#9 Craig Hatoff: An Investment Banker, Best Selling Author's Principle of Awe & Disruptive Innovation to Success.

What makes America a land that attracts millions of entrepreneurs to innovate and build some of the world's most disruptive brands? Most of us who've immigrated here, cannot deny how it rewards true passion and give you a platform  to turn a far fetched dream into reality. 

This episode dives into the mindset of a successful American  entrepreneur- Craig Hatoff and his path to living by the principles of AWE & applying disruptive innovation theory to all accepts of life along with building some of the most prolific businesses.

He looks at the world and fosters innovation through his Disruptor Foundation.

An amazing dinner table story teller, Craig Hatoff, is a man of multiple interests, passion and an insatiable curiosity that led him to disrupt, galvanize and innovate multiple fields over the decades. He’s known as a pioneer in commercial mortgage securitization, he co-founded one of the largest real estate investment management-NYSE listed company Capital Trust, a former trustee of NYC school construction Authority, Chairman of Turtle Pond- a children’s publishing & entertainment company that illuminate resilience and emotional learning. He authored a NYT best selling children’s book.

An investor, mentor and also teaches courses on entrepreneurship and innovation. He’s famously known as one of the three Co-Founders of TriBeCa Film Festival that was started to revive downtown NY after 9/11 crisis.


We discuss his early experience of disruptive innovation, and meeting his collaborator -the father of Disruptive Innovation strategy with whom he started the Disruptors Foundation, along with Rabbi Irwin Kula. 
Reader's Digest being a source of inspiration not only for me in India but also for Craig's father who stated NY's first discounted toy store. 
How to cultivate an open mind that fosters innovation. 

Transcript

0:12

Welcome to this powerful container of infinite possibilities to a highest state of awareness. Join me. Should we shut that tie as we uncover the pathways to the world's most illuminated leaders, Seacoast creators. And perhaps even some saints

SRI: 0:32

Welcome. Today's episode a habit. Meet Craig Hatkoff, who is a co-founder of Tribeca film festival. He's in a waiter of disrupt as a word along with one of the most prolific, business purist Clayton Christiansen. He's a children's book author. also an artist. he started as a real estate investor. When I met Craig, it was through a dinner party. Interestingly, you got to know Nino magazine mentions Craig Hatkoff as one of the dinner Yes. You would want to be sitting next to, and I did a table because he is just an all around wonderful storyteller. Thank you so much, Craig, how are you doing today and where am I finding you?

Craig: 1:20

I am speaking to you from my apartment over on the East side, close to the East river. And, um, I guess, can I say Nama stay

SRI: 1:29

As long as he can say properly,

Craig: 1:35

Perfect. thank you for having me. I'm very excited to have our conversation.

SRI: 1:39

I'd love us to dive into a story. I remember in my childhood, Vito's digest was my connection to the Western world with joy and love. And I remember reading these stories that automatically made me wow, these kinds of people exist. And I would love to hear your story of what went on when your father read an article on Vito's digest He changed his professional trajectory and impact that made on you.

Craig: 2:09

A very, very interesting way to open. And it's it, it brings back lot of, memories, a lot of emotion, positive emotion. And my father was a very interesting self-made man with very few. Frills. He was a no-frills kind of person. And when right around 1953, 1954, I was born in 1954, but he read an article on the concept of discount retailing in reader's digest, which was very new. And if you remember some of the names that entered the discount sector, there's always Sears Roebuck and the catalogs, the stores, the Macy's, but they were not in the discount business, but it was people like EJA Corvettes, two guys. And it was really the beginning of what today we call big box retail. And my father's idea was to go into the toy segment and there really was no discount toy, concept at that point in time. And while, sometimes I will often say never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Uh, some of this is. What I'll call the origin story that we do the best we can to assemble the mosaic tiles. But the way I understand the story is, as I was, being born, he was launching as best. We know the first discount toy store in America. And to a certain extent, I just read an article recently from some local journalist I grew up in the Albany Schenectady and Troy area, and a local journalist was writing a story, how Dwayne's toil and the name of the business was really the first big box, model of the big box retailing concept. Which is we had taken over an old firehouse, which was 20,000 square feet. Now most stores back then were, two to 3000 square feet. And it was stocked from floor to ceiling. Loosely assembled, very, serve yourself, but the prices were 20% lower than any place else. You could find the toys. And so in his own way, my father was quite an inspiration on me and he, we may come back and talk a little bit about disruptive innovation and disruptive innovation theory. And my relationship with clay Christensen, the Harvard business school professor who's father of the theory. But looking back while we did not have the language back in the fifties and the sixties, It really was. My father was really a disruptor. He, intuitively without the language, without, a theory, but he made things simpler, cheaper, or more accessible, and it was not the perfect shopping experience. It was sort of no frills service. But the prices could be beat and it was sort of classic disruption. And that's one of the things clay talks about in his works is the concept of discount retailing. Not knowing about my background and my father's background is, who knew that my father was a, in his own way, part of the evolution of a disruptive innovation and the retailing segment. And so my father had a great impact on me it was always. we always try to fix everything ourselves. So the hot water heater went down. God forbid we should call a plumber. We would go down there and try and fix it ourselves. It was a leak in the swimming pool. We try and find the leak ourselves. So it was very much in that spirit that, I guess as someone says, how did you get to be disruptive? I guess I said, I was born this way. And it comes from my, my father's DNA.

SRI: 5:46

My parents keep saying it has to run in your DNA. Otherwise you cannot be a business person. And I keep telling them, and because I don't come from a family of business people, and I'm an entrepreneur in a foreign country. So I'm like, just watch me. That is also a disruption to me. I truly do believe that a families laid the foundation and how we take that as a jumping point to get to our destiny. Now, with that, I would love to understand. You've had such beautiful phases of your life? what would you call as your main identity? Do you now, when you look back, is there any specific thing that you call that, this is who I am?

Craig: 6:29

Very interesting question. I would respond in the following manner that I don't have any overarching identity today. One of the most difficult questions, if you open up sitting next to me at a business party, or then cocktail party or dinner party, when someone says, what do you do? It is such a loaded question for me. It's, you know, where do I begin and who am I sitting with? But I've had the good fortune. And I'll tell you how I was inspired by it in a minute, but I had the good fortune to be in many different kinds of. Fields domains, businesses, interests. And I would describe my primary identity as not a single identity, but I refer to it as multiple fluid identities so it depends on where I am, who I'm sitting next to, but I've been involved in, you know, in a serious way in the world of banking and the world of real estate but I've also been in the music business in the children's book business. Didn't know much about the film festival business when we got started. And so, and then innovation for the last 20 years, actually, since I met clay Christensen became in a funny way, the closest connective tissue for my identity, whatever I'm involved in, whatever, whether it's music, art business, what's the connective tissue through this lens of disruptive innovation. so I'm kind of like a chameleon and the one common thread is, people said, what, you know, what is your primary skill? I would say. Yeah, it's all about the narratives and storytelling. And act to me is that's how we change the world is not through fact and analytics. It's really through story, the power of stories. And that goes all the way back to sitting around a campfire in prehistoric times cave paintings. It's all about the stories.

SRI: 8:20

You bring in the Sutton kind of energy and Southern kind of lightness to every project that you work and you elevate everything, your boards of multiple nonprofits and organizations. You have this innovation background and, you come from an prolific family as well. You've got, innovators all around you, your children, who you co-authored with your brother in law as well and your sisters. And you look at your life and the macro level. And if you had to say, what was your purpose and what was that one ingredient that helped you fuel all of this? What do you think that would be?

Craig: 8:57

So I know purpose is a tricky question for me. You know, my purpose at this stage in my life is to try and help others fulfill some of their passions, just given I do a lot of mentoring. And I'd say the one characteristic that really drives me is almost an insatiable curiosity. And if you said to me, what was the, uh, inflection point in your life where you became so interested in everything I'd have to say it was really goes all back. It goes all the way back to when Google was invented. All of a sudden the entire universe, all the information was available and probably one of the greatest, actually almost an invention. was this concept of the hyperlink where when you're eating something and there's a hyperlink, it just click on it. And it takes you to another pathway in your journey of reading an article. So if I'm reading an article and it's got a lot of interesting hyperlinks, I can be, could take me two days to read the article because I love going down these sort of pathway, not necessarily the, you know, the path most taken, but I love the side. The side roads, some of them tend to be somewhat, sometimes a dead end, but connecting the dots is really, I was born to connect that's. My purpose is to connect dots and try and bring meaning. To almost everything that I do and that's meaning to me. And if I can share some of these experiences, just a little bit of my career path, that's perfectly fine for me, but and some of the things, sound trite, but trite works. There's a reason we have these sayings, the destination is not the purpose. The purpose is the journey and what you learn along the way. And I really, the problem with the destination is once you get there, then what do you do? So the journey and have multiple journeys and watching how they start connecting. And that to me is sort of the fuel, the grist for the mill that really drives me. So it's almost some people get the adrenaline rush from playing video games or diving out of planes or whatever it might be. I kind of get the adrenaline rush, connecting dots and say, ah, wow, isn't that interesting? I never knew that. So to me, it's a process of curiosity and discovery and you must keep an open mind. The second you close your mind, the charm, the awe, the enchantment disappears.

SRI: 11:20

Not many people are like, it's great to say yes, I need to keep an open mind, but not many people are actually open. So I would love to dig into this aspect of your personality. What is having an open mind? What is that curiosity? How did you manage to never lose that? The power to grow up in this world, and still be in that all, childlike wonder of not letting outside world get to it.

Craig: 11:48

So maybe the best way to understand that is I met clay Christensen about 20 years ago. And at the same time I met an, I may secular Jew who has a very, very spiritual, but I'm more of, I'd say six days a week, I'm either atheist or agnostic and I'm seventh day. It all depends on how very spiritual moments, which week

SRI: 12:15

in this week are we in this spiritual week or

Craig: 12:19

last couple of weeks have been very spiritual, very spiritual. You know, so while I'm not religious, I'm spiritual, but my primary partner now, clay Christensen has passed away, I guess in February. And my primary partner for the last 20 years, separate apart from clay in the beginning. And then the three of us joined together is an eighth generation rabbi Irwin Kula, who when I had children was a, I wouldn't call it an intervention, but was trying to, encourage me to be a slightly more ritualistic, attend services, be a little bit more religious and, embrace all the holidays. And for whatever reason, it wasn't really working for me. And one of the fundamental tenants of, innovation is what job are you trying to get done? And the job is. Really for, finding meaning and enchantment in almost everything that's there and something's not working and not getting the job done, don't stick with it. And so when the rabbi, we joke around, he said, listen, you're, you don't need it to go to synagogue. Or if you go, you don't have to stay for four hours. I always found, you know, high holidays, very challenging for me and they just weren't working. And he said, you haven't more Jewish sensibilities. The most of the truly Jewish people. I know. And I said that can't possibly be, so I think the spiritual it's a continuum, but when you read about our founding fathers, not withstanding a lot of the Judeo Christian threads that are woven throughout all of our important documents, in God we trust, most of them, particularly Thomas Jefferson. Was a deist, which is, he did not believe in God in the sky. It was more, God is a force. And I heard something a while ago, Buckminster fuller, who was one of the most innovative thinkers and intellectual minds that we've ever had said something that stuck with me. He said, God is a verb. And that's a very insightful thing that kind of reflects how I view the world. It's not necessarily a man in the sky, but there could be, how would I know? And that's what I mean about keeping an open mind, but I look back at all of the wisdom traditions and whether it's the Galean dialectic, which is a lot of fancy words, but assume, you know, nothing. And when it really the two key virtues, one is humility where I assume whatever it is, I really think I might be wrong. And that's a very interesting insight to keeping an open mind. I actually have a series of, I'll call them exercises that help you develop cultivate these virtues. And the other is clearly empathy. And without empathy we're as a civilization the future's not very bright, but we're seeing so many things going on today. You know, particularly in view of COVID and black lives matter where it invites us to truly try and step into the other person's shoes, understanding you can never have that experience, but it's a very interesting way to keep an open mind. And so if you're curious and you want to understand how and why someone's thinking a certain way, rather than demonizing them saying, can you help me understand how you kind of came to this position and not being judgemental? so that to me is the open-mindedness, that enables you to, a different kind of journey. If you think, you know, everything one you're certainly wrong. That's the only thing I can tell you with certainty is if you think, you know, everything, you're definitely wrong. And if you kind of have this curiosity, it's amazing how you can rearrange these mosaic tiles and have a set of experiences that help you navigate through the world. So whether it's a great quote from someone, an illustration, a piece of art, these are things that help us. These are the tools. These are in the toolkit.

SRI: 16:00

So did you have a toolkit through the years to help you stay in that, the humility or what would you call it? The state that you like to be

Craig: 16:09

in a state of wonder and then chaplain concern. And if you can find something positive and even the most awful things, I mean, if you take a look at the first amendment, it's not there to protect what I'll call civilized speech. It's there really to protect the most heinous speech, which in today's world, we're going through a whole new dimension. You can't even have conversations in today's world, but you have to listen and you have to listen really carefully. That's a deep rooted wisdom tradition. but I'd say a lot of this came the toolkit, the rabbi, and I started working on it about 20 years ago. it's a set of exercises that very simple things that will help you pass through and keep in mind just when you think, you know something, for sure, just remember you might be wrong and you can depend the image to that. It's very helpful. One of the Greek said the only thing that I know is I know nothing, and that's a very interesting invitation to have a different kind of journey, as opposed to, traveling to the world, thinking, you know, everything because arrogance is the end of civilizations and that we know. So you bris, arrogance don't fit in well for, the development of either the individual or society.

SRI: 17:19

I think that's a great segue into talking about your, work that you did with Clayton Christiansen on what is innovation and how you applied it to creating other businesses foundations that you've started?

Craig: 17:32

So I was invited to meet clay Christensen. I did not know who he was. This is going back to literally 1999, the year 2000. And I was working on a startup involving children's publishing that one of the students was working on empty my nephew. And when clay read the paper that, my nephew, John Patricof had submitted, he got a note back and said, this is really interesting. Do you think I could meet the entrepreneur involved now? I didn't know who clay was. I didn't know anything about disruptive innovation. But important Harvard business school professor invites you to come sit down. It sounded like one of those interesting experiences that I want to put into my portfolio of life experiences. And so I went up to Boston. I think it was the summer of 2000. Walked into an empty school was not in session. but we met at, Harvard business school offices where clay was, we walked into a classroom and he had a whiteboard and a marker. And he laid out his theory of this, of disruptive innovation, which was completely blew my mind. And within 45 minutes, my entire world was turned upside down. Everything I thought I knew, I realized wasn't the case and it was in total paradox. And in a nutshell, the theory is most great companies. That we would consider the best management teams tend to take perfectly good products and make them better and better stronger, more powerful, and more expensive, basically in search of profits and that the paradox of disruptive innovation, it's literally the two guys in a garage. So think Steve jobs, Steve act think of bill Gates and Paul Allen, two guys in a garage start off with a pretty lousy product. It's kind of inexpensive. It was sort of cobbled together and it wasn't very powerful, but it was very simple to use. And the real key is it wasn't terribly good, but it was good enough. And so the fundamental question, you always have to ask yourself in innovation theory, particularly disruptive innovation theory is what job am I trying to get? And if it gets the job done, And it costs a fraction of the premiere product or service out there. That's the one that's going to put the incumbent out of business. So you might remember Eastern Kodak, where are they today as opposed to an Instagram? Eastern Kodak didn't think digital photography was going to be good enough for the consumer as it turned out. And what we've seen evolving is Instagram and digital photography. Lend themselves to a new kind of storytelling. So pick the PDO when it started wasn't, you know, it was kind of scoffed at, by the we'll call it the elite, the intelligence of the academic community the best of class. The Holy grail was encyclopedia Britannica. And what we were able to predict with Clay's theory is if you try to buy it encyclopedia Britannica today, the only place you'll find it is on eBay, they stopped making it. And we compete, interestingly enough, The more you use it, the more people that use it, the better it gets, as opposed to encyclopedia Britannica, you read it. What have you, something changes you have to wait for the next edition to come out. So with PD, it was a classic disruptive innovation. Digital photography was the classic disruptive innovation. The MP3 file for music. When the industry, we used to have the big five ANR, names that they control the entire music industry. And when the music industry heard about the MP3 file might remember something called Napster, just turned out to be illegal. So master didn't quite make it. But Steve jobs heard about, the MP3 file. And he went to the record industry and said, I'm, I think we should partner together. And the future is about MP3 files. You're wrong about it's not good enough. And they kind of dismissed them. And needless to say the music industry has probably had as much fundamental, almost seismic changes because they did not understand that the MP3 file, particularly in Napster's case, it was good enough because it was free. It doesn't have to be great. It was free. And so these are the classic cases of disruption. It is you start at the low end of the curve and you don't make it overly complicated or overly accessible. You go for a much larger audience. Who's not even currently your customer or your consumer. So that was sort of the fundamental lesson of disruptive innovation. And that we started applying into certain areas that weren't really about. We'll call them utility products. Like there's not a lot of identity wrapped up in an MP3 file. I don't really care whether it's an MP3 file from. Apple or Amazon or wherever it might be. when you get into things that touch your identity, it's a whole different way of looking at innovation. And that was sort of our main work with clay was looking how identity impacts, fundamental change and serious change in the world. So you typically products, they're fine. But when you talk to some about who the doctor is, your kid's teacher, your religion, then we're talking about people's worldviews and belief systems. And so that's the theory. We are focused on, with claim until he passed away. And now the rabbi and I continue with down this road. So it's a different way of looking at innovation.

SRI: 22:28

And you've had been working on innovation, disrupting the spiritual world as well with the rabbi, with the current scenario, with the culvert. And there are so many disruptions happening in the way we connect with each other and our personal lives, the way we live, maybe shop the way we work, the way we date every single thing. What advice would you have for the innovators, the entrepreneurs, where they need to look according to you?

Craig: 22:54

I think been through, in my business career, depending on how you want to count, but about 14 major crises, financial crises, and sometimes like September 11th was the different kind of crisis, but none of them compare to what we're seeing with COVID. And, Tribeca was formed to try and help get people back on the streets. and we launched in may of 2002, when we decided to watch it, there were no theaters, there were no venues. We had no sponsors, we had no films, but there was a purpose, some Tribeca born out of a purpose to help rebuild the community and get people to come out. It wasn't necessarily about how great are the films. It's the fact that there are films that people can go see and then talk about afterwards. And that was really sort of the, the mission of Tribeca. It wasn't to be, you know, the world's greatest film festival, meaning film specifically, it was as much about the audience and the community as it was about the filmmakers. So we brought those two pieces together. It had a big psychological impact on lower Manhattan, cause not much else had happened. No, it's not that we were great. There just wasn't anything else going on

SRI: 23:58

and then you use that to keep re innovating based on what happened. What was the current scenario and what was needed? Is that what you did like rise up to the occasion?

Craig: 24:08

I was always looking at Tribeca through the lens of disruptive innovation. I don't think anybody else was. but I had had this relationship with clay and, you know, Tribeca was starting early on in my relationship with clay. And so for example, we didn't really have theaters. So the innovation that we came up with was to put a big screens on the piers and we kind of created drivers. you can't really drive onto a pier, but we had general motors as our, as our main sponsor. And they would bring in their vintage cars and you'd say the outdoor driving experience. Isn't so much about what's on the screen. It's that communal experience, which is different than sitting in a dark theater. This isn't a big open space. And if you look happening in COVID, one of the hottest trends is everything is now moving back to drivers. If you look at all the articles about drive-ins, they're doing art shows on dry in drive-ins, they're doing concerts, but a drive in wasn't a perfect cinematic experience, but it was more about the experience of being in a place with your family being outdoors and very different experience. And so that would be a classic example of the kinds of innovations that we're seeing during COVID. this is, you know, I call COVID, I call it the triple helix. We have a health crisis that morphed into an economic crisis that then has precipitated in view of all the things we've seen, we now have a social slash political crisis, going on as well. So it's a thrice as opposed to twice, as opposed to one problem, September 11th was about terrorism and getting people back on the streets. We don't have an exit plan. I think this is really, really different. but as you say, virtually every kind of interaction. Whether they're it's retailing, dating, entertainment, telemedicine everything's being reinvented. And so you're going to see a lot of disruption from our classic forms of business models into these new business models. So we're at an inflection point. And while it's seems very dark and ominous and existential, we will make it through the question is how much pain, how much damage. And on the other side, amazing things will come out of this

SRI: 26:15

do you have any particular points for someone who is in that inflection point where they are rising up to create those products to create those disruptive companies? I know you've worked with hundreds of disruptors with a disruptive foundation. What would you say, like in terms of advice or perhaps a tool set that you could give right now to someone who's in that middle of coming emerging through the kiosk to provide the solution.

Craig: 26:42

So say that this is the, uh, once in a generation, you know, people kind of refer to the, you know, the great influenza of 1918 things that could never happen in normal times, whether, because of institutional structures, power arrangements, and in fact, The resistances in time of crisis collapse. I mean, you see all of a sudden at the FDA, something that would normally take years and years and years, I'm working on one project with a very disruptive innovation. So healthcare innovation, they have something called the, I believe it's called the emergency use application, an EUA where they'll fast track approval from the FDA that normally would never happen unless you're in the middle of a crisis. And so the resistance is to these new ideas are at an all time low and enormous amounts. Just look at telemedicine. That would be resisted when you don't have a choice. Telemedicine works very well. So you're not going to go to the doctor at all. And the doctors are getting used to it, but most, and there's a whole host of, political, economic issues on liability on it. It's very complicated stuff, but when you're in a crisis, I have one of my quotes is nothing focuses the mind, like a hanging it's a, it's actually Samuel Johnson, where when you don't have any choices, it's easy to make decisions. So, you know, it's nothing, I think it's actually, it's that focusing of the mind where I know in normal times, this isn't how we would do it. but in a moment of crisis, this is where great innovation takes place. So my advice would be. This is your time don't waste it.

SRI: 28:18

Mm mm. So I follow you on Instagram and Facebook and you started putting these pictures of the most stunning skyline of the empire state, and I believe it's from your home. You've been taking picture inspired from Monday the haystack. Correct. So tell me you have this entrepreneur and finance brain and create a brain. And this is almost like you're wanting to merge these two sides of you bringing art and technology and creativity and putting it on line. How did this come about during COVID?

Craig: 28:53

Well, it came about because, I fortunately have amazing views of the empire state building, which has always been one of my favorite views. And, you know, one says, well, if you take a picture of the empire state building, how many pictures is going to take of the empire state building? And the answer says, Oh, after two or three, one would think it gets a little bit, a little bit boring. And you know, I've seen that before, but it's, it's very interesting that what got me sort of into this was when they started the 7:00 PM salute. And when I opened my windows, I happened to have a terrorist where I take a lot of the pictures from at 7:00 PM. you would hear the sirens and you'd hear the cheers celebrating and honoring the first responders. And so every night at 7:00 PM, I would go out just to listen. And I just started at first I was doing night shots of the empire state building. But that gets a little bit, you know, it's a different color, but the night shots are a little differently. But what I discovered was the sunsets and then ultimately sunrises looking at the East river are so different. I probably have done close to 200 photographs. No two are the same. I have like a very small devoted following who kind of, enjoy seeing these, these photographs. But what really inspired me after I started off with the 7:00 PM salute, I'm an avid my curiosity, and trying to connect certain things up I'm that I don't consider myself an artist. You might, some people might say you're borderline, you seem to have artistic, tendencies or attributes, but I love history and connecting the dots. And I came across something which was, Claude Monet in the 1890s. At a sort of seminal moment in the whole history of modern art moved to, a, basically a country house that was on some farmland. And he started doing a series of 25 paintings of the same objects, which were two haystacks and every day, and well, he worked on it for two years for 20. So, but he would paint every day. And what he concluded was this amazing, I guess I'm going to call it insight or the epiphany that art had traditionally been about the object, representational, art portraits, you know, still lives. And it was very representational. And so this is significantly before Picasso. So we're talking to the 1890s and what he concluded was the object really wasn't. The essence of his paintings, it was the color, it was the texture. It was the time of day. And one of these amazing reflections. And you couldn't, unless someone told you they were haystacks, you wouldn't even know they were haystacks. And what happened, which I found to be fascinating. It is, I believe it was, I think it was just before, or just after 1900, the artist I guess he was at the time living in Russia, Vasili Konwinski went to an exhibition and he saw one of Monet's haystacks and he didn't even know how to respond. So he's looking at the somewhat what we might call impressionistic. painting about two haystacks on, gorgeous colors and lighting. And the, the shadows were, very, very captivating, but he was incredibly jarred and upset and disoriented that there was no object. And you wrote about this and he said, I'm almost angry, but there's something about, and he didn't even know until he read the catalog after he'd seen it, that they were actually haystacks. And then he, when he realized it was haystacks, it completely changed his entire artistic sensibility. And he realized the object is not really the important part. It's a feeling and what's the emotion. And so you kind of look at whether we do a lot with Picasso, not about the art is a great art. It's, what's the insight. Whether it's great art or not, it can be a kid's piece of art that gives you an insight. So connecting these dots really becomes, as I said, early on, that's my version of an adrenaline rush.

SRI: 32:46

I wanted to just dive into that story of your number one best-selling children's book was about a hippo. It was a real life story about two animals, You wrote that with your daughter after the tsunami and the story was circulated a lot it was about showing resilience and how two very different species depended on each other and developed a beautiful friendship that I would love for us to talk about how. If animals are able to do it, where in that point in our history where we're looking at so much a polarities, so much of differences of color, religion, and where you're coming from countries and your point of view, if believe in God or not politics, w what can be learned, how can we be like those animals?

Craig: 33:31

Well, the children's books that we've done, there is a theme it's young animals in distress, or experiencing a trauma. They're all, non-fiction, they're all photographs. Most of them tend to be very famous stories that are already out there. Owen and we saw a picture in the newspaper of a 130 year old tortoise that was bigger than, you know, it's a 600 pound hippo, but a 700 pound tortoise. and we saw pictures of them snuggling together. And that's all we saw. And we, because we were curious and I'd written some other children's books with my older daughter, my younger daughter, my version was, she said, daddy, can we do our book about own music? we just said, let's see if we can figure out how to do it. And we picked up the phone, we connected with the, the people in, Kenya. And the next thing, you know, we, you know, we did this children's book that became, uh, quite a bit of an unexpected, phenomenal, because the O and M is they lived together for two years. when we saw the first probably, you know, they're together for a couple of days. That would be a lot. but we also, we watched the book of be t-shirts of the two of them. It's an adorable picture. I mean, it's probably in the animal odd couple animal kingdom, probably one of the most famous pictures of these two, the odd couple of getting along and the t-shirt had the picture of them snuggling. And just said, if they can get along dot, dot dot, and it raises the question, if they can get one, why can't we? And I think the power to make these kinds of changes, doesn't come from a mandate top-down it comes from sort of the local, the parochial, hundreds, and hundreds of stories like this really help with start changing. these narratives are the only thing that really help us make these Epic changes. It's not by, dictate or, you know, by Fiat it's really when people have their minds opened and this element we call it. We only do books that meet, we call it the principle. There's the goosebump test and the off principle. And if we see a story and we don't get goosebumps, not interested, didn't pass the goosebump test. And if. The all principal stands for all wonder and then championed. And so does it meet the all principle and pass the goosebump test? That's how we sort of select our books.

SRI: 35:42

I love that. I think I'm probably gonna start using that the, our principal and Goosby I'm good. Every time I have a goosebump, like this is it, this is what

Craig: 35:50

we follow, you know? This is kind of an interesting connection, you know, and I am very spiritual, I'm culturally very Jewish. It's just not the services for whatever reason. As I said, I said to the rabbit, you know, most of the famous Jewish music tends to be done in minor chords. And I'm just sort of more of a major chord. You know, a little bit more. I like bagpipes, Gregorian chants and minor chords. Just, I don't know. I can't put my finger on it. But I'd say to him, I've gone to synagogue for, you know, 40 years. I never got goosebumps and I see a picture of a hippo and a tortoise in the newspaper. I got goosebumps. So that became the practice. When you have invitation, and permission to adopt your own rituals, that's where it gets interesting. And I encourage everybody and it's very complicated. I mean, when you look at tradition, we look at tradition in general, these dogmas creeds, rituals practices, they're very ingrained. And so the second you don't adhere to it. It creates conflict, but liberate yourself you'd say, well, okay, I'm on my own path and the other wasn't working for me and this does, so that's what I'm going to follow. There's a lot

SRI: 37:03

of fear and letting go of the rituals of darkness that give a sense of security. Um, Oh, to be able to, I mean, you were lucky to have such close relationship with the rabbi who gave you permission to adopt something else because as a young child was born into religion or anything, uh, that your family follows and you want to be a divergence of it, it takes a lot for you to get away from your tribe because that's our fight and flight, the tribal mentality. Right. And, and the idea of jumping away and taking your own rituals, that maybe that is what the hero's journey is, right? Like that is like being able to be emancipated from the documents as you were born at to create some, With that I would love for us to get into my last question. how in your practice do you say hello to Nirvana? And if you have a practice you'd love to share with us. We'd love that. And what does it mean

Craig: 38:01

to you? Wow. When I've been in reader. And one of the things I also haven't been a chronic insomniac for about 30 years. And so one of the things that I started doing 30 years ago was when I couldn't sleep, you don't want to pick up a Tom Clancy novel and get sort of sucked in and you'll be up all night. You know, you don't want a page Turner. so I started reading interesting books on quantum physics, and these were East meets West versions, dancing, wooly masters. There's a whole host of these books that kind of make comparisons between the world of mysticism and belief and the world of quantum physics. Now. You don't have to know any math, it requires zero math. But if you really start to understand what you can't possibly understand about quantum physics, because it makes no sense. And so when you know, just enough and how small the universe is at the smallest dimension and how epically infinite it is at the largest dimension, you know, our journey on this planet is, not even a blip. I've had a very interesting life. I don't feel like I've missed anything. I'm not planning on going anywhere anytime soon. You know, if for no other reasons, I've got my two daughters that or my pride and joy and I want to be around for a long time. But when you think about. there is a downside to strict adherence to science, and there's a great book by Steven Pinker is called enlightenment now, and that we've disconnected the emotional from the scientific. And as much as we think we know about science, we really know very little, I mean, we know one truly in the 1% of what's really happening in the universe. So you sort of say, I have no bad memories from before I was born. I'm not presuming I don't have any bad memories after. And you know, if time isn't infinite, what does that mean? Do we have multiple parallel universes? well you read the science and certainly sounds that way. And so if you know, just enough to spark your curiosity. It's any, what do you have? I feel like I kind of just expression, what do you, I'm not afraid of dying. I just don't want to be there when it happens. And so you kind of songs about, you know, it's yeah. I want to go into my sleep. you know, and it's, if you have an open mindset, we know so little and the in Shannon returns when you can acknowledge. So there is an arrogance to science. I mean, if you look at paradigm shifts, it was all about Epic changes in our prescriptions of reality. And, you know, we know like the perfect examples the paradigm shift, we thought we've, descended from Adam and Eve then maybe, maybe we did, or at least in a metaphysical sense. I've looked into microscope and it's not obvious to me that evolution is a fact It's still called the theory of evolution that doesn't mean I am a big believer in, intelligent design, but I certainly have an open mind listening to someone because religion and science are completely different modalities. Religion is based on faith of things. You can never prove that's the whole point. Science is about things that you can prove until another model comes in that the existing model, if you look at Kapernick aneurysm a good hundred years to be even partially accepted from Copernicus to Galileo and then another. A hundred years to improve it. So I think if you have that kind of all wonder and enchantment, it's just another part of the journey. I can be scared to death or can say, had a good run here. you know, feels like I flipped the odometer a couple of times along the way. it's part of the journey. And so there's a, not a, a morbid fascination saying, listen, if we didn't die life, wouldn't be very interesting. Death is what gives life meaning otherwise, what would it be?

SRI: 41:34

So that's so if you had to say, you had a practice to get to that state of your maximum creation point for yourself.

Craig: 41:43

You know, it's funny. It just comes back to It's not about the words, it's about the effect and the feeling It does change. And I have had the great fortune through the awards and through the foundation to meet what's called 500 of the most, not the most famous, not the most powerful richest, but 500 of the most interesting people that I can possibly imagine. And there's probably another 5 million, 50 million or 5 billion out there. If it's us, as opposed to me, I want to meet them all. I will ever be able to meet them all, but I want to meet as many as I can. And that's the whole sentiment of us versus, you know, it's whether, you know, the notion of, or or even the Shamar is really about, we are all interdependent and we're all connected. that works for me. So I don't have any plans to change, what I do on a daily basis, but, uh, every day is another, another it's like, I think I'll close with the Einstein quote. I'm a, I'm a big Einstein fan. And he said you can live life as though nothing is a miracle. Or everything is a miracle. And I prefer the latter.

SRI: 42:47

Well that I would like to thank you for making this happen. Such a beautiful miracle and connecting all the dots for us And hello, Nirvana.

Craig: 42:57

Okay. Much stay.

42:59

And with that, we come to an end. Please follow us on Instagram at hello Nirvana world. Like share, subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for your valuable presence. Goodwill goodbye and vishing you hello nirvana