Challenges of the C-Suite with Jeff Kirschner, Episode 19

Okay, I think guys you saw me taking a lifesaver out of my mouth because I'm coughing. In Colorado, it is dry as a bone. And anyway, hi everyone, how are you? This is CB Bowman live, and today, you know, on Tuesdays we do Challenges of the C-Suite, and boy do we have a guest for you today. We have Jeff, who is the CEO of Literati, and our purpose today is to talk about entrepreneurs because you know what? There are so many amazing entrepreneurs out there and we just pay attention to the big old guys and gals out there from big companies. But you know, as President Obama once said, the United States moves not on the big companies, but on the entrepreneurs, or as we call them these days, the solopreneurs, right? And Jeff is incredible. He is a master at raising funds. He's a master at running his organization. It's not his first turnaround in the entrepreneurship world. I can't wait to interview him to, to find out how entrepreneurial challenges are different from those that are in the C-suite in Fortune 500 companies. So stay tuned and listen in for the secrets. So Jeff, let me say welcome. I'm so excited to hear about you and your company and, uh, the space that you work in in the entrepreneurial world. Jeff, welcome.

CB, thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here.

Great, great. So Jeff, tell us a little bit about yourself before we get into details.

I've kind of slalomed through life. I was never one of those people that was on a linear path. I, uh, you know, graduated from the University of Michigan having no clue what I wanted to do, so I applied to law school because that's what you do when you have no clue what you want to do.

Okay.

I got out before I ever got in and found myself living in the Bay Area, bartending at night to make ends meet and teaching kids how to play soccer during the day. And all of a sudden I experienced what it meant to be free for the first time, really enjoy time. What I mean when I say freedom, I mean just have the freedom of time to explore. That led me to backpacking around the world for a year where I discovered a passion for storytelling and the craft of marrying, I guess, business and art. Started my career as a writer, fell over backwards into the world of technology startups, and that's where I am today.

So, you know, I have to tell the audience, Jeff has an amazing sense of humor. And I told him I was going to tell on him because— and you're going to have to refresh my mind on exactly what you said. But I informed him, wink wink, just a few minutes ago that he was going to be one of our keynote speakers in a conference coming up for coaches. And it's, it's being put on by the Association of Corporate Executive Coaches, which you all know I'm CEO of. And every 2 years we do an incredible conference Which talks to coaches about the money side of coaching. So this year's theme is The Futurist Coach: Understanding the Mindset of the Leader and the Buyer. And I couldn't think of a better person to have on than Jeff, who can tell us about the minds of the entrepreneur. So I said to him, Jeff, so do you have any questions about the conference? And what was your answer?

What conference?

And I said to him, uh, the conference that you're speaking on. And he thought it was a different conference I'm doing on racial injustice in the workplace. And I said, no, Jeff, it's the other conference. And he said, what other conference? And I said, oh, Jeff, maybe I forgot to tell you, you're a keynote speaker in the other conference.

And his response was, I've already prepared my entire talk.

So everyone, you see the world we hang out in, you know, it's kind of like boom, it just happens.

I think you might be onto something, though. There may be a new model of just the impromptu keynote that you just tell people, look, you're on stage at 11 PM or 11 AM on Sunday morning. Go.

Exactly. I love it. It's like this new app, the Clubhouse. Oh my gosh, is that a riot? Oh my God. But let's not get off subject. Jeff, tell us, what are some of the challenges that you face as the CEO? Well, first tell us about your company, Literati.

So we're on a mission to clean the planet. And what we have built is a platform where anybody can download the Literati application, iOS or Android, and instantly become part of the solution. And what we are doing is we are empowering people to collect data about all of the objects, the materials, the brands that are leaking into our environment, whether they are being found on a beach, a schoolyard, the ocean, or just a city street. And it's that combination of people with the data that are allowing us to do things like inform policy or inspire personal responsibility or even inspire more sustainable forms of packaging. And what started out because of something my 2 little kids said on a walk in the woods has now turned into a community that's in 185 countries.

But what do you mean collect data? And what did the 2 children say to you that it Inspired this?

Yeah, so it all started when we were hiking in Oakland and they noticed—

Your children?

Yes, my children. Although sometimes I've thought about just putting other people's children into the story, just because frankly I think my kids are getting tired of me telling the story. So they noticed this— they were 4 and 2 at the time— and they noticed this plastic tub of cat litter lying in the creek. Right behind our house, and so they looked at me and they looked at me and they said, "Daddy, that doesn't go there," and it was this innocent comment, but it was an eye-opener for me. I was never an active environmentalist before, but seeing the world through their eyes really opened mine, especially when I'm living in a place like the Bay Area, which is known for being environmentally progressive and ecologically responsible, and yet all of a sudden. All I could see was trash all over the ground. And so when they made this comment, it reminded me of when I was a kid. I used to go to summer camp, and on the morning of visiting day, the camp director would say, quick, everybody go pick up 5 pieces of litter. And so you'd have several hundred kids all picking up just a few pieces, and suddenly the camp was spotless.

Wow.

The idea was, well, why can't we adopt that crowdsourced community initiative to cleaning the entire planet. So that was the inspiration. What happened next was a little bit odd. I photographed a cigarette butt using Instagram. And CB, there was no idea at the time. I didn't have a rhyme or reason for doing this. I just took the photograph. And then I took another photograph of a bottle cap and another one of a can. And I noticed 2 things happening to me. The first was litter became artistic.

Why?

Because of Instagram. The Corona bottle cap that I may have walked over suddenly was a really cool photo opportunity based on the way it was up against the beach. The second thing I noticed was that at the end of a week, I had 50 photos on my phone and I had picked up every single piece I had photographed and properly discarded it. And so I realized that the same way people are measuring the steps they walk or the miles they ride, I was measuring the positive impact I was having on the planet. And so I just started telling people what I was doing. And so what began as nothing more than a hashtag on Instagram has now turned into a complete technology platform and computer vision and AI models and mapping and some really robust data science. And the way it works, to answer your second question, is all through the simplicity of a photograph. So anybody can snap a photo, and that photo holds a ton of data. It tells us who picked up what where and when, and we use that data at scale to really create change.

But, but I don't understand. So you take a photograph of a plastic bottle.

That's right.

How does that tell you where and when, and how do you extrapolate data from it?

So think about it this way. Every photograph is nothing more than a container, and within that container are different bits of information. So let's just start with the who. Well, you took the photograph so you could start to measure and track your own impact. You took 10 photographs, you picked up 10 things. All of a sudden you can start to understand what positive impact CB Bowman is having in Colorado. Then there's the what. So the contents of the photograph we analyze, we put in AI or what are called machine learning models using computer vision to look at what are all the objects that are in that photograph. What are the materials of those objects? What are the brands of those objects? And what we've done is we have trained models, machine learning models, to start to recognize, oh, that's a Snickers wrapper, that's a Budweiser can, that's a plastic bottle cap, that's a cigarette butt. That gets really complicated and complex, but that's the what. Then there's the where. Every photograph has a geotag. There's a latitude and a longitude that are attached to that photo, and the same with a timestamp. And so when you think about the data that comes with a photograph and you think about what you can track with millions of photographs around the world, you start to get some really interesting datasets.

Okay, so how does that— how do the datasets help you in cleaning the world? Because if you have a plastic bottle that's been thrown on the ground, I understand somebody picks it up and discards it the proper way. That definitely I could see How it helps. But how does— how does whether it's a Snickers bar or a Pepsi bottle help improve the world?

You're getting to the absolute right point, which is understanding the root cause of the problem. So we like to call them stories of impact. And I'll give you a couple of examples of how that data is creating change, which is really what you're asking about. Like, how do we solve this problem? In, in the city of San Francisco, they wanted to understand what percentage of litter came from cigarette butts. Why? Because they wanted to create a tax on all cigarette sales. And so before Litterati existed, they handed a few people pencils and clipboards.

And I say that that's very sneaky.

One might say it's just smart, right? A way of understanding What's all over the ground? Like, what are we really dealing with? Well, let me take a step back before I get into that example. We're like hamsters running on a wheel. We are just doing the same thing over and over and over, which is, it's a mess, let's clean it up. It's a mess again, let's clean it up. How many more decades will we just clean it up?

Right.

Our failure in society has not been from a lack of trying. There are countless public service announcements, street signs threatening $1,000 fines, Keep America Beautiful campaigns, all sorts of stuff. And yet the problem's not getting any better. So at Litterati, we've been asking this question, well, maybe there's another way. And we believe that other way is through data, by understanding the root of the problem. I'll come back to that. Let me get to the stories of impact. So San Francisco wanted to understand what percentage of litter came from cigarette butts, to create a tax on cigarette sales. Before us, a few people in the streets using pencils and clipboards walking around saying, that's a cigarette, that's not, that is, that's not. They came up with a number, and that led to a tax which generated about $0.20 a pack. The industry then sued the city of San Francisco, claiming that the information collected with pencils and clipboards wasn't precise. more provable. So we were brought in, and because our data is all taken with a photograph, meaning there's evidence-based data with timestamps and geotags, our data was used to not only defend but double that tax, which now creates a $4 million annual recurring revenue for the city of San Francisco. All of that money goes back into the city's coffers to help clean up. So that's an example of how data can be used at scale to generate meaningful revenue for one city. Here's another example on a smaller scale. A group of 5th graders wanted to understand what the most common type of litter on their campus was. And they learned from using Litterati that the most common type of litter were the plastic straw wrappers from their own cafeteria. So they just asked their principal, why are we even buying straws? And they stopped. And they prevented those wrappers from ever hitting the ground again. Simply by understanding the root of the problem. And we have a number of stories like that, but those are a couple.

Wow. Okay, so basically your literati can be used to generate income and to stop bad behavior in a way that we haven't thought about before.

That's exactly right. And where we really see an opportunity— I mean, you've hit the nail on the head, CB. We see a massive opportunity with cities, and here's why. Cities are spending billions of dollars on this every single year, but they are effectively trying to slay a dragon that they can't even see. They don't know what they're up against. They just know, like, yeah, that block is really filthy again, so let's throw more resource at it. But our belief is that there's a way to spend smarter. So at Literati, we talk about it a lot as almost like a A medical condition. If my knee hurts, I go to the doctor and the doctor doesn't just give me a pill. They do a diagnostic. They ask questions, they probe, and they understand like, well, what part of your knee hurts? What— how long have you felt the pain? How sharp is the pain? They get to the root of the problem so that when they do prescribe me with exercise, a medication, topical, oral pill, it's based on the learning of that diagnostic. We're applying a similar methodology to cleaning the planet.

Okay, so let me ask you, people are taking pictures of, for example, a Pepsi, and I don't mean to pick on Pepsi, it could be Coke, it could be 7-Up, whatever, and you know where it was tossed, when it was tossed, and how many were tossed? How do you then go to Pepsi and say, do something? What do you say to Pepsi? Or is it the users of Pepsi?

So now you're really sort of looking at our business holistically. So that's the other area we see a massive opportunity is working with corporations. And look, we're not about shaming. We're not about pointing a finger. That's just not who we are. We are an organization that's built on transparency, or what we call the ground truth. What is all over the ground and how do we do something about it? And so we are working with brands in a number of ways. One is around employee engagement and their consumer engagement. So we do a lot of work with companies that want to not only demonstrate the social good that they're doing for the planet, but they're also—

Mm-hmm.

encouraging their customers to get involved. Right. And that could be for a consumer packaged goods brand like a Pepsi or a Coke or a Red Bull or McDonald's. But it could also be for a company like Levi's, who we've worked with. But you asked specifically around a Pepsi or a Coke. Right. So what we have started—

Let's say a soda can. Sure.

And again, we're not here to shame and blame or point a finger. Where we really have an opportunity to turn them from the villain in the story to the hero Is by letting them understand exactly where their materials are ending up, because those companies, a lot of them want it back, or they want to demonstrate to the stakeholders that they recognize the situation and they are doing something to become part of that solution.

So, for example, if you notice that a lot of soda cans are at a beach, a specific beach San Diego, then that company that made that brand could go there, collect all those cans, or you could have a bin with all the cans for each company. People throw it in there, or whoever is picking up the litter puts it in there, and they can go and get those cans and recycle them.

Absolutely.

I love it.

Or they may say, okay, we are noticing that there's a lot of these cans at a particular playground that is adjacent to a school. So we're going to underwrite a curriculum and we are going to work with that school to help start educating tomorrow's environmental stewards about taking care of the planet.

So I could also see the flip side of this though, coming from a marketing background, which is, gee, our soda pop is not being sold in that geotagged area. We need to have some more distribution.

I could see how you could say that and make that and have that line of thinking. Whether or not that would actually create a real acceleration of market penetration in a given area is yet to be proven. And none of our— certainly that's not where we're focused, and none of our partners have either. For us, it's about how do you empower people with a simple yet sophisticated tool to be part of the solution. Because one of the things we've learned is that when you talk about today's environmental problems, whether it's climate change, ocean acidification, plastic pollution, people feel overwhelmed. They don't even know where to begin.

Yes.

Many people feel hopeless. So we constantly ask ourselves the question, how do we give everybody the chance to be part of something bigger than themselves and and connect through community, because you can— if you do that well, you can transform that feeling of overwhelm into one of empowerment and inspiration.

So a couple of thoughts. I remember back in New York when they, um, had a refund for the number of soda cans that you collected, and it was, from my eyes, an excellent program. Because you would see people walking through New York with huge plastic bags filled with soda cans, taking them to the center where they could turn them in, and people were making money that might not have had the opportunity to make money before. I think that's— I mean, for me, that was very heartwarming and It helped clean up the city. I don't know why that program is not universal, but my question to you is, is there an opportunity for people who are picking up the litter to be financially compensated?

Absolutely, absolutely. And what you're talking about is simple Incentive, right? So one of the stories of impact that recently happened in the Netherlands was our data was used to inspire what's called the deposit return scheme. That's the phrase for what you are explaining, right? You get a return for making a deposit of a can. So in the Netherlands, they added small PET bottles, small plastic bottles, to the deposit return scheme. What did that do? Exactly what you just said. It put an incentive a monetary incentive on those small bottles to be picked up and properly put back into the system. And what that led to was the Dutch government said, based on Literati's data, we are now putting cans on notice. So we're going to give it 1 year, and if we don't see a significant reduction in cans found on the environment, we're going to put those into the deposit return scheme. And where I think this becomes really interesting is What if there was an incentive to collect data and catalog and map all the waste that's leaking into the environment? How might we change behavior? That is a truly disruptive idea, and we've started prototyping that concept right now.

So let me go back a second. Are you saying that on the canned can reimbursement, the manufacturer of the product was paying for the return of those cans? Or was it the city or state that was paying for it?

In that case, it is funded, I believe, through an industry consortium, but it comes through the government.

Okay, great, great. Okay, so here's my next question. With COVID have— there's 2 parts to this question. Have you seen A decrease in literature? That's number one. With COVID have you seen a decrease in people wanting to pick up litter?

So let me make sure I heard your questions correctly. The first one was, did we see a decrease in litter? And the second one was, how has that maybe impacted or not people's desire to pick up litter?

The second one is really more to Has the desire lessened because people are concerned about contracting COVID?

Understood. So the answer to the first question is yes, there's been a decrease in litter simply because people aren't traveling as much. There's just not that many or as many people out and about. What we find more interesting is that the profile of what's found on the ground is changing. So we are now seeing tons of PPE, masks and gloves are everywhere, wipes, and a lot of single-use plastics, right, because of all the curbside dining pickup. So everybody's takeout, right, has a spork or a fork and a knife and a napkin wrapped in a single-use plastic. So we are seeing quite a bit of that, and we have a number of organizations on the Literati platform that are specifically collecting data on PPE, just that. When COVID first happened, we sent a community-wide email that just said, the planet— cleaning the planet can wait, protecting your health cannot. And we told everybody to stop. And that's a weird thing to do for a company, to tell everybody to stop doing what we've been asking you to do. But we felt it was the right thing to do, given all of the uncertainty around the health issues that may come with COVID Mm-hmm. Once I think more science came out that COVID wasn't necessarily lasting on surfaces as long as maybe initially thought, our community started really ramping up. And what we have now seen is that a lot of organizations, a lot of schools have reached out to us because we represent a great way of staying connected while disconnected. So suddenly where people have been trying to find employee engagement programs where they're bringing folks together or conferences where they're bringing people together, we're able to still enable people to come together digitally for the same greater good.

So is there like a user group that you have that allows people to come together in the way that we're talking about?

That's right. So there's not only the base Literati community, so anybody can download the application and join the community, but we also have what are called challenges. So a challenge is nothing more than a container for a group of people to come together and say, we are going to pick up X amount of pieces. So 25,000 pieces in this week in this location. And that's how we run our school programs, our education— excuse me, our employee engagement programs. So it may be all of the employees from one company and they could be all located in one city or globally. And they all, they are all placed in this one challenge, this one container. And that's how we're able to track the impact of that one group. And we have thousands of challenges happening at any given time.

So how are they rewarded?

They're not. They're rewarded intrinsically because they are contributing to cleaning the planet. Now you have brought up something we think about all the time. What would it take, if anything at all, to motivate people who aren't necessarily intrinsically motivated to participate? And then you start introducing maybe gamification techniques. So if CB picked up 10 items in Colorado, does she get the 10-item badge or does she earn 10 points? And can she redeem those 10 points for a reusable mug? Right. How can you start to engage with people in a way that is surprising and delightful so that they do participate? And that's a tricky challenge, but that's exactly what we're focused on for this year.

Oh my God. What you just said takes me way, way back to couponing. When you were shopping in a grocery store and then you could redeem those coupons for some type of merchandise. Oh my God, that's really history.

Well, you get to the fundamental psychology of why, why will people take a certain action and what will cause them to take that certain action? And there are plenty of, you know, we have a behavioral scientist on our team and she has really taught us a lot about the difference between being intrinsically motivated versus being extrinsically motivated and how you have to be really careful, right? Because there are— it can be a slippery slope if you have a group of people who have always participated because they want to, because they believe in something, and all of a sudden you introduce a reward that might turn some people off.

Yeah.

But it also might invite some new people. And so we need to test some of those hypotheses.

Absolutely. So I want to now swing back to talking about you and other entrepreneurs. You said something really interesting a moment ago. Not that everything you say is not interesting, but I want to zoom in on something. You took a step which said We'll just continue and hope that the camera picks back up. Okay.

So, um, can you repeat that, CB? I took a step.

You took a step which said to your, uh, you, your followers and those who participate in the program, And you said, stop doing what we have advocated for. Your health is more important with COVID That's a very courageous step for a CEO to take, because literally you're saying your health becomes more important than my company. And we have a friend who works in the courageous leadership space, Rhett Power.

Yes, we do.

What gave you the strength as a CEO to make that call?

So I'm going to suggest that that actually wasn't that courageous.

Of course you would, Jeff, knowing you.

No, but— and so come along with me on this one, if you will. I look at courage specifically when it comes to making a decision as The difficulty between choosing the greater of two goods or the lesser of two evils, like the people's health versus how do we continue on? Like, that's, that's not a difficult decision to make. There's a very clear decision. And I would gather that if you polled most CEOs or most people in general, they would all agree.

Yeah.

To me, for me, not a difficult decision. It wasn't fun. And it presented challenges for us. But it was a— there was never in my mind a, hmm, maybe we should tell people to still go outside when we don't know what's happening with this global pandemic. That wasn't a courageous decision for me. The courageous decision is, wow, I've got to decide. I've got 2 situations. Neither are great. Which one am I going to choose?

I'm going to push back, Jeff, because, you know, We both know that's what I do. No, but, you know, seriously, we heard so many companies that continue to keep their doors open with employees contracting COVID. Let's look at the meat industry. Not everybody was guilty, but there were some major players, and we lost some people, you know. Let's look at the retail business. Until the government stepped in, they were open. They were accepting people without masks. I mean, let's be real, that was a courageous decision, especially as an entrepreneur.

So you're absolutely right that those companies, um, that made those decisions, I believe that those were courageous. But here's the distinction. Those were people who were also responsible for employees getting paid and continuing to live their lives uninterrupted. Our community wasn't necessarily— their lives weren't truly disrupted by whether or not they went outside and picked up a bottle or a bottle cap, right? For us, it wasn't, oh, their paycheck is dependent upon me saying to them, continue on or don't. That's a much more courageous decision. I appreciate the sentiment. And look, it wasn't easy, but I would do the same thing every single time if the situation were the same.

Yeah, you know, you present a different way of looking at this, which I applaud, because that's what these conversations are about. And I really didn't have it in my head that these companies were doing great things in order to sustain the living conditions of an employee, visa a check every week. In my mind, in my eyes, it was putting employees' health at risk. And so thank you for presenting a different side of the picture. Let's talk about some of the challenges, because you and I have talked privately as friends, colleagues, some of the challenges that you faced As an entrepreneur before Literati and now with Literati? And how did you resolve some of those challenges? So let's start with before Literati.

Well, before Literati, I had had 2 other startups. And I would say in both cases, I had no idea what I was doing. But I just kept going forward. oftentimes with Literati, I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing. That's where I think courage comes in, is, you know, despite the fear, you continue moving forward. 'Cause we all feel fear, we all feel anxiety and stress, but it's what do you do with that that I think is the definition of being courageous or not. But specifically, I think early on, There was a sense of, is this how I should spend my life? So I built companies that were not necessarily based on solving a big problem. I had started really companies to kind of scratch my own itch, but it wasn't an itch necessarily shared by anybody else. And I just thought, oh, this will be fun, so I'm gonna go do it. Well, I learned the hard way how if you really aren't solving a problem, You may or may not have any success going forward. So learning a little bit about what makes the proper foundation for building a sustainable organization was a lesson I learned the hard way. With Literati—

So wait, what do you feel that is other than solving a problem?

You know, CB, if I were starting out today, I don't— and I'm talking about building a profitable company— I don't think I would take the leap unless I was trying to solve a problem. Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Because it could— otherwise it can just be a passion project, which is fine. It's great. I'm not belittling that or suggesting people who want to start something shouldn't. I think you absolutely should. But when it comes to building a sustainable company, I think you have to fall in love with the problem. Everybody talks about following your passion. I think you need to follow the pain. Because if you feel pain around something, there's a good chance somebody else does as well. And if you can identify a pain that a planet's worth of people feel, then you really have a shot. at changing the world. I'm not saying that you can do it. I'm not saying it's easy, but I think you set yourself up with the proper ingredients, the proper foundation for building something sustainable.

You know, I love that. I think you just hit it on the head because as I, um, have joined Clubhouse and I hear all of the people talking about, well, I'm doing this and I'm doing that. And, um, You know, I want to know how to scale my business. And I sit here and I listen for what is the difference, what is the need for your company. I heard a young man last night who had a challenge articulating his value proposition, and it was about, uh, putting together an app. He had developed an app Based upon selling it yourself. And I had trouble figuring out what he was talking about because certainly, you know, we know there's plenty of very successful apps out there that you can sell things on, right? And finally, I realized he was talking about real estate, selling your house yourself. And I thought, okay, what exactly is the pain that he's solving? Yes, there are people who want to sell their houses, but there are so many who don't, who have sold houses before and understand the mechanisms that are involved in selling a house. I'm one of those people, and I would never try to sell a house Myself. Now granted, I'd like to keep the commission money, but is it worth— is like $5,000 worth the headache? I don't think so, not for a really good real estate agent.

You know, I think where some of the most magical innovations and companies come from, where they're born from, is what is The thing the founder sees that nobody else sees, right? Some of our colleagues talk about looking out the window, and what do you see when you look out the window that nobody else sees? And I think those are the times where you end up finding companies that everybody thought this was crazy, this was nuts, but somebody had a vision that was contrarian. But they were right. And that's where I think some of the more life-changing, oh my God, how did that happen sort of organizations come from. And that's what makes this both incredibly difficult and a whole lot of fun.

So what do you say— some reason when you said that, I always think about 3M Sticky. Paper. So simple.

So simple.

So needed, you know. So what do you say to people who want to start their own company, who see the pain and can't figure out, for one reason or another, how to get it off the ground? What, what is the moxie that's needed to get it off the ground? What are the connections that are needed? Who— how do you make the first phone call? All of that stuff, is that something that a coach helps you with, or do you just do as Nike says, you just do it and hope for the best?

I think it is the latter. I, I do think that a coach can help you see your own blind spots. I think that a coach can provide a framework for building courage. Um, I think a coach can share what other individuals have done that might provide a, you know, a gleam of what's possible. But at the end of the day, I think the only way out is through.

Oh, I love— only way out is through. I'm going to quote that one.

Well, I'd love to take, you know, ownership of that, but there are many, many people who, who talk about, you know, this concept. Um, there's a wonderful book by Ryan Holiday called The Obstacle Is the Way. And I absolutely believe that's true. So whether you are, you know, in a growth stage or taking your first step, I think that you must— action is the key. And there's a good chance your action is going to not be what you— is going to provide a result that isn't what you expected, but you had to take that step to learn.

Yeah.

And so I think that's I think that is really important. And, you know, a lot of people, and I'm certainly guilty of this, we let perfection get in the way of progress.

Oh my God, yes.

I trip on that one all the time.

I finally had to learn when somebody said to me that they wouldn't sit on my board because they believe in moving forward. I took that as an insult. But you know what, I developed the concept And this may be— this is probably not right for most of the listeners— of leaping first and then figuring out where I'm going to land.

It's really hard.

It's so hard. But if you really believe that you have something, that's what you have to do.

So this to me is where, when you talk about courage, I think this is a great place where I feel scared and I try to find the courage. So when you do take that leap and you don't yet have your wings and you're falling fast and that plummeting is only accelerating, how do you find it within to right yourself, to reach out and ask for help, to just go in a direction that you don't know if that's the right direction? You, you may absolutely fall to your death, metaphorically speaking. How do you find that while at the same time projecting to the world and your teammates and your investors and your clients and your community some level of clarity and confidence? That to me is the balance of courage because it's leaning a little over your skis, but you need to remain authentic and true And not be deceitful, right? To me, there's nothing more important than building trust, right? So how do you build that trust when the potential for failure is coming at you fast and furious? That's hard.

You know, it may seem hard, but it's not. I don't think for me, and part of it may be all of the situations that I've experienced as a Black woman in corporate America. The abuse that I received made me so much stronger because I thought, you know what, you're just not taking me down. And so part of that leap is it's okay to hit ground. Because you're just— you know you're going to come back. And you're going to come back stronger and swinging powerfully. I remember when I started the Association of Corporate Executive Coaches and reaching out to other association owners and saying, let's partnership with me, or can I be your mentor? And they were like, get out of my way. And don't you dare try this. And every time somebody said that to me, it was like, I got an extra charge in my battery.

Mm-hmm.

So don't ever say no to me because I'm going to fly. But I think that the main thing to answer your question is, as I'm going down, I can see the mattress, the pillows, the trampoline. Probably trampoline is the best visual of it. that I'm going to come right back up. And I'm going to learn from that fall what it is that I need to do. And am I scared? Oh, hell yes. But I can use that scared energy and turn that into positive energy. Does it work all the time? No. But that's OK.

That's exactly right. And the way we got into this part of the conversation was you asked the question, What does it take for that person who's having a little bit of fear or skepticism about taking the first step? And so for me, I'd much rather be falling and learning and picking up wings along the way than staying back at the edge of the cliff wondering what it might be like to take the leap.

Yeah, I think that people that find difficulty in taking that leap Um, it's, it's that confidence that you must have to know it's only the beginning of something new, not the end. It's the end of something old that didn't work, but it's taking that learning. Look, I have a favorite expression which I created. I own it. And it comes from going to the New School for Social Research. And my expression is, the answer is only the beginning of the question.

Hmm.

The answer is only the beginning of the question. So when you look at life like that, you're always seeing possibilities. You're taking those answers and you are looking for, okay, so the question is, where can I fit this that will make a difference to myself and to— if, if that's within your space— others?

That's right.

Right. You don't have to be passionate about it. You just have to make a decision in terms of how you're going to use it. Right? Sometimes passion comes out of that, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you pick up and you do something else. And eventually, what you want to happen, which is your definition of success, will happen.

Which is different for everybody.

It's so different for everybody. And I think part of that is People realizing that it is different. You know, I get teased because 2 years ago I had a house in New Jersey. And I was sitting there thinking, it's time for me to change my life. And so I said, how do you want to change it? I said, well, it's time for me to get married. And a friend of mine said, CB, you're an introvert. You're never going to find a husband staying in your office and working on ACE. And I said, okay, what do I need to do? So I decided to sell my house in the middle of a conference, move across the country from New Jersey to Colorado, didn't have a house or apartment. I lived in a hotel, then finally took an apartment. At the apartment, I said, okay, it's now time to find a husband. I went on eHarmony. I met a guy in 5 days. Last July, we got married.

Fantastic.

And that— 3 months before that, I bought my new house. So yeah, go for it.

Well, as my mom likes to say, nothing is etched in stone.

Nothing is etched in stone. And if you want to change, then you've got to take the risk.

That's right.

The risk was my dog and I got on a plane and said, bye, New Jersey. Now, we have a little bit of time left. I want you to tell me some of the lessons that you learned Barriers that you knocked down, both in your past companies and what you're doing in Literati, to knock down barriers that's allowing you to be the success you are?

Wow. So I think there are internal barriers and then external barriers. Um, you know, on the internal side, it's all about what we just discussed. You know, could I build the confidence to take that leap? And could I convince myself that this was a leap worth taking? And then could I convince others while I'm mid-fall to join me, you know, in that journey? So I think there's that, you know, can you overcome those internal barriers to try to build something that you want to see happen in the world? On the external side, there are innumerable barriers that I feel like we're constantly trying to knock down. And oftentimes, you know, it's rare in my experience that you're able to just blow through a barrier and it just comes tumbling down. It's much more chip, chip, chip, chip, chip.

Yes.

Constantly chipping away at it because that's where all the learning occurs. And so, you know, we've had situations where— I'll give you an example of where we lost trust. So last year, we had a major release to our technology. It was a big upgrade and we were working on it for months prior. And it was all leading up towards a major cultural event, which is called World Cleanup Day. It takes place every September. And our partners were excited and we were excited and our community was excited. And we totally screwed up bad.

How did you screw up?

The technology just didn't work the way it was supposed to. Features were buggy. There were little careless errors, larger, you know, problems. And the what part of it, the, the, the, you know, the, the menu of what was wrong isn't what was important. The single thing that was important is that we had lost people's trust. And what took us—

Why do you think that you lost people's trust? Aren't people used to technology going down now?

Yes, but that was only one of the problems that we had. It wasn't just that our technology failed. It wasn't that, you know, our technology stalled for a minute. It was all of the conversations and meetings and contracts and all of that leading up to this major cultural event that was on the line, and we failed. And, you know, the lesson I learned there with that particular barrier, if you will, was that what took years to build evaporated in seconds. And that, for me— so, so the barrier was how do you now build all that trust back? And that is a really difficult place to be. That is a tough barrier to go through, go around, over the top of. Like, where do you even begin? And so for us it was, okay, how do we turn this disappointment into delight? How do we like lick our wounds? How do we communicate clearly vulnerably, authentically about the mistakes we made and start earning people's trust back, knowing how long of a road it's going to be. That's probably one of the biggest barriers we've ever faced.

You know, uh, I know that for me— and we talked about this a little bit before with trust and taking a leap of faith— I think that trust doesn't get destroyed If you say to people, I'm going to try a pivot, or I'm going to try something new, it may not work, but hang tight with me. You know, I think that the issue that people have with trust corroding is presenting as though this is an idealistic situation. an ideal solution. We're going to come out strong. We're not going to fail. I mean, that just sets up— sets the framework up for breaking trust.

It does. And, you know, there's a great quote which when I'm at my lowest lows, when I'm really down, I often look to. And it's a quote by Teddy Roosevelt, commonly referred to as the man in the arena, or as my wife and I like to say, the man and the woman in the arena. That was recently made popular through Brené Brown's work in her book, Daring Greatly. But I won't go over the whole quote. There's one phrase that really strikes me, which is, it's not the critic who counts. Right? So if you do take that framework that you talked about and you said, look, I don't know how this is going to work out, but this is where I'm going and this is what I'm trying.

Yes.

Come with me on this.

Yes.

I think that is the right come from, and it also allows for people to cheer you on, join you in the movement, offer suggestions, offer criticisms, but it doesn't allow for the person who is not joining you on the ride to sit there and throw stones your way. It's not that critic who counts.

Right.

And there are tons of them. And that's hard, right? It's really hard to do something. It's really hard to build a successful business or organization or make an impact in the world in and of itself when you have people who aren't down in the dirt with you.

The naysayers. Also the naysayers.

Like, I don't personally have the patience And I don't give them— I don't allow them to affect me because it's not their word that counts.

Yeah.

But for those that are along our side, those that are traveling with us, if they say, hey, I'm not sure that you're doing that the right way, absolutely. I think being open to that feedback is great.

That's a different tone.

That's right.

And you must have your personal board of directors to champion you because you do have those moments with— As much as I talk about being brave, let's be real. We are going to have those moments of doubt. And the question is, are we surrounded by people who will say— who are cheerleaders, right? That make those particular moments— and notice I didn't say days or years— those particular moments less severe, less impactful on your life, right? So, Jeff, tell us— we only have 5 minutes left— in Literati, we know it's a huge success, but so do a reveal for us. What, what moment has taken a task on you? What moment Have you said, oh my God, what am I doing? And how did you get through it?

I would love to give you the answer that you want, CB, like that there was some big, you know, moment in time. Um, but if I'm being radically honest with you, those moments happen every day for me. Not question my why. I never do that because it's rooted in a very simple comment that my 2 kids made a long time ago, right? So for me, that is never far behind. For me, it's really clear that our goal, my personal goal, is to leave this place better than I found it. So I never questioned that. But every day I wonder, is there a different way, a more effective way, a faster way, a more impactful way How do we make this continue to work? And so how do I get through that? It is by talking to people like you. It is by connecting with family. It is by just taking a moment to remember my why. It's not easy, and I'm not exaggerating when I say I face it every single day, but it's how do you become aware of that feeling and take it and whip it into an opportunity or get curious about it or put a very positive spin Around, huh, I'm falling right now and I'm getting smacked in the face a lot, but what might happen today that's gonna take me to a place I never imagined that's gonna be that much better?

I love what you're saying. I love it because it's, it's, as a CEO, you're speaking your true north and allowing other people to say, hey, I don't have to be perfect. Here's a man who's incredibly successful And this is how he deals with the doubts. And I want you to please explain— I know that we use this term a lot, and I'm sure that there are tons of people in our audience who don't understand how we're using it today— the why. I know my why. What does that term mean?

Well, I'm not 100% positive that it came from the work of Simon Sinek, but that's where I learned about it.

That's where a lot of people associate it with.

Yeah. And, and so what he— I'll paraphrase, but what he says is that people don't buy what you do or how you do it, they buy why you do it. And so, you know, it's about the bigger thing that you stand for. So for us at Literati, it's about cleaning the planet. What we do, how we— more importantly for us, how we're going about that, that's maybe less important. It's why we do it. It's because we want to leave this place better than we found it. It's because we think that there's a better way to be. So I think that's what people mean when they talk about their why. What is that North Star, the words that you use? What is that bedrock that you can always come back to that points you in the right direction when it's so easy to go astray?

Quickly, can you say, uh, we have 1 minute left, What is, what is it that you feel you've done successfully? And what is it you feel that you could do better with Lina Ratti?

I feel like I've told a pretty clear and concise and compelling story to get us to where we are. And that's exactly what I also think I can start doing a lot better.

This has been fantastic, Jeff. I hate to say goodbye to you. I, you know, there's just so much more that we can get into because I love how you tell the truth.

Well, you don't have to worry because I'm going to be keynoting that conference so we can keep it going.

I think I just got busted. I love it. Well, everyone, thank you so much for tuning in to CB Bowman Live, and don't forget, on Thursday we come back on an hour earlier And that's the day that we look at our race situation in the world, and we look at it from a no shame, no blame conversation. So I look forward to seeing you on Thursday. And of course, next Tuesday we have another power-packed guest. Jeff, thank you so much.

My pleasure, CB. It was a pleasure being here.