Discussion: Paco Underhill, Retail Guru

[00:00:01] Speaker A: And given the fact that I had worked in grocery, I'd worked on food, I'd worked on adult beverages. I'd work for Coke and Pepsi and Budweiser and whatever all over the globe, I thought I had a very good platform to be able to start talking to ordinary people about how to get better. And, you know, Ramsey, in finishing that book, which took another year, I took my own advice. [00:00:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:00:33] Speaker A: And I lost 30 pounds. My blood pressure went down. My cholesterol level went down. I started looking at both how I eat and what I ate and be able to start doing better at it. And I realized that one of my goals at age 72 is I'm going to spend the rest of my life trying to get us to a better world and a better version of ourselves. [00:01:03] Speaker C: Hey, there. It's Ramsey here. That was Paco Underhill. Paco is the author of why we buy, which has been translated into 27 languages and has been a best seller used in business schools and corporations for decades. The consulting firm Envirocell, which Paco founded, has done work across the globe for more than a third of the Fortune 100 companies. Looking at how people interact with retail environments, Paco's recent book, how we eat, looks not only at food retail, but also how food is being grown and distributed. We spoke about how the COVID era has impacted retail spaces, how food production and distribution is going from global back to local, and how that impacts packaging. We also got personal. We talked about what is motivating him these days, how he lives out his faith, and a bit about his parents, whom I knew many years back. I feel like I got to know Paco a lot more as a result of this discussion. I hope you'll feel the same. Here we go. [00:02:04] Speaker B: Hey, Paco, how you doing today? You feeling better? [00:02:08] Speaker A: Hey, Ramsey. I'm better because I'm talking with you. [00:02:11] Speaker B: That is great. Thank you so much. I'm so glad that we had a chance to. That we have a chance to talk today. I know you weren't feeling great the last couple of days with COVID but it was really great to see you the other night a couple of weeks ago. Now for dinner. After many years, I'll mention for the sake of the audience that you are the cousin of my wife. So I was lucky enough to marry into your family. But most of the world knows you as a best selling author, a motivational speaker, and perhaps the world's foremost expert and pioneer on understanding the layout of retail spaces. I'll let you properly introduce yourself, but let me ask how did you become such a talented observer? [00:03:06] Speaker A: Well, you know, I grew up as a son of a diplomat, and we moved countries almost every 18 months, starting when I was three years old. And I grew up with a terrible stutter, and it was very awkward for me often to ask questions about how things worked wherever I moved to. So I had to watch and be able to figure things out with my eyes. And many people have said that I turned a coping mechanism for a handicap into a profession. [00:03:44] Speaker B: Let's talk more about that profession. So I believe you started out sort of a looking at traffic patterns in roadways and streets and things like that, but you pivoted into looking at traffic patterns within sort of human spaces. So what was that like in terms of kind of the beginnings of your career and how it pivoted to what you did? A lot of. [00:04:20] Speaker A: Well, it actually happened in your own. [00:04:24] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Tell me more. [00:04:27] Speaker A: 40 years ago, I was a part time instructor in a doctoral program in environmental psychology at City Union University in New York City. I was also part of the crew that would go to different cities across the country and rewrite commercial zoning ordinances based on topography and traffic patterns. And I had my moment of epiphany on the roof of the sea first bank building in Seattle, Washington, 60 stories up. I was on the roof installing the cameras, and there was a stiff wind blowing, and I could feel the building rocking in the breeze. You can't tell, but I'm six foot four. I tell a joke that I'm one of the few tall people I know that can get height sick with two pairs of socks on and on the roof of that building, on the edge of the building with it rocking in the breeze. I promised myself that I would reinvent what I did and not have to confront my fears. And a week later, I was standing at a bank in New York City, getting madder by the moment, and realized that I could take some of the same tools I'd been looking using to look at how a city worked and take them inside a bank or a store or an airport or a hospital and start to figure out how they worked, and I'd never have to go to the roof of a building again. [00:05:59] Speaker B: So the. Your first book, and I think that's really how people really got to know you and broke through in many ways. Your first book is why we buy, and that is a kind of a legend. It's been translated into many different languages. It's been a bestseller for decades. Tell us a bit about sort of what that book book is really about and how it was groundbreaking. And I believe that it was based off of work that you had done, and I'm sure it launched you into even more. But talk a bit about the book and what a difference that made in terms of setting your career and enviro cell onto its tremendous path. [00:06:52] Speaker A: Well, in the summer of 1996, I just moved offices, and this short, slight man walked in my door and said, oh, my name is such and such. I've been working for the Washington Post. I'm doing an article for the New Yorker magazine. And they said I should come interview you. And I said, okay. And he came back a couple of times, and I called the New Yorker and said, does Malcolm Gladwell work for you? And he said, oh, yes, he does work for us. Okay. So I finished the interview, and that was that. And then in late November of 1996, Malcolm Gladwell's article came out called the Science of shopping, and it became the most reprinted piece in New Yorker history. And all of a sudden, I'd done other magazine stories. I'd done whatever. But all of a sudden, my intersection with the broader world of media changed. And while I'd been struggling, I'd written articles and I'd been, you know, pitching, you know, publications on books and gotten, you know, marginal responses. I'd published articles. But at that point, I had agents knocking on my door going, Mister Underhill, can I represent you? And at that point, I picked a very powerful agent who had a history of doing political books. But I got along with both he and his wife really, really well, and they pitched me to Simon and Schuster. And that was the start to it. The other piece of the puzzle here, and this is an interesting personal one here, is at that moment in my life, I was living with a very prominent classical musician. And she played the flute and the piccolo here. And when she wasn't at Carnegie hall or Lincoln center, she had the tenured chair at Phantom of the Opera on Broadway, which meant that she worked every night and every weekend. Ramsay, could you imagine having a girlfriend that walks out the door every night between 630 and seven, and every night is never home before 11:00 or 1130. Yeah, every night and every weekend. So part of what I did was to realize that writing books was a way of staying out to trouble. [00:09:58] Speaker B: Yeah. So having, yeah, having, having a partner that was gone during those hours, you'd have to, like, live in a different time zone or something like that to have any fun during the day. [00:10:09] Speaker A: It was true. Well, part of what I did was I worked every day and I would come home, and several nights a week I would work at the local catholic hospital on the geriatric award. And several nights a week I would do outreach on the street for urban pathways. Who I've been a volunteer. It's a homeless organization in New York. And then the nights that I wasn't doing either, I'd work on books. [00:10:36] Speaker B: Terrific. And then how did that really launch the company after the book came out? [00:10:46] Speaker A: Well, the company had been launched, and enviracel was founded in the mid 1980s, we were the principal testing agency for prototype stores and bank branches in the world. By the mid 1990s and into the late 1990s, we were opening offices around the world. The word got out that we were really good. Part of what made some of the difference here is that if you think of the difference between the PWCs and the fancy consulting firms of the world that focus on strategy, we were able, in the context of working for banks and merchants, to be able to come back often with immediate tactical issues. Immediate tactical issues. And if you can get someone's victories that are fast, quick and easy, getting them to buy in to the larger concept becomes a lot easier. And that was part of what drove our work. The second piece is that while we started dealing with physical retail, as the Internet launched in around 1999 and 2000, we started building tools not only to look at how physical spaces work, but how cyber cyberspaces work. And certainly for in Virocel over the past ten or 15 years, some of our largest clients are the world's largest digital companies. I did two world tours for Samsung, for example, looking at the future of communication and the future of the home and its impact on how people use phones and the Internet. So that was programs to the african consumer, the Middle Eastern consumer, the asian consumer, the russian consumer, all based on the fact that at that point, we had offices scattered across the world and had worked in 53 different countries. [00:12:52] Speaker B: That is incredible that that reach and broad expanse. And it's interesting, you know, in your childhood, you traveled the world for, you know, with your family because of your dad being a diplomat. Now you had the chance to travel the world. So that was probably familiar, but I'm sure very different in a different context to do that kind of work across the world. [00:13:23] Speaker A: Well, I think part of what was interesting is being able to look at the difference, for example, between Korea in 1972 and Korea today, which is one of the most remarkable transformations. If you want to look at the most digitally literate city on the face of the planet now, it's probably soul. [00:13:46] Speaker B: So, and then your most recent book is looking specifically at food and food systems. It's nothing new to you in the sense that you've been an expert on grocery stores and retail and restaurants and things like that. But I think in this book, you really took more of a deeper dive into kind of where food comes from and how food is produced and things like that. What kind of made you interested in picking up the topic of food for writing your book, how we eat? [00:14:23] Speaker A: Well, you know, that book was started before COVID hit. Started almost nine months before COVID hit. And when COVID hit and my world just went bonkers. Okay, obviously, you know, we had to. I had to close the business. I was doing a lot of work in China. A number of my employees came back sick. I mean, it was just a real difficult trying time. And the lawyers came to me and said, paco, it's time for you to pivot. And I looked at the manuscript and I said, maybe I need to go back and start this over again and to do something that is less focused on business and more focused on consumers and as a reflection of part of the way you would like to see the world progress. And given the fact that I had worked in grocery, I'd worked on food, I'd worked on adult beverages. I'd work for Coke and Pepsi and Budweiser and whatever, all over the globe. I thought I had a very good platform to be able to start talking to ordinary people about how to get better. And, you know, Ramsey, in finishing that book, which took another year, I took my own advice. [00:15:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:15:52] Speaker A: And I lost 30 pounds. My blood pressure went down. My cholesterol level went down. I started looking at both how I eat and what I ate and be able to start doing better at it. And I realized that one of my goals at age 72 is I'm going to spend the rest of my life trying to get us to a better world and a better version of ourselves. [00:16:22] Speaker B: That is really terrific. So, as you know, this podcast is called what's worthwhile. And it's a question that I've been asking myself lately, just as I'm sort of going through some transitions in my life. But the question is really all about, there's so much going on in the world, and you can sort of see so many things happening, and so many things are competing for our attention, and there's so much information, and yet it's difficult to sort of understand what we should be focused on and even what's true versus what people just want us to believe. And that's it. So that question of what's worth our attention, what's worth working on, is a really interesting question, I think. And I'm curious how you would answer that question for yourself, because I think you're sort of beginning to go around the edges of that. But it sounds like maybe that you've grappled with that question, and maybe you have, you know, becoming to some kind of a. An answer, and we'd love to hear your thoughts on that. [00:17:39] Speaker A: Well, I think there are a number of issues here about how we move forward progressively. I. First, we need to understand, you know, the role that this plays in the context of our lives. [00:17:56] Speaker B: You're holding up your phone and recognize. [00:17:58] Speaker A: That the line between the physical and the cyber world has gotten a lot fuzzy. And second, is recognizing the impact of birth control and the fact that probably the most seminal event in our species since we invented fire is uncoupling sex from procreation. And I don't make any moral or religious judgment, but part of what we know is that people are having children later. They're making the decision whether they have children, how they have children, all of that stuff. And part of what that's done is to fundamentally change the role of men and women in terms of how we consume and the nature of our culture. You know, historically, we sold women food, clothing and apparel. And now they're often the most important consumers of technology. For example, every technology that has moved from a technology to an appliance has done so based on the work of working women. They were the first operators of phones. They're the first operators of desktop computing. They were the first adapters to ATM's, and they're the most important users of online. And yet that dichotomy between what is female friendly and the design of that world is a really important one. And I'm a big advocate of making things female friendly. And looking at the difference between wizards and witches, and that maybe it's time to give witches a little more power and to take some of the power away from wizards. The third one is generational, which is that at age 72, more than 80% of my weekly purchases are the same thing. I've made some fundamental decisions about what I eat and how I eat. I like grey Poupon mustard. I don't like golden. I mean, all of that stuff. Isn't there a better way for me to consume it or better way to acquire it in a way that is more ecological? Why do I have to, if I've made my purchase decision, why do I have to buy it in a jar that is designed to scream at me from the shelf when I've already made my decision. Next one is the issue of time, which is that all of us, particularly in 2024, are multitasking. And that the premise in retail design or in cyber design, that the longer I held you, the more money I was going to get out of your pocket doesn't make sense anymore. Just doesn't make sense anymore. What is global and what is local? I mean, the way someone consumes in Bellingham and the way someone consumes in Olympia, much less Duluth or El Paso or New York City, there are some very predictable differences, and it doesn't mean that there's an infinite set of buckets. But one of the fundamental issues about us getting healthier and the world getting healthier is us being able to get more local. And this is about how we consume and what we consume and how we treat the world that is immediately around us. Getting local is important. And whether that's in terms of consumption or politics or charity, I think those are key issues. And the other issue is the recognizing that the role of money has changed, that money is no longer anchored in a peaches and cream complexion, and therefore understanding what that role is here it is. Interesting. And the interrelationship between money, ethnicity and consumption. I love the fact that when I walk through the East Village in New York City, there's a korean corndog stand, a korean corn dog stand, knowing, you know, based on the fact that I did part of my university education in Korea in the 1970s, that there was no such thing as corn back then in Korea, and now there's a korean corn. [00:22:27] Speaker B: Does the korean corn dog place have some really good sauces for the korean corn dogs? Like, I hope so. [00:22:35] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, you know, kochi chan and, you know, variations on kimchi. Yep. [00:22:41] Speaker C: Oh, man. [00:22:42] Speaker A: It's good for you. [00:22:43] Speaker B: Well, you said so much stuff there. Maybe we can dig into a few things individually. So how about. Let's start here. So, you know, I feel like the big event that kind of changed the world lately is just that whole COVID. It's changed the world in so many ways and I wonder which things that will sort of go back to and which things have been sort of fundamentally changed forever. So maybe we should set a baseline. Talk to me a bit about. Okay, talk to me a bit about how sort of retail spaces and food and shopping were evolved up to sort of 2019 pre lockdown era. So where were the trends going in the first couple of decades of the 21st century. [00:23:41] Speaker A: Please. Let's understand something, Ramsay, that if we look at retail, retail, on one side of the equation is, what are the biological constants? What are the things that stay the same? 90% of us are right handed. Okay, I may be six foot four. My lovely wife may be five foot three. But there's the same ratio of hand to mouth here, the same ratios here. That's two. Our eyes age in the same way. The way I see color at 72, and the way someone sees color at 25 is predictably different as we age. The lenses in our eyes, yellow, the way I see color and the way a 25 year old sees color is predictably different. And I can look at the design of a package, a website, the signage inside a store, and tell you with reasonable accuracy what the age of the design was because they tend to design for themselves. Okay, so there is the biological constants. But recognize that one of the things about retail is it is a reflection of the changes in us. And what made a good store in 1998 and what made a good store in 2008 are predictably different. And they're a reflection of some of the evolutions within us. Part of what was true about the impact of COVID is that among those six things that we just talked about, gender, eyes, whatever, many of those things either morphed or were accelerated. Part of what we're looking at now, for example, is, again, better supply chain management. People are looking at the fact of, why do I have to have stuff manufactured in China and shipped here if I'm having to pay the price of transportation, when what was made in Guangzhou could be made in Georgia, much less in Olympia, Washington? Because we can do it better. I think this is one of the things that we're watching, particularly within the context of our own culture. And we had stories running today in the newspaper talking about the conflict between the US and China and the fact that we've looked at ourselves and gone, should we really be sourcing? Isn't it time that the sewing machine that started off in the garment district in New York City in 1960 and moved from the garment district in New York to Haiti? Then it moved from Haiti to Mexico, then it moved from Mexico to China, then it moved from China to Vietnam, and then it moved from Vietnam to Bangala, Bangladesh. It's now 70, 80 years later. Maybe it's time to kiss that sewing machine goodbye and start with something else that allows us to be able to do something digitally and not chase the lowest labor dollar across or labor cost across the world. And I think this is one of the very positive economic decisions. One of the things that's very interesting, though, is that it means that the modern factory, for much of things, is going to need a dog and a person. Hmm. The dog is to make sure that the people stay away, and the person is to keep that dog fed because the factory is going to run digitally. [00:27:36] Speaker B: Okay, I get it. [00:27:37] Speaker A: And I think part of what this, this creates for us is how are we, as a consuming and labor culture, going to move forward? And I think that's a very interesting question. And we see that in the context of our modern political debates here, is that, on the one hand, the stock market hit new highs today. Today it got over 40,000. 40,000. Yeah, that's right. On the other hand, it means that some of us are doing just fine, but some of us that are not invested in the stock market are having to pay higher prices because, you know, the major food and beverage companies have been shrinking the package and raising the price. One of the things I think is very true about retail and organized consumption is, is management answerable to Wall street, which is, you know, doing the investing versus, versus answerable to the consumer who's changing. And I think we can look at the broader landscape of retail and go, if I'm a national chain, how do I do a better job of getting local? Let me just give you an example. One of the things that I noticed working in grocery is you have a major player like Whole Foods, okay? And while their headquarters are in Texas, a lot of the decision making happens locally, meaning that there are places in the world where having a halal meat section makes an enormous amount of sense. And yet there are other places across the country where it makes no sense at all. And I think one of the management issues that we're looking in the broader world of retail is how well are the merchants doing about getting local and staying local? And I think this has been a real struggle for companies that are trying to, oh, let's shrink our management structure because it lowers our operating costs. On the other hand, what's the difference between the decisions being made in Texas versus the decisions being made at the regional office in Philadelphia? [00:30:08] Speaker B: Okay, so you're talking about the decision. So I think this is a really powerful trend and idea, this idea of national or global versus local, it's the same concept as centralized versus distributed. I work in the renewable energy business, and renewables like wind and solar are, by their nature, distributed energy versus central power plants that are very centralized. What I hear you saying is that food distribution production is getting and needs to get more distributed versus centralized, kind of. Is that what you're saying? And if so, so what are the sort of the unique benefits versus challenges of looking at distributed local kind of food systems versus centralized? [00:31:20] Speaker A: Well, some of it is recognizing that for us, if you look at the typical french peasant of the 19th century, over the course of a year, they would eat anywhere from 70 to 90 different things because they would consume seasonally. If you look at the typical american consumer of 2020, they tend to consume between 20 and 25 things that, if you walk into your local grocery store in February, where are the freshest blueberries? Are they in the produce section? No, they're in the frozen. Frozen food section. If I'm interested in the healthiest fruit, often in the middle of the winter it's eating dried fruit as opposed to fresh fruit that's being imported from Ecuador. I think this is. This is, again, one of the issues about how do we do a better job. One of the things that I love, for example, is that in my home now, my wife has an orchard. We have put in bees. There's a hydroponic garden in the basement, which is organic, but it still is hydroponic. Ramsay, this is one of the impacts on agriculture, which I think is really interesting, is what have the pot growers of British Columbia taught us? [00:32:56] Speaker B: We got lots of pot growers out here in Washington, too. So they were. They were out there. [00:33:01] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. [00:33:02] Speaker B: What have they taught us? [00:33:03] Speaker A: Well, the point is here is taking that same technology, and rather than growing cannabis, growing, you know, basil and lettuce here, we worked on a project on hydroponic growing with a North Carolina grocer where we put hydroponic. There were hydroponic gardens put into the parking lot and the roof. And do you know what the problem that they had is? They couldn't sell all of the greens. [00:33:34] Speaker B: Eat your greens. [00:33:37] Speaker A: How do I teach you to eat basil for breakfast? [00:33:43] Speaker B: Cold pizza. That's obvious. [00:33:47] Speaker A: Or, you know, some form of taking the basil and putting it in the blender with the dried blueberries and the kefir. [00:33:57] Speaker B: Yes, that sounds really good. So basically, what you're talking about is growing plants indoors, right? So. [00:34:05] Speaker A: Well, it could be growing plants indoors, but, I mean, this is one of the things that may not work in Austin, Texas. But if you're in Olympia, Washington, having a simple hydroponic tree in your basement is one of the ways to take 25% of your green consumption and do it within, you know, 25 yards of where it's consumed. I have a friend who lives in Westchester, and she is a very avid grower. And she can serve a meal where everything that's served at that meal is grown within 75 yards of the dinner table that you're eating at. [00:34:50] Speaker B: Very impressive. [00:34:51] Speaker A: And that includes chickens eggs. She grows some pigs. She has honey. She has a garden, and it's really delicious because it's a whole new definition of what is. [00:35:05] Speaker B: And she can actually tell you what the chicken's name was and whether the chicken had a lot of friends, you know, and everything else from that Portlandia skit that they get hyper local. Did the chicken have a lot of friends, like, love that? [00:35:25] Speaker A: Well, chickens are let out of the coop, and they also clean out the insects across the garden. So, I mean, it's a, there's a, there's a synergy there that is really interesting between the. Them picking up the insects to them leaving their poop behind. [00:35:49] Speaker B: Thinking about sort of feeding the world. You know, back in, like, the 1970s, it was kind of the green revolution, which was based mostly on fossil fuels and fertilizers and new sort of high tech irrigation systems. And that was sort of how farming became centralized. But then I think in the first parts of the 21st century, we had permaculture and sustainable agriculture kind of came in. But there are, I think, concerns in the world now about whether that can really handle, you know, the great amounts of demand for food. Kind of. How's that going, in your sense? And is it the solution that everybody needs to grow their own food, whether that is, you know, literally in their house, in their basement, in their garden, or, you know, whether it's, you know, operations adjacent to the grocery store, you know, is that the. Is that the ultimate solution, to get hyperlocal? Is that going to. Is that going to do the trick? [00:37:05] Speaker A: No, I think. I think it's some of. I mean, are we ever going to be able to grow all of our vegetables in our gardens and whenever. The answer is absolutely not. But part of what we know here is that if we grow some of the things, our vocabulary and our sense of justice is influenced by the fact of what we're exposed to. Less than a month ago, Ramsey, I gave the closing speech at the plant forward convention in Toronto, which is talking about the reinvention of the 21st century farm based on, are there ways of farmers being able to use organic fertilizer, being able to look at, how do I get closer? Why does the canadian farmer create all this wheat and whatever, ship the wheat to China? It's processed here. And it comes back to us as whatever it is, as opposed to something that can happen much more locally. And the degree to which modern farming is going to be based not on just the volume, but are you able to sell a portion of that locally and be able to have a better relationship to what the evolution of consumption is? And it was a terrific convention. We had people from all across the world talking about the interrelationship between the foreign and the grocery store and how do we make it better. And I would urge your listeners to look at plant forward online. [00:38:56] Speaker B: Plant forward. Okay, great. [00:38:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:38:59] Speaker B: You know, another thing about. About local. Local food production, local food distribution, is you don't need as much or the same packaging. Right. You know, packaging is a big sort of solid waste issue. [00:39:25] Speaker A: Do you know what this is? [00:39:27] Speaker B: It looks like an item of packaging. [00:39:31] Speaker A: Do you know what it's made out of? [00:39:34] Speaker B: No. Excels. I mean, that's what nature uses. [00:39:41] Speaker A: This is some of the packaging we've been working on. Okay. This is cups, food containers, and shopping bags made out of compostable as opposed to recyclable material. This is one of the revolutions that is going to come to us is that we're recognizing that recycling is failing. And this is a plastic bag that you can use over and over again, but when you're ready to get rid of it, you put it in your compost heap, and 120 days later, not only is it dirt, but it's fertilizer. [00:40:26] Speaker B: Okay? So I gotta say, I'm like the straws that are made out of, like, cardboard that melts in my mouth when I'm using them for, like, 10 seconds. Kind of annoyed by that. [00:40:38] Speaker A: There are straws now that are made out of seaweed. [00:40:42] Speaker B: So you can just eat it. [00:40:44] Speaker A: You can just eat it. That's right. [00:40:46] Speaker B: Do they come in different flavors? [00:40:47] Speaker A: One of the things. Yep. [00:40:50] Speaker B: Because I want a wasabi one. [00:40:55] Speaker A: Well, part of what we're working on now is cups. That if they. If you're on a cruise ship and that cup gets blown off into the ocean, that it dissolves as opposed to floating around and polluting, you know, fish and shellfish. [00:41:12] Speaker B: Well, that's good because, you know, plastic in the ocean is having a tremendous impact. You know, I talked a while about, in a. In an episode about the great Pacific garbage patch, which is a zone of ocean between California, Hawaii, that has like 100 million plastic and is roughly the size of Texas, which just seems absurd to me. [00:41:41] Speaker A: It is really pathetic. It's really pathetic. And it's. Again, it's testament to the fact that we're still shipping stuff across the world that doesn't need to be shipped. It could be produced locally. This actually comes from a swedish bioengineering company called Gaia, and it's being produced now in Poland. But we are trying to help them find a us manufacturer. And I've been pitching both us retailers grocery and Qsrs about making that ship kissing plastic goodbye. [00:42:20] Speaker B: Okay, so what role has faith had in your life and in your work? [00:42:29] Speaker A: Well, if you asked me, Ramsay, I would describe myself as a Christian with a small c as opposed to a big c. Okay. I have a christian father. I have a sephardic mother, a north african jewish mother, and I have a muslim wife. I recognize that dogmatic Christianity insists on a monopoly on truth, that the only way to the kingdom of heaven is through the acceptance of Jesus Christ as your savior, which I do not accept. I think it is critical. And if he, Jesus, were sitting here next to me, he would agree. It isn't the beliefs you profess. It's the actions that you take. And it's hard for me to think of my virtuous mother, who spent much of her life doing volunteer work and helping people learn skill sets, or my wife, who is in the other room, who is working on a foundation for earthquake victims on the syrian turkish border and is caring for children that have lost their parents. These are virtuous people with virtuous projects. And I think this is one of the aspects of faith here, which is, I don't care what you espouse. I care with what you do and the degree to which we, as members of the earth, are trying to help other people out and to recognize differences, to be tolerant and understanding is part of what makes it better. There are nights when I'm trying to go to sleep at night, and I look up and I go, ah, God, would you please take Netanyahu, Erdogan, Putin, Biden, and Trump to the poker game in the sky? Because it's time for. For the witches as opposed to the wizards, and it's time for a new generation of leadership and maybe having a few more women in that process getting. [00:44:52] Speaker B: Some feminine energy into the leadership space. Yeah, I hear what you're saying. I think, and I believe that what we need more of is love and understanding. And I think you described it as, you know, virtuous. And I agree with that, too. I think a lot about how I'm motivated to do things. I think intention is really important, too. And I just find that when I. Or when we or when people are taking actions motivated out of love that they don't always work out great, but even when they don't work out the best, you can at least understand and, you know, build off of attempts that were made. You know, actions that were taken and motivated out of love are sort of the best ones. And I find that things like fear generally motivate me towards inaction towards not doing things. So, you know, that gets to that notion, I think, of not condemning or excluding people, which, from a spiritual basis, which I was hearing you say and talk about, but instead recognizing that and leaning into love and good intentions is a powerful motivation and way to do good in the world and make the world a better place. What do you think about that? [00:46:45] Speaker A: Do you know what the concept of mitzvah is? [00:46:47] Speaker B: Tell me about mitzvah. [00:46:50] Speaker A: Mitzvah is the Hebrew word for an act of kindness to which often you cannot be thanked for. So when I was working on the street with homeless, are the homeless ever going to thank me for being able to help them out? Not directly, but the nature of the thank you or the virtue was very real and very palpable. And I try in as much as I can to do acts of kindness every day to which I cannot be thanked for. [00:47:31] Speaker B: Well, that's even more interesting, because I've been learning a lot about the power of gratitude and how beneficial it is for people to feel gratitude. And in ways like when you feel gratitude within yourself, it recognizes your mind to your body that you received something good, and that it improves even physical aspects, in addition to body and spiritual. And so having and doing and performing mitzvah, providing good for people that they're not directly compensating you for, enables them to feel gratitude, which is sort of a double benefit, right? Because you've benefited them by the physical, direct thing that you did, and you also benefited by, you know, providing and empowering them to feel gratitude and feel better afterwards. [00:48:29] Speaker A: Hmm. [00:48:30] Speaker B: Before we kind of wrap up our time today, is there anything else that you wanted to kind of talk about? [00:48:39] Speaker A: It's up to you. Ramsey, this is your podcast. [00:48:44] Speaker B: Indeed it is, and it is so much better for having had you as a guest. Paco, thank you so much for taking the time and talking to me. I just feel like. I feel moved to say that. [00:49:03] Speaker A: I. [00:49:04] Speaker B: Look at you and I see so much of your father in you. When my wife and I were younger, we spent a lot of time at your parents house. They had a wonderful retreat home, and your parents were both beautiful, wonderful people. And the sense of peace that always emanated from your dad. I'm feeling that from you these days. Really, just really enjoyed and really feel blessed that we had the time to talk today. So thank you. [00:49:41] Speaker A: Give your wife a hug. [00:49:42] Speaker B: I will. [00:49:45] Speaker A: She's a lovely, lovely lady, bro. You're one lovely. [00:49:49] Speaker B: Don't I know it. [00:49:52] Speaker A: All right. Thanks bro. [00:49:55] Speaker C: Thank you for asking. What's worthwhile? Visit what's worthwhile.net to learn more about me, Ramsay Zimmerman, and please provide your name and email to become a supporter. I'm asking for prayer, advice, feedback and connections. The what's worthwhile podcast is on Spotify, Apple, iHeart, and Amazon. You can also [email protected] thanks.