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How Mick Ebeling And Not Impossible Labs Are Transforming Lives For The Better

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Not Impossible Labs

Mick Ebeling by all accounts was having a pretty good life. As president and CEO of The Ebeling Group, which dealt with branded content creation, design and animation and general think-tank for film, television and advertising industries, he had the chance to work on slick advertising and James Bond films. But deep down inside, he felt like there was something missing in his life.

“I guess the motivation came from the fact that I felt that there was a bigger calling for me. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I just felt like I had these superpowers within my own business. We were a multinational production company, we had offices all over the place and things were going amazing -  but there was something that I just wasn’t feeling and that was inspiring me to continue being an innovator. That’s what The Ebeling Group had done along the way as we really innovated the business that we were in, animation and production design.

But something changed one day when Ebeling met a graffiti writer, called Tempt One, who was paralyzed by ALS; and learned he hadn’t created anything in seven years.

“I accidentally met this paralyzed graffiti artist and we decided to commit to making a device that we had no business making for him called the Eyewriter. I just went into producer mode, the thing that I do all the time; I bring brilliant people together and we all collaborate and figure out what is it that we can all contribute to creating some type of solution. Then lo and behold, we finish this thing up and it works. We were psyched; using only his eyes, he drew again for the first time in seven years. Many weeks later, we got an email from TEMPT saying, ‘That’s the first time that I’ve drawn anything for seven years. I feel like I had been held underwater, and someone finally reached out and pulled my head up so I could take a breath.’”

Not Impossible Labs

This may have been reward enough for Ebeling and his team of mad scientists, but unexpectedly the world took notice of what they had created.

“All of a sudden we woke up one day and it’s Time Magazine’s Top 50 inventions of the year. The world just went bonkers over this thing.  I started to get invited to TED talks, and it’s announced that the Eyewriter will be part of the permanent collection of MOMA, and I’m thinking… wait a second. All the work I did for James Bond films, major campaigns had never had this typ e of resonance in the market. So I said, ‘Maybe there is a real need for this. Maybe people are hungry for the stories of good being done, not for any other reason but just a human wanting to help a human.’ That was a moment of clarity for me.”

The next project that Ebeling decided to work on had an even more powerful personal resonance for him as a father.

“I read an article in Time magazine, about this young boy named Daniel in the South Sudan who’d had both of his arms blown off in a bombing. When he woke up and realized that he was a double amputee, he’d said, ‘If I could die, I would. Because now I’m going to be such a burden to my family.’  At the moment I was reading this, it was late at night; and down the hallway my little boys were asleep. I couldn’t fathom one of my little boys saying, ‘I wish I were dead because I’ll be a burden to my family; I don’t want to be a burden to mom and dad.’”

Ebeling drew on a mindset that he had developed in his years of being a producer that he calls ‘Commit and Figure It Out.’

“So I what I learned during the Eyewriter is now this absolutely essential part of what we do.  We call it “Commit and figure it out.”  The thing that it is funny but very indicative is when you think in a producers mindset, ad agencies or movie producers come to you and they say, ‘We need this, it needs to be this amount and we need to get by tomorrow.’ And you respond, “Yeah, no problem!’ Then you hang up the phone and say, ‘OH NO…what am I going to do?’ Then you just scramble and figure it out.  So I read Daniel’s story and I was both dumbfounded and appalled by the fact that this boy will never be able to feed or clothe himself again.  So I said, ‘Alright! Geronimo! Let’s do it.’”

Not Impossible Labs

Ebeling and his team flew to South Sudan and set up a 3-D printing lab, a somewhat Quixotic journey that came with its fair share of obstacles.

“We could not have run into more roadblocks metaphorically and literally! We had to cross over checkpoints into enemy-controlled territory in North Sudan, we had planes that were canceled, we had electricity surges ….you name it, it went wrong.  But four months to the day after I’d first read that article about Daniel, he fed himself for the first time in two years. The smile he had on his face when he fed himself, was truly one of the most amazing images I have ever witnessed in my life.”

“In the end, we launched the world’s first 3-D printing prosthetic lab and we did it in a war-torn country that’s completely off the grid.  No running water. No sewage. Nothing modern.  We just did it. The most important part is that we trained others so they were able to keep making arms after we left.”

This inspiring story doesn’t end there. For the first time, Ebeling is able to unveil what happened to Daniel afterward. “After leaving in November 2013, I took my family, my wife and three kids back to the refugee camp in 2016. We deployed a new prototype arm solution and started to train people on other approaches to making arms. We also managed to get Daniel, his brother and his friend out of South Sudan, and enrolled in a private school in Kenya. Just yesterday, we got pictures of him in his uniform, swimming, singing.  He speaks beautiful English.  All three of them have these incredible dreams and it’s amazing to witness them coming into their own.”

Not Impossible Labs

All of these experiences made Ebeling realize that he had to focus full-time on following his purpose. So he created Not Impossible Labs, which is a hybrid of an innovation lab and a storytelling studio that creates, what he calls “technology for the sake of humanity.”

“Not Impossible is a brand new business model, and it’s a mash-up. We are a technology innovation lab that’s focused on creating things around social good. But it’s focused entirely on solving ‘Absurdities.’  It’s the conquering of these social absurdities that drives us. An example of an absurdity is when you see something in the world and you say, ‘That’s absurd, that shouldn’t exist!’  Like a man (say, Tempt One, the graffiti writer) who been lying motionless in bed for seven years, unable to communicate. Or a young boy who has both of his arms blown off, and is destined to never be able to feed or take care of himself again -- that’s absurd. We have to change that. So it’s all a reaction to human absurdities and then saying, ‘Hang on, that must change!’ Then, with our team of staff and volunteer engineers, programmers, makers and hackers, we dogpile on, creating a solution. That’s the innovation lab part.”

“Now the second part is figuring out how to support and scale the solution we created.  My last name isn’t Gates or Buffet so I figured out how to leverage my past, which is creating and selling content. So brands and companies license our content, license the story as we tell it about the innovations we are creating. They love it! It’s an amazing exchange. Brands get amazing, heartfelt, emotional content that is genuine to who they are as a company.  It usually isn’t just, ‘Write check to us and walk away,’ either. Typically, companies want to get into the sandbox to play and build with us.”

Not Impossible has created compelling partnerships with companies like Avnet, which sponsors the Not Impossible Awards, as well as an eclectic group of other large companies and brands like Blue Cross Blue Shield, Zappos, Northwestern Mutual, Charles Schwab, Juniper Networks, Life is Beautiful, No Barriers USA, National Grid, and others.

Ebeling sees a win-win situation for the brands and companies that work with Not Impossible.

“I talk a lot about ‘enlightened capitalism.’ Enlightened capitalism is when you start to think about your business from the perspective of, ‘if I do good it’s actually good for my brand, it’s good for our perception in the marketplace, it’s good for growth, it’s good for recruiting and retaining people… it’s good for shareholder value.’ Now you’ve got business driving change, as opposed to slow, broken, bureaucratic government.”

“Brands are people, right? They are made of people and if the people believe in something bigger than just their goods or services, then they resonate what their values are, and values come from what people truly believe.  A friend of mine, who is a CFO of a Nasdaq listed company, sums it up perfectly: ‘If doing good means that I have a more passionate and committed workforce, then I know for a fact I'm going to make money because they are going to be more engaged and productive. They are going to work harder, better, faster because they are more inspired and excited to stay.  So if we have less turnover, they are more enthused to work and they are more engaged in what they’re doing, then there is a direct and measurable financial correlation to being a more profitable company and continuing to do good.’”

Ebeling now wants to take the positive energy and momentum they have created around Not Impossible and scale it to inspire even more people to take action. Part of the offering is the Not Impossible Podcast which is now available to listen here. “This year we launched a podcast to begin to tell the stories of about other people solving absurdities,” he says.

The episodes are truly amazing: from a mountain-climbing engineer, who lost his legs and now climbs with prosthetics, to virtual reality technology that helps veterans deal with PTSD; from the heartbreaking story of a seven-year-old boy losing his sight and hearing but gaining ‘superpowers’ from a suit that Not Impossible created, to a vibrotactile suit that helps deaf people ‘hear’ at concerts. The stories are inspiring and the whole series is well worth a listen.

Not Impossible Labs

One of the important principles Ebeling tries to preach is that innovation can come from anyone, anywhere, anytime.  He calls it ‘Remind, Not Inspire.’

“Every time I get up on stage, I just tell our stories. I don’t get up there and preach. I don’t get up there and tell people how they need to change their lives. All I do is say, ‘There’s a bunch of punk rock, Robin Hood hackers and makers and skateboarders in Venice Beach and we’ve decided to use our talents to try to do good in the world and here are our stories.’ People come away and say, ‘We want to work with you. We want to do something with you. Let’s partner.’”

“I truly believe that innovation is everywhere and that one of Not Impossible’s roles is not to inspire people but to remind people that they already have the ability to do amazing things. Some people have just been ground down, or believe they’re just cogs in the system. People need to be reminded that they have the potential to do it. Our job at Not Impossible is to remind people that they already, and always, have it in themselves.”

The belief that innovation can come from anywhere is what drives the Not Impossible Awards, which are designed to shine a light on great inventions happening around the world. The 2018 Awards included such marvelous innovations as a pen that can help detect cognitive impairment linked to Alzheimers, Parkinsons, and dementia; a toy that can teach braille concepts to children as young as toddlers; and an off-grid box that can provide renewable energy and treated water in disaster areas in less than three hours. You can find them all here and entries are now open for the 2019 Awards here.

At the end of our conversation, Ebeling is just as ebullient as ever.

“We have figured out a way to self finance so that we can be driven by our goals, our morals, our ethics, our vision and our mission which is, ‘Change the world through technology and story.’ There’s nothing else on this planet that I need to do besides this, and this snowball continues to gain momentum.  Since that point there’s up-days and down-days, there’s struggles because we figured out that one of our missions is to show and prove to the world -- from kids to students to graduate students to MBAs to doctors -- that it’s very possible to “Do good and do good” You can do good financially, you can do good as a business, you can do good as a person and you can do good in the world. When more people realize that they can create a successful and profitable business, based on this concept of starting with doing good, then we will have fully fulfilled the purpose of Not Impossible.”

Entries for the 2019 Not Impossible Awards are now open here.

 

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