brother Mike's, but I'm not I can't remember, but it there was a lot of why involved in the the naming of acumen. And then I Really love the word immersion. I still do. It's one of the principles of moral imagination.

1:38:27 There's a great line from Tilly Olson where she says, May you live a life of immersion. I'm paraphrasing, but what price will you pay? To truly understand the complexity of the issues that we are trying to solve, you have to get close. Brian Stevenson, the civil rights activist, says you have to get proximist. I say you have to immerse. It's the same. But when we did

1:38:49 Trials. Particularly across gender. Women were attracted to the word immersion, men hated it. Hated it. And so

1:38:58 Acumen seemed a little less. Offensive to one of the Like the two groups. Ha ha How did you test it? Were you

1:39:08 sending out a poll to a group of friends. How did you Do the split testing. Well, a friend of mine, Antonia Bowering, was working for a now no longer dot com called I think it was called March First. They did this big ideation project with us. So they actually did some True consumer testing.

1:39:27 But I also having so many people in my life and being an extrovert just kept asking, asking, asking and I couldn't find a single man who was with me on immersion. And in fact I can remember one person was like I just hear that word, Jacqueline, and I feel like you're making me drown in a sea.

1:39:47 Well there is something to that. There are moments when you feel like you're drowning, but then you come out to clarity. But so we decided. I never would have guessed in a million years that you would have such a gender split on immersion. Maybe I'm just a language geek, so I find it attractive. As a concept. I think now, in fact, our housing company in Pakistan Javat Aslam. He actually named one of his funds, the immersion fund. Once you really think about it's a

1:40:14 Beautiful word. All of us right now need to immerse more. In each other's lives. All of us need to Design with the imagination.

1:40:24 Not just through our own lens, but with the imagination that is morally based. You don't get that. If we don't have immersion. I think it's changed. Yeah, I was just gonna ask if you could

1:40:36 Just explore for a moment and then we're gonna come back to Acumen and I'm gonna ask you about the earliest wins and if you could speak to those. But I don't wanna gloss over moral imagination. Could you Just take a moment. I think you're kind of walking into that territory, but

1:40:52 Just to frame it. What is moral imagination? Moral imagination is essentially putting yourself And in other shoes and building from their perspective, as I said, it's We often design through the lens just of our own imagination.

1:41:07 That doesn't work. When we're designing for people whose lives are completely unlike our own. So Moral imagination starts. With empathy.

1:41:16 But I've learned time and time again that empathy by itself reinforces the status quo, or at least risks doing so. And so the idea of moral imagination is Understanding By immersing.

1:41:31 a particular problem and then thinking systemically. about those issues that get in people's way and then frankly being honest enough to recognize where people get in their own way. And then Moving from there. When you say empathy in some cases enforces the status quo.

1:41:49 Could you elaborate? On that does do you mean that it's just an us versus, not versus, but like an us and them kind of uh the the savior of the fill in the blank? Is it that dichotomy that's created or Not that that is what empathy does, uh of course, but what what do you mean by enforcing the status quo? I think it's even deeper. I mean, I think when I first learned about the moral imagination was in college. When I was at Charlottesville, ironically, given everything that happened in Charlottesville.

1:42:17 Yeah. And I Signed up to Bring a turkey dinner and all the trappings of a Christmas to this

1:42:27 community that was twelve thirty minutes away. From the university where low income people lived. Aye. was also kind of a wild co ed. It's so we had this big party We asked everyone to bring

1:42:40 Food and Toys. To make a perfect Christmas for these kids. I was really excited because I felt at some levels so sorry for

1:42:49 These people that didn't get to have a Christmas. The next morning My girlfriend and I got up and We Gotten her.

1:42:58 car we loaded it with all the stuff. We were both completely hung over. We drove Into this Place that. I'd never been to a place like that before, and it was literally when we got to the house

1:43:10 It's like a shanty. Fuck. And suddenly I just felt shame. I was like Oh my god, like

1:43:18 I I don't know who these kids are. I don't know what kind of things they like. I don't know if the parents Want the kids to know that somebody else is bringing them Christmas. And This is all wrong. And literally I said to Suzanne, my friend, I was like

1:43:34 Just keep the car running. And grabbed the stuff, I ran it, I threw it on the porch. I ran back to the car. It was like just go. And I think in a way it was the beginning of my moral imagination that

1:43:46 That act was an act of empathy. It was well intended. And I hope that they had a really lovely Christmas. But

1:43:55 The moral imagination would have said look. Am I willing to do the work of actually understanding? Who these people are at the very least. And building from there. If I'm not

1:44:07 Find an organization that does. Even better, Ask the questions. Around what got them there in the first place. And where can I be spending my time and my energy and my capital?

1:44:18 To solve that problem. And I'm not saying we shouldn't give charity I think there's a real role. for moving from that place of empathy. And from that place of unbridled love in a moment.

1:44:33 Our job right now when When Pandemic and Everything that's happened in the world. Has broken our systems open?

1:44:40 Is to think bigger than that. And to hold ourselves to account. at a systemic level and that's That's what my obsession is. Thank you.

1:44:50 For explaining that and uh Telling that story also, which I think drives it home. Acumen. So Winging a prayer.

1:45:00 Good idea. Tested the name. Here we go. Buckle up. Do you recall any of

1:45:09 The first wins where you're like Okay. I think this might actually do something. Oh yeah. I mean, I recall it like it was yesterday.

1:45:18 We had helped put together this collaboration, this deal. To bring it. Long lasting. Malaria. Bed nuts.

1:45:25 into Tanzania. It started with Sumi Tomo who had developed this But not. And also recognized. That ninety five percent of malaria is in Africa, and yet

1:45:35 There was no manufacturing capability. for this particular kind of bed net. And so it was a real experiment. Could we build manufacturing capability with with similar through print rates to the kind that you might get in Asia where the long lasting bed nets were created. We went through all these different entrepreneurs, we identified this incredible guy named Anusha in Arusha, Tanzania.

1:45:58 Um And worked with Global Fund to buy these nets and Didn't really know what it was gonna look like and of course I had seen a lot of things fail.

1:46:09 This was a complex collaboration. And then I went to go visit. Just as the factory was getting going and there was one line. Uh Bednet making machines.

1:46:19 And I was like This is cool. I love operations, factory operations. Few months later, I went back and there were four. Few months later I went back and there were eight. And there was that moment.

1:46:32 When suddenly I was seeing hundreds of women. operating these machines. That I thought, Oh my goodness, we're doing this. And then They ended up creating jobs for 10,000 people.

1:46:42 manufacturing thirty million nets a year. They ended up being fifteen percent of global production. And when you think about that, That's like a half a billion people who have Gotten access to malaria bednets because of this. little company in not so little anymore.

1:46:58 Company and Arusha Tanzania. I was like Bingo. This is what we're about. Boom. Proof of concept. Boom.

1:47:07 Let's look at this example. Because I'd I'd like to Explore the thought process or the process a bit. In so much as I think

1:47:18 Many people who are Considering Impact investing. Or even perhaps starting a firm or a fund or a company that has that as its intended purpose. Particularly if fund.

1:47:32 They might Solicit. proposals or business proposals and then choose from that menu of options. But it seems like you started with selecting a problem and then you canvassed to find Candidates. Is that how you approached it? In the beginning we selected

1:47:50 A sectors. We were mostly focused at the very beginning on health technologies. And then the idea was we would find entrepreneurs. I was and am such a believer. In entrepreneurs. And in fact people would say Oh, are you f try to solve malaria? And I'd be like, No.

1:48:06 We are trying to find those health technologies that could fundamentally change people's lives and bring them dignity. Now Again, we're in a very different place where um we have all local teams on the ground. depending on the region, there's much more Focus.

1:48:22 On the sectors and Tim. what we find then is if you think about acumen as a laboratory When we see a company really move up. Like a D light. Then we can start to build

1:48:34 other companies around it to really help create that ecosystem. So we're a bit different. In the US, for instance. it wouldn't make sense for us to look be looking at off grid energy or investing in the social determinants of healthcare. financial inclusion and workforce development, which we feel are so critical to

1:48:52 where the nation is now when it comes to the poor. or low income people. The uh you know, you mentioned Sumitomo, which is Japanese and uh developing an ecosystem around a company is is in some ways very Japanese. Concept or something that's been very well explored and developed in the cadets of these I suppose conglomerates would be a lazy way to

1:49:11 to translate that in Japan. But that's a very long term. Approach. Yeah. Absolutely.

1:49:18 I mean that's uh Look at some of these companies. They've lasted us a very long time. They're not five or ten year companies. I look at your story. I look at your chronology. And

1:49:32 one thing that stands out to me, and please feel free to disabuse me of any misconceptions, but You cut your teeth. in banking. You got to understand that machine from the inside. You Then

1:49:47 Well, simultaneously uh in some respects, and then after looked at microfinance access to capital. You started a bakery. I don't think that's a small thing. You you actually were boots on the ground. Getting first hand experience. In an immersive way. of what entrepreneurship looked like in your chosen environment.

1:50:06 You got your ass kicked in West Africa. Ha ha Uh but Put another way. you really got an extended

1:50:16 Education. on someone else's charter with someone else's organization and support. You Through that entire period of time are developing grit learning what

1:50:29 Doesn't work. Certain. approaches to parachuting it. You're learning conversely what does work. And then Suddenly your Jaclyn Novogratz. founder and CEO of Acumen. But I think it's tempting for people to jump straight to the Acumen.

1:50:43 And I'd love to Here you Answer the question, what advice you would give to young people who say they want to change the world? Because it strikes me. That if you had tried to jump straight to Acumen

1:50:58 Correct me if I'm wrong, but you wouldn't have been viewed as backable. You wouldn't have had the operational experience. It just wouldn't have worked. I sometimes worry that these Young or older people, quite frankly, who could really make a positive debt in the world.

1:51:13 are putting the cart before the horse. in terms of skill development. They they don't have the chops, but they want to change the world. You've spoken to students. I know you've given commencement speeches, but

1:51:26 For those people listening who are like, I just want to change the world. What advice would you Give to them. Well the first would be This idea of just follow your passion, I don't even really even understand what that means.

1:51:37 E even though my whole life I have been very clear. About the the way I wanted to create change and for whom It wasn't

1:51:48 This As you said, out of the box really understanding that we were gonna use different forms of capital and support it with the right kind of talent to Work a system to create real change. I would say just start.

1:52:01 Don't start by asking No, what is my purpose? What is my passion? Start by asking what are the problems that need to be solved? Which ones attract me? And take a step toward that.

1:52:14 Take one step. And the work will teach you where you need to take the next step. Build tools in your toolbox. If you still don't know what your passion or your purpose is as you take those steps, Follow a leader.

1:52:26 And learn from that later. There is something so powerful and I think this is What you're getting at too, Tim. In apprenticing. I would say I apprenticed.

1:52:37 For fifteen years. And Also to your point. That bakery In some ways,

1:52:44 probably look like a girl scout project to a lot of people. When I think about some of the most important things I've ever done in my life. That one. Sits at the top. For all the reasons that you imply.

1:52:56 I had to learn the gritty realities. Talk about learning humility. I also saw that we could succeed. And I had to let go of a lot of my assumptions yet again.

1:53:06 And so I do think you're right. Skipping steps, particularly because life is both shorter than we think it is and it's longer than we Think it is. It doesn't serve the world and it doesn't serve you. Here, here. You've also I don't know if you've said this or written it.

1:53:23 But I vaguely remember And maybe you can provide some Some context here for the year. When it was said or written, but Something along the lines of

1:53:33 If you try to keep all of your options open. you may just end up With a bunch of options. I actually think Jim Collins said that to me when I was lucky enough to be his student. And I've paraphrased Jim. Um I say that a lot where it's like, Well You know, Jacqueline, I need to keep my options open. I'm like Seriously?

1:53:50 Just Commit to something. This We don't tell.

1:53:56 Young people. Or even old people. We don't Expect that Enough.

1:54:01 But I think the cult of in of the individual is the is also the cult of optionality. And the secret is that when you commit to something, particularly something bigger than yourself It will set you free. And suddenly you will find a freedom and a and layering

1:54:18 That you Never really understood you had. That is something that I I don't think I would have fully been able to wrap my head around until just in the last few years really becoming dedicated to Scientific research around psychedelic compounds. And uh uh I don't want to take us down that rabbit hole necessarily. Certainly your brother Mike has a fair amount to say about it. Yeah, yeah. Well, your brother Mike has a fair amount to say about that. Mr. Mr. This ain't your grandma's philanthropy or whatever the name was. But

1:54:51 The great relief. And unburdening. Of Me centric. living that comes from dedicating yourself to something larger.

1:55:02 Is is really profound. And I mean it's not entirely altruistic. It's like it's so relieving. Uh I I just uh

1:55:14 it it's hard to overstate that. Um I'm glad you mentioned it. Well and none of this is entirely altruistic. If we're seeking purpose, if we all buy into you know throws that So many Men live lives of quiet desperation and we don't want to be those people. Then There is no clear path.

1:55:33 Then making a commitment to problems that might be so big you won't solve them in your lifetime. Because then you are constantly just starting. You are constantly learning and unlearning and and renewing. And I think that's been Also The story of this work of

1:55:49 Trying to solve these big problems. with entrepreneurs that are as relentless in their seeking it's just that What drives them is to solve a problem. What does not drive them is It's just profit. though they recognize they need the profit for long term financial sustainability and scale.

1:56:08 Mm. It's the prioritization. You Mentioned following. A leader. earlier.

1:56:16 And also apprenticing. And There are many different types of leaders out there. Many people who might seem to be good mentors, but make terrible mentors. Could you speak to

1:56:29 An example in your life. of a mentor or a leader. Doesn't have to be John Gardner. I wrote that down just because you mentioned it in pa uh mentioned John in passing from I believe that that was your GSP days, right? The the Stanford days. To what makes A good mentor.

1:56:44 Or A good leader. The type you might want to follow. Or learn from. For me, there's really no one like John Gardner in my life.

1:56:53 Chim He was this very patrician man who almost spoke in koans by the time I met him. We were fifty years apart. So he gained a lot of wisdom. Where he stood apart, and again, we need him so much right now. He was the only Republican on uh Lyndon Johnson's democratic cabinet and was the head of health, education and welfare. So he was at the table.

1:57:17 uh negotiated s some of the great civil rights legislation Talk about courage. He would say things to me. Like You know, focus on being interested, Jacqueline.

1:57:27 Not interesting. When I would get some fancy job offer. And he would think that it's that was a vanity project rather than a character building project. John. Left the cabinet.

1:57:39 and resigned his his position. In protest of the Vietnam War. And in response, he created a grassroots citizens organization at age fifty four called Common Cause. And it was that level of integrity And of doing the right thing, not the easy thing.

1:57:55 That I think we're all yearning for. In our leaders today. John Could have done anything. But when I think about what legacy is

1:58:06 I think about him. And I look at the the now Yeah, we've had over a million sign ups on our on Acumen Academy when I see these hundreds and hundreds of Acumen fellows and the entrepreneurs I sometimes hear John's

1:58:20 Words. In them. And I think This man who's been dead for almost twenty years is fully alive. With the kind of legacy that matters.

1:58:30 Because he focused on investing. In the world around him and not just in himself. So Jacqueline, I I've good news, bad news. Depending it's actually the same news. I just don't know how you're gonna take it, which is I think we're gonna have to do Or I would like to do round two at some point,'cause we're there's no way we're gonna cover even a fraction of what I have in front of me. But

1:58:51 Oh, definitely not a do over. You kidding me? You've been nothing but net for an hour and forty minutes. I'm not letting this one go. I would like to ask About Actually First a short question, then a longer question. The shorter question is gonna be about books. And the longer questions are going to be about

1:59:14 Advice. to different types of listeners. Those people who have more time than money. Maybe they're earlier in their careers, maybe they're just in a transition. Then you have the investor types. I would consider myself an investor type also. who are looking to have more impact, make more impact, and then two institutional.

1:59:31 those people who might be in positions within institutions. Before we get to that, so you were you were kind enough to contribute to Tribe of Mentors. My last book. Thank you very much for that. And you Answered

1:59:44 Quite a number of questions. Is what is the book or books you've given the most as a gift and why Or What are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life? Now you mentioned a few and You can also revise these.

1:59:59 One was Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, another Things fall apart. By can you pronounce this author's name for me? Chinua Che Bay? Thank you. There's so many words and names that I know how to read. I recognize, but I have no idea how to pronounce.

2:00:14 And then a fine balance by here's another one. Rinton Mystery. Rooton Mystery. There we go. If you had to pick one of these Or another book. It doesn't have to be one of these three. But

2:00:27 A book that you've given as a gift. Or that has had a lot of different things. a strong impact on you for people to start with. Which might you recommend and why. Of course, I recommend people also Read your books, The Blue Sweater and also Manifesto for Moral Revolution. So not to exclude those, but for the sake of conversation now, if they weren't those books.

2:00:46 What comes to mind. I have reasons for each of those books and certainly The Invisible Man in this moment of the Black Lives Matters. protests and uh continuing. Racial reckoning. Invisible men really. taught me to not see through anybody.

2:01:01 Ever. But the book I give right now um in this time of so much despair is um Victor Frankel's Man search for meaning. Where he

2:01:14 really looks at people in the Holocaust. And asks himself why did some just sort of crumple up and die and others stayed resilient and strong. And that at the end of the day, no one can take our dignity away from us. And so I think that We have to be reminded right now that between

2:01:32 Stimulus and response. There is a choice. And we're in that moment. And and I have seen myself personally so often. That in the darkest times we can find our best selves.

2:01:44 And that's our opportunity right now. And so I think For this moment, Tim. Man search for meaning is should be required reading for all of us. I Could not endorse.

2:01:54 That Strongly enough. for anyone who's listening to this also across five hundred Plus episodes of this podcast. the single book that has come up most often is Man's Search for Meaning. So if you have not read this book,

2:02:08 Do yourself a favor. Do everyone around you a favor. And uh Pick it up. It is just a tremendous Tremendous book.

2:02:16 And also a great example of Someone in this case Victor Frankel embracing something larger than himself, the completion of Man's Search for Meaning. the concept of writing this and compiling it as a book that helped him to get through so much suffering also. Yeah, and moral imagination. That he had in seeing the

2:02:35 Not just The ugliness of the world that is, and the humility that that takes, but he truly had the audacity to imagine. What could be? And to see the infinite potential in every human being.

2:02:48 Let's use that as a segue. To help others. to embrace the audacity to imagine. What they might do. And you can take these in any order. And uh there might be other archetypes we we wanna touch upon, but for those people listening, and I'll just grab three we have

2:03:04 the the person with right now for any number of reasons, more time than financial resources, what they might do. And you don't have to tackle them in this order. The individual investor. So that's someone who is accustomed to perhaps investing in public equities or in my case and many others startups.

2:03:24 cryptocurrency, whatever it might be. who would like to begin to experiment. with investing. For greater. Social impact.

2:03:34 Or impact. And then the players in the institutional space, those people who may be at asset management firms or or otherwise. What

2:03:45 Who also would like to either in a man in a management or leadership position begin to steer the ship. at least carving off a portion of activities. to focus on impact.

2:03:58 Maybe lean data. or who just as entrepreneurs within these companies want to want to try something. What would you say to to any of those groups? To the person with Not a lot of money, but time.

2:04:10 I would say focus on both immersion and understanding the problems around us and also Another Practice from the book which is accompaniment. By accompaniment.

2:04:21 But I mean to walk with someone to Try and understand their problem, not take it on and solve it for them, but to help them build the muscles so that they can solve it themselves. By book in this case you mean Manifesto. Manifesto for moral revolution. And the whole idea of moral revolution is you know, give more to the world than you take. It's not There are some who have the moral responsibility and some who do not. It's like all of us. So I really appreciate that you would ask for all. Three categories.

2:04:47 When you look at The brokenness of our criminal justice system, the opioid epidemic. Poverty. The arts community that's out of work. There is such an opportunity.

2:04:59 To be of use. To pay visits. to just talk to people who are lonely right now. to be more conscious about the way that we spend our money, even for small things. And buy sustainably.

2:05:10 And so it's building into Your everyday A much greater Consciousness and awareness of The fact that

2:05:18 Our action and our inaction impacts people. Everywhere. For the Individual investor

2:05:25 I would say that One of the broken parts of our current system of capitalism, which bifurcates How we make money and how we give it away. is that we often disregard how people are treated.

2:05:40 inside and outside our companies. And then we As well as the environment, and then we try to make amends For the fact that we are the status quo with our philanthropy on the outside. And that model

2:05:52 Is deeply broken. As investors, how do we think more holistically about the impact? That were We're making Positive and negative.

2:06:02 With all parts of our money. Across that spectrum. There has never been a such opportunity as there is right now to invest in extraordinary entrepreneurs that are That are reimagining.

2:06:15 How to use the tools of capitalism to solve big problems. As I said, ten they exist in every ev every country. And we have to think with more Openness. to how we would look at our overall portfolio.

2:06:29 Again thinking Of it going from philanthropy to more market driven returns. We have a company in the United States called Every Table. And it is a fast food

2:06:40 Healthy, nutritious, affordable. restaurant chain now. In Los Angeles. It's about eight different restaurants, and with the pandemic it just has. Exploded in the best ways. of delivering food and partnering with governments and individual philanthropists.

2:06:55 That are willing to pay mails forward so that People in low income parts of Los Angeles can Get healthy affordable food.

2:07:03 With Black Lives Matter protests. What Sam Polk, the entrepreneur, understood is that He had within him. Within his operation, Individual employees who had the capability to become franchisees.

2:07:16 But in the United States the franchise model usually expects that you will have your own capital to put into the system from the beginning. So he's created a university. And he's now raised to Probably three of thirteen million dollars. you know, seven year debt at two percent.

2:07:32 That will allow. And to identify the entrepreneurs amongst his employees, give them the opportunity to start their own franchise. enable them to have forty thousand dollar year salaries for the next three years. And hopefully we're gonna see

2:07:45 A whole group of Black and Latinx entrepreneurs that are running every table franchises. In of at four. their communities. That's the kind of creativity that exists right now?

2:07:57 In the United States and Everywhere else in the world that we work from Pakistan to Colombia If I were And I am. A divester.

2:08:05 That really cares about impact. I would urge myself and urge everyone else to think More expansively. about themselves as investors.

2:08:15 using all the tools at our disposal. And for the big institutions. I would say One thing. That as long as we have an investment model that is still based on extraction.

2:08:29 Rather than actually investing. For good. we are going to continue to build more and more inequality in ways that are fully unsustainable for this world. It has been really exciting to me.

2:08:43 to see not only a seven hundred billion dollar impact investing. Sector emerge over the last twenty years, but also to see Big companies like BlackRock. And others.

2:08:55 Say enough. But we've got to move from a place where we do no harm. to one where real investing is not only accounted for by What a few shareholders earn.

2:09:08 Come what may. But that real investing is truly measured. By the amount of the jobs, the beauty, the human capability. the opportunities that are enabled in the world.

2:09:20 So I would love to Ask you for Some simple next steps. Four. also each of those three categories. Like what people could do tomorrow.

2:09:31 And the the reason I asked that is that I think it's very easy for people to take next steps towards impact investing. Whether the form of investment is time. Or money. Or energy.

2:09:44 and to push it into the someday category. I think it's it's very easy to do. And and I don't wrong them. I don't wrong anyone for that because It can seem like kind of stumbling through a fog if they don't have a direction. In so much as if we take just an individual investor. I'll I'll use myself as an example. You know it took me

2:10:06 a long time to build the relationships and the deal flow. In the for profit sector. Where the Pass fail marks are very clearly defined. to get to the point where

2:10:17 I could invest. in really good companies. Yeah. And for people who have developed those relationships and put in the time to get an understanding of Let's just call it the

2:10:28 The the more Black and white. Capitalist model. Uh I it can be very intimidating.

2:10:36 The idea of starting from scratch to try to figure out what makes a good Impact investment. Could you speak to that? For the person who has Uh you we could tackle the investment side first, but the kind of individual, the institutional, and then a person with more time, like what could they do?

2:10:51 Tomorrow or next week, for instance, is Is a simple answer like hey. If you don't want to figure this out. Invest in one of our for-profit impact funds. Understanding that this podcast is not giving investment advice. I'm not a registered investment advisor, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I would love to hear

2:11:08 what some simple next steps might be. If they agree with you. They want to begin to get a Get some skin in the game. to get on the playing field. I mean, I appreciate the self promotional invitation there, Tim. If I'm gonna go down that path, I would say that the the

2:11:29 The symbolist Next step would be to get on to Acuman Academy. On our website. And check out the courses. Including the path of moral leadership that

2:11:40 Seth Godin, who's so extraordinary in every way, has helped us build uh which takes the different practices of the book and really looks at the examples. of companies that go from you know chocolate and coffee in Columbia to Bed nuts too. Chickens.

2:11:58 in Ethiopia and really shows some of the fundamental Business models. That have enabled extraordinary levels of change as well as identified role models. So I would get onto the Acumen Academy The second would be both for institutional and individual. There are increasingly uh trade associations, for lack of a better word.

2:12:19 That can direct you to really strong impact investors. The Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs is probably The best, Andy. And D E dot org, I think.

2:12:31 And so get smart. Learn. On the Acumen website are also All of our companies. and the stories of many of them.

2:12:40 that give a real sense again not only of the possible but of ways that that people can get involved. As I said, Tim. All of our actions increasingly matter. And so pay more attention to Where and how we buy the

2:12:55 And giving ourselves license. within our communities. To be a little radical. In the way that we might make sure that we're investing in each other.

2:13:06 And giving back more than we take. I think becomes a mantra. Every day. Having uh my brother Michael at Galaxy And going such different routes as young people.

2:13:17 And yet all along the way asking these questions of how do you change the world, how do you change the world? How do you change the world? I actually think it's about Getting started where you can with what you have and who you are. But it's also about asking yourself the question, not am I making more money?

2:13:34 Am I richer famous, more famous, more beautiful today? But rather What am I doing? And the way that I run my business. In the way that I invest my dollars. In the way that I interact with everyone from the waiter to

2:13:48 The president of Some fancy bank? What am I doing to Insist on. Elevate.

2:13:56 And enable human dignity. I would start there. And then I'd get smart. You invoked. The name of uh

2:14:04 Mutual friend who texted me prior to this conversation also. Seth Godin. And I bring him back up. Because I think Seth would agree. that it's easy to hide.

2:14:18 with big aspirations in the sense that if you say, Well, I just want to change the world It's easy to hide. You can make the argument that you're not ready. You can make the argument that you have to make a little bit more money. You can Use all sorts of socially acceptable excuses not to take action. And that

2:14:37 There are in fact Easy things, simple things. And you can do the easy thing first. If in doubt, don't hit Snooze for three years. Go to Acumen.org.

2:14:49 Just commit to spending sixty eight minutes educating yourself. You will learn something. Or Getting Manifesto for a Moral Revolution. Your book. Commit to getting that on Kindle. Maybe you try it for just twenty pages. You give it a taste test.

2:15:02 So you think there are simple things that you can do first, and it's easy to hide behind the big, ambitious, world changing thing that may or may not come. That's a way of hitting snooze and I think absolving oneself of responsibility. And I'm as guilty of that as the next person, so I'm not casting stones. But there are some very simple options here, as you mentioned. including just going to acumen.org or acumen.org forward slash moral revolution. Stick around. Commit to

2:15:30 Thirty, sixty minutes. Limited downside. And uh I wanna ask you Maybe two more questions. And one

2:15:38 I didn't want to ask you earlier because I didn't want to make you self conscious. But you are really good. Exceptional. At nailing the Goldilocks amount? Of using

2:15:52 People's names. In this case Tim, like you use it very well. You don't overuse someone's name. It's a very effective way of I'm I would hope that I'm already engaged, but keeping me even more engaged. Is that something that you've always done or is that something that you've developed somehow?

2:16:11 Tim, you're making me laugh. You're reminding me of the first book thing I did with blue sweater. And I got off the stage and a famous actor came up to me and said, Oh my god. You do real so well. And I was like Excuse me. Not to imply that this is some artificial thing. I just I I feel like it it's, of course, genuine, but it's something that not a lot of people do. Or they try to play real.

2:16:38 so deliberately that they end up saying your name every other sentence and you're like, I I feel like you're trying to sell me a s a used car or something, but you are uh very natural. I think it goes I actually think it goes to immersion, which is probably why I didn't get to like talk about many of the things I really wanted to talk about because I just get so focused on what Who you are what you're talking about that No, it's not conscious. It's not conscious. So

2:17:02 I wish I had a better answer. Oh, what a gift. I quite appreciated it. Well let's let's give. I'm gonna cheat, I'm gonna ask you more than two questions, but My last question is gonna be

2:17:13 recommendations, closing comments, things you'd like to say before we Wrap up for this round one. But Would you like to give a teaser for other things that you would have liked to have talked about that we didn't get around to? Yeah.

2:17:28 Is there anything you'd like to mention, lest it be left out of this? This first edition? I really appreciate that you are even asking me that opportun giving me that opportunity. And I think another reason that I probably know when to say your name or not, or don't even know, but Without Meaning to flatter. You truly are deeply engaging.

2:17:46 conversationalist and interviewer. And I I really appreciate that. Yeah. You really are. There are many things that I'd like to talk about. In terms of what it actually means.

2:17:58 To bet on character. that I think that one of the mistakes I made at the beginning of Acumen. was to be so excited by a particular technology or Business idea.

2:18:10 And over time. Understanding character. And that You used in a lot of the words. The grit the resiliency.

2:18:18 The vision, the ability to take feedback. conversation I'd love to have with you. Is on courage. I I I shared with you at the beginning of this. That you do remind me of my brothers.

2:18:31 Plural. And that you've got Just an extraordinary level of what looks like fearlessness. And I'm betting that You've learned to flex those fearless

2:18:42 Yes. muscles early in your life and you practice them all. Along. But because of the the vulnerability and the The real courage that you've shown.

2:18:52 And you're Podcast with Debbie Millman. There was a whole set of muscles that went untended. And that the key to us becoming not just Good at what we do or famous or what have you, but becoming wise.

2:19:06 is to Learn how to flex those. Muscles of courage that we don't always flex. And I think this is another moment in history that really demands that of us. And third, I'd love to go deeper into the holding of tensions.

2:19:22 We are at a moment in history where we have to learn how to find each other across what's might seem like Impossible divides to cross. And yep. We're all we have.

2:19:35 Each other. And we're on this earth for a short time. And It's up to us to be a generation that actually gets stuff done rather than being seen as being blind and disconnected from one another.

2:19:48 And so Acumen has worked. For twenty years. in communities where people are raised to hate each other and when I think about who our global community is, it also has been raised. with many, many different people.

2:20:00 Who were taught to hate each other. And yet It is possible to build. Out of diversity a sense of wholeness. But not

2:20:09 Nah. If we just focus on what we're getting. From an organization or a nation or community. But the responsibility that we have for each other.

2:20:18 And I hear that. in different conversations that you've been having with people. And I'd love to go there too. Finally, I would just love to say

2:20:26 You're really one of a kind, Tim Ferris. And the prep And the curiosity. That you bring. And frankly, the love. that you bring to every conversation.

2:20:37 and to the work that you're doing is really unparalleled. When I think of true moral imagination. It's based in A deep curiosity. And and people who are willing to follow that thread.

2:20:50 of curiosity to wherever it might lead. And so thank you for modeling that for all of us. Thank you so much. Talking about unflexed muscles, I'm not very uh I haven't flexed the muscle of letting things land very much. So I'm gonna

2:21:04 I'm gonna tuck that away. Think about it for the rest of today. So thank you very much. For saying that and for Providing Such a wonderful

2:21:14 conversation to me and to everyone listening. My God. You are so good. You're so good at this. And You're such an inspiration and I I just love the fact

2:21:28 that you have traveled so many paths that many would assume diverge and yet you have found a way to make them converge. If that makes sense. You have the operational Shops. Uh you have

2:21:46 The toughness. And the honesty to speak truth. And I I recall the process of doing homework for this finding someone, I can't recall who it was. Saying something along the lines, maybe an investor. In one of your funds. I k I don't know. Saying something. Along the lines of Jacqueline, you always talk about love, but then we get you around the negotiating table and you're so hardcore. And

2:22:09 You are living proof that those do not need to be mutually exclusive furthermore. that they can be mutually reinforcing. You can combine the hard and the soft. in a way that is tremendously effective in the world.

2:22:23 And that in fact there are Some might say an imperative. Or there are imperatives to be able to combine those things. And to not view them. As separate. And

2:22:35 I'm just so extremely happy that I had the chance to have this conversation and I hope it is just The first of many. So thank you again for taking the time. Thank you, Tim, and I I'm just so honored. Truly. I feel so, so privileged. And thank you too for Making manifest the hard and the soft.

2:22:55 Mm. It's what we need to do in our world together. And so looking forward to many conversations as well. And uh And I wish you good luck on this. To be continued. I love saying that. I always mean it, and I I mean it Very, very sincerely right now. Everyone

2:23:13 Check out acumen.org. There's a lot. They're That is worth digging into. We will have show notes.

2:23:20 For everything we've discussed. Link galore, resources galore at Tim.blog forward slash podcast. That will be easy to find. And until next time.

2:23:31 Ask? Dumb questions. They're often the smartest Questions you could ask. Be honest.

2:23:38 Bet on character. Use courage. It is the Mother. attribute for all other attributes. I'm stealing someone else's quote, but all other attributes at their testing point require courage. And

2:23:51 Thanks for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bold Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kinda like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmas, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests, and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then

2:24:42 I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash. Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. I don't know about you guys, but I've had the experience of traveling overseas and I try to access something, say a show on Amazon or elsewhere. And it says not available in your current location, something like that. Or

2:25:17 creepier still if you're at home and this is happening to me. I search for something or I type in a URL. incorrectly and then a screen for ATT pops up and it says you might be searching for this, how about that? And it suggests an alternative and I think to myself, wait a second. My internet service provider is tracking my searches and what I'm typing into the browser. Yeah. I don't love it. And

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2:26:42 Now they can't read it. ExpressVPN is so fast also it doesn't bog things down at all. I usually forget that I even have it on. I can stream high quality video with no lag or buffering, even on servers thousands of miles away. Gives me access to servers in 105 countries around the world, which is very helpful. as I am constantly traveling and love to do so. It's easy to use. If you just choose a server location and tap one button to connect. You do not need to be technologically savvy, you don't need to know anything about how it works. It's just one click. and it works on every device. Phone, laptop, tablets, even TVs. ExpressVPN has really changed the way I use the internet, and I can't recommend it highly enough, so check it out. Right now you can go to expressVPN.com slash Tim and get three extra months for free when you sign up. Just go to ExpressVPN E-XP R E S S V PN.com slash Tim for an extra three free months of ExpressVPN. One more time, expressVPN.com slash Tim.

2:27:43 Okay, this is gonna be part confessional. As some of you know, I am recently single and navigating the world of modern dating. What a joy that is. Sometimes it's fun, but it's mostly a goddamn mess, as many of you probably know. I've tried all the dating apps and while there's some slick options out there, the most functional that I have found is the league. Why did I end up using the league? First, most dating apps give you almost no information. It's a huge time suck. On the league, you're starting with a baseline of smart people, and you can then easily find the ones you're attracted to. It's much easier. It's like going to a conference. where everyone is smart and then just looking for the people you think are cute to go up and speak with. So more than half of the league users went to top 40 colleges and you can make your filters really selective. So if that's important to you, then

2:28:34 go for it. It does work and that is one of the reasons that I use it. Second, people verify using LinkedIn. So you can make sure they have a job and don't bounce around every six months. It's a simple proxy for finding people who have their shit together. It's infinitely easier than trying to figure things out on Instagram or whatever. Third, you can search by interest and in multiple locations. I haven't found any other dating app that allows you to do this. For instance, I usually search for women who love skiing or snowboarding. Have those as interest as I like to spend say two to three months of the year in the mountains. I'm a rivers and mountains guy. The UI is a little quunky, I'll warn you, but it's incredibly helpful for finding good matches and not just pretty faces, so you can search by interest and specify multiple cities. So to summarize a few things that I think Make it stand out.

2:29:23 Features available in the league include multi-city dating, LinkedIn verified profiles, ability to block your profile from co-workers, bosses, family, etc. That's very easy to do. You can search by interest. You can get profile stats and there is a personal concierge in the app. So you there's someone you can text with within the app as a personal concierge to get help. So what am I looking for? I am looking for a woman who is well educated, who loves skiing, or snowboarding. Or both. These are, and I've used this word already, proxies for like 20 other things that are important. So just I'll leave it at that for now. Someone who's default upbeat.

2:29:58 Like smile. Smiles often. class half full type of person who would ideally like to have kids in the next few years. Her friends would describe her as feminine and playful and she would love polarity in a relationship. She's athletic and has some muscle. I like strong women. Not necessarily bodybuilders, but you get the idea. It could be a rock climber, dancer, whatever, but has some muscle, loves to read, and loves learning. If this sounds like you, send hashtag date temp. So hashtag datetim in a message to your concierge in the app to get us paired up. So these are all reasons why I was excited when the league reached out to sponsor the podcast. They even have daily speed dating where you can go on three three minute dates with people who match your preferences all from the comfort of your couch. So check it out. Download the league today on iOS or Android and find people who challenge you to swing for the fences and who are in it.

2:30:48 to win it. I found it to be super fascinating. You can really get good matches instead of just looking at pretty faces and kind of rolling the dice over and over again. Much better. So don't believe today on iOS or Android and check it out. Message hashtag Tim to your in app concierge to jump to the front of the wait list and have your profile reviewed. First. Check it out, the leak. On iOS for M.

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