In this EO Unlimited talk, Nir Zavaro opens with a playful audience exercise, asking participants to take a funny photo of the person next to them and later turn that moment into a story. He then illustrates the power of storytelling through a series of personal anecdotes: his childhood dream of becoming a Formula 1 driver, his passion for snowboarding in New Zealand, and an unexpected break into Olympic commentary where he taught himself luge, skeleton and bobsleigh in three weeks, becoming Israel’s sole commentator for those sports. Zavaro recounts his path into EO, describing his initial confusion, the “cult‑like” perception of the organization, and how he eventually aligned his personal mission – meeting as many people as possible and doing good – with EO’s values. Over three years he served on the regional council, grew his solo business, lost weight, traveled, and embraced a service‑first mindset, echoing a JFK quote about giving without expecting return. The core of the talk focuses on his current project: collecting member stories to create a “culture book” for EO. He explains how, after attending 17 chapters and meeting 160 people in a storytelling workshop, he realized that a book of 100 stories was just a starting point. The goal is now to continuously gather narratives that capture EO’s culture and share them both within the organization and with external audiences (students, mentees, etc.). He invites anyone interested to contribute. Throughout, Zavaro emphasizes the need to understand the “box” before thinking outside it, the importance of service, and the simple but powerful habit of ending conversations with “If you ever need anything, call me.” He concludes by urging the audience to imagine their own “man walks into a bar” scenario, turn it into a story, and go achieve their goals.
He did 17 chapters in 25 days. Nir from Israel is going to tell us something about creating your own story.
Yes, going after Santorini, that's a bad choice. How's everyone? You good? Can I ask you for a favor? Take out your mobile phones, please. All of you, take out your mobile phones. It's not to take a picture of me, don't worry about it. Quickly, look at the person next to you. Take a funny picture, please. Okay? When you go home, remember to tell that story to someone when they ask why you have this stupid question on your phone. So this is how you create a story. Thank you. I hope you learned. Are you awake now?
Can we start?
So let me tell you a very short story. A man walks into a bar. Think about it for a second. Can you imagine the bar? Can you imagine the man? The smell? How many people are there? How does it look? Why did he show up? What did he do before? What is he going to do after? Are you at the bar? Because it's amazing— one sentence, long story. Every one of you has had a different story in their mind just now. So imagine if you could create those stories at any given moment, go into your mind, create them, and then follow them, make them your reality. Being a storyteller is just that. Doing those things. You know, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a racing driver. Not just any racing driver, I wanted to be a Formula 1 driver. I admired Michael Schumacher. That was the big thing. I watched all the races, I watched everything, I read all the magazines. In the 1990s, we couldn't watch them in my own language, so we had to watch them on RTL in German. My German still sucks. I knew all the names of the racing drivers, the circuits, teens, and the only thing in German we learned as teenagers was the ad, meet Kornbacher. That was the only thing we learned. But I never gave up. I always wanted to do something with racing in Israel. I just never knew what. So I finished the army after 3 years of service. I went traveling and I fell in love with snowboarding. I snowboarded a whole season in New Zealand. It was unbelievable. It's probably the only place I left crying. And the only thing I wanted to do is do snowboarding. I live in a country that has 10 months of sun, and today in Tel Aviv it's 38 degrees. So I managed to find a snowboard shop, and I got a job. I was there for about 5 years, never giving up about the idea of doing something with racing cars. So a few years passed. I was sitting at home with my friends. I was bored, and I said, I want to do something different, something exciting. I get a phone call a few hours later. from a very good friend from college. And he says, how's it going?
Good.
How about you?
Good.
So listen, I've been hired by the Israeli, um, sports channel. We just got the license to do the Summer Olympics in 2 years. And I said, cool, how can I help? So he said, so the problem is, in order to get that license, in 3 months we have to present the Winter Olympics in Israel. We don't know anything about it, and someone told me you know snowboarding. Can you help? Being as bored as I was, I said, sure, why not? And I started collecting all these people to join and help do some sort of commentary on the Olympics. We had 2 and a half months. The problem was all of us know a bit of snowboard or a bit of ski. That was it. And there were a lot of people who knew more than I did because I already quit the profession, or whatever you want to call it. So I really wanted to be on TV, like really. So everyone I called said, sweet, I'd rather do snowboard or do ski. And I said, I need to figure out a different way. I went online, I checked everything, and I think I found it. So a couple of weeks passed, we got into the meetings, I meet the producers, and they say, so are you gonna commentate snowboard? And I said, no, I found the best people, they're outside. So what are you gonna do? I looked at them and said, I will commentate all the luge, skeleton, and bobsleigh, all the competitions. And they said, what do you know about these things? And I said, well, absolutely nothing, which is something you can't say in Israel in a meeting. But trust me, in 3 weeks I will be the best at this. What they didn't know, that till this day, and I've done 2 Olympics, I'm the only one who commentates about these things in Israel. So I will always be the best. I'm the only one. So, of course, And that led me to thinking that every time we go into a meeting, we do stuff for clients, everyone says, let's think outside of the box. But sometimes you first need to understand what the box is in order to enjoy thinking outside of the box. So the second thing is, um, you know how you joined EO, you didn't get it, it was like a strange cult, only you find out after you pay you don't get a mask and a cape? So, in 2015, I woke up in the morning, went out of the house. It was red. The sky was red. It looked like hell. And I thought the world was over. Oh, I was hungover. I had just had a very long drinking night the night before. I finished raising 100% in 96 hours for my crowdfunding campaign to write my second novel. Well, everybody thought I'd finished it. I had 3 chapters. So I felt that the right thing to do as a struggling author was to fly to Berlin, sit and write in coffee shops. This way I can avoid drinking and other stuff you usually don't do in Berlin. The moment I posted the first Instagram picture, I got a message from a good friend saying, hi, in 6 hours we will land in Berlin for my bachelor party. One of the guys is bailing, we need help. And I thought, that's a great way to get experiences for my book. So 48 hours passed, but the funny thing is, when we met, one of the guys that came into the van used to be my army sergeant, the one that made my life hell for 3 years. I couldn't stand the guy. And we started to talk and chat, and apparently over the years he's moved to Seattle in the US, built a business, has done stuff. We had some meaningful conversations. It was very interesting. And I told him about my struggles, about my business. I'm a solopreneur and all that. We like to tell all these—
Stories.
Weird stories. And he says, boy, do I have something interesting for you. When I go back to Seattle, I will call you. A few weeks pass, he actually did call, introduced me to the Israeli chapter, and I joined because I was already looking for something. The problem was, um, I don't know, how about you, I just didn't get it. It wasn't like, what am I doing here? So I thought about quitting, and then I look at my mission statement in life which is to meet as many people as I can on the planet and do good. So kind of simple. So I decided I needed a new goal. So my goal was that I want to be happy when I pay my dues at EO. And I've given 3 years. Just so you understand, I had a very small business when I joined. I actually asked if it's okay if I come because it'd be embarrassing. So 3 years, I'll do anything.
That's great.
I'll do everything you ask me. I joined— for the past 3 years I've been serving on the regional council, having fun, meeting a lot of people. The amazing thing is when I joined and I said I want to have some sort of value— does it have anything to do with money? Can you measure happiness? So I said it doesn't really matter as long as I feel I am getting value. I met hundreds of people. I lost weight. I'm working on it again, but I lost weight. I started to run. My business grew. I had more fun. Different things happened. I started traveling around the world. And in the end, this year I was very happy, and last year very happy to pay my dues. And it took me 3 years to get to where I wanted, not just in the business but also in EO. So what I did in order to do this is basically the famous quote by JFK. By the way, he's not a founding member. I checked. You know, every event you go, people will say they were founding member. And the, the life is give without expecting anything in return. Have fun, that's where the magic happens. And sometimes we're getting asked to do something in EO and we're like voluntold and all these things, but what if we didn't care what's in it for us? Same goes for helping people and doing other stuff. One of the best sentences I love when I go to GLC or ELC or stuff like that Is when you finish a conversation with another EO, and I always finish it by saying, "If you ever need anything, call me." So easy and so simple. By the way, when they call, it's usually unbelievable, huge fun. So it's a big part of what you want to achieve. Sorry. So a quick sorry. So I don't know how many of you know. But for some weird reason, I love stories. So, um, last year I went to this EO event. It was great, had a good time, learned a lot. During the drinks, I asked a member, tell me, um, how did you meet your wife? And the guy went on telling me this amazing story about a celebrity wedding, and he wanted to go, but he just didn't get a ticket. That, that's how big the wedding was. And his best mate said, don't worry, you can go with my sister, she has no one to go with. She said, okay, one thing though. The moment we get into the event, I want to find a husband, so you have to screw off and not stay. They went in together. 15 minutes afterwards, they left together. They've been married. They have 4 kids. So I heard that story and I said, I really need to get married. But on top of that, I loved it. I love the concept and I love the story. So the next morning I said, I think I have an idea. By lunchtime I said the idea is not good. It went back and forth for a few months, kind of like an entrepreneurial life, right? I'm happy, I'm not happy. I mean, we don't have money. How are we going to do it? And then I spoke to the regional council and I said, I think I have an idea. If you guys don't mind, I want to go and collect stories. So in September of 2018, I had the huge pleasure of Going to 17 of your chapters and meeting more than 160 different people doing a workshop about storytelling. And the idea was to see if we can collect 100 stories. But the real take-home value for me was that was the beginning. That was my MVP. That was my beta test. It didn't really matter. I want to collect more and more stories. And I learned it's not 100 people's stories. It's not just a book. It could be our culture book. So we are still trying to collect those stories and still trying to create what is our culture book. How will it look like? We know so many things. The problem is we are not very good in EO in writing those stories and passing them onwards, also to people outside— your kids, students who come up to you, people you mentor outside of EO, doesn't matter. We have so many things we can give them. So if anyone wants to still join I will collect those stories. We will make that book. It will be our culture book. But I decided to own it. It's my experience, and it doesn't matter where I started. Now is where I want to go. So that's a big part of what I want to do. So if you have one line of a story— a man walks into a bar— imagine your bar. Imagine what you want to achieve. Now go get it. Thank you. Thank you.
Nir! Thank you so much. Yes, as I told you, we are
