January 5, 2021 • 46 mins
Kimbal Musk is a chef, restauranteur, and philanthropist. His mission is to pursue an America where everyone has access to real food. Named a Global Social Entrepreneur by the World Economic Forum, Kimbal is the co-founder and Chairman of three real-food companies that are rapidly scaling across the US.
The Kitchen Restaurant Group—including Next Door, Hedge Row, and The Kitchen, serve real-food at every price point. The restaurants source food from American farmers, stimulating the local farm economy to the tune of millions of dollars a year. His non-profit organization, Big Green, builds permanent, outdoor Learning Garden classrooms in hundreds of underserved schools across America. His tech-enabled, urban farming company, Square Roots, grows hyper-local, real food year-round while empowering the next generation of farmers.
Kimbal joins us to talk about how, in their early 20s, he and his brother Elon courageously built out their network through cold calling some of the most powerful people in the country, serving on the board for Tesla and SpaceX, and how he effectively scaled his non-profit, Big Green to reach over 350,000 students.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Art of the Hustle is a production of I Heart Radio.
You're listening to the Art of the Hustle, the show
that breaks down how some of the world's most fascinating
people have hustled and learned their way into achieving great things.
(00:21):
I'm your host Jeff Rosenthal, co founder of Summit, and
today on the show, I had the pleasure of chatting
with Kimball Musk. Kimball is an entrepreneur, investor, a chef,
a restaurantur, and a wildly impactful philanthropist. His mission is
to pursue in America where everyone has access to real food.
He was named a Global Social Entrepreneur by the World
(00:41):
Economic Forum, and Kimball is the co founder and chairman
of three real food companies that are rapidly scaling across
the US. The Kitchen Restaurant group, including next Door, Hedgerow
and The Kitchens, serve real food at every price point.
The restaurants source from American farmers, stimulating the local farm
economy to the tum of millions of dollars year. And
this nonprofit organization, Big Green, builds permanent outdoor learning garden,
(01:04):
classrooms and hundreds of underserved schools across America. His tech
enabled urban farming community, Square Roots, grows hyperlocal real food
year round while empowering the next generation of farmers. Kimball
joins us to talk about how, in their early twenties
he and his brother Ellen courageously built out their network
through cold calling some of the most powerful people in
the country, serving on the board of Tesla and SpaceX,
(01:27):
and how he scaled his nonprofit Big Green to reach
over three hundred and fifty thousand students. Please enjoy my
conversation with Kimball Musk Kimball, Welcome to the podcast. Thanks
for heading a gift. Where in the world do we
find you today? I am in beautiful Boulder, Colorado. I've
been here almost twenty years and it is just a
(01:49):
wonderful place to cool home, but especially during the pandemic,
it's a wonderful place to office out of I consider
myself very, very thankful. That's awesome. I also spend a
lot of time in the mountains, but you know, I'm
in Los Angeles at the moment, and I am so
envious of you know you having a back door like
you to go out in the nature right now. It
is It is a truly a gift totally. And and
(02:14):
you have so have You've been there for twenty years.
But how long have you been in the US. I've
been in the US since. I was in Canada before
that for four years studying, and I came from South Africa. Amazing.
And where where did you study? I studied at Queen's
University in Kingston, Ontario. It's a great, great school. What
did you study? I studied business. I am I kind
(02:36):
of regretted studying business. I'll be honest, I um, I
think if I had could do it all over again,
I would have studied economics. It's a little bit more philosophical.
And business was really I mean when I say really,
I'm not guessing here they were. They told me while
I was just studying it that they were really training
us to be middle managers in corporate North America and
(02:56):
that really it wasn't what I wanted it. Oh. I mean,
I think in my whole life, I've I've worked for
someone for maybe combined twelve months and just never really thrived.
Universities are and it's such such an interesting subject nowadays
because you don't pre COVID everyone was you know, we
should have free university and now with COVID, no one's
(03:17):
even able to go to university. I really didn't get
that much out of it. I enjoyed the social experience thoroughly,
but for me, the learning was in the real world totally.
And and where are you from in South Africa? You're
from the city or your country? Boy, Like, where'd you
grow up? Yeah? I grew up actually in a pretty
intense place. It is the city called Pretoria, South Africa.
(03:40):
It's kind of like the Sacramento of South Africa. It's
the capital, but no one ever has heard about it.
All goes there. The The other thing is that it
was the center of a parduct. We I grew up.
The social way to hang out was protests. Uh. And
you know when you look at the Black Lives Matter protests,
there's a lot that I relate to. There. We would
(04:01):
go do anti apartid protests. And I came of age,
you know, my teens were late eighties, So the approachest
that I were part of we're very joyful and very
musical oriented. So um, the really violent protests happened in
the late seventies early eighties, and then by the end
(04:21):
of the eighties, it was fairly sure that this was
gonna be over, and it was. I wouldn't call it
a celebratory because there was still a lot of stress around.
In fact, it was enormous stress around it. It was
more just more positive, and there was there was a
lot of violence in protests, because protests by their very
nature attract a lot of crazy people. But it was
(04:41):
protester on protest or fights. It wasn't the police. And
in fact, it's out of if you got in, if
you got into an altercation with the police, I mean,
you're screwed. So you stayed very far away from the
police were considered quite you just you just don't go there.
You don't even go you don't go there for safety,
you don't go there for protection, you don't go there
at all. And when you were in those protests and um,
(05:04):
and I think there are some frustrating and sad similarities
unfortunately with the fear of the police in America. Yeah,
I totally hear you. And and in terms of the solutions,
you know, like things like divestment, things like you know, boycotting.
You know, when as I understand it, when Coca Cola stopped,
you know, sending product to South Africa. That was a
(05:25):
real moment in the movement on both sides. And it's
been really inspiring to see that, you know, in the
US and the last you know, eight months, this new
generation you know, expressed themselves and their point of view
and the world in which they want to see and
live in. And you know, I'm actually very much against
defunding the police. That is a very bad idea. But
(05:46):
I am against the police unions which are originally to
the teacher unions, where if you're a bad cop, you
don't get fired. You're you in fact, you're protected against
getting fired. Um. And so you get someone like that
guy that killed George George Floyd, you had seventeen council
complaints against him, just gets shunted and shunted too worse
(06:09):
and worse precincts and eventually kill someone. I mean, that
is the union issue, that is not a funding issue.
Like the equivalent of the rubber room for a teacher,
you still get to have a gun when you're a
bad cop, yes, exactly. It's brutal in teaching these tees
something similar where you simply cannot fire fire someone that
is bad at what they do and and every single
(06:31):
person who has ever worked a day in their life,
you know, when they're around people, they know that some
of the people on that team are are really good
at what they do, and some of those people are
They might be good at other things, but they're not
good at that particular thing, and you call somebody you
have to manage that. It's the same with police. If
you if you expect every policeman to be an A
(06:54):
plus policeman, you don't understand how humans work. You're gonna
have A plus players, A players, be players, TEA players,
and then I just should not be on the team.
I hear you, and it's like, I don't you know.
I never thought that this was gonna be where we
would take this conversation out the gate. But I totally
I totally appreciate your perspective here. I think, you know,
defund the police. I also don't agree with literally um,
(07:17):
but I do agree with reallocating budgets for mental health services.
You know, like there if the same group that is
supposed to deal with like the most high stress, high
risk situation is also supposed to deal with like my
teenager having like a psychotic break and in term them
in a hospital like that often is what ends up happening,
is like there's nowhere else really for people to turn
(07:38):
to for these things, and and it's a force that's
not trained necessarily to It's like, again, we're just asking
a lot. Like when you go to I Rock and
you have soldiers you know in charge of you know,
war and then peace, it often doesn't really work out
that way because these are typically different skill sets, right,
I mean, I completely agree with mental health challenges and
how different that is, but we have to be very
(08:00):
ful about you know that people talking about we'll send
a psychiatrist along with every not live and cool. It's like, no, no,
psychiatrists will not agree to that because it's dangerous totally.
So I've there's these are people that don't understand or
or not or not allowing them is to appreciate. Remember
how humans work. I don't. I think that actually everyone
knows how, you know, how our humans work. They just
(08:23):
choose to forget when they're thinking about other people's problems. Well,
one thing you have, you know, unique and singular exposure
to is the brilliant you know, generational entrepreneurs who are
at heart problem solvers. So you know like when you're
pursuing a process, whether it's with your ventures or your
(08:43):
you know, friends and families ventures. You know, I know
that you don't think anything is impossible, and I mean
check the record, like it's like it's not a debate.
You know, I've seen the unbelievable things that you guys
have built adjacently for like the last you know, fifteen years,
it's been unbelievable. But I know that you really shaved
down the pedestal, like I mean, simplify it for us
a little bit, whether it's this issue or it's like
(09:04):
how do you how do you approach innovation? I know
it's broad, but I imagine you have some thoughts. I
know I love it. I mean I think the what
I love about Big Green, our nonprofit where we work
in schools, we build learning gardens and schools. These are
these beautiful outdoor classrooms that teachers can teach science through
the growing food. It's the beds are It's a very
different way of thinking of gardens, the traditional way of gardens,
(09:25):
as you put them on the corner of the school,
or you might give them across the road, give them
a couple of acres and give them more Land, and
my attitude was, no, you need to make this really
easy to teach it. And so we brought it right
outside the classroom, right next to the playground. We raised
it up eighteen inches. We don't allow offense around it,
and it made it easier for teachers to teach it
(09:47):
and enable them to be more spontaneous in their teaching.
No offense around it meant that kids would spontaneously play
in the garden. And this kind of comes back to
my my deep respect for human nature. But that respect,
it doesn't mean that I have a high regard for it.
It means that I I really understand how humans work.
I think I think I do have a good, good understanding.
(10:08):
In other words, if a teacher is teaching a class
and wants to be outside, but the garden is across
the street, there's a lot of friction in that teacher's mind.
That says, man, that sounds hard. I'm just going to
teach inside. You know, I live in Boulder, Colorado, right
on the mountains, and I can go for a hike anytime,
and that makes my life really easy to go for
(10:29):
a hike. But if I if I live just one
mile further further east, it's much harder to go for
a hike. And so just that sort of respect for
human nature, how humans think. And so I really wanted to,
you know, to take the friction out of using the garden.
That was to think. You put myself in the mind
of a teacher and said, well, how would I spontaneously
do this? And then I also put myself in the
(10:51):
mind of the principle and said to myself, you know,
most principles think that gardens are a real pain in
the ass. You get a passionate parent or a passionate teacher,
and you know, they play their violin over and over
and over again, and they finally agree to let a
garden happen, and then that garden becomes a real issool
within a year or two because that parent graduates or
the teacher retires, and it's just you gotta put yourself
(11:14):
in the mind of that principle where they don't disagree
with having a learning garden outside. They just have done
this before. They've been around the block, and these things
full apart. And so we changed the mindset and said, Okay,
this is gonna be the most beautiful thing on the
school ground that the principle will be most proud about
how do you do that? And so that's when we
(11:34):
throw designed the product, which is the learning gardens would
be quite beautifully. Go to big Green dot org and
you'll see the what they look like. They're quite they're
quite beautiful. And then I said, okay, what does it
take to manage these gardens? And the rule of thumb
was you need one to two people per school to
run the garden, run the curriculum, engage the kids, teach
(11:55):
the nutrition, and help the teachers teach your lessons outside.
And you know, if you live in if you live
in a magical faeryland, that works just fine. But if
you actually live in the real world. There are hundred
and thirty thousand schools in America. We're going to do
to two people per school. Really, okay, imagine success would
be in every school. That means we have two hundred
(12:17):
and sixty thousand employees. That doesn't work. Most of the
once in the world don't have two sixty employees. So
we would we would actually have to have an aspiration
to be the biggest, one of the biggest companies in
the world, which we don't have. That's not an aspiration.
Our aspiration here is teaching kids about food and connecting
him to real food. So I challenged the team and
(12:37):
I said, okay, how can we get that down to
a hundred people? And we could not figure out a
way to do that. Okay, how could we get it
down to a thousand people? And we could not figure
out a way to do that. And we managed to
figure out a way to get it down to twenty people,
and we did the math. We literally did the math,
and we said, okay, if we can get a team
(12:57):
of seven people to run one hundred schools, then you
run the math. It's about people around the country. That
is something was okay, could I imagine building a person company.
That's pretty hard to do, but that is within the
realm of possibility. And so how do we get seven
people to run one hundred schools? We said, okay, if
(13:19):
we if we just focus on metro areas where they're
two hundred or more schools, and we focus on doing
one hundred schools in that metro area within driving distance,
we can have one leader. We can have three garden
trainers that work with the district and the schools. We
have three maintenance and project manager that can build the
gardens and maintain them in partnership with the schools district.
(13:41):
But the reason why we don't need even more people
is because that when we work at a hundred schools scale,
all of a sudden, the district will participate, they'll partner
with us. Because if you if you work at one
or two schools, the districts is like, well, it's not
with our time. But if you work at their scale,
they don't want to be left out. So you start
realize that once you get to a certain scale in
(14:02):
a city, you need less people. And that's how we
sort of figure out a way to to scale the
idea of school gardens, which were already successful. If you
looked at them in one off, one off level, you
can double the intake of fruits and vegetables of kids.
You can improve their test schools by fifteen points on
a hundred point scale. It's incredible if you look at
one school, but if you try to it across a
(14:24):
hundred schools or sorry, across the country, it doesn't really work.
What we found is you can actually make it work,
but you but you need to do a hundred schools
at its hime. Wow, I love that, and there's so
many things that this I think empowers kids with HARKing
back to empowering ourselves at scale, these protests that we're seeing.
You know, Killer Mike, I saw talk he was giving
(14:45):
in Atlanta during the last you know set of this
this time last year, when you know, an unarmed black
person got killed by officer. You know, he was like,
how many of you have your own gardens? How many
of you can honestly sustain yourself with your own food?
You know, like if you if you have that, you
have utility, You have you know, self autonomy, you have
(15:06):
the ability to sort of power your own community and
life in a way that you really can't when you're
completely dependent upon you know, someone else to provide your
calories quite literally. And then when it comes to like
you know, you are what you eat. I mean, like
it's just so huge, Like we feel the difference, especially
as we get older, you know, about what we put
into our body and how it ends up impacting you know,
(15:27):
our our mental physical performance, and it is a savage inequality,
just like lack of education, lack of you know, nutritious food,
because I mean our brains literally can't work as well
if we're hungry in a classroom if we're eating you know,
shipped from a convenience store. We have this malnutrition where
we actually have a lot of calories but no nutrition
(15:48):
in it. So you've become obedience and starving at the
same time. It's actually a thing. It is awful. And uh,
the idea as you as you just said, the idea
of empowering people to grow at home during the pandemic,
Big Green has implemented a program called Big Green at Home.
As you know, many of the schools are closed, many
of ours are closed, and those gardens are now converted
(16:11):
to giving gardens, so they're growing food for the community,
but they're also serve as a as an education hub,
so families can learn to grow at home and they can,
as you just said, empower themselves to learn how to
feed themselves. You know, this is not going to solve
all of their nutritional needs, but the food literacy improvement
that they're gonna get and they're going to give their
(16:31):
kids is amazing. And Big Green at Home has been
taken home by tens of thousands of families over the
past few months. Extraordinarily successful program and it came out
of so when the pandemic started. We run a national holiday,
Plant a Seed Day, and it's the first day of springs.
And this year was March nineteen, and you couldn't imagine
(16:52):
a more difficult day to have a have a national day,
because March sixteenth was when all the shutdowns started happening.
And it actually was pretty wonderful. We got about two
d and fifty thousand people around the world to pledge
to plant a seed at home and it's the first
day of spring. And what we actually found was what
(17:13):
we expected it to be quite challenging. It turned into
a surprising positive because all of a sudden we had
everyone at home and they were They started to reach
out for more materials because Planet ce Day was a
one off event and it was everyone to get behind it.
It was pretty it's obviously it's a great it's a
great holiday, but um, they actually started asking us for
(17:37):
more content because planting and seed wasn't enough and they
wanted more information on planting carrots or planting radishes, or
what do I do and when I can harvest the
carrots and biggering at home came out of Plant a
Seed Day, and we're going to continue it all the
way through to the Planet Seed Day in March. And
our goal is to get millions of people growing at
(17:59):
home over the next year, and we are already at
and this is a very engaged community and it's wonderful
to see how excited people have been to to engage
in gardening at home. Um it has been a side
effect of the pandemic, which I think is a positive
side effect. And I believe that it will it will
(18:21):
stay with us after the pandemic is over, because the
food literacy and prently just the joy of growing at home,
the food tastes better, connection you get with your kids.
No one's don't want that to go away. That that's
just that's a great lesson we're coming out of. We're
getting out of this pandemic. We'll be back with more
out of the hustle after the break. Well. It's also
(18:49):
interesting for me teaching a toddler at home, and you know,
like I could care less if he can write letters.
I don't care if he can do basic math, but
I do care that he end stands the concept of
planting a seed and you know, it's flowering and blossoming
and something growing, whether it be something he enjoys, like
a flower or something that he can actually eat and consume.
(19:12):
But you know, not to go philosophical with plant a seed.
But it's like, I feel like this is a rich dad,
poor dad lesson that so many people miss and we
don't plant enough seeds, Like we spend our money on
frivolous bullshit or on things that like, you know, improve
our lives in the short term. But when really push
comes to shove and you examine people and what they
do with their disposable income. In America, I wouldn't say
(19:35):
that that's like the prevalent culture, but you know, I
think that having mentors, Frank, I mean, I'm happy we're
friends now, but we weren't when we met. Like you
certainly were my mentor, and you really were kind and invested,
you know, some time in me and my organization and friends,
and you know, like people that I'm older than you.
I mean, you said you're older. You're in the eighties, bro,
(19:56):
What am I supposed to do? You look younger? Only
started I was, I was only three. Yeah, you were,
Like I told, I told my family, pack your stuff,
we're going to Canada. Um oh man. But I just
love that this is something like you could dedicate your
time and your energy to literally anything, and I think
(20:17):
it's just such a powerful and profound thing that you're
thinking about and working on. Thank you. You know. I
love also the stuff you do. And I've been thinking
a lot about the Utah Summit community you've built, and
to me, I think that this is an interesting time where,
you know, I'm thinking about Boulder and Denver, where you know,
there's such a desire now to move to the middle
(20:38):
of the country and and I don't know if it
will last post COVID, but it will have an effect
post COVID. And you know this, the real strong desire
for community is quite it's quite powerful too to see it.
It's wonderful to feel it. You know, in Boulder, we're
entertaining a visitor at least once or twice so that
(21:00):
will come into town to look look at buying homes
or trying to figure out a way to move to.
And we're looking for a sense of community when they're
stuck in uh in l A or New York or
or or San Francisco where it has been really tough.
And I don't want to necessarily uh benefit of that,
but I do love the idea of I mean, Frankie
(21:21):
Boulder and Never is a wonderful place to live. It's
kind of given, given a second class citizen status in America,
and I've loved for twenty years. I love that people
are stilling to open their eyes to the communities that
are being built inside the US versus just on the coast. Totally.
I think we were fully coastal living with Summit in
the first like three or four years the organization. It
(21:43):
would be like s f l A, New York, London,
Tel Aviv, Madrid, whatever major city Berlin we could go
to where there was a heavy concentration of entrepreneurs, similar
mathematics to how you were thinking about like how to
scale learning gardens with a small amount of people, while
you'll go to a heavier concentry ration of of those
you know, school districts, communities, etcetera. UM At first to
(22:05):
establish the org, I think that what was really crazy
was like in two thousand and ten we actually moved
to Nicaragua, and because it was that era, we had
Gmail and drop Box and Google, Dox and all these
things that didn't exist for entrepreneurs, say four years before
the point is is that like, by getting away from
sort of the hustle bustle and distraction to the city,
(22:26):
there was this phenomenon of us doing such better work,
learning about such much more interesting stuff, discovering more interesting
in global music that would end up becoming the trends
that would dominate those cities, the things that you know,
historically you have to be in the city to get
like first access at first looks. Too. I think that
there's been a quiet movement empowered by sort of the
(22:47):
digital world that we also live in, where like you know,
people like yourself who have got that space initially have
actually been benefiting from it from a long time. So
I just think world's kind of catching up now. Yeah,
I mean, I definitely think Boulder and Boulder, Denver and
Austin o the two that are that people are definitely
focusing on them. Curious, what are the areas do you
think in the world what doesn't have to be the
(23:07):
US where where people gravitating? Well, I mean certainly if
you look at like the Zillo page views, uh really
you really have a data driven analysis. I mean, I've
been curious about the same thing too, So like if
you look at the Zillo page views, and you look
at the movement of people, Colorado is on fire. You
might know that already. Colorado Springs actually is the other
(23:28):
city that has a ton of people moving to it.
Ohio is on fire, like yeah, Ohio, Columbus, And like
all these cities and Ohio people are moving. I think
a lot of it too is just America is America
is becoming an international country. We're all moving back in
with our parents. We're gonna have a multigenerational households. Again,
to your point, it's like access to nature, you know,
(23:49):
like better quality of living for the affordability and like, dude,
you can't, like it's multimillion dollars to have a house
and like the West side of l A that's a
tear down. It's ridiculous. And whereas if you look at
Utah where I was just there actually to to just
see how it was doing, it's a beautiful community. You know,
everyone is very socially distance, very thoughtful. It's like it
feels like a little mini Sweden. You know, everyone is
(24:11):
very very thoughtful socially distance. But life goes on well.
And there's also the benefit of not being like you
get it. Maybe it's a false sense of security. But
you get a sense of security in a town with
no street lights and no stoplights, and like everybody knows
the count of cases in like the like ten square
mile radius through like the community phone tagline. We have
(24:33):
to get in Boulder where we we had a COVID
outbreak at se u C University of Boulder, the town
is small enough where we know, we actually know the
houses that the outbreaks came out of. You know, it's
literally to that level. And there was a county order
giving the police authority to oversee these sixteen addresses and
(24:54):
and if you haven't to live in one of those addresses,
and there the extra scrutiny, and it was amazing within
within a few days, as even the COVID cases dropped
like a rock. And uh and I think that's because
we're in a small town of was it's protably a big,
big town, but it's small enough where we we can
we can get that focused on on on managing the
(25:15):
pandemic totally. And I mean, you've been in this, you've
had a vision for this for a long time. Your
your first I don't know if it was your first business,
but I know one of your first businesses that you
and Ellen had started zip to it was online city
guides right back in like ninety nine. Yeah, we started
in ninety five. It was so right now what you
see on Google Maps or Yahoo Maps. We ended up
(25:37):
getting acquired by Yahoo and became Yahoo Maps. That had
never been seen by a human on the Internet before.
My brother and I what did you put it up?
And built it and and we this company called Navtech
which had been building it, put three million dollars into
building the data and the mapping four hurts Herst the
rental car company, and you know, they were building that
(25:58):
never lost system that never had not been launched yet,
and it had been They've been working on it for
years and no one had ever seen it except for
you know, inside the company Navtech. It was amazing technology.
And my brother is an incredible engineer and he I
think he's one of the world's best engineers. At the
time though we we were just hackers. Uh. He built
(26:20):
the first vector based mapping, which which is a way
of saying you're simply transmitting data back and forth. You're
not moving graphics back and forth, so you're just you're
sending data and the data updates on your on your
rap on your web browser, and then it changes the
map on your browser, which is how all mapping has
done today, And prior to that, it was all you know,
(26:41):
uploading images. Here was an image of a map, and
my brother figured out a way using Java at the time,
which I might still be around, but it was the
first interactive tool on the Internet was used. Figured out
a way to take the data from navtech and uh
you you you load the page and you just load
the initial Java apple it and then you can move
(27:02):
them up around with your cursor and you can move
zoom in and you can zoom out, and it's and
we have no no latency and no download issues. And
we were we were My brother and I were literally
the first humans to see this on the Internet. And
we eventually showed it to venture capitalists and they got
excited and funded us. But it was cool. It was
cool to have that stamp on the Internet. I love that.
(27:24):
And around that time you told me a story once
that and it was like so in passing, but it
always stuck out to me that when you guys moved
to Silicon Valley, you literally got a telephone book and
started cold calling people that sounded like technologists. Oh yeah,
that was actually in university. We would read the newspaper
together and we would find interesting people in the newspaper
(27:45):
and then we would dare each other to call that person,
and we take turns. And it's actually surprisingly easy to
reach someone. You'd be amazed. It just takes a lot
of courage. So that's sort of that daring each other process.
You know. We we we met a lot of very
interesting people. We met a lot of people that frankly,
were not that interesting. But you know, because we were
South Africans, we were immigrants, we didn't know anyone, and
(28:07):
we found it just such a powerful way to get
to meet people. But but what's very interesting is it
didn't work when we after we had graduated. It worked
very well while we were students, and people were so
welcoming and open to meeting underdogs. They couldn't believe they
were getting a phone call from you exactly. We were
kids from another country that were in university and the
(28:30):
fact that we were students made them very open to
meeting with us. And we would call some of the
most powerful people in the in the country and and uh,
whether it's us or Canada. We just have to be
able to get to them because the the ask was
taking them to lunch. So if we could get them
to let us take them to lunch, we'd learned from them,
We get to know them, and they would who knows
(28:51):
what could be from it. Some of the most interesting
people we knew when we were younger were those folks
that they were. They were actually not necessarily technologists, but
they were. They were very players. A lot of politicians
are very very cool. Once we graduated, we continued to
do it, and it was an immediate shutdown. They were like, Nope,
now you're in the real world. Why are you calling
(29:12):
me interesting? And it was quite a quite of different.
So I would really encourage anyone listening who's a student
to take advantage of that, of that time to reach
out to people, and the people you are most excited
to meet. Believe me, you know everyone's gonna eat, so
they will. They will go to lunch with you if
you can get to them. And on a radio basis,
(29:34):
people find their way to me because I've shared this
story with other people, and they'll get to me and
I'll go to lunch with them. But but it's not
easy to get to me. But I mean, I say,
it actually is easy to get to me, but it's
not easy to get to me in a way that
I will actually have lunch that takes a little bit
of work. But do that if you're a student, use
your time as a student to understand that this is
(29:55):
the time when people will give you a break. Part
of the hustle will be right back after this short break.
The entrepreneurial leadership, like the celebrated business stories and say
eighties and nineties was very much that sort of swashbuckling
(30:16):
HBS leader. And then you had, you know, the temple
to the engineer with good reason, like you like for
your for instance, your bro or these you know other
brilliant you know technologists that built these amazing companies. Ultimately, though,
it's creatives, right, Like the best engineers and developers are
just the most creative people or their creative problem solvers. Right.
(30:37):
My brother is an amazing engineer, and I honestly think
that he's the best engineer in the world. He's the
Michael Jordan of of our century and and them and you.
Obviously he has a record to prove it. Um and
I and I get I get a front row seat
to watch him solve problems that and I really mean
it an engineering and physics level, the world's greatest engineers
and physics pH ds. We'll say that is impossible, and
(31:00):
he will solve it. That's different. That's a different kind
of gift. Um you think that obviously he's creative, and
when many, many people are creative and the world that
we technology has enabled creative problem solved to leverage their
abilities worldwide. You know, if I want to do something,
and like you talked about Nicaragua, if someone wanted to
do something in Nicaragua, pretty soon Starlink from SpaceX will
(31:23):
give that person in Nicaragua more broadband than I get
in Boulder today, which we sit right on on the
fiber in America. And it's embarrassing how bad our internet
connection is. Sure that's gonna we'll get changed when when
SpaceX has startling across the world. This is why I'm
so interested on your perspective on like it's just and
this is so helpful because you're you know, like you're
(31:45):
talking about the macro and like, you know, the the
fully scaled version of somebody taking a dream and turning
it into reality and changing the world with it, like
not hyperbolically, but but literally. And then you're also talking
about like just the screw rappy as stuff like as
an entrepreneur, like you know one like the the you know,
rolling the idea of big Green in these learning gardens,
(32:09):
and you know, innovating and iterating on it as you were,
you know, moving forward but being super thoughtful. It wasn't
ready fire aim, right, It's clear that you guys really
thought about this before you started taking your shots. When
we were younger, it was ready fire aim. Yeah, as
we've gotten older, it is I would probably say it's
more like ready fire aim constantly, so that whatever you
(32:33):
fire at it's really a small target. So you really
you want to fail as fast as you can. But
that process is a failing is really a learning process.
So before you you you just use a rocket as
an analogy, you really want to fail and learn all
of the issues before you actually launched the rocket. Um,
(32:55):
you know, you do a static fire, you hold it down.
You have the engines each tested separately, because you want
each of those things to do. You want to find
out which one is going to go wrong before you
launch the rocket, because that's going to carry a very
valuable payload into space, and you want to make sure
this pointing in the right direction, and that's when you
really put fuel on it and you put the rocket
(33:15):
boosters on you make it go. But but you actually
want to learn all of the issues as much as
possible before you press go. So it's it's a little
different to a ready higher am. Yeah, I would say
it's more like constantly letting problems surface so that you
can knock them down before really committing at a at
(33:38):
a bigger level, Whereas I do think it when I
when very younger, when you've got nothing to lose, you know,
when you're By the way, anyone in their twenties should
be to be taking all the risk they possibly can.
If that's once away from this thing is you just
don't realize how long life is. Life is so long,
that is your twenties, and take all the risk you
possibly can because you will benefit from that for the
(33:59):
rest of your life. May not be a potential positive outcome,
because you know when you take risk, you got to
risk the fact that you're gonna lose, lose financially, but
you don't lose in terms of the relationships. You you
take on the what you get, how you get educated
in the problems you're trying to solve. The it's it's life,
life's life's lessons compound on each other. And the more
(34:21):
you can do in your twenties, the faster you get
that snowball running or rolling, the bigger and more interesting
in your life is as you get older. Yeah, it's
it's funny because it's like both taking those risks and
planting seeds along the way, right, Like which are analogy
because planning a seed, of course, is for gardens, but
it's really for hope. It's a sign of of your
(34:42):
your future. You're you're you're planning a seed when you're twenty,
when you're when you're when you're going into university, you're
planning a seed. When you graduate, your planning a seed?
Or which what are you taking on first? When you're
twenty five? You might take on your next challenge? What
is that? And and it should be about hope? It
should be about you know, are you Are you challenging
yourself enough? Are you surrounding yourself with the most interesting people?
(35:05):
You can be as humble as you possibly can, but
be as ambitious as you possibly can. Because humility gets
you around really interesting people. But ambitious what keeps you
around really interesting people. They don't want you if you're
you're not ambitious totally, And I love that. I love
the Brian you know, saying gardening not architecture. You know,
like it's to your point. You can you can have
(35:27):
is detailed of plans and strategy and fail faster and
experiment all you can, but you know you can't, like
I love with some and I always would say it
was guardening on architecture because like I've never heard that before.
That's a that's a beautiful analogy. I couldn't know where
it was going. We just trim the leaves, let the
plant grow, and you and you and you're harvesting all
year long, and there's obviously there's you're gonna have some
(35:48):
things that are out of your control, like bad weather.
Sometimes things work out in your favor and you you
you your gratitude, you're grateful. But but I love that analogy.
Life is like gardening, and start early, don't don't don't
wait until mayo June, start planting in March, start planning
whenever the season is right, and uh and and get
as many seasons in there as possible transitioning a little
(36:10):
bit on the food side. I know that you know
a lot about just you know, the future of meat,
and I think about, you know, we have a hunting culture,
not an agrarian culture like we were were mining the
resources of the world, not so much you know, like
creating these evergreen gardens to not to t to beat
a metaphor to death. But but you know you you
(36:30):
happen to be very close and Christianity, your incredible wife,
um to to the future of meat. Where are we,
like what's the time horizon? And do you think that
we're going to be growing like real meat and labs
or do you think that we're just gonna have incredible
substitutes that people are going to incorporate into their diets.
Where do you think this is at? Uh? You know,
I think it's a very interesting year. So, um. The
(36:52):
the part of the most exciting company in alternative meats
is lab grown meat is some com people of Memphis
Meats and actually growing chicken or beef or duck and
they're trying to figure out which one should be the
product entry point. Um. And I've had the good fortune
of being able to click. The actual chicken out in
this case was chicken breast, and it's amazing. You're just
(37:15):
looks like you can taste like chicken is actually chicken,
and that is that's extraordinary. No, no, no animals harmed
in the process. It's it's just mind blowing. And then
also even just yesterday, I went to try an alternative
meat product that that is a vegan version of pulled pork,
and it's it's um, vegetable based and without any of
(37:38):
the processing that you might see in some of the
other alternatives. And I'm a big fan of less processing
is good, you know, just a real food. I believe
in trusting your food, and the more ingredients or more
processing involved, the more cautious I am. I'm not saying
that all processed food is bad, but I but I
generally have found less processed food to be better. I
(38:00):
call it real food, nourishing the body, nourishing to the farmer,
nourishing to the planet. You kind of know what you get,
you know, what you see is what you get. I
had this product yesterday which was not processed at all,
and it's it's it's basis jackfruit, and I was very impressed.
It was the slowest pork with a Korean barbecue seasoning,
(38:20):
and I was like, wow, I was, I was very impressed.
So I think we're in a we're very interesting time.
I think that the future of meats will include regular
beef and chicken and so forth. But what I like
about these alternative meat products is that puts pressure on
the traditional industry to step up on ethics, step up
on how they feed what they feed their animals from,
(38:43):
antibiotics too, hormones. Generally, we're headed in a good direction.
That's fantastic. And do you think do you think we'll
all be driving electric cars ten years from now? No? No,
because they will all be autonomous. Good point. You really
think in ten years and thirty days all these cars
are gonna be autonomous? Yes, I think it's even sooner
(39:06):
than that. Amazing. I mean, I for one can't wait.
We play with designs that don't even have a steering wheel,
and we're not ready for that yet. But but it's
fun to imagine what is a car when there's no
steering reel? Should you all face forward? Well, maybe you
should all face each other, m hmm. I mean it's
quite interesting. It's a different world. When you don't have
(39:27):
to think about driving the car. So so I think
that autonomy is is going to be within ten years
for sure, pretty sooner than that. And um, what I
love about has been and I'm so proud of my
brother and what he's not a Tesla now profitable. We
have an extraordinary path in front of us with the
products that product lineup that that he's he's creating, and
(39:50):
it's also motivating the rest of the industry to go
electric and that is going to change the impact on
our environment in ways that we desperately need. And so
we need to go faster. And one of the major
red limitters is it like battery? Is it is like
is it you know, like manufacturing? Is it rare earth minerals?
Is it policy? I mean, my brother announced the battery
(40:13):
innovations that they're working on, but up until that that point,
it really was the batteries. So if you uh, well,
in Tesla's case, it really was the battery. I don't
think it was necessarily the case with others because they
there are low volumes. But our battery plant in Nevada
makes more batteries than all of the other battery plants
in the world. Combined. Wow, And it is not enough
(40:37):
to provide the batteries for our Tesla just for the
regular demand of our Tesla cars. So we have to
solve the battery problem. And so that's what we have
been working on. And we are we're run away. Well,
I mean, you're you're you're very humble, and you are
a board member of the organization, have been deeply involved
in certain and I and I don't you know, argue
(40:58):
the credit is due where you put it, but um,
you know, I do think it's interesting just when I
think about these companies that you know, are in the
family of Musk businesses, and I just and honestly hosting
the show. Um and and this is maybe say the
thirtieth episode where I've considered my friends and what they've
built and how they've built them a little differently. And
the brand vision of these companies is incredible, like and
(41:21):
you're like the kitchen is fantastic, and theigoring, I mean
the way that you describe it, You're you're always trying
to civilize and and bring whatever the innovation is to
the form that is easiest and most fun and most
sort of I guess enjoyable for the in Consumer Glad
you mentioned the kitchen. So we have a restaurant concept
called next Door Eatery. And you know, COVID was I've
(41:45):
always had this this pet pee. So I love I
love our restaurants, I love our teams. But even in
our restaurants where we were considered really well respected restaurants,
the service isn't perfect. You know, sometimes you want to
order around of drinks and you can't get attention of
the server, or you might want to how your check
and you can't get your attention to the server, or
you just want to quit me and your kind of
(42:05):
and you just want to kind of get get through
your milk quickly, which is often the case with me.
And we have the supercomputer in our pocket that should
be able to help you order your food really whatever
you want. And the challenge with the restaurant industry is
it's stuck in this legacy world of point of sale
systems that are that are literally thirties or four years old.
(42:27):
And what I did during COVID with our team, which
has worked out so well, is we've built the ability
to manage your order on your iPhone. So you show
up at the restaurant and you order your food that
we still have a server, and the server let you
know about the man. You do whatever you want, but
but all you're ordering is done on your phone, so
that you manage your order, you pay for your order,
(42:49):
you order another round of drinks, all done on your phone,
and it is the most convenient, most incredible thing. Next
Door Eater is a very fun restaurant, so we really
love it's very much a social drinking restaurant. We have
we have a sort of to drink minimum attitudes. You know,
if you come to our restaurant, we want you to
(43:10):
have fun, you know, and if you didn't have two drinks,
you you probably didn't have enough fun. So for us,
it's especially during the pandemic, it has been about hey,
come here for your fun time. That has been wonderful
and all done through your through our phone. So we
developed a technology. I think my brother kind of lead
the way on this, but I but I but I've
been working in that same philosophy, which is, we're not
(43:31):
here to do this for competitive reasons. We're doing We're
here to do this because it's the right thing to do.
And so the codebase for for the technology is now
available to any restaurant company that wants to use it.
We have a few restaurant cup groups that are using
it awesome. And the idea is that it's really about
a better guest experience. It's about a better server experience
(43:52):
and a pandemic when you know, too much interaction with
the guests can can spread COVID. So it's it's better
for the guests even in a non COVID world, but
it's also a healthier way to run your restaurant during
the pandemic. And and we we share a code base
with any restaurant group that wants to use it, and
people are taking us up on it. So it's awesome.
And next Door Eatery is about fun in a time
(44:14):
when we all kind of need a drink right now,
We all kind of want to maybe we gather in
large groups, but we can go out with a friend
and and connect, you know, do our part to be
responsible during the pandemic, but not hide ourselves in the basement.
Repped in cotton wool. M h. Well, I mean, one,
thank you so much for taking the time to be
(44:35):
in on the podcast. You're fantastic and such an incredible
guy and and and this has been awesome. Um, I
want to I want to go out with just you know,
like just understanding you just a little bit more. Um,
you know, like you you just have done so much
and you know, so I want to know what what
do you still do too much of? Or what do
you still want to like let go of? Like what's
still is you know, something that you want to want
(44:56):
to remove from your life and and that you're still
you know, figuring out. And then what are you still seeking?
Like what are the things that you you seek and
that you want to bring more into your life at
this stage. That's a good question. You know. The pandemic
is such an interesting time to reflect on yourself. I'm
sure everyone is doing that is what you're doing. The
right thing, is what you know. It's an opportunity to
(45:18):
change if you want to, you know, I think that
for me, the I'm really learning the wonderful value of
being around just very talented and interesting people. So I've
heard this from older mentors of mine, where as they
get older, they really start to appreciate people on their
(45:40):
team there you know, well I'm referring to in the
work world here, you know, that sort of passion for
people not just of course attracting great talent, but mentoring them,
training them, making them better. It's sort of the next
phase for me. As a thank you for saying I
was a interviewers, I feel like I've always helped out
younger folks as all the people helped me out. But
(46:01):
it's a different thing when I when I feel like, actually,
this is truly what's getting me up in the morning
and making me excited to go to work and sort
of bring my a game. Well, Kemball, you're the best.
Thank you again. I can't wait to see where all
these things lead. And you know, anything I can do
for you, no job too big, no job too small, forever.
Thank you. Jeff sam Stam with my side here for
(46:22):
you anytime. Thanks for listening out to the Hustle, and
I'll see you next time. For more podcasts for my
(46:46):
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Art of the Hustle is a production of I Heart Radio.
You're listening to the Art of the Hustle, the show
that breaks down how some of the world's most fascinating
people have hustled and learned their way into achieving great things.
(00:21):
I'm your host Jeff Rosenthal, co founder of Summit, and
today on the show, I had the pleasure of chatting
with Kimball Musk. Kimball is an entrepreneur, investor, a chef,
a restaurantur, and a wildly impactful philanthropist. His mission is
to pursue in America where everyone has access to real food.
He was named a Global Social Entrepreneur by the World
(00:41):
Economic Forum, and Kimball is the co founder and chairman
of three real food companies that are rapidly scaling across
the US. The Kitchen Restaurant group, including next Door, Hedgerow
and The Kitchens, serve real food at every price point.
The restaurants source from American farmers, stimulating the local farm
economy to the tum of millions of dollars year. And
this nonprofit organization, Big Green, builds permanent outdoor learning garden,
(01:04):
classrooms and hundreds of underserved schools across America. His tech
enabled urban farming community, Square Roots, grows hyperlocal real food
year round while empowering the next generation of farmers. Kimball
joins us to talk about how, in their early twenties
he and his brother Ellen courageously built out their network
through cold calling some of the most powerful people in
the country, serving on the board of Tesla and SpaceX,
(01:27):
and how he scaled his nonprofit Big Green to reach
over three hundred and fifty thousand students. Please enjoy my
conversation with Kimball Musk Kimball, Welcome to the podcast. Thanks
for heading a gift. Where in the world do we
find you today? I am in beautiful Boulder, Colorado. I've
been here almost twenty years and it is just a
(01:49):
wonderful place to cool home, but especially during the pandemic,
it's a wonderful place to office out of I consider
myself very, very thankful. That's awesome. I also spend a
lot of time in the mountains, but you know, I'm
in Los Angeles at the moment, and I am so
envious of you know you having a back door like
you to go out in the nature right now. It
is It is a truly a gift totally. And and
(02:14):
you have so have You've been there for twenty years.
But how long have you been in the US. I've
been in the US since. I was in Canada before
that for four years studying, and I came from South Africa. Amazing.
And where where did you study? I studied at Queen's
University in Kingston, Ontario. It's a great, great school. What
did you study? I studied business. I am I kind
(02:36):
of regretted studying business. I'll be honest, I um, I
think if I had could do it all over again,
I would have studied economics. It's a little bit more philosophical.
And business was really I mean when I say really,
I'm not guessing here they were. They told me while
I was just studying it that they were really training
us to be middle managers in corporate North America and
(02:56):
that really it wasn't what I wanted it. Oh. I mean,
I think in my whole life, I've I've worked for
someone for maybe combined twelve months and just never really thrived.
Universities are and it's such such an interesting subject nowadays
because you don't pre COVID everyone was you know, we
should have free university and now with COVID, no one's
(03:17):
even able to go to university. I really didn't get
that much out of it. I enjoyed the social experience thoroughly,
but for me, the learning was in the real world totally.
And and where are you from in South Africa? You're
from the city or your country? Boy, Like, where'd you
grow up? Yeah? I grew up actually in a pretty
intense place. It is the city called Pretoria, South Africa.
(03:40):
It's kind of like the Sacramento of South Africa. It's
the capital, but no one ever has heard about it.
All goes there. The The other thing is that it
was the center of a parduct. We I grew up.
The social way to hang out was protests. Uh. And
you know when you look at the Black Lives Matter protests,
there's a lot that I relate to. There. We would
(04:01):
go do anti apartid protests. And I came of age,
you know, my teens were late eighties, So the approachest
that I were part of we're very joyful and very
musical oriented. So um, the really violent protests happened in
the late seventies early eighties, and then by the end
(04:21):
of the eighties, it was fairly sure that this was
gonna be over, and it was. I wouldn't call it
a celebratory because there was still a lot of stress around.
In fact, it was enormous stress around it. It was
more just more positive, and there was there was a
lot of violence in protests, because protests by their very
nature attract a lot of crazy people. But it was
(04:41):
protester on protest or fights. It wasn't the police. And
in fact, it's out of if you got in, if
you got into an altercation with the police, I mean,
you're screwed. So you stayed very far away from the
police were considered quite you just you just don't go there.
You don't even go you don't go there for safety,
you don't go there for protection, you don't go there
at all. And when you were in those protests and um,
(05:04):
and I think there are some frustrating and sad similarities
unfortunately with the fear of the police in America. Yeah,
I totally hear you. And and in terms of the solutions,
you know, like things like divestment, things like you know, boycotting.
You know, when as I understand it, when Coca Cola stopped,
you know, sending product to South Africa. That was a
(05:25):
real moment in the movement on both sides. And it's
been really inspiring to see that, you know, in the
US and the last you know, eight months, this new
generation you know, expressed themselves and their point of view
and the world in which they want to see and
live in. And you know, I'm actually very much against
defunding the police. That is a very bad idea. But
(05:46):
I am against the police unions which are originally to
the teacher unions, where if you're a bad cop, you
don't get fired. You're you in fact, you're protected against
getting fired. Um. And so you get someone like that
guy that killed George George Floyd, you had seventeen council
complaints against him, just gets shunted and shunted too worse
(06:09):
and worse precincts and eventually kill someone. I mean, that
is the union issue, that is not a funding issue.
Like the equivalent of the rubber room for a teacher,
you still get to have a gun when you're a
bad cop, yes, exactly. It's brutal in teaching these tees
something similar where you simply cannot fire fire someone that
is bad at what they do and and every single
(06:31):
person who has ever worked a day in their life,
you know, when they're around people, they know that some
of the people on that team are are really good
at what they do, and some of those people are
They might be good at other things, but they're not
good at that particular thing, and you call somebody you
have to manage that. It's the same with police. If
you if you expect every policeman to be an A
(06:54):
plus policeman, you don't understand how humans work. You're gonna
have A plus players, A players, be players, TEA players,
and then I just should not be on the team.
I hear you, and it's like, I don't you know.
I never thought that this was gonna be where we
would take this conversation out the gate. But I totally
I totally appreciate your perspective here. I think, you know,
defund the police. I also don't agree with literally um,
(07:17):
but I do agree with reallocating budgets for mental health services.
You know, like there if the same group that is
supposed to deal with like the most high stress, high
risk situation is also supposed to deal with like my
teenager having like a psychotic break and in term them
in a hospital like that often is what ends up happening,
is like there's nowhere else really for people to turn
(07:38):
to for these things, and and it's a force that's
not trained necessarily to It's like, again, we're just asking
a lot. Like when you go to I Rock and
you have soldiers you know in charge of you know,
war and then peace, it often doesn't really work out
that way because these are typically different skill sets, right,
I mean, I completely agree with mental health challenges and
how different that is, but we have to be very
(08:00):
ful about you know that people talking about we'll send
a psychiatrist along with every not live and cool. It's like, no, no,
psychiatrists will not agree to that because it's dangerous totally.
So I've there's these are people that don't understand or
or not or not allowing them is to appreciate. Remember
how humans work. I don't. I think that actually everyone
knows how, you know, how our humans work. They just
(08:23):
choose to forget when they're thinking about other people's problems. Well,
one thing you have, you know, unique and singular exposure
to is the brilliant you know, generational entrepreneurs who are
at heart problem solvers. So you know like when you're
pursuing a process, whether it's with your ventures or your
(08:43):
you know, friends and families ventures. You know, I know
that you don't think anything is impossible, and I mean
check the record, like it's like it's not a debate.
You know, I've seen the unbelievable things that you guys
have built adjacently for like the last you know, fifteen years,
it's been unbelievable. But I know that you really shaved
down the pedestal, like I mean, simplify it for us
a little bit, whether it's this issue or it's like
(09:04):
how do you how do you approach innovation? I know
it's broad, but I imagine you have some thoughts. I
know I love it. I mean I think the what
I love about Big Green, our nonprofit where we work
in schools, we build learning gardens and schools. These are
these beautiful outdoor classrooms that teachers can teach science through
the growing food. It's the beds are It's a very
different way of thinking of gardens, the traditional way of gardens,
(09:25):
as you put them on the corner of the school,
or you might give them across the road, give them
a couple of acres and give them more Land, and
my attitude was, no, you need to make this really
easy to teach it. And so we brought it right
outside the classroom, right next to the playground. We raised
it up eighteen inches. We don't allow offense around it,
and it made it easier for teachers to teach it
(09:47):
and enable them to be more spontaneous in their teaching.
No offense around it meant that kids would spontaneously play
in the garden. And this kind of comes back to
my my deep respect for human nature. But that respect,
it doesn't mean that I have a high regard for it.
It means that I I really understand how humans work.
I think I think I do have a good, good understanding.
(10:08):
In other words, if a teacher is teaching a class
and wants to be outside, but the garden is across
the street, there's a lot of friction in that teacher's mind.
That says, man, that sounds hard. I'm just going to
teach inside. You know, I live in Boulder, Colorado, right
on the mountains, and I can go for a hike anytime,
and that makes my life really easy to go for
(10:29):
a hike. But if I if I live just one
mile further further east, it's much harder to go for
a hike. And so just that sort of respect for
human nature, how humans think. And so I really wanted to,
you know, to take the friction out of using the garden.
That was to think. You put myself in the mind
of a teacher and said, well, how would I spontaneously
do this? And then I also put myself in the
(10:51):
mind of the principle and said to myself, you know,
most principles think that gardens are a real pain in
the ass. You get a passionate parent or a passionate teacher,
and you know, they play their violin over and over
and over again, and they finally agree to let a
garden happen, and then that garden becomes a real issool
within a year or two because that parent graduates or
the teacher retires, and it's just you gotta put yourself
(11:14):
in the mind of that principle where they don't disagree
with having a learning garden outside. They just have done
this before. They've been around the block, and these things
full apart. And so we changed the mindset and said, Okay,
this is gonna be the most beautiful thing on the
school ground that the principle will be most proud about
how do you do that? And so that's when we
(11:34):
throw designed the product, which is the learning gardens would
be quite beautifully. Go to big Green dot org and
you'll see the what they look like. They're quite they're
quite beautiful. And then I said, okay, what does it
take to manage these gardens? And the rule of thumb
was you need one to two people per school to
run the garden, run the curriculum, engage the kids, teach
(11:55):
the nutrition, and help the teachers teach your lessons outside.
And you know, if you live in if you live
in a magical faeryland, that works just fine. But if
you actually live in the real world. There are hundred
and thirty thousand schools in America. We're going to do
to two people per school. Really, okay, imagine success would
be in every school. That means we have two hundred
(12:17):
and sixty thousand employees. That doesn't work. Most of the
once in the world don't have two sixty employees. So
we would we would actually have to have an aspiration
to be the biggest, one of the biggest companies in
the world, which we don't have. That's not an aspiration.
Our aspiration here is teaching kids about food and connecting
him to real food. So I challenged the team and
(12:37):
I said, okay, how can we get that down to
a hundred people? And we could not figure out a
way to do that. Okay, how could we get it
down to a thousand people? And we could not figure
out a way to do that. And we managed to
figure out a way to get it down to twenty people,
and we did the math. We literally did the math,
and we said, okay, if we can get a team
(12:57):
of seven people to run one hundred schools, then you
run the math. It's about people around the country. That
is something was okay, could I imagine building a person company.
That's pretty hard to do, but that is within the
realm of possibility. And so how do we get seven
people to run one hundred schools? We said, okay, if
(13:19):
we if we just focus on metro areas where they're
two hundred or more schools, and we focus on doing
one hundred schools in that metro area within driving distance,
we can have one leader. We can have three garden
trainers that work with the district and the schools. We
have three maintenance and project manager that can build the
gardens and maintain them in partnership with the schools district.
(13:41):
But the reason why we don't need even more people
is because that when we work at a hundred schools scale,
all of a sudden, the district will participate, they'll partner
with us. Because if you if you work at one
or two schools, the districts is like, well, it's not
with our time. But if you work at their scale,
they don't want to be left out. So you start
realize that once you get to a certain scale in
(14:02):
a city, you need less people. And that's how we
sort of figure out a way to to scale the
idea of school gardens, which were already successful. If you
looked at them in one off, one off level, you
can double the intake of fruits and vegetables of kids.
You can improve their test schools by fifteen points on
a hundred point scale. It's incredible if you look at
one school, but if you try to it across a
(14:24):
hundred schools or sorry, across the country, it doesn't really work.
What we found is you can actually make it work,
but you but you need to do a hundred schools
at its hime. Wow, I love that, and there's so
many things that this I think empowers kids with HARKing
back to empowering ourselves at scale, these protests that we're seeing.
You know, Killer Mike, I saw talk he was giving
(14:45):
in Atlanta during the last you know set of this
this time last year, when you know, an unarmed black
person got killed by officer. You know, he was like,
how many of you have your own gardens? How many
of you can honestly sustain yourself with your own food?
You know, like if you if you have that, you
have utility, You have you know, self autonomy, you have
(15:06):
the ability to sort of power your own community and
life in a way that you really can't when you're
completely dependent upon you know, someone else to provide your
calories quite literally. And then when it comes to like
you know, you are what you eat. I mean, like
it's just so huge, Like we feel the difference, especially
as we get older, you know, about what we put
into our body and how it ends up impacting you know,
(15:27):
our our mental physical performance, and it is a savage inequality,
just like lack of education, lack of you know, nutritious food,
because I mean our brains literally can't work as well
if we're hungry in a classroom if we're eating you know,
shipped from a convenience store. We have this malnutrition where
we actually have a lot of calories but no nutrition
(15:48):
in it. So you've become obedience and starving at the
same time. It's actually a thing. It is awful. And uh,
the idea as you as you just said, the idea
of empowering people to grow at home during the pandemic,
Big Green has implemented a program called Big Green at Home.
As you know, many of the schools are closed, many
of ours are closed, and those gardens are now converted
(16:11):
to giving gardens, so they're growing food for the community,
but they're also serve as a as an education hub,
so families can learn to grow at home and they can,
as you just said, empower themselves to learn how to
feed themselves. You know, this is not going to solve
all of their nutritional needs, but the food literacy improvement
that they're gonna get and they're going to give their
(16:31):
kids is amazing. And Big Green at Home has been
taken home by tens of thousands of families over the
past few months. Extraordinarily successful program and it came out
of so when the pandemic started. We run a national holiday,
Plant a Seed Day, and it's the first day of springs.
And this year was March nineteen, and you couldn't imagine
(16:52):
a more difficult day to have a have a national day,
because March sixteenth was when all the shutdowns started happening.
And it actually was pretty wonderful. We got about two
d and fifty thousand people around the world to pledge
to plant a seed at home and it's the first
day of spring. And what we actually found was what
(17:13):
we expected it to be quite challenging. It turned into
a surprising positive because all of a sudden we had
everyone at home and they were They started to reach
out for more materials because Planet ce Day was a
one off event and it was everyone to get behind it.
It was pretty it's obviously it's a great it's a
great holiday, but um, they actually started asking us for
(17:37):
more content because planting and seed wasn't enough and they
wanted more information on planting carrots or planting radishes, or
what do I do and when I can harvest the
carrots and biggering at home came out of Plant a
Seed Day, and we're going to continue it all the
way through to the Planet Seed Day in March. And
our goal is to get millions of people growing at
(17:59):
home over the next year, and we are already at
and this is a very engaged community and it's wonderful
to see how excited people have been to to engage
in gardening at home. Um it has been a side
effect of the pandemic, which I think is a positive
side effect. And I believe that it will it will
(18:21):
stay with us after the pandemic is over, because the
food literacy and prently just the joy of growing at home,
the food tastes better, connection you get with your kids.
No one's don't want that to go away. That that's
just that's a great lesson we're coming out of. We're
getting out of this pandemic. We'll be back with more
out of the hustle after the break. Well. It's also
(18:49):
interesting for me teaching a toddler at home, and you know,
like I could care less if he can write letters.
I don't care if he can do basic math, but
I do care that he end stands the concept of
planting a seed and you know, it's flowering and blossoming
and something growing, whether it be something he enjoys, like
a flower or something that he can actually eat and consume.
(19:12):
But you know, not to go philosophical with plant a seed.
But it's like, I feel like this is a rich dad,
poor dad lesson that so many people miss and we
don't plant enough seeds, Like we spend our money on
frivolous bullshit or on things that like, you know, improve
our lives in the short term. But when really push
comes to shove and you examine people and what they
do with their disposable income. In America, I wouldn't say
(19:35):
that that's like the prevalent culture, but you know, I
think that having mentors, Frank, I mean, I'm happy we're
friends now, but we weren't when we met. Like you
certainly were my mentor, and you really were kind and invested,
you know, some time in me and my organization and friends,
and you know, like people that I'm older than you.
I mean, you said you're older. You're in the eighties, bro,
(19:56):
What am I supposed to do? You look younger? Only
started I was, I was only three. Yeah, you were,
Like I told, I told my family, pack your stuff,
we're going to Canada. Um oh man. But I just
love that this is something like you could dedicate your
time and your energy to literally anything, and I think
(20:17):
it's just such a powerful and profound thing that you're
thinking about and working on. Thank you. You know. I
love also the stuff you do. And I've been thinking
a lot about the Utah Summit community you've built, and
to me, I think that this is an interesting time where,
you know, I'm thinking about Boulder and Denver, where you know,
there's such a desire now to move to the middle
(20:38):
of the country and and I don't know if it
will last post COVID, but it will have an effect
post COVID. And you know this, the real strong desire
for community is quite it's quite powerful too to see it.
It's wonderful to feel it. You know, in Boulder, we're
entertaining a visitor at least once or twice so that
(21:00):
will come into town to look look at buying homes
or trying to figure out a way to move to.
And we're looking for a sense of community when they're
stuck in uh in l A or New York or
or or San Francisco where it has been really tough.
And I don't want to necessarily uh benefit of that,
but I do love the idea of I mean, Frankie
(21:21):
Boulder and Never is a wonderful place to live. It's
kind of given, given a second class citizen status in America,
and I've loved for twenty years. I love that people
are stilling to open their eyes to the communities that
are being built inside the US versus just on the coast. Totally.
I think we were fully coastal living with Summit in
the first like three or four years the organization. It
(21:43):
would be like s f l A, New York, London,
Tel Aviv, Madrid, whatever major city Berlin we could go
to where there was a heavy concentration of entrepreneurs, similar
mathematics to how you were thinking about like how to
scale learning gardens with a small amount of people, while
you'll go to a heavier concentry ration of of those
you know, school districts, communities, etcetera. UM At first to
(22:05):
establish the org, I think that what was really crazy
was like in two thousand and ten we actually moved
to Nicaragua, and because it was that era, we had
Gmail and drop Box and Google, Dox and all these
things that didn't exist for entrepreneurs, say four years before
the point is is that like, by getting away from
sort of the hustle bustle and distraction to the city,
(22:26):
there was this phenomenon of us doing such better work,
learning about such much more interesting stuff, discovering more interesting
in global music that would end up becoming the trends
that would dominate those cities, the things that you know,
historically you have to be in the city to get
like first access at first looks. Too. I think that
there's been a quiet movement empowered by sort of the
(22:47):
digital world that we also live in, where like you know,
people like yourself who have got that space initially have
actually been benefiting from it from a long time. So
I just think world's kind of catching up now. Yeah,
I mean, I definitely think Boulder and Boulder, Denver and
Austin o the two that are that people are definitely
focusing on them. Curious, what are the areas do you
think in the world what doesn't have to be the
(23:07):
US where where people gravitating? Well, I mean certainly if
you look at like the Zillo page views, uh really
you really have a data driven analysis. I mean, I've
been curious about the same thing too, So like if
you look at the Zillo page views, and you look
at the movement of people, Colorado is on fire. You
might know that already. Colorado Springs actually is the other
(23:28):
city that has a ton of people moving to it.
Ohio is on fire, like yeah, Ohio, Columbus, And like
all these cities and Ohio people are moving. I think
a lot of it too is just America is America
is becoming an international country. We're all moving back in
with our parents. We're gonna have a multigenerational households. Again,
to your point, it's like access to nature, you know,
(23:49):
like better quality of living for the affordability and like, dude,
you can't, like it's multimillion dollars to have a house
and like the West side of l A that's a
tear down. It's ridiculous. And whereas if you look at
Utah where I was just there actually to to just
see how it was doing, it's a beautiful community. You know,
everyone is very socially distance, very thoughtful. It's like it
feels like a little mini Sweden. You know, everyone is
(24:11):
very very thoughtful socially distance. But life goes on well.
And there's also the benefit of not being like you
get it. Maybe it's a false sense of security. But
you get a sense of security in a town with
no street lights and no stoplights, and like everybody knows
the count of cases in like the like ten square
mile radius through like the community phone tagline. We have
(24:33):
to get in Boulder where we we had a COVID
outbreak at se u C University of Boulder, the town
is small enough where we know, we actually know the
houses that the outbreaks came out of. You know, it's
literally to that level. And there was a county order
giving the police authority to oversee these sixteen addresses and
(24:54):
and if you haven't to live in one of those addresses,
and there the extra scrutiny, and it was amazing within
within a few days, as even the COVID cases dropped
like a rock. And uh and I think that's because
we're in a small town of was it's protably a big,
big town, but it's small enough where we we can
we can get that focused on on on managing the
(25:15):
pandemic totally. And I mean, you've been in this, you've
had a vision for this for a long time. Your
your first I don't know if it was your first business,
but I know one of your first businesses that you
and Ellen had started zip to it was online city
guides right back in like ninety nine. Yeah, we started
in ninety five. It was so right now what you
see on Google Maps or Yahoo Maps. We ended up
(25:37):
getting acquired by Yahoo and became Yahoo Maps. That had
never been seen by a human on the Internet before.
My brother and I what did you put it up?
And built it and and we this company called Navtech
which had been building it, put three million dollars into
building the data and the mapping four hurts Herst the
rental car company, and you know, they were building that
(25:58):
never lost system that never had not been launched yet,
and it had been They've been working on it for
years and no one had ever seen it except for
you know, inside the company Navtech. It was amazing technology.
And my brother is an incredible engineer and he I
think he's one of the world's best engineers. At the
time though we we were just hackers. Uh. He built
(26:20):
the first vector based mapping, which which is a way
of saying you're simply transmitting data back and forth. You're
not moving graphics back and forth, so you're just you're
sending data and the data updates on your on your
rap on your web browser, and then it changes the
map on your browser, which is how all mapping has
done today, And prior to that, it was all you know,
(26:41):
uploading images. Here was an image of a map, and
my brother figured out a way using Java at the time,
which I might still be around, but it was the
first interactive tool on the Internet was used. Figured out
a way to take the data from navtech and uh
you you you load the page and you just load
the initial Java apple it and then you can move
(27:02):
them up around with your cursor and you can move
zoom in and you can zoom out, and it's and
we have no no latency and no download issues. And
we were we were My brother and I were literally
the first humans to see this on the Internet. And
we eventually showed it to venture capitalists and they got
excited and funded us. But it was cool. It was
cool to have that stamp on the Internet. I love that.
(27:24):
And around that time you told me a story once
that and it was like so in passing, but it
always stuck out to me that when you guys moved
to Silicon Valley, you literally got a telephone book and
started cold calling people that sounded like technologists. Oh yeah,
that was actually in university. We would read the newspaper
together and we would find interesting people in the newspaper
(27:45):
and then we would dare each other to call that person,
and we take turns. And it's actually surprisingly easy to
reach someone. You'd be amazed. It just takes a lot
of courage. So that's sort of that daring each other process.
You know. We we we met a lot of very
interesting people. We met a lot of people that frankly,
were not that interesting. But you know, because we were
South Africans, we were immigrants, we didn't know anyone, and
(28:07):
we found it just such a powerful way to get
to meet people. But but what's very interesting is it
didn't work when we after we had graduated. It worked
very well while we were students, and people were so
welcoming and open to meeting underdogs. They couldn't believe they
were getting a phone call from you exactly. We were
kids from another country that were in university and the
(28:30):
fact that we were students made them very open to
meeting with us. And we would call some of the
most powerful people in the in the country and and uh,
whether it's us or Canada. We just have to be
able to get to them because the the ask was
taking them to lunch. So if we could get them
to let us take them to lunch, we'd learned from them,
We get to know them, and they would who knows
(28:51):
what could be from it. Some of the most interesting
people we knew when we were younger were those folks
that they were. They were actually not necessarily technologists, but
they were. They were very players. A lot of politicians
are very very cool. Once we graduated, we continued to
do it, and it was an immediate shutdown. They were like, Nope,
now you're in the real world. Why are you calling
(29:12):
me interesting? And it was quite a quite of different.
So I would really encourage anyone listening who's a student
to take advantage of that, of that time to reach
out to people, and the people you are most excited
to meet. Believe me, you know everyone's gonna eat, so
they will. They will go to lunch with you if
you can get to them. And on a radio basis,
(29:34):
people find their way to me because I've shared this
story with other people, and they'll get to me and
I'll go to lunch with them. But but it's not
easy to get to me. But I mean, I say,
it actually is easy to get to me, but it's
not easy to get to me in a way that
I will actually have lunch that takes a little bit
of work. But do that if you're a student, use
your time as a student to understand that this is
(29:55):
the time when people will give you a break. Part
of the hustle will be right back after this short break.
The entrepreneurial leadership, like the celebrated business stories and say
eighties and nineties was very much that sort of swashbuckling
(30:16):
HBS leader. And then you had, you know, the temple
to the engineer with good reason, like you like for
your for instance, your bro or these you know other
brilliant you know technologists that built these amazing companies. Ultimately, though,
it's creatives, right, Like the best engineers and developers are
just the most creative people or their creative problem solvers. Right.
(30:37):
My brother is an amazing engineer, and I honestly think
that he's the best engineer in the world. He's the
Michael Jordan of of our century and and them and you.
Obviously he has a record to prove it. Um and
I and I get I get a front row seat
to watch him solve problems that and I really mean
it an engineering and physics level, the world's greatest engineers
and physics pH ds. We'll say that is impossible, and
(31:00):
he will solve it. That's different. That's a different kind
of gift. Um you think that obviously he's creative, and
when many, many people are creative and the world that
we technology has enabled creative problem solved to leverage their
abilities worldwide. You know, if I want to do something,
and like you talked about Nicaragua, if someone wanted to
do something in Nicaragua, pretty soon Starlink from SpaceX will
(31:23):
give that person in Nicaragua more broadband than I get
in Boulder today, which we sit right on on the
fiber in America. And it's embarrassing how bad our internet
connection is. Sure that's gonna we'll get changed when when
SpaceX has startling across the world. This is why I'm
so interested on your perspective on like it's just and
this is so helpful because you're you know, like you're
(31:45):
talking about the macro and like, you know, the the
fully scaled version of somebody taking a dream and turning
it into reality and changing the world with it, like
not hyperbolically, but but literally. And then you're also talking
about like just the screw rappy as stuff like as
an entrepreneur, like you know one like the the you know,
rolling the idea of big Green in these learning gardens,
(32:09):
and you know, innovating and iterating on it as you were,
you know, moving forward but being super thoughtful. It wasn't
ready fire aim, right, It's clear that you guys really
thought about this before you started taking your shots. When
we were younger, it was ready fire aim. Yeah, as
we've gotten older, it is I would probably say it's
more like ready fire aim constantly, so that whatever you
(32:33):
fire at it's really a small target. So you really
you want to fail as fast as you can. But
that process is a failing is really a learning process.
So before you you you just use a rocket as
an analogy, you really want to fail and learn all
of the issues before you actually launched the rocket. Um,
(32:55):
you know, you do a static fire, you hold it down.
You have the engines each tested separately, because you want
each of those things to do. You want to find
out which one is going to go wrong before you
launch the rocket, because that's going to carry a very
valuable payload into space, and you want to make sure
this pointing in the right direction, and that's when you
really put fuel on it and you put the rocket
(33:15):
boosters on you make it go. But but you actually
want to learn all of the issues as much as
possible before you press go. So it's it's a little
different to a ready higher am. Yeah, I would say
it's more like constantly letting problems surface so that you
can knock them down before really committing at a at
(33:38):
a bigger level, Whereas I do think it when I
when very younger, when you've got nothing to lose, you know,
when you're By the way, anyone in their twenties should
be to be taking all the risk they possibly can.
If that's once away from this thing is you just
don't realize how long life is. Life is so long,
that is your twenties, and take all the risk you
possibly can because you will benefit from that for the
(33:59):
rest of your life. May not be a potential positive outcome,
because you know when you take risk, you got to
risk the fact that you're gonna lose, lose financially, but
you don't lose in terms of the relationships. You you
take on the what you get, how you get educated
in the problems you're trying to solve. The it's it's life,
life's life's lessons compound on each other. And the more
(34:21):
you can do in your twenties, the faster you get
that snowball running or rolling, the bigger and more interesting
in your life is as you get older. Yeah, it's
it's funny because it's like both taking those risks and
planting seeds along the way, right, Like which are analogy
because planning a seed, of course, is for gardens, but
it's really for hope. It's a sign of of your
(34:42):
your future. You're you're you're planning a seed when you're twenty,
when you're when you're when you're going into university, you're
planning a seed. When you graduate, your planning a seed?
Or which what are you taking on first? When you're
twenty five? You might take on your next challenge? What
is that? And and it should be about hope? It
should be about you know, are you Are you challenging
yourself enough? Are you surrounding yourself with the most interesting people?
(35:05):
You can be as humble as you possibly can, but
be as ambitious as you possibly can. Because humility gets
you around really interesting people. But ambitious what keeps you
around really interesting people. They don't want you if you're
you're not ambitious totally, And I love that. I love
the Brian you know, saying gardening not architecture. You know,
like it's to your point. You can you can have
(35:27):
is detailed of plans and strategy and fail faster and
experiment all you can, but you know you can't, like
I love with some and I always would say it
was guardening on architecture because like I've never heard that before.
That's a that's a beautiful analogy. I couldn't know where
it was going. We just trim the leaves, let the
plant grow, and you and you and you're harvesting all
year long, and there's obviously there's you're gonna have some
(35:48):
things that are out of your control, like bad weather.
Sometimes things work out in your favor and you you
you your gratitude, you're grateful. But but I love that analogy.
Life is like gardening, and start early, don't don't don't
wait until mayo June, start planting in March, start planning
whenever the season is right, and uh and and get
as many seasons in there as possible transitioning a little
(36:10):
bit on the food side. I know that you know
a lot about just you know, the future of meat,
and I think about, you know, we have a hunting culture,
not an agrarian culture like we were were mining the
resources of the world, not so much you know, like
creating these evergreen gardens to not to t to beat
a metaphor to death. But but you know you you
(36:30):
happen to be very close and Christianity, your incredible wife,
um to to the future of meat. Where are we,
like what's the time horizon? And do you think that
we're going to be growing like real meat and labs
or do you think that we're just gonna have incredible
substitutes that people are going to incorporate into their diets.
Where do you think this is at? Uh? You know,
I think it's a very interesting year. So, um. The
(36:52):
the part of the most exciting company in alternative meats
is lab grown meat is some com people of Memphis
Meats and actually growing chicken or beef or duck and
they're trying to figure out which one should be the
product entry point. Um. And I've had the good fortune
of being able to click. The actual chicken out in
this case was chicken breast, and it's amazing. You're just
(37:15):
looks like you can taste like chicken is actually chicken,
and that is that's extraordinary. No, no, no animals harmed
in the process. It's it's just mind blowing. And then
also even just yesterday, I went to try an alternative
meat product that that is a vegan version of pulled pork,
and it's it's um, vegetable based and without any of
(37:38):
the processing that you might see in some of the
other alternatives. And I'm a big fan of less processing
is good, you know, just a real food. I believe
in trusting your food, and the more ingredients or more
processing involved, the more cautious I am. I'm not saying
that all processed food is bad, but I but I
generally have found less processed food to be better. I
(38:00):
call it real food, nourishing the body, nourishing to the farmer,
nourishing to the planet. You kind of know what you get,
you know, what you see is what you get. I
had this product yesterday which was not processed at all,
and it's it's it's basis jackfruit, and I was very impressed.
It was the slowest pork with a Korean barbecue seasoning,
(38:20):
and I was like, wow, I was, I was very impressed.
So I think we're in a we're very interesting time.
I think that the future of meats will include regular
beef and chicken and so forth. But what I like
about these alternative meat products is that puts pressure on
the traditional industry to step up on ethics, step up
on how they feed what they feed their animals from,
(38:43):
antibiotics too, hormones. Generally, we're headed in a good direction.
That's fantastic. And do you think do you think we'll
all be driving electric cars ten years from now? No? No,
because they will all be autonomous. Good point. You really
think in ten years and thirty days all these cars
are gonna be autonomous? Yes, I think it's even sooner
(39:06):
than that. Amazing. I mean, I for one can't wait.
We play with designs that don't even have a steering wheel,
and we're not ready for that yet. But but it's
fun to imagine what is a car when there's no
steering reel? Should you all face forward? Well, maybe you
should all face each other, m hmm. I mean it's
quite interesting. It's a different world. When you don't have
(39:27):
to think about driving the car. So so I think
that autonomy is is going to be within ten years
for sure, pretty sooner than that. And um, what I
love about has been and I'm so proud of my
brother and what he's not a Tesla now profitable. We
have an extraordinary path in front of us with the
products that product lineup that that he's he's creating, and
(39:50):
it's also motivating the rest of the industry to go
electric and that is going to change the impact on
our environment in ways that we desperately need. And so
we need to go faster. And one of the major
red limitters is it like battery? Is it is like
is it you know, like manufacturing? Is it rare earth minerals?
Is it policy? I mean, my brother announced the battery
(40:13):
innovations that they're working on, but up until that that point,
it really was the batteries. So if you uh, well,
in Tesla's case, it really was the battery. I don't
think it was necessarily the case with others because they
there are low volumes. But our battery plant in Nevada
makes more batteries than all of the other battery plants
in the world. Combined. Wow, And it is not enough
(40:37):
to provide the batteries for our Tesla just for the
regular demand of our Tesla cars. So we have to
solve the battery problem. And so that's what we have
been working on. And we are we're run away. Well,
I mean, you're you're you're very humble, and you are
a board member of the organization, have been deeply involved
in certain and I and I don't you know, argue
(40:58):
the credit is due where you put it, but um,
you know, I do think it's interesting just when I
think about these companies that you know, are in the
family of Musk businesses, and I just and honestly hosting
the show. Um and and this is maybe say the
thirtieth episode where I've considered my friends and what they've
built and how they've built them a little differently. And
the brand vision of these companies is incredible, like and
(41:21):
you're like the kitchen is fantastic, and theigoring, I mean
the way that you describe it, You're you're always trying
to civilize and and bring whatever the innovation is to
the form that is easiest and most fun and most
sort of I guess enjoyable for the in Consumer Glad
you mentioned the kitchen. So we have a restaurant concept
called next Door Eatery. And you know, COVID was I've
(41:45):
always had this this pet pee. So I love I
love our restaurants, I love our teams. But even in
our restaurants where we were considered really well respected restaurants,
the service isn't perfect. You know, sometimes you want to
order around of drinks and you can't get attention of
the server, or you might want to how your check
and you can't get your attention to the server, or
you just want to quit me and your kind of
(42:05):
and you just want to kind of get get through
your milk quickly, which is often the case with me.
And we have the supercomputer in our pocket that should
be able to help you order your food really whatever
you want. And the challenge with the restaurant industry is
it's stuck in this legacy world of point of sale
systems that are that are literally thirties or four years old.
(42:27):
And what I did during COVID with our team, which
has worked out so well, is we've built the ability
to manage your order on your iPhone. So you show
up at the restaurant and you order your food that
we still have a server, and the server let you
know about the man. You do whatever you want, but
but all you're ordering is done on your phone, so
that you manage your order, you pay for your order,
(42:49):
you order another round of drinks, all done on your phone,
and it is the most convenient, most incredible thing. Next
Door Eater is a very fun restaurant, so we really
love it's very much a social drinking restaurant. We have
we have a sort of to drink minimum attitudes. You know,
if you come to our restaurant, we want you to
(43:10):
have fun, you know, and if you didn't have two drinks,
you you probably didn't have enough fun. So for us,
it's especially during the pandemic, it has been about hey,
come here for your fun time. That has been wonderful
and all done through your through our phone. So we
developed a technology. I think my brother kind of lead
the way on this, but I but I but I've
been working in that same philosophy, which is, we're not
(43:31):
here to do this for competitive reasons. We're doing We're
here to do this because it's the right thing to do.
And so the codebase for for the technology is now
available to any restaurant company that wants to use it.
We have a few restaurant cup groups that are using
it awesome. And the idea is that it's really about
a better guest experience. It's about a better server experience
(43:52):
and a pandemic when you know, too much interaction with
the guests can can spread COVID. So it's it's better
for the guests even in a non COVID world, but
it's also a healthier way to run your restaurant during
the pandemic. And and we we share a code base
with any restaurant group that wants to use it, and
people are taking us up on it. So it's awesome.
And next Door Eatery is about fun in a time
(44:14):
when we all kind of need a drink right now,
We all kind of want to maybe we gather in
large groups, but we can go out with a friend
and and connect, you know, do our part to be
responsible during the pandemic, but not hide ourselves in the basement.
Repped in cotton wool. M h. Well, I mean, one,
thank you so much for taking the time to be
(44:35):
in on the podcast. You're fantastic and such an incredible
guy and and and this has been awesome. Um, I
want to I want to go out with just you know,
like just understanding you just a little bit more. Um,
you know, like you you just have done so much
and you know, so I want to know what what
do you still do too much of? Or what do
you still want to like let go of? Like what's
still is you know, something that you want to want
(44:56):
to remove from your life and and that you're still
you know, figuring out. And then what are you still seeking?
Like what are the things that you you seek and
that you want to bring more into your life at
this stage. That's a good question. You know. The pandemic
is such an interesting time to reflect on yourself. I'm
sure everyone is doing that is what you're doing. The
right thing, is what you know. It's an opportunity to
(45:18):
change if you want to, you know, I think that
for me, the I'm really learning the wonderful value of
being around just very talented and interesting people. So I've
heard this from older mentors of mine, where as they
get older, they really start to appreciate people on their
(45:40):
team there you know, well I'm referring to in the
work world here, you know, that sort of passion for
people not just of course attracting great talent, but mentoring them,
training them, making them better. It's sort of the next
phase for me. As a thank you for saying I
was a interviewers, I feel like I've always helped out
younger folks as all the people helped me out. But
(46:01):
it's a different thing when I when I feel like, actually,
this is truly what's getting me up in the morning
and making me excited to go to work and sort
of bring my a game. Well, Kemball, you're the best.
Thank you again. I can't wait to see where all
these things lead. And you know, anything I can do
for you, no job too big, no job too small, forever.
Thank you. Jeff sam Stam with my side here for
(46:22):
you anytime. Thanks for listening out to the Hustle, and
I'll see you next time. For more podcasts for my
(46:46):
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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