PBI 009: Creating Community And Successful Summits With Ocean Robbins
Description
A rare opportunity to dive deep into the mind of the New Media Influencer who inspires & mobiles other young visionaries worldwide — Ocean Robbins.
Ocean’s mini-book, Building Healing Bridges Across Historic Divides … is a seminal work that shares insights and inspirations from his 20+ years of working to build authentic partnerships.
Ocean also co-authored Voices of the Food Revolution and is CEO of the 250,000 member Food Revolution Network.
Join us as Ocean shares:
- How he created summits that reached over 400,000 people
- How he mobilized 250,000 people for healthy sustainable, humane and delicious food
- Empowering individuals and building community
- Creating sustained positive impact in the world
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Announcer: This is Push Button Influence where the world's leading influencers candidly share their exact strategies for maximizing reach, accelerating growth and generating massive exposure, all by leveraging the power of new media. You can become the next Larry King, Oprah or Howard Stern, all you need to do is broadcast your brilliance. Push Button Influence teaches you how.
Here are your hosts, Alex Mandossian and Steve Olsher.
Steve Olsher: All right, all right, all right. Welcome to another edition of ... No I almost said it, Push Button Influence. It had to happen at some point and now it did, but here we are on Push Button Influence, with the one and only Alex Mandossian and myself, Steve Olsher and Ocean Robbins. How cool is that? Knowing how busy you are, because you actually have a pretty big thing in the works right around the corner, so for you to take the time to be with us here on PBI is greatly appreciated.
Let's do this, which is, Ocean, we start every show with a word, and both Alex and I have a word, and let me turn it over to the one, the only, Alex Mandossian, what is your word of the day for Mr. Ocean Robbins?
Alex Mandossian: All right, well there are 2 aha's for today, first of all it's the first time Ocean is on Blab, according to Blab, I don't know if that's true or not, and secondly he and I have never crossed paths on a virtual event, although we've done tons of gigs like this, or on stage. My word was going to be, because of his lineage and because of what he stands for, it was going to be food. One of my mentors taught me 20 years ago, when I was a sophomore in college, 1984, when the family moved to California, according to your website, Ocean, I was at UC Irvine, that food is the most powerful drug on earth and I thought, wow what a great topic. To me what you represent is movement.
Steve Olsher: I've got to change my word.
Alex Mandossian: Nothing happens because something moves. This is movement as the noun and not the verb. It's one of the only words where when used as a noun it has more power than as a verb. Let's talk about the specific incident, where you were, who surrounded if you can remember, I'm putting you on the spot, but it's my job, it's your first time on Blab and first time we're interviewing each other. When did you decide that you could be a movement builder, because that is something that you are?
Ocean Robbins: I decided that when I was 7 years old, honestly I was in elementary school in second grade and the movie The Day After came out, which was about nuclear holocaust and it was a television special and all my friends were talking about it. I was thinking are we just going to stand by and allow this possibility that weapons of unimaginable destructive power could actually be used some day by human beings? I organized a peace rally in my elementary school at lunch time. Got a bunch of my friends out there, we made little signs. We were just screaming to each other, everyone in the school agreed, we don't want nuclear war, that's not a very controversial topic, but I saw right then that I could speak out and organize and people could follow and we could have a voice.
Steve Olsher: Awesome, it is so funny, and I have to admit that this was also my word. Great minds thing alike there and if you're on Blab, you see that my word was also movement, but I have quickly changed it because I can adapt quickly like that. Let's move to this word which is community, and you, Ocean, obviously, geez, you started at a super young age in terms of trying to create community around what you were really just ... Let's put it as bluntly as we can, you were just fired up about that at that moment; you're fired up about this at this moment. Does it become your life's calling in that particular period of time to then enroll people in whatever it is that you just absolutely feel so passionate about?
Ocean Robbins: To me leadership is about standing for something. It's not about having a bunch of followers. It's about being willing to step outside the herd to do something different than the norm or the status quo because you were born for something other than to repeat the patterns of what you see going on around you. In the world in which we live, in which it is considered normal to, for example in the food world, to eat food that is full of pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, that's been stripped of fiber, that is full of added sugars and chemicals and flavoring and additives, in which it's considered normal to eat food that is quite frankly toxic, that is causing epidemic rates of diabetes, obesity, Alzheimer's, cancer, heart disease. In that world, I think leadership is the only sane option. If we follow the status quo, we will follow it right to our hospital beds and our graves.
If we're willing to take a stand for what is possible, we can radically extend our lifespan, our health span, our vibrancy, our joy, improve our sex lives, have more fulfilling lives on this planet. To me, when I stand for a food revolution, which is what my work is all about right now, I'm standing for something that to me is very basic, it's about sanity and yet it's also radical. That's what leadership is about to me. When we think about what it means to have your life stand for something. What is the saying, if you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything? I think all of us in this world are faced with the reality that the status quo isn't fulfilling. We're surrounded by norms, not just with food, but with so many other kinds of life choices that are just quite frankly not fulfilling.
The idea of a typical corporate job, working crazy hours for somebody else to mak