Good Life Project - Michael Ventura: Reclaiming His Body, Business and Life.

Episode Date: September 18, 2018

By the age of 25, Michael Ventura had founded and built one of the "hottest" shops in the interactive design world. From the outside-looking-in, he was flying high. But, from the inside looking out, he was riddled with stress and falling apart.His body eventually gave in, leaving him with three ruptured discs and the prospect of fusion surgery and arthritic pain for the rest of his life. At the same time, the economy crashed, decimating his business.He saw this as a wake-up call, both personal and professional. Ventura began to explore an alternative path to healing that led him not only back to full recovery without surgery, but on his path to becoming a practitioner of eastern and indigenous medicine, working through his private practice, Corvus Medicine as a healer.At the same time, he rallied the tiny group of remaining employees to redefine what their company was about and stand in a place of radical honesty and vulnerability with their clients. Relaunching in 2009, as Sub Rosa (http://wearesubrosa.com/), they've grown into an award-winning, strategy and design practice with a focus on what they called Applied Empathy (http://appliedempathy.com/), which also happens to be the name of Ventura's latest book (https://amzn.to/2PQb0iy)-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Imagine graduating college and embracing entrepreneurship, and you find yourself a few short years later heading your own high-flying creative agency with huge global clients with 40-something employees, but underneath it all, you're kind of pretty miserable. And one day, you're at work, and in a moment, your body betrays you, sending you screaming to the floor, unable to move, and very likely in need of spinal surgery. And while you're on a healing journey from that, within a relatively short period of time, the economy falls apart and pretty much takes your firm out from underneath you as well. How do you rebuild from there?

Well, today's conversation with Michael Ventura explored this very thing. And in fact, as we sat in the studio, he was the founder and head of a really cool strategy and design agency called SubRosa, which was in fact the rebirth, the phoenix of his original firm. And not only that, but the healing journey, the personal healing journey that he went on led him to also become a healer. And in addition to growing and running this incredible agency, he actually sees private clients early in the morning, in the evening, and on the weekends. And I know it's like more. Beyond that, he's also a partner with his wife in a really cool retail concept, and he lives a pretty awesome life. It's all about the idea of intuition, empathy, service, and openness. And these are all key topics that we explore

in today's conversation. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. You're somebody who's figured out how to weave these different

stories, these different narratives, these different professional sort of explorations together in a way that I think a lot of people would be fascinated by, would love to realize is possible, but think probably isn't. So I kind of want to dance with those different sort of threads with you for a bit. Let's take a step back in time because I want to know how this all came together. So grew up in New Jersey, if I remember. Went to college, came out of college at a time where the economy, especially for what you were interested in, was kind of in the dumps. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the bubble had just burst. It was 2002. And, you know, coming out and wanting to be an entry level creative or strategist at any kind of design

shop or something like that was there were there were no jobs. I mean, if there were they were giving them to people who had three years of experience at an entry level salary, because basically everyone had leaned down so much. And so I ended up at like a small boutique that was really focused on financial services, marketing and communication. So it was super dry work. But it was like this, we referred to it now lovingly, a couple friends of mine who I've stayed in touch with from there as like the cubicles of dreams, because we all sat in these little cubes together and had these like visions of grandeur of where our lives would go. And particularly two of them I've stayed in really close touch with. I see them, you know, multiple times a year. One went off and became, he was an art director and he just one day came

in and said, that's it, pulling the rip cord. And he went up to Maine and he learned how to sail. And he's since become a captain on a sailboat and travels around the world, captaining other people's boats for half the year. And then the other half the year, he's a rancher and he goes to different ranches throughout the Midwest essentially, and works on cattle ranches. Was that actually in when, when he was in his cubicle of dreams? That was his dream. Yeah, that was a dream. How amazing is that?

Yeah. And so like he fulfilled that. And then another woman who was there, who was a creative director, she was just kind of getting burned out and like wanted to have babies and like do something foreign. And since then she's moved to san miguel de allende in mexico with her husband she's got twins they've started the day of the dead festival in that city which is probably one of the biggest festivals that in mexico for day of the dead they she runs a little design studio down there they opened a daycare place for kids and her husband's a dj in the town and like they're living their dream and so like all of us kind of like had these like sketches on the wall of like, what might we do when we get out of this place? And we all ended up doing it. That's, I mean, how, how incredible, how rare

is that also? It's like, it's like, was there something about the cubicles? We're like enchanted cubicles or something like that. It's really, you know, I think I can't remember what the, the psychological term for it is, but it's like when people are captive together and you become family because you just have to sort of commiserate the same way. We all just had each other's back and said, yeah, you could do that. Yeah, no doubt. And then everyone went out and did it. I got laid off about a year into the job because the agency was shrinking down also. And so I found myself out of work at 23 with barely a year of experience. And I was trying to

figure out what I was going to do with my life. And that sketch that I had shared with them was like, I'd love to start something on my own. And I had a conversation with my parents and I said, look, I think I'd like to try something. And I was worried because I thought they were going to say, look, it's not so easy. My father's an entrepreneur. I've seen what it's like being an entrepreneur growing up. And they said the exact opposite. They were like, look, you's not so easy. My father's an entrepreneur. I've seen what it's like being an entrepreneur growing up. And they said the exact opposite. They were like, look, you don't have a family. You don't have a mortgage.

Now's the time. You want to take a risk? You want to try something? Try it. What's the worst thing that happens? You have to go get a job later. They said, well, why don't we say it this way? We'll, for the next six months, make sure you have food in your refrigerator and a little

bit of a cushion for rent if you run out of money but give it a shot and in six months if you can't get something off the ground then maybe we have to have a different conversation and so they gave me like a little life support and off i went and i got a 2500 credit card and started this little design studio making flash websites with a friend right and it has grown from there and that was back in the day when i when people wanted flash before like you know it was banned from every. And that was back in the day when Flash was. When people wanted Flash. Before, like, you know, it was banned from every platform. So you're, I mean, so interesting, too, because you mentioned you saw what it was like to sort of, like, be the child in a family where the parent was an entrepreneur.

What was your lens on sort of, like, what entrepreneurship was from being a kid growing up in that? So it was, so my dad's business was started by my grandfather and my dad took it over in when my grandfather retired. When my grandfather started, it was an ice and coal and kerosene delivery business, right? It was like in the prohibition era, like he was delivering like ice to ice boxes. And then when my dad took it over, it became basically like home heating and fuel and stuff like that. And like real, you know, it's a small business. It's got two employees and my uncle who works with him. But what I saw was a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week job. Of course, he always made time for us, but there would be nights where at three in the morning, if someone's heat went out in the middle of December in New Jersey and he was on call that night, he'd get in the car and go over and pick up his van and go fix someone's heat at three in the morning. And I saw entrepreneurship as a you're-never-off never off the clock life. And truth be told, I mean,

that is what it is most of the time. I mean, even, even though you can take your breaks and you can practice self-care and all the things that I, that I really focus on in my life, I have committed to making this thing successful. And so my time and my dedication to it is, is directly proportionate to its growth, right? And if, time and my dedication to it is, is directly proportionate to its growth. Right. And if, if I, you get out what you put in, right. To put it more simply, if you put in a lot, you'll get a lot. And if you try to coast, then I think that, you know, those businesses don't often have as much of a shot. Yeah. I mean, so it's interesting because when you were then, when you came out and you're 23 years old and you're saying, I want to take a

shot at my own thing, you're doing it with full awareness of the fact that this may be the thing that effectively consumes my life like 24 seven. And you're raising your hand saying yes to that. Yeah. Cause I was passionate about it and I cared about it. And I thought that, you know, I was, I was at an age where this was the first time brands were starting to think about having two-way conversations, right? Before that, they'd make a thing and put it on TV or they'd make a thing and put it on a billboard. And it would just be one directional telling you something they want you to hear. And with the advent of digital and social, and even just like the early days of blogs,

you know, brands were having a hard time learning how to behave like a human. And I'm in, and I'm in one could argue, still do. That's why to behave like a human. And I'm in the- One could argue that you still do. That's why we still have a job. The thing that I found was, I grew up in this weird generation that isn't talked about a lot. It's Gen Y, depending on what generational theorist you listen to, it's about a four to six year window

of like 78 to 83, 84 is essentially like the window. And it's a generation that was born completely analog, but were the first to receive a grade school level digital education of some kind so at some point in probably like eighth grade or freshman year of high school a computer showed up and like and we started to get exposed to it at a young age of course there were like computer science programs in colleges at that point but like we were like the kids who were taught, quote unquote, digital first. So we had this weird perspective on both worlds. Millennials are born digital. They don't know another thing.

Gen Xers came up without it. Right, which is me. Yeah, right. And so we're this weird kind of I've referred to it sometimes as like a bridge generation where we understand sort of the way a millennial to some degree is sort of living in this world. And we understand the way Gen Xers also live in this world because we saw both. They were our older brothers and sisters and our younger brothers and sisters growing up. And so we kind of like we're that middle child.

You're like the translators. Yeah, exactly. And so that's kind of what we became for these clients was something that was a bit of a translator to say, if you're going to show up in the world, here's how to do it with authenticity. Here's what people actually expect of you. And here's the sort of transparency or candor or reciprocity that is required in order to be a brand that acts like a human. Right. So that's what you've evolved into.

But in 2003, when you're saying yes to, okay, so let me do this, you're basically, what were you saying yes to? When you're like, okay, so mom, dad, I'm going to take my shot. Yeah. So it started with brochureware flash websites, right? It's like the basic stuff. Basic stuff. And we made nice enough ones that one day Pepsi called. And they said, we've got a project.

We've seen some of your work in the design blog world, and we think it's interesting. Would you come in and talk to us about a project for Mountain Dew? What, what before, what was like, when you get the message, Hey, Pepsi's on the phone. Oh, it's, it's a, you go on mute and you shit your pants and then you come back off and you're like, okay. And it was so funny. And we went up there in like, you know, our bad suits. And we were just, you know, like we were like pretending to be this, like this big agency that had all this infrastructure because we didn't want them to think we were these like punk kids sitting in a mini storage unit on Varick street making websites, but that's exactly what we were. And we came in and we had a good conversation. And the conversation was basically in short

Mountain Dew has really invested in action sports. And we really like kind of own that at this point, but we realized that when the action sport consumer is not on the mountain, on the wave, on the ramp, whatever it is, they have another part of their life that we're completely missing. They're gamers, they're into music, they're into design, and we want to build a program to reach them there. And we thought that you guys seem like you're in that world and could maybe help us do that. And so, you know, we walked out of the room asking ourselves, like, what the hell did we just say yes to? But a friend of mine's dad at that time said, if you don't get into trouble, you'll never learn how to get out of it. And it was like the best piece of advice about

like quality risk-taking. And so we thought this was a quality risk worth taking. Yeah. So you say yes to that. What happened with that? Now I'm curious, like what actually happened? So we created a program called Green Label Art, which was basically an artist collaboration series where we brought in artists who were graphic designers and musicians and DJs and skaters and all this sort of stuff. And we created limited edition bottles. We shot content that showed the making of their package design. We distributed them. We did events in 20 markets. We did a big website where you could design your own bottle and basically discover new young talent. And this program ran for like two and a half years with Mountain Dew,

and it became a real foundational thing. It's actually still pumping in some corner of Pepsi's organization now. But really, it was this platform to say, we're going to reach all these other audiences and engage with them in a two-way, person-to-person conversation. And when we did that, we realized, oh shit, we're onto something. Like this is something we could pursue elsewhere with other brands. And that really lit the fuse for the future of the business. Yeah, so it's almost like in the blink of an eye,

you go from, hey, we're building brochure flash websites for small businesses to we are creating experiential, you know, like interactive engagements, events, all sorts of stuff on a larger scale. How do you even, okay. So I get that your friend's father said, yes, like you can't get out. But I mean, for you to say yes to that, which basically is saying, okay, so we have never done any of this, but we'll just figure it out along the way. And we'll stake our personal brands and our company's brand on the ability that we can figure out something big and complex we've never done before.

Are you just wired to be comfortable saying yes to things with that level of stakes and uncertainty? I don't know if I was naturally wired for it. I definitely thrive in high-press pressure environments from time to time. It does pull out the best in me because I do feel like I am someone who is willing to try to rise to the challenge and to push myself and to pursue growth and all of that. But at the same time, I mean, we were terrified because the tightrope walk over like an alligator pit that this felt like to us, you know, if we screw this up, it's over. No one's ever going to hire us for something like this again was very real. And the knock-on effect of that was, you know, the doom and gloom of like going and getting a nine to five somewhere afterwards, right?

So the incentive, in many ways, that was the incentive. It was don't screw this up because then you screw up everything. Yeah, then we're back in the cubicle. Yeah, exactly. And we don't want to go back there, even though that's where the dreams came from. Yes, exactly. So this becomes sort of like a big catalyst for growth and also for you really understanding, okay, so we can do something different.

And seeing sort of like the seeds of how to create, like you said, the conversation and tell stories. What happens over the next couple of years with this particular endeavor? Yeah, so the business gets big quick, right? We go from literally four people in a former mini storage locker to probably about 20, 25 people. And then 25 becomes probably close to 45, all in the span of maybe 24 months. So when you walk into the door and you've got 45 employees looking at you now in a ridiculously short period of time, and you're what, 25, 26 at that point? How are you feeling about all this?

Panicked. There's no joy. And I can say that with all honesty. There was no happiness. There was no sense of satisfaction. There was panic because I saw 45 rents that need to get paid every month. I saw 45 people who need to buy groceries and go on dates and enjoy their lives. And I saw that responsibility staring me square in the face because I was basically the only business development person out in the game doing that for our business. And so I went down a rabbit hole and I started drinking, I started doing drugs. I started like

basically just like doing anything I could to numb myself from that pain and that fear and that anxiety. And, you know, and it was crippling. I had insomnia. I mean, just, it was everything. It was, and I didn't have a real mentor at the time. There wasn't someone around me who could say, hey, this is normal. Here's some thoughts I have or, you know, think about it this way versus that way. And so I didn't really have any release valve. And so one day amidst all of that, I was changing the water cooler in the office and I picked up the jug.

And the next thing I remember, I just like flash like white. And then the next thing I remember, I opened my eyes and I was on the jug. And the next thing I remember, I just like flash like white. And then the next thing I remember, I opened my eyes and I was on the floor and the jug was on the floor also like glugging water next to me. And I was in excruciating pain and I had herniated three discs in my lumbar spine and basically just couldn't walk. I like any weight on my feet was nerve pain straight through my whole back. It was brutal, brutal, brutal. And people helped carry me to a chair. And I sat in the chair for a little. And I was like, I don't know. I must have just pinched a nerve or something. But it wasn't getting better. Ended up going to the hospital. They take a look. And they're like, yeah, you've got basically bone on bone. You have very little disc left. And you've herniated three discs. And we're going

to need to do surgery. We're going to fuse your discs. We can do all this crazy stuff. And you're 25 years old. So you're facing the possibility of substantial spinal surgery, three fused vertebrae at the age of 25. Yeah. And I was generally, I mean, despite all of the abuse I was doing to my body, I was in relatively okay shape. I wasn't out of shape. So I was like this, and I was an athlete growing up. I was like, how is this possible? And they were like, well, you know, it is what it is. Sometimes this just happens. And I said, I kind of don't accept that diagnosis. And so what makes you, well, cause I felt like, I felt like there, there, before I agreed to surgery, let me just see what other points of view there are. I always get a second opinion. And so they gave me a walker and I left in a walker taking 3,000 Percocets or whatever it is

they gave me. And I like amble out of the hospital. And I was on the phone with a friend and he said, I don't think it's going to change your life, but I've heard some people get good benefit from acupuncture. Maybe you should try that. And I said, I'll try anything right now because the alternative is going under the knife at 25 years old and having probably arthritic pain the rest of my life. On the recommendation of him, I found this guy near the United Nations who a couple of friends had been to and had found good work from. And so I sat down with Dr. Chan and he looked at me and he said, wow, you're really stressed out, aren't you? And I said, hmm, yeah, I would say so. And he said, yeah, let's get on the table.

And he started doing some work and I left his office after the first session. And if my pain was at 100 when I walked in, it was at like 99 and a half when I left. It wasn't like a night and day shift, but I saw like a little crack in the door. There was like a night and day shift, but I saw like a little crack in the door. There was like a little light coming through. And I said, I'd come back. And he said, yeah, please come back in a couple days. Let's do another session. Came back a couple of days. It got a little better, came back again and started to get a little better. And then after maybe like five or six times, we started to have a bit more of a rapport and he felt comfortable asking me and he said, you know, do you have any

kind of like meditation practice or anything that helps you manage your stress? And I said, no, I'm drinking and doing drugs and doing things like that to just numb it. And I just broke down and started crying. He's like, it's okay. Understand that that's why you're here and we're here to work on this. But I think you need to make a lifestyle change and you really need to think about a different way of managing this. And so he said, I think you should try finding a Tai Chi teacher and start to do that because you're not in a position to sit on a floor

or on a cushion and meditate. Like your mind is too crazy. Your body's too erratic. You need to have something else to do with your mind and Tai Chi is moving meditation and it'll help you kind of just relax your mind and get into a different state. And this was wintertime. And that night I told my then girlfriend at the time, who is now my wife, that this conversation took place. And we were heading to a friend's Christmas party in a restaurant that he had rented out in Brooklyn in a basement. So we go down the basement of this Italian restaurant and there are 49 white people in the basement of this Italian restaurant and one old Chinese man. And he just starts weaving his way through the crowd as I'm coming down the stairs. And I get

to the bottom of the stairs and he looks at me and he puts his hand out and he says, hi, I'm Master Roo. I teach Tai Chi. And I said, you got to be fucking kidding me. And that began my work with Master Roo. And he was friends of my friend. I didn't know that my friend practiced Tai Chi for five years and that they had this whole other side of their life because we had only become friends recently. And so that began a long journey with him to learn how to manage stress through meditation. Have you ever asked him why he came to you? Like why? Yeah. You know, he said he saw me coming down the stairs and I looked like I needed help. And I think it was probably because I was limping my way down the stairs and like,

but maybe it was also because he sees things on layers and layers and layers that most naked eyes don't. And I think he saw someone who was really in need and he just put his hand out. And, and I, I will never forget that moment because it was, it was the hand I had been looking for, like someone to just say, I can help you. Let me help you. And, you know, we practice at South street Seaport outdoors in the snow, in the rain, in the sweltering summer heat, it didn't matter. Like we do the work outside and you suck it up and you wear an extra set of gloves if you need to, because it's going to be cold. But that was the way he trained. And every time I would ask a question, he would say no questions. And because he didn't want me to

intellectualize any of it. He wanted me to just feel it. And he wanted me to just be peaceful and in my body and not worry about trying to understand when I move this way, is this opening up my lungs more? Or is this opening, you know, like, he was like, look, Western people just want to learn all the science. He goes, we'll talk about the science at some point. But for right now, just move your body. And that was all we did. So what was, was his approach to teaching just sort of like stand next to me and just follow me as much as you can. That's exactly right. And in the beginning, he told me I moved like a, like an awkward horse. He goes, he goes, Tai Chi, you should move like a cat. He goes, you move like an awkward horse. He goes, but keep doing it.

You'll get there eventually. And I did. And, you know, and it's become a daily practice. I mean, I don't miss a day. I haven't missed a day in years of doing that because it has, it has truly become life support for me. It'll be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here.

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Tell me more about what tai chi is i have the i have the smallest experience i've like gone to a couple of classes here in new york where again i you know like i just walked into this room and no instruction or anything like that they're just like follow and it feels like this really interesting blend to me of moving energy, meditation, stillness, and frustration. But it's also, I've seen a demonstration of somebody doing the form kind of like at high speed, and it looked like at a much faster pace, kind of like what I would say like martial arts, really stunning martial arts. Yeah, you're spot on. So at a slow and methodical pace, which is part of the daily practice, it is. It is a meditate.

It's a moving meditation. And it's built to open up certain points in the body, start to get circulation going, start to get blood moving, start to get, as the Chinese would call qi, life force, sort of in balance. And everything's about yin yang in the Tao, right? So everything is about finding balance. It's not over-indexing, it's not under-indexing. So that work really helps to do that. But when you do speed it up, there is a martial art form of it. And actually Master Ru, interestingly enough, was before coming to the States, was the head of Tai Chi and Qigong. And Qigong is another form, which I'll explain in a second, for the Chinese army for 25 years. So he trained the army in this work. He was a very well-regarded healer and had

been pulling people out of, putting people in remission from cancer, pulling people out of comas, like crazy stuff in China. And Western doctors had heard about this guy doing this stuff and wanted to study him in the 80s. And they lobbied the Chinese government to bring him over. And the Chinese government were excited to show off their powerful medicine that the Western world didn't have. And so they let him come over. And as soon as he got off the plane, he said, get my family out of China. I don't ever want to go back. And so it spent like 18 months basically figuring out a way to get his family across the border and back into the States. And now he can go back and forth, obviously. But there was a period of time where he was like,

this is not the life I want to be in is communist China. And it's a crazy time. And lo and behold, he does do those things. Like, I mean, he was, he's, he's worked out of hospitals in Boston and New York and Philly. And he's, he's a powerful man who can really do paranormal stuff. Going back very briefly, Qigong, which is another big form. And actually the form that I practice daily also, and also work with my clients in the medicine practice to work with. Qi, life force, gong, circulation or movement, right? So it's about, again, kind of finding a way to move stagnancy and move stuckness out of different parts of our body so that we create that balance, that yin yang that really makes things flourish. So 23-year-old, grew up traditional.

Yeah, Italian, Irish, Catholic kid in New Jersey. Headbanging, really grinding hard business person. All of a sudden, deep into Tai Chi and Qigong and all these things that you can't easily explain and define and and they're soft and they take time to unfold was your mind immediately open to to this working or was it the fact that you were in excruciating pain and this was doing something that just made you say let me keep doing it and see let let that be my proof because you strike me as being somebody where like you want the answer. You want to know what's going on.

I'm certainly a pursuer of those types of things, and I am a very curious person. I wasn't closed-minded. I grew up with a pretty liberal family that we were open to stuff. My parents weren't hippies by any stretch. They're pretty straight-laced. But if I was curious about something, there was a path that would be availed to me to learn about it, right? The, you know, Rumi has a quote that says, the wound is the place where the light enters or something, paraphrasing, right? And that wound was essentially what I had, right? My back injury was where I created, my body basically said, your spirit's not listening, your emotional body's not listening, nothing's listening, We're going to get you to pay

attention to this or it's going to kill you. So your back is going to go out. And lo and behold, I have no back pain anymore. I had never had the surgery and I can touch my toes and I have complete flexibility and everything feels really good. There are days where it gets a little crunchy and that's my body basically putting up a white flag and saying, hey, you're not paying enough attention to the way you feel or you're not resolving something that's nagging. You should really go have that hard conversation. And it's my release valve. It's where my body kind of says, hey, pay attention. And I think we all have those.

I was talking with a friend last night about it, actually. And he was saying how the injuries he sees when people come in for work with him and he practices in a similar tradition is, he goes, they're all just signals that the body is giving off to say, please pay attention to this thing you're ignoring because it really needs help. And I thought it was a beautiful way of thinking about it. Yeah, I mean, it makes a lot of sense. I remember a number of years back going to a Chinese medicine practitioner and getting acupuncture and telling him that it's certain pain in certain parts of the body. And he started kind of chuckling. And I was like, dude, what's going on? And the metaphor he described, he's like, he said it has nothing to do with like you didn't injure yourself anywhere. He's like, think of the, he said, it's the way you're living.

He's like, basically, he's like, it's almost like there's a little boy inside of your body living in there. And he's got a lighter in his hand. He's having fun playing with it. And he's running around your body, flicking the lighter. And until you sort of like find out what he's running from. Beautiful. Nothing's like, nothing's going to help. There's no joint thing to fix.

There's no, he's like, I was like, huh. And, and, and I was like, wow, that's, there's, there's a deeper truth that I need to explore around that. And I'm sure that as you did, those pains went away. Well, I'm still exploring it. Okay. Fair. But, but yeah, I mean, cause you start to sort of like check off.

Okay. So it's not this, not this, it's not this. There's clearly got to be something bigger happening. And I think from an Eastern standpoint, until, you know, like, but there's no until. For, I mean, the biggest sort of source of pain these days is quote, non-specific. And Western medicine is not all that awesome at figuring that out. Non-specific, yeah.

I had a physician on my table yesterday morning and it was her first session with her. She had just finished residency and one of her friends bought it for her as a gift and said, I think you need to go do this because you've been going through a lot and someone needs to care a little bit more about you. And she came in and we had an amazing session and she came out the other side saying, I never, you know, I literally just finished residency. I have been studying Western medicine diligently for years. And she said, and I haven't really paid attention

to this and I think I should. And it was such a cool moment because, and I have a couple of physicians that I treat and, and the, the, the, that aha moment is so interesting to see for someone who spends their whole time doing what you just described, treating an ailment or treating an injury, but not looking at the system necessarily. I mean, some doctors do by all means, but some doctors really just sort of, you know, look at this is what hurts. Great. We can do this to fix that pain, but don't ask, well, why is that? Why does that hurt? You know, what's it coming from? What's the root cause? Yeah. And by the way, not to slam Western medicine, there's a role and a place and incredible things that it can do. It's more of a yes and thing.

It is completely. And I, and that, that's the way I think about it too. No one should ever, you know, just completely swing the pendulum in one direction or another. In fact, I work with a lot of these physicians with their patients collaboratively and, you know, and what they're doing is really valuable to help them heal in some way. And then what I can do is additive to that. And so we work together to try to get them into a some way. And then what I can do is additive to that. And so we work together to try to get them into a better place. Right. Okay. So we just made a really big jump

because we're talking about you as a practitioner. Let's fill some of this in. So you're in your late twenties now. You're experiencing this and it's healing you and it's transforming your body, your physical health, your mindset too, helping you process stress, because you're still running a company. And from what I recall, there's another window of pain that is coming in the company. Yeah. And so then, yeah, 2008 hits and I've been doing this for a little while. I've gotten a little more stable. I'm feeling like my feet are beneath me and my brain is a little more together and I'm enjoying it a little bit more, right? Which is a big change. Which is a huge change. I'm getting married that year. It was the year I got married. That was

when the financial crisis hit. And every client's purse strings just totally tightened up. And our cash flow just started precipitously draining. And I looked at my partners because at that time there were three of us who were equity partners in the business and we were about 50 people. And I said, I don't know what we're going to do because there's just not enough work to pay for all of this. And the other guys said, you know what, we've been at this for a few years and I think it's my time to kind of step aside. And I'd like to go try to do something else. And so I, for whatever reason, felt really compelled to stick it out. And I said, I hear you. I'm going to stay with this thing.

I'm going to, you know, I'll go down with the ship if I have to, but I want to, I want to see it through better or worse. And so bought them out with like whatever little savings I had, which, you know, we're talking like negligible amounts of money, but it was enough to sort of take the ownership back into the company. I mean, what is there left to buy out at that point also? I didn't want to have to shut down the entity and start a new one. So I wanted to own the equity of the entire thing so that at least there was no other decision-making power sitting in people who weren't there. And so we went from 50 some odd people down to about eight in a massive layoff crush, but enough people to still service the work that we did have.

And I sat down with those eight people and I said, look, I totally understand if you don't want to be here because this is a different thing than what it was two weeks ago, but I'm committed to seeing how we can turn this thing around. And they all basically said, we got your back and let's see if we can figure this out together. And I went to a couple of our key clients and I told them what was happening. And I said, look, this is not a good thing for us. And they, A, appreciated the candor and B, sympathized and said, you know what, we're going through the same thing here. It's got a couple more zeros on the end of it, but it's the same problem.

And so I said, what are you not getting? Let's just have a conversation. What do you need that either we're not providing or that some other agency you work with isn't providing? And they all kind of said the same thing. They said, we've got a lot of great shops like you who do the doing. And we can write a brief and we can give you a request to go do something and you'll go make it.

We also have a bunch of consultants who sit upstream of all this stuff and they tell us research and they build strategic plans and they set us up with the information to figure out what to do next. But they don't do any of the doing. Their final deliverable is a deck. It's a PDF. And so what we need more than anything is someone who can be a through line, someone who can recommend and do. And I said, well, look, we've never done the recommending stuff. And I know that's a totally different business, but it's a business I'd like to get us into. Will you give me a pilot? It doesn't have to be a big one, but will you just give me a pilot project? And if I screw it up,

I'll never ask for another one again. But if I solve it, if I can actually build a team to do that, then maybe we solve your problem and we solve my problem too. And so I had three clients who were brave enough to do that with us. And one of them was a woman named Beth Comstock, who was a CMO at the time at General Electric. I'm still very good friends with Beth. She stepped down at GE about a year and a half ago, but I still thank her every time I see her for that moment because she really, she said, I saw something in you and I knew you weren't going to let me down and you weren't going to let yourself down. So I figured it was worth a shot. And so we basically used those pilot projects to hire people and put them on staff and begin to build a process. And that was, and we rebranded at that time to prior to

2009, we were called seed seed communications was sort of the, the, the entity that we operated under and then post the buyout and this new pivot, we formed Sub Rosa, which was a new brand. And the brand's name in Latin is it's direct translation is under the rose, obviously, or maybe not so obviously, but the, uh, the, the, the meaning of it is conversations had in confidence conversations had in confidence, conversations had in private. When you had a conversation that was sub-rosa, it was deemed to be confidential. And what I wanted to evoke with that name was we all have these moments, like the one I had with Beth, where I said, look, this is the truth of the matter. This is where

we're at and this is what we need. And she reciprocated and she said, this is what we really need. And those are not the kind of conversations you sometimes have with clients. But those are the conversations I want us to be in with our clients. And so she committed to that. I committed to that. And off we went. And Sub Rosa was born. And still to this day, I think our best work is when someone is willing to be vulnerable

and to sit down with us and say, this is the problem we're having. This is the thing we're really trying to fix. And then we go in and try to do it together. Yeah. And that decision, your willingness to basically say, well, let me just lay all the cards on the table and see if we can solve, like each solve our biggest problems together right now. Maybe we can, maybe we can't, but your willingness to basically be completely vulnerable and transparent with the people who as a general rule and agency never would do that. So you're basically completely breaking the rules. You're turning it upside down. That was the decision, like that decision that effectively saved the company and laid the foundation to grow a whole new,

a whole new company. Yeah. It was a, it was a sink or swim moment, right? It was like, if I knew if we didn't do that, if we were too proud or if we were too sort of stuck in our ways, we, we would have ground this thing to a nub and it would have been done right there. Just, there wasn't an opportunity there. And then the more I looked at it, you know, we were, we were in a position and everyone that was in the same position who did this kind of work, clients wanted the best possible work they could get at the lowest possible price. It was a commodity business. And so we said, how do you get out of the commodity business? Well, you have to have more IP. You have to add more value to the system that you're participating in. And so we'll still stick with that work because people still do need the doing,

but let's see if we can get a little more value for our time by doing something that's in higher demand. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And so it's kind of like, what makes us different? What can't people get elsewhere? It's like the blend of these different things together. The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

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Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. I mean, zooming the lens out,

you almost feel like, okay, so, you know, were you brought to your knees a couple years earlier from physical trauma to introduce you to the healing modalities and the skills and the daily practices that would allow you to have developed into them at a level where when this bigger reckoning moment of reckoning came, you were able to move through that moment with more without completely destroying yourself.

That is the way I view it. I a hundred percent agree is that that was, that was bootcamp, right? And, and it was so formative because had that not happened, had I not learned how to understand myself, I think is really what it boiled down to. That back injury taught me how to begin the process of understanding my interior self, my physical body, my emotional state, my mental state, my spiritual state, all of those sorts of things.

And so that really gave me the wake-up call I needed to start to train that so that I could be stronger for the business that I wanted to be committed to. And so then when that time came, I was a little more sturdy than I probably would have been otherwise, both physically and emotionally. Yeah. So you start to build SubRosa now now and now you're doing something different. Now you've got, you've got strategy, you've got design, you're doing the advising and the doing,

and that's, it's getting traction. It's growing nicely. You're rebuilding, but that's also not the end of your personal healing and medicine journey and your journey to sort of like, not just be a student of or a patient of or a client of but you you just keep going deeper yeah so because i i don't know maybe i'm a masochist

or maybe maybe not but so at that point i basically you know fast forward a year later 2009 you know we're off the ground doing that sort of stuff and i woke up one morning with just a very clear what i can only call it sort of like it was an intuitive message. It wasn't my brain saying psychologically or rationally something to me. It was just a gut feeling that I had when I woke up. And the gut feeling was these folks who helped you get better and learn how to kind of stabilize yourself, Master Ru, Dr dr chan some other some other

practitioners that i had worked with in other traditions they helped you you should go to them and ask them if they would teach you so that maybe you can help other people and it was just so i never questioned it it wasn't like a yeah that crazy. Or where am I going to find the time? Or that's not the, that's not, that's going to pull you out of focus. None of that came into my mind. It was just, oh yeah, okay, I'll go do that. And so I asked Master Roo and Master Roo said, what are you kidding me? We've been training you for six years already. Like you've been in class.

You've been like, now let's just keep going. You know, like now ask more questions. Now I'll tell you more things, you know, now let's just keep going you know like now ask more questions now i'll tell you more things you know now let's try this or that and so off we went to sort of play in that space and then around the same time there was a woman she's a indigenous medicine woman from the like jungle outside of puebla in mexico and her name's donia leova donia donia leova is she works in a tradition known as the tradition of the grandmothers. And traditionally, grandmothers teach granddaughters. And they skip a generation

because they believe that a mom could never really teach a daughter solely from a place of love and compassion because a mom also has to be a disciplinarian, has to be a caretaker, has to be a lot, but grandma could just be love. So grandma teaches granddaughter. And Donia doesn't come to the States very often. She speaks no English. She comes probably twice a year and she's very connected to the Kundalini yoga community here, which I have no came to find was Yogi Bhajan, who was the yogi who popularized Kundalini in the 60s, at one point got very ill in Mexico and was nearing his deathbed, essentially. And someone found Dona Leova and brought her to him, and she healed him. And after that, he basically said, when I travel, when I go somewhere, will you come with me from time to time and make sure that I don't put myself in this position again? So she basically found herself as this young Mexican woman traveling around with this yogi and having this crazy weird life.

And so when he was dying years later, he said to her, look, New York is your second home and you'll find students there and you'll find a community there that cares for you. And that community will support your village because they will pay you what you need to get paid to do this work for them so that you can come back and buy shoes and candy and all the things that you need for your grandchildren and the kids of this village. And so Donya comes back and forth. And so one day I'm laying on the floor and it's my first session with her and she beats the living daylights out of you. I mean, she's five feet tall, five feet wide, big smile. And she just like, whether it's with her hands, whether it's with implements, stones, whatever it is, she beats the pain out of you. And she gets away with it because she's so cute.

At the end of it, I'm wiping up the tears and I'm blowing my nose and I'm just like, I'm beat up. And I look at her and she's smiling her big smile. And she's got Robert who's her, who's her translator and her student sitting next to her. And Robert's a yogi and a Kundalini practitioner. And my Spanish at the time was much worse than it is now. And she's basically said something to me. And I looked at Robert and he said, she wants you to come back tomorrow. And I said, I thought that's what she said for another treatment. This was painful. I have to come back again tomorrow. And he asks her and then she says something.

He goes, no, she wants you to come back tomorrow to start learning. And I said, start learning. And he said, I'll be honest with you. I've never seen her do this before either. You should probably take advantage of this. And I said, okay, fine. I'll come back tomorrow. And I came back the next day and she started teaching me what she does.

And she said, I think there's something that you are seeking that this can connect to. And if it doesn't, that's fine. You don't have to stay. But I thought that this might be something you want to learn. And I began. I came to find out that Robert is the only other person outside of her own granddaughter she's ever done this with. And I feel very honored to have received that sort of tap on the shoulder from her. But it's also because I think she saw in me

what I didn't see in me. And she saw that this was something, had I asked, she probably would have said no. But she knew something that was happening and she said, let's go on this road together. And so those two folks, Mastaru and Donya Leova, really helped me build a practice for learning how to work with other people.

And so I've been doing that really in earnest since about end of 2010, early 2011. So what's it like for you? You're running this company, you're building a healing practice. I'm so curious about the first moment when you're like, okay, when you go from being purely a student to a practitioner, the first person walks in, do you actually have confidence that you know what you're doing and you can make a difference? So a little, I would say it starts with friends and family because, you know, you go to people, you know, and people who are willing to be a guinea pig. And Donya told me, look, before you

work on any organs and Master Rue said the same thing before you're working on organs and meridians and internal emotional systems and things like that, like you need to be able to fix a quad muscle you need to be able to help someone like you know who's got you know a sprained ankle you need to be able to like really just deal with the physical body so for the first year i mean i was really just doing touch-based therapy and this is not there's no adjustments there's no chiropractic there's no this is like light touch on the body to just manipulate energy and to open things up through meditation. Basically I'm meditating while we're working and they're not the big misconception.

A lot of people have about this work is that you're getting my energy and you're not, we're actually just reorienting or reallocating your own energy or you're getting the quote unquote, the energy, right? Like the, the greater energy that is around all of us. And that's, there's a Chinese expression that translates to a little cream stays in the pitcher. And essentially like as practitioner, you're the pitcher, right? And stuff's flowing through you in order to help orient them, but it's not your own energy. Otherwise you'd be depleted and tired every day. And so actually after you do a couple, you're pretty energetic

and you kind of have to ground yourself a little bit because you're humming to some degree. But yeah, so you start very basic and start with friends and you get a couple wins on the board and you start to see, okay, this is working. Something's happening and people come back and they're like, yeah, I feel so much better. And so then the aperture opens at its own pace and you start to get wider and wider and you let a little more in a little more in. And then, you know, where it is now, you know, basically I've come to a philosophy on this, that it's the same job. People are like, how do you switch gears all day? And how do you like do that? I do a session at 8am and then another at 6.30pm pretty much every day. And then Saturday I'll do a couple, but from nine to six, I'm in Sub Rosa running the business. And they're like, how do you just like switch gears from one to another back and forth?

And I say, it's the same job. It's just sometimes we're using touch and song and prayer and herbs. And sometimes we're using decks and research and this and that. But really, the job is to empathically get out of your own perspective and feel into or see into someone else's and see where the problem is and see where the root issue is and see where the, see where the, the, the, the roadblock is. And then through either a strategy or a design solution or touch or prayer or whatever it might be, help to nudge that back into balance so that they can get where they need to go. And that is the only thing that lets me sleep well at night. Cause if I thought Because if I thought I was changing those gears

and shifting hard up and down, up and down, up and down all day, I think I would drive myself crazy. But there was some moment at some point on this ride where it kind of clicked for me. And I was like, oh, it's kind of the same job. And it's funny, driving over here this morning, there was a stop on the subway. So I hopped out and hopped in a taxi so I wouldn't be late.

And I got in and the driver's name was Ganesh. And that actually, that Ganeshian moment, I was reading something about Ganesh at some point during this. And that was what actually triggered the, all I'm doing is removing obstacles in both of these situations. And it was funny that that person actually drove me here today. That is pretty funny. It's pretty awesome. Actually, I love that. Have you ever had any crossover clients? Yes, I have. And they start both ways.

It's not like they've only come from getting a treatment and then saying, hey, I'd like to work with you on a piece of work. I've also had people who I never tell our SubRosa clients that I do this, but it's inevitable that at some point they find out through the grapevine or like, you know, they read some interview or whatever, but there are some very senior, you know, C-level executives who I've been working with for years. And then like, I get a call one day and they're like, Hey, I was talking to so-and-so and they told me that they were at your place the other day and they were laying on a table and you were like doing something to them. And I, yep, that's true. And they were like, Hmm, I'd like to know more about that. And so that,

and then it just happens organically. Is that weird for you at all? Or is it completely natural? It's totally fine. It's totally fine. And actually, I think it really deepens our relationships because that's, I mean, that is the utmost gesture of trust, right? That someone's willing to sit on a table or lay on a table and work together in that way, they're really being open to it. And frankly, the same is true. There's an utmost level of trust at the Subrosa side for someone to say, I'm going to vouch for you inside this organization that you guys can do this for us. I'm going to write a check and we're going to do this together. That's the same kind of trust. There's a reciprocity. Yeah. Does it ever create the opposite though? Like, are there ever

realizations or things that have to be done on one side or the other, which create a conflict or a conflict of interest or, you know, well, this entity is paying me and this person is on my table and I realized for both to get what they need, there's a conversation that's not happening that has to happen or something like that? It's a great question. It hasn't happened as overtly as that. No. And I think maybe part of the reason why is often at a certain point, I'm not in the work at SubRosa, right? Like I'm running the business and I'm running a lot of the business development and I'm looking at the growth plan for the vision of the company, but where the tensions often arise or where the stumbling blocks often are is in the sort of work product creation right or like this thing that we're kind of hitting a roadblock on for one reason or another and so by being one step removed often actually it helps because if something is sort of locking up the phone gets my phone rings and they say hey can we talk about this and we can have a one-step removed conversation about it. And I don't have to feel so affronted by the issue. Right.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, actually. Okay, so you're growing a company. You are taking care of yourself personally. You have this private practice. You're married and you also co-own a retail business with your wife because there's just 29,000 hours a day somehow in the world of my commentator. No, I mean, the only thing more masochistic than running a services business is owning a retail store. So there is clearly a theme in my life of that as well.

But when I met my wife, she lived in LA and I lived here. And we did long distance for like a year and a half before she got out here full time. And during that time, we spent a ton of time on the phone because that's what you do. And we would talk about everything, hopes and dreams and, you know, where we want to go with our lives. And one of the things that we always talked about together as a pipe dream was this idea of owning a store together. And we said, wouldn't it be so cool to be able to, on our adventures, wherever our adventures lead us in the future, that like, if we're somewhere and we see some beautiful thing that like we could bring it back to a store that we own so that someone else could own it, right?

And sort of be this like halfway house for eccentric objects, right? And we just loved that idea because we love the idea of the discovery of a thing. We don't necessarily want to own the thing, but we want to help the thing find a home. And so we tucked it in the file of like, yeah, maybe one day. I was living in an apartment that was a couple blocks from Sub Rosa's office. And we were outgrowing the office and it was time to find a new place to move the office to. And I said to Caroline, my wife, maybe we move the apartment too. Maybe we try to find a place where we could put it all. And we started talking about that.

We're like, oh man, that would be so cool. And she has her own business. She's a goldsmith and does a women's fine jewelry line. And so she's like, oh, I could have my studio in there too. And you could do your treatments in there and we could like, it could all become a thing. And then one of us, and I don't remember which one of us was the more masochistic one in that moment said like, and that store. And so, and so kind of just was like, we said, well, let's see if we could find a container for that. And we hired some real estate brokers and they were looking around and no one could find, I mean, this is a needle in the haystack because obviously, well, maybe not, obviously we didn't, you know, we weren't like independently wealthy. There was

no way we were going to be able to like go find something like find a whole building in New York city that was going to actually suit our needs, but we were willing to roll the dice and the needle in the haystack that is the New York State real estate market, New York City real estate market, was at any given time, there was a building on the market that might fit our size and location requirements and zoning requirements. But the price was often way out of our reach. And so what we started doing, because the brokers had exhausted brokers and they were just like, you know, quitting on us. They were like, look, your research is impossible. We can't do it. And so what we would do after dinner every night when we were still living in the other apartment was we'd finish dinner and we take the, we had a young puppy at the time and we take the

puppy for a long walk in neighborhoods we liked. And we would just walk around the neighborhood looking at buildings and seeing where there were signs on the windows. And one day we were just walking down West 12th street in the West Village, which was a neighborhood we loved. And there was a sign on a window that said for rent. And there was a sign on the adjacent window that said for rent. And so we looked up at the top floors of the three-story building and all the lights were out. And we said, I wonder if the whole building's for rent. And we called the number and they said, yeah, actually the whole building's for rent, but you should take a look. It's really dilapidated. It's falling apart. The landlord doesn't want to rent it unless someone wants to take the whole building. So we went in and we took a look at the whole building and I mean, it was mold, rats, asbestos, illegal squatters. I mean, literally everything you could imagine. And we were like, yeah, it's perfect. We'll take it. And thus began the renovation and the build out. And so we opened this store that is, it's called Calliope. Calliope is a Greek muse for the arts.

Calliope is how you would say it in Greek. There's also an instrument from like the turn of the century that was like this, almost like a steampunky looking like caboose that had pipe organ in it. And as it was pulled by horses, it would play this like charming music that became essentially the soundtrack for circuses. And so we loved both of these terms. And we were like, yeah, a muse for the arts and also that risk that I had bared back in the startup day kind of recirculated because this was a huge difference than taking on, you know, like a little 3000 square foot office space. We had an 18,000 square foot building that needed renovation and needed to move for business into it and then also our home into it. But for whatever reason, again, trusting

the gut and not the brain and not the rational mind that's like, hey, bro, this is maybe a little more than you want to bite off. We went for it. And we've been in there for five years. And it has really served us well. I mean, it sounds like your killer app is somehow being able to tune into your own intuition and then trusting it. Where I think most people struggle with both of those things. One, we're completely disembodied. We can't actually feel it anymore. And we just want to sort of make everything cognitive and rational and intellectual because that's the real data. That's how we make decisions, especially when the stakes are high. And then even if we can

tune into it, we don't trust it. We're like, yeah, I can't be right. It seems like for you, that you've been guided so much by this blend of being able to actually feel it and sense it and then trusting it, which is, I mean, so rare. I appreciate you saying that. I think we all have the opportunity to do it. And Antonia Leova actually said something to me once that it fits this conversation perfectly. She said, look, the mind tries to make sense out of everything, but this, and she stuck her finger deep into my belly button. She goes, this is sense. She goes, learn to trust that. She goes, because that's where all the answers are going to come from. That's where you started. That's where you were first fed. That's

where you first took life. That's when you were in utero. That was you. And she goes, that's the original you. She goes, the brain is something that your parents imprinted on you and school imprinted on you and experience imprinted on you. And yes, it'll make sure you can get on the bus on time and it'll make sure you get a raise next year when time comes around for your salary review. And it'll make sure of all of those things. But it's not your compass. This is your compass.

And I was like, holy shit, you're right. I think we all have the capacity and the ability to follow that compass, but we've lost such touch with it because we're not remunerated by it on a daily basis, right? We're not told that, oh, your intuition is so good. We're told you're smart. we're told you're smart we're told you're clever we're told you know and so we're positively reinforced for the attributes of our mind but there is another there is another mind and actually a lot of the like human biome stuff that's going on right now is talking about how really there is a second mind in our gut. That is, you know, our OG mind. Yeah, I love that.

And it's like that's our internal observing and decision-making system. And what I love also is it seems like you've then taken that and you have translated that and you have sort of like the external manifestation of that for you is empathy, where you can both connect with that and other people. And it comes back to the beginning part of our conversation, too, sort of serve as a translator between people, like where they can feel, they can become empathic between themselves, who they want to serve, the people they want to work with, the people in their relationships, in their lives. And you're playing this role as like an awakener and a facilitator. You do it, you know, in a private practice and in a healing way, you do it in a professional way. And in fact, you've even like, you've literally encoded this, like as the heartbeat of Sub Rosa now is sort of like the concept of applied empathy in the book that sort of offers this

as, you know, out to the world saying, hey, listen, this is our secret sauce, but you know, like the world can benefit from this and maybe here's some things to think about so that other people can cultivate this as well. Yeah, exactly. You know, Applied Empathy kind of came out of another sort of just trusting that we came around to. And I say we, because it really was a team effort in this one. And you know professional services firms of all ilks whether you're like design studios or whether you're consultancies or what have you everyone kind of you go on the website for one of them it's the

same 10 adjectives right it's an innovation and ideation and and so we were saying to ourselves one day like is there really any special sauce like are we just another one of those or is there something else we do because if there isn't we should be self-aware enough to acknowledge that and just say, hey, we're another one of these and we can do good work too. There's nothing wrong with that, but like, there's no like real, let's not get high on our own supply. Or is there something more out there that we do do that we're not aware of yet? And so we pulled a bunch of case studies of our past work and we started really picking it apart. It was a working group of about five or six of us.

And what we came to find was as we looked at the best projects in our past, what we saw was that it was when we made an effort to drop bias, step out of our own shoes, see the world from a different perspective, get into the mind of the consumer, get into the mind of the zeitgeist, whatever it was, and understand what was happening there more deeply. And then take that insight into the room and then say, okay, based on that, what's the right answer? How do we solve this thing? And that is ultimately the way I think about empathy. Empathy has got a funny rap in the world these days because I think it's misconstrued for

a lot of things. A lot of people hear empathy and think being nice or think being compassionate or being sympathetic. Those are side effects of empathy, but that's not empathy. In my view, empathy is about bias-free perspective taking to gain richer, deeper understanding. And when you do that, ultimately, you're going to want to use that to hopefully make something better and so you might end up being more compassionate to someone as a result but you also might just be more astute at the way you design a solution so we we kind of zeroed in on that and said that's a thing let's write a talk on that and let's just like go see who listens

and so i started you know they wind up the little screw in the back of me and send me out and i go talking to people about stuff and i ended up getting invited down to Princeton to speak to the class student body there on this topic. And I come off stage and the Dean of the Keller Center, which is the engineering school down there and also houses entrepreneurship. She said, this is a really interesting topic. And I think it's something engineers and entrepreneurs would really benefit from learning more about. Would you be willing to create a one-on-one and teach it? And I said to myself, look, there's no way we will ever know this more deeply than if we're forced to create a 12-week Ivy League curriculum. Right. And then be challenged and questioned. Yes. Exactly. Like really smart students. Yeah, exactly. So that was what we did.

We taught it for three semesters and it became the number one student ranked class on campus. And it was oversubscribed every semester. And I think that was also just because we weren't tenured faculty and people wanted to like sit around and ask, what's the real world like? So we did that. And in so doing really learned our rap a lot better and learned the methodology a lot better and learned what goes into it a lot better. And it has become this formative thing that is our foundation and everything we do at SubRosa is built on this concept of applied empathy now. And it has become this formative thing that is our foundation. And everything we do at SubRosa is built on this concept of applied empathy now. Yeah.

And I kind of love that you also, in deciding to sort of like, okay, so let's put this entire secret sauce into a book. Let's codify it and share it with the world. It's like, okay, so yeah, this is what makes us, this is why I think people are coming to us and what we do differently. And the very concept itself is so important and so much bigger than us that it needs to be out in the world for other people to interact with and to develop skills and abilities around and to share. Just sort of like, let's scale this and let other people have it. Exactly. We said there was, there was absolutely a conversation. I would be lying if I didn't say there was one that at some point, one of the guys on our team said, but wait, this is our IP. Why are we going to put this out into the world for everybody?

Like this is, we don't want, and then he stopped himself and he goes, he realized he was about to say, we don't want everyone being empathetic. And then, and then he was like, oh yeah,

we do. Don't we? And I said, yeah, that's the point. It's like, that is, that we do, don't we? And I said, yeah, that's the point, man. It's like, that is everything. That's what it's all about. Yeah, all ships rise in high tide.

Yeah, at the end of the day. This feels like a good place for us to come full circle also because we've kind of caught up to all your mysterious adventures. And I'm really excited to revisit this in like five years and see sort of like how everything has evolved. I'm sitting here in this container at a good life project. If I offer out the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? Don't be afraid to trust your instincts is really the first thing. I think that we are so afraid to believe what is right for us is what we deserve and that we can have it. And so living a good

life for me has really proven to be be even in the hard times, trusting your gut and knowing that, you know, what, what that's telling you is may take you to a hard place before a good place, but eventually it's going to take you to the right place. Thank you. Thank you. This was great. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make the show possible. You can check them out in the links that we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, be sure to click on the subscribe button in your listening app so you never miss an episode and then share the Good Life Project love with friends. When ideas become conversations that lead to action, that is when real change takes hold.

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