Latest / Daily Influence / 671. From Hollywood to Humanity: Peter Samuelson on Service, Storytelling, and Finding Happy

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671. From Hollywood to Humanity: Peter Samuelson on Service, Storytelling, and Finding Happy · Daily Influence

0:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Daily Influence, your daily dose of positive influence.
0:14
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Brian Smith founder of IA Business Advisors and co-author of the Iain team series.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Each day we share stories and insights to help you find be and build your influence in a positive and responsible way.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm Greg Clino, partner at IE Business Advisors, and co-host of Daily Influence.
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0:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Daily Influence.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Greg Collino, and today I'm honored to be joined by someone whose life work beautifully reflects what responsible influence looks like in action.
0:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Peter Samuelson is an accomplished film producer, social entrepreneur, and humanitarian.
1:06
[SPEAKER_01]: He's the president and co-founder of First Star, and the founder of Impact Organizations, including the Starlight Children's Foundation and everyone deserves a roof.
1:17
[SPEAKER_01]: He's also the author of the book, Finding Happy, which blends powerful storytelling with practical life lessons about purpose, service, and creating meeting.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Peter's journey spans Hollywood, global storytelling, and deep civic impact.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And today, we're exploring how influence, intention, and service intersect to create lasting change.
1:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Peter, welcome to Daily Influence.
1:44
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm so happy to be here.
1:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
1:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Peter, to set the stage, could you share a bit about your background and what led you to where you are today?
1:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Particularly the moments of influence that shape how you define purpose and success?
1:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
1:57
[SPEAKER_02]: So first pivot for me was my year 10.
2:04
[SPEAKER_02]: English teacher, Mr. Lund, I'm sure he had a first name, but for us he was Mr. Maybe that was his first name, don't know.
2:15
[SPEAKER_02]: So he said, see me after school, rarely a good thing, but I did.
2:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And I remember he poked me like this in the chest.
2:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And he said, you know, if you worked about twice as hard,
2:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And I laughed at him with all the, you know, the arrogance of my 15 or 16, whatever I was.
2:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And I said, I don't think I'm going to university, am I no one in my entire family has ever been to college and in fact, my dad left school at 14.
2:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And he said, ah, well then it'll be even better because you'll be the first one.
3:03
[SPEAKER_02]: So I did what he said, and I sat the Cambridge University Scholarship exam, and they gave me a scholarship, and that's where I got my bachelor's and my master's.
3:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I came out, I had studied English literature, special focus on medieval primarily because that's what Mr. Lund loved and he was my mentor.
3:31
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's what he said I should do.
3:35
[SPEAKER_02]: and I did, and I came out of Cambridge and realized there was no work of any description for someone who knew an awful lot about, you know, England of the 14th century, but very little about anything else.
3:52
[SPEAKER_02]: But I had managed to pocket money really while I was in college by being an interpreter, English French, French, English, and I had worked on an amazing, huge, profligate commercials about the Monte Carlo rally, and at the end of it,
4:18
[SPEAKER_02]: the producer, a Hollywood producer in the commercial's business, Tony Bushing.
4:24
[SPEAKER_02]: He said, do you want to come back to LA?
4:27
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you don't know anything about really how we edit.
4:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Come back, we'll teach you.
4:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And I said, what I, you know, get paid, enough to live somewhere and wouldn't I need a car?
4:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I think you need a car in LA.
4:43
[SPEAKER_02]: He said, yeah, you would.
4:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And we'll get you a visa.
4:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And I came.
4:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And in fact, he said to me, you know, to get on your feet because I didn't know anybody except him.
4:56
[SPEAKER_02]: He said, um, our family, we have a, you know, guest room.
5:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Why don't you stay in that for a few weeks?
5:02
[SPEAKER_02]: And well, while you find somewhere and, you know, we have a spare car, you can drive that around.
5:08
[SPEAKER_02]: So that was my introduction to the
5:15
[SPEAKER_02]: because the American dream says, we don't care about your parents, you know, they may have come from as immigrants from somewhere and they earn money, you know, with a streetcar selling whatever food.
5:29
[SPEAKER_02]: But if you work hard, we'll get you educated and then we expect you to
5:36
[SPEAKER_02]: work hard in a profession, be part of the American dream, pay your taxes, build something, raise a healthy family, and I realized that's unique to America.
5:51
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no British dream, there's no French dream.
5:56
[SPEAKER_02]: If you are born in Germany and your fathers are plumber, you might
6:06
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't work that way.
6:07
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a sort of lateral barriers to advancement, but in the United States, all the brain surgeons, their parents were, you know, first or second immigrants.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And it doesn't matter here because we are a meritocracy.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think Americans have forgotten.
6:30
[SPEAKER_02]: how important and valuable that is.
6:32
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like free brains, you know, let's build our GNP.
6:37
[SPEAKER_02]: So, um, there you go.
6:39
[SPEAKER_02]: That was my first pivot.
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[SPEAKER_02]: There have been many since.
6:43
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm a very lucky sonso and very privileged to be an American and I've always felt I should try and be a good American and lift up my country.
6:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, Peter, what a beautiful story.
6:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for sharing that.
6:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sounds like Mr. London certainly had a positive influence on you.
7:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, but one of my fixations is I try and say his name in every interview.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So there you go.
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[SPEAKER_02]: London, London.
7:13
[SPEAKER_01]: That's wonderful.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And thank you for reminding us for our Americans who are born here and forget
7:18
[SPEAKER_01]: those privileges that we have.
7:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for reminding us.
7:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you share a moment or experience where you truly felt you made a positive impact on someone's life and what that moment taught you about influence or responsibility?
7:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I built a career, not only one go, took me several years, but I went from being basically the most junior person on a film set.
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[SPEAKER_02]: to being a producer by 1980.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I got my first producing credit then on a Donald Sutherland film.
7:51
[SPEAKER_02]: In fact, I was his junior partner for a period of time and in parallel,
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[SPEAKER_02]: I had a shocking experience that really did change my life.
8:05
[SPEAKER_02]: My cousin, younger cousin, she was a young fledgling actress, still in London.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I was already in LA.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And she phoned me and said, I think I've done a terrible thing.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I was in great, warm and street children's hospital.
8:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And I sort of befriended this 10 or 11 year old very, very gravely ill.
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[SPEAKER_02]: uh not looking so good in in in in in a hospital bed and I asked him I usually what would make you happy sure and he said oh that's easy I want to go to Disney land and she said I don't know what do you think and I said what you've done it now we have to do it go talk to the mum go talk to the doctor you know can he be transported
8:52
[SPEAKER_02]: and catalog story short, we brought him to LA and he couldn't stay in a hotel, but he and his mum moved into my apartment, as did the cousin, came with, and we did two weeks of everything you shouldn't do probably with a very seriously ill, in fact dying child, and we had such an amazing time.
9:14
[SPEAKER_02]: There were so many things beyond that we made him happy, we did make him happy,
9:22
[SPEAKER_02]: But also, you know, his mum hadn't seen him being happy for some period of time, and when they went home and a bit after that, he passed.
9:33
[SPEAKER_02]: She was left with memories of him laughing his head off at Disneyland and not spree farm and on the beach and this and that and not, you know, wasting away in a hospital bed.
9:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And I thought to myself, you know, compared with to producing a film, which is about the most difficult thing, you could possibly set yourself to do.
9:53
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought, I know how to do this.
9:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe we could do it again.
9:59
[SPEAKER_02]: So I called a meeting after work.
10:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And I stuck stood at the end of the conference room table, and I had invited, you know, one of the things you do as a producer is you, you, you, you, you, you crew are meeting.
10:12
[SPEAKER_02]: What do I need?
10:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I need a lawyer.
10:15
[SPEAKER_02]: I need an accountant, you know, we've got to do the books and I need a graphic designer and I need someone who understands hospitals and I simply said, you know, this is what we just did.
10:26
[SPEAKER_02]: It was incredibly powerful.
10:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Why don't we try and do it four or five, six times a year?
10:33
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, why wouldn't we do that?
10:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And everybody said yes.
10:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And the lawyer said, what do you want to call it?
10:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And I said, I don't know, what should we call it?
10:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And there was the only lady there that was back in my single days.
10:46
[SPEAKER_02]: I had had gorgeous, so beautiful.
10:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I had had one date.
10:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And I had phoned her up and said, remember me, I'm so sorry, I've been out of town.
10:56
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm terrible.
10:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I apologize, didn't call you.
10:59
[SPEAKER_02]: But I'm having this charity meeting and didn't you tell me you were an accountant?
11:04
[SPEAKER_02]: She'd, yes.
11:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And I said, well, will you come and consider being our accountant?
11:09
[SPEAKER_02]: So that was the second date.
11:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And when the lawyer said, what do you want to call it?
11:14
[SPEAKER_02]: She said, you know, that children's rhyme, starlight, star bright, first RIC tonight.
11:21
[SPEAKER_02]: I wish I may, I wish I might have this wish I wish tonight.
11:25
[SPEAKER_02]: So that was the second date.
11:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And I can tell you when I realized I was in love we threw a hospital party.
11:33
[SPEAKER_02]: at in the Children's Ward of County USC Medical Center, that Christmas, and we had a live band, and there we were in the auditorium, and we had all these kids in hospital smocks, and some of them were so ill that they'd had to be wielding in their beds, and in one of the beds was a little girl,
11:56
[SPEAKER_02]: who was dancing while lying in her bed because she couldn't get out of the bed and we had these adult-sized sea creature costumes that have been donated to us, you know, sharks and dolphins and stuff and inside one of these costumes was this young lady, the young accountant.
12:20
[SPEAKER_02]: and I looked at the little girl dancing horizontal in bed and I looked into the grill in the chest of the dolphin and there was the accountants little pretty face with all her mascara running down her cheeks and I thought
12:36
[SPEAKER_02]: I think I love this person.
12:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, we've been married, you know, 40 odd years.
12:44
[SPEAKER_02]: We've raised four kids together with three grandchildren and so when I say to young people, there are such huge advantages to getting outside yourself and trying to help other people and there's a chapter
13:02
[SPEAKER_02]: selflessness can be selfish.
13:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's a very good thing.
13:06
[SPEAKER_02]: There are such advantages, you know, seriously, you want to fall in love, you want to find someone to love you and that you can love.
13:14
[SPEAKER_02]: how are you going to do that?
13:15
[SPEAKER_02]: You're going to go to a bar and kind of interview people while both of you are drunk.
13:20
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not going to work out too terribly well.
13:23
[SPEAKER_02]: You're going to flip left and right on pictures that was strongly docked or in fact invented with AI.
13:29
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not what that person looks like.
13:32
[SPEAKER_02]: You're going to be disappointed at the coffee.
13:35
[SPEAKER_02]: If you want to find someone,
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[SPEAKER_02]: that's worthy of your time and attention, and vice versa, go volunteer, look to the left, look to the right, who are these people?
13:46
[SPEAKER_02]: They care about what I care about, and you now have something to talk about, and it's much easier and more straightforward, and you bond over,
13:57
[SPEAKER_02]: lifting up other people's lives or animals' lives or the planet's life or whatever rings you bell doesn't matter but you'll find people who agree with you and that's a good place to start.
14:10
[SPEAKER_01]: you know what a beautiful story.
14:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for sharing that and what great advice.
14:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I wrote the book that we waved the book.
14:18
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's called Finding Happy.
14:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I was going to call it, but then the publisher told me it was too long.
14:27
[SPEAKER_02]: I was going to call it what I know now that I wish I knew when I was 18.
14:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's kind of a book of life hacks because I realized a couple of years ago through first star, which is my third non-profit.
14:42
[SPEAKER_02]: which I form because I sort of stumbled on the fact that American foster kids don't go to college, less than 9% go to college against five times that in the general population.
14:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And I thought to myself, well, this ridiculous, it can't be because they're less intelligent.
15:02
[SPEAKER_02]: It must be because no one ever helped them to go.
15:04
[SPEAKER_02]: No one ever gave them the ladder.
15:07
[SPEAKER_02]: So I formed First Star and in the process of 20 odd years of First Star, I've mentored hundreds of younger adults, you know, 15 to 20 something years old.
15:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And I realized I have kind of pattern recognition.
15:26
[SPEAKER_02]: I know what they want to talk about.
15:28
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm being bullied.
15:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't understand the math.
15:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And they've gone past me and now I can't catch up.
15:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And what is the difference between a credit card and a debit card?
15:38
[SPEAKER_02]: All this stuff, which, you know, foster kids don't have good adults, generally in their lives.
15:45
[SPEAKER_02]: So I thought these are chapter headings.
15:49
[SPEAKER_02]: So I got up every morning at five o'clock in the morning and I started writing the book.
15:54
[SPEAKER_02]: When it came to the cover, I analyzed the prevalence of words and the more prevalent the word, the bigger the font we used on the cover, but there's also all the little words.
16:09
[SPEAKER_02]: which are in the book as well.
16:11
[SPEAKER_02]: So I finished the book.
16:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I illustrated it, I thought I can punch this up by talking about mad, crazy, funny, ridiculous, scary things that have happened to me.
16:25
[SPEAKER_02]: in the film industry, because I mean, it's a very vivid job making a film or sorts of mad things happen.
16:33
[SPEAKER_02]: So I did that and then I thought, well, I'll have to self-publish.
16:37
[SPEAKER_02]: But no, I got a book agent, the book agent went out.
16:40
[SPEAKER_02]: There was a little bit of a bidding war, Simon
16:49
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's caught finding happy.
16:52
[SPEAKER_02]: It's on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and whatever.
16:54
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's mostly fascinating to me.
16:58
[SPEAKER_02]: It's mostly being bought by grown-ups to give to younger adults that they care about.
17:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Because sometimes there's stuff
17:06
[SPEAKER_02]: which is very difficult for a mum or a dad or a grandpa or uncle Phil to talk about with a teenager.
17:14
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, they sort of don't want to be mentored quite often in their family, but there's stuff.
17:21
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, what a tragedy it is that in every generation, everybody has to make all the same mistakes to learn all the same lessons.
17:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Why don't we pass it down a bit?
17:32
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's what I've tried to
17:36
[SPEAKER_01]: That's wonderful.
17:37
[SPEAKER_01]: What a gift, uh, if you could give one piece of advice to your 18 year old self, what would it be?
17:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Get outside yourself and get outside your own problems.
17:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Go find someone to help.
17:52
[SPEAKER_02]: In first, uh, I'm really only qualified to teach two classes.
17:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I teach videography, because if I don't know how to teach that, nobody does.
18:03
[SPEAKER_02]: But the other thing, I invented a class that's called random acts of kindness and pay it forward.
18:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Remember that the, you know, 15 year olds, I'm teaching it to usually, um, they don't have two pennies to run together.
18:19
[SPEAKER_02]: So I say to them, okay, you're walking down the sidewalk and there's an old lady fast asleep face down.
18:27
[SPEAKER_02]: in front of you.
18:28
[SPEAKER_02]: You have three choices.
18:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Tell me why you do what you do and why people do the other two choices.
18:36
[SPEAKER_02]: You can stop and put a dollar under her arm.
18:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't wake her up or you can stop, wake her up and give her the dollar.
18:45
[SPEAKER_02]: or you can ignore her across the street, don't even look at her.
18:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Why do people make those choices?
18:52
[SPEAKER_02]: So it leads to a conversation about the golden rule that in life, as human beings, if we, you know,
19:00
[SPEAKER_02]: have a heart beating in our bodies.
19:04
[SPEAKER_02]: We are offended by asymmetry, by if things were out of whack, our human instinct is, I must do something about that.
19:15
[SPEAKER_02]: So then I say, there's 174 religions in the world.
19:22
[SPEAKER_02]: It's in the scriptures and commentary of every single one of them.
19:27
[SPEAKER_02]: This idea of putting yourself out
19:31
[SPEAKER_02]: to help other people.
19:32
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a truth.
19:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I say, what about an atheist?
19:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Would an atheist never
19:39
[SPEAKER_02]: put a dollar under the woman's arm.
19:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And they say, no, an atheist could have a heart and could feel that.
19:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And I say, who can tell me, what is the second law of thermodynamics?
19:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And usually in a class of 30 kids, there's like two.
19:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And they say, well, it's the one about entropy that in any closed system, if you don't apply external energy, your system will fall to bits.
20:05
[SPEAKER_02]: It'll end up in random,
20:07
[SPEAKER_02]: nothingness, and I say give me examples.
20:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, if you don't oil the engine in your car, eventually won't go round anymore.
20:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And I say, what about more abstract things?
20:18
[SPEAKER_02]: What about a family?
20:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, if you don't apply energy to and love to your family and help the other family members, you won't have a family that's worth having.
20:29
[SPEAKER_02]: and I say, what about something huge like a planet?
20:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you don't take care of, you know, the environment, it'll decay, and you'll lose Florida, and you know, with a rise of the polarized caps will melt and so on and so forth.
20:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And I say, now you want to come to the class tomorrow, because something shocking is going to happen to each one of you, usually 30 of them sitting there.
20:55
[SPEAKER_02]: and I say, you're each going to get $200 and they're sort of amazed.
21:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And I say, well, you don't get to keep it.
21:06
[SPEAKER_02]: You're going to write a $300 little essay to whom or to what you wish it to go.
21:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And they write the most amazing things.
21:18
[SPEAKER_02]: My name is Jose, I'm adding $10, because that's $210, which is $3,70, and $70 is what you pay down the human society for them not to use the nice adog.
21:31
[SPEAKER_02]: So I am gonna save three puppies and the reason I'm gonna do that.
21:35
[SPEAKER_02]: is that when I was down there last time I looked into the eyes of a puppy that they told me have been very badly beaten and I saw my eyes because I was very badly beaten as well.
21:47
[SPEAKER_02]: That's why I'm in foster care.
21:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Love Jose.
21:51
[SPEAKER_02]: My name is Sheila.
21:52
[SPEAKER_02]: My mum did terrible things and she's going to be imprisoned for another two years, seven months and three days.
21:59
[SPEAKER_02]: They always know exactly the period.
22:02
[SPEAKER_02]: And I still love her, even though she did the bad stuff, including to me, and I know she hates the shampoo.
22:11
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm going to put the money in her prison account, so she can buy better toilet trays.
22:16
[SPEAKER_02]: The interesting thing is we go and we do it, and then we go back a second time and see, you know, did the unhoused gentleman did he buy the shoes or did he buy a big bottle of brandy?
22:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Because we talk about, you know,
22:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, all of the people in the class are substantially taller.
22:40
[SPEAKER_02]: two months later as a result of this because to be in foster care is to be devoid of agency.
22:48
[SPEAKER_02]: You're not in charge of anything in your life.
22:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Suddenly they are encouraged to realize someone's worse off than them.
22:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And most importantly, they have the agency, the power that they can do something about it.
23:04
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's an enormous personal benefit as well as obviously it's
23:09
[SPEAKER_02]: good for the unhoused guy who needed in new parachutes.
23:12
[SPEAKER_02]: So my world goes around primarily by my realizing that everything I've put in and it's the work of thousands of people.
23:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, Starlight now is ginormous.
23:27
[SPEAKER_02]: We've raised over all these, it's 43 years old.
23:31
[SPEAKER_02]: We've raised in all our countries, in all our chapters and offices and whatnot, that's Australia, Canada, United States, UK.
23:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Well over a billion dollars, it's actually pushing a billion three now.
23:46
[SPEAKER_02]: We've helped millions of seriously ill children and their mums and dads.
23:50
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the work of thousands of people.
23:53
[SPEAKER_02]: I just, you know, started it and nurtured it and worried about
24:01
[SPEAKER_02]: that you kind of learn as a film producer, you know, every year it's a new project.
24:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Will I be able to tell the story of this?
24:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Will I be able to raise the money?
24:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Who's going to help me do it?
24:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it worthwhile?
24:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it vivid enough?
24:17
[SPEAKER_02]: How's it going to be distributed, you know, how, how, how, and you learn that stuff as a film producer, but what I stumbled into, thanks to my cousin, is that I could apply it lateral.
24:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I could carry the little red Sears robot toolkit that I had learned over and address some great big social challenge.
24:41
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, Edar, everyone deserves a roof.
24:44
[SPEAKER_02]: I met an old lady and in the street who didn't look to good and I said, where do you live?
24:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And she said, I'll show you and she took me sort of into the bushings off of the freeway on the wasteland.
25:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And there was this gigantic colourball box.
25:07
[SPEAKER_02]: and on the side of the cardboard box, it said sub-zero, and I thought, oh, that's the epiphany.
25:16
[SPEAKER_02]: I got the refrigerator.
25:18
[SPEAKER_02]: She's living in the box.
25:20
[SPEAKER_02]: So my first thought was, I will build a building.
25:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I know how to raise money and I will do a hundred beds and you know, get it out and all of that.
25:31
[SPEAKER_02]: If you run the math, it works out at $5 million to create a hundred bed building.
25:37
[SPEAKER_02]: That's $50,000 ahead.
25:41
[SPEAKER_02]: If you multiply the $50,000 with the unhoused population, just of Los Angeles, which about $100,000, you're looking for $5 billion.
25:51
[SPEAKER_02]: To house those people, I thought, now I dare how you raise $5 billion.
25:57
[SPEAKER_02]: They'll never be taxpayer.
25:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, you know, raise all the taxes to house the unhoused, $5 billion.
26:06
[SPEAKER_02]: So I thought, well, what would be the best that we could do with 600 bucks?
26:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Surely it would be much better than a damp car or box on a rainy night.
26:15
[SPEAKER_02]: So I tried to design this thing and I couldn't.
26:19
[SPEAKER_02]: So I thought, well, where do they design stuff?
26:23
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, toasters and automobiles?
26:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And I found a place called the Pasadena Arts Centre College of Design.
26:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And I went and met
26:33
[SPEAKER_02]: President Corshreck and I said, if I put up a little prize, could we have a competition of all the students for this thing?
26:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And I described it.
26:44
[SPEAKER_02]: I said in the daytime, you push it around.
26:46
[SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of like a big shopping cart in one sense.
26:50
[SPEAKER_02]: But at night, it's nothing like a shopping cart because you park it and you put the brakes on and you perhaps you let the front down and the back down.
26:58
[SPEAKER_02]: and what you've got there is a cot 7 feet off that's raised off the ground and that 7 feet long and it's covered so you don't get wet and keep the wind out and the little windows and and the whole thing has to cost less than $600.
27:17
[SPEAKER_02]: and we did it and then we found a metal fabrication shop and a canvas fabricator and we went through prototypes and we had a final time with then and then I ordered 50 of them and we got the Rand Institute to volunteer.
27:34
[SPEAKER_02]: There's students to study whether it was any good
27:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's called edr.
27:41
[SPEAKER_02]: It's on the internet edr.org edr.org stands for the acronym stands for everyone deserves a roof.
27:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Because President Corshack said to me, what do you want to call it?
27:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And again, I said, I have no idea what shall we call it?
27:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And by the end of the meeting, we said, well, everyone deserves a roof.
28:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, E-D-A-R, it's an E-D-R, and on the side of it in great big reflective letters on all four sides, opened and closed, it says E-D-R.org, because the theory of the thing which is a little bit true,
28:17
[SPEAKER_02]: is people see it in the street and they think, well, as a whole heck of a lot neater and tidier than what it replaces.
28:25
[SPEAKER_02]: So they sort of look as though they were designed by Mercedes-Benz, you know, they're good-looking things and people keep them speak and span, kids them a little bit of, you know, agency, pride of ownership, kind of
28:43
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what he'd are is.
28:44
[SPEAKER_02]: And I believe my seven non-profits have given me so infinitely more than I've ever given them, they make me happy.
28:57
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we just had a big reunion for the graduates of first-art who are now, because we started pushing them
29:07
[SPEAKER_02]: In ninth grade, we started 2012, so we've now got architects and engineers and all sorts of professionals, you know, making good lives, leaving behind abuse and neglect that was in that, you know, earlier childhoods, and they have a camaraderie, we don't do the camaraderie, they do it with each other, you know, get show someone,
29:34
[SPEAKER_02]: People roughly their age with the potential to be brothers and sisters, they'll make them into brothers and sisters and they help each other and they're deeply supportive and our alumni are so bonded together.
29:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, frankly, we're the least of it as, you know, we're, I guess, we're the parents kind of, but honestly, the kids are a phenomenon.
29:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Nothing, the matter with kids in foster care, a little bit of PTSD, maybe, but, you know, if you partner with big universities, they have a department of psychology.
30:09
[SPEAKER_02]: They have a school of psychiatry.
30:11
[SPEAKER_02]: They have social workers.
30:13
[SPEAKER_02]: They have everything that you need and by the time at one of these academies we've got 14 in the United States and three in the United Kingdom and each of them is a partnership with a great big university.
30:28
[SPEAKER_02]: By the time we've had the kids for four years from, you know,
30:36
[SPEAKER_02]: 89% of them go to college.
30:38
[SPEAKER_02]: How about that?
30:39
[SPEAKER_02]: That's 10 times the benchmark.
30:44
[SPEAKER_02]: I say, 9% of American foster kids end up going to college.
30:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, our kids, 89%, but think of this.
30:52
[SPEAKER_02]: That's twice the proportion that middle-class America sends its own kids to college.
30:59
[SPEAKER_02]: So huge success and all started with one, you know, little idea that they always do is like a film, you know, oh, that's a really good idea for a film.
31:13
[SPEAKER_02]: What would be the narrative?
31:15
[SPEAKER_02]: How would I pet you?
31:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Making a film is a ridiculous thing because you have nothing but your mouth.
31:22
[SPEAKER_02]: to persuade someone to give you $20 million to turn it into a film.
31:27
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm its absurd, and you often fail, and that's the other lesson is, and our culture teaches kids you mustn't fail.
31:36
[SPEAKER_02]: The opposite is true.
31:39
[SPEAKER_02]: You have to fail and learn from it and do better, and don't give up.
31:44
[SPEAKER_02]: I say to them, think of your life this way.
31:47
[SPEAKER_02]: You're in an envelope.
31:48
[SPEAKER_02]: It's dark.
31:50
[SPEAKER_02]: You're sitting there cross-legged in the middle.
31:51
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't know where the edges are, but you have a pencil.
31:55
[SPEAKER_02]: You can either just sit there and do nothing, and that's no good, or you can poke with the pencil.
32:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And sure, once in a while, you'll go through, and you'll say, whips, I will never be a concert pianist.
32:09
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not good enough.
32:11
[SPEAKER_02]: However, you have the privilege in your young life to pull the pencil back, find some other direction, poke away at that, maybe you'll be brilliant, you know, engineering or something.
32:22
[SPEAKER_02]: So there you go, the power of narrative and you have to be willing to fail.
32:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I have temporarily failed just in the last six months.
32:34
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought what a sensational idea it would be.
32:38
[SPEAKER_02]: If we had a thing called VillageAll.ai, which would be a special AI, sucking into it, the safe guidance from the world's great religions and indigenous wisdom and great literature and great philosophers, all to provide advice to
33:06
[SPEAKER_02]: young adults with a challenge.
33:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And I've been through two tech partnerships with expert experts.
33:15
[SPEAKER_02]: The technology is not there because each of them in turn said to me, how safe does it need to be?
33:22
[SPEAKER_02]: What is the proportion that you can tolerate of bad advice?
33:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And I said zero.
33:33
[SPEAKER_02]: We're not going to harm anybody.
33:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, you know, I couldn't stand it.
33:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And they said, so if one out of a thousand bits of advice would distract it, that wouldn't be acceptable.
33:42
[SPEAKER_02]: I said, correct, it wouldn't be acceptable.
33:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And most of them, separately, said, well, then the technology is not there.
33:52
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a wonderful thing.
33:53
[SPEAKER_02]: We built it, but we dare not unleashed it on the world.
33:58
[SPEAKER_02]: because it would do some harm.
34:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe it would only harm every 100,000th young soul that it advised.
34:08
[SPEAKER_02]: But there's litigation against chatGPT and the other big AI companies at the moment.
34:14
[SPEAKER_02]: who are prof, you know, guided by making a buck, nothing to matter with that.
34:20
[SPEAKER_02]: But the AI does this terrible thing called hallucinations where it just, if it doesn't quite know what to do, it just makes stuff up.
34:34
[SPEAKER_02]: and confronted with a kid saying, you know, I think my life is meaningless and I'm just incredibly depressed on thinking of ending it.
34:43
[SPEAKER_02]: If it transacts enough with the AI and this is why some of the litigation by bereaved families is going on at the moment for damages against, for example,
34:59
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's terrible and I said no zero tolerance to get it wrong.
35:05
[SPEAKER_02]: It's always got to make things better, but even more important than making things better, you know, you're being bullied.
35:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, we can help advise you on that.
35:18
[SPEAKER_02]: That's all good, but not at the expense that every
35:26
[SPEAKER_02]: because AI befriends you and makes you feel good that your choice is a good, but a young adult's choice is might be awful.
35:37
[SPEAKER_02]: So we know we're not going to encourage someone taking their life or cutting themselves or something awful like that.
35:44
[SPEAKER_02]: So the tech is just not there.
35:47
[SPEAKER_02]: So I've ended up with, you can see it behind me,
35:53
[SPEAKER_02]: I've ended up with an owl for my, you know, credenza at we're going to have to wait two three years before the tech is clever enough to be careful enough for me to be willing to unleash it on an unsuspecting group of young adults.
36:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much, you know, for sharing
36:15
[SPEAKER_01]: all of your stories and the advice.
36:18
[SPEAKER_01]: As we close, what message or words have encouraged me?
36:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Would you like to share with our listeners who aspire to make a positive difference in the world?
36:25
[SPEAKER_01]: But maybe I'm sure we're to start.
36:27
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, emotically, I would say, by the book, finding happy.
36:32
[SPEAKER_02]: because I don't know how to give enough, you know, life is complicated.
36:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's particularly complicated for young adults.
36:41
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, they wake up in the morning, they just barely survived the COVID.
36:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Estrangement from their community of friends and their school and so forth.
36:50
[SPEAKER_02]: They just were getting on their feet again.
36:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And now all of a sudden we've got this
36:54
[SPEAKER_02]: horrendous political polarization, and it doesn't matter what your politics are.
36:59
[SPEAKER_02]: They wake up in the morning and think, oh my God, half the country hates my guts.
37:04
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not a good feeling.
37:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And they realize I've got $1,000 of student debt and how am I going to... What do I do and how do I do it and...
37:14
[SPEAKER_02]: They can't always look, even the ones who are not in foster care.
37:17
[SPEAKER_02]: They can't always get the best advice from parents and grandparents and so forth.
37:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Help is on the way.
37:25
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's why I wrote the book.
37:27
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you modestly, it's not really a modestly, because honestly, every time we sell copies, I give copies to underprivileged kids.
37:38
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'll be delighted to come out of it even financially.
37:42
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm certainly not going to make money from it.
37:45
[SPEAKER_02]: because I just buy more books and give them to kids.
37:49
[SPEAKER_02]: So that would be one suggestion.
37:51
[SPEAKER_02]: But the other is the three chapters in the book, the meaning of life part one, part two, and part three, one at the beginning of the book, one in the middle, one at the end.
38:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And the one near the front, the meaning of life, I think chocolate ice cream, a big spoon, a tub of chocolate ice cream, something interesting to watch and no one to bother you.
38:15
[SPEAKER_02]: happiness or the meaning of life, I think is the chocolate ice cream, speaking personally, repeating, but long-term happiness and the meaning of life.
38:27
[SPEAKER_02]: The closest I can get is that you have to help other people.
38:31
[SPEAKER_02]: No one wants on their tombstone.
38:33
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the great irony of people measuring
38:42
[SPEAKER_02]: The guy who's a double billionaire desperately wants to keep up with the Jones isn't be a triple billionaire.
38:50
[SPEAKER_02]: What the heck?
38:51
[SPEAKER_02]: It's ridiculous.
38:52
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, after you've got one jet, why do you need another?
38:55
[SPEAKER_02]: How many yachts could you possibly need?
38:58
[SPEAKER_02]: I get our every so often to go and lecture to talk, to gatherings of what
39:12
[SPEAKER_02]: by a multifamily office company to the breakers hotel in West Palm Beach, and I said, what do you want me to talk about at this conference of ultra wealthy people?
39:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And they said, oh, the G3 effect and challenge.
39:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And I said, you mean like the airplane?
39:33
[SPEAKER_02]: They did no, no, no, no.
39:36
[SPEAKER_02]: G1 is
39:37
[SPEAKER_02]: who opened a store, made it successful, opened more stores, and by the time they retired, they had a thousand stores, and they'd made their family very wealthy.
39:50
[SPEAKER_02]: G2 are their children who got the work ethic from the parents.
39:55
[SPEAKER_02]: and who have gone through post-secondary education, they have MBAs and JDs and MDs and CPAs and all the rest of it, and they have built healthy families.
40:08
[SPEAKER_02]: G3 are the grandchildren who were born with the silver spoon in their mouths.
40:15
[SPEAKER_02]: and have never had to work hard, get lots of stuff just through entitlement, and they are lacking in a work ethic, they're lacking in motivation, they have substance abuse challenges, and they have enormous difficulty making sustained interpersonal relationships.
40:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Tell them what to do, so I did.
40:38
[SPEAKER_02]: I said, if you have a family foundation or if you don't have one form one,
40:44
[SPEAKER_02]: and have the grandchildren help give them money away, send them out to find where the money should go, have them with chaperone it and keep an eye on it.
40:55
[SPEAKER_02]: I make sure it's being used properly and highest and best, have them learn how other people live.
41:02
[SPEAKER_02]: And that is how they will find their way.
41:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And I still get emails from that particular conference.
41:08
[SPEAKER_02]: So apparently, some of that was good advice.
41:11
[SPEAKER_02]: So my advice here would be, get outside your own zone.
41:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't worry about the thing that's worrying you about you.
41:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Go help someone else.
41:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Watch what all the benefits are from that.
41:25
[SPEAKER_02]: They are wide and deep.
41:28
[SPEAKER_01]: That is wonderful advice, Peter.
41:32
[SPEAKER_01]: for the work you do, and for the way you model intentional responsible influence.
41:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Through storytelling, leadership, and service, your message is a reminder that influences and about scale alone, but about the ripples that we create through how we show up for others.
41:49
[SPEAKER_01]: If our listeners want to get in touch with you, what is the best way to do so?
41:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, there's a website, my website, which I built myself, so it's probably not the world's most,
41:59
[SPEAKER_02]: In fact, for website, but it's www.Samuelson, say, m-us-l-s-o-n-dot-l-a, like Los Angeles, no dot com or dot net or anything like that.
42:14
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just www.samuelson.l-a.
42:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And on there, there's an email link and there's stuff about my films, we didn't talk about them, but, you know,
42:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Return of the Pink Panther, Revenge of the Nerds, Arlington Road, Wild, Tom and Vive, all sorts of films.
42:34
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm up to number 27 now and I still do that because I love it and I know how to do it at this point.
42:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, but also all sorts of crazy stories, the film stuff is on the website, so are the seven non-profits and you know, a little bit of personal information, whatever I love hearing from people.
42:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Let me hear from you.
42:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Peter, we will put all that information as shown notes and thank you for the positive influence you are having on people all around the world.
43:05
[SPEAKER_01]: We're so grateful that you're able to join us today.
43:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
43:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And for our listeners, thank you for joining us on daily influence.
43:14
[SPEAKER_01]: You can learn more about Peter's work at his website, and we'll put that in link in the show notes.
43:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I hope today's conversation brought you insight and inspiration.
43:23
[SPEAKER_01]: If it's spoke to you, share it with someone who could use a little positivity today.
43:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Remember, small actions create big impact.
43:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Keep showing up, leading and growing one day to time.
43:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Until next time, stay inspired and keep having a positive,
43:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Bye-bye.