 A few years ago, I went to go visit some tea gardens in China and I flew a long way and drove a long way and flew again and drove again until eventually I got out. I wasn't quite sure where I was, all I knew was I was supposed to go see some tea bushes. And I was a little surprised because when I got out, my host led me down a path and I couldn't see any tea bushes. They led me right to the edge of a river. And I sort of had to do the reality check and say, we are here to see tea bushes, right? And my host said, well, it's just on the other side of the river. And so I look on both sides of the river and I didn't see any bridge. And I wondered if I was in one of those, you know, zend tails where you've been with the tea bushes, but you're on one place that the bushes are in the other, but you've already always been with the bushes. So I said to my host, well, is there a bridge? Have you thought about building a bridge? Since you're engaged in commerce, it usually would make sense to do that. And my host gave me four interesting reasons why they hadn't built a bridge. So the first was, well, we're a poor community. We can't just build a bridge just because, you know, that might be the economic thing to do. Number two, there's a lot of flooding in this part of China. This is an Anhui province, South Central China. And the bridge could be underwater during one season and far away from the land on the other season. Number three, they said it's an organic teaguard. And if there's no need for heavy equipment or large bags of chemicals. The most interesting thing they said was, if we build a bridge, then there'll be a road. And if there's a road, then there'll be infrastructure. And with infrastructure, there'll be pollution. And so instead of a bridge, this guy comes up on a bamboo raft and we got our feet a little bit wet, but we ended up in a tea garden. And for me, that incident really sparked a different way of thinking. I saw a problem, no bridge. For this community, no bridge was a solution. We all know the stories of runaway development and pollution in the developing world. And for this community, not having a bridge was a way to protect their source. And when you extend that metaphor, you realize so much of what's going on in our society are solutions that we're creating to fix problems that maybe don't necessarily always need fixing. Organic, the whole organic agriculture movement rests on the fact that when people see weeds, they assume that the chemical pesticides are a solution to fix that problem. But I say, we're creating so many solutions, we're killing ourselves. We all know that the capital markets are inefficient. And my MBA colleagues would always tell me, oh, I'm going to help make markets efficient. But we know sometimes that those solutions to make markets efficient create their own problems. We even see it in our personal lives. My oldest son, a wonderfully creative boy, but when he started in kindergarten, he couldn't read. And he came home saying, I'm dumb, I'm stupid. And we actually had to meet with that academic therapist. They said, you know, you really need to put him on some medications. We didn't follow that advice. That solution would have created some other problems. We learned, in fact, that he was dyslexic. And instead of relying on medication, we helped help him relearn the alphabet. And in fact, it was his creativity that helped me think about creating honesty as a comic book. Let me share with you a story about how what we did in the beverage business, where we found a problem that became a solution. So 15 years ago, just after I had met Tim, if you told me I'd be running an organization that was helping to eliminate billions of calories from the American diet. And it was also involved in promoting organic agriculture. And also involved in spreading fair trade labor standards. I would have said, well, okay, you know, I'm living near Washington, DC. It's got to be a wonderful government organization or nonprofit that I'm involved with. I would never have guessed that it was a beverage company, let alone one that is now connected to the Coca-Cola company. But in honesty, what we did was we saw an industry doing selling drinks that were extremely sweet. And with ingredients that were extremely inexpensive. And where distribution was very consolidated. So what if we do something completely different? Instead of 100 calories per serving, what if we make drinks with 17 calories per serving? Instead of looking for the cheapest ingredients, what if we invest in organic and fair trade ingredients? And what we realized was we were creating something. It threw a lot of hard work and the book is full of some of those stories and some tragedies along the way. We realized we created something. Not only that was different, but was actually valuable to the large companies because it was so different. We were created in response to a problem, but we kind of linked in. We clicked in because we weren't going to be stealing market share from consumers or customers that the large companies were selling to. And so when Coca-Cola invested in 2008, honesty was in 15,000 stores. Today we're in over 100,000 stores. When Coca-Cola invested on his tea was buying about 800,000 pounds of organic ingredients, this year we'll buy over 5 million pounds of organic ingredients. And when we can start to accelerate that kind of demand, we help transform what goes on in the developing world. I want to share with you two Chinese proverbs. These are, we call them bottle cap quotes. The first is, it's a truism. If we don't change the direction we are headed, we will end up where we are going. Well, where are we going? Not in a pretty place. The UN recently ranked the life expectancy of the 200 countries in the world. And think about it. So what is the average life expectancy? What should it be for the United States? Well, let's just think about the facts. The United States is the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. We have more advanced knowledge of science and medicine than any civilization has ever had, and we spend more per capita than any civilization has ever had. We have a greater capacity to feed not just ourselves but other populations beyond ours. So what number do you think the United States would be? Well, we're not number one, we're not number two, we're number 40. So what does that say about our society? What does that say about our priorities, about our diets, about our lifestyles, about the way we live and interact with nature, about the way we live and interact with each other? It feels to me like we've created a few too many solutions when there may be some solutions already there, some problems that actually are solutions in themselves. We wrote the book Mission in a Bottom, my co-founder Barry and I, who is my professor from business school, to help both inspire and help entrepreneurs commiserate with the process. We started the bit, we brewed samples of tea in my house, five thermoses, we got an empty Snapple bottle, and we pasted a label on it, and we brought it to the local Whole Foods office and we said, we're selling this in your store, we'd like to sell this in your store, because it's different. It's not like other beverages out there. And the buyer was willing to give it a try, in fact, he placed an order to our both, our both great delight and horror, he placed an order for 15,000 bottles. We had to figure out what to do. We used that green light from the buyer to raise some capital, we raised about $500,000, all from angel investors, and over the next 10 years, we raised another about $10 million from angel investors, and delivered, by the way, a 26-fold return to the founding investors with our exit. So it's a story with a lot of bumps along the way. One of the things I learned is that some of the challenges are just inherent in the business. Within the first week of making our delivery to Whole Foods, I went, I was at a family picnic and was eating a piece of pizza and felt something crunchy in my mouth. I said, there's not supposed to be anything crunchy in a pizza. Turned out it was my tooth. My tooth had cracked, and I went to the dentist and he said, well, it looks like you've been grinding your teeth. Are you under any stress? I guess you could say that. He says, well, you've got two options for you. The first is, you can learn deep breathing techniques and yoga, and you could find a way to relax. Or I can fit you for a night guard and you'll put that on, and even though you might grind your teeth, you'll just, they won't sort of bump up against each other. I said, tell me about the night guard. I'm still wearing the night guard, but we're building something important. And more than just what we're doing with tea, I hope we're creating a model for how corporate America can change. When an entrepreneur can take a vision, gain buy-in from consumers that then leads to buy-in from a larger corporation and really becomes a main part of their portfolio. And so I want to close my remarks. I'll share with you another Chinese proverb. This is one that I know you all feel very much. It says, those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt the people doing it. And this is a room full of people doing it. The challenge, of course, is if markets are efficient, then there's no need for social investing. But markets aren't efficient. And there are problems out there. And those problems can be solutions when you can connect with them in the right way. Building a business like this was, I was told it was impossible. Not just that I didn't have any experience in the beverage industry, but just because of the competition, the challenges. But it's a community like this that can take a vision, come together as a group and make solutions out of problems. And that's what we need you to do. So good luck and let's all do it. Thank you very much. Thank you.