Episode 34 - Joe Babarsky
You're Not Broken, You're Just in Beta
Motivation N'at Podcast
Full Transcript
Natalie Bulger:
"Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Motivation N'at where we take hot mess to high potential. My name is Natalie, I am your host and today I am joined by Joe Babarski, the director of the Not Impossible Institute. And if you have been here for a few months and we're here for the Priya Patel episode, Priya and I met at a Not Impossible Institute session in Nashville where we had a chance to meet Joe to meet his team, including Maya, Mick Ebeling, the owner, the director, the big, you know, honcho of Not Impossible. But underneath that are amazing people like Joe, who are making magic happen and doing so in ways that I think so many of us are like, wow, I wish I could do that. Or, my God, how do I get started? And sometimes all it takes is someone showing you, ironically, how possible it is to break out of molds, to think creatively, and to start to challenge our own inner dialogue in a lot of ways. And today's conversation, I'm just so pumped for this, Jo, because I know we have a bullet list of like five, six things we wanna touch on. I don't know if we're gonna stick to all of those. We may end up down some pathway. I'm here for it if we do. But to pull apart this just insane world of inputs that we're in right now and how do you start to make sense of it? I know you've been talking recently about this feeling of being in beta about comfort with failing because if we don't fail, how do you grow? And they're all conversations that we have heard, but I don't know if we've understood. So. Having you here, being hands-on, in the midst of it all, I really am just looking forward to this. So with no further ado, Joe, tell us about who you are, how the heck have you landed, where you are today, like what does this path look like for you, and what is kind of motivating you to keep pushing this conversation forward?"
Joe Babarsky:
"Well, thank you so much, Natalie. I'm so thrilled to be here. Really loved meeting you and Priya and the team in Nashville and then have just had a blast also listening to your podcast and sort of getting into the kind of conversations you had. You hit on so many things already from. you just calling out making the magic happen. We'll talk a little bit about magic and inner dialogue and how important I feel that that is something I love that you've brought up in so many different ways with different guests in different capacities. But I'll tell you about myself. Joe, I feel like, you know what? I was an imaginative, creative, sensitive little kid. I'd like to think I'm an imaginative, creative, definitely a sensitive grown man. And it's someone who feels really deeply. It's so funny that what I think about is, you know, I can give you my LinkedIn, but when I tell you about like who I am, I'm like. I always wanted to do magic. I've been a lucid dreamer all my life and had this kind of fascination with sort of making things possible and things being unexpectedly possible. That desire, honestly, actually early in my life made me want to get into medicine and what made me feel like healing is almost a sort of human way of doing magic in the human body. And then big vacillation actually, where I sort of ended up in storytelling and journalism and ultimately filmmaking. So I am a nerd. I've always been a tinkerer and a problem solver. I was an AV kid, this might make less sense in a time where everyone's just airplaying something to a device, figuring out how to make things work. And I really came of age, and I think we kind of connected a little bit around this kind micro generation connection, came of age in this, I think an era that was really grounded or seasoned. with a sense of new possibilities. In the 90s and in kind of high school and college into the 2000s, there was always something new, a new tool. I thinking going to this conversation, it almost seems silly, but I think it's important to remember, because it's so different, it can be very different for the generations on each side of us, that we were jumping from. taping songs off the radio to a mini disc player, to a CD player, to a CD burner, to that MP3 player that could hold 14 songs, to the new platform, the new thing. And that kind of, realize that that has given me a sense of this fascination with incremental progress and these finite new possibilities. But there was always this suggestion that we were moving towards these infinite possibilities. So that's really where I think that as I studied, I went to school and studied film studies, which was sort of a niche at the, even at the time in the 2000s, it was like, oh, this is kind of a niche thing. Ironically, then I step in to move to LA and working in, found kind of a foothold in a career in startups that were inventing social media. And suddenly, the use of content and storytelling and the way the audience reacts to it and the use of media in novel ways was the cutting edge and every company, every industry was sort of fascinating or being sort of upended in some ways by that. So I was able to use these kind of fundamentals of storytelling and of the connection between humans and stories and the ways that we interface with them. I actually wrote in... in under, I think it's freshman year, I took a sociology of arts and popular culture and I wrote this paper on Facebook and the sociology of how we interact on Facebook. And this was back when there was no feed. There was just your wall. You could post your photos and your wall. And I was talking about the origin of the newsreel. When people would go to the movies, a newsreel was the only way that you would see another place in the world, another person's life. And you might be clips of the Royals on a trip, clips of a war across the world or a seminal event. And that was not something that people had in front of their eyeballs, talking about the proliferation of what we're doing now. my fascination with all of that took me to LA startups. My second startup was acquired by the Walt Disney Company and I was able to have this strange foothold, a very cool role doing data and insights driven storytelling. How do we take the creative process, talent and audience, all these platforms that are giving us data and insights and how they're all colliding, how does that affect our creative development and the stories we tell? That was fascinating and I... found myself in a position where that work was being done in the interest of global corporations and marketing campaigns. And not that I'm very grateful for the amazing experience afforded by the Fords, the Targets, the American Expresses of the world. And I kind of felt my soul leaving my body and I needed to find a way to ground what I was doing in a sense of purpose."
Natalie Bulger:
"Mm-hmm."
Joe Babarsky:
"And that aligned with another kind of possibility that I had not even really conceived of as a young person, as a closeted gay kid growing up in central Virginia, where I fell in love with my now husband. And that took me on a path to change my career and to make choices that led to us being able to be together. I live in Washington, DC now. And I found my way through kind of Kismet to Not Impossible Labs and the ability through our model of really being a, you know, I think about us as almost a studio, but focused on impact in the world. And that studio is creating technology, is prototyping, is finding, like a studio does, finding projects from outside our organization that are creating real human impact, addressing issues of access and opportunity. And then, And then using storytelling as a tool in that process. How can we actually understand the impact that these technologies can have on people? How can we tap into human stories as a means of researching and developing the R &D that goes into creating solutions and how do we actually build them around the experiences of an individual person in their life. So I've gotten to be in the mix working on projects and partnerships at Not Impossible for almost nine years and this my most recent opportunity was to say essentially let's make sure we're not just leaving people like Natalie saying I wish I could do what you do and instead answering them saying great. Not only can you, we need you to. We need people, we need individuals and organizations and companies all around the world to focus and to put their capabilities and invest them in what can we make possible that needs to be made possible? This can't be a small shop based in Venice Beach doing this lift. This is a much bigger collective societal lift that needs to happen. And the Not Impossible Institute is about taking our work and approach and philosophy and bringing it to others as a practice."
Natalie Bulger:
"Well, and that whole journey, first off, one of my trick questions to you, you got ahead of, because I didn't tell you I was going to ask this, but I was like, I'm going to get him, was what did you want to be when you were five years old? Because to me, that is when we have our imagination and our juice. we're tied into what I, ironically, when I asked myself that, I was like, I wanted to be a farmer of all things. My grandparents lived in the middle of nowhere with farms around them. And I was like, yeah, I'm going to have cows. I'm going have corn. It's going to be good. And no way in the world am I ever going to be a farmer. I can't even keep my house plants alive for very long. But the idea of cultivating and sowing and nourishing things is still there. And I think I still have a love for animals. So looking back and being able to take this lens to it and going, OK, at the time, the tangible thing you thought those pieces were connected to was the farm that you could see. But in reality, it was so much more of kind of the goals that you wanted to do with your life potentially overall and having this kind of space and this land, wherever that looks like. So, you when you said being a magician, that's right where it popped to. It was kind of like making things happen. Maybe not everyone needs to understand how they necessarily happen, but if you don't dream of that crazy idea, you can't ever figure out how to make it exist behind the scenes. Like the first person that thought about cutting someone in half and like tricking everyone to think that, like in what world? Might have been a secret serial killer behind the scenes, but nonetheless, like they found a way to do it that was safe apparently and brought mystery to our lives. And I think when there's mystery, we're always kind of seeking the answers associated with that. So a kind of flip-flop different way around, well, how do we create? ironically more access to that knowledge and that information so it makes sense in our heads. So thank you for getting ahead of the question, but it works out really well. And I mean, having gone through a not impossible Institute, I can say it was funny. walked in and I was like, I need them to tell me how to raise money. Like if I'm going to do any of this, I need money. And you guys talked about that and how the connection of the storytelling came in. But I think the longer I have sat with this, and it's funny, Priya's I think doing a very similar thing by taking the social media route to her story and her investment was more of, well, if I can't just have an investor dump all this money here and make this happen, what are the skills that I can bring to create an environment that hopefully still has value and purpose? And I think having, it's funny when people approach to be on the podcast and I'm like, Yeah, no. Who's your staff? Like, I want to talk to your secretary. I want their story. I want the person that came in the coffee shop to grab something in between things. I want to find the 30 minutes of time that they have to chat. Or, you know, when we do talk to the owners or the people that had the ideas, are you giving credit to everyone else that makes it happen? Because that's the magic part. And so I think it's beautiful to shift from an idea of, all right, who can fund this? Who can make it happen? And into the... Who are the components that you put together to have these magical moments? And you talking about your film background and all those things, it just goes to show how unique the team members to that overall just it factor can complement each other. you mentioned what you bring to the table for Not Impossible and doing there. You've got an incredible group of inventors and testers and researchers and just speakers in general that make this really possible. And I think I'd be interested in your ideas with this flood of everything that's happening. You each kind of have your niche of what you know, and you can pull that out and tease that out. What are those conversations like when there's like, okay, deluge of information, all this noise around us, and you all have different perspectives that you're coming to the table with, you're in a non-impossible institute, everyone at those tables has different ideas, information that you may or may not know anything about in our healthcare one. was probably like, what do mean that's a rule? You know, kind of thing. What is that like to have to navigate that or kind of understand? who's got the right information to make the right decisions to find that right first beta path that you want to go down."
Joe Babarsky:
"Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know, I think that that, and I like that you end with what is the first step? Because I think that is a big part of often what we, that is how, a way that we approach the potential for noise and for overwhelm of all of these inputs. I make my founder often is a little militant about the horizons. Like, okay, this could be, let's make sure there is always space for what could be, where things could go, there is no problem with big blue sky thinking. And there's also always a recognition of what are we going to do next week or next month? What can we do tomorrow? And so I think that that is always a really, you know, I think that horizons exercise is something we often think about is let's Let's lay out those horizons. Let's think about really where this could go, but also maybe where this could go in the next six months, 18 months, but then what is the actual next step? And I sort of think of that like, you know, this is a practice and this is where it's not like, we've got it all figured out. We kind of just plug it right in the machine and it pops out. This is something that has to be a practice about your mindset. And I think of it as a practice. I am not a rock climber, but I think of it a little bit like rock climbing. And I think maybe we can all at least imagine where there's a summit that you maybe haven't that you can envision that you have in mind that you know that you have a shared understanding of working towards. think having a shared story is really important about where you're working to. But The summit is not the next step. The next foothold, the next handhold, the next sort of possibility that you need to be able to line up and stack on top of each other to get there might be the work to be done. And that makes me think about one of our projects, one of, there's now a venture that has been spun out and has venture backing called Bento. And Bento is a food is medicine company, know, medically tailored grocery that has, you know, is architected in a really exciting, powerful way to meet people where they are, actually patients, but people and families where they are and what they need and finding a way to almost Trojan horse in care and a care pathway and communication through the groceries that speed and sustain them and work to keep them healthy. That's great. Guess where it started? It started with the idea of, huh, there are opportunities for people to be able to order food out there through whatever, you know, delivery service, pickup delivery, the Uber eats and door dashes of the world. And there's people who really need food. Can we just collide those? Can we try it? You know, and what if that became a point of trust where that line of communication that gets someone who needs food, food that is in a way that is stigma free is flexible and accessible to them. And we didn't say, OK, let's go build a platform. Let's go get investors. Sure, we knew that that would have to happen. The first thing we did was set up a Google voice number and rig up a Google Sheet and figure out a way to, this is the idea of the mechanical Turk. This is like the idea of a little guy inside the machine that when you put it in, there's a little guy in there. That was sort of what we did is, okay, let's figure it out. Guess what? Figured out really quickly that if you have a credit card hooked up to multiple orders happening quickly, it gets flagged for fraud and shut down. What did we do? We didn't let's go get with the company. Let's whitelist or this. No, we bought gift cards to the restaurants that we were setting this up for and deployed it with."
Natalie Bulger:
"Mm-hmm."
Joe Babarsky:
"on how's youth in Venice Beach area and partnered with some community organizations and said, let's figure out how this can work. And I also want to remind that sometimes that needs to be approached even on a more interpersonal kind of, I don't want to say small because it's so important, but this is our idea of help one, help many. Sometimes if you're figuring out, where do we go? How do we do what? How do we sort of break through the noise of all this input? That is where we really tap into, and it's a storytelling exercise, the one. Let's think of and let's honestly find and work with a person, a family, representatives from a community, and actually engage with what they need, what their experience is. I also recognize that that's an incredibly sort of brave and selfless thing for someone to expose their vulnerabilities and their needs. But it's so important when we don't do that, we will get this later. But now that we know how many parts of the larger healthcare footprint, when we work with partners in pharma and other places, they go, we can't talk directly to a patient. There's all these understandable and important regulations and protections and sunshine laws and all these different ways that things are structured. And there are ways that that serves us. And there are ways that we gotta really get back to people's. experiences and their lived experiences as a guide. So I think that is a big part of the filter is when we bring all these inputs in, we might have to say, well, what really matters to a person? And sometimes what is the barrier in the way? Meaning what's the possibility that needs to happen? We have some partners who in the healthcare space, actually, we met through the workshop that we did together. and they run a poverty simulator. They have a program where organizations, individuals can go through a facilitated exercise to just project themselves into the experience of someone living in poverty and the decisions they have to make in a given month and the realities that they're confronted with. And they're a healthcare company. They have lots of healthcare partners come in and they said such a revelation for so many participants where they go, well, this individual, this family, they're not even having any conversations about healthcare. That's not even on the radar. It's not even a priority. It's not able to be a priority because there's so many things that might be in the way. So to me, projecting yourself into and really partnering with individuals and communities to understand their experience is the powerful way to break through that noise."
Natalie Bulger:
"Mm-hmm."
Natalie Bulger:
"And I think in a separate episode, one of my guests had said, you know, we will make our greatest advancements when we undo some of the things we've done to ourselves. And when we mentioned regulations, and I'm sitting here going, I know darn well why they were all put in place. That was my world. And some of them are stupid. Like to be frank, they have been over controlled to such a point that you can't, the doctor can't have that conversation now with the patient. You know, we can't barter for services. Even people that are in the middle class are looking at a deductible and going, well, my MRI is going to have to wait for six months because I can't even afford a payment plan while I'm trying to get this other stuff done that I had to handle before. So it's just build and build and build upon itself. And at some point, one of those Jenga blocks is going to come out. And there's going to be some kind of fall down. And if we have lost our ability to have the conversations of what's important, why is it important? what are the resources we still have, what does the cornerstone still look like, then we're all going to be floundering for a bit. So kind of coming back to that core point of, all right, well, what do we need? What are the things that don't change when the environment around us changes? And what does that set us up for as we explore? What do we maybe want to simplify a little bit? Because innovation, in the same sense of creating newness, may also be simplifying and pulling back so that we can see, we lost the plot a long time ago. Like where do we really need to be? And I think that, you know, will hopefully help us come to a better center over time. But that was one of the questions I know we had chatted about at one point, which is, you know, a hundred years ago, innovation looked like a 20 year kind of, I figured out how to make a car. And then all of a sudden we've hit like in the last 35 years. this just rapid or what feels rapid to us explosion of things that now it's like, what do you even dream about? Like, okay, I wanna fly in car. Okay, well, we've been dreaming about that for a long time, so that's cool. But we've gone to space. We've done all of these things that at one point were just outside the mind frame of so many folks. So what the heck do we dream about now? How do we come up with ambitions? And how do we deal with the stigma that when you pitch that and someone goes, you are insane. Like, why? Why is that something that you think is your kind of goal or where you want to get to? So when you're going through these discussions with large variable groups of people, I'm sure you've seen folks that kind of their dreams and ambitions are that first handhold step. That's that first kind of like, I just want the thing that's tangible that I can get to. And there's others that are like, burn it all down and start over. And how do we get them and get ourselves, I think, to a place that those can connect because they feel so disparate at times. And then we create our own homogeneous groups where all of the dreamers are here together and then all of the like, what do I do tomorrow or down here? And there's no one in between to facilitate."
Joe Babarsky:
"Yeah, yeah. You know, I think this, it's a really important question and it also, I think, begs the question of how do we meet the moment right now? Because I think that as you point out, we can be dreaming and have been daydreaming about flying cars for decades. Can't say that inventing a flying car feels like the most important problem to solve by any barometer right now. and I, you know, I, I, I will come back and I, hopefully this will be an answer to your question, but your, your, how you got there really made me think about this concept from Meredith Broussard from NYU software developed data journalist and a professor of techno chauvinism. This idea that tech is always the solution that we're just going to build more, better technology. And that will cure any social and societal ill. And it's a real, I think it's an assumption that those technological solutions are somehow superior to human-based ones. It definitely feels very relevant in a moment where it feels like there's a healthy skepticism to that. And also we're plugging AI into everything to give ourselves a technologically driven output and result and an optimized experience. So I do think that a reframing, I think the mindset and reframing is a big part of how do you collapse that big, big ambitions, thinking about the dream. And you do have to come back to connect it. And I feel like there's, it's a narrative exercise, connecting back to the, well, could we ask what if today and say, what if something was different here and recognize that sometimes we're going to make big leaps, but sometimes and more often, It's going to be the smaller dominoes that we set up and those dominoes are not always going to be a new technological solution. are going to be, those dominoes are going to be made of human interactions. They're going to be made of stories and representation to what I see you doing on your podcast, to your conversation with Priya. They're going to be done through mutual aid and community care. And they can be potentially happen through. the application of technologies, the creation of new technologies. And if we are creating with, we've thought about it and even started talking about this together. If we are going for scale technological impact without spending time on that idea of helping one person, I think we can see what that looks like. We create tools and platforms that are to where you started the question about healthcare. Hmm, we're designing around the system and around the money and the limitations. And we might've lost the plot of designing around the patient experience. We can talk about the, in the room together, I remember that interesting quality where keeping the patient at the center was name checked so often. Those words were said so often."
Natalie Bulger:
"Mm-hmm."
Joe Babarsky:
"And I did have to ask the room and say, we've been here the whole day. I haven't actually heard the story of an individual patient's experience. I've heard about the idea of keeping the patient at the center. So I think that it's, it's an, that thrills me. That idea, that to me is the potential for this impact storytelling where inserting and insisting on human stories being part of the process is actually really trans, it's not a distraction. It can be really, really transformative."
Natalie Bulger:
"Well, we're going to kind of talk about what does innovation actually mean. And I think one of the things that became in health care in our world, we're constantly trying to make change for the larger whole. So it's like 2 % improvement for everyone versus the conversation of 20 % improvement for a very small batch of people. And because there's this competition of, well, why am I more important than them? Or why can't you focus on us? what's wrong with us. And so we get into this feel of, we have to help everyone. And so I know we had talked in the Institute about help one help many is not help one help all. And that if we are empowering people to start doing this on their own, you start to have a lot of people helping one that start to help many. And the many grows exponentially with every single individual that is helping at least that one connection point that they know. And so it feels more as you mentioned the domino piece, but also that almost infection. Like you want to infect people with this idea of all you have to do is help one and understand how that help of one can spread further. And if we're helping one and that one person makes change of their own, I think of the Daniel piece, you know, and I'm not going to steal mixed thunder on his stories, but you can find it on the website to go in and see, well, if we make one person's life. to be that they have access or that they can exponentially create who they want to be, who knows what they'll do and what they'll develop as they go forward. But if we only fixate on helping people we think have that potential, then that pulls away the motivation behind it. back to that kind of simplifying, what's the story that caught your attention in the local news? What's the thing on the neighborhood Facebook page? that you're just like, I can't believe that's happening. And if you just look at that and don't feel responsible for the gyms and the Janes that have that same story in every city, then I can't help my one neighborhood here. I can potentially have that impact. So when you think of innovation for you, for your team, for the things that you kind of look at, what have been some of those components of, well, the innovation has to eventually help this volume of people? Or is it really more of kind of, I hate to say, a gut feel of, have no idea what this is going to help, but it feels like it could be really important as we go forward."
Joe Babarsky:
"Mm-hmm. You know, I think that there's an idea that we carry with us and it is a little bit of a gut feeling, but I think it's something that you can also step back from and understand. And we call it an absurdity. And you know, you're going to feel it in your body when we get confronted with a lot of that. How can that possibly be? That doesn't make sense. That shouldn't be, you know, sort of often you feel like we have the capabilities. the technology is out there. Just the, the collective belief is out there. How can people be confronted with this lack of access, this, this, you know, marginalization, whatever it is. So. To us, think that sniffing out those absurdities is a big part of it. And I think of them kind of like a game of pickup sticks where each one of those sticks is sort of a status quo in our world that we say, well, yeah, that's a thing that we assume. That's a thing that just is, imagine the healthcare is full of them. well, that's, there's no way around it. That's just the way it is. And then you reuse, there's those points where those pickup sticks touch each other and you're like, whoa, what is this about? It's just like that. you know, people are, know, this is, there's so many examples that we know can really hold people back often related to how expensive it is to be poor in our country. How difficult, how much more difficult things are for people who are already coming from a place of lack of access, opportunity and privilege. So I think. being able to see those connection points and then often for us, as I said, understand them better because they're being lived by someone. And I think that that is a huge, I think it's a huge challenge. It's something that I want to be part of, not to get ahead of what I want to make possible, but I think of there's a lot of really smart, well-meaning people all around the world, all around our country. may or may not be sitting in front of a computer like this or here in DC in a tall building wanting to solve problems and dealing with the fact that they are not actually living in the communities that are dealing with these challenges. And so I think breaking down, actually creating a human connection and finding ways to embed the... the desire to make that solution in the community that needs it. That is where alchemy and magic, I think, can happen."
Natalie Bulger:
"So I'm going to take you on a journey as we get into the beta discussion. And I'm going to ask if you're willing to share a story that you shared with me at the Institute when we had it, when we got into an AI conversation. You can't have health care without AI right now. And this discussion of, OK, well, AI robots in surgery, all of this kind of stuff. And we may lose the feel of how unique every human is and how every time you blink, we're discovering something new about how our bodies react or what we do. And I remember, you know, after it was all said and done and we chatted quickly and you shared about when you were a child and how you were kind of a first learning experience on some stuff. And if you're willing, and not to put you on the spot, I can always get this, what was that experience? Because we're still seeing that today. So even though we have grown up in healthcare is, you know, gone a lot of ways, there's still moments like what you went through as a kiddo that are still happening today. So what was that? And it invoked massive change in the industry, right?"
Joe Babarsky:
"You know, it's funny that I, it's funny. I sort of, realized that I can sort of leave that experience behind because I was so young, but it was, you know, it, and I'm realizing still that it had a big impact on my life. I was, I started experiencing some sort of mysterious health issues when I was about two years old and these, you know, super intense headaches and it was sort of a medical mystery and I was going to a local teaching hospital, big medical center and was sort of not, there were they were not finding solutions. It was eventually, it was only when I happened to be traveling as a family and went and had a sort of, I would have an episode of this sort of pain, headache and abdominal pain. And I went into another hospital and they, this is again, they took my blood pressure because a pediatric blood pressure was not the standard of care at the time. And they went, holy blank, you're, you're. this kid's, two year old's blood pressure is like nearing stroke level. And it turned out that I had a kinked ureter that was causing reflux in my kidney and spiking my blood pressure. I had one surgery to unkink that ureter and then I had a second surgery to go in and take out the kidney. They just, you know, essentially believed that that's what needed to happen. And it was only because, and it's funny, because in the workshop we were in, I don't know if I mentioned, but it happened to be there was a leader from the transplant team at the actual hospital that did the surgery that knew the doctor that I mentioned, who was his research as he was performing surgeries, but his cutting edge research was on organ regeneration. And so they actually went in, were in the middle of the surgery to remove my kidney and he went, stop. He called it off and said, there's healthy tissue here. Leave this kid's kidney. And so I have a scar from a surgery that was aborted. And I'm very grateful it was because I have full kidney function. did, there was healing and regeneration that happened. It was, it took a person to go in. You know, they had went in with an intention and it took those instincts and that observation to say, we're going to stop and not successfully complete the surgery as, as laid out and intended. And that was actually the best choice for me. And that does, I think those store, have to make sure that we are designing around those stories as much as the story of, my gosh, how great would it be? And often how great will it be to have a perfectly executed, you know, AI enabled version of that intervention done. So I think that they're, I think designing around those and designing for those human experiences, you can call them edge cases, but we know that when we're optimizing, if we're not designing around quote edge cases, you're leaving a lot of people out and you're that is where we have to watch out for the potential to optimize in a way. that is not inclusive, that does not offer accessibility and does not offer that sort of human observation instinct and expertise to allow for a pivot when a pivot is needed."
Natalie Bulger:
"And not only is that, I think, a fantastic reminder is that sometimes, again, back to that gut feeling, you need someone that can kind of tie so many things together and make a judgment versus taking a task and executing the task, but also even back to taking the blood pressure. And this is, you know, we have always, I mean, from airlines to back to healthcare to anything, empowered checklists to say, okay, did all of this, I'm good, make my decision, on I go. And we have to realize those checklists may not always be right. So the person that said, I think we should probably do blood pressures too. And then the question is, the checklist wasn't wrong. The checklist can be enhanced. The expectation can be enhanced. Did we need the other 10 things that never seemed to show us anything? Or what's the risk if we lose those? It tends to be maybe we're going to catch something more of a higher mortality rate if we actually look at blood pressures for everyone, because there's generally a practice of what we would expect to see here and stuff like that. So this idea that we may be in beta and not even realize we're in beta. And that's, think, where we are always in beta, because there's not much that's ever at a final stage where it's never going to be revisited, never going to be changed, never going to be enhanced. And when we find gaps to talk about, are those gaps actual? failures, has the system not done what it's supposed to do, or are they truly opportunities to do better, to be better, what is better, you know, and have we overdone? like, mean, beta can also be like, no one can do this in a timely manner. Scrap it and start over again. So talk to us a little bit about this thought of what does beta mean? How do you get to beta? Are there steps before it? Are there things after? Like frame it out for us."
Joe Babarsky:
"So this concept of being always in beta is, I think that's really, really core to our approach. And it can be tempting to think, or it can be a little, I think a little disconcerting sometimes to frame that as, does that mean I'm never done? Like, it always, there's always more to do. And I think that it is, it serves us better. to think about always in the idea of being always in beta is actually a source of sort of comfort and reassurance versus a source of stress, which is it's okay. This is, know, we are all on an active journey. is, and that is, you know, be that self-improvement is that seeking joy, it's creating possibilities. And I think being always in beta is for us. The ability to say, okay, we're always learning from how we are deploying, how I am operating in the world, how I am spending my day, how I am applying myself, the goals that I've set. They are being beta tested, which means I'm learning from the feedback. I'm learning from where things succeed and where things work for me. I'm also ready to learn from where they fail or where I feel like the friction is happening. And you have to put things out in the world to beta test them. can sit, all, I mean, I feel like we can all identify with, you know, I get nervous. I'm going to put this out there. You know, I'm to put myself out there in that way. it's, it is overwhelming and scary. And it's the only way that we're going to grow. It's the only way that we are going to find those success paths. But also we need to take comfort in the fact that those failures are. source of learning. And we can also recognize that we're beta testing. That also means we have to be listening."
Natalie Bulger:
"Mm-hmm."
Joe Babarsky:
"And that's, you have me thinking a lot about our role as listeners and even our inner, you, I loved one of the conversations that you had, the dear self we need to talk with. And I've been thinking about that inner critic, that inner saboteur. We know they're in there, you know, I can definitely understand and identify with that. I think that it's actually important. that we cultivate our inner creator, our inner inventor, our inner beta tester, that inner voice that can say, well, what if, and then also say, hey, you know what? I can observe things that worked and didn't work and that can serve me and not, and I can find a path for that input that isn't being channeled into shame, it's being channeled into growth. So I think that to me, I also think of it a little like, you know, it's funny you think about you talked about what do we want to be when we were kids and I wanted to be a I wanted to do magic and then I wanted to be an artist and I want to be a doctor and I want to be a journalist and I want be a filmmaker and you know in a funny way I kind of see how these things all mix together to that that like melange that we become and in a funny way now I have a deep and abiding love for cooking I love food I create I during COVID my husband and were like we love restaurants and food and we're okay with cooking but like we better get into cooking if we're be having a good time and we kind of thought it was a little bit of like, well, maybe we'll learn, maybe it'll be tough, but I guess we'll gain. Maybe I could see gaining a skill. It could be possible that we can gain something that can serve us for the rest of our lives. And so I think we found, and I found a way to not just feel like I could cook, but love doing it. that was, so I think a little bit about beta testing and I can think about the way that I approach cooking, which is like both... You gotta taste as you go. You gotta kind of understand and check in with how things are going and being recognized that something might need to be seasoned differently, might need a little more time. And then not just that, my husband and I have a kind of tradition is when we cook something, it's something new, especially. we can at the afterwards say, okay, like what did you think about that? Is there something that could be adapted or changed or something that could be improved? And it's not about a failure of that experience or that resulting dish. It's about the opportunity to learn from the experience and be present in the experience. And I actually think that's a thing that I find really beautiful and important is... to be beta testing and how we approach things the best we can, you gotta be savoring the experience of them, savoring the experience prospectively before, in the moment, retrospectively after. And it allows you to also savor the great things and the successes while recognizing and having a distinction from the things that maybe you wanna learn from and change."
Natalie Bulger:
"It's funny, it's like you read my mind. You know, the episode as we're recording this that's releasing the weekend that we're recording this one is on coffee. And the owner of the coffee shop talks about the most important moment is between when you pour the cup and when you let it cool enough that your taste buds can actually ingest the flavor of the coffee. And so if you're drinking a scalding hot coffee, you never actually taste the flavor. And what all you can do in that moment. And it's this idea of smell the roses, but we don't all have roses. We can have a cup of coffee. We can have some tea. We can have a Manhattan that you can sniff that maraschino cherry on. And so that component of take the pause, understand it might not be perfect, but I can still enjoy it. And I can also self-reject. I think one of the hardest things I've had is shutting a TV show off after the first 10 minutes because I'm like, ew, no, I don't want to watch it. Like I used to force myself to finish the book, to finish the TV show. And it's like, no, you have power of rejection too. And that doesn't mean other people are being harmed by you saying, no, I'm not interested. And you can also say that to yourself. Like, I made that and that does not look appealing. That, I'm just not, just straighten in the trash can. Let's try again tomorrow. And I love reality TV and there's below deck Mediterranean season that's on right now. The chef who is probably the best chef I've ever seen on the show literally talks about his emo little mind person and describes what he looks like and how he talks and like the whole conversation he has with him. And he would never know because when he presents it's this very kind of confident all this stuff looks amazing. And meanwhile, the whole time is emo guys in the back going, you really suck at this. Like this is not your thing. So being I think very aware that we can't see into each other's brains. We can't see what's happening when we're having these conversations of is that person really proud of where they're at right now? Are they not confident in what they're presenting? Sure, you can make assumptions on body language and all of those pieces. But I think one of the pieces in innovation, and I know you guys have been through rejections and like, no, we're not interested, is learning how to manage that rejection in a way that either says, you know what, it's okay to put this on the shelf right now. That's been four rejections in a row. Clearly, maybe we're not connecting something that we need to, and we need to pause. Or just motivation, we're just going to keep going. We just haven't found the right spot for it. What has rejection been like for Not Impossible? along the way because it hasn't been wins at every single step. You guys have been pretty open and honest about that."
Joe Babarsky:
"No, absolutely not. I think that the I think that again, it's a place where we can lean on this idea of this is this is a beta test. This is an experience and an experiment. And we have these micro instances of where we thought. one of our interventions was going to be a particularly effective breakthrough for an individual person. And we totally goofed it up. it doesn't have the right fidelity. It sounds silly, but it's true. You're creating an affordable prosthetic and you're testing it with a Paralympic athlete and you made them a left arm and they need a right arm. I feel like an idiot. And, you know, bigger rejections as well sometimes around, you know, as we're figuring out how do we take this idea that has been kind of impact prototype and get the funding and get the support needed to turn it into what we can envision it being. And, know, I think there's, there's ways that my founder, you know, doesn't, doesn't back down easily. And there's absolutely instances where we really have to figure out how to pivot. And that might be, Hey, we believe in this such that we need to figure out. a philanthropic angle versus a venture funding angle for this next phase. We've had that happen. And then guess what? When we worked on a philanthropic angle and we actually deployed it, we proved a model that led us to a different path. And sometimes that is, you know, there's a design thinking 101, one of my colleagues, mentors, and dear friends who I worked with at Not Impossible and now run our venture, one of our venture companies. It's how might we, and you have to make sure that you can keep asking how might we, but to your point, Natalie, there needs to be, I think you need to be open to humbling yourself and recognizing that sometimes a solution goes back on the shelf and there's also the opportunity. to strip it for parts, to find the places and parts of it. And we had past programs that actually were where we sort of proved the model and we discovered this, you know, this was a program that was providing ocular care in really isolated places where. basic care can be so transformative for individuals. And there's amazing organizations out there doing it. What we actually gained was not that we scaled that initial program, we gained a recognition that meeting people at a point of trust was so incredibly powerful for getting them something that can really support them in their lives. And that sometimes that you have to respect those points of trust. You can't just toss a solution at a community and feel like they should be grateful for it and they're gonna take it up. So I think that the... ability to learn from that rejection can be kind of the superpower and can help you grapple with it. You know, it's also, I say this as if we have it all figured out. I absolutely can be, I'm the first that can perseverate around something that really gets to me that I wish was a different way. I can run laps around it and it's a practice, I think, like a daily practice. And thank you, I a new therapist that I really like. It is something that I don't see as like, I have all figured out. It is something that every day you got to engage with. And I've experienced, I think that rejection in my career as I've had incredible opportunities. and been impacted by layoffs somewhere that I was incredibly passionate and dedicated and part of growing an organization or startup. And I have recognized over time that maybe that sense of loyalty, that way of operating can be my greatest strength, can also be an Achilles heel. I kind of see that as a lesson of my 30s is that often, Those things that are our greatest strengths can be our weak points when they're approached differently. So I think that that, you know, navigating rejection for us, and this is also an important thing. We may, our roadmap might need to change. We might meet a roadblock, a pivot and that doesn't mean there aren't the story of what we've done and what we're trying to do isn't valid and viable. And we might need to take a close look at it. And sometimes the story needs to change about what you're trying to do. Or you might look and say, you know, we were trying to get to here and we ran right into a roadblock. So we need to take a couple steps back and actually take perhaps a really different tact and decide if we still want to get to that goal, that dream, there's going to be a different way of approaching it. and learning and the experience and what we learned to get there might be the point. I think back to being a nerdy kid and playing games, and this is back before, know, this is back when you didn't have save points that often. This is like the video games, this and that. And at times, be like, no, I lost, but now I'm going to know how to navigate that better. I can be more successful. I can be, I learned from that experience, even if I have to backtrack and try again."
Natalie Bulger:
"Mm-hmm."
Natalie Bulger:
"Yeah. So as we get into kind of the wrap up here, and I mean, we could talk for hours on all of this for sure, but you you've mentioned storytelling, we've talked about listening, and I'm curious as to what is one of the most meaningful things you have learned while listening to other stories? Because sometimes it's really hard not just to be quiet, but to shut our brains off too, especially if you're neurodivergent, you're immediately thinking about what's the story I have that matches me with this person? to truly ingest that and be present to listen, but what's one of the ones that kind of comes to mind when you think about, wow, that was really kind of a life-changing moment or a direction-changing moment when I heard it?"
Joe Babarsky:
"Well, Natalie, you're speaking my language. And you know, there's two that come to mind. One came from actually your podcast that I've really been thinking about recently and talked to a couple of people about, which is, again, it's so straightforward and so simple. And it was from your friend on your Dear Self episode. But I think it is really, really important. And I feel like it is something that I am continuing to work on. to recognize that ourself, we are the listener within ourselves. And I think for a lot of people, whether we are, whatever our neural reality, whatever our way of operating the world, whatever the way that we've been, let's be honest, society and life has told us we're supposed to be, that I think coming to that recognition that we can not only... Are we the listener within our own mind and recognize that there are these voices that we are also playing a part in, those parts of us, but recognizing that there is strength in identifying with that listener and that there is actually power and that you can grow and your capacity to speak, to understand can be really augmented by cultivating that internal listener. And hey, I'm here for that being, I feel like that might be the journey, journey lesson of my forties that I'm excited about. And the other one that I think about is actually came from speaking to someone in the healthcare space and this woman who is a hospital administrator and she spent, I think at least 20 years as a nurse. And I think this is a little bit about the stories we tell ourselves and our self-perception. And she... engaged, she was really excited about Not Impossible. She was talking to me and she said, I'm not an inventor, I'm not an innovator, I'm not one of those people that's out there making things that didn't exist before. She said, but I am a workaround queen. And I said, you know, I'm not gonna push back too hard, but I'm gonna check you there. I'm not so sure you're not an inventor and you're not an innovator. And you know, there's a lot of people who can put a lot of really fancy words on a PowerPoint deck, but when push comes to shove, I want a workaround queen in my corner. And that is how you solve problems. And that is how you understand people's experiences deeply. And I imagine that perspective being at the bedside is exactly where you might, you might get to that point that I understand the systems and I understand the way I need to bob and weave inside those systems to take the best care of my patient. possibly can. So that to me was both to me an important lesson and also a recognition that we can contain these capacities and we don't even necessarily see them. And I think the story we tell ourselves is so, powerful. And that is where I would say we talk so much about look outside, you know, what social impact are you going to have and spending time in the non-impossible Institute, bringing this practice to people has been a real beautiful reality check that You gotta start with yourself. You gotta keep yourself in the lens. And you can recognize often that helping one has the power to have an impact on them and it has the power to have an impact on yourself. And I think that contributing to others' and that mutual care and community care, it is both a selfless act. and it is an incredible act of self nourishment and feels like something we need as a people and as a society. And if I can be part of that, if I can bounce off incredible people who have a drive or a desire or an inclination, they want to be doing more of that in their lives. That feels like a beautiful place for me to be."
Natalie Bulger:
"No, definitely. So last question, and then we're going to talk about how we find more information about Not Impossible and all that good stuff. But right now, in this moment in time, what is your current Not Impossible goal or thing you are working to? You mentioned kind that inner voice piece, but is there something else that is really just kind of maybe you haven't started yet, but it's dancing out there in the periphery. It's like. I'm coming for you. you know, catching your energy and your attention."
Joe Babarsky:
"You know, I think that one thing that I feel very privileged and grateful for is that as I sit here in a beautiful home with a husband and a sense of family that I could not project myself into, I couldn't imagine for myself as a young person, as growing up in the 90s. I have a recognition that I'm living an impossible dream for myself in many ways and that I really don't take that for granted. You know, we live here in DC. My husband works on Capitol Hill. There is a great deal that I feel like needs to be made possible. And I also, you know, I have to say somewhat there is a little bit there, both the personal inside myself. I'm starting to think about what kind of parent can I be? Could I be? Is that gonna be on my path to raise a child? And how could I, what can I offer the world through that role? A role that I wasn't necessarily as a man in America raised sort of with that being represented to me as a role for me to play or something in that like a nurturing role. So I actually think that there is, there's a sort of. possibility within myself that I'm looking to really foster. I also have know that in the near future, both my husband and I have parents in their 60s, 70s. We are gonna be navigating potentially being new parents, potentially the same time that we're providing a different role in our relationship with our parents. And hey, how grateful and lucky do I feel that we both have a close and loving relationship with our parents. Something that I didn't take for granted when I was young and felt that, being gay was this sort of broken part of me that everything was going to come crashing down if people came to know it. So again, a possibility that's sort of unfurled. One area that is a little more of that innovation area that I find really fascinating and I was really fortunate to get a chance to work on some project work at Not Impossible over the last couple of years is think transforming, I do think that we need to transform our relationship with our brain health. And I think we need to transform the way we think about it, the story we tell about it, and the way that there's an opportunity for us to be healthier if we engage with our brain health earlier in the life course when we are younger, recognize that it is just a domain of our health. mean, an incredibly complex, mysterious, incredible domain of our health and step away from starting from a place of fear and I think avoidance. There's a lot of anxiety around brain health and we understand your cognition and your brain changes as you age. There is a lot of recognized, you know, an epidemic of dementia and Alzheimer's and there's incredible new interventions and therapies and sort of tests that can be done. And we are not going to take better care. We're not, we're not going to take full advantage of that opportunity to take better care of our brains unless we actually change the narrative and engage people our age and younger than us and in your brain health as part of your overall health. So that is, that to me is both a, I know what a source of stress and anxiety for a lot of people. And I think it is also a domain where there's really incredible possibilities and we've got to make sure that we're pushing on, there's an opportunity to push on a lot of fronts that isn't just inventing new interventions, but actually inventing new ways of thinking about our brain health."
Natalie Bulger:
"I love that. And I'm hopeful, you know, in a world where you either do it through a clinical process that's rigorous and under FDA and all these IRB guidelines and everything, or you're in the holistic space where everyone's like, no one's monitoring anything you're doing. You're just throwing stuff out there and maybe it works or not. That eventually we can break those silos down and get to a point where there is a way to do reviews and investigations that aren't taking advantage of certain groups or, you know, I hate to say leaning on the fact that we have people that will volunteer to be a part of a study if it pays money or something. Like getting to a place where we are really doing wide reaching, open minded approaches to some of this so that we can have the best information to make those judgments going forward. So that would be my play into that idea. But there are some great things out of Not Impossible. I want to make sure people know how to find it in the end. You've got a website, you've got a podcast, you know, there's the Institute. If you're in a workplace that is maybe trying to figure out how do we break out of what has always been, the way we've always done it, this group is gonna come in and challenge you to be really uncomfortable. And that's where we do hear motivation in that, it's hot mess. So if you are kind of in that hot mess world trying to figure out what the high potential is, Not Impossible is gonna be one of those groups that you can lean on for that. So Joe, where do we find more information about Not Impossible Labs? Or just how do we educate ourselves more by using some of the things out there that you guys offer."
Joe Babarsky:
"Well, please, I so appreciate that. And please check us out at notimpossible.com. are across social media at our Not Impossible handles. We have a Not Impossible podcast where my founder, Mick, speaks with people who have had sort of their own not impossible moments being contributing and inventing incredible new things. And it's always fascinating to see the different ways people approach that. And often you may not even realize you had a not impossible moment until after the fact. And please reach out to me. You can reach out to institutions at notimpossiblelabs.com and I would love to, you connect with your community. We have, as you said, the opportunity to bring workshops into organizations and community groups and corporations. And I'm excited also for what we're going to be doing next, creating these studio environments for us to come together and kind of dogpile on problems, have that radical collaboration, diverge, converge around these ideas and maybe approaches people are already piloting that hold so much promise. you can reach out to Institute at nonimpossiblelabs.com and we would love to make these things happen. Honestly, that is, I feel like the guiding sort of idea that really carries me is that all ships rise together and that this is, and that I think this, broader involvement we can have in these ideas and whether you find this kind of confrontational or you're intrigued or you're really energized, you know, like, teaming up with other people around these ideas, talking about them and finding your own way to contribute. Because I think each of us has ways we can make these ideas real in our lives. And you just got to have a kind of a possibilities mindset to get there."
Natalie Bulger:
"and place to do it. And I know there's always a point where, you know, if you're a five wise person, the Institute is like that on steroids. Like it's like there's 25 wise that we're gonna go through as we get through this. But you, I think what I saw in the Institute was you got to a point where people just finally, I don't wanna say broke, but just were like, no, this is the thing. And then you could just watch them almost be relieved once they got it out there. And it was like, well, I don't have to explain around why this has to be the way it is. because you're talking about those absurdities and you're talking about those components. So I think the first four hours sometimes we were like, I don't know why I'm here, this is really crazy. And then it's like that light bulb moment and then kind of the, as you said, kind of everything kind of falls and then you start picking up the sticks again and start putting together those pieces. So really, really encourage people. think it's a fantastic. use of time, money, energy, resources. It's an incredible group of folks that you bring out to do the training and to be possible. Mick is a part of it. You are a part of it. Maya is a part of it. So, you you really, you get the experts hands on with it and that's incredible. So we'll make sure to link all of those resources in the show notes as we get these out to people. I hope that you will explore, take a listen in on some of those mixed conversations on the podcast. I listen in and I'm like, I don't understand half of this, but yet somehow I'm really encouraged. that there are people that are doing these things. Now I'm thinking about how do I bring that back into my own world? So it's a great lesson. Yeah."
Joe Babarsky:
"Mick does a great job of like, explain to me like I'm five, like really take me on this journey, I gotta understand this, because you've got people with this incredible technical acumen, and often telling a story people connect with is a different job to be done. So I really appreciate it."
Natalie Bulger:
"Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Joe. know our conversations will continue over time and thanks to the listeners who hung in there for this awesome discussion. Hopefully you're going to go back and think about what's going on beta in your life. Hopefully give yourself a little grace associated with that and keep in mind, what are those stories? What's the one person? What's the one thing that might drive you tomorrow when you get to wake up fresh and take your energies into the day? So hopefully you'll be back soon for another episode. And again, Joe, thanks so much. The spin motivation and that. and talk to you soon."