Chris Jaeb: One Entrepreneur’s Journey To Wholeness

In this episode of the Rich Roll Podcast, Rich interviews technology entrepreneur Chris Jaeb about his life path, founding Broadcast.com with Mark Cuban (bought by Yahoo after the most successful IPO in history at that time), social entrepreneurship, the role meditation has played in his life, sustainable living at Common Ground Kauai, his take on happiness and future plans for his newest venture, Common Ground Media. Side note: Thanks for all the crazy support for the initial episode. The success and feedback exceeded my wildest imagination. Very proud to see that we have already been listed by iTunes as a “New & Notable” in the health podcast category. Awesome. If you haven't yet, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes by clicking HERE. If you would like to support the podcast, just tell a friend. Thanks for listening. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:13Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:17Rich Roll?

  All right, welcome to episode two. Very happy to be back with you guys. If you listened to episode one, we put it up a couple of days ago. It was my wife and I. And it was our first stab at this podcasting thing, very much an amateur at this whole thing. But I have to say, I'm completely overwhelmed by the early response to the first episode. We got a crazy number of downloads and a whole bunch of great reviews on iTunes page as soon as it went up. It took a couple of days for us to get configured and live on iTunes. And actually, just a couple of hours ago, iTunes listed the podcast under the health

• 1:59Rich Roll?

  section as a new and notable, which is pretty hilarious after one episode. So, we're off to a great start. So, thank you guys so much for the support. I love doing this, and I'm really excited about getting some momentum here, having some great guests, and being able to share some great content with you. It's been cool so far, and I'm looking forward to the adventure ahead. So, we have a great show for you today. We have Chris Jabe with us. And if you've been following me for a little bit, you know who Chris is. Chris is the founder and owner of Common Ground here in Kauai, where we're living. It is a 50-acre, 50 acres? Correct.

• 2:42Rich Roll?

  About 50-acre organic, sustainable farm and community with a cafe, restaurant. It's an amazing place and Chris has some big ideas about what he wants to do with the property and he's a really fascinating guy. He's got a really interesting background and we're going to get into all of that stuff. So I'm going to bring Chris in in a minute, but just a couple of housekeeping things. Like I said, this is very much a grassroots kind of organic podcast. We're recording again in a warehouse, so I know and I understand and realize that the sound is probably a little bit tinny. We got some feedback from the last one saying, you know, it's echoey or whatever. We're doing the best we can with the equipment that we have.

• 3:24Rich Roll?

  We're looking into a different space that might give a little bit of a softer sound. But hopefully the content will kind of trump the technical issues that come up. And we are also looking into doing videoing and live casting, live streaming of the podcast. So that's in the works. We had an amazing dinner here last night at Common Ground where we livestreamed a presentation that Chris gave and that I gave and that went over really, really well. So we're going to try to incorporate that into the podcast for those who want to follow along live and we can make it interactive by answering questions and responding to feedback in real time, which is pretty cool. So anyway, the podcast, of course, is free.

• 4:10Rich Roll?

  It will always be free for you guys, but it's not free to produce. There are some costs with bandwidth and hosting and all that kind of stuff. So I did what I said I would never do, which was put a banner ad up on my website. I've got this ugly Amazon banner ad up there right now, which pains me to have. But I just signed up with an affiliate program there. So anyway, you know, I know most people buy a lot of stuff off Amazon. So if you want to support the show and support what we're doing, before going to Amazon, why don't you just go to my website, richroll.com, click on the banner ad there and then buy whatever you're going to buy. It's not going to cost you any more than it would ordinarily and it'll throw like a few...

• 4:54Rich Roll?

  Nickels in our bucket, so we can pay for the bandwidth and keep it going. That's all. And telephone, telephone.

• 5:08Rich Roll?

  Okay, so, without further ado, Chris Jabe, how you doing, man?

• 5:12Speaker 01

  Very good.

• 5:13Rich Roll?

  Good, good. It's great to have you here.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Good having you here, too, man.

• 5:16Rich Roll?

  So, Chris is, like I said, a fascinating guy with a very, very interesting background. Chris is an entrepreneur. His background is in internet broadcasting, which is why he has this affinity for the live streaming.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Slightly.

• 5:31Rich Roll?

  And we're doing some interesting things here together. Chris, Chris and I have some mutual friends and got in touch with each other. He reached out to us about a month ago and we started talking about some of the stuff that he was looking at doing out here at Common Ground, and it seemed to really dovetail nicely into our interests and seemed like it was in really good alignment. So, we are here working together on some cool stuff, and we're going to talk about that. But first, I want to, I want to talk about your background a little bit. So, Texan, yeah?

• 6:01Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. Well, grew up in Minnesota until I was like 12 years old, then moved to Dallas, Texas. And my father was a banker, so he had, he got a new job at a new bank in Texas, and our family moved there. We had six kids, three boys and three girls. Very much a Catholic family.

• 6:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  And became Texans after about 10, 15 years.

• 6:25Rich Roll?

  Right, right. So you went to high school in Texas?

• 6:28Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 6:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Went to Jesuit College Preparatory School, and then went to USC for college and for, for a couple of years, and then went to University of Texas for a couple of years, and then took a couple of years off, and then actually graduated, graduated from University of Texas to Dallas.

• 6:46Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  As a result of a... I have a wish from my father for me to finish that last class so that I actually got out of college.

• 6:55Rich Roll?

  So, oh wait, so wait a minute, so you went to USC but you didn't graduate?

• 6:59Speaker 01

  I did not.

• 7:00Rich Roll?

  What happened there?

• 7:01Speaker 01

  It just, it wasn't right for me, you know, I basically, I had gone in with the idea that petroleum engineering was something I might want to be doing, and the further I got into it, the more I realized I was not an engineer, and everything I did was sort of hard to do, and after a certain period of time, I realized this was not the best, you know, really curriculum for me to be involved in, but I also, at the same time, was, you know, was wanting to be back in Texas, just because it was so much more familiar to me at that stage in life. So I moved from, you know, Los Angeles to Austin, Texas, and I just ended up hanging out with a lot of my, my high school friends and sort of had a lot more of a, sort of

• 7:43Speaker 01

  more connected to who I really was kind of at the time, because I really didn't get or understand the LA culture for me personally, couldn't, at that stage in my life, wasn't a good fit.

• 7:54Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm, so you kind of hit the pause button.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 7:56Rich Roll?

  Well, I think that, you know, that's interesting, and I think a lot of people, you know, don't do that enough, you know, we're on this track, you gotta go from point A to point B as quickly as possible, and, you know, it's certainly a part of my story too, is sort of, you know, being on the habit trail a little bit, without ever taking time out to get some perspective on what you're doing, and, you know, I think there's a lot of value in kind of exempting yourself from whatever equation you're in, and gaining a little perspective, so.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  No doubt, you know, I feel like that's sort of been just sort of the, my personal MO, is to sort of always be, sort of asking myself, why am I doing what I'm doing? And, and that creates a lot of changes in direction, you know, it's, it's not a consistent, I'm gonna do this for the next 20 years of my life kind of path. In some ways, it's, it's hard, from a business perspective, because it's not like you're, you're able to create a three to five year plan and just go on it. But it's really good from a business perspective because oftentimes what happens when you start a business is you have a vision for where you think it's gonna go. But once you start doing it, it's not the place where it really wants to go. And so you sort of learn by doing what really does work best.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  And for me, it was very easy for me to, once I started doing that, to migrate to stuff that was really working. And in some way, that's what I was doing at an early age in my life, you know, sort of asking myself questions about religion, asking myself questions about school, and asking myself, why am I doing, what am I, why am I doing the stuff that I'm doing?

• 9:30Rich Roll?

  Where do you think that comes from? Because I think, you know, most people don't do that, you know, or don't do it enough, or as much as they should.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  You know, for me, I can trace it somewhat to my father, because my father was a banker and he spent some time in the Army, the ROTC, so he came from a really regimented environment. And there was something about that that just was not me. So it was more of a rejection of that. It sort of always made me ask myself, am I a Catholic? Am I a banker? Am I all these things? And I think it was, if he hadn't been so strong willed in who he was, I think it would have been hard for me to create a distance, because I think I would have been more, it might have been easier for me to go along those paths. But it made me think almost at the earliest of stages of my ability, you know, I remember

• 10:21Speaker 01

  when I was, I'd played baseball, because he was a baseball player for like the first, you know, from like six years old to about 11. And when I got to be 11, I just said, I ain't gonna do this anymore. Even though I liked playing, it was sort of fun, but there was a rejection of that whole way of doing things. And it really has sort of helped me and made it so that throughout the course of my life, I've been able to get into more of a connection to what it is I really was. And even though I might not have the tremendous highs all the time, I've got the quality of life at some level that makes me feel like I'm, I'm living.

• 10:58Rich Roll?

  Right, and I think in the, in sort of the spiritual context and in the business context, to be able to always take a step back, take inventory and try to gain perspective on what you're doing is important. And as an entrepreneur in, in technology, I mean, you know, technology is moving at this light speed where it's constantly changing and evolving. And, you know, I think anybody who's an entrepreneur in that space who's not, you know, willing to kind of stop and evaluate, well, is this the right direction for this company? I mean, you see it all the time with these startups that they think they're creating, you know, widget A, and they realize halfway in like, oh, there's this completely other application for this that's way better. I mean, I think, we were talking about this before, I think Twitter even started as, I think Jack Dorsey wanted

• 11:42Rich Roll?

  to help public transportation systems operate more seamlessly or something like that. It had a very kind of limited, you know, application window. And, and, you know, obviously it's become this incredibly socially influential thing that's occurred that I don't know if he ever anticipated that.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  No, I didn't.

• 12:02Rich Roll?

  But just being able to be flexible and...

• 12:04Speaker 01

  I had no idea, really, when you're in the middle of doing it. But as I look back and study biology a little bit more, it's sort of a natural aspect of, you know, evolutionary biology, basically. It's the cell naturally is looking for these gaps in, in the planet and places to live and survive and thrive. And I think intellectually and sort of consciously and subconsciously, that's what my being has been about, is finding those, those gaps and seeing these opportunities and putting myself in them in a way that can give me an opportunity to live more original moments.

• 12:38Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  You know, things that haven't been done by everybody before.

• 12:42Rich Roll?

  So, more specifically, you know, getting back to your background, you finished college, et cetera. And, I mean, I think most people know of you because of Broadcast.com. Can you just explain like, kind of what led up to that and how all of that sort of began from the beginning?

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Sure. It's pretty much started in 1986. I'd just gotten out of, my, my best friend and I had just closed down a car business. And I owed the IRS about a quarter million dollars. And I was trying to figure out how I was gonna come up with the kind of money.

• 13:22Rich Roll?

  Wait, all right, hold on a second.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  A car business, how did you get, how did you get into that kind of deep water? Basically, when my buddy and I were in college at the University of Texas, we had been reading about the, how you could import a car from Germany and because the change in the, the values of the currency, you could make an extra 10 grand pretty much on every car you brought in. So we put a, a plan together between ourselves and a, and a third party where we would raise some money and start importing German cars, primarily Porsches, BMWs and Mercedes to Dallas, Texas. And we didn't realize at the time, we were 23 years old, that the more business we did, the more money we were losing. So you could come into our 20,000 square foot warehouse in North Dallas and see, you

• 14:07Speaker 01

  know, probably over 70 or 80 late model and antique, high-quality imported cars. And to a banker that was going to loan us money, he would think, oh, you guys are doing incredible business. But the reality was, is about 80% of the cars that were in there were cars we'd work on for three or four times and the opportunity cost and the negative cash flow created by having to do the same job two or three times was significant. And we never really got it because at that stage of business, we weren't even balancing our checkbook. We managed our business based on however much money was in our checking account. And because of the way we worked out our relationships and my limited understanding

• 14:49Speaker 01

  of banking, I was able to arrange a letter of credit with one of the heirs of the Firestone Fortune and he had guaranteed our, our credit at the bank. So we would, basically every week we would get notices as to how much negative, we were like 25 or 30,000 debt or overdrawn and the bank would clear our checks because basically they were backed up by a, a real credit. And so, how old were you when this was going on? 23 to 25. Wow, so you're, you're, you're basically an, you know, an entrepreneur from the get go. I was just totally winging it and the, the sort of, the, the street sense that we got in two years of the car business really blew away anything I ever got in college or after, really, because...

• 15:33Speaker 01

  You're dealing with the bankers, the attorneys, the accountants, the insurance companies, the workers, the customers, all in our case, which are sort of questionable shady characters to start with, because we're working in a gray market car as compared to sort of traditional Mercedes Benz Porsche dealerships. So, you, right off the bat, we were learning how to read people and understanding what a real deal was and what wasn't. And one of the best things I got out of that two years was really the awareness that if a deal's bad, don't try to make it better. It's bad, let it go. And I think that's one of the main things that hounds a lot of people in business that are kids that are just getting started.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  You try to make and hope that something that's not working is gonna work, rather than letting it go and going on to something that really will work. Because usually if you're dealing with somebody that's questionable, they're not gonna change. And the cost of you to continue to deal with them for an extended period of time is really high. When you look at your opportunity cost of working on a job that is actually making a positive cash flow, and then you're just the brain damage that comes associated with that relationship.

• 16:42Rich Roll?

  Right, like just not being attached to outcomes when...

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Right. Just letting it go and moving on.

• 16:47Rich Roll?

  What an amazing experience. I mean, much more valuable, I would imagine, in certain respects than, you know, being in business school. I mean, to have that kind of real world experience at that level at such a young age.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, my best friend and I would always kid about that. We'd say that we could've gone to Harvard and got an MBA, but what we got out of two years of being in North House at that time in life, when things were ripping and roaring, and getting a chance to learn that A business at that age was invaluable. And that sort of led, you know, sort of created the opportunity for me to look into what was next. And what was next was the awareness that the overhead is what killed me and killed us. We couldn't manage the costs associated with a 20,000 square foot warehouse and 15 to 20 employees that we didn't know how to manage, and all the other fixed and non-fixed expenses associated with that. So, the next business I started, ended up becoming a business that I could run on my own, was called Promotional Radios.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  And what we did is, we got... Got like palm sized versions of basketballs, soccer balls and baseballs and got a company in Hong Kong to put AM radios inside of them and we would get, we'd like put a Dallas Cowboy or a Texas Ranger logo on one side and a Dr. Pepper or whatever Sport Mart logo on the other side and they'd give them away as promotional items at the games.

• 18:06Rich Roll?

  Gotcha.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  And that's sort of what led to Broadcast.com because when people were giving these radios at these events, they couldn't hear an AM radio inside an arena, for example, because of all the metal and concrete. So we noticed that everybody's trying to listen to the radio, but they couldn't get a very good signal and we started thinking, shoot, there's huge value in these arenas for people to listen to a live broadcast, an FM quality broadcast of these events. And we sort of took that, or I took that a next step and started thinking, shoot, the value for this broadcast is really outside the stadium, it's the whole metropolitan area. I was, I'd come from Minnesota and I could never listen to Minnesota Viking or Minnesota Twin game, living in Texas, unless it was a nationally broadcast game.

• 18:51Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, for a lot of people listening, they're, you know, they have a hard time fathoming this in our internet age, but there was a day not so long ago where

• 19:00Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 19:01Rich Roll?

  You know, simple things that we take for granted now, you know, just were not possible.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  Not even possible.

• 19:07Rich Roll?

  Right. So, so the idea was born, and when you say we, is this the same partner that you were in the car business with?

• 19:14Speaker 01

  Well, I say we loosely, basically it was, it was my father and I and my partner that was in the car business had made a small investment and he had helped me, but he was on his own path. He ended up working as an entry level accountant for Chuck E. Cheese and after, here we are now, 20 years later, he's the number three guy at Chuck E. Cheese, which is a trip to see that we'd come from what was that place in time to this place in time and sort of migrated in a way that was really, sort of good for both of us.

• 19:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, interesting. So, so we're talking right now, what is this, like 1989?

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Eighty-six and promotional radios was eighty-nine and then

• 19:55Speaker 01

  It really became apparent to me in a short period of time that there was, I couldn't control that market. It was just as easy for anybody to go to Hong Kong, source that product and sell it to Major League Baseball, the NBA or NFL at a better price than I could get because I couldn't do the volume deals, I didn't have the relationships, etc. So, in a relatively short period of time, I pretty much said, "That's not gonna work." But there probably is a business in redistributing these signals, rather than getting locked into the hardware. So, I started doing the research to try to figure out what it would take to acquire the right to redistribute all the Major League Baseball, NBA, NFL games, and college football,

• 20:36Speaker 01

  baseball, basketball, hockey, etc. games, and make them available in local markets using satellite spectrum. And the idea was basically to take satellite spectrum that I, I was at the time working for affiliated computer systems, and, and one of the main things I was doing there was writing proposals for outsourcing contracts, where they would go into big companies and say, "Well, you know, we'll take over your data center and run all your back, backhaul data around the country." And they were all, so I, it was really easy for me to understand the cost of distributing data globally. It was like, and it really was practically nothing. For a really small amount of money, I could distribute, you know, in one six megahertz

• 21:18Speaker 01

  television spectrum, 400 channels of high-quality, at the time, you know, four to 10 kilohertz bandwidth AM signals, in a way that you could, you could, you know, in real-time distribute 400 signals anywhere in the world. So, I started doing the math behind it and tried to figure out a way to receive those signals using the, at the time, PCS telephone network, and making it so that you could basically punch in a code on your phone and listen to anything over a sort of a free frequency that we were gonna set up.

• 21:50Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  So then, but not too long after that, the internet came along.

• 21:55Rich Roll?

  Then the internet comes along and everything.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  And then the need to do any of that infrastructure just went out the window. And all I had to do is acquire broadcast rights, which is what I was doing at the time, anyway. And that's when I met Mark Cuban.

• 22:07Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. So, and I want to get into that, but first of all, I mean, the thing, the sort of theme that's rising to the surface in these ventures and in hearing you talk about it is this real scrappy nature of going after it, right? Like of, I mean, just seeking out these opportunities and not being afraid and pursuing them as a young person, really. I mean, there had to be a lot of cold calling involved and knocking on a lot of doors.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  No doubt, no doubt. And that's really what made it work or not work, really. And that was the thing that, as I look back on it, that it was, is what made, it makes anything work, is your ability to communicate with your market and understand what the opportunities are and aren't. I mean, for example, when I was trying to produce, you know, create this broadcast infrastructure in a local market, I went to the FCC in Washington DC and got the right to create an experimental license in Austin, Texas to test this out. And to do that, I had to go to some of the major hardware manufacturers that could make phones that would do this stuff and get them to consider making this phone for me.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  Needless to say, I'm a, you know, at the time, a shoot, 27, 28-year-old kid with an idea. There wasn't a lot of people that were interested. But, that said, I learned how to communicate with those people after trying to, you know, talking to 70, 80, or 100 of these guys over a certain period of time. And that, that seasoning and that experience in communication is what really gave me a skill set to almost describe anything and to position it in a way people could understand it and possibly do something about it.

• 23:41Rich Roll?

  Right, interesting. And so, all right, so Mark Cuban comes into your life. Like, how does, how does that happen? I mean, he wasn't, you know, he wasn't Mark Cuban then, though, right?

• 23:50Speaker 01

  No, he wasn't. Well, in his own, in his own way.

• 23:53Rich Roll?

  Well, he probably, you know, has always been Mark Cuban. Right.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  And that's that part I'm sure never going to change. What was, what made, what put Mark and I together was his friend that he'd gone to college with named Todd Wagner and Todd-

• 24:08Rich Roll?

  Who's still his business partner today?

• 24:10Speaker 01

  That's true, that's true. Todd I had met because my girlfriend at the time was in a course called Running From The Law and Todd was in, he was an attorney that was trying to get out of the legal profession and looking for something else to do. And the person that ran this seminar and this sort of workshop put Todd in touch with me through my girlfriend and we just, we started talking about, he said, "I'm interested, but I, I'm making a trip, I'm just leaving, you know, my law practice now, the company I've been working for, I'm going to be back in a couple of months, but before I leave, I'm going on this trip to Australia, I want you to meet Mark, I think he's the kind of guy that could, could make this work for us."

• 24:50Rich Roll?

  And what was Mark doing at the time? I mean, this is 1990 by now or something?

• 24:54Speaker 01

  It's 1994 and it's, it's, it's basically roughly early November 1994. And he had just sold a company called MicroSolutions, I don't know, it was like eight, 10, 12 million dollars that he'd recently put in his pocket and he was looking for things to do. I think mostly he was seeing himself more as like a venture capitalist and just sort of seeing what deals were good. And once I started describing what it was we were doing, he goes, within five minutes, he goes, "I'm in." And I go, and I just, it surprised me because up to that, I had probably given that pitch, you know, 120 times or more and nobody said they were in.

• 25:34Rich Roll?

  What was it, what was it that you were looking for? Was it just cash?

• 25:37Speaker 01

  I was trying to raise, I was asking for $750,000 for 49% of the company. And he said, "I'm in," but he didn't qualify as to what that was and I was just expecting that we could work something out. I personally wasn't overly concerned with the dollar amounts, the percentages, because the key to me at the time was just to move the ball forward, you know? I didn't, I probably couldn't say this clearly at the time, but I just wanted to get something going because I'd been working on this kind of stuff for a long time and I had never really got that bigger deal going. So I would have taken pretty much any deal. What, what ended up happening was about- Two months later, I went back to Mark because he had written me a check for $10,000.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  It said, New York's $10,000, 2% of the company. And after this big contract fell through, he said, I'm out. And so when Todd came back, he started working with me. We went back to Mark because we had to figure out what this 2% was or wasn't. It wasn't going to be very easy for me to go to third parties and raise money with this, what seemed to be a hanging per ownership percentage.

• 26:46Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  So after haggling with Mark for about three months, Todd and I went over to Mark's house and Mark said, you know what, you guys, I'm going to do this with or without you. Todd, I want you, there's things that you can do. You're an operator, you're an attorney, you're CPA. Chris, I really don't need your skill set that much. I really don't. You can sort of go on and do whatever you want to do. And Todd didn't really feel very good about that. And sort of the backstory to that was Todd had only worked with me for about three months, but I had recognized really quickly what Todd was doing and how he could organize the contractual side of what the company was. And he really understood the business pieces very well. So I, after three months of working with him, even though I'd been doing this for like

• 27:32Speaker 01

  four years on my own, I go, Todd, whatever we create will split evenly. And it was like, and I think that bond and that gift and that confidence in our relationship made it, you know, if I would have treated it differently and said, Todd, you get 5% for doing X, I think it would have been easier for him maybe to go off on his own and do whatever. But I think it created a quality of a relationship that made us feel like we were working together. And that night, he pretty much went back to Mark and said, I'm not going to do this without Chris, and this is a deal I think we could do with Chris. And it was sort of unusual. I mean, basically, it was a deal where they both split 90% of the company and I got 10%. For a company that I've been working with for four and a half, five years.

• 28:15Rich Roll?

  It's an interesting conundrum. I mean, You know, in certain respects, it was a cut and run and there was no, there wasn't enough, I mean, was the intellectual property not proprietary enough to prevent him from just taking your idea and running off with it on his own?

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Clearly not. I mean, he could, with the resource he had, he could do what I was doing. And he, with, especially with Todd sitting right next to him, he could, he could make it happen. Yeah. And it was, at the time, it really needed financial resources to blow it up. And because of right at this time, and we're having these conversations, the real audio player came out that made it now. So we didn't even have to build the audio software that made it possible to listen to sound on the internet.

• 28:57Rich Roll?

  It was just a question of executing on that platform that already existed. So here you are, and you have, you go from having 98% of something with Mark Cuban to having 100% of probably what might have been nothing without Mark Cuban, to then having 10% of something back with Mark Cuban in, you know, a very short period of time.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. And that night, that night when that was all going on, I was, I was good with it. I was pretty much saying I was gonna-

• 29:25Rich Roll?

  You were, so you weren't like going insane, thinking, "I'm getting screwed and now I'm getting..."

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Well, that night, I was pretty much going to my plan B, saying, "You guys go do it, I'm gonna go work on my own." I really wasn't that worried about it. It was really Todd sitting in the middle of the deal and understanding the pieces and parts, and calling me late at night and saying, "We'll give you $2,500 a month, 10% of the company or more if you want to work more, but not report to Mark in any way, shape, or form." Basically, you can have your autonomy. At the time, I was living on $1,200 a month, so 25 seemed like I was like raking it in. And to have 10% of something that those guys were gonna run off and do, you know, it felt okay, because at the time, I had this idea called internet e-ads, which is electronic advertising, and it was the first fee-per-click advertising company on the internet. So I'd already sort of was working with some software programmers

• 30:12Speaker 01

  to develop that. And this would give me the autonomy to go blow that up, which I felt near-term had a lot more cash potential.

• 30:19Rich Roll?

  And that goes back to what you were saying before about like, "All right, we'll just not be in touch. Like, I did this, and now I'm moving, I'm being flexible, and now I'm gonna move in this direction."

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Truly.

• 30:28Rich Roll?

  It's all good.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  I mean, I really give the majority of the reason this all happened to meditation. It was like about two years before that, a guy walked into my house and I could sense his peace. And it, for me, it's like- Something's different here, and I'd go, "What are you doing?" And he goes, he basically told me how to watch my breath for five minutes at a time. And if I look back at my life, I would say, is that singular moment that really gave me the consciousness to let go? You know, basically, that's all you're doing in meditation, is you have a thought come into your mind, you learn to release it, release the emotional charge related to it, and basically, create your own self-identity, and not be lost in all the craziness that your mind strums up.

• 31:14Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, I think so much of life boils down to how we react to situations. And, you know, a lot of times, we just, you know, our buttons get pushed, and we just react, and we don't even consciously know what we're saying, we're just sort of reacting to it based on some program that we're running that was, you know, plugged in by our parents, or our genetic makeup, or what have you. And then you're often running on some path that maybe you didn't even think through. And, you know, when I got sober, and was in early sobriety, I had a sponsor used to always say to me, "You never want to go through, like, an intense period in your life, whether it's a good thing that you're experiencing, or a bad thing, and look back on it and go,

• 31:59Rich Roll?

  'I wonder what that would have been like if I was, like, really spiritually fit.' Like, I wonder what that experience, like, maybe you, you know, you can go through a great experience and be grouchy the whole time, and be a jerk to hang out with, or you can enjoy it and take it in, or, you know, you can react to situations differently. And I think that, that's a pretty crucial thing. Like, let's say that guy had not come over to your house, and you had never been exposed to this meditation technique, or hadn't taken to it, or what have you. And here you are in this pretty intense business situation, where suddenly this company that, you know, you founded and were fostering was pulled out from underneath you. I mean, you could have, nobody would have put it past you to, you know, have a knock-down, drag-out with this guy.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, in another life.

• 32:43Rich Roll?

  It could have imploded the entire thing, and then you could have ended up with zero, and whatever.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  Clearly.

• 32:48Rich Roll?

  Your life today would be, you know, maybe, I mean, who knows what it would be like, but it would probably be different in certain respects.

• 32:54Speaker 01

  No doubt. I mean, it's interesting. When I started meditating, I stopped drinking as well. It just sort of changed every part of my life. But you're spot on. Yeah, I mean, the reality is, is by letting go of all that stuff, it gave me an opportunity and still, you know, there's the chance of me sitting here today would have been greatly diminished because I could very easily see me getting an attorney, getting some family money together and suing them because I thought that I could, you know, collect on it. And that could have been a long drawn out lawsuit that really never got me anywhere.

• 33:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and you could have surrounded yourself with a lot of people who would have supported that and said, "That's what you should do."

• 33:29Speaker 01

  Totally. It didn't matter. My best friends at the time were saying I was crazy. "You worked for four years and something, and you got 10% of it? Go sue those guys."

• 33:37Rich Roll?

  Right. And so, all right, but at the time, and now you're sitting on this 10% of this thing, I mean, did you have any idea like where this was headed or how big this thing was gonna be?

• 33:47Speaker 01

  You know, I'd pretty much written it off. To be honest with you, I believed it had potential, but I had no idea what the scale was or what I'd really end up with, just because of the way those deals go. And I knew that when I, you know, when we signed the paperwork that actually got me that percentage, it was like spring of 19, like late spring of 1995. And I knew it was years before there was gonna be any cash out. And then when, at that stage in my life, when you're looking in terms of years, you don't really put it on the balance sheet. You just sort of, for me personally, I was just hoping something worked out and not betting. I wouldn't, at the time, you would have said, "You think you're gonna get something out of it?" I would have thought it was a 50/50 chance of getting anything at all.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  I think what I was really excited about was this opportunity to pursue electronic advertising because I could see the ability tomorrow afternoon to generate a return on that. And it, to me, was the most exciting thing because it was almost like magic. I'd also often had these dreams when I was a kid. Of just going to the mailbox and picking up checks. And basically have designed a company and a vision and a program that made it so easy for me to and all we'd have to do is basically go to my mailbox and pick up money. And that's what Eads ended up becoming. Basically, I got a programmer to write a program. And then I in my, I would have people that I would pay contract basically to go out and find websites.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  And we'd put, you know, at the time, because it was early internet advertising, I was getting the biggest names in the internet in software and in media that were buying advertising from me. Because I was doing something that was much more easily verifiable. You know, fee per click as compared to impression based advertising.

• 35:41Rich Roll?

  So you're, okay, sorry, go ahead.

• 35:42Speaker 01

  But anyway, I'm just sort of saying, it was, you know, from Microsoft to CBS Sportsline to, you know, Adobe to, you know, go right down the list, any of the biggest ESPN sports companies and other software development companies were buying advertising for me. And in its heyday, you know, 97, 98, we were making like $400,000 a month.

• 36:06Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  Just from, in all positive cash flow, which at the time was more than Broadcast.com was doing. So I really felt that was the opportunity.

• 36:13Rich Roll?

  Right, so you're all wrapped up in this and excited about it and not really thinking about Broadcast.com? And then, and then what happens?

• 36:21Speaker 01

  And then, now I'll go fast forward a couple more years. You know, Eads continues to do well, but when, when Broadcast, in July of 1998 is when Broadcast.com went public. And we were, I was in a lockup for, you know, six months, so I couldn't sell my stock. And it had the, the single highest day gain at the time in the history of the New York Stock Exchange for an IPO.

• 36:44Rich Roll?

  Right, that's what I think, you know, nowadays it seems like there's a huge IPO every month.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 36:50Rich Roll?

  And we're used to these big tech IPOs, but back at the time, and I remember when this happened, it was a really big deal. It was really one of the first tech companies to go really big. I mean, it was the most successful IPO in history, right?

• 37:04Speaker 01

  At the time, at the time.

• 37:05Rich Roll?

  Crazy.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  And a lot of it... For me, I believe it was the idea and the quality of relationships that Todd Wagner had put together. I mean, if you could sort of put yourself back at that place in time and to know that the cable companies at the time were trying to conceive of the 500-channel cable TV network and figure out a way to bring those parts together in a way that would make it accessible. This was like the 5,000-channel, you know, anything in real time, international network at lower cost.

• 37:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, anywhere in the world, right.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  So it was like, it was pretty easy for people that really didn't know too much about this to get their head around what it potentially could become. But what Todd had done really well, and we had worked on a little bit even when I was there, is we had, you know, some of the major investors were the biggest companies at the time that were connected to these kind of issues. Motorola was there, Yahoo was there, Intel was there. I mean, with those guys, partners and owners in Broadcast.com, it made, when the stock was being offered, it created the credibility that made it go from, you know, a $100 million company to a billion-dollar company.

• 38:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's crazy. So, wait, so how long, so that was in 90?

• 38:13Speaker 01

  98.

• 38:14Rich Roll?

  98, okay. So you had a good, like, three-year period, um, leading it, before the IPO where you were sitting on it.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  Where I was just sort of, yeah, I wasn't even, basically for two years, maybe two and a half years before it went public, I wasn't even working there. I was just, for about a year and a half, two years after 1995, I was training people to acquire broadcast rights. So that they, so basically anybody that I was working with could learn how to call professional sports teams or a radio station that owns the rights, initially the audio rights, but eventually the video rights, and get the right to retransmit them on the internet and share the income, reproduce, 50/50.

• 38:53Rich Roll?

  Okay. So IPO, I mean, this had to be like a, I mean, what is going through your mind when this happened?

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Well, once the IPO happened, it was, needless to say, it was just a freak of nature beyond a freak of nature, because even at the time, I never, when the IPO happened, I wasn't expecting much. Then, once the IPO happened and we saw what it was worth, then it was like, is it going to make it another six months at these valuations? Because if, I couldn't sell my stock until January.

• 39:23Rich Roll?

  Right, so the bottom could have just dropped on.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  And I expected that at some basic level, because to me, you know, I don't know if you got, how many people remember, but back at the time... Most of these companies were getting valuations based on page views.

• 39:35Rich Roll?

  Right, right.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  They weren't getting valuations based on positive cash flow. So the amount of cash flow that this company had in relation to its valuation was totally fractional. And if the world was ever going to change in that six months prior to it, and it went to a reasonable valuation, then my equity interest would be, you know, who knows, a tenth, a hundredth of what it was.

• 39:58Rich Roll?

  So are you waking up every day and, you know, checking it to see?

• 40:03Speaker 01

  In one hand, I'd sort of brushed it off because for the first four months, I didn't even watch it. But after, for like the last two months of the lockup, I was watching it regularly. Just because it's like, there was one day that they actually halted trading because it was like the, it went up like 96 points. It was like the largest single day gain in the history of a stock on the New York Stock Exchange. And that day, you know, if you did the math on my shares, it was like off the charts. And for me, it was like, as I started doing the math on other people that were big in the tech world and seeing what this money was in relation to that, I was like, this is incredible. And if it holds on for another two months, it's going to be a, you know, a gift from the God and beyond. So that's what happened. Basically, you know, the numbers sort of stayed the same for that remaining two months.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  But the day that we had the, that day that my lockup expired and I was at Goldman Sachs in downtown Dallas, getting ready to sell my shares into the market, they had the Argentinian peso crisis. And the stock, which was at 250 bucks or 220 bucks that morning, went to 100 bucks.

• 41:07Rich Roll?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  So at the time, we don't know if it's going to go to five bucks.

• 41:13Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  And, or if it's going to come back to two and a quarter at the end of the day. So it took, it was a, talk about, you know, just a weird twist on the whole thing.

• 41:23Rich Roll?

  It had been steady over those last couple of weeks.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:26Rich Roll?

  And so you're like, all right, I'm out. I'm going to go, I'm going to sell, I'm going to cash out.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  And then it's like half, it's like, oh, I lost half of everything. But so, thank God, I just had, I, you know, sort of was listening to, you know, my father and others that were just saying, "Have patience, markets change. Don't feel like this is the last day of a market." So I sold probably, I don't know, I'd probably say 1/20 of what I owned that day. And at the time, it was still obviously more money than I'd ever had, that it was, you know, in my pocket at one point in time. So it was, it was an incredible day in the life. And then about three months later, I sold the remaining 80%, and then sold the rest of it, like, in the middle of the summer of 1999, which is about nine months before the internet crashed.

• 42:13Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  And so when the internet crash happened, I was 100% out, and pretty much willing to shut down e-ads, because I didn't want the brain damage of dealing with an internet advertising company. And it was going to be, like, 10 times harder to make e-ads work, because the internet, you know, stock bubble had burst.

• 42:31Rich Roll?

  Right. So, wow, so that's very fortunate, you'd been completely cashed out before the crash. And so here you are, and you're sitting on, you know, more money than you probably ever imagined that you would

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Clearly.

• 42:45Rich Roll?

  ever get. I mean, it's really an incredible story, you know, to have this happen in your life. And I think that, that this is really what I wanted to, you know, talk to you about, and what I find fascinating, which is, you know, with this comes, obviously, opportunities and a myriad of decisions and directions that you could take with your life. I mean, the whole world is open to you, you could do anything you want, right? And I think most people in your situation would kind of go the Gordon Gekko route, or the empire-building route, you know? They'd go and they'd say, "Hey, I've got the golden touch, you know, let's do it again." Or, like, "Where's the next deal?" And, you know, it's an aphrodisiac, and I'm sure that, you know, the sort of adrenaline

• 43:28Rich Roll?

  and the kind of rush that comes with that experience is, you know, very Intoxicating, right? Like, when am I gonna experience that again? And as humans, we're always like, it's never enough, right? Like, oh, that was good. Like, well, let's do that again. Or how can I do that and even better the next time? It's gonna be, you know, and then you're off, right? You're off running on this route or whatever. And, you know, you see people do that a lot. And I think that probably would have been the expected course for you to take.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really interesting, the psychology that happens in that environment. Because you're thinking at one level, it's like, I got enough to live on for the rest of my life. Why would I go keep doing more of that same stuff?

• 44:11Rich Roll?

  But most people do.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  And you know what it is, or what it was for me? I sensed that same energy, needless to say. You know, I was super competitive as a kid. You know, I just, I had my next door neighbor that all we did every day, every waking moment of our day was making up games and competing. It could be anywhere from, you know, a new way of playing ping pong to playing a new way of, you know, creating a golf course around his yard or playing football with some friends. Bottom line, it was all about competition. And the reality is, I sort of felt that same energy. It's exactly what you're describing. You know, it's like, okay, I've got X, I wanna make it 10X.

• 44:52Rich Roll?

  Right, I mean, because there's always somebody who has more, right? And you're probably like, well, that guy over there did it. And, you know, look what he did. Like, I wanna see if I can beat him now and all of that.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  No doubt. So, that was, it was something I felt. And it was something that was definitely part of me. And I, in some way, took a half step in that direction by moving to Santa Barbara, California, or actually Montecito, and buying a huge house that was beyond anything I would have ever imagined as a kid. And I bought an interest in a jet and I...

• 45:25Rich Roll?

  Good for you.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  And I did those things, you know, I bought all the nice cars. And then, you know, it was weird. You know, I was in bed one night with my wife. And we were talking and we were, you know, it's like... What is this? You know, is this making us? Are we happier? Is this happiness at some level because we have these things? And it's like I would have people come over and I would be... It was interesting how I did. Initially, I was showing them the property as I was, as though I was really excited and wanted to offer it because I so wanted them to experience the feeling of seeing it. But after a really short period of time, I almost felt bad because it's like I really wasn't getting anything out of it.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  And I felt, I felt almost sort of sick inside. It was weird. It was something that just came over me and it made me realize is this is not an end point. And it wasn't something that really made me a healthier human being. And, and it's like right then, just the world started switching. And then everything started going off inside my mind. It was like, I need to get out of this place. I need to get into something that's more real, more grounded. My wife was great because she was right there with me. She didn't need more stuff. She didn't really need anything. And she was incredibly, she was like the ideal grounding instrument. Because she was right there, she wanted simpleness and peace and actually the beauty of Kauai

• 46:50Speaker 01

  was inspiring for her, like nothing you could imagine. So we had actually, we started traveling around the country and in different parts of the Caribbean, trying to find the ideal place to live. And after going to the Caribbean and to, you know, different parts of Mexico and to different parts of, you know, the Californian stuff, it's like once in different parts of the Hawaiian island, we got to the north shore of Kauai and it's like, it became this little six mile stretch between Killaway and Princeville. Like to me, just became God's gift to the most beautiful part of the world. Because of the, the natural beauty and just the, the way the weather comes through this place. It's real. I mean, it's sometimes a stormy north shore of, of any, you know, like any coast and, and

• 47:35Speaker 01

  any small island in a remote part of the world. And there was, there's that, and then there's the community that's represented on this North Shore Kauai. You know, it's like, there's an authenticity here that I really was able to feel right off the bat. And it's got the full range, you know, in some way it's sort of real, in some way it's sort of rugged, in some way it's very native Hawaiian in some ways. And it was, to me, it was much more, you know, an opportunity for learn more about myself than living in Montecito, California, where it was so much more who you were and what you were as compared to what you were really doing and what it is you were about.

• 48:20Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Well, yeah, I mean, that's really cool. I mean, you sort of, you know, started to build the gilded cage a little bit and had a course correct. I mean, other people, I think, would have said, "Well, yeah, I'm still, like, why am I not happy? Like, I have all this money and I have the, you know, the house and the cars and all that kind of stuff." Well, "Oh, it's because, you know, I don't have that car, you know, I'll get that car and then that'll fix me." Or, you know, "I'll get this and then I'll feel better about myself." But you had the insight to say, you know, chasing that dragon is not taking me to the best place.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, it really didn't take too much to feel that the more stuff I got, I wasn't getting happier. And it was interesting, you know, right off the bat, I was getting a lot of stuff. And it really became apparent that I would have that new stuff, whatever it was, whether it was a new car, or a new computer, or a new phone, or whatever it was. And within a week and a half, the coolness of having that new thing was gone.

• 49:17Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  And, but I still had the stuff, and then I started to realize, you know what? Now that I have this stuff, I now have this, because of my family history and values in some way, now I have the obligation to maintain it. So I really quickly became... Sort of like this, I was possessed by my possessions. And I had to, I had a certain amount of obligation I felt and still do, you know, to maintaining what I own because I don't want to waste. There's something really genetically clear inside me that when I waste, I feel a lot of pain at whatever level. So it was really interesting how quickly that awareness came and then the decision to sort of just get to the most basic things you need. And if you only have those things, those are things you want to maintain,

• 50:01Speaker 01

  rather than having all that other stuff that's very superfluous. It takes a heck of a lot of brain damage just to keep track of, much less to keep it in a good working order. And I call that the burden of the rich. Because there's so many wealthy people out there. And they, if, if anything is out of place in their house, or if there's a scratch on their car, or if the maid hasn't done their laundry just right, their day's upside down.

• 50:25Rich Roll?

  Exactly, yeah, I mean, just, just living in Los Angeles, I'm exposed to, you know, quite a few rather wealthy and successful people. And, you know, I can assure you that it's not a recipe for happiness. You know, not all of them, but you know, a fair number of them are relatively miserable people or fair to middling. And, but the common thing that I always hear from them is, yeah, they become a slave to their possessions. It's all about kind of holding on to what they have and being, you know, the fear that comes with losing it and trying to maintain it. And, and suddenly they're, you know, they spend all their time managing other people who are upkeeping their stuff. And it becomes a full-time job. And, you know, they think like, oh, you know, my life's going to be easy and simple now.

• 51:09Rich Roll?

  And actually it just becomes complicated with all that stuff.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  And I, I think the, again, you know, that's, that's Western culture's export to the third world, really. When you really look at what we're, what we are exporting today is this consumption lifestyle. We are trying to, through media and through all the subconscious and conscious ways, we market America, more or less, and Europe in some ways, many, very much in the same boat, but doesn't seem to be quite to the extreme.

• 51:37Rich Roll?

  As a concept, as a lifestyle.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, the more stuff you have, the more successful you are, and the more happy you are, and the more knowledgeable you are, because you've learned how to acquire vast amount of things. And even if you've gone, you know, 190% in debt to acquire more stuff, and you have zero income to live on, the perception is that you have all this stuff, so you've figured it out. When reality is, is you're almost like the government of the United States, you've created so much debt, it's questionable whether you're going to be able to get out of it without printing money or declaring a bankruptcy. And what is that life like, you know, as compared to one that really doesn't need that stuff? And I don't think the government wants us to think that thought, because they need

• 52:24Speaker 01

  big, big business to work. If we decide to stop buying, the system stops.

• 52:29Rich Roll?

  That's completely predicated on consumption lifestyle and consumerism. I mean, you know, the famous George Bush quote, you know, "Go out and shop, everything's great," you know, that kind of thing.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah.

• 52:42Rich Roll?

  So, all right, so you discover the North Shore of Kauai, and you have this epiphany that this is where you want to relocate to and settle to. And I'd be remiss if I didn't bring this up, but it's so fascinating to me. I don't know, have you been following, we didn't talk about this, this, the sort of unfolding saga of John McAfee right now?

• 53:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 53:07Rich Roll?

  So, so this is a very, very fascinating, interesting thing that's occurring right now. So, John McAfee, who's a, who's a software entrepreneur, he developed McAfee Virus software, incredibly successful guy, who...

• 53:25Rich Roll?

  Is, I guess he's retired, or he sold his company, I'm not sure exactly, but you know, a very, very wealthy guy, relocated to Belize and sort of built this compound in a tropical paradise and has been living out his life down there. I think he divested all of his money out of the United States, or, I mean, he literally has been living down there in this compound. And essentially, from what I can gather, and I'm not completely read up on everything, but I just heard an interview with him the other day on the Joe Rogan podcast, and I've been reading John McAfee's blog, is, you know, there's some evidence that he's kind of going off the rails right now, and they don't know whether he's experimenting with designer drugs that he's creating at his house, and, you know, bath salts, there's

• 54:09Rich Roll?

  some indication that maybe he may or may not be doing, and he's got a, you know, young girlfriend, and his neighbor turned up dead, and there's some suspicion that he might have had something to do with it, and he's claiming that the Belize government is out to get him, and that this is a giant conspiracy. And, long story short, is he's essentially on the lam right now, and he's running from the law. But meanwhile, he's tweeting and blogging in real time, and he has enough technological savvy to cover his tracks and conceal his IP address. But it's pretty amazing, because, and to bring it back to this conversation, to see a guy who, you know, I don't know, maybe everything that McAfee is saying is

• 54:52Rich Roll?

  true, and people are out to get him, I have no idea. All I know is what I've heard. But it would seem like there's some instability there, and a definite imbalance in kind of how he's living his life, and all the drama that is sort of circling him right now. And when you see a guy like that, who, you know, kind of has everything, and we have this notion, this American dream, this idea that, hey, you know, in America, you can make it big, and anything's possible, and, you know, everybody's got a startup, and wants to, you know, cash out, and this idea of moving to a tropical paradise, and, you know, I'll just sit at the beach, and, you know, have my house, and live out the rest of my days in peace and solitude. I mean, how many people actually do that? And how many people actually do that, and do it?

• 55:38Rich Roll?

  So that they're happy, you know, and don't go off the rails or become imbalanced or, you know, create some kind of, you know, insane drama that is unfolding. So as I'm watching this and I'm contrasting McAfee with the choices that you've made, and it's fascinating, really. So you come out here and, you know, what is the idea? I mean, was it, was part of that the idea of like, I'm going to, you know, be out here? I'm gonna simplify, I'm gonna, you know, I'll be by the beach?

• 56:05Speaker 01

  Well, a lot of it was getting sort of back to meditation was, what was coming up for me is I have to get out of the environment that I was in to find myself. And I, Kua ended up being a great place for that. I sort of felt that early on coming here because the natural vibration here is so strong, you know, that you can be here for a relatively short period of time and go to any of these beaches or just, you know, hang out near a waterfall or just sit out on a quiet night and feel the energy of this land. And I definitely didn't feel that at any level, you know, I couldn't probably, I lived in the same house in Dallas, Texas for probably 20 years. I couldn't tell you where the sun was rising or the moon was setting.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  You know, I can tell you the cycle of the moon here. I can tell you when the high tides are gonna happen. I can, you know, I can tell you the time of year because of where the sun sets. I can tell you what's happening today and tomorrow somewhat by the way the winds are blowing today. You know, there's just these, these aspects of connection to nature that are almost rudimentary here, that when you're sitting in the middle of a city, they're not even on the radar. So that piece was, was really interesting, but the thing that was, what really moved me was just the idea of getting my head out of the mainland energy and getting it into a space where it wasn't so influenced by all that stuff that I was part of it.

• 57:33Speaker 01

  And that was the piece that I'd sort of held on to in the back of mind and was motivating me to come out and just see what it was like to be in the middle of nowhere for a while and see what effect that would have on me and just play the game, see what happened. Because I felt, worst case scenario, I'd learn more about myself. Best case scenario, I might do things that I'm really excited about that are fulfilling me at the deepest level of my psychological and spiritual self.

• 58:01Rich Roll?

  So you move out here. So it started really as an experiment. Did you come out here like temporarily to spend some time?

• 58:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, initially, we came out here just sort of saying we'd go back and forth. And then we came out, we came back after being here like for about six months. And we looked at each other and said, why would we go back? What are we going back to? It's like this is so exponentially better from what we are giving to ourselves and what we're giving to our kids at the time my wife was pregnant. It became a very simple decision. So at the time, though, even though we decided to have our child and start living here, in the back of my mind, I was thinking it's gonna be a three or four year kind of a run. And just sort of see and sort of play it out. But then one thing led to another and it was really,

• 58:49Speaker 01

  after a relatively short period of time, I felt myself sort of almost like a tree. With every passing week, with every passing month, I was rooting in. I was sort of becoming more connected, whether it was to the community that I was living in, just to the land that I was living in, the connection with myself. There's so many parts of sort of my natural biological self and then the natural world itself that I just was becoming more aware of. That it made me sort of now think it's, it would be really hard to move. But at the same time, I see the value in balance too. Because it's almost like you have to go to appreciate what's here. It's like, and it's true, even on the most, you know, simple ways of looking at life.

• 59:33Speaker 01

  You know, for example, when you're staring at something, you can't really see it, but you have to look away to look back. And it's that, you know, even, you know, train pilots to look that way, to be able to see what's in front of them better. And I feel like the more I go and spend a relatively short period of time in what I'd call higher energy cities around the world, and then come back here, it's really, it's sort of, it creates a connection to, you know, those things that make me understand those, the proportions and the reality and sort of more of an identity around the pieces and parts that make this life unique and what make me the way I am.

• 1:00:08Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, you know, this area, the North Shore of Kauai, it's a really special place. And for those of you who haven't had the opportunity to visit here, It's very different from the other Hawaiian islands. In its terrain and in its energy field, I feel. I mean, it's a very lush, you know, green, really, you know, tropical, foresty kind of area. I mean, if you've been to the big island, you know, most people go to Kona, it's, you know, lava rock and very arid and Maui is very populated and obviously, you know, Oahu is almost like a, you know, a mainland city.

• 1:00:46Rich Roll?

  Kauai is very untouched in certain respects and the mountain ranges and the sort of overgrown fields are so remarkable in their dramatic appearance and colors. It's very vivid and it's, I always joke, it's like, it's almost like you could just see King Kong, you know, walking right out of the jungle. I mean, it's really quite, quite remarkable. And I think that you're correct. I mean, the energy field here is really strong. Like, I can, I can feel it and that, that doesn't mean it's always good. Like, it goes dark and heavy as much as it can be

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  No doubt.

• 1:01:24Rich Roll?

  Light and good.

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  The pendulum swings.

• 1:01:26Rich Roll?

  You can't have one without the other.

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  And you need them both. And I think that's sort of the missing, you know, people think, oh, I've got everything or whatever. I'm not talking about me in particular, but when you have everything you want, that, oh, all of a sudden, life should be on this straight path towards upward happiness arc. That is so not connected to reality. Life, as in everything, goes through cycles of ups and downs and you need the downs to know the ups. If you had nothing but ups, you would never appreciate anything other than more up and you'd eventually, in my mind, die just because you'd, you know, like, I think what happens a lot of times with people into drugs and whoever else, they just want more of a high all the time and at some point, they just, they die.

• 1:02:07Rich Roll?

  No, I mean, I don't think, no one's walked the earth that just, you know, had highs all the time that worked out.

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  It doesn't work that way.

• 1:02:13Rich Roll?

  And that's not what happiness is. I mean, what is happiness? I mean, happiness isn't, you know, sort of this, this adrenaline rush or this, you know, crazy enthusiasm 24 hours a day. I mean, it doesn't work like that. I think happiness is a much more complex Thing, you know, it's

• 1:02:30Speaker 01

  It's a range, you know, it's unique to an individual, but it's a range of life. For me personally, it's a range of experiences related to those, those times in life that you're aware enough to feel them at whatever level they are. They aren't really good or bad, they're just things that are happening. And if you can be open enough to feel them with an open heart and feel them with the depth of your being, you've had an experience that's unique. But usually our mind is so busy with stuff, we don't wanna feel, we don't wanna look, we don't wanna know.

• 1:02:57Rich Roll?

  Well, we live in a system that's not designed to encourage that. We're living a system that encourages us to consume as a recipe for happiness rather than accumulate experiences.

• 1:03:08Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:03:09Rich Roll?

  You know, I mean, that, I mean, it's, it's completely backwards, in my opinion. Not backwards, but, but the emphasis is on the wrong side of that equation, I think.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, just to think that you can have more stuff and that you are gonna be happier because you have more stuff. I think there's a, I was reading this thing, was saying, once you get beyond a certain level of income that makes it so you can survive, there's the difference between having, let's just say that number's $70,000 a year. The difference in happiness between the guy that's making $70,000 and $7 million and $700 million is not even noticeable. And I, I totally can make, you know, that makes total sense to me because once you have what you need, your happiness is more based on what it is you are and what you're doing, as compared to how many more things you have. And for me, it's, it's more being channeled now into what can be created with my limited

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  light force in a way that makes me and the people I'm connected with feel more alive and healthy.

• 1:04:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I think also that the thing, the thing really that, that gives me the, the sort of a sustained feeling of wellness, or, you know, you can call it happiness, is when I'm giving back, you know, when I'm trying to get out of myself and my ego and my problems and what I need and all that kinda stuff, and I kind of try to get grounded and, and just be of service to somebody else, which I'm not saying I always do.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  I'm right there with you.

• 1:04:41Rich Roll?

  But when I do do that, on the rare occasion, I generally feel really good. I feel better about myself, feel, I feel a, a contentedness that

• 1:04:54Rich Roll?

  That seems more, you know, meaningful to me personally than

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  I get that.

• 1:04:59Rich Roll?

  Other things.

• 1:05:07Rich Roll?

  Which takes us to what I want to talk about now, which is how, you know, Common Ground came to be and, you know, what the birth of this idea was and what you want to do with it now. So let's talk about that a little bit.

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  Very cool, yes. Common Ground is a unique place in time, basically. And it is all about place at one level, but it's also about the range of spirituality, emotion, and life forces that happen when you're connected with things that are, you know, based on values that are elemental to life experiences. So, I mean, that's a lot of, you know, sort of ambiguous stuff. But the reality is, is I'm really trying to imagine a sustainable resource center that makes it easy for people to get connected to things that make their life more worth living. And for them to see a way to connect with a range of activities that make them feel

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  more willing to get engaged with community and sort of a new way of doing business and other people in a way that sort of creates a very noticeable difference between the way things are traditionally being done. You know, I feel like there's so much apathy in Western culture about getting involved in anything because we really don't feel like it's worth supporting community activities or government or a lot of nonprofits because we don't really feel like our time's being very well respected or we're getting much back for that investment. I'm trying to imagine an environment that creates a sustainable path forward, using

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  food system as the foundation, in a way that combats disease, creates economic opportunities, creates a better environment, and does a lot of things that make life healthier for the long term so that when we look back, that our kids can say, "Wow, that was something different. That was great." It doesn't, it's not the path that it seems like the rest of the world is on, and it's standing out as something different.

• 1:07:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I think that...

• 1:07:15Rich Roll?

  You know, I think that people are starved for community. And, you know, by community, I mean like a real connectedness to your neighbor or your fellow man. And just speaking personally, living in Los Angeles, you know, we are very blessed and live in a really beautiful spot of the world. And in many ways, it's really phenomenal. But the one thing that it really doesn't have or that I haven't experienced is any sense of community with my, you know, neighbors, my environment. And, you know, we don't really know our neighbors very well. And in like the closest town, which is Calabasas to where we live, there is no town. It's essentially an outdoor mall.

• 1:08:00Rich Roll?

  You know, it's an outdoor mall with a road going through it, and that's it. And so people sort of convene at Starbucks to hang out and talk. And that's really, I mean Starbucks, quite honestly, has taken the place of the town square, because there is no town square. And, you know, I don't know if this is good or bad, it just, this is the way that it is. And I think that for myself and my wife and my family, you know, one of the reasons that we were attracted to coming here was because we were lacking that sense of, you know, community and mutual support. And, you know, I, we would remember days, there are days that, you know, when one of our, you know, we couldn't drop Trapper off at soccer practice because we were doing

• 1:08:44Rich Roll?

  something else, or another kid had to be somewhere else at that time, or whatever, and just trying to find somebody to help us out to like, hey, can you, you know, can you get a ride home? Or can you find somebody who can give you a ride? Or, you know, even carpooling, something very simple and basic. It was like incredibly difficult, you know? And this is, I don't think that we're wired. I don't think that our DNA is suited for this kind of lifestyle that we've created, the cul-de-sac lifestyle, where we're all kind of on our own. I mean, we, you know, mankind kind of habitated for eons in these villages where, you know, tasks were divided appropriately and everybody works together. And, you know, the Hillary Clinton that takes a village or whatever, sounds super trite and stupid, but, you know, it's really true.

• 1:09:27Rich Roll?

  And we don't live that way anymore, you know, unless you're in some remote Greek village or, you know, in some third world, you know, country or something like that, where they're still rooted in traditions that we've gotten away with. And what I think is really cool about Common Ground... And you personally, is your interest in trying to recreate that. And I think we're in a very interesting time where people are fascinated and attracted to different ideas about how to live their lives and lifestyle and a way of kind of getting back to something more primal like that of living communally. And at the same time, it's bifurcated because you have that which is sort of on a, um, this aspirational plane.

• 1:10:10Rich Roll?

  And then you have the preppers and the militia people and all these sort of end of the world apocalyptic groups that they're kind of weird cousins because they're kind of doing the same thing like, but they're just doing it in a, in a kind of a dark, negative way. And then there's the sort of new agers, you know, that are trying to do this in a, in a kind of a hippie way. You know, you have people who are, I think in some respects, wanting the end of the world to come so that they can shoot their guns and, you know, tell everybody that they were right about what's happening and the currency isn't worth anything anymore and blah, blah, blah. And that makes for great reality TV because these characters are larger than life. And then on the other end of the spectrum, it's, you know, it's the hippie, free love, you know, kind of commune.

• 1:10:53Rich Roll?

  And so what you're doing is really grounded in something very neutral and sustainable and, and accessible for a normal human being to wrap their brain around, which is like, let's, let's figure out a better way of living that's more sustainable ecologically with our food, with our pooling our resources and finding a better way of living. And I think that those ideas are, are really powerful and, and interesting.

• 1:11:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's very ambiguous and fairly amorphous when you really look at, at the highest level. But at, at a basic level, it's common ground and the, the reason we chose that name was basically all of us, when you look at, you know, the, the range of values and issues that humans around the planet Earth deal with have much more in common than we have that divides us. And I'd even go to the extreme of saying, we really have, you know, I'd say 98% of the things we care most about are things that are, are the kinds of things that are the same to people in the most remote parts of the world that are in the other side of the world from us.

• 1:12:00Speaker 01

  But yet, that said, we seem like, when you look at the media and you look at the way things unfold, it's like we are constantly slicing and dicing and judging all these little pieces and parts that we don't have in common, you know, whether it's religious kind of stuff, or it's other values that seem to be a little bit different than ours. But if you just stacked up the values that all humans have in common, and what they need to live a healthy, basic life, you know, the love for their family, the quality of food, air, water, the access to resources, all those things we know that are needed to create a high quality and evolving and growing human being. They're pretty simple.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  And so my thought was, is there a way that we can create a very fertile environment, and create a demonstration environment that makes it so that the second people step on this property, they feel that energy. And it's a very supportive energy, but it's a very clear energy in a way that they can see how to engage and grow in their experience of themselves and the planet by doing certain things. And the three things we're starting with is creating a great organic garden, creating a really good, you know, organic food service or restaurant, and then creating a market that supports that. And it may seem sort of redundant when you look at these similar restaurants and gardens and markets around the planet.

• 1:13:25Speaker 01

  But what makes these three unique is they're all bound by a vision that's basically saying, "Let's do what's best for this community in this place." And if we create and make the best soil, we make the best plants, and we make the best food from it, and we start working with the other growers of food in the area, and other people that can contribute products to the market, this becomes a hub for the creation and distribution of local products. And eventually, we start, hopefully, we'll start creating more products and training more people to learn and see the benefits of keeping money in the community rather than giving it to Walmart and 24 hours later

• 1:14:07Speaker 01

  only having four cents of every dollar left back on the island. In this scenario, when we grow our own food, make our own products, and sell our own products, we maybe import... In some cases, maybe as little as 4% of the ingredients to make those products. And we retain 96% in a community. And the multiplier effect, that's 24 times right there, is incredible. When you look at it over time, done right, you know, with a vision that really brings people together, rather than pulls them apart.

• 1:14:39Rich Roll?

  Right. It's closing the loop, right? It's closing the loop and keeping it within the community and supporting the community in doing so. And it's sustainable in its own right for doing that. And I think it's an incredible model. And I think it's hopefully, you know, a model that will not only thrive here, but will be replicable in its own, you know, versions and incarnations in different areas of the country and the world. And I really think it's the future. I mean, you and I, we talk a lot about, you know, the unsustainability of factory farming and not just in its implications for health, but in terms of, you know, the economy and

• 1:15:20Rich Roll?

  the long-term vitality of the soil and, you know, the future of growing food and GMOs and all that kind of stuff. I mean, it brings all of that stuff into focus.

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, to me, the top four issues are the economy. Basically, if we can maintain and create our own local economy, rather than to be dependent on the US dollar and a basket of other foreign currencies that are going to be constantly printing money to survive, that's a huge step. And that creates a lot of financial security and economic security for the community. Food security, you know, even though it's sort of for the general public not perceived to be much of an issue today because they can go to a grocery store and get food, but the reality is, is having 100% local, fresh, organic, local food that you're buying and growing here is compared to bringing food in from another part of the world that has a lot of toxins in it, that gets redistributed in the environment, and the residual effects

• 1:16:14Speaker 01

  of that over time are dramatic. And fundamentally, it's creating disease, which gets to the number three issue, which is drugs. You know, supposedly 45% of the American public is on prescription drugs of some sort. If you have a healthy, local, fresh, organic fruit and vegetable diet, I would argue that you probably don't need 99% of those drugs. And if that's the case, what does that mean, again, to keeping money in the community and creating long-term productivity and overall health?

• 1:16:45Rich Roll?

  Preventative medicine starts with the plate.

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  You got it.

• 1:16:49Rich Roll?

  Starts, everything starts with the food.

• 1:16:52Speaker 01

  So those are, in my mind, huge issues, and the last one being environment, and basically maintaining and supporting the health of the local environment rather than degrading it and destroying the ecosystems because of the way big business and government has traditionally looked at the use of resources. Those, when you, when you just look at those top four issues, a new food system done right in a community, being supported by the community, and being educated, or educating the community on the value of it, is really huge over time. And I believe the hypothesis that I'm describing there can be borne out in reality. And I really want to be able to prove that to myself and to prove that in a way that others say,

• 1:17:37Speaker 01

  "Shoot, I want that for my family, I want that for my community."

• 1:17:41Rich Roll?

  And what do you think, what are the obstacles? I mean, what are the impediments? And what are the walls that you've been bumping up against? Whether they're political, or social, or...

• 1:17:53Speaker 01

  You know, the biggest wall for me personally is, it's probably more of a personal issue than it is an actual issue within the, you know, the business 101 issues of making it happen. And it's more like, it's fair exchange, basically. I don't want to feel like I'm doing it. And I really need to be in service of the community and be in service of the people that need these things in the community in a way that the business and the financial sustainability and the economic feasibility of the product can sort of create and have a life of its own, rather than feeling like it needs somebody like me to fund it or to manage it at some level.

• 1:18:37Rich Roll?

  Right, I mean, I think it can't, it can only be truly healthy once it's completely self-supporting.

• 1:18:42Speaker 01

  Bingo, bingo.

• 1:18:43Rich Roll?

  And so that's the trick. Getting it to that place, but you've been having to double down to get it to that place with the belief, right?

• 1:18:50Speaker 01

  And a lot of it, you know, as much as I've... Gone through the, the learning curve and by no means at the end of it, of what it takes to do these kinds of things. The biggest, the biggest lessons I've had to learn is dealing with my, my own baggage that I bring as a result of being a kid that grew up in Dallas, Texas, you know, from 1970 and 80 and having a mom and dad that came from a certain place and their parents coming from a certain place that have instilled a set of values and, excuse me, ways of looking at life that I have subconsciously accepted and, and have made my reality. And to get rid of that baggage more or less so that I can have my own identity and look

• 1:19:33Speaker 01

  at things clearly and make healthier, long-term decisions is really the piece that I'm trying to get clear enough on so that I can give and commit to different aspects of this in a way that really make it work naturally rather than with that sort of that, that push-pull thing that otherwise happens.

• 1:19:51Rich Roll?

  But the ultimate sort of end game, or not end game, but the, the sort of ongoing result that you're looking for is to get to a place where common ground is a self-supporting community, where the individuals who are either residing here or working here in a communal, in a communal way are contributing in such a way that they're all able to support themselves and support the greater good by doing it, whether it's through harvesting the fields or creating food products or, you know, the, you know, managing and running the restaurant and store, et cetera. But that it will be this ecosystem that will, would, would be able to operate in a healthy way without you having to be.

• 1:20:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. Imagine an organism that's, that's lives on its own, it's all, it self-organizes and all I've maybe done is created a fertile environment for it to thrive. And, and I'm not really telling it how to thrive, I'm just giving it the opportunity to be great. And I really don't see this location necessarily as a community in itself. I think it's more of a community in the emotional and intellectual sense. That people that believe in these values are a community. And there's a number of people that care deeply about these values enough to continue to support the vision by contributing their time, buying the products, showing up at meetings and saying yes, basically doing those range of things that support the values

• 1:21:16Speaker 01

  in a way that bring more people to it and make it naturally sustain itself.

• 1:21:20Rich Roll?

  Do you have entrepreneur friends or friends from your former life who think you're crazy?

• 1:21:27Speaker 01

  Every one of them.

• 1:21:28Rich Roll?

  What are they telling you?

• 1:21:30Speaker 01

  You know, I don't even bring it up to them. It's interesting, you know, it's like I don't really, this is not an area that I can really have a conversation with very many people with just because it is so relatively outside the scope of normal business. So the number of people that I could even describe what we've discussed to and then have a conversation about a way to design and build that that self-organizing structure, for example, is very limited because it's like most people don't see the financial game. You know, it's really got, more often than not, the beginning of this conversation ends with most people thinking, what's my return over what period of time? And how much am I going to put in and how much I can get back?

• 1:22:13Speaker 01

  As soon as you go there, an energetic thing happens that moves it away from building the strongest, healthiest community to, let's get the most dollar in and the least, or the most dollar out in the shortest period of time.

• 1:22:26Rich Roll?

  Well, it's two completely different paradigms.

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  Clearly, clearly. And that's sort of the test. Can this new paradigm tell a story that's extraordinary? And to see that it's supporting the emotional and personal and spiritual health of the individual in a way that anybody that comes in here, almost like that guy did, to me, you know, 20 years ago, when he walked in my room and I sensed his peace and his confidence and his inner joy. Can other people feel that when they come here and see the reason to engage because of what it will mean to their health for the rest of their life?

• 1:23:04Rich Roll?

  That's a beautiful thing.

• 1:23:06Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:23:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's worth fighting for, too.

• 1:23:09Speaker 01

  Well, what a better thing to spend a human life trying to understand.

• 1:23:16Speaker 01

  Because you're right, there's a million other things that I could do to keep myself busy and we all could. But if you're going to describe the kinds of things you could do that would have the most meaning and purpose in your life, what would they be? They're unique to every individual. This is just a piece of art that I've been trying to figure out and draw.

• 1:23:35Rich Roll?

  So, the other part of this equation that's going on with Common Ground is this Common Ground media idea that I'm here to help you work on a little bit. And so I thought I'd let you, give you an opportunity to talk a little bit about that and what you have in mind and where you see it going and what you want it to be.

• 1:23:56Speaker 01

  Sure, no problem. Common Ground media should stand in contrast to what I'd call traditional mainland or Western culture media, from the standpoint that we wouldn't put things on it that would degrade the human condition. What would be the purpose of putting things in a video format that people around the world would digest that would make them feel less of a human being and degrade their health and their happiness at some basic level or steal a part of their soul? I feel like standard Western culture media preys on the weaknesses of human beings at a basic level.

• 1:24:38Speaker 01

  And I would love to imagine a range of media that would be the kinds of things that would support our soul and support our happiness and support those things that we're great at and build those up and show us how to do those things better. And I'm really sort of starting with sustainability one. And the way I'm describing is sort of inner sustainability, those kinds of things that come with personal growth and those things that make you healthy individually. And there's outer sustainability, it's the range of things we know you need to live as a human being at this place and time and be healthy. It's the food, energy, water, housing kind of stuff. So I'm trying to put some stakes in the ground that people can understand that those two

• 1:25:19Speaker 01

  worlds in a way that just by seeing those reference points and those contexts, that they can have the awarenesses they know they would need to be healthy. And if all they do is get that, they can have some deeper connection to a real world rather than what I'm calling this sort of... This crazy imaginary world that the general media seems to push in this, these ideals of perfection that sort of makes everybody at some level feel less than human or less than good.

• 1:25:48Rich Roll?

  Well, and also is incredibly fear-based and salacious and exaggerated

• 1:25:53Speaker 01

  Go right down the list.

• 1:25:54Rich Roll?

  in every regard. So, yeah, you know, aspirational wellness-related content is not test well in the Nielsen houses.

• 1:26:04Speaker 01

  It certainly does not. And so that's, that's a good point, you know, and one, you and I both know that just putting that information out, it's not going to create much of a draw. You know, it's not going to be the kind of things mainstream America is flocking to.

• 1:26:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but what is the purpose? The purpose isn't to, you know, sell advertising on it. Clearly, the purpose is to create something transformational.

• 1:26:27Speaker 01

  You got it.

• 1:26:28Rich Roll?

  And I think that, you know, the kind of primary marching order is to stand in the light. I mean, I think it's more powerful to, to be a magnet of attraction rather than promotion.

• 1:26:43Speaker 01

  You're, you're spot on. I believe the work we can do can create an example of demonstration environments around these things where people say, oh, they can do it. They did it. We can do it. I can do it. And we can open source that information in a way that makes it easy for people to see how to do it.

• 1:27:00Rich Roll?

  Right, exactly. Because I think there, there's probably a lot of people who, who are listening, who are thinking, well, that's great, you know, but, you know, I don't, I don't live on a farm in Kauai and, you know, I have to be at the office at 7:30 every morning and, you know, I don't have this kind of flexibility and, and, you know, so I, I would like to be more sustainable, both inside and outside and the choices that I make and the way that I feel about myself, et cetera. But how can I do, you know, I, I don't know how to do that. How do I, you know, what am I supposed, are you telling me I'm supposed to quit my job and, you know, move to Hawaii and live in a tent? You know, like, what can I, what are the, some of the things that somebody can latch on to to

• 1:27:44Rich Roll?

  try to just begin to move in that direction or some tools? And I'm not, I'm not saying you have the answer immediately, but I think, I think common ground media is a, is a sort of, is the idea is that this is a means of speaking to that.

• 1:27:57Speaker 01

  No doubt, no doubt. You know,

• 1:28:01Speaker 01

  I agree with what you said at a high level. But the reality is, is once you have the awareness around things you can do for personal growth, you can be anywhere on the planet Earth and experience those things. I mean, meditation is a great example, yoga is a good example, eating good food is a good example. Walking in nature is a good example. These are not things the normal, you know, mainstream Western culture does every day. But they are transformative. And equally, on the other side of the coin, for the outer sustainability piece, there's a range of things you can support in your community. Because you, as a human being, buy something every day, almost. Almost every day of your life, you're either buying some food, buying some gas, buying toilet paper, whatever it is.

• 1:28:46Speaker 01

  If you can consciously support the right things with that money and vote with your time and your money that way, that's slowly making big change happen. And this is a generational thing, or maybe many generational things. It's not an endpoint tomorrow and the next day. This is not something that's going to change and be done in two quarters. This is going to take a lifetime. And it's going to be something that you will experience throughout the course of your lifetime, hopefully in a way that adds value to every part of it.

• 1:29:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we definitely, you know, I think the real vote in this day and age is the dollar. It's not the ballot box. And we have choices and we have domain over where that money gets spent. And like you said, every day we're spending money. All of us are spending money on one thing or another, and there are choices. There's never been more choices available to us in the way in which we spend those dollars. So I think that that's critical. And I think the other thing is, it really does, you know, it's an inside job. And it starts there, it has to start there. Because the other stuff won't mean anything if you don't address the inside first. And, you know, that's a tough pill to swallow, you know? I mean, it was for me and it continues to be for me.

• 1:29:57Rich Roll?

  Because I don't want to believe that, you know, meditation is the key or the solution that is going to help me address the other problems that I face in my life. You know, I don't wanna, it's been proven to me time and time again that when I am meditating or I am very diligent about, you know, sort of my inner life or my spiritual life, that my life gets better. There's less drama in my life. The breaks tend to kind of break in my favor and, you know, things generally kind of work out, you know, maybe not the way I expected them to or predicted them to, but my life is easier, you know, I'm calmer,

• 1:30:38Rich Roll?

  I'm more grounded and, uh, and I don't seem to have as many problems or the problems that I have are more easily managed and sort of navigated.

• 1:30:47Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:30:48Rich Roll?

  And that's been demonstrated to me countless times in my life and yet still I want to think, I don't need that anymore. That's not the answer. The answer is if I can just get that thing, you know, I wanna, I wanna, I need to.

• 1:30:59Speaker 01

  I'll be happier when I do that thing.

• 1:31:01Rich Roll?

  The iPhone 5 came out. It's got a better camera, you know, so, you know, that is the human, that's the human condition, you know, that, that is.

• 1:31:11Speaker 01

  We want to be slightly better than the, the person next to us in a lot of ways.

• 1:31:16Rich Roll?

  Or just, or I don't even know if it's, yes, it's that, but it's also just, you know, this sort of insatiable need and belief that like, that outside circumstances are the solution to our problem.

• 1:31:30Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:31:31Rich Roll?

  I think that that is.

• 1:31:32Speaker 01

  Or when I get to this certain thing or place in time, that is when I'm gonna be happy. I mean, I mean.

• 1:31:38Rich Roll?

  If I move my, if I move from my house, from my town to this other place, then everything's gonna be better.

• 1:31:44Speaker 01

  Or when I retire. When I get to be 76 or whatever, 66 and I retire, then I will be happy. In the meantime.

• 1:31:50Rich Roll?

  That's the greatest lunacy of Western society, in my opinion, but maybe not the greatest, but that's a big one, that's a big one. But, yeah, I mean, you're living, I mean, you're somebody who is sort of, you know, had an extraordinary life experience to this point and has had the luxury of being able to see what it would be like. You know, to walk in the shoes of something that, you know, most people kind of aspire to. I mean, our culture, we all like, you know, we're gonna hit it rich and then everything's gonna be good or whatever. And you've been in that place. You've felt the emotions that come along with that. And have made, you know, the choice to be here rather than somewhere else. And to be sitting here and talking about your interior life.

• 1:32:32Rich Roll?

  You know, I think that speaks to, that speaks to a very strong character.

• 1:32:36Speaker 01

  Well, and I think that, you know, obviously you've been through similar processes. And I think it's really hard for me or anybody to really put themselves in vulnerable positions. We don't, we don't like to not know. We don't like to look inside ourselves.

• 1:32:51Rich Roll?

  We don't like to be uncomfortable at all.

• 1:32:53Speaker 01

  At all. And that's the reason we do all those things to distract us. You know, when I look at the way I was living before I moved out here and just the manicness of a normal day and the consistent routines that were all just sort of subconsciously ingrained in me and how I consider that a fulfilling life. In relation to the range of things I've come to know that are the experiences in life that can make life more fulfilling, it's amazing, you know. And it's not surprising at a basic level, once you've been able to step far enough back to have perspective. And I think that's sort of the hope for CG Media is to begin telling some of those stories in a way that other people can get them. And I think one aspect of that, because I agree with what we were talking earlier,

• 1:33:37Speaker 01

  a lot of the context that we were talking about, sustainability, in and out, or it's not the kind of things that people are gonna gravitate to in numbers to learn. Because it's just not the kind of information, generally speaking, unless it's done in a really entertaining way, that's gonna make people excited. And the way I see the answer to that being is working with artists like yourself and others that have a message that resonates well and to support them in a way that their message can get out and let that take on a life of its own. Just in some way similar to what we're trying to do at Common Ground. You know, as much as I'm hoping we can create a fertile environment for the most fantastic food and a range of products that support the community here, I would love to imagine

• 1:34:19Speaker 01

  that we can create a range of technological products and a range of services that support artists in a way that they can become... Really valued in the digital age and they can be able to do their best work and not worry about the range of things they've been having to deal with up to this point, you know, and when you just look at music as an example of how much what a musician would make 20 years ago and how hard it is for him or her to make a living in the online world today.

• 1:34:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's crazy. We were just talking about this the other day and Tyler had sent my wife and I an article that was written by a musician. Who was that Tyler that wrote that? What are the dudes from Galaxy 500? From Galaxy 500, yeah, because there's this concept that with Pandora and Spotify that now finally musicians are getting paid because it's a paid subscription and so, oh, I pay my $10 a month for Spotify and, you know, that money's going, you know, a portion of that money is going back to the artists that I listen to when I play my playlists or what have you. And this band wrote an article and said their song, I think their

• 1:35:26Rich Roll?

  song had been played 75,000 times over a period of, how long was it? Was it just like a couple of months or something like that? And their royalty check was like a couple bucks, a couple of dollars, not per play for that 75,000 plays. Like it was literally like five bucks or something like that. So it's not working, you know, it's not, it's not working for the artist. And, you know, it's this incredible period of time in which every artist, every creator, every creative person has the world at their disposal to to share and distribute their own product. But yet there's, you know, how do you get the message out? How do you connect with your audience and how do you do it in a way

• 1:36:08Rich Roll?

  that is, that is sort of sustainable and self-supporting for you and fair, quite honestly?

• 1:36:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the main issue when I look at it is mostly artists nowadays are run by managers that are still in a more of a traditional way of looking at business. It's almost the old record label way of doing things as compared to really recognizing the value and the values of the digital age. I mean,

• 1:36:37Speaker 01

  If you're an artist today and you're really doing great, you're basically, generally speaking, having a relationship with iTunes, where they take the majority of what they create, and you get a fraction of it, and you hope to market it in an incredible way that you continue to maintain your right to your fraction of that fraction. As compared to looking at it from a different perspective, right now iTunes, in that scenario, has its relationship with your audience. So you have created an audience for iTunes that they're deciding how much you, as an artist, are going to get paid. Flip that around. I mean, you know, Tom Petty's a great example. How many people, or Jack Johnson, or any well-known artist, they have, let's just say, 15,000 to 100,000 people, in some cases,

• 1:37:22Speaker 01

  see an event of theirs. How many of those people that went to see, you know, Tom Petty, out of that 15,000, can Tom Petty get in touch with tomorrow afternoon? Probably not one of them, not many of them. You know, if he really wanted to, he should be able to push one button and get to every one of those 15,000 people in whatever way they most readily wanted to hear from Tom Petty, whether it was a phone call, a text message, or a podcast, or an email, go right down the list. And people should be able to, you know, in some way, artists should be able to control the access, in some way, manage the monetization of the audience they create over an extended period of time.

• 1:38:06Speaker 01

  Because right now, an artist, in the iTunes scenario we described, they download one song and they go on to the next. What you should be saying to iTunes is, "I got that guy to you one time, and now he's bought all this other stuff, and I should get the residual value of every time he buys anything else from iTunes. Instead, you gave me a fraction of a fraction, and I created a customer for who knows, years or longer than that, and you got all his information that shows what he likes and doesn't like, and you're marketing him all this other stuff." Right, who's really benefiting? So why don't I take that in-house and work with an entity, like possibly something like a CG Media, that is really working more on the artist's behalf?

• 1:38:49Speaker 01

  To say, "Mr. Artist, you create this net of a range of whatever, tens of thousands or millions of relationships, and we'll give you the value of those relationships over an indefinite period of time. As long as those guys or people are buying something from the network, you're getting something for it."

• 1:39:05Rich Roll?

  Right, it's working as an ally for the artist.

• 1:39:07Speaker 01

  Bingo.

• 1:39:08Rich Roll?

  Because, you know, there's, of course, the example of Radiohead that released their album on their website and kind of circumnavigated iTunes altogether and did it their own way. And you're seeing that in other mediums too, like Louis CK released his comedy album, you know, on his website, and other people that have audiences are able to leverage their own audiences and circumnavigate that system. But, most of them have achieved their sort of notoriety, or have those audiences, as a result of their success through more traditional avenues of media. I mean, Radiohead, you know, was on a label that, you know, pushed them and got them to a certain place that allowed them to have this audience, and etc. And Louis CK is on a television show where, you know, millions of people get to see him,

• 1:39:53Rich Roll?

  so he's able to build and develop his audience. But now he can release his comedy album, not on HBO, but do it himself, and completely control that. So, but if you're not Radiohead, and if you're not Louis CK, or one of these handful of other people that have that kind of audience, you need somebody to help you develop your audience that is going to be artist-friendly, as opposed to, you know, something like iTunes that really isn't interested in that, they're just interested in the reasons that you just articulated.

• 1:40:22Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. I think you're spot-on. You know, I would, whether it's CG Media or whatever entity, the bottom line, there's a range of web tools out there. The artists should really find the marketing entity, you know, a marketer, hopefully an individual that totally believes in them, that gets the range of digital tools that are out there, and they're creating those, a range of relationships that Radiohead has. You know, there's a range of sponsors, there's a range of appearances, there's a range of events, there's a range of stuff, that a great marketing company using online media and others can really efficiently, at low cost, navigate on behalf of the artist, in a way that adds tremendous value.

• 1:41:03Speaker 01

  And that's the piece that I'm wanting to get my head around, in doing a way that really cultivates large numbers of fans for artists over an extended period of time, in a really thoughtful, trusted way.

• 1:41:16Rich Roll?

  And the other piece of the equation that you haven't even gotten into yet, which I think is the piece, is the idea of giving back. That every sort of transaction that would take place in this environment involves giving back to support. Local communities.

• 1:41:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:41:34Rich Roll?

  Local agriculture. Or a nonprofit or charity of that artist's choice. So it's really embracing this new, you know, we're talking about paradigms and this really is a new paradigm of business that's finally being recognized and embraced by, you know, traditional business, which is this idea of building in the nonprofit or the giving back into the actual business plan. So you have these companies like Ethos Water, or Tom Shoes, or Warby Parker, which made my glasses, where for everything you buy, somebody is getting something back out of that. And I think that that is really an amazing model, and it's so great to see those companies doing so well. And I think that that's really the future of business.

• 1:42:17Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 1:42:17Rich Roll?

  I think that. Because it's also, it's not just the giving back, it's about involving the consumer and understanding that their dollar is a vote, and what are they voting for? And that vote is going towards, you know, a good product at a fair price, where a portion of that is going back to support something that is important to the company and important to the consumer who's voting with that dollar.

• 1:42:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think there's been a huge, and this is in market research information over the last like 10 years, like I want to say, I don't know the exact number is, but roughly 40% of the consumers out there are now basing their buying decisions on what they perceive, the ethics and the business, you know, morals, values of the brand to be. And if that's the case, and if we in some way, through our efforts, can create relationships with consumers in a way that they understand and they actually see through a positive feedback loop, that the nonprofits are being not only well-funded, but they're actually seeing programs

• 1:43:24Speaker 01

  take place, and that they're seeing the economics of that really makes sense, so that it's not going through overhead administration, but like 95 or 99 cents out of every dollar actually makes a program happen. That's huge, and that's what I'm like in a vision. So rather than going to pay X to see, you know, X, Y, Z, you know, great performer, you're giving maybe 50% of the online income to a nonprofit that goes straight into a program that you really want to see happen. You know, in our case, it might be training people to do green jobs or, you know, organic food preparation in some way, or feeding kids at the local skate park because we found

• 1:44:05Speaker 01

  out that a lot of the kids at the local skate park, you know, on weekends don't have any food to eat. But as an example, those are great examples of the kinds of things that when it's leveraged and really now the nonprofit is cultivating these relationships rather than the artist creating these relationships. For me as an individual, I would feel much better seeing that because I want to see the artist do well, but I would love to see the things he cares about do great.

• 1:44:33Rich Roll?

  Right, and then also creating a relationship between the end user or the customer or consumer with the results of where that dollar went.

• 1:44:43Speaker 01

  Bingo.

• 1:44:44Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? Because I think that we're in a disconnect with, you know, giving right now in many ways where there are these behemoth charities and, you know, it's sort of like, all right, you know, Hurricane Sandy hits, it's, you know, give to the Red Cross or give, and not to say there's anything wrong with that, that's great, you know, it's sort of like, how do we give back and support what's going on? But then you have no idea what happens with that money. And you can go online and go to Charity Watch and find out which the good ones are or the bad ones are and how much spend too much on their, you know, overhead, et cetera, but, you know, who has time for that? But I think what's important and what I think is a big part of the new model of giving in nonprofits is really creating a connection between the person who is donating that dollar

• 1:45:29Rich Roll?

  and then what actually happens, like engaging them in the chain of command or the sort of chain of custody of that dollar all the way to where it ultimately gets spent and the effect of that spending.

• 1:45:42Speaker 01

  Bingo. Actually, to have a real time or close to real time feedback loop. So if we get 50,000 people to pay three bucks to see an online event and a buck fifty out of that 50,000 goes to feed the kids. Fifty thousand times a buck fifty is what? Seventy-five thousand buys X number of meals in some way that you might visually, in video form, see delivered. And then actually, maybe even be able to interview some of the kids that have been eaten there for six months, saying, "This is what it's meant to my life. And this is the things that have changed as a result of this."

• 1:46:13Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:46:14Speaker 01

  And that's huge. And that's the kind of change at a really systemic level that makes me excited.

• 1:46:20Rich Roll?

  You've got big plans, Mr. Jay.

• 1:46:23Rich Roll?

  How are you gonna make all that happen?

• 1:46:25Speaker 01

  Just patience and time. Patience and time.

• 1:46:28Rich Roll?

  Patience is a tough one.

• 1:46:29Speaker 01

  Oh, no kidding. That's the hardest one for anybody that's been in the tech world, because when you do tech stuff, it happens in ten minutes. You know, as long as it takes you to do it. Whereas in the organic gardening world, it doesn't quite work that way.

• 1:46:42Rich Roll?

  You're not creating Instagram here, right?

• 1:46:45Speaker 01

  Not exactly. This is...

• 1:46:46Rich Roll?

  There's a longer incubation period, physically and better physically, right?

• 1:46:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:46:52Rich Roll?

  Very cool. All right, we should probably wrap this up here. But Chris Jay, you're an inspiration.

• 1:46:58Speaker 01

  Right back at you.

• 1:46:59Rich Roll?

  You're a fascinating guy. It's an honor to know you and to be here and to talk to you and to be working on some interesting stuff with you. So, thanks a lot, man.

• 1:47:10Speaker 01

  Well, this is the fun stuff.

• 1:47:11Rich Roll?

  It's great to be here, yeah.

• 1:47:12Speaker 01

  Thanks for making it happen.

• 1:47:12Rich Roll?

  Thanks for taking the time to sit down and talk to you. I think people are gonna really dig your message, so...

• 1:47:18Speaker 01

  Perfect. Bring it.

• 1:47:19Rich Roll?

  Cool. So, that is episode two, everybody. How long did we go here? Whoa. An hour and forty-six. That's pretty cool. So, I have some other cool guests lined up. I'm gonna try to do this podcast two or three times a week. And like I said, we're gonna try to jerry-rake the video in the livestream and maybe do some interactive stuff, so I'll keep you posted on that. Most importantly, if you want to learn more about what's going on with Chris and Common Ground, check out Common Ground Online. The website is cgkawaii.net.

• 1:47:53Rich Roll?

  And I'm sure if you Google "Common Ground" or "Chris" or whatever, you could probably come up with some interesting stuff about what's going on there. And I will continue to keep you posted on the developments with Common Ground Media and the stuff that we're working on. It's some really exciting, cool stuff. So... Without further ado, we'll wrap it up. Again, if you want to support the podcast, and you've enjoyed this, tell a friend, help get the word out. Early subscribers would be great to have, since we're just launching this thing. And if you want to support us financially, don't send us money, but click the Amazon banner ad on RichRoll.com if you're going to be buying something on Amazon anyway. And that'll throw a couple bucks in our pot and help keep this thing going.

• 1:48:37Rich Roll?

  So, anyway, that's it. Thanks a lot, and until next time, thanks for joining us. Thanks, Chris.