Michael Bervell is a Ghanaian-American angel-investor, entrepreneur, and author. His debut book “Unlocking Unicorns” was an Amazon best-selling new release that investigates the founders, philosophies, and strategies for building a unicorn company in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. In 2007, Bervell co-founded “Hugs for” an international, student-run non-profit organization focused on using grassroots strategies to develop countries around the world. To date, “Hugs for” has fundraised over $500,000 of material and monetary donations and impacted over 300,000 youths around the world. Because of his work, Bervell was awarded the National Caring Award in 2015.
Bervell is the youngest President of the Harvard Club of Seattle and a former board member of the Harvard Alumni Association (which he joined when he was 19). He also helped start Sigma Squared in the US (formerly the Kairos Society). He has experience working as a Venture Fellow at Harlem Capital, a Portfolio manager at Microsoft’s Venture Fund, a Program Manager at Microsoft, and as a Software Engineer at Twitter, and has helped to found and lead a variety of organizations including the Enchiridion Corporation, a marketing consulting company, and Billion Dollar Startup Ideas, a media and innovation company.
In this episode, Michael and Bryan discuss:
- The root causes of inequity in entrepreneurship
- The benefits of being able to simplify complex situations
- Michael’s path to authorship and the revelations along the way
The show is shared on the following platforms:
Transcript:
Bryan Wish:
Michael welcome to the One Away Show.
Michael Bervell:
Hey, Bryan, thanks for having me on. It’s great to be here.
Bryan Wish:
Yeah. It’s been great. Getting to know you the last, what? Five years. Yeah? Five years?
Michael Bervell:
It’s been five years, but I just remember, there was one year in there where we did our annual ping pong tournament and I lost. It was a tragedy, so five years, but I only remember four of them.
Bryan Wish:
Michael, I remember that match in the Harvard dorm and that orange ball that you signed for me, I keep in my car today, just as a sign of victory in my life.
Michael Bervell:
It’s good, it’s good. You were just one away from [inaudible 00:00:45] champion.
Bryan Wish:
I was one win away from my life going in a good direction. Yeah, man. You catapulted me. No, Mike, we shared some really good times together. I’m excited to kind of put this out with the new brand and heavy part of what’s ahead. And you’ve been such an incredible friend, so let’s dive in and we’ll go from there. Mike, what is the one away moment you want to share with us today?
Michael Bervell:
Oh, man. I mean, I study philosophy in college, so I feel like I always have strange philosophical answers to what should be seemingly simple questions, but I always feel like, if you think of a one away moment, one away moments are happening all the time. I think there’s the conscious one away moments and the unconscious one away moments, right? The moments that you know are going to be impactful for the rest of your career. Hey, I quit my job and I moved to a new place. Hey, I decided to go write and publish a book. Hey, I’ve been running this nonprofit and I’m just rolling off the board. Those are all conscious one away moments. And there’s also the unconscious one away moments, I came onto a podcast, someone listened to it and then they reached out to me three months later and did X, Y, Z, and changed my life, right?
Michael Bervell:
And so I think as we think about my one away moments, I love the conscious ones, but I also love the unconscious ones because those are, I think, where there’s more serendipity and surprise and fun. But the conscious one away moment, obviously, I recently published a book, about six months ago, it’s called Unlocking Unicorns, became an Amazon best seller pretty quickly, which was great. You can find it in bookstores globally. You can also find on Amazon, online, ebook, everything. And that consciously, is what I spent a lot of my time doing throughout the pandemic. And now that the pandemic’s over, I’m excited to give out and go on the kind of the speaking circuit and share the lessons and messages and so on and so forth from this book of billion dollar founders.
Bryan Wish:
Well, amazing. I love how you opened up with the unconscious and the conscious, and if we have any unconscious moments where you want to share, the floor is yours on that. But first off, congrats on the book, man. I remember when I was in Salt Lake, in the fall and you were gearing up for lunch and telling me all about it, I guess, let’s go back to, before even the book coming out. What propelled you, Michael, to write the book in the first place?
Michael Bervell:
Yeah, I mean, growing up, I grew up about 30 minutes north of the Seattle, small town, called Mill Creek. I went to high school in Mukilteo, so it was another 30 minutes away from where I lived. It was always kind of a nerd, but my parents always instilled in me kind of the ideas of community service. So my grandmother took care of me while my parents would go into school, all throughout elementary and part of middle school. And she was really, really there as a caretaker when my mom was getting her master’s and my dad was working and all that stuff, right, was happening. And we used to always go back to Ghana once a year and we’d go and take school supplies and teddy bears with us because my grandmother just was like, hey, we have all this stuff here, some of it you use, some of it, you don’t use, let’s give some to some of the kids at hospitals and orphanages and schools and stuff like that.
Michael Bervell:
So when my grandmother passed away, that’s what led us to make this nonprofit called Hugs for Ghana. And the reason I bring it up is because Hugs for Ghana was my first entrance into entrepreneurship. And as I graduated from high school, went off to college, started my first job, I realized that first off, there aren’t many non-profit founders, who were Black or Ghanaian, African American. And if I looked also at super successful billion dollar founders, a unicorn company founders, or name the most five famous founders in the US, none of those five are going to be a Black founder or a Latinx founder or a female founder, despite those three groups collectively making up just around 60, 70% of the global population, right?
Michael Bervell:
So why is it that these groups, which are majority of the world are not being represented or discussed in the majority of the startup literature folklore? And that was what led me to want to write the book. And it was over the pandemic, I was thinking, well, how could I start talking to people? And understanding why that is and what solutions there could be. And that was why I was like, well, if I just say I’m writing a book, I can interview them. I got all these interviews. And I was like, well, now I’ve interviewed them, I should probably actually write a book. And so I kind of walked into it on accident.
Bryan Wish:
Well, first off, just the values your family instilled in you from a young age, I think there’s a lot to be said for that. And ever since I’ve met you Michael, I mean, I’ve probably shared this story with you three times, I’ll share it with our audience. First time I met you, you submitted 30 applications on your campus in the most well thought through and the fastest… My first question was like, who is this kid? And two, I should probably really get to know him because I so appreciated and admired the level of effort and thoughtfulness that went into it. So maybe I’m starting to understand some of the things that maybe made you into who you were, and it’s cool that your parents, from a young age, instilled service, and what you saw from them and in the nonprofit that you started.
Bryan Wish:
So first off, it’s a testament to who you are. I’m not shocked, but two, what a cool way to think about using time thoughtfully during the pandemic. When you kind of had this idea or had this idea to interview, and then the idea for the book, to chicken-or-egg, what came first, but who did you reach out to? Who are you inspired to reach out to and talk to? And what were some of the things that you learned?
Michael Bervell:
Yeah, I mean, I had kind of first been exposed to kind of startups out of the US, when I was in college. I think it was sophomore year. I remember I was coming back from New Haven, because it was the big annual Harvard-Yale game. And I was in a car and I got a Facebook message from a friend who was two years older and he said, hey, Michael, what are you doing in about two weeks? And I was like, I don’t know, going home because it’s winter break. And he’s like, do you want to come to China? And I was like, for what? And he’s like, oh, well, there’s this conference called the World Internet Conference and I got an extra ticket and I’m trying to find some younger entrepreneurial people who want to come with me to this conference.
Michael Bervell:
It’s like, okay, sure, why not? So I changed my ticket from going home to go to China for a week and then go home after finals and winter break and everything. And it was at that conference that I was able to meet a ton of super successful CEOs in East Asia and also Southeast Asia. So that’s where I met Jack Ma, right? He started Alibaba. Robin Li, who started Baidu. At the time, the CEO of Evernote was trying to do an expansion to China, became pretty close with him as well. That was how I started the base of who I wanted to reach out to for the book. I was thinking, well, I’ve already met these people. There’s already some warm indication. And even one of the early chapters of the book talks about how me and the three other Americans who were selected to go on this trip, snuck into Jack Ma’s talk and crumpled up the reserve seat signs and got in early enough that one of the people came in, rear in their seats, but they didn’t know where seats they were, so they got kicked out.
Michael Bervell:
Anyways, it’s a whole funny story of how we were able to see Jack Ma speak. And then eventually, how we were able to ask him questions in the Q and A and take that lesson, the stuff I’d written in that notebook from that trip and turn that into one of the chapters of the book. So it was that, reaching out to those people. For the primary interviews, I think my book also did another type of interview called a secondary interview, right? We like to think of interviews in this setting, one person talking to another, but what’s beautiful about the digital world is that there’s so much content online about everybody, especially people of note and the secondary interview is that where you interview people who have interviewed them, right? So let’s say someone ought to write a book about Michael, they would interview Bryan about what Brian knows about Michael, right?
Michael Bervell:
It’s a huge kind of introduction to profile writing a type of class about that in college and this was kind of one of the ways that you have to write a great profile. You can’t just talk to the person, you have to talk to their surrounding circles. And even if you can’t talk to the person, their surrounding circles can give you a silhouette as to who that individual might be and you can approximate the person through those secondary interviews. So that, plus another [inaudible 00:09:27] interview, I call the tertiary interview. We’re not only interviewing the person primary and the people that they know, secondary, but also all of the content around them, right? So consuming all of the articles that are published about them in the last 15, 20, 30 years, comparing how that’s changed over time. Almost doing a literature review on a person. So that was the process of reaching out, interviewing, crafting the narratives and making 10 stories of 10 successful billion dollar founders in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
Bryan Wish:
Wow. I mean, taking on that journey, Mike, one, the first, I appreciate how you broke it down so technically, and how you brought in your research, your interviews to the process and what you compiled these 10 stories. When you look back on, part of it, it’s a learning journey for others, but part of it is a learning journey for you. So when you look back on it internally, where do you think you’ve experienced the most growth personally, professionally? Where do you find unexpected things that came out of this process that you would’ve never anticipated going in?
Michael Bervell:
Well, here’s a secret of book writing, hopefully, and this is where you censor, you’re like, (censored), Michael, you can’t share the secret with the audience. No, I’m just kidding here. Here’s the secret of book writing, is that once you’ve written the book, you have this kind of network of other book authors that you can reach out to. And so it’s pretty phenomenal because that was the unexpected learning from the book is being able to reach out to other authors in the space. Other people thinking about these issues of equity in venture capital equity and entrepreneurship, and be able to say, hey, I saw your book, I’m writing a book or I’ve written a book and I would love to just trade notes. What are you going to do for your next book or book three, or how are you taking your book and kind of get it out there in different creative ways through TikTok or Instagram or whatever else? And that to me has been kind of a phenomenal learning and phenomenal takeaway that I didn’t expect from having [inaudible 00:11:28] this book.
Bryan Wish:
Who are some of those authors that you-
Michael Bervell:
Yeah, I mean, there’s one named Ellie Ricker. Ellie wrote a book about mind hacking and kind of growth hacking and how to use kind of mental strategies for success, kind of in a psychology research space. I reached out to her, she reached out to me. I think we were chatting about how we do book marketing and it was a super fascinating connection and now a really good friend. I think she published with, maybe it was Harvard University Press or her business school press, one of those. And she was pretty phenomenal. Another author who published with Penguin, wrote a book called Work Your Way, her name is Lisa Hufford, super awesome friend. Her and I, we’re talking every quarter and just kind of trading notes on book writing strategies, book marketing strategies, but also about the content of the stories that they’ve written and how their stories are helping to impact lives beyond what they even could have imagined. And so kind of that network of authors unofficially and I’m sure there’s a lot officially as well. It’s been a great learning.
Bryan Wish:
Mike, if I was someone, was to say, hey, Bryan, can you do an interview with me about Michael. Something that would come to mind immediately would be the way you simplify things. I mean, you said multiple things to me in just our short friendship, times we spent, that I’ve just always stood out. You said, I never read the same thing twice, or you were describing to me how you thought about building your career, one of our last phone calls and something so audacious and vision, yet so simple in the way you just, you process to go about it, right? And I wouldn’t be shocked if you accomplished it. And so I think you have a unique gift for taking really complex things or big ideas and breaking them down to just their essence and then communicating that in such a simple way.
Bryan Wish:
So I want to applaud to you on just, I think that’s a true gift that you have, and I don’t know if people have told you that, but when I talk to you, I’m like, I wish I… Could life could feel so simple sometimes. So thank you for sharing on kind of how you developed relationships and kind of your internal growth from that experience. When you look beyond yourself now, right? When you look at why the work was done, you said it was act of service, but when you look at getting this work in people’s hands and the message behind it, what do you hope the greater impact is? How it serves the world, maybe some of the tangible outcomes of, well, you want people to take away from you as the person, but also your work that you put out.
Michael Bervell:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think it’s hilarious of being simpleton. I think the word simpleton has a negative connotation, but I think it’s good to be an educated simpleton, someone who kind of has backing behind what they’re saying, but can simplify it.
Bryan Wish:
Well, I wouldn’t define you as a simple person, but the way when I talk to you, I just feel so at ease with you because it’s like a subtle confidence that you give off in the way you communicate, where you can break things down, I think in a very simple way, but it’s complex information or complex thinking. So by no stretch, would I ever call you a simple person. I just want to be clear.
Michael Bervell:
No, no, but if you did, it would be a compliment. But I will say to your question right on, what do I hope people gain? Or what do I hope people take from the book? I’ve always joked. I know the book is successful, I know the book would’ve been successful if I meet a random person on the street or at a bar. And they mentioned to me, right? Not me breaking it up, but they bring it up to me, oh, I heard this book called Unlocking Unicorns and I thought it was so stupid, right? If I can get to the point where someone is criticizing the work, meaning that they’ve engaged with enough to find something to say about it, that they just grew it. That to me is success. It was funny enough, actually two weeks ago, I was looking up on Goodreads, how the book is doing.
Michael Bervell:
Authors are human too, so we were like, how is our book going? How are the reviews? Do people like it? Is it being well received? And I found someone who gave me a two star review and I was like, oh, who is this? And I Google searched stuff and tried to find their LinkedIn, looked at all the other books that they had read. And I was like, I could not figure out, for the life of me, who this person was. You had no mutual connections, maybe three degrees of separation away. And I had no idea how you even found the book, right? But I think to me, it was really fascinating because it was like, okay, this is now stretched beyond the 120 people that I know in my tribe or even the 500 people I know on LinkedIn or the 2000 that I know on Instagram or Facebook. It’s now reaching people who I don’t even know how they found the book, but they’re being moved by it, either positive and negatively, to leave a review, either great or not so great.
Michael Bervell:
And for me, that to me is success, when the message has outlived the maestro, right? When the lesson and the teaching has outlived the person who has tried to teach it. And I think that’s the reason why people create, that’s the reason why people write. You can’t talk to Shakespeare about what he was thinking when he wrote Romeo and Juliet, but the idea still live on, right? The same with sculptures, whether you’re looking at a sculpture from Michelangelo or a sculpture from Rodin, right? The fact that those things persist through time and still inspire conversations, even if you hate the art and disagree with it. So that to me, I think is, as I look back and think what I want people to gain, I want people to be engaging in discussions, even if the discussions are rooted in disagreement.
Bryan Wish:
So eloquent. You said something about when your successful, when the message outlives maestro.
Michael Bervell:
Yeah.
Bryan Wish:
It’s like mic drop, or you hear someone in a bar talking, putting work down or taking the time to criticize something because they’ve thought deeply about it. When one author, or just say a person, whether it’s a book, a new website, new product, actually takes the time to give you critical feedback, especially if they don’t even know you or outside your initial spheres of influence. If you’re reaching those people, you’re not looking that as… Well, the way you’re describing it, you’re not looking at as, oh my God, but you’re looking at as, wow, that’s success in itself.
Michael Bervell:
Exactly, exactly. And I think that’s, I mean, all the metrics of New York Times’s best seller, which I think is 100,000 copies, is New York Times’s best seller, 10,000 is Wall Street Journal. I think a thousand is Amazon, right? 95% of books don’t sell more than a thousand copies. So even getting your message out to more than a thousand people, that right there is, you’re in the top decile, the top, whatever 5% tile it would be. So even that is success. And I think all the metrics of best selling or whatever is trying to get at that, how many people are reading this thing that aren’t in your direct network?
Bryan Wish:
Yeah. So Michael, how old are you, just for context to level this conversation?
Michael Bervell:
24, 24. Hopefully, a fifth of the way through my long life.
Bryan Wish:
So you’re going to live until you’re 125?
Michael Bervell:
I mean, I would love to live until 200, but if we can get 125, that’d be pretty great.
Bryan Wish:
So I just watched a documentary called, If You’re Not in the Orbit, Eat Breakfast, and talked about remaining vital in the later years of your life and then documented people in their late eighties and nineties and into their hundreds. Let’s start maybe there, when you look back, let’s just say, when you’re in the fifth, five out of the five, kind of quadrant of your life and you’re at the end and you’re looking back and you’re saying, you probably made all the money in the world, you climbed all the ladder of success, you did all the things, beyond that, what did you do tangibly that you saw was impactful for the world, as you think about legacy and you think about your life philosophically? What’s important to you?
Michael Bervell:
Yeah. I mean, I think for me, it’s all about the people. I think there’s this great book called Tuesdays with Morrie and I haven’t watched the video that you messaged or the video that you mentioned about, If You’re Not in the Orbit, Eat Breakfast, but I’m guessing the message probably would’ve been the same by the end of it in realizing that life is only meaningful, and so far as the people that you meet. It’s actually one of the first lessons that I learned when I was at Harvard. I think it was my freshman fall. I was chatting with all the professors about like, why is Harvard such a special place? And one of the philosophies professors said, well, actually, Harvard’s not a special place at all, neither is Yale, neither is Stanford, neither is Princeton, neither is Google or Microsoft.
Michael Bervell:
The places mean nothing, right? They’re just a collection of buildings. It’s just brick and wood and mortar and tar and clay. But what makes those places interesting is the people who fill them up and the experiences that you have with the people in those spaces. I think you could say the same about a life. I mean, a life isn’t really much more than breaths in and out over time. And maybe that time is 100 years or 125 years or 30 years or 35 years. But what fills up a life is the experiences of people and of relationships, and the same way of what fills up Harvard to be Harvard is the people who even have attended it. So to me, as I look back, I want my life to be measured in people, in impact. I had a chat conversation with a friend last week about the same exact topic.
Michael Bervell:
And we were saying, what we want to be said about us at our obituary, my response was, I don’t really care what’s said, as long as there are people there to say it, right? Have I influenced anyone enough that they would care to show up and take time out of their life to talk about and share about how much I impacted and influenced their life? So that to me is what I think is as I look back, what I want my legacy to be, and I think dollars or impact or number of readers and number of employees are all metrics for getting to that, fulfilling one’s life with people.
Bryan Wish:
That’s a beautiful way to live and lead life. I think, Michael, you’ve always been so community-centric, in the way you’ve gone about life and you’ve done things the right way from at least what I’ve seen. And you do take a true, genuine care in others. And to your point, it’s not about what people say, it’s, are people there in the first place to show up? Did you actually have an impact? Now, if you live to 125, there may not be a lot of people there, besides younger people, or maybe your metaverse community will be there one day, so.
Michael Bervell:
But that’s true too, right? It’s like, you can’t just kind of get to know people who were your friends for the last 100 years or the last 50 years or whatever, you have to be always be kind of sharing the lessons and sharing the messages through time. I think that’s why, I mean, a lot of people love mentorship, not just having mentors, but giving mentorship to people who are younger because it connects them down through generations.
Bryan Wish:
Sure.
Michael Bervell:
And connects them to make an influence that really matters. Last thing I’ll say on this, I recently watched the Marvelous Business Maisel. I do watch that show on Amazon Prime Video.
Bryan Wish:
I think I watched that too.
Michael Bervell:
Yeah. It’s a very feel good show, kind of in the same vein as a Ted Lasso, type of show. And there was one scene where, Mrs. Maisel’s manager goes to one of her really good friend’s funeral, and no one is there and she’s so upset about how no one is at this guy’s funeral. And I think it really just epitomizes the… At the end of days, you hope that people will be there at least in person or with their presence, maybe in the metaverse, to show up and to show out.
Bryan Wish:
Yeah, special. Mike, you’re a deep thinker, clearly, if the audience could not tell, I’ll tell them for them, but I think you spent a lot of thought on the things that are matter. And I think it’s society right now. There’s a lot of structures that are in place, by the way things have always been done and the way things are. If you could uproot one major structure that you know to be true today, what would it be and why?
Michael Bervell:
Yeah. People would say to start with the lede, but I’m going to bury the lede in this time and walk you through the process first and then we’ll get to the lede at the end. And we’ll see if it makes sense. The process is, I want you to imagine for a second, that you’re going to relive your whole life. You’re going to go back to the beginning and relive everything, right? And in doing this, you could either be placed in your own body or randomly in someone else’s body, right? But you have no idea whose life you’re going to be placed into. So you could roll the dice and maybe you’ll be placed in Obama’s life. You can’t change anything, but you have to live as if you’re Obama or you be placed in Trump’s life, or you be placed in some of that person’s life, maybe Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg. You get the idea, right?
Michael Bervell:
You roll a dice, you go back, you live the life as if you’re them. It’s a very interesting thought experiment and it’s actually called the veil of ignorance. I think it was John Rawls who wrote this, wrote about it. And his reason for making the experiment is, if you put on the veil of ignorance and you roll the dice and you think to yourself, actually, I really don’t want to be born as a person who’s homeless for 15 years, or you think to yourself, oh, I actually don’t really want to be born as the billionaire because they have all these stresses or I don’t want to be born as the person who committed tax fraud. If you realize that there’s so much mental weight and pressure and energy, being born in certain types of people, then you may say to yourself, that society isn’t just, right?
Michael Bervell:
And so the veil of ignorance, as described is, if you feel like you’re happy to be born as any person in society, then you can say you have a just society. And if you’re not, then you wouldn’t want to have a just society. Right. And so, as I think to myself and kind of what structure I’d want to uproot, I mean, I think there’s quite a few, where if you play the veil of ignorance thought experiment, maybe you wouldn’t really want the structures of today to exist. So one for example was college. Let’s say I had to go back and apply to college and it was totally random. And I just randomly get placed into a college. I was lucky that I got into Harvard. Truly I think it was a lot of luck involved. But yeah, would I even been happy if I had to go to community college, right?
Michael Bervell:
Would I’ve had the same opportunities if I had to go to community college? Right? I think this is one structure where placing the veil of ignorance can give us some direction as to what needs to be changed, right? Bringing the average closer and making the standard deviation a bit less. And so I think that the framework of the veil of ignorance is really great to use in all applications, whether you’re building a business and you’re thinking, which employee would you want to be at your own business? Whether you’re applying to college, applying to schools, whether you’re choosing what country you want to live in, or let’s say you’re president or politician of a country and you’re running it. And you’re thinking, how can I make policies that really, truly apply to all people equally and make them better? I think this veil of ignorance is something that’s really, for me, helps me to determine if structures need to be uprooted and maybe if not.
Michael Bervell:
So I’ll give you an example of one that doesn’t need to be up uprooted. Maybe you go to Chick-fil-A, you kind of order the best sandwich, right? Veil of ignorance isn’t going to really do anything there. Maybe you randomly get french fries, maybe you randomly get chicken sandwich, maybe you randomly get chicken nuggets, right? You’re all about the same, right? The variant standard deviation is just a bit lower. And so to me, that veil of ignorance is, it’s a great thought experiment for understanding what systems to uproot, in particular.
Bryan Wish:
Fascinating. I really like what you said about, you said lower the standard deviation to create more equal opportunities, which also ties, I would say in a way, to your book, right? It’s like you said, Black, Latinx and women founders are 60, 70% of the population, yet when you look at the numbers and opportunities of who’s running and leading these unicorns and businesses, that doesn’t match. So to me, there’s this equilibrium or thread line with you around creating a more sense of equality or a sense of equal opportunities.
Michael Bervell:
And even I would say, use the word equity more than equality.
Bryan Wish:
Thank you.
Michael Bervell:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.
Bryan Wish:
Where does that drive come from for you? You said, I’ve been more privileged, I’ve been… Harvard, would my chances be differently? I’m not saying it hasn’t impacted you because I’m not in your shoes every day. What I’m hearing you say is, I’ve been able to take advantage of more of the things that most people maybe in my shoes have not. So where does the drive for you come to create that sense of equity, whether it’s writing a book to help other people, or the way you’re looking at structures of today? Where does that come from?
Michael Bervell:
Yeah. I mean, I think if I were to drill it all the way back, probably something in my childhood pushed me to realize that life isn’t fair, but you could do things to make it more fair. I remember I used to have a Game Boy, it was a red Game Boy DS. That’s the one that we could open and we could play, MyCard and whatever else. And we’re going to Ghana as a family, in the summertime, because that was what we did in the summertime. And we traveled to Ghana and I brought my Game Boy DS and I forgot to bring the charger. And I was like, oh, okay, it’s no problem. My cousins will probably have a charger because it’s Ghana. I didn’t really know the difference. So I got there and my cousin was so surprised that I had a Game Boy, right?
Michael Bervell:
This thing cost 200 US Dollars. And he’s like, I couldn’t afford that. That’s many months of my parents’ salaries for me to buy this Game Boy. And here I was, the same exact age as my cousin, not able to charge my Game Boy because it had died on the plane. And also not able to really understand and relate with him because he didn’t play any of the games that I played. And part of that reason was because of those, literally just because of where we were born, right? Because he was born in Ghana and I was born in America. We just had different trajectories, different starting points on where we could go. And so I think that permeated, right? I’d come back to school in the fall and when were talking about their vacations, some people went to Hawaii, some people went to Europe and I’d be like, oh, I went to Ghana and I had to use bucket showers for three weeks, right?
Michael Bervell:
Fill up a bucket of water and use that to shower. And then I couldn’t brush my teeth with the sink because the water might be contaminated. So we had to use bottled water or packets of water to brush our teeth. And to some people, they were like, oh you went camping. And I was like, no, I didn’t go camping, I went to Ghana, where the rest of my family is from. Right. And so I think even just going back from school, that dichotomy of Ghana not being able to charge my Game Boy, the day-to-day living, of course, some of that was in the village, some that was in the city. Two, going to mostly an all white school in the suburbs of Washington, very different in terms of just what I was seeing in the course of a year as a six, seven, eight, nine, 10 year olds and beyond. And so I think that’s what made me realize, maybe I could do something here. And having grown the nonprofit, I realized it is possible to build change and to create something rather than being passive.
Bryan Wish:
And how old were you when you went to Ghana? What age?
Michael Bervell:
We used to go back every two or three years, right. And so it was pretty frequent. I mean, as early as when I was, I think when I was a baby, when I was three or four. We went pretty frequently after that.
Bryan Wish:
But you’re able to see, I think growing up like that, the dichotomy and the difference in privilege from such a young age and clearly a huge influence on how you’ve gone about and constructed your life of today.
Michael Bervell:
And I think it also made it more real, right? In the sense that most people will see it in the abstract, right? They’ll see the video with what the heart of an angel or the eyes of an angel playing in the background and they’ll be like, oh, that’s so sad, that some of these kids in other emerging economies don’t have the same resources that we have. But to be able to go and see the people there, to be like, well, this person is the exact same as me in terms of intelligence, skill, ability, desire. The only thing that they don’t have is the access to the opportunity. And I think that’s what’s really humbling. I think if you don’t travel and you don’t see that, you miss that whole entire perspective or really more than that, if you’re not conscious about exposing yourself to those things, you wouldn’t see it as well.
Bryan Wish:
Mike, they say mere money only amplifies your values or amplifies kind of who you are as a person. So having a lot of money only amplifies kind of who you are and how you’re going to go through the world. When you look at yourself and let’s just say, I’ll put you in a more privileged bucket, just be goodbye, your trajectory and what I’ve seen and I think where you’re going to go. How do you look at your own privilege in the sense of… With more privileged financially, how do you see that as an opportunity to create further impact? And by the way, if I’m speaking incorrectly, feel free to correct me, but this is just my skewed observation looking objectively.
Michael Bervell:
No, no, no. I mean, I think you’re 100%, right? I mean, I think, yeah, my ancestors’ wildest dreams, right? Could they have mentioned that, I’d be in the air conditioned building right now, with lunch waiting up for me and in our company [Foyer 00:34:53], toting on a Zoom call, that’s recorded, that’s going to eventually go out to thousands or hundreds of thousands of people, probably not, right? And so I think that is a privilege. I think though, with privilege comes responsibility, being thoughtful and even more than that, I don’t want to just quote, Spider-Man was great, power comes with great responsibility and so on and so forth. But I think for me what it means is it means intentionality, right? Every dollar that I spend on anything, whether it’s a lift to get to work or a rental car or a dollar that I spend to go watch my girlfriend across the stage and graduate, every dollar that I spend on something could have been reallocated.
Michael Bervell:
And I think it’s hard to conceptualize the opportunity cost of dollars if you haven’t physically seen where those dollars could be super, super, super impactful, right? Having gone to Ghana and seen like, wow, I could build a well for $5,000 and that well could give water to a whole village for about five years. It really makes it different when you’re thinking, oh, should I go buy Google Glass for $5,000? Right? And if you put it in respective, the opportunity cost of those dollars could be giving water to a village for years or six months of pleasure for yourself. And I think every choice is intentional. And so it’s important to have that intentionality as you’re making those decisions, especially when it comes to dollars, responsibility or power or influence or whatever it might be. That said, there’s also this idea that you don’t want to have analysis paralysis, oh, should I buy coffee this morning? Or should I donate it to an organization in the Middle East or Southeast Asia or whatever?
Michael Bervell:
I mean, there’s so many opportunity costs to dollars, that part of it really has to be driven by values. And that’s why part of my values is to learn as much as possible about the world in my twenties, focus on earning money for some time in my thirties while I’m starting a family and spend the rest of my life returning, returning back things that I’ve gotten, things that I had the opportunity to be exposed to and see if I can return back in variety of ways, potentially even through public service.
Bryan Wish:
Mike, I love what you said about intentionality. I think there’s so few people, in what I’m learning, is they even have been able to work with a lot of, I think financially successful people, is how unintentional they actually are. And to be 24 and see the world in such an intentional lens, to drive your decisions, allocation of money, allocation of decisions, I think speaks volumes and is rare. So not to inflate your limited ego that you don’t really have, but to just say, I’ve always admired you as a friend. And I think this conversation gives me even more insights into who you are and have enjoyed it thoroughly. And we seek a time and you getting back to your speech writing and everything else, where can people find you, the book, anything else that matters?
Michael Bervell:
Yeah. I mean, they can go to michaelbervell.com. It’s M-I-C-H-A-E-L-B-E-R-V-E-L-L. I update it pretty frequently with everything, my bio, my latest projects, where I’ve worked and where I’m hoping to work and everything. So you’ll see it there, also my maxims, what’s running my life for the next year or two years I have on there as well. And those are pretty good resources. But before we close, I want to ask you a question, Bryan, because you’re hosting this. What do you hope your one away is going to be in 10 years? If you protect yourself 10 years in the future, what do you want to answer that question with, your one away?
Bryan Wish:
Yeah. I experienced something last summer that I think really shook me to my core in the way I saw the world. And it was a crack that I think revealed a lot of other cracks. And I finally took time to examine and explore them. And I learned a lot about myself, but also a lot about society and a lot about the way I think men are brought up and just people are brought up and a healing journey. I think there’s tremendous opportunity with younger individuals, younger professionals, to really help them lead more intentional lives. You really get to know who they are at a younger age, not hit these crazy life moments in their forties and then reevaluate everything. And so I hope in 10 years of scaled this business arc bound, in the way that it’s highly impactful to who we’re serving today, but using this as an experience of what I’ve gone through, to go tap into another audience, to really help them live more meaningful, intentional lives and heal process.
Bryan Wish:
I think there’s a huge opportunity with men and it’s been a conversation for decades, but how it’s done, it’s not just a retreat, this is intense work, emotional work. And I think the world would be a better place, anyone going through it. So when I look at that, I think that’s an area that can have, when you impact one person in that way, the effects of that energy and the effects of that interaction on everyone else around them is, everything transfers. And so, how I make you feel will transfer into your next conversation. I’ll transfer into that conversation, right? So we can embrace that collective awareness of society.
Bryan Wish:
I think there’s a lot of power there and it takes a lot of painful work to do it, the necessary work. So I think when I look 10 years out, I’ve continued to create things bigger than myself that can outlive me. And I think this would be one of the next kind of evolutions of that. I think I’m a few years away, but I think through this experience I’ve gone through, I’ll be a better person in a family, if I have one, one day, I’ll be a better partner, I’ll be a better… I’m a better leader because of it. And I’m more aware of things. So good question, Mike.
Michael Bervell:
I love it, I love it. Well, thank you so much for having me. Again, if anyone reaches out, happy to chat. Maybe if you reach out, include a fun snippet from this conversation. Maybe if you write veil of ignorance, I’ll know exactly how and why you’re reaching out.
Bryan Wish:
Ooh, I like that a lot. All right. I like the specificity. Well, Michael, thanks again. So great to do this with you, man. And just proud of who you are.
Michael Bervell:
Thanks, Bryan. Appreciate it.