Likeable Radio Interview - Dr Chris Stout

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Radio, covering inspiration, leadership, marketing and more. And now, here are your likable hosts, Dave Kirpin and Meg Reddinger.

Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of Likable Radio.

It's great to be with you, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, my name is Dave Kirpin.

I'm your host.

And Meg, you are here with us today. And Chad, you are on the other side of the glass. How you doing, man? You know, you know, I'm in New York. I'm in New York.

Yes.

And I'm just happy to be here.

I know, it's very exciting. I'm great. How are you, Dave?

Isn't it great?

It is great. It's good to be here, Chad.

It's great to be here. The sun is shining. I don't care how cold it is outside, because I'm. I'm doing this show from the comfort of Chad's awesome studio in the heart of New York City. And I'm just. I'm just in a good mood, Meg.

I know you are. It's great.

Happy to be here. Speaking of being in a good mood, we have a really good guy on today. And a little bit we're gonna talk to Dr. Chris Stout, a true humanitarian. He's actually been called the accidental humanitarian. We'll have to find out a little bit more about that. Meg, are you a humanitarian?

I wouldn't call. No, I don't think so. I mean, I donate to charities, but I wouldn't call myself a humanitarian.

I think you're a humanitarian.

You do?

I think that each and every one of us can be a humanitarian. All about. It's a state of mind. Are you there for yourself first? Are you there for others first? And if you can be there for others first in any given day, in any given hour, in any given moment, then in that moment you're a humanitarian.

Okay, good. Good to know. That's a nice little point.

So you're a humanitarian.

So are you, Dave.

Congratulations. And ladies and gentlemen, wherever you are, listening, and there are over a hundred countries of you listening now, which I'm just blown away by, you too, can be a humanitarian in your day to day lives. One of the things we're going to be asking Dr. Stout about is the fact that he founded a kindergarten in Tanzania. And so I thought, I've got to share the story with you about how I helped to start a school in Tanzania.

You did?

Myself.

How so, Dave?

Well, it was in likable social media that obviously Meg read cover to cover. It was one of the Very first fundraisers that was ever conducted in social media, it was about five years ago. I got a tweet from somebody named Meshug Avi. And for those of you that are not of the Jewish persuasion, meshug, it basically means, like, a joker, maybe even a loser. A meshug can't get his act together.

Okay.

So I get a tweet from Mishugavi saying he's looking for people to help. They're thinking about doing a fundraiser. So I respond and say, okay, cool. Tell me more. And, you know, we start a conversation via Twitter. I don't really know. I've never met him, mind you. And it turns out he was working with somebody named Stacy Monk, who had a very small nonprofit called Epic Change, and she had a vision to do some fundraising on Twitter. This was back in the early days, so nobody had ever, ever done anything like this before. Now, her vision was to do something around Thanksgiving.

Okay, here's the.

Here's the catch. It was seven days before Thanksgiving when she had this idea. It was literally seven days until Thanksgiving. And we got. We jumped on a phone call with Stacy, and my wife and I talked through her idea, and she basically had this idea to do this event called Tweetsgiving. And within just a few days, I'm very proud of the fact that we helped her take that vision and make it a reality. And for the 48 hours of Thanksgiving, I want to say, I think it was, like, five years ago. It was 2008. And for the 48 hours of Thanksgiving and the day after in 2008, we asked people to give $10. And for every $10, you would get a brick with your Twitter handle written on it. And we built a school in Tanzania with the $11,000 that we raised in 48 hours from individual donors, all giving $10 each.

That's a great story. And you know what? I did know that.

Yeah. Yeah, you did. The thing is, I was just amazed by the power of social media to get people to give donations to something that they didn't know at all. To me, that was really, really cool. And it almost seems like it doesn't seem like a big deal anymore, because now with Kickstarter and Indiegogo and all these other fundraising organizations using social media to raise money, it doesn't seem as innovative or as shocking as it was back then.

But the early days of Twitter, that probably was a pretty big game changer for you to see how quickly things could evolve.

It was really an amazing experience. And, of course, I never been to Tanzania but there is a school with my Twitter handle on it.

Wow. Do you know the name of the school?

Yes, of course. It was the Shepherd's Junior High School in Tanzania, in Arusha, Tanzania. And we went on to do tweetsgiving for a few years. And Epic Change continues to grow as a nonprofit. And just an amazing example of how not only can social media be instrumental in bringing about change, but we can all be humanitarians. We really all can be humanitarians, and social media just connects us all even more, and it makes the world even smaller than it is. So that's one of the reasons I'm so darn excited about social media. It's a wonderful thing. Well, in other news, my daughter doesn't want to play tennis.

No. Why not?

I'm really annoyed. Meg. I signed her up for tennis. I was super excited because my favorite sport to play, and I signed her up for tennis. She's 10, and she's not feeling the tennis right now.

I think that she's got to try it.

What do I do?

I don't know. I know that I was the least athletic child, and I wish my parents pushed me more because I can't play anything. We do likable sports, and I am the one on the sideline yelling for everyone. It's embarrassing.

I gotta push Joshua. You want me to push her, but I never want to push my kids for anything as a parent. But you wish your parents had pushed you more.

I do.

But if they had pushed you, would you have done sports?

I would have tried at least. I don't know. I don't think I gave it enough of a shot.

Huh.

Well, it's food for thought. I'm gonna think about it. Well, that's an interesting segue, but from humanitarianism and social media to Meg's in athleticism, to Meg and my daughter's perhaps in athleticism and back to humanitarianism. Because when we come back, we will be joined by my fellow LinkedIn influencer, Dr. Chris Stout. You don't want to go anywhere. He is one of the most impressive people I've ever met, and he will be with us when we come back.

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You're listening to Likable Radio. Be sure to interact with us on Twitter using the handle ikableradio. Now here's more with your hosts, Dave Kirpin and Meg Rettinger.

Welcome back to the show. Today I'm very excited to introduce Dr. Chris Stout. He is the founding director of the center for Global Initiatives. He is a person of incredible numbers. He's been listed on the TED conference's founder, Richard Saul Wurman's who's really who 1000 the most creative individuals in America. Chris has published more than 30 books, which are translated into eight languages. He's traveled to over 85 countries in the world and has won four honorary doctorates. Welcome to the show. Chris.

Nice to be here. Thanks, Mike.

Thanks for joining us today. Chris. Four honorary doctorates. I think I need to hear about those first. Where have you been honorarily?

Dr. I have my original degree was a doctor in psychology from Forest Institute, which is in Missouri. And then that was a million years ago. And then in the last two years, I received a doctorate in technology from the Purdue University School of Engineering. I received a Doctor of Humane Letters from my alma mater at Forrest. I received a doctor of Humanities from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. And I received a PhD honorary PhD from the Argosy University's School for Psychology.

That's it. Yep.

That's all I'm telling you. You got to stop being so lazy and get out.

I know. You sound like my mom. She says the same thing.

Tell us a little bit about the center for Global Initiatives.

It's a nonprofit that I started, kind of started doing the work in it in the early and mid 2000s. And then we got our approval from the IRS in 2007 to be 501 fully fledged charity. 501. And we started off doing a variety of different kinds of projects with some individuals that I had opportunities to meet with in some of the travels that I was doing. And then one thing led to another and my mentor basically said, you know, you're doing all this work and you're funding all this out of your own pocket. It would be, you know, more appropriate. You'd have more opportunities and avenues available to you to be a 501. So he was an attorney. His wife was an attorney. And they everyone with our center, we're all volunteers. We don't take salaries or stipends or anything. And they volunteered and went through that process and got it going for us. And subsequently we still have the projects that we started off with, but as we're all volunteers, we sort of hit a capacity limit so now we're sort of evolving since 2003 into moving more towards providing tools for other individuals that want to be involved in humanitarian projects or work or helping others start their own 501. And we do all those kinds of things pro bono.

So I did a little bit of digging on your background, and it looks as though you started a kindergarten in Tanzania. Can you tell us that story?

Yeah, it was really kind of a neat thing, A lot of the work going super far back in the 90s. One of the things that I was doing back then was a lot of climbing. And I always wanted to climb Kilimanjaro in Africa and Tanzania. And in the process of doing that, I met this one fellow who was working sort of as a porter supporting climbs. And he was doing that to work his way through paying for tuition for seminary. And we kept in touch over the years, and one thing led to another, and he was working with orphan children in Tanzania. And he asked me if I had any knowledge or contacts or any skill set in terms of being able to help them found a kindergarten. So this is all before the center for Global Initiatives formally existed or anything. So I just kind of went through my network of friends and I knew some high school principals, I knew some administrators, I knew a lot of teachers. And I just sort of sent out a calling all cars email and said, hey, I'm working on this project. I know, you know, 10% about education and stuff. You guys are really the experts, but could you help me maybe put together sort of like a model curriculum for a kindergarten for kindergarten level stuff? And this is in Tanzania, so it's, you know, it needs to be relatively, you know, non America centric sort of a thing. Don't expect that there's a lot of resources or abundant supplies or heavily involved parents or anything. These are orphaned children, et cetera. And I just had a great groundswell of people, you know, giving me materials and things like that, put them all together, got them organized and snail mailed them over to them. And then one thing led to another. And my contact there that I had climbed with submitted it to the Ministry of Education in Tanzania. And about eight months later, we got word back that the ministry had accepted it. And we were able to actually found the kindergarten based upon the curriculum and what we had put together. So subsequently we done a variety of fundraising projects and things like that. This is one of the projects that we've kept in touch with, and we provide materials and we provide different kinds of resources. And in 2014 or 15, we're looking to expand into thinking about being able to give consultation for kids that have special education kinds of needs, so to speak, or learning disabilities or autistic children as well, which was something that we never had the scale or ability to do before. And now we're partnering with others in Tanzania to help deliver around that.

What an amazing story.

Yeah, it's really. I tell you, when you sort of find out what an individual can do and working together with others in a very short period of time with a shoestring budget, it's really kind of neat to see how that can scale elsewhere.

So Dave and Chris met through the LinkedIn influencer program, and I just was wondering how have your experiences with the center of Global Initiatives helped play a role in this, in your writing?

I was sort of trying to find my way, I think, when I first started off, you know, as an influencer and writing about different kinds of things. And one of the. Another mentor of mine, you know, was sort of kind of challenging me on what I was writing and where I was going. And it sort of evolved into trying to write more like a lot of the. Probably the last half dozen or more. I've really been talking about global health issues, which is kind of one of our special focuses, humanitarian interventionism and things like that. So I've really tried to use that as an opportunity to kind of vet ideas and share resources and things. And I've tried to be very heavy in my influencer pieces to have lots of links to resources. So when we talk about things or whatever in it, we talk a lot about tools. I've done things on, like, humanitarian toolboxes, and I talked about what I called philanthropy for the rest of us, you know, what we can do in even small micro loan kinds of ways or small donation kinds of ways, that we'll never be a Gates or a buffet or something like that, but that doesn't mean that we still can't have a wonderful impact and maybe just do it at a smaller scale. So it's been a great opportunity. And just as LinkedIn influencers can sort of track who they're connecting with and who they're getting a following from, I found that I have a great deal from Asia and from India and from Bangladesh. So I feel like I'm getting kind of good traction from areas that I hope to be able to reach out to that without LinkedIn, I don't know that I would have been able to get there at least as quickly as it seems to be doing now.

Chris, tell us a little bit about your new book, the New Inspiration, Innovations and Blueprints for Visionaries.

Thank you. I'm really excited about it. Kind of in my process of feeling my way through and figuring out how this nonprofit world works and things like that, I have worked with a lot of colleagues that were just really doing some amazing stuff. I had done some work years ago. I'd been invited to do some things with the World Economic Forum and had chances to meet some really cool people like Mehmet Oz and others. And Mehmet was gracious enough to write the foreword for our book. And basically I saw these people with these great nonprofits or these great NGOs and I thought, how is it that they did that? And everybody's story was a little different. Some people had kind of cashed out of the business world and were now kind of bankrolling their own work. Other people had just sort of done their stuff on a shoestring. The books are turned to one book turned into actually another book turned into another book. So there's actually three volumes of them focused on different kinds of things. One's education, one's health care, and one's sustainability. And each chapter is actually based upon an interview with whoever it is that's the founder or the current director of these different kinds of organizations. And again about. It was a very non scientific way that I went about picking them because I very biasedly picked the ones that I thought were cool organizations that I had always respected, like Doctors Without Borders or Amnesty International that I hadn't worked with. And the balance were a lot of organizations with people that I had worked with that I just thought were really cool people doing really amazing things. And I wanted to deconstruct, to learn, hey, how did you do it? So I can learn some tips or some tricks to be able to start my own. So in the process of doing that and wanting to know that I had a very nice relationship with my publisher Prager, and kind of pitched the idea to them as a book. And it was kind of a neat triple win because it was an opportunity to give voice to these other organizations and get them greater exposures. An opportunity for me to learn at a much finer grain level how it was they did what they did. And it was an opportunity to then get these books out to people so that they could perhaps gain inspiration or learn more about organizations that they perhaps had some interest in, that you'd learn other kinds of things that you wouldn't necessarily see in their general promotional materials or what would be on their website. So it was really kind of a labor of love to be able to do. It took about a year and a half of interviews and edits and rewrites and things, but I was just really, really pleased to have it come out and nice to have it be available to the masses.

Fantastic. And congrats on that.

Thanks.

So we're going to switch gears. We have time for one last question that we ask all of our guests. What would you pinpoint as your biggest career mistake and what have you learned from it?

We could probably spend an hour about the multitude of mistakes, I suppose, but I guess sort of off the top of my. What it makes me think of. I gave a talk a couple of years ago, and I entitled it the Accidental Humanitarian, because I sort of felt like I was kind of like the Mr. Magoo of the kinds of stuff that I do that I wasn't really. I sort of. I thought I had a plan, and I did have a plan. I was going in a certain kind of direction. But I guess, you know, what would have. I don't know if this. Maybe I'll tweak your question a little bit, but sort of like the mistakey part of it was that I thought, this is how it works. I've seen what these cool people and their cool organizations do, and I just sort of imagined that there wouldn't be problems, there wouldn't be stumbling points and there wouldn't be roadblocks and things like that, which was really a mistake. And then in the process of trying to get mine up and going and do the kind of work that we're doing, I found that a lot of the things that we wound up doing, like the kindergarten, wasn't my idea. I didn't have, like, some, you know, needs assessment that I went into Tanzania and said, oh, we should do a kindergarten, or, oh, we should do this. And I've just sort of let myself be open to that of the people that we work with and collaborate with and partner with to let them kind of lead and sort of like a jazz ensemble, they can lead, and I can kind of fill in the background and do what I can do to be able to support that lead. And I think that's kind of the next evolution of my career in the nonprofit area with what we'll be doing with the center for Global Initiatives.

Well, thank you for sharing that and thank you for sharing your story with us, Chris. You know, you really have done some amazing things and proven that any of us perhaps can become accidental humanitarians if we pay attention to the world around us and the opportunities that exist. If you want to learn more about the amazing work that Dr. Kristout is doing, please do check out centerforglobalinitiatives.org you can check out the new humanitarians at bookstores everywhere, including Amazon. And thanks again for joining us.

My pleasure. Thanks, Dave. Thanks, Meg. Great to talk with you.

Great to talk with you.

And we'll be right back to wrap up after this.

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here at likeable Radio want to hear from you. Please leave us your reviews on our itunes page and tell us what you think of the show. Now back to Dave Kirpin and Meg Reddinger.

Welcome back. This is Dave and Meg and we just had Chris Stout on. Chris is one of those people that on the one hand is very, very impressed. On the other hand, kind of makes you feel like, what are you doing with your life?

Kind of.

And that's how I felt. But it's funny. I have actually a very funny story along the same lines that I, that I have never. The story that you've never heard. Meg, I love these. Yeah, it took. I was, I was 22 years old and I was single. I was dating at the time and I went out with this girl

and

it was a first date, you know, a lot of the line, first date, you're trying to figure out, you know, what you're doing. And so at the time I was working in sales, but I had studied education. And I, and I remember saying to her, you know, I'm really passionate about education. So even though I'm not teaching now, I'm hoping to one day go, you know, sort of into teaching and go back to what I had studied to do. I really want to make the world a better place. And I think that maybe being a teacher is how I can do it. And I said, what is your vision for what you want to do? And she looked right back at me. She goes, I'm very actively involved in campaigning to end a human slave trade. And I was like, oh, well, that's awesome of you. And I'm a horrible person that is sitting here on a radio sales job and thinking, I'm going to save the world by just teaching. And teaching is obviously very important, but I just remember thinking, wow, you are a better person than I am.

Yeah, that's tough. Tough on a first date.

Tough on a first date, Right.

Really changes the mood there.

I totally changed the mood right away. And I was like, well, you are a humanitarian and I am a lazy, fat, you know, idiot. But seriously, I think that actually hearing Chris is quite an inspiration. And I haven't worked with his organization, but I've worked with some amazing organizations like Pencils of Promise and donors Choose.

I love donorschoose.

I actually have worked with a lot of organizations that are changing the way humanitarianism can happen now. And that's one of the amazing things about the world we live in now is, you know, you don't have to travel the world in order to change it. Change it in order to change it. I couldn't have said it better myself, of course. You know, we've been working together long enough that we can finish each other's things.

That's right. Now it's just about a year now.

It's very exciting. We have to have a party for the year anniversary.

We will.

Well, speaking of partying, this has been a party as always, and I am deeply grateful to each and every one of you for listening, listening and for sharing your reviews and your feedback with us. You can tweet us anytime at likable radio. You can tweet me at Dave Kirpin. Until next time, this is Meg and Dave saying, have a likable day.

You've been listening to likable radio with hosts Dave Kirpin and Meg Revenger. The executive producer is Chad Dugatz. Likable radio is recorded at the hangar studios in New York City. Please leave us your reviews on our itunes page. If you have a comment or suggestion for the show, please email us@radioikable.com and be sure to interact with us on Twitter using the handle ikableradio as we work to build a more likable world. I'm Chad Dugatz. Have a likable day.