WEBVTT - Cindy Gallop: “MakeLoveNotPorn” Founder 0:00:00.440 --> 0:00:04.240 I'm Jesse Hemple, host of Hello Monday. In my twenties, 0:00:04.320 --> 0:00:07.120 I knew what I wanted for my career, But from 0:00:07.120 --> 0:00:09.320 where I am now, in the middle of my life, 0:00:09.800 --> 0:00:15.480 nothing feels ascertain. Works changing, We're changing, and there's no 0:00:15.600 --> 0:00:17.840 guidebook for how to make sense of any of it. 0:00:19.120 --> 0:00:22.360 So every Monday, I bring you conversations with people who 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:26.200 are thinking deeply about work and where it fits into 0:00:26.200 --> 0:00:30.680 our lives. We talk about making career pivots, about purpose 0:00:30.760 --> 0:00:34.120 and how to discern it, about where happiness fits into 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:37.880 the mix, and how to ask for more money. Come 0:00:37.960 --> 0:00:41.040 join us in the Hello Monday community. Let's figure out 0:00:41.080 --> 0:00:45.240 the future together. Listen to Hello Monday with Jesse Hemple 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:48.280 wherever you get your podcasts. 0:00:49.600 --> 0:00:51.839 Welcome back to sheep Pivots. I'm Cindy Gallop. 0:01:02.560 --> 0:01:06.160 Welcome to she Pivots, the podcast where we talk with 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:09.520 women who dared to pivot out of one career and 0:01:09.640 --> 0:01:13.920 into something new and explore how their personal lives impacted 0:01:13.920 --> 0:01:22.080 these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman. Welcome back 0:01:22.120 --> 0:01:26.600 to she Pivots. I'm your host Emily Tish Sussman. Today 0:01:26.720 --> 0:01:29.839 we've got a guest who calls herself the Michael Bay 0:01:30.040 --> 0:01:33.280 of business, so basically, she likes to blow shit up. 0:01:33.840 --> 0:01:37.240 I'm so excited to share my conversation with the remarkable 0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:41.679 Cindy Gallup. Cindy started her career in the eighties and 0:01:41.720 --> 0:01:44.119 climbed her way to the top of the advertising world, 0:01:44.560 --> 0:01:47.360 snagging the Advertising Woman of the Year title in two 0:01:47.400 --> 0:01:51.040 thousand and three. Then, on her forty fifth birthday, she 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:55.840 had what she describes as her personal midlife crisis. Never 0:01:55.920 --> 0:01:58.840 thinking she'd be an advertising her whole life, she took 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:01.880 a leap of faith, leaving behind the agency she'd been 0:02:01.920 --> 0:02:05.160 with for over fifteen years and not fully knowing her 0:02:05.200 --> 0:02:09.280 next steps. A staunch feminist, Cindy has changed how we 0:02:09.480 --> 0:02:12.919 as a society think and talk about sex through her 0:02:12.960 --> 0:02:16.160 ted talk Make Love Not Porn, where she launched her 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:19.560 company of the same name, centered around the idea of 0:02:19.600 --> 0:02:23.720 sex positivity and celebrating quote real world sex, Cindy is 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:27.000 tackling the stigmatization of sex and hoping to promote sex 0:02:27.080 --> 0:02:31.680 education through real world demonstration. Throughout her life, Cindy has 0:02:31.680 --> 0:02:34.919 continued to push and question the boundaries set by society 0:02:34.960 --> 0:02:38.240 and as a result, has curated a life truly her own. 0:02:38.960 --> 0:02:41.400 She says, if Sheryl Sandberg wants us to lean in 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:45.360 within the existing system, she wants to redesign the system. 0:02:46.000 --> 0:02:49.320 And there's no question she is doing just that. Let's 0:02:49.360 --> 0:02:49.960 dive right in. 0:02:55.200 --> 0:02:57.920 So I'm Cyndi Up. I'm the founder and CEO of 0:02:58.120 --> 0:03:01.800 Make Love nor Poom. We all pro sex pro pawn 0:03:02.160 --> 0:03:03.560 pro knowing the difference. 0:03:04.120 --> 0:03:05.880 So you were born in the UK. We're going all 0:03:05.880 --> 0:03:08.240 the way back. We're going all the way back, right, 0:03:08.639 --> 0:03:11.040 But you grew up in Brunei, that's right? 0:03:11.160 --> 0:03:13.320 Yes, how long were you there for? 0:03:13.720 --> 0:03:15.280 What was that move? What was that community? 0:03:15.400 --> 0:03:15.480 Like? 0:03:16.240 --> 0:03:20.639 So my father was English, my mother is Malaysia and Chinese, 0:03:20.760 --> 0:03:23.600 and my father's passed away. My mother is ninety living 0:03:23.600 --> 0:03:26.880 in London. But basically I was born in the UK, 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:30.080 as you say. But when I was six, my father 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:33.040 got a job in Brunei, and you know, he met 0:03:33.040 --> 0:03:36.680 my mother in Singapore and my father just absolutely loved 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:39.640 Asia and very much wanted to move back there and 0:03:39.720 --> 0:03:42.560 live and work. And equally, obviously, you know, that was 0:03:42.560 --> 0:03:44.920 where my mother has family, so she was very happy 0:03:44.960 --> 0:03:46.960 to go back there as well. And so my father 0:03:46.960 --> 0:03:49.080 got a job as an assistant head master of a 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:52.600 school in Brunei and we moved there in nineteen sixty six. 0:03:53.120 --> 0:03:56.240 Wow, So were you living as part of a British 0:03:56.280 --> 0:03:59.520 community like English international English speaking community. 0:03:59.680 --> 0:04:02.800 Not now case. No, because my father got a jobb 0:04:02.800 --> 0:04:05.640 as head master at one of the local Brunei schools. 0:04:06.000 --> 0:04:09.440 There certainly were expat communities, but they were focused around 0:04:09.440 --> 0:04:11.560 the fact that there was a lot of oil in 0:04:11.600 --> 0:04:15.960 Brunei still is, and so Shell and BP had very 0:04:16.040 --> 0:04:19.520 significant expat communities there. The rest of the expats were 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:22.680 a bit ad hoc, and certainly in the places we 0:04:22.680 --> 0:04:26.320 were living Qualabolite and then Tutoon, there were not many 0:04:26.320 --> 0:04:27.160 other experts. 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:30.960 So what was that like to to adjust to acclimate, 0:04:31.000 --> 0:04:32.159 to learn the language. 0:04:32.839 --> 0:04:35.040 Well, I would say that growing up in Brunei is 0:04:35.040 --> 0:04:38.560 a lot more boring than it sounds, because it's an 0:04:38.680 --> 0:04:42.200 orthodox Muslim state. It's one hundred miles long. When we 0:04:42.200 --> 0:04:44.760 were there, the population was two hundred thousand. I don't 0:04:44.800 --> 0:04:47.919 know what it is these days. But my parents would 0:04:47.960 --> 0:04:50.719 regularly apologize to me and my sisters for our childhood 0:04:51.200 --> 0:04:57.520 because Brunei was distinctly lacking in more international cultural pursuits, 0:04:58.160 --> 0:05:01.120 and so for English speakers that there was not a 0:05:01.120 --> 0:05:04.520 lot going on. My father, you know, loved Malay culture. 0:05:04.920 --> 0:05:07.640 You know, he would do regular walking tours into the 0:05:07.760 --> 0:05:11.440 jungles of Borneo, you know, the center Borneo. But in 0:05:11.480 --> 0:05:15.000 our case, honestly, you know, it was a wee bit tedious. 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:18.080 What ages were you there for? 0:05:18.960 --> 0:05:21.400 So we moved there. I was six and when I 0:05:21.480 --> 0:05:24.200 was fourteen, my parents sent me and my next sister, 0:05:24.200 --> 0:05:27.760 Annabelle back to the UK to go to boarding school. 0:05:28.040 --> 0:05:30.880 But because my father worked for the Brunei government, they 0:05:31.040 --> 0:05:34.120 paid for us to go back to Brunei for vacations 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:37.880 twice a year until we turned twenty one or completed 0:05:37.920 --> 0:05:41.200 full time education, you know, whichever came first, And so 0:05:41.320 --> 0:05:44.040 we would go back twice a year on vacation from 0:05:44.279 --> 0:05:47.240 university and then I guess it's indicative that, you know, 0:05:47.320 --> 0:05:50.000 once the government paid for leave ran out, we never 0:05:50.040 --> 0:05:53.480 went back. My parents understood it wasn't the most inflating 0:05:53.480 --> 0:05:55.440 place in the world, so they were fine with that. 0:05:55.920 --> 0:05:58.360 I just I think this background is so interesting because 0:05:58.920 --> 0:06:00.520 you talk a lot about you know, we're going to 0:06:00.560 --> 0:06:03.520 skip ahead later to the culture that we're in and 0:06:03.560 --> 0:06:08.360 how people are raised and the ideologies around sex and intimacy, 0:06:08.920 --> 0:06:12.719 and actually you had quite a different upbringing than the 0:06:12.880 --> 0:06:16.479 US or even Western culture in general. So how do 0:06:16.560 --> 0:06:20.559 you think the Eastern Asian piece played into your thinking 0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:23.520 around what is culture and what are cultural constructs? 0:06:23.920 --> 0:06:27.359 I grew up very much in Asian culture, and so 0:06:28.200 --> 0:06:30.279 first of all, it certainly gave me a global perspective 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:34.000 with everything I've done since, I absolutely believe in bringing 0:06:34.040 --> 0:06:37.680 a global lens to anything that I'm working on or 0:06:37.800 --> 0:06:40.880 you know, my own ventures. And I think it just 0:06:40.960 --> 0:06:44.760 it absolutely broadens theal horizons and makes you think differently 0:06:44.920 --> 0:06:48.080 about how different people respond to different things. 0:06:48.680 --> 0:06:52.240 After moving back from Brunei, Cindy attended Somerville College at 0:06:52.240 --> 0:06:56.919 Oxford University, one of the university's first women's colleges. It 0:06:57.000 --> 0:06:59.840 was there that she found her first love, theater. 0:07:00.720 --> 0:07:03.120 I fell mad in love with theater at Oxford, which 0:07:03.120 --> 0:07:07.480 has a very thriving student drama scene, and I alreally 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:09.720 threw myself into that. I was present in my college 0:07:09.760 --> 0:07:14.320 drama society. I wrote actor directed stage manage, and I went, 0:07:14.360 --> 0:07:15.880 oh my god, all I want to do is work 0:07:15.880 --> 0:07:18.360 in theater the rest of my life. But I knew 0:07:18.440 --> 0:07:20.920 I wasn't good enough to be an actress or directors. 0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:23.320 Many of my friends wanted to be professionally and I 0:07:23.400 --> 0:07:25.440 used to draw a lot when I was younger, and 0:07:25.560 --> 0:07:28.480 so my friends would pull me into a Sydney can 0:07:28.520 --> 0:07:30.880 you design a theater poster for our show? And from 0:07:30.920 --> 0:07:33.600 there I got sucked into, you know, helping to promote 0:07:33.600 --> 0:07:36.000 and sell the shows. And I really enjoyed that, and 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:39.440 I thought, gosh, I suspect it's easier to find a 0:07:39.520 --> 0:07:42.720 job in theater doing this than acting or directing. And 0:07:42.760 --> 0:07:44.880 I was absolutely right, because I had no problem at 0:07:44.920 --> 0:07:48.240 all finding jobs as a marketing and publicity office in theater. 0:07:48.440 --> 0:07:51.280 So that's how I came to occupy that role. 0:07:51.840 --> 0:07:53.680 Did you enjoy it? It sounds like you must have enjoyed it, 0:07:53.680 --> 0:07:55.200 like why not stay in theater forever? 0:07:55.800 --> 0:07:58.240 No, it was enormous fun to begin with, but then 0:07:58.440 --> 0:08:01.640 you know, after a few years of working theater, I 0:08:01.680 --> 0:08:04.640 got completely fed up with working twenty four to seven 0:08:04.640 --> 0:08:07.240 and earning chicken feed, which is what happens in theater. 0:08:07.920 --> 0:08:10.640 And just as I was starting to feel quite disillusioned, 0:08:11.240 --> 0:08:13.360 I was the marketing office at the Everyman Theater in 0:08:13.400 --> 0:08:16.600 Liverpool and part of my job promoting the theater was 0:08:16.600 --> 0:08:18.720 to give talks about it. So I gave a talk 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:21.680 to a group of women in Liverpool and after the talk, 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:23.440 one of them came up to me and she said, 0:08:23.880 --> 0:08:26.640 young lady, you could sell a fridge to an eskimol 0:08:27.280 --> 0:08:29.920 And I thought, that is the universe telling me something. 0:08:30.280 --> 0:08:32.360 Time to sell out going to advertising, and so I did. 0:08:33.120 --> 0:08:36.000 With her mind made up, she made her first pivot, 0:08:36.200 --> 0:08:39.280 but changing her career from theater had its challenges. 0:08:40.200 --> 0:08:44.680 This was gosh the UK back in the eighties and 0:08:44.920 --> 0:08:51.040 advertising was considered the sexiest profession going. Everybody leaving university 0:08:51.080 --> 0:08:51.600 wanted to work. 0:08:51.520 --> 0:08:52.600 In advertising, you know. 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:55.440 I mean it was the golden heyday of British advertising 0:08:55.880 --> 0:08:59.480 and it was therefore extraordinary different to beginning too. And 0:08:59.600 --> 0:09:02.840 so I tried, you know, applying for my theater job 0:09:03.160 --> 0:09:06.120 and got stuck in that bind of no one would 0:09:06.120 --> 0:09:07.960 give me a job in advertising because I didn't have 0:09:08.000 --> 0:09:10.280 experienced advertising. But I couldn't experience in advertising and they want to 0:09:10.320 --> 0:09:12.959 give me a job. So then I went back to the 0:09:13.040 --> 0:09:19.160 beginning and I applied for entry level graduate trainee roles 0:09:19.400 --> 0:09:21.000 and took the first one I was offered at an 0:09:21.040 --> 0:09:24.640 agency called head Baits and actually that was a good 0:09:24.640 --> 0:09:26.920 thing to do, because I've got no idea whether UK 0:09:27.000 --> 0:09:29.559 ad agencies still do this, but back then they had 0:09:29.600 --> 0:09:33.440 these very thorough training programs where you literally spent six 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:37.200 months working in every single department in the in the agency, 0:09:37.800 --> 0:09:42.480 learning the entire advertising creation and production process end to end. 0:09:42.760 --> 0:09:46.080 And that was a phenomenal grounding in the business. I mean, 0:09:46.320 --> 0:09:51.280 advertising was not just sexy but sexist. You know. I 0:09:51.360 --> 0:09:55.440 really asked this question about what sexism I encountered coming 0:09:55.480 --> 0:09:58.520 up through the ranks advertising, and honestly, my response is 0:09:58.559 --> 0:10:01.120 always a fish does not know wh water is. It 0:10:01.200 --> 0:10:03.040 was all around me, but it was the norm and 0:10:03.080 --> 0:10:05.520 I never noticed. Right, that totally makes sense. 0:10:05.520 --> 0:10:07.200 I think you probably get that question in the US, 0:10:07.200 --> 0:10:10.400 in particularly a lot because mad Men were so popular here. 0:10:11.080 --> 0:10:13.800 Whenever I you know here mad Men mentioned, I have 0:10:13.840 --> 0:10:16.840 to bring this up. So I was on the inaugural 0:10:17.120 --> 0:10:21.959 board of Advertising Week in New York, which started, Gosh, 0:10:22.559 --> 0:10:25.120 I guess that must have been twenty years ago or so, 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:29.320 in order to celebrate the industry make young people more 0:10:29.360 --> 0:10:32.920 keen to come into it. And in our very first 0:10:32.960 --> 0:10:37.559 board meeting twenty years ago, I said, and by the way, 0:10:37.640 --> 0:10:39.200 I wish I had a video or audio of this, 0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:42.280 but I literally I said to the gathering, which was 0:10:42.320 --> 0:10:44.800 full of like luminous and advertising industry, I said, if 0:10:44.840 --> 0:10:48.240 we want to elevate the states of the advertising industry, 0:10:48.720 --> 0:10:51.720 you know, really excite people about it, make many more 0:10:51.800 --> 0:10:55.320 young people want to come to our industry versus Wall 0:10:55.360 --> 0:10:58.720 Street or Silicon Valley. Then what I think we should 0:10:58.760 --> 0:11:01.120 do is, this was back in the day when the 0:11:01.160 --> 0:11:04.480 Sopranos had just ended at HBO. I went, HBO is 0:11:04.520 --> 0:11:06.680 bound to be casting around for the next big show. 0:11:07.120 --> 0:11:10.960 We should have a competition. We should invite Because every copywriter, 0:11:11.120 --> 0:11:13.600 every art director has like a student in their bottom drawer. 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:15.840 We should invite people the advertising industry to write a 0:11:15.880 --> 0:11:20.240 really compelling series for HBO about our industry and get 0:11:20.360 --> 0:11:23.360 HBO to agree that if they find a really brilliant concept, 0:11:23.400 --> 0:11:26.040 they will absolute commission it and shoot it. And that 0:11:26.080 --> 0:11:29.000 would engage people in ndustry. No end and lo and behold. 0:11:29.000 --> 0:11:31.120 A few years later, mad Men certainly did. 0:11:32.000 --> 0:11:34.880 While her idea may have been swiped, it became her 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:37.200 reality when she was sent to New York City to 0:11:37.280 --> 0:11:40.840 open her Advertising Agencies American office in the late nineties. 0:11:41.320 --> 0:11:45.040 It was now Cindy, who became the new hotshot advertising 0:11:45.080 --> 0:11:46.640 executive running around the city. 0:11:48.240 --> 0:11:50.880 The advertising agency I used to work for, Bartle Bogle 0:11:50.920 --> 0:11:54.240 Hegety sent me here to open up its American office, 0:11:54.360 --> 0:11:56.439 which began as me in a room with a phone, 0:11:56.760 --> 0:11:59.920 starting an ad agency in the world's toughest advertising marketplace. 0:12:00.400 --> 0:12:03.360 But you know, I absolutely got my dream job because 0:12:03.840 --> 0:12:07.480 I love New York. I had seized every opportunity to 0:12:07.600 --> 0:12:11.760 vacation over here, to stop off on business trips, and 0:12:12.320 --> 0:12:14.959 very soon after I arrived here in September of nineteen 0:12:15.040 --> 0:12:18.360 ninety eight, I went I found my spiritual home. I'm 0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:20.840 never going back to London and that was it. I 0:12:20.880 --> 0:12:23.720 am now a New Yorker for life. I love this city, 0:12:24.200 --> 0:12:26.760 and you know, I love it for all sorts of reasons. 0:12:26.800 --> 0:12:28.959 It's absolutely my kind of pace. You know, I love 0:12:29.000 --> 0:12:32.760 the dynamism, the energy, but I also love the diversity 0:12:33.040 --> 0:12:36.080 and the cultural melting pot of New York, which is 0:12:36.160 --> 0:12:39.280 very special. And so you know, the business I founded 0:12:39.280 --> 0:12:42.400 here and now work on is global in its scope. 0:12:42.800 --> 0:12:45.480 But I think that having been started up in New 0:12:45.559 --> 0:12:48.280 York just you know, not just for my own business, 0:12:48.320 --> 0:12:52.920 but for other businesses. There's something about that energy and 0:12:53.000 --> 0:12:58.320 that open mindedness, and that willingness to embrace difference, that 0:12:58.440 --> 0:13:01.400 absolutely informs, you know, businesses that started here in certain 0:13:01.440 --> 0:13:02.280 informs mine. 0:13:02.720 --> 0:13:04.760 I think it's an important point because I think that 0:13:04.880 --> 0:13:07.199 for people who were born and raised in the US, 0:13:07.240 --> 0:13:12.520 they actually don't appreciate that the willingness to create something 0:13:12.600 --> 0:13:17.439 new and to cross lines is pretty unique to the US. 0:13:17.960 --> 0:13:20.079 How did you find that that was not the case 0:13:20.200 --> 0:13:21.160 in London. 0:13:21.800 --> 0:13:25.080 After I moved here, you know, and I absolutely said 0:13:25.080 --> 0:13:27.080 this to people when I would go back and visit 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:32.439 London after New York, London felt so much smaller, sleepier, 0:13:32.720 --> 0:13:36.600 more parochial. And actually one of the reasons I'd wanted 0:13:36.640 --> 0:13:38.679 to move to New York in the first place. I 0:13:38.760 --> 0:13:44.320 made this ambition known within within BBH was because I observed, 0:13:44.760 --> 0:13:47.000 and by the way, things are still not greater on 0:13:47.040 --> 0:13:48.839 this front, so that this is a massive in diamond 0:13:48.880 --> 0:13:51.079 of the UK. But I observed that when it came 0:13:51.240 --> 0:13:55.280 to women in business, the US was ten years ahead 0:13:55.320 --> 0:14:00.760 of the UK in terms of welcoming women working and leading. 0:14:01.400 --> 0:14:04.160 And I observed this because while I was based at 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:06.360 BBAH in London, I was running big global pieces of 0:14:06.400 --> 0:14:10.080 business Coca Cola, Polaroid, RayBan, and I was running their 0:14:10.080 --> 0:14:13.160 business across Europe. But what that meant was working with 0:14:13.320 --> 0:14:16.760 teams from the US and quite often visiting you know, 0:14:16.800 --> 0:14:22.280 Atlanta for Coke, Boston for Polaroid, Rochester for RayBan, and 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:26.880 I realized that my American clients had no issue at 0:14:26.920 --> 0:14:29.440 all with me leading the business, saw me as their 0:14:29.440 --> 0:14:32.560 first point of contact. I built amazing relationships with them, 0:14:32.800 --> 0:14:35.040 and I have to tell you that with you know, 0:14:35.200 --> 0:14:37.320 white male clients in the UK, that was not always 0:14:37.360 --> 0:14:40.440 the case. So interestingly, one of the things that made 0:14:40.480 --> 0:14:43.160 me want to come and work over here was the 0:14:43.200 --> 0:14:45.440 fact that even though as I said, things are still 0:14:45.440 --> 0:14:47.440 not great in this front, at least if you were 0:14:47.440 --> 0:14:50.720 a woman, you were more accepted in business and leadership 0:14:50.800 --> 0:14:52.200 role here than you own the UK. 0:14:53.080 --> 0:14:56.160 At that point, Cindy had spent over fifteen years as 0:14:56.200 --> 0:14:59.720 a top executive at Barto book or Hegarty, and despite 0:14:59.760 --> 0:15:02.120 being at the top of her game, she felt as 0:15:02.160 --> 0:15:04.360 if there was something more that she was missing in 0:15:04.360 --> 0:15:06.280 her career than in her life. 0:15:06.680 --> 0:15:09.560 Basically, in two thousand and five, I turned forty five 0:15:09.960 --> 0:15:12.320 and I had what I described as my very own 0:15:12.360 --> 0:15:15.880 personal mid life crisis. In the sense that I've always 0:15:15.960 --> 0:15:19.880 thought of forty five as kind of a midlife point. Obviously, 0:15:19.880 --> 0:15:21.680 by the way, the happy assumption that one does in 0:15:21.720 --> 0:15:23.760 fact live to be ninety fingers crossed. 0:15:23.720 --> 0:15:25.400 Well like you' have good genes, yep. 0:15:26.080 --> 0:15:27.640 But in a couple of years running up to it, 0:15:27.720 --> 0:15:31.000 I'd always thought, on one's forty fifth birth is the 0:15:31.040 --> 0:15:35.680 moment when you should pause, take stock, reflect, review, where 0:15:35.720 --> 0:15:37.480 am I being, where am I going? And so on. 0:15:37.520 --> 0:15:40.320 February one, two thousand and five, idually did that, and 0:15:40.360 --> 0:15:42.440 that was the moment in which I went, oh, my god, 0:15:42.600 --> 0:15:46.760 I've just worked sixteen years for the same advertising agency 0:15:47.320 --> 0:15:49.960 and by the way, amazing agency, you know, I mean 0:15:50.200 --> 0:15:53.240 love BBH to death, cannot say enough nice things about them. 0:15:53.240 --> 0:15:55.440 But I went, wow, I think it might be time 0:15:55.480 --> 0:15:58.400 to do something different. And the problem was I hadn't 0:15:58.440 --> 0:16:02.080 the faintest idea what because I'd always said to people 0:16:02.080 --> 0:16:04.280 for years, I'm not going to work in advertising forever, 0:16:04.440 --> 0:16:07.320 not gonna work bh forever. But advertisers a very good 0:16:07.320 --> 0:16:09.680 industry to work in to figure out what you want 0:16:09.680 --> 0:16:12.200 to do next, because you come into contact with so 0:16:12.280 --> 0:16:17.320 many different sectors, companies, people. I guess i'd always thought 0:16:17.520 --> 0:16:20.400 that one day my next big thing with Bubblah from 0:16:20.400 --> 0:16:22.200 ether and there I was the age of forty five 0:16:22.240 --> 0:16:25.440 and it hadn't so I basically, in the summer of 0:16:25.480 --> 0:16:27.680 two thousand and five, took a massive leap into the unknown, 0:16:28.120 --> 0:16:30.640 resigned as chairwel of BBH without a job to go to, 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:33.920 and honestly best thing that I ever did in my life. 0:16:34.520 --> 0:16:37.400 You know, the premise of this show is how personal 0:16:37.480 --> 0:16:40.880 things in our lives end up impacting our professional decisions. 0:16:41.200 --> 0:16:43.040 And it sounds like you had a couple along the way, 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:45.200 like wanting to live in the US, but it was 0:16:45.240 --> 0:16:47.280 a lot of professional decisions that you made. You know, 0:16:47.360 --> 0:16:49.560 who you wanted to work with, where you wanted to work. 0:16:49.800 --> 0:16:52.600 Do you think there were really driving personal factors in 0:16:52.640 --> 0:16:54.280 the first half or did that come later in the 0:16:54.320 --> 0:16:54.880 second half. 0:16:55.600 --> 0:17:00.440 Honestly, none of any of this was consciously planned. I'm 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:04.080 a big fan of serendipity. My ex boss at BBH, 0:17:04.200 --> 0:17:08.320 John Hegerty, has this great mantra. He says, do interesting things, 0:17:08.320 --> 0:17:10.680 and interesting things will happen to you, and that's been 0:17:10.800 --> 0:17:13.000 very much I've made my professional life decisions. 0:17:13.600 --> 0:17:15.960 So what did you end up doing in those? Because 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:19.120 we became a founder a couple years after you left 0:17:19.160 --> 0:17:20.359 the firm, but not right away. 0:17:20.960 --> 0:17:23.480 So when all these things came to me, I went, Okay, 0:17:23.920 --> 0:17:25.800 I still don't know what I really want to do. 0:17:25.880 --> 0:17:28.320 So I'm going to be employment slut. I'm going to 0:17:28.359 --> 0:17:30.560 talk to everybody. I'm going to take every phone call, 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:34.040 I'm going to do every meeting, no preconceived notions. Even 0:17:34.080 --> 0:17:35.920 if I think to myself, I'm not sure i'd want 0:17:35.960 --> 0:17:37.840 to work for this company, I'm going to go meet 0:17:37.840 --> 0:17:41.120 with them. So I embarked on a fascinating exploratory which 0:17:41.200 --> 0:17:42.920 was as good for telling me what I didn't want 0:17:42.960 --> 0:17:44.560 to do as what I did want to do. That 0:17:44.560 --> 0:17:46.280 that really helped kind of give me a sense of 0:17:46.280 --> 0:17:48.600 what needs to be in place where I work next. 0:17:49.040 --> 0:17:51.320 At the same time, to support myself, I was working 0:17:51.359 --> 0:17:54.480 as a consultant and a public speaker and I've been 0:17:54.480 --> 0:17:57.920 doing that ever since. And the way my path went 0:17:58.359 --> 0:18:01.800 was an ex cloud Aman of Bee was starting up 0:18:02.560 --> 0:18:05.080 a new tech venture. This is back in spring of 0:18:05.080 --> 0:18:07.439 two thousand and six, and he asked me to partner 0:18:07.440 --> 0:18:10.240 with him on it, and I saw an opportunity to 0:18:10.240 --> 0:18:13.119 make this venture something much more interesting. You know, He 0:18:13.200 --> 0:18:16.600 and the team loved it. The VC's backing the venture 0:18:16.760 --> 0:18:19.879 didn't get it, and so I ended up walking away 0:18:19.880 --> 0:18:21.560 from it because they wouldn't give me the equity I 0:18:21.600 --> 0:18:23.879 wanted to go forward, and by way, it was a 0:18:23.960 --> 0:18:25.879 very good thing I did, because they just took it 0:18:26.080 --> 0:18:28.880 in a very bad direction and it never it never 0:18:28.920 --> 0:18:31.000 went anywhere in the end. But what that meant was 0:18:31.040 --> 0:18:34.720 that I spent three months out of Cambridge in Boston 0:18:35.119 --> 0:18:38.199 steeped in the world of tech startups and of what 0:18:38.320 --> 0:18:42.040 was essentially a social networking platform. And so when I 0:18:42.359 --> 0:18:44.440 came out of that, a headtime to call me up 0:18:44.600 --> 0:18:47.280 about the job of CEO of a Small World. He 0:18:47.440 --> 0:18:49.800 just raised some funding and knew he wasn't the right 0:18:49.840 --> 0:18:51.800 person to take it to the next level. So he's 0:18:51.840 --> 0:18:53.679 looking for a CEO to take over, and I was 0:18:53.680 --> 0:18:55.760 really interested because I just spent three months steeped in 0:18:55.880 --> 0:18:58.280 this whole scenario, and A Small World back in the 0:18:58.359 --> 0:19:02.600 day was a very special community. The level of gatedness 0:19:02.640 --> 0:19:05.119 meant there was an extraor amount of trust within the community, 0:19:05.440 --> 0:19:07.239 and you could tap into that anyway you went all 0:19:07.280 --> 0:19:10.800 around the world. So I didn't get that job entertainingly 0:19:11.040 --> 0:19:14.439 because of Harvey Weinstein. So Eric had just raised some 0:19:14.520 --> 0:19:19.119 money from the Weinstein brothers, and so he wanted me 0:19:19.160 --> 0:19:20.440 to do the job. The whole team wanted me to 0:19:20.560 --> 0:19:23.480 vince CEO, but I had to be interviewed by Harvey Weinstein. 0:19:23.760 --> 0:19:26.720 And by the way, I'm extremely grateful. I clearly wasn't 0:19:26.840 --> 0:19:30.119 in any way harvest type. The interview lasted five minutes 0:19:30.200 --> 0:19:32.800 at the Direka Film Center. I mean literally, he came in, 0:19:32.920 --> 0:19:35.640 said Hi, asked me a couple of plunctory questions, dismissed 0:19:35.680 --> 0:19:39.040 me because he had already decided that this job could 0:19:39.080 --> 0:19:41.080 not be done by some you came from the advertising world. 0:19:41.119 --> 0:19:43.280 It had to be someone from Taker Entertainment. So that 0:19:43.320 --> 0:19:47.000 didn't happen. But another one of the investors was Bob Pittman, 0:19:47.240 --> 0:19:49.520 you know, the founder of MTV, and and he and 0:19:49.560 --> 0:19:52.959 I got on really well. And so he said to 0:19:53.000 --> 0:19:55.320 me this, you know, sorry, isn't going forwards, but if 0:19:55.400 --> 0:19:58.359 you ever have any ideas for anything you might like 0:19:58.400 --> 0:20:00.280 to do, I'd love to hear them. And I thought, gosh, 0:20:00.320 --> 0:20:02.680 you know, that's a very nice offer. So I might 0:20:02.720 --> 0:20:05.159 go and thought about what I would do if I 0:20:05.160 --> 0:20:07.040 start something myself, and so I came up with the 0:20:07.080 --> 0:20:10.440 ideas my first startup, If We Ran the World, which 0:20:10.480 --> 0:20:12.800 I shared with Bob, and he really liked it, and 0:20:12.800 --> 0:20:16.080 so that gave me the confidence to pursue it. And 0:20:16.160 --> 0:20:18.800 If We Ran the World was based on our observation 0:20:19.080 --> 0:20:23.560 that the single biggest pool of untapped natural resource in 0:20:23.600 --> 0:20:27.200 this world is human good intentions that never translate into action. 0:20:27.920 --> 0:20:30.960 And so I built a platform to take not just 0:20:31.040 --> 0:20:34.600 human good intentions, but corporate good intentions and combine the 0:20:34.680 --> 0:20:39.480 two to enable brands and businesses to implement what I 0:20:39.600 --> 0:20:42.760 believe is the business model of the future. Shared values 0:20:42.960 --> 0:20:47.560 plus shared action equals shared profit, financial profit, and social profit. 0:20:47.920 --> 0:20:52.000 You can decide exactly how you want to make money. 0:20:52.119 --> 0:20:54.760 You can design your business model to be anything you 0:20:54.800 --> 0:20:58.240 wanted to be. I believe that the business model of 0:20:58.280 --> 0:21:03.439 the future is all about doing good and making money simultaneously, 0:21:04.440 --> 0:21:06.800 and that the business model of the future therefore is 0:21:07.480 --> 0:21:13.760 shared values plus shared action equals shared profit, financial profit, 0:21:13.920 --> 0:21:14.879