RR: I have a background in working with nonprofits, and I read a statement from you that nonprofits waste a lot of money in mismanagement. When did you discover this?
JSO: I was living in Southern India and I met all of these people through this nonprofit group. They were on a $150 a day stipends, where I was spending about $9 a day. They were in these groups, funded with millions of dollars, for these kids to go down there and do women’s rights work, but they were only in a town for 10 days. What kind of women’s rights work can you do in 10 days? You’re a tourist. If you want to start a nonprofit to do that, you say, please donate money to this institute so we can send Americans to India so we can educate them on how the rest of the world lives. That would be fine, but it was under the guise of women’s rights work. Then after that, I kept seeing it everywhere. All of these groups were well-funded groups of tourists. Trust me, there are thousands of amazing nonprofits doing great work. Pangea is working with Women for Women International that is doing phenomenal work in countries that are post war conflict. But many of them are wasting millions. Same in the investment community. Your average VC investment is millions of dollars spread around ten companies in hopes one of them makes it big. 97% of cosmetic companies are gone within 12 months.
RR: I love your statement that, “One of the best things about an economy is capitalism. Corporations will generally produce products that we want or ask for.”
JSO: I studied neuro-marketing. The new statistic is that last year, corporations spent 32 billion dollars trying to figure out what we want to buy. We as a culture are always quick to say it’s not our fault. It’s someone else’s fault. It’s the government. It’s the political system. It’s the corporations. In the end, there’s 300 million of us. Figure out what you want the future to look like. People don’t think about what they buy. We’re just starting to understand the impact of what we buy. Prefect example: we go into a recession, and people go to Walmart to stock up on products made overseas by people getting paid next to nothing in horrible conditions.
We invented the ball bearings, yet we don’t make them anymore. Not one ball bearing is made in America anymore. It’s used in every automobile and bike in the world. We outsource it because people aren’t willing to pay for them to be made here anymore. We invented the t-shirt and made it famous, but only 14% are made here anymore. Jeans - forget about it. I think they’re only 20 pairs a year made here. We need to wake up and think about what we do today effects tomorrow. What do we want tomorrow to look like?
RR: Did always know you would be an entrepreneur?
JSO: My mom would tell you I have been since I was seven. I used to go in the woods and look for golf balls and sell them to golfers. Sure.
RR: What has surprised you most about being an entrepreneur?
JSO: The thing that has surprised me most is the impact that a small company, like Pangea, can have on the global community. I spoke at a conference and one of the head designers at Coca-Cola came up to me and said that they’ve had my packaging in their design room for four years. Which is amazing to me. We’re influencing Coca-Cola. I haven’t drank a Coke in I don’t know how long, and we’re influencing them. We’ve influenced one of the largest home cleaning companies in the world with how they are with their consumers. They’re watching what we’re doing. People like you. Maybe we can just change one thing a week. The impact is enormous. Every minute of every one’s day, we have the opportunity to make a better decision. That’s stretches far beyond consumerism. It goes into the authenticity we have with each other.
Our relationships are based on a cumulative count of every interaction we’ve had with that person. So from the first time you meet with somebody to the day you die, every conversation and interaction you’ve had with them is based on the authenticity that you’ve had with them in every instance. For example, if you’re married for 40 years, the conversation you had last night at dinner is literally based on every interaction you’ve had with that person. When people ask why we’re here? We’re here to constantly be improving ourselves. And we do that through improving the world around us, improving our authenticity, improving the value of trust in our relationships and in our life. Only we can make the difference, and the more people that can make those changes, the more people that will see it and say, I want to be that.
JSO: I was living in Southern India and I met all of these people through this nonprofit group. They were on a $150 a day stipends, where I was spending about $9 a day. They were in these groups, funded with millions of dollars, for these kids to go down there and do women’s rights work, but they were only in a town for 10 days. What kind of women’s rights work can you do in 10 days? You’re a tourist. If you want to start a nonprofit to do that, you say, please donate money to this institute so we can send Americans to India so we can educate them on how the rest of the world lives. That would be fine, but it was under the guise of women’s rights work. Then after that, I kept seeing it everywhere. All of these groups were well-funded groups of tourists. Trust me, there are thousands of amazing nonprofits doing great work. Pangea is working with Women for Women International that is doing phenomenal work in countries that are post war conflict. But many of them are wasting millions. Same in the investment community. Your average VC investment is millions of dollars spread around ten companies in hopes one of them makes it big. 97% of cosmetic companies are gone within 12 months.
RR: I love your statement that, “One of the best things about an economy is capitalism. Corporations will generally produce products that we want or ask for.”
JSO: I studied neuro-marketing. The new statistic is that last year, corporations spent 32 billion dollars trying to figure out what we want to buy. We as a culture are always quick to say it’s not our fault. It’s someone else’s fault. It’s the government. It’s the political system. It’s the corporations. In the end, there’s 300 million of us. Figure out what you want the future to look like. People don’t think about what they buy. We’re just starting to understand the impact of what we buy. Prefect example: we go into a recession, and people go to Walmart to stock up on products made overseas by people getting paid next to nothing in horrible conditions.
We invented the ball bearings, yet we don’t make them anymore. Not one ball bearing is made in America anymore. It’s used in every automobile and bike in the world. We outsource it because people aren’t willing to pay for them to be made here anymore. We invented the t-shirt and made it famous, but only 14% are made here anymore. Jeans - forget about it. I think they’re only 20 pairs a year made here. We need to wake up and think about what we do today effects tomorrow. What do we want tomorrow to look like?
RR: Did always know you would be an entrepreneur?
JSO: My mom would tell you I have been since I was seven. I used to go in the woods and look for golf balls and sell them to golfers. Sure.
RR: What has surprised you most about being an entrepreneur?
JSO: The thing that has surprised me most is the impact that a small company, like Pangea, can have on the global community. I spoke at a conference and one of the head designers at Coca-Cola came up to me and said that they’ve had my packaging in their design room for four years. Which is amazing to me. We’re influencing Coca-Cola. I haven’t drank a Coke in I don’t know how long, and we’re influencing them. We’ve influenced one of the largest home cleaning companies in the world with how they are with their consumers. They’re watching what we’re doing. People like you. Maybe we can just change one thing a week. The impact is enormous. Every minute of every one’s day, we have the opportunity to make a better decision. That’s stretches far beyond consumerism. It goes into the authenticity we have with each other.
Our relationships are based on a cumulative count of every interaction we’ve had with that person. So from the first time you meet with somebody to the day you die, every conversation and interaction you’ve had with them is based on the authenticity that you’ve had with them in every instance. For example, if you’re married for 40 years, the conversation you had last night at dinner is literally based on every interaction you’ve had with that person. When people ask why we’re here? We’re here to constantly be improving ourselves. And we do that through improving the world around us, improving our authenticity, improving the value of trust in our relationships and in our life. Only we can make the difference, and the more people that can make those changes, the more people that will see it and say, I want to be that.
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