Mick Ebeling
Ep. 2 - From an L.A. Art Benefit to a Refugee Camp in Sudan / Mick Ebeling, Founder and CEO of Not Impossible Labs In this episode, Mick Ebeling describes how a date night with his wife at a Los Angeles gala for a graffiti artist with Lou Gehrig’s disease convinced him to coalesce technology warriors from around the world to help the artist, known as Tempt, draw again. He then shifts his focus from his thriving production company to start Not Impossible Labs and dedicate his life to building technology to help those with disabilities. Ebeling reveals how this shift ultimately took him from the comfort of his home in Venice, California to the refugee camps of Sudan to build prosthetic arms using 3-D printers for a young boy named Daniel wounded in the civil war. He shares what he learned about leading both in the process of helping Tempt get back in touch with his artistry and as he undertook the Sudan mission to help Daniel regain his mobility and independence. Ebeling shares his insights through those anecdotes about the power of narrative to change the world. Transcript Download the PDF Chitra: Hello, and welcome to When it Mattered. I'm your host, Chitra Ragavan. I'm also the founder and CEO of Goodstory consulting, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. Chitra: On this weekly podcast we invite leaders from around the world to share one personal story that changed the course of their life and work, and how they lead and deal with adversity. Through these stories we take you behind the scenes to get an inside perspective of some of the most eventful moments of our time. Chitra: On this episode, we will be talking to Mick Ebeling, founder and CEO of Not Impossible Labs, and author of the book Not Impossible. Mick was most recently named one of Fortune Magazine's world's greatest leaders. He's a recipient of the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian of the Year Award, and he's listed as one of the world's most influential creative people by the Creative 50s. Chitra: Mick, welcome to the show. Mick: Thank you so much. Chitra: Tell us a little bit more about yourself. Mick: Well, Not Impossible Labs, I think, like a lot of things in this world, was launched on accident. It wasn't something that I had intended to do, and it was a byproduct of my wife and I had a date night, and on date night a friend hijacked our date, and took us to an art benefit, and we were exposed to an incredible artist, graffiti and street artist, named Tony Tempt Quan, that we had never met or heard of before, but we learned at this event had Lou Gehrig's disease. Mick: He had ALS, and the event was a benefit of his family and friends coming together to support him, and help to pay for his hospital bills, because he didn't have health insurance. Mick: And it was one of those incredible nights that had this echo effect on my life, essentially, because at the time I ran a production company. We made television commercials and films. We had just done the James Bond main title sequence, and things were going incredible. Mick: But then this night happened, and it just left this impression on us, and we found out that this artist was unable to talk, and unable to communicate, except through a piece of paper that had the alphabet on it, and people would run their finger along it, and when peoples' finger would get to a letter, he would blink, and then they would write it down. Mick: And for us that was just, that was absurd. We didn't, just, that didn't make any sense. And so I said all right, well, that makes no sense. I live in Los Angeles. We have a GMP greater than most developing nations, 13 miles away from where I live in Venice Beach there's a dude who's having to talk through a piece of paper because he doesn't have health insurance. Mick: And I know, through videos, and commercials, and things that I've read about Steven Hawking,