Coming up next on PassionStruck.

It's important to understand that for you, what you experience is a baseline, and then you judge the other world from that baseline. So when I think about it, it took me the whole life to find the path that makes sense, that feels good, and that is effective for what I want to achieve.

Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become passion struck. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to passion struck in episode 488. A heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you who return to the show every single week, eager to listen, learn, and discover new ways to live better, to be better, and most importantly, to make a meaningful impact in the world. Today, I have a very special episode for you, but if you're new to the show, I wanted to welcome you. For those of you who would like to introduce this to a friend or a family member, we have episode starter packs, and I can't believe that we're almost at 500 episodes, so we have a lot of content.

So we created these starter packs to give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here in the show. They're organized in a convenient playlist, and you can find them on Spotify or passion struck. Com/starterpacks. And in case you missed my episode from yesterday, it featured a guest who this community has requested multiple times, Chris Kenobi. And in this discussion, Chris and I delve deep into the hidden dangers of industrial seed oils and why the ancestral diet is so important for our long term longevity and health. You absolutely want to check it out. And we would so appreciate it if you'd like that episode or today's, giving us a five star rating and review. These goes such a long way in helping more people find the passion struck community where we can bring them weekly doses of hope, meaning, and connection. I know we and our guests love to hear from our listeners. Today, we're going to do something a little bit different. Instead of our regular episodes, we are giving you a taste of a podcast we think you'll enjoy. Hosted by English Saul and Jeff Walker, System Catalyst shares stories of change makers who put their egos aside to improve the systems that run the world.

If you like what you hear today, make sure you follow the link in the show notes to subscribe and listen to more episodes of System Catalyst. I hope you really enjoy, and I do want to remind you that we have another great interview tomorrow with Erin Ahuvia. In this one, we're going to do a deep dive into brand love. Thank you for choosing passion struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin.

I'm English Saul. Welcome to System Catalyst, the podcast that cracks the code for making the world a better place. Ever stopped and wondered, Am I really making a difference? It's one of those big questions that sneaks up on us from time to time. Not to get too existential here, but if you want to become a system catalyst, it's something that you should be asking yourself. Today's guest, Yemi A. D, is here to offer some guidance. After working in the arts, entertainment, and advertising industries, he now runs Moonshot, an accelerator for young change makers. Having grown up in the Soviet Union, Yemi later achieved success that was once unimaginable. His secret? Being authentic, forging effective collaborations, and dreaming big. So today, Yemi will be sharing some of that wisdom with us. One of his crazy dreams was to go to the moon. And guess what? He will. More on that later. All right, let's get into it. Here's my interview with Yemi. I'm so excited to talk to you. How are you doing? How's everything?

Yeah, everything is well. I am slowly preparing for my next stretch of a tour. I came back three days ago, and I'm leaving again on Wednesday. I'm very happy to be home, to be just relaxing here. I went to spa on the weekend. I had a beautiful dinner with my friends in the city, so I'm soaking Nice.

That's awesome. Where are you off to on Wednesday?

I'm going to Boston, and then I'm coming back and then flying on Monday to LA, then Santa Barbara, then Asalen, Big Sur, then San Francisco, then Ireland, Dublin, then Prague, and then New York again.

Oh, my gosh. You've got a whirlwind tour coming up. Yemi, as someone who travels quite a bit, do you have a packing routine or do you have a potentials that you have to take with you? What's your secret? Do you have some face serum that we should all be buying?

You should see my packing routine. It would be something between an explosion of an atomy bump and improv dance in between the pieces of my clothes. But sometimes when I get back, I have to leave again so soon that I just leave some stuff in my suitcases and I bring some I leave some in. It's been really crazy one and a half year since the announcement of the space mission. I've been traveling much, much more than before. But honestly, I think that the best skin product is a good food, a good sleep, and a good mood. I think those would be the things that I would suggest for everyone to pack when going somewhere.

As you can probably tell, Yemi keeps busy. Here He works on many creative and tech projects and runs his organization, MoonShop, an accelerator for the new generation of change makers.

We support young people who are doing social innovations in every way possible. How we measure it? We measure it through SDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals, which is a metric that's used across the world. And how we do it is we created two programs. One is MoonShot Awards, which is our solution, crowd sourcing mechanism, where we announced these awards. We give about $100,000 to different people who come forward and show us that their social innovation is really changing lives or changing environment, and that it needs help, that it needs boost to accelerate, to scale up, to be transferred to different places, because sometimes people are solving problems that are problems in so many other places, and the solution doesn't get the right distribution. And then when they win it, we take about 30 to 100 of the best ones, of the most promising ones, and we bring them to acceleration camp. It's called Moonshot Camp. And in this Munchot camp, I bring, and our team bring, probably the best mentors you can ever meet. People who have exited multibillion dollar companies, professors from Harvard, Yale, Oxford, leaders of NGOs, but also examples of the young innovators who has made it, who has made and scaled up their innovation.

So they could also... These young people that we bring, they can identify. So we really care about inclusion and diversity. And I don't mean... I don't want to say these words because I know this is such a buzzword out there, but we take this differently. For us, it's not a spreadsheet that we fill in. As an artist coming from an environment of culture, we really look at diversity of people not because of how look, but because of what their life experience is and what their mind perspective is. That's the most important thing for us. I think that is the magic mixture when you have them in the room, and just to give you an example, for example, one of the winners of Moonshot idea board was Matias Bohacek, who developed a translator for sign language. You have it in your phone, somebody is signing, you point your camera at someone and you read the text. He He offered it as open source, so anybody could use it. It became the most precise and the fastest translator in the world. We take this person, and if we see that they are ground-breaking or If we see that what they do is definitely worth attention, we expedite their journey from that place right to the right table, to the table where there are decision-makers that can fund you, that can help you carve the language around your campaigns, that can introduce you to new customers, to partnerships.

I think that is what actually can accelerate partnerships. It's what can accelerate the Sustainable Development Goals, and that can bring much more inclusion and much more just healthy advancement into the society.

That's amazing. One of the things that strikes me so much hearing you speak about these amazing entrepreneurs and these amazing ideas is with this podcast, one of the things One of the things that Jeff and I are really trying to do is elevate and highlight the stories of system catalysts. The reason, obviously, that we wanted you to come on here and talk to us is because the system, in my mind, that you really are not only trying to cultivate, but shape is really that of collaboration. It's that of this locally-driven, network-supported model that we speak about a lot of saying, Hey, what are the spaces in which we can bring in really amazing people with really great ideas to then be able to collaborate and go further together. As I'm hearing you and as I'm listening to you talk, I just hear the passion and excitement in your voice that you have for the change that these various individuals can bring about, both individually, but as well as when they're all sitting at the table together and when they're all in collaboration and conversation together.

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate you.

So, Yemi, back to something that you also just actually said in this conversation around the Moon mission. And full disclosure, you are the first guest that we've ever had on the podcast that I think is actually on a mission training to go to the Moon. Can you tell me about how this happened? Can you tell me about what inspired you to apply to Dear Moon and how this all came about?

It was one of these days when I was back home in Prague and I was just working on an event. I had an event agency and creative studio and talent agency, and I started many different things, like ventures around entertainment industry and arts. My friend Peter, who is a great cinematographer, and we work together, he came and he showed me this article and a video. He was like, Hey, you know what? You're doing these things here in Chukwabli for so long, and you're always stressed about these different campaigns and your clients are stressing you. You should just go to the moon. And he showed me this article and the video and I couldn't get it out of my head. I was thinking about it for months and I was picking courage to believe that it's even possible for me to sign up and to make it. In this time, it was a very special time for me because I also for scholarship to Aspen Institute, a Henry Crown Fellowship.

The Henry Crown Fellowship, Yemi just referred to, is a two-year program by the Aspen Institute. It's all about bringing together business leaders who want to do more than just climb the corporate ladder. They also want to make a positive impact.

After I worked in the entertainment industry, I've achieved probably everything that I dreamt of working with I was working with Kanye West, working with Virgil Abloh, doing these big shows like VMAs and Southern Nightlife and Coachella and doing different tours, choreographing and directing live shows. And then I still didn't feel like this is not my final destination. It's not my home. It's not where I want to spend the rest of my life. So when I retrieved and went like, Okay, what's the next thing? Because I love to reinvent myself every two, three years because I think it's very healthy and I just love to start from the beginning and just keep my feet on the ground while dreaming big. And this was probably one of the hardest moments for reinvention because before when I was moving from different industries like dance and choreography and theater and advertising agency and founding different businesses, it was not that hard because I could always feel my guts. But when I stopped working with Kanye and did this big Hollywood productions and so on, I felt... I had to take a couple of years to really find myself. In this instruction point, I found Aspen Institute and I found, Okay, this is a great program.

So I went and it took a couple of years for me to get there because it's very competitive. It's not easy to get in. And I finally did. So this moment I was in this class and then I saw this article and I had these classmates, which are fellow fellows, Who are Americans? Most of them. Very diverse, different descent, but Americans. And there's one thing that's great in America, and I know many people around the world, when you tell them about America, everybody has an opinion about the United States of America. But a good thing that people know about the United States is that people often encourage each other much more than anywhere else in the world. I was raised in Eastern Europe, and it's not a common thing that you come with a crazy idea and people I tell you, Hell, yeah, this is what you should do. You can do it. You got it. So when I shared with my class my dream to go to the moon, they were really, really encouraging to the extent that I did not expect that. They named the class, because there is a vote in the end of each class, they named the class Moonshot, just to support me.

I remember I was leaving after the first seminar, going back home, and I felt the weight on my shoulders. I felt like, Oh, Yemi, you're so silly. Really, you don't even deep inside, you don't believe you can win the seat to go around the moon. But these are all people, they all believe in it. Why can't you believe in it? So this was an experience that I realized that really it's so important who is around you because this just gives you... I always say that it moves the wall of the room. It just expands the room. So you can dream bigger or achieve more when you see these great examples of people. And also, it's not about what they achieve, it's about how they do their work.

Eventually, Yemi adopted the name Moonshot for his accelerator. Inspired by his peers, he also applied to Dear Moon, and he was selected among one million people to be one of the first eight civilians to fly around the moon.

This was probably the biggest shift in my awareness that I have ever went through because when I first told my mom, and of course, she was worried and proud, and we cried together, there was this moment of connection that we looked back at everything that we went through, all the crap, all the damage, all the bad stuff growing up in Czechoslovakia in a communistic country under the Soviet rule, a lot of bad things happened. And this one moment when When I got the seed, we looked at each other as we were crying and we understood that all of the bad things also were good for something. I am very grateful and very humbled by this potential. I know I haven't flown to the moon. I haven't been even... I didn't go through any thorough trainings yet. But just the fact that you can dream in such an extent and that someone from such a small and insignificant beginning can get this far, I feel really much better about the world and about young people growing up because they see so much as possible today.

Wow. I mean, it's just hugely inspiring. I think that your story in itself is hugely inspiring, the narrative of growing up in the Czech Republic and all of the things that you have done that are both in the vein of being just an artist, a social entrepreneur, and a system catalyst. Tell me a little bit more, Yemi, about... I mean, you obviously are a very creative person, a very visionary person. Tell me about how you've been able to capture that creative and visionary passion and direct it more on the social sector and what you're doing now. What inspired you to go from this career in the arts and creativity and now focusing that on the social sector and thread that line of safety for me a little bit more.

Very often people ask me about my strategy, right? What was the one point that changed everything. And it's really not that. It's more about equation. So my equation is always surrounded by excitement. So if something really excites me, if I really feel happy, I want to follow it. And another thing is, I don't think that when you just copy someone else's success, you see someone is doing great, and you say, Okay, this is the profession I want to do. This is what I want to do. You disregard the path to there. In my life, I always just went from one thing that excites me to another. That's why I went through so many different professions. I was very awkward, kid because I was growing up in the '80s in Czechoslovakia. It was communism. I was the only Black kid in the whole city. I saw another Black kid when I was 15. My father, he unfortunately lost his freedom when he was visiting his parents in Nigeria, and there was a revolution and the borders closed and he could never come back. So it was just me, my mom, my grandma and my great grandma, three White women that would erase me.

This recently was visiting my friend Ranji, and her daughter gave me this new term. She said, You are a coconut. You are white on the inside and black on the outside. I love the term because it's like being raised among white people, so being completely raised in that way, but then being reminded from outside that you're not really them. It's important because this created a foundation. As a kid, you look from your head outside outside, you don't look on the inside, or you don't look back. It's important to understand that for you, what you experience is a baseline, and then you judge the other world from that baseline. When I think about it, it took me a long... It took me the whole life to find the path that makes sense, that feels good, and that is effective for what I want to achieve. I had to start working very young, so I had my first business when I was 16, And so I couldn't just decide what I want to do, but I just had to do it. I had to know how to buy and sell, how to make business. And so I could never just be an artist, which was a great advantage.

I didn't think of it back then, but it was a great advantage later on because I started these different companies and that it allowed me to really expand and travel around the world and do different things. So I had these businesses running, but then I felt like, hey... And it was one of my friends amazing, amazing Estonian entrepreneur, David Heinrich Kuhls. He was the first employee of Skype. He started transfer-wise. And he asked me, Hey, Yemi, so what would happen if you didn't do it? And I was like, Well, if I didn't do it, I think someone else would do it. And he says, Oh, you see? And I was like, Oh, this is such a simple question, but actually it's very profound because am I that privileged that I can think about it in this way? Can I do something that if I didn't do it, it would really be a loss? And I started to think about this and I started to transition because I realized that in the entertainment industry, there was so much fun already. There was so much entertainment. I don't think we have a lack of entertainment in this world.

So I had to face a real question, ask myself, Am I being useful? But then I was thinking, Hey, I'm making people buy more stuff they don't need, and I don't think that's being useful. So that's how I transitioned. When I entered the space, it was both the technology, which was already there, but more in artistic way. When I transitioned, I was full on in technology and impact space because it's the best way, right? Combination between the art and culture, technology, and the impact space. This is a very special equation that can really move mountains.

I love the question Yemi's friend offered to him. What would happen if you didn't do it? As a system catalyst, find something that excites you and that you are uniquely positioned to do. For Yemi, it is supporting emerging entrepreneurs and collaborating to accelerate impact. You have worked with a lot of institutions. You've worked a lot across various sectors. What is Summit advice that you would have for a system catalyst in wanting to bring people together, in wanting to work with institutions, in wanting to collaborate, in wanting to get funding for their ideas? What's just some advice that you can share with us based on your experience of how to just be patient and continue that work and have that spark and that passion?

Interesting. If there was one thing that I I would suggest or recommend for other system catalysts to do so they could bring people together and have a community to work with, because this is a work that it would be both absurd and very ignorant if one wanted to bring upon any change on their own, because we are biased creatures. And if we don't share, if we don't really use the collective direction or let's say, inclusive co-design, we're not doing good work. So I think that's number one. I think it's important for those system catalys to first recognize their motivation. In the time of social media and in the time of cancel culture, and in a time of all these different new terms, it's really important to spend some time alone, digitally detox, and really ask yourself the hard questions of why are you doing it? Because if you're If your motivation is external, it's not going to last. Maybe it's still worth it. You're going to do some good job, you're going to do some good work, you're going to learn something, you're going to meet amazing people, but in the end, you're going to end up elsewhere.

But It's okay because it could just be a transition moment for you. It doesn't have to be the destination. But still, it's very healthy to understand your motivation. I remember, I give you one example. I had one moment in my life that was hard. Something traumatic happened and I needed to do this reset. What I did is I decided that I'm going to stay off for two years. In my country, I used to have a TV show, and I go to different events and I do a lot of interviews and podcasts and so on. It is like a thing if you decide to withdraw from a public eye. I did it and it was very interesting. It was a beautiful cleansing process, and it was one of the most valuable It changed a lot of decisions that I've done. It changed the trajectory of my life, and it was very healing. And also the people who were around me have changed. Some people left and different people came in the circle. So I recommend it. And one of the reasons, and this is also intimate, but it's useful only if it's authentic. I was doubting myself also in, why do I do this impact space?

Is it because I like the way it looks? Because I was a performer, so I also always was like, learned how to perform. So then if you are on a stage and you're receiving an award for something, or if you are on a social media and you are being applauded for something, you are still the actor in all of it. You're in the middle of it and you will have people admiring what you do. But then is that the motivation? Sometimes it doesn't matter because as long as you're doing good work, it's good enough. But I wanted to go one step deeper and see how I like doing this work without all this. And that was just a self-reflective process. The second thing I would say, I would recommend is choose the right partner. I think that both on your own team and on the team that sits across you, it's really important who you work with. And sometimes I was very naive and I wanted to change things that I was not supposed to change. You know this, like a Messiah complex that you want to change people or you want to change the things they are done.

But you know what happens when, this will be maybe a little harsh, but when you have a bowl of rotten apples You put a fresh apple, it's going to run. So you have to first protect yourself and to work with people that excites you, that you know they have integrity, you know that they will They'll see things through, you know that they also like you for what you're bringing to the table, and it's not just a transactional relationship. So choose the partner wisely and have integrity, not just with the world, but with yourself when you do that. And I think the third thing, and I spoke about this already a lot, is just make it exciting. But when you do it, make it exciting not just for yourself, make it exciting for the people. And to make things exciting I think for the people you work with for your community, it means to learn something much more than just foreign language. So I speak Czech, a little bit Slovakian, I can understand some Polish, I learned German for a little bit, I learned French for a little bit, I can understand something, but not really speak it.

But when you learn languages, you realize that every new language has a whole different personality. The way people call things, it changes who they are, how they were raised. So if you don't know as another language, it's hard to get this, what I'm trying to explain. But there is a different type of languages which has nothing to do with foreign countries, and it's the languages of our personalities. Whether you are an introvert, whether you are an extrovert, whether you are an analytical mind, when you are conceptual mind. There are people who like to start in the detail and go really deep, and that's how their brain is wired and they can get best out of it. But then there are people who really to just like one, two, three, and then they need freedom. They need to step back and have freedom to think on their own. If you don't understand this and you want to lead a community, and you're explaining yourself to people or building structure the way you understand it, I don't think you're doing well enough. Because if you see people are not excited and you blame them for it, I'm like, no, it can be done.

Even things that are sad, even things that are hard. We don't have to bring toxicity into work that's already so hard. I think people deserve to be excited to wake up in the morning.

That's beautiful. I think that what I heard is, number one, it's really about the authenticity. It's really about how you show up. It's about how you show up for yourself, and it's about how you show up for the people around you and doing what you need to do as a person to heal, to be your authentic self, yourself to show up in a way that really is truthful to your motivations and your intent on what you're bringing to the world. I think number two is partnership. It's finding the right partner. And so much of that, right? The first thing helps you get and achieve the second thing. If you're showing up authentically, then that partnership will become more organic and you will know. It'll be clear about who that right partner is and who the right people are. To surround you with.

Absolutely.

The third thing I think that you spoke about just so eloquently is it has to be fun. It has to be enjoyable. It has to be delightful. Building community and being in community with others has to start from a place of joy. Even if the work itself is hard, even if the issue itself is sad, working to better a system, it has to be a reason that people want to keep going. A lot of that is being in the right community. If you're helping try and change that system, or if you're helping try and lead that community, doing it in a way that really honors everyone else that's showing up at the table and the language that they speak and the intention that they have and the personality that they bring to it. Is that a fair summarization?

You did a great, amazing job because I was mumbling for so long and you were able to really summarize it precisely very well. I would say I would add one more thing, and that is that today we use a lot the word authenticity, and it doesn't mean the same for everyone. So that's why when I pointed out the first thing, I'm like, do you know what your real motivation is? Did you look inside really, really well? Not in a group of people, but really just for yourself. Because sometimes people use the word authenticity just to be lazy because they are like, Oh, this is my authentic self. But they don't really realize this is just another layer of compensation or who they became through different events. It's simpler when you focus on the motivation.

Well, Yemi, this has been so wonderful. I'll leave us the final question here. Is there any final message that you want to leave our listeners with? You have just given so much wisdom, and I appreciate you talking about your various adventures of the Moonshot platform, the work that you've done in the entertainment space, and then, of course, just your adventure going to the moon. We're so excited to be able to follow along with you on all of that. But anything else? Any final words of wisdom?

Well, thank you so much for having me. I just have an invitation. I think it's important for the people who are listening to know that Moonshot platform is there for them. It's not a close community, and it It doesn't matter whether you are 15 or 55, even though the awards are... We are giving the awards to the younger people, but then we are looking for mentors. It's just a community. So if you go to moonshotplatform. Org, you can sign up into the community and just be with us through this movement, through this movement when we want to bring young people into spaces where they can contribute and co-design and shape the future that they will inherit.

Amazing. We will make sure to put all of the relevant links to everything that you've talked about in our podcast notes and our show notes as well. Thank you so much, Yemi.

Thank you, English. It was great.

That's it for today's show. Please don't forget to subscribe to System Catalysts so you don't miss out on a new episode. Also, do us a huge favor by rating our podcast and leaving us a review. Thank you all so much for joining us, and we'll catch you all in the next episode. Before we go, we'd like to thank our producers at Human Group Media. We'd also like to thank our incredible network of partners who are supporting our mission, the Skoll Foundation, the Aspen Institute's Global Leadership Network, Echoing Green, DRK Foundation, Maverick Collective, Virgin Unite, Charlie's Theran Africa Outreach Project, Boldly Go Philanthropy, Scenargos, Forward Global, Nexus, and New Profit. If you are interested in becoming a system catalyst and would like to learn more about our partners, please visit systemcatalyst. Com.