 I think that we're all holding two poles right right now and and they're the very ends of those spectrum one is in our field in particular when we're thinking about what the opportunity is here it is there's a tremendous opportunity there's a moment that we've all gotten still enough to see what's really happening in the world and on the flip of that there's this incredible amount of pain right in the unknowing in death in in triage and the things that most people live their lives oblivious to right and so there's it's all on the table right now and I feel like as a long-term organizer and advocate um usually you feel like you're holding up a wall and right now it feels like the wall has disappeared and everybody's kind of just looking at us being like okay what's next Mark brand is my guest on this episode of inside ideas brought to you by innovators magazine and 1.5 media mark is a social impact entrepreneur chef and professor of innovation mark is one of north america's foremost social entrepreneurs with 11 businesses under his belt he exemplifies a new form of leadership that encompasses good in every step brand is determined to breathe new life into our struggling and disjointed communities through his advocacy convenings and social impact business models along with overseeing the five organizations under mb incorporated mark brand leads his a better life foundation in canada the united states and mexico and is a stanford fellow professor of innovation and design thinking and has served as executive chef for the american refugee committee and pope francis' climate challenge as a certified integral facilitator and mediator he helps to unstick groups facing deep challenges through design at the center of all this work is helping us see ways to help each other in meaningful and long-lasting ways with the theory there is no us and them only us mark my friend is so good to have you here and to see your beautiful smiling face on the other end how have you been i have been like many of us and let me also echo that it's wonderful to be here and to see you i think that we're all holding two poles right right now and and they're the very ends of those spectrum one is in our field in particular when we're thinking about what the opportunity is here it is there's a tremendous opportunity there's a moment that we've all gotten still enough to see what's really happening in the world and on the flip of that there's this incredible amount of pain right in the unknowing in death in in triage and the things that most people live their lives oblivious to right and so there's it's all on the table right now and i feel like as a long-term organizer and advocate um usually you feel like you're holding up a wall and right now it feels like the wall has disappeared and everybody's kind of just looking at us you're like okay what's next um and so it's it's a little bit of a and b brother has all uh so i mean first of all that was just a short synopsis of everything you've done over the years you've been very active and busy and had a wonderful not not just rock star type of life but also very fabulous for helping and advocacy and food um has any of that prepared giving you some extra resilience or help to to be in a unique position to help others during this time have you said wow i'm so glad that i went through this years ago that now i'm in this unique position very much so i think you know um the analogy is what doesn't kill you makes you stronger right and so we we perpetuate that onto our social circles and our children and our families and we're like look you made it through and so we've been making it through those struggles my my whole life personally and then professionally for the last 10 or 12 as we started one particular business and i'm in vancouver right now bc in the downtown east side which is the center of the opioid epidemic and we started a business here in 2010 and before anybody was comfortable saying the word social impact entrepreneur together they would be like you mess those up those don't go together now it's everyday vernacular before people were super familiar with b corporations right benefit corps we were one of the first in on that and so we're used to being at the forefront of that envelope in trying to push and see like you don't know that you are but you're trying to figure things out and prototyping and when you're doing that all these traditional structures that would support that do not they don't support that like it's too risk advert like this is too risk heavy we don't want to do that and so we've been cobbling it together which really puts us in a place of triage constantly right and so when you are in that sort of modality you realize that everything's okay here this is a safe space right it's not as comfortable but it starts to be a little bit more and then you get comfortable in the discomfort and when you get to that space and you can see cleanly and clearly you're not spinning your inflow state in triage everything is possible and so for us when this crisis hit you can imagine one of the first things to go is street level food for people who are unhoused so all the people would come out and do outreach and have mobile soup kitchens and hand out sandwiches and all that disappeared so you've got a population of over 30 000 people who are used to having a bunch of food come to the neighborhood plus our program who now don't have any options so we increased our output by about 250 with government partner fabulous it was wonderful and so we were in a unique position because i built the brick and mortar ready to scale for these moments so it really helped us show our value in the way that we could show up but also be able to be there as an ear in a guiding hand for everybody from municipal politicians through to frontline organizations who were like now what do we do our whole business is built on being with each other and so yeah i think we were we were as prepared as anybody could be don't let me it's four months in right so i'm a little more settled now but as prepared as you could be to deal with the sort of a crisis is it's yeah it's in our training for certain i'm so glad to hear and i'm so glad to see that you made it through i had no doubts that it would be you standing on the other end helping others and and doing that is there any special shout outs that you would like to give to any special organizations or heroes during this time that helped you or assisted you or that you partnered with yeah absolutely i mean the one that comes top to mind is attiro women's resource center and the ceo over there janice abbot who's been a just a tremendous ally in helping me understand the work going back to the first day that i stepped in the neighborhood essentially and janice and attiro have been helping women and children who flee violence and indigenous populations here in the downtown east side for over 30 years and they're just spectacular people and and they know they know it they get it they're about it and um they are the partner that stood up with us and helped us put this whole thing together and then that's a us together is like an organization and imagine the mycelium of social networks here we're all on high alert and so every other organization um i would spend our entire hour and a half yeah i believe we're galing them so i just i just wanted to give a chance because i know it you know it's not just one it's us and as i said in your introduction so i really appreciate that did is there anything i left out in your introduction or an update that you would like to give give our listeners of maybe something i left out or what where are you now and where are you moving forward what's kind of what can we expect from from compound brand yeah i think that you did a wonderful job and i um it's interesting how we react as humans to our accolades as they're known being said back to us i get i still get uncomfortable you of course you have pride but then you're like oh yeah no that's okay it's okay to have done those things it's it's totally fine uh we're just built that way and so i think what's also interesting is that the way that we operate everything that you said to me and we know this about each other is one thing right in that last line really encompasses that is i have a bunch of tools in my tool belt those tools are charitable organizations for profits non-profits a whole bunch of chefs at the go on this side whole bunch of design thinkers on this side you know and then all of the different people and all we want is for everybody to be safe and healthy and happy right and so people are like it's so complex what you do i'm like it it isn't it is but it isn't really all we want is that and we want to have a bright future for everybody so we want to think five ten fifteen twenty generations ahead and say what are we doing right now because we were left with a dumpster fire right that's what we were left with for sure and we're aware of it and instead of pointing fingers and getting angry because that's just not helpful we already went through that phase of grief what can we do and so mark right now i'm focused on how can i be best of service personally as a tool in conversations like this and working with our dear friends at the future food institute in the fao how can i help with all of the archetypes that we've built that aren't complex they're intentionally easy to understand regardless of where you are how can i help to get those into places that provide comfort to people who are marginalized and so all the rest of the stuff on the outside is just simply tools and mechanisms and devices that we use to achieve those goals of safety and happiness and health we're so our eye was blessed let's let's start that way i was blessed to meet you this year and Bangkok Thailand more specifically Chantaburi Chantaboon and at a chef's cookoff and and also many other chefs but it was just a wonderful time and your artistry your um deep interaction with everyone there to not only do sustainable meal but to value and cherish everyone who was in your kitchen on your staff as a help as providing the Gragas to using food waste was absolutely mind-blowing and the dishes even though they were for the elderly i must say i snuck uh snuck some some tastings for myself okay they were absolutely fabulous but it was just like a a symphony a concert being produced that was unbelievable to watch you and it wasn't just a few hours but you spent a couple days preparing and and thinking about traditional indigenous sustainable what kind of packaging how can i do it and it was just fabulous and and that's that for our listeners that's how we met but i just uh i fell in love with you you're a great man and and i loved your your your talk that you gave at sustainable brands on stage and i also love the the kind heartedness and and the the ways you touch so many people's life and it touched my life and i thank you for that and i'm i'm i'm glad i was fortunate enough to meet you so thank you for that it was not a question i just wanted our listeners to know and to let you know openly so there's no secret um thank you for the reflection and it means a lot to me and ultimately when you're in that work um you go to your skills right and uh the gift of also meeting you and being in thailand and being with the people who could put us into the places of deep deep trust i got to spend what came resonant for me when you were just talking about that a day with generational farmers on their farm and i have had the blessed life to be able to travel to a lot of those places behind your head and eat cuisine and and dig in but i had never had an experience like i had in chantaburi which was being with this generational farmer who spoke no english we had no translator there was no need and i was there with his son who was two and he the three of us just walked through the bush and is totally natural growing farm so there's no lines it's just proper farming and he's pulling leaves off and handing them to me and i'm putting them in my mouth and i'm i'm trying not to like look like a crazy person right because i'm in a complete amazement like this tastes like a niece but what is this tree and it just went on and on and on and on and then we went to the market together and i saw a real tiger prawn for the first time and it was this big and folks i'm six foot two two hundred and thirty five pounds it was this in my hand and i'd seen gamba prawns of course in like portugal or madagascar but it just these the ability and the opportunity to be in different places to understand that we get so caught up in the singular the eye of the ego to be able to go out and be like there's so much beauty and amazing things worth us investing every source and like moment of our being and trying to save all of this right so i think that's where you and i both deeply connected was the awareness of the gift and being able to cook and have a chef battle with a michelin star chef at an elderly facility was also something that i will cherish for the rest of my life yes it was just very beautiful but i think the analogies in there are no matter our privilege or the gifts of what we've seen there's always so much more to see and we just i want that for everybody for many generations to go it's important well this behind me is not only a map of our world but it's also the world bank it's also the world kitchen as we have learned as we've we travel around all our resources our kitchen is here and as thailand is said to be the kitchen of the world and by by many quotes and discussions because the diversity the amount of fabulous food is just just amazing and it's an eye-opener to not only to cook there to see those great chefs but to see the indigenous and local people cook and and the markets as a fabulous experience and and i love it i go there at least four or five times a year and i really really love it and i loved it more because of the experience of meeting you and the hospitality of pinui and sustainable brands and she's also contributing in my book menu b as well for our listeners you are as well and and and so i'm so thankful and thank you for those contributions because there are voices around food and things that people need to hear this leads us nicely into the the first question it's really uh in some respect i call myself a global citizen from the moment i was born my father's american my mother's german my grandfather was german my grandmother was austrian and spanish and and italian and family members from all over the world and at a young age was doing that you've also traveled the world and been very diverse and and that how do you feel about global citizenship and what if in the future there were no borders limitations or walls out there how do you feel about that what what kind of a response do you have to to that kind of tag as a global citizen so in the in the current iteration of this planet i say it and i know that it comes with a deep white male privilege right so i want to acknowledge that that i also would like to quickly acknowledge and just because it's incredibly important that i'm currently on the unceded territories of the musqueam snohomish and squamish peoples and sailor tooth peoples and this thought of borders by presencing them and the ancestral territories that i occupy right now that i'm blessed enough to be on those borders didn't exist we created these capitalism created these borders and domination and and conquering created these borders and this is it's new right it's in the big scheme of things it's very new and it's a failed experiment it the experiment failed it is done nothing but be divisive visibly yeah it just it's it's that between those and religious sectarianism those two things together have just destroyed so much and so if i could if a genie popped out of a bottle right over here and was like hey i got three for you you've done good work you know number one would be eradicate any any divisiveness all right i'd want to be i want to be at 30 000 feet with it because i could like bring in a lot of stuff and cheat with that one just eradicate that divisiveness and in in practice what is that the borders so before this was all happening i was planning a border called love that sort of dinner at the border in um san diego in tijuana at the actual border structure called love thy neighbor and we were going to do a giant heart-shaped table from the roof that would connect on both sides and i had chefs going us and canadian chefs going over to mexico and mexican chefs coming over and the border patrol got wind of this and they were not excited about what i was going to do but we were with the friendship society who owns the park there or doesn't own it has regulations of the park there but there's so much sketchy i want to say black op like enforcement going on around the us border for what i mean seriously it got so touchy and i was like we're still doing it so my team was like well you're going to be on the mexico side so you don't go get lost in some hole somewhere um and we're going to execute this dinner and when i started to talk about it the energy that came behind it because it was it was commentary on the ridiculousness of the border if i can step one direction this way or one direction this way the landmass is intrinsic right like we are on one energetic space the latin american people are i hate to pick favorites right but top three for me of all time or the mexican people like i just can't get enough of the way that they live their lives the food they're just deep respect for each other the love and if there's ever been bad pr agents mexico's had some bad pr agents because you spent time like we you and i talked about Mexico city for probably two hours in the car yeah i adore it and so what with the borders disappearing people get to have the experiences that we're discussing right people have these misnomers about canada in the us that just blow me away every time like you're canadian oh it must be cold i'm like it's 2020 you have the internet are you serious right now is this a real question yeah no poll i don't write a polar bear to work right it's we're on caribou landmass like what are you what are you thinking and it just it really points out to a deep failure in education a deep failure in these border states in the divisiveness of our political parties globally and what's going on so i believe if we were no longer restricted and people could just be and just travel we would be in a much different place than we are now and i just hope that that becomes when looking at the EU as a concept got me very excited like oh this is an opportunity for us to have a look at what would that look like for the americas and all the way down to the tip and all the way down to the top right up to the top um what would that look like and you know in a pipe dream for me i would snap my fingers and have that happen tomorrow uh because it's so beautiful yeah and you can still have your languages and your dialects and you can still have uh you know these these rough borders but you're have the freedom to work and travel and move and and and that that that's a really nice thing if if we go back to and i i don't i hope i'm not opening up a rabbit hole but if we go back into our early antiquity Mesopotamia Aztecs Incas Mayas and the ancient Greece ancient Rome ancient uh uh persian civilizations we have more than 12 civilizations that don't exist anymore they didn't exist i mean the roman empire was basically europe and much europe and much more and uh you know it was all the you know it wasn't divided and and many many other examples but all of them except for two collapse because of ecological or environmental collapse and two collapse because of some form of conflict or or other reasons but they're not around anymore and so uh this not only pandemic but craziness with um leadership borders walls and and division of humanity is really not working for us all anymore it's not uh is you know the trumpocalypse the bull scenarios the putans the shays the duarte's the arid ones whoever we want to name they're not they're not speaking for all of us it's not working we we need some better system and i really like this you know this vision of being a global citizen and and removing these borders walls and limitations and also a lot of the the labels and divisions of humanity no matter uh what what race or religion or nationality or culture that you are that you can still have that but that it doesn't divide us it doesn't make you less equal of a human being so i had the fortunate uh a couple days ago uh i was maybe four days ago i had a podcast interview it's already been released with a hindu ibrahim she's a united nation sustainable development goal advocate and she represents the indigenous people's voice globally all of them from the arctic to africa to congo everywhere and she's from chad and she's from a pastoral nomadic tribe and her whole life is almost like a global citizen because she doesn't her her her culture her tribe her family they don't just stay in and and chad they travel thousands of kilometers all you know throughout the year and with their cattle and their herds and and they're very global citizen she also expressed a similar similar feeling about that as well so that that's nice to hear thank you so much that about resources just before we move on mark sure what you're describing is a group of humans who have figured it out right like to be that what are you ultimately all of us are chasing being present now we've decided that what we've been reaching for this whole time is just to be radically present that the moments matter we can't live there we can't live here you're not there you're here and so imagine that literally which way is the wind going what's the temperature where's the water source let's just work on those things so i can just be and enjoy the gift that is this right and so we have those moments but they're fleeting a lot of people chase them with psychedelics now they try to do anything they can to be present where all the tools are already built in but capitalism has ruined it for us because we're constantly in chase what was the next thing or the goal that i have to achieve it's never enough the word enough is just doesn't exist in our vernacular north america right it couldn't be enough and so when people say i don't understand why you act the way they did the what you're doing with business you had a different trajectory and we were our trajectory was in for-profit business just skyrocketing right and i realized that that was literally the most empty in the least i like myself i was the worst version of myself that was a bully i didn't like the way that i interacted with anybody including myself same with me yeah right because you're just chasing a thing that's unattainable and also looking for acceptance for all the wrong reasons now when we spend time with nomadic tribe or with a farmer who's literally fifth generation on the land and they're with their children or their family or their energy or their beliefs and their chosen deity deities they got it figured out that's what it's about right and so they're not judgmental of the rest of these things because a group over here is judgmental of them and resource we know that there's more than enough to go around more than enough there's abundance everywhere of resource but we've added this construct that doesn't serve us and really has destroyed us and we're aware of it but we don't see an alternative and i believe that the alternatives are have always been right we see them we know what they are so the the chase and you know i never thought that i would be the guy it would be like anti-capitalist right because i didn't know what it meant right i thought it meant that i had to be a pauper and it doesn't it's not it's not what that means a b-corp a sustainable development business model a resilient business model it's just a more efficient better business model it it's just that reduces your cogs and increases profits to be sustainable it's to sustain not your only you and your employees in your business for future generations but to have the resources to produce your products to produce your foods to produce whatever you want to offer as you're offering and if you do that without harm to people and planet my god what a better business model what a business romance to have people come in and say i love to come here i love to buy your product that because you guys are going to be around for a while you care about me and and you care about our world and our kitchen our world bank you know it's not some brick and mortar place it's right there it's it's where all our resources are so i i love that that way of thinking and the way you frame that do you believe that there is a plan a earth shot a climate shot a moonshot to get us at least to 2030 or to get us to a more sustainable future the latter yes but i i believe that we've passed the point of what we were falsely holding on to right and so let me just dig into that a little bit more when we think about and i'm looking at the map very specifically if we think about miami or california as they currently exist that's over right like that's that's not it can no longer be a discussion point right you've got to be planning right you're looking for higher ground you're you got to be looking for higher ground you have to be thinking how do we survive this versus how do we reverse this because we're we're not no matter what we do unless we come up with some real magic there's not a way to reverse what we've already impacted or affected what we have to do is then mitigate it getting any worse right so when we say what are the practices that we can change and one thing that just came to my mind is i'm aware in everything that we do that we have impact so we're going to do 670 000 containers individual containers this year that we need to put food in because people can't gather like i used to serve in that i'm talking with the manufacturer of those things yesterday and she's thrilled because a chemical has been realized in a lot of these compostable and biodegradable things that actually is damaging and she's going to be the first one to pull it out and so we're creating a product together that has zero foot print right and we're working on that together this stuff matters right every part of this chain matters not for me because we're in the place that we're in but the other part of us looking at history and looking at the planet is we've lost lots of species we've lost lots of things we can mourn that and we can be aware of it we can try and conserve and be as mindful and as diligent and as aggressive about this as we are daily but we also have to be realists and we have to plan because the people who are going to be impacted by this climate change in particularly are the marginalized right so how are we using our privilege awareness science science is really really important i know in current media especially in the US we're like i'll forget science let me just read some numbers that's not how the world works we need to listen and we need to be aware and we need to instead of panicking and disassociating which people do constantly it's it's the plague of our existence is disassociated behavior right this is our planet we're on it together it's we're part of it we're made from it it's made from us how do we plan appropriately and then just start to have non-negotiables with our consumerism we have to have non-negotiables and say i absolutely will not do a b c d or e and i won't name names because i think we're all aware of what i would say in those blanks right yeah we have to have those non-negotiables socially and as family units and as cultural units and then we change behavior the dollar the same dollar that's broken us will listen to us if we all suddenly stopped going online to purchase our next pen there would be a reaction from that and that reaction would be positive both to small businesses to family units to all of it i i don't want to negate anything that you've said because i also feel that but in some respect you're being a little bit dystopian a little pessimistic about can can can we reverse it you know are we we've got your using words like mitigation and you're using words like this resilience so now there's three main definitions of resilience you know there's dystopian resilience where we're gas mass and oxygen mass and spacesuits to enjoy our planet then there's the the resilience that you know very well somebody calls you a name or hits you or abuses you that you have the resilience to mentally and physically emotionally bounce back and and and make it through that difficult time the loss of someone etc and then there's this resilient desirable futures where you still enjoy beautiful cleaning water and fresh air and our planet and a green nature and you don't have to have these limiting restrictions another form of walls borders and boundaries to enjoy nature and our world or each other and and right now we're at this this point social distancing personal protection equipment that you know very well and in the food business and then you know healthcare business and then these face masks right i mean you know george not only said i can't breathe but i can't breathe it is hot in these masks and in tailand they when we were there they were wearing them i think almost three months prior to our arrival because the air pollution was so bad and it wasn't because of uh covid or a virus it was because the air pollution was so bad and so let's push that model forward what's the next step is it a gas mask is it an oxygen mask so mark not only uh is that dystopian to move forward with these other type of you know uh gas mass spacesuits for the future but i do believe there is a plan um 193 countries came together for the first time ever historical precedence 2015 and before the paris agreement this is what a lot of people don't know september 24th all these countries agreed upon the sustainable development goals 17 goals plus hundreds of targets and indicators as a roadmap to get us to 2030 to keep us at that time before the paris agreement it was two point uh degrees of of warming to hold us there right and then at the paris agreement they said a bold ambition it says let's make it 1.5 and go a little extra and so then there were some tweaks and adjustments made but that is the earth shot the moonshot the climate shot the roadmap to get us there it's a true plan it's not only done with back casting from 2030 to 2015 when we started or should have started let's say it that way and now we're five years into it the decade of action started this year 2020 and it is it is a roadmap and it is doable especially if we believe and understand the exponential function which occurred the beginning of this year a lot of ambitions a lot of corporations a lot of countries a lot of people got on board and said we're implementing them and our business plans we're implementing them and our policies we're going to achieve them and it's not just reversing stopping and reversing it's going that extra step further to actually clean up our planet make it better than we found at circular economy principles and things that i'm going to ask you another question after that but i believe you have something to tell me about this what i what i just mentioned okay well i mean first of all i learn a lot from you in this space right so i just want to really oh you're fine put that there and be like your talk in thailand as well opened my eyes up as a lifelong purveyor and creator of food and its impact on our systems but also as a design thinker and a deep believer in in reversal right so while my answer was very much from the lens of my friend jeff goodall right is like this is you know pay attention because we're the stacks are still pumping well they're not and of course in the last four months what we've seen and just these success stories and the cleanliness and the planet breathing easier and what that did vastly outweighed anybody's predictions of what would actually happen right so when we saw the results science again we know that they're incredible right my question is can we look past the dollar and if the u.s. is any indication or 150 000 encroaching on very quickly dead because of capitalism and that's let's not you know we don't know i'm right in line with you i believe it because of capitalism this is because of money is why we're trying to you want to jumpstart the economy which is just going to shut it back down it's all about money right and so living in this so when we talk when you said the other earlier about being a global citizen i have never been prouder to be canadian in this moment right we said shut it all down give everybody ubi so they didn't use that language but that's what they did they gave everybody two thousand dollars to live on and there was almost zero application they said do not everything is closed we're not going to do this we're going to when businesses reopen subsidize 75 percent of rent through a mixed medium model we're going to subsidize 75 percent of small and medium and large business payroll to make sure we get our workforce back to work and we're going to do it completely and utterly safely that's what governance looks like right and so the governance wasn't based on money because if it was we wouldn't be going into another trillion dollars in deficit the government's like this is a long play we want to keep people alive and safe we're not looking at the next six months of selling wings at hooters yeah looking at keeping people alive and showing that we know how to govern through a moment like this now it was a perfect of course not but it was brilliant and it's it's incredible because i i'm still dumbfounded and i'm a small business owner right we get a check from the government two days ago for 22 000 to subsidize one of my spaces that's my god this is my government showing up for me wait this is humanity showing up for humanity so if we look at this the same way for protecting people and we look at the existential crisis that is i like that we say existential crisis ease because we're in multiple yeah we are the existential crisis that is covid sure pales in comparison to the crisis of climate climate yeah so we've become focused on climate again and we're like oh right okay this was real bad but you know i love the analogy of the tsunami waves in showing covid and then showing climate change and we've seen that it can be reversed we've seen that it works my my dystopian portion comes from the almighty dollar right and and of course i will i am a forever optimist as well but i i think that my response to that knee jerk is also because i feel like people are detached from reality i feel like they don't listen or believe if i may i want to tell you two things about that i'm in total alignment and agreement with you about capitalism that tie very well into that the first one is let me start with the dystopian one first in 2008 we shifted all our our investments and financial interests from technology and and automotive and internet and whatever to the majority part to food systems and in 2008 our food systems became a commodity capitalism right we it was no longer about the farmers the food producers and the cherishing of food and how it's made it's a commodity it has to be done cheap and fast and in abundance and we it doesn't matter if we waste it we've got to sell it as cheap as possible and get the biggest bang for the buck out of it right happened in 2008 and has really messed us up to to this date and and that's a really negative thing that we see how capitalism has affected our industry our our livelihood but more so it's not just an industry it is the fundamental basic resource of humanity it's our energy source without that there is nothing without our biodiversity without that sustainable development goals for life on land life below water clean water and sanitation climate change our biodiversity we can't produce nothing not a watch not a phone not a car not food and so we really have to cherish that and that goes it also ties in to that question I mentioned in the beginning about the global citizens and the nation's walls and borders and divisions what one thing during our lockdown our pandemic remained open and is a global citizen food even though we wasted a lot of it and there was a lot of issues around it and it was hurt good bad and that ugly on the other hand it was the only industries that continue to go to continue to balance because they are an essential it's our energy source and second of all the nations and borders have always been gone when it's in regards to food and trade right and so when you put that into perspective how can humanities human beings not be global citizens or be divided up by walls nations and borders but yet our vital energy source is not exactly and I think that you know you you mentioned President Barack Obama talked about hey we could be facing a pandemic we should prepare we should make some measures and then I believe he did as well he did and then Trump came in he's like oh and that's not that important and the capitalist portion of that was and I don't want to generalize it or or that because it's a very serious thing and it needs to be respected and taken seriously of course but to say we're going to to get the cheapest mass produced and gloves and personal protection equipment produced in China China's not the enemy but they're able to produce pennies on the dollar products cheaply and let's just order the minimum stock just the minimum it's it's like saying let's order one sheet of toilet paper and then when I need the second sheet then then we'll go to the store and buy it you know that's capitalism and budgeting and turning food into a commodity so that's the negative part of it but all 17s united nations sustainable development goals are tied to agriculture seafood food and beverages of course our life source and during this pause and reset not only have those companies been affected the hardest food and gastronomy the worst and many other sectors people not getting foods children not getting food because they're get their food from school and now at home they're getting one meal a day if that all sorts of multifaceted problems definitely but eat environmental social governance stocks and investments have weathered during this first quarter and during the pandemic better than their counterparts that were based on fossil fuels and other things correct so well and so and the last before I shut up and go too far because I know your voice is vital and I want to hear it earth overshoot last year was July 29th because of the pause and the reset it's now August 22nd which is 24 days increase that we've gained because we're not moving we're calming we're connecting with nature we're figuring out what's the better business model to work on how do we want to move forward it's not a new normal it's the great reset it's a fundamentally different than we did before and and I love that there's countries and individual nations and and governance like Canada like you mentioned that are providing like that but there's so many that aren't that are just are failing us all over and that's why we really need a global system we need something new definitely I think there's so much in what you just said and I want to bring it granular and I'll go back out chef hat on all right so I get back from Thailand I'm with you I have three dinners in Los Angeles particularly around school food and school hunger and I partner with an organization there called swipe at hunger we do teaching at LA tech so I do a lot of instruction on food agency advocacy sovereignty but dispel the myth of the food desert and replace it with the proper word apartheid right this is race relation stuff these are designed this isn't by happenstance there's no desert in Oakland right there's a desert in the Sahara but there's racism in Oakland so we we work on these projects and it hits I I see it hitting what I'm with you right we fly and I fly into Los Angeles I do these dinners I'm already warning people if you're feeling any sort of fever or temperature or any sort of gastritis or anything please stay home and people think I'm being a little too aggressive like no this is it's coming so I get back here and I think immediately to myself how are we going to be in service I'm used to being on the road 300 days a year like you right how am I in service from this eight by 10 that I'm sitting in right now I've been here for four months more now at this point what does it look like to be in service well what are people going to do because they're going to be like me they're sitting home they got $2,000 a month what are they going to do and so we start teaching cooking you know like well I have to I have to be with so all of my own assumptions and tropes that I'm carrying around convening you know how I feel about convening gathering it's so important I'm pulled into zoom calls 10 times a day I hate them instantly I'm like I don't like this like what if you what if you stopped saying that to yourself what if you embrace the technology embrace the presence if you could imagine and fill in the gaps because you can you can energetically feel mark right now how do you do that and how do you show up in service so I think to broil all of our analogies down being aware of time I developed this one program called sharpen up all right and sharpen up we were doing in Los Angeles in Oakland in San Francisco in the Bronx in Brooklyn in Harlem with the New York City food bank which is in the council of we were doing these in person we're going to where people were in community centers I was bringing induction burners I'm bringing a gang of chefs and we're just cooking and we're cooking what's at the bodega we're cooking whatever we is naturalized in that environment well we can't do that so it's a full like hardcore stop so I get 15 people together via zoom I send questionnaires out to them what do you want to eat what would you like to learn what what interests you and when I say people I mean nine year olds to about 23 year olds and we start teaching via this medium and power comes from knowledge we're just aware that that is how that centers our fuel source is our greatest source of power it's food it is everything it's it's literally in the circles of the Venn diagram of whatever diagram you draw if it's not in there nothing else goes and your mental health and your physical health and your confidence everything is directly attached to it so how do we teach more of it and I got to watch people grow in tomatoes in their windowsill I got all sorts of this like you would never have done that you've only eaten out of cans and boxes your literal entire life and now you're like wait a second I could grow in my backyard right the Karen washington's of the world are suddenly like thank you 30 years I've been telling you this let's go and so we've seen this idea and understanding that not only is food power for self but the cost of actually producing it may mean that I don't have to work three jobs maybe the way that I'm living is just completely backwards maybe this chase for the dollars never made me happy but food is the center point of that conversation so I think it's really important the only other thing that I wanted to address and what you said around PPE in my personal disgust around it comes around from us losing so many people to police violence the typical riot police outfit in gear is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment PPE properly is about 50 bucks yeah we didn't have PPE well we saw how many riot police we had yep so what are we doing that in itself is worth an exploration of destabilizing our governments yeah what do we do you can push up further with a you know military as well I mean what who are we protecting ourselves against who are we protecting ourselves against other global citizens which are distant cousins distant human beings there are brothers or sisters our closest relatives that they weren't dropped off on planet Russia planet China or planet Germany we're all homo sapiens you know we're protecting each other against each other that's insanity and I mean that's a that's a much deeper and different problem but being from food dealing with food as we do food is a binder of humanity food is companionship and stories and culture and it brings and binds people together solves problems there's no event of the thousand events that we go to every year travel all over the food isn't somewhere there or and if it's not you're you're saying where's the food I'm starving okay sorry forget about the conference I've got to go get something to eat if you guys didn't figure that part out you know it's it's a big thing and so I we I think we kind of went down a little rabbit hole but I just needed to to to get it out there and I know it's in you but I I don't want to uh don't be so pessimistic I want you to have hope and optimism that we appreciate that we will draw down and the way we'll do it is actually the one that we've done so the biggest impact on on our human health and human suffering and our environment it's agriculture sea food and beverages it's not the oil coal and gas industry the telco or the automotive industry it's our industry that's because of how we produce and how we package and how we transport and how we waste and I think what I've seen from you that's a different story that doesn't happen or that's something that's a no no and it's our you you've got that ingrained and and what you do and it's well thought out but we need to get it in the rest of those who produce and in the rest of the world to change the food systems from a commodity to something else because it will be the biggest impact in our world and it will be an exponential function um to to to solve some of these problems and these are wolves I I think we are beyond the limits to growth and we're going to see suffering we're going to see climate catastrophes well worse than we've ever seen before but there's a way that we can get back in the safe operating space of our planetary boundaries and kind of get a rebalancing of things for future generations I hope I'm around to see it I hope you are as well um that leads me right off to the most difficult question unless you have something else to say no I just I couldn't possibly with this preemption what have you got the burning question wtf and it's not the swear word it's what's the future and not the future for others the future for mark brand what's the future it's a great question and you know I I think I'll answer it in two ways number one I believe deeply that it's determined and that I need to listen and be present and follow it right so I believe that part if I have to you know describe it it's very much an exponential education right so I want I want people to learn and feel and see and be right and so I want them to develop everything that I build is around helping people develop empathy for other and I never say that right I'll develop like our token system our token system was I created it with my team to specifically have two humans from different socioeconomic backgrounds understand each other because that's how you start advocacy is with a spark what people thought they were doing was being generous which they were but what the Trojan horse is you're realizing that's just because somebody's in poverty that doesn't mean that they're dirty or different or weird or it means that you just haven't met them yet and so in these processes all the skill sets that I've learned up until this point and everything that I have in that tool belt we talked about earlier it will be to continue to help us see how easy it is to truly be in service right because what we've done so far is we've made this great magical mystery of the great orgs and the work that they do and everything from the UN and having been there a year ago three days ago being in those halls realizing this is just a group of humans who want the world to be a better place let's stop like adding all this mystique to it and just make it really easy for every person to be involved in solving and healing their own communities that's what we've got and that's our best shot at all of this right is this communicative mycelium of communities and the globe right we talk about it with a fungal network and with trees and the redwoods etc but we have it energetically we have it in love it's there for us to access and so my job as I see it is to spend every moment that I've got helping to facilitate these systems and be part of the healing portion of it right because again in this presence and in the spirit of we have this moment to stop the suffering of all those moments so many people will not get to have joyous experiences and that's I think that's one of the great failures of humanity and of society rather not of humanity but one of our greatest failures is that we we preach the ability for everyone but we build structures that further marginalize them so if we can just those structures are being destabilized naturally because they were unsustainable to begin with but as they destabilize instead of looking how we fix them throwing trillions of dollars at banks to save them we could just get everybody fed and we could get everybody housed and we could say you know what makes a lot of sense a 25-hour work week makes a lot of sense and you watch productivity go through the roof and if you want to work from home I'm good with that like the way that we govern our teams people like ooh that's a little hippie like what is it 1975 what are you talking about seriously we want people to be happy safe and productive when you give people trust and this goes back right to the center point of this border conversation I trust people well nobody's trying to come take my stuff I mean I don't really have much but they don't want my stuff they just want safety they want freedom they want the ability to raise their families they want to have freedom of spirit and religion and just to do the things that they want and if we give people those things all the abundance that these people these dictators that you're talking about look for would 100x what they don't realize is they would get everything they would ever dream of plus plus plus yeah because what I'm certain of and for me is the second that I stopped chasing money and that I started chasing just helping people understand and be accepted that was when my whole life turned around all my joy came all my happiness came my understanding came I was able to be present I slowed down so for me I want to continue to develop those tools for self and for for other I think my listeners are probably at a little bit of a disadvantage because I don't think they got to hear you speak even though you've spoken all over the world in many different places is there a little mess message similar to what you give on stage or maybe even what you gave in in Thailand that you would like to share with us kind of mark brand's message to humanity that they can get an insight of what you talk about and we've heard of business aspects we've heard about some other things but when you get on stage or when you're out there giving your message you mind sharing a little bit of that with us yeah and I'm going to just share what comes to the top for me sure that's fine I think what when we disassociate because we do when we're when we're under attack and when we feel like we're not enough for imposter syndrome kicks in which everybody battles with or one in four of us is mentally ill in some way and all of those things need to be normalized first of all like we need to just be okay with that that's not weakness it's just is that mental health and physical health are the same thing that we all have mental health but we don't all have mental illness and we also all have physical health but we don't all have physical illness right and so I have both and I seem to operate just fine like I'm very able and capable and I know how to navigate those things because I've accepted them instead of trying to fight against them and when you accept them they become part of your superpower right and I think that every single person has the opportunity to understand what they are capable of and because of capitalism again the structures that we're built with we're told that we're less than and social media has destroyed a lot of that and people's self-worth and their confidence and I said we're seeing a bit of a change in what's important right and so I ask people just to feel more into themselves and to think more about that right is is what makes you happy and every once in a while you'll have a friend in your circle who's like I'm moving to Salt Spring Island or I'm moving to Thailand and and you're like oh that person's crazy like maybe they're not maybe they've actually just figured out what makes them happy and they've done everything in their their power to make that a real thing for them in my life I've been a dishwasher lots of times I've had zero resource many times I've been sued by multinationals and had my reputation run through the mud I've been addicted to narcotics and alcohol many times I've been a bad by my definition person I've been a wonderful person and what I know is that none of that is current what's current is what I've decided today what I've decided so you're not your past you can't be unless that's what you want to be and you're holding on to that all that you can do now is be the best version of yourself that you want to be and so you know I don't want to get too Tony Robbins with it but at the end of the day you have decisions you make thousands of them every hour right micro decisions and major decisions you make every day with those decisions you have to sort of start to scaffold and ladder what it is that you want to do and how you want to show up so when I decided I have this very deep recollection being 19 and I was a I got my first bartending job on a coastal at a coastal restaurant called the rope loft and I was the doorman and I was the bartender and it was fishing it was wealth versus inequality right so it was wealth and poverty in there so it's like a Cape Cod if you will at Chester Nova Scotia so there's these super wealthy Americans coming in and these these fishermen who are hard drinking there'd be a fight every night so I'm over the bar and I'm breaking up fights and it's super violent and you're seeing these tensions that have been around since surf them right around and I said to myself I in at a party actually said out loud as well and it was me going away party I was moving to Australia I said I'm going to own my own restaurant one day and one of the gentleman who was there and looked at me he's like yeah because bullshit's Nova Scotia Nova Scotia's bullshit and I am 45 next week that has never left me as motivation I was like that's so crazy that your structure and at the time for me that felt like he's probably right he was obviously very wrong I've owned and operated 11 restaurants with no investment you can literally do anything right and the constraints that are placed upon you by other people that doesn't belong to you that belongs to them and so just a consistent acknowledgement that other people's their interpretation of what they're capable of has nothing to do with you right and so if you had said to me on that same night you're going to hang out with one of the most impactful people in the global food movement who literally leads at the UN and you guys are going to be in Thailand together I'd be like pass me that joint because I like what you're smoking right but at the end of the day when you dedicate your life to service the world opens up to you everything if you look at on paper my history my first time in jail was 14 years old right like this is like the first time I got arrested and locked up overnight my trajectory was not to be at the United Nations last year helping to instill September 29th but it is as I decided that I was built for something different and we all are and I think that if I could share any message it really truly is that the only limitations that you will ever face in life for your own that you set for yourself thank you for sharing that I know you um you always say I fucking love you or you have that up and you show your you I probably show it at the end but you give it yeah I love hard I love you brother I appreciate it we have uh not only because we cross the pass in Thailand but we we also have a lot of mutual friends Harold Knight Hart and wonderful Hatch and and the people that we know and are you know I would say not even three degrees of separation you know so it was bound to determine that we come together one way or the other has there been anything that during this pause that has been an influential read or view or connection that has touched your life or changed anything that you would like to share with us maybe that would give us a little bit of of help or inspiration that you say oh man I do you read this book or have you heard this sure yeah I'll go granular and then big again okay granular everybody needs to buy a book called tell me about yourself and it's written by my dear friend uh Holly Murchison all right we can link it in the podcast but it is Holly and I met at the Stanford D school and her and I were there on a trial to see who is going to attend with a group of other people and um she is a black queer goddess yeah she is I read the book and I've seen seeing her stuff she's fabulous oh that's that that's my human her and her wife Dr. Coley are just so dear to me and I revisited that book I actually it was the first forward or part of a forward or cosine whatever you call it that I'd ever had published wow wonderful and I just think that again in that vein of how can you best be of service well you need to love yourself and you need to understand yourself and you need to understand how to introduce yourself like those things are critical skills in just navigating this thing we called life so that and directly attached educating yourself on the last 400 years of global oppression of black indigenous people of color and as well as the oppression of sexuality right so we think about those things when you say we're all homo sapiens fuck yeah we are right and but we can't and we have intrinsic wiring and generational trauma from things that have happened around us and to others that we carry and that trauma informs a lot of bias and so to remove that bias and do personal work and and really figure out how you can show up for people who have been on the wrong end of this thing for a long time has of course been at the centerpiece of our work for over a decade and that's I say this is fulfilling because when shit gets bad and it's bad right now as far as like bad is good in this analogy as far as everybody seeing what's happening like oh my god I can't believe that I didn't recognize my own privilege that's that that's the homework the homework is to understand and love yourself to know that you you're not going backwards you can't take back that ununassumingly racist thing that you said at the office you can't take it back you can own it and then you can go forward in a way that is honoring all peoples did you get did you get you got the granular and the big so okay we I've got two more questions for you please and then we'll wrap it up what does a world that works for everyone look like for you beautiful question uh it means that people are allowed to show up in their true genius everybody everybody is able to do exactly what fulfills them so uh using an analogy very quickly we have dozens of requests a week to come and work with us or volunteer with and I've used this I've told you this story before but I think it really it hits for people and the majority of those requests come to me directly and they say pardon me chef I would love to cook with you and help people and I say do you know how to cook in nine times it's in like I have no idea and I'm like how is that valuable and I mean no offense by this I'm just being pragmatic you want me to give you a free cooking lesson where you come in my kitchen you mess up the flow of 1800 people getting fed get burnt cut yourself do something you're gonna feel terrible about it trust me because you're gonna feel like if you shut a water and then you're not gonna do you might not volunteer ever again I don't want that responsibility what do you do and people like uh I'm a UX designer that's not helpful like yeah of course you've seen a nonprofit website lately you're like of course that's helpful let me introduce you to somebody that could use that skill this goes back to I'm a CPA chartered accountant that's not helpful like oh my god you are literally the resource you're right like let me volunteer give that two hours a day I'm writing a book right now it's just about finished and the book is a guide it's a guide book it's around 90 pages about finding where your sweet spot is and how to show up in purposeful volunteerism or that may then divert into being your life I want everybody to have that skill set right so if you'd asked me 10 years ago Mark you're going to go back to cooking in fact you're going to be the chef for Pope Francis climate change challenge and it said I'll be like I think I remember how to make chicken wings like I didn't realize until I looked deep into myself how much I loved cooking how I started my career cooking at 14 and how I was going to then spend the next seven to eight years daily sharpening pun intended that skill set to be deeply in service to everybody and using that as a tool that's what I want for everyone if you are a stand-up comic there is a place for you if you want to literally read tea leaves on the corner for people that is exactly what you should be doing and in the way that we have enough resource is everybody was actually allowed to do that we would not live in a weird society where nobody works it would be the opposite I've seen it people want to give away their time and skill set and resource we just don't trust them enough to to implement it and so with a UBI universal universal basic basic income for the listeners you have that you have the safety to explore your creativity what skill set you want people who are accountants like being accountants you know people who are firemen and women love that job they love saving people they love doing it so critical services don't fall apart they're just allowed to be exactly who they want to be and the other part I think for people is you can live many many many lives right you can be the next version of you tomorrow if that next version of you decides that you want to be a fly fishing instructor you should absolutely do that and you should teach the conservation of our rivers and have replenishing fish stocks and everything should be catch and release but you should do that and I think that the the planet as we would see it would be that that we would understand that responsibility isn't intrinsic to capitalism that people have deeper responsibility and senses of it that we should just trust them with it I totally agree thank you for sharing one of my very first podcast was with author John P. Strelinky he's written numerous books but the Y cafe and the big five for life the big five for life continued and the Y cafe continued he a safari many others but he says your purpose for existing and what is your big five for life you know these and it's kind of related to Africa hunting the the big five game or seeing the big five game that there are in Africa don't by any means no hunting it's more so to have seen them in their natural habitat but what are what are your big five what are your big what's your purpose for existing and that's exactly what you you said and what you've discovered but everybody has that and and and it can be a county it can be a comedian it can be any of those things that gives you that feeling that you're special that you're you have a talent that you enjoy it that you'd leap out of bed every day to do that those are the the future of work you know so we've learned in this this pause and in this great reset that people can't work from home they can have that pause that a lot of these offices and meetings and spaces are unnecessary the work can still get done and there are some that cannot of course there's always that but there are different ways of doing that there's not just one uniform or one way for us all we can find our unique spots so I really like that and I think just just to say yes and before you answer this question we're talking about a skill set but what does the skill set provide accounting provides safety and clarity so you're actually a purveyor of safety and clarity you're not a purveyor of numbers right and so I always say that to people too because they they mess up what it is that they're doing laughter is critical it's not a maybe it's not a nice to have if you're not laughing every day you're doing life wrong right you have to and so to have the beautiful poet comedians that allow us to reflect our political states that they're essential workers right so I didn't mean that in a flippant way I just wanted to clarify no I know I know you didn't mean it that way I took it the right way and I think our listeners got it but thank you for clarifying as we wrap this up the the last thing is so one is there anything that you would like to say to our listeners that you did not touch upon but more importantly if you could have the chance to go up to all the billions of people on this earth individually one on one and give them just one message your message mark's message what would that be I think it would be an ask I don't think it would be a tell I think it would be a prompt and it's the prompt that I share from stage as well right and I think you got to to see me do it with canoeing which is a promise it's a social contract right it's a socially binding contract that you make with one other human being so I would make it with a billion people if I could fabulous and it would be to promise to leave the world a better place than you found it just promise that and whatever it is whatever incremental change or gigantic change that is that you're going to make know that it's all important and so I just will share one quick story to give a context there was a young lady working on soil and resilience working specifically for the organization Kiss the Ground and I was cooking in Panama City and off the grid place called Caliela and she was there and she asked for some time and mentorship around homelessness and they had a a little farm that they'd set up in Malibu and they had employed two gentlemen who were homeless to do the farming and she was so thrilled she was so so thrilled her name is Lauren with what they had achieved and she was so excited about scale she said I can't wait to do more of this like you do more of this and I said why do you want to scale it and she said so we can get more people and employed who are homeless and I said but you work on something very critical which is food sovereignty and soil regeneration and we've got 15 harvests left by best count that is critical to focus on for all of us otherwise we're all screwed why this she's like I just love seeing the men find that purpose and I was like have you asked them about it if you asked them about scaling and she said looked at me like I was a little crazy she said no I have not and I said because by scaling you could potentially destabilize them and so think about what your impact is think about what's enough think about where your focal points are where you put your energy and as a lifelong non-stop addicted entrepreneur I can tell you now running five organizations versus 13 cost centers I'm having way more impact by doing way less right so I'm focused on the things that matter and I said to Lauren I said those two men's lives are forever changed because of the work you're doing if everybody impacted one or two people there wouldn't be enough to go around we would be arguing over who's going to help the next person and we'd be looking for them versus driving through streets of unhoused street entrenched addicted mentally ill struggling humans from Bangladesh to Bangor main they're there and you talk about office spaces being empty we have the space to put people and to help them recover we're choosing not to poverty is violence it's a it's a violent act that we've chosen so I think if I could speak to everybody I'd say do your part just do your part we'll be fine but everybody has to participate I heard and I will do I will do my part I promise you and I would like to continue seeing you and and our paths will cross and we'll do some more things and we'll have a follow-up hopefully thank you so much mark it's been absolutely a pleasure I wish you all the best and have a great weekend thank you brother and don't don't work too hard I promise I will and I know you will and thank you for the time I look forward to seeing you very soon thanks