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[Deepak Chopra] I'm Deepak Chopra, and you're watching "One World with Deepak Chopra," and
we're bringing this program to you from Deepak Homebase in New York City. This is my world
headquarters for everything media wise. We have a healing centre in California, of course,
as well. Welcome to the show and my special guest today is Chris Burch. Chris Burch is
known as one of the most creative investors in the world. So we'll talk about that but
we'll talk about many other things so you actually get to know him. Chris, thanks for
joining us today. [Chris Burch] Love being here.
[DC] So why are you known as this amazing, creative investor?
[CB] Well, I've been real lucky in that I've met incredible people, and I've been able to invest
in them, and it's instinctual, and I think it comes from my childhood. It's actually like being invested in creative people, is not actually about
money, it's about the human being. [DC] So tell me a little bit about your childhood.
You said it comes from your childhood. [CB] Yeah, so I grew up outside of Philadelphia,
kind of an upper class family. One of the most challenged young men ever. I was... I
had terrible, terrible learning disabilities. ADD, HDD, every DDD that you can possibly
have, a massive bed-wetter, and a guy that would have tremendous panic and anxiety as
a little boy. My brother was much brighter than me, and perceptionaly so, and my other
family members, but I had a lot of love from my mom and dad, but nobody back then actually
knew what was wrong. So every day that I would go to school, I wouldn't be able to focus
or concentrate. No one knew kind of what was wrong. [DC] I'm trying to figure out the
connection between that and your creative investing, but go on...
[CB] I would then end up at night, I would end up at night going into a closet with a telephone, and I would call
Talk Radio, and I would talk to Barry in Philadelphia WWDB, and I would listen to the voices of Philadelphia.
So when most children were at home, listening to dreams, every single night from about 11
o'clock to 3 in the morning, I would listen to different voices and those voices would
be people, from the woman smoking, to the guy that loves sports, to a guy that talked
about stories, and that allowed in a very important part of my brain, to actually understand humanity,
to understand vulnerability, and to understand why people tick. That ability to listen outside
of myself is the only reason that I've been able to creatively invest in great people,
or ideas because I'm so curious. It's genetic, it's emotional.
[DC] It was your, not only was it an escape, it was a refuge for you, connection to the bigger world, and it
was therapy at the same time. [CB] Yes, and it was the only way in which
I actually could feel good about myself. I actually would crawl into the closet to feel safe,
and I didn't know what was going on. No one knew what was going on, but that was my refuge.
[DC] You know, these days there's a lot of talk about the power of vulnerability because
when you're not afraid of being vulnerable, you open yourself up to the larger zeitgeist,
so to speak. It imbues you with collective consciousness in a way. So tell me, what was
your first big investment? What was your first... [CB] So I, in prep school, I went to the prep school
in New England. I was doing little businesses, but in college... [DC] So you got to prep school with all those
disabilities, huh? [CB] Very unlikely, I went to the worst prep
school in America, and I actually just, fortunately was able to get back a little to that prep school, and
I was decent athlete, so I stayed in, and the, it was a small prep school in New England, kind of helped to save me, Tilton School. And then I went on
to Ithaca college where I started my first business, which was selling sweaters, door-to-door
on college campuses. That business was very exciting, I had a number of businesses, and I
turned that into a business right out of college, which I did monogram sweaters and preppy clothing
and all sorts of different things. [DC] You're pretty preppy right now.
[CB] I'm very preppy. [DC] Shoes, extraordinary shoes, no socks,
a suit. [CB] I have many pairs of shoes. I have, like,
50 pairs so I try to come up with good expressions. So that's how I did it, that's
how I got it. My creativity actually was, "What does consumer want?" And, "What's missing
in the market place?" And, "How do we link it?" And that's what I do a lot of today. It's
like linking. [DC] You created the Tori Burch brand, right?
[CB] Tori and I created it together. We're very lucky, you know. Tori was very, very
interested in... [DC] And that's worth several billion dollars
now, right? [CB] Yes, very. It's worth a lot. I don't like to take.
I actually think all businesses are collaborations between great people, and actually Tori is an amazing
person, highly creative, a tremendous visionary. [DC] I met her actually. [CB] She's special. [DC] At a fundraiser a
while ago. [CB] Oh, did you? She's very special, and just the combination
kind of worked. I had the business side of it. I had a lot of creativity as well, and I had
the consumer instincts because I built a pretty large site before in apparel, but it's also
the people that Tori was able to attract around her and some of the people I was. It's that
1+1=100 and that's what I look for when I look to invest in extraordinary people. And
I look at that childhood and I spend a lot of time not thinking about numbers. I invest
in extraordinary people that may have vulnerability, that may have creativity...
[DC] So does it all have to do with fashion, apparel? Other things...
[CB] No, everything, say, your bracelet right there, that the Up bracelet. [DC] Oh, the Up Bracelet. [CB] I'll tell you a story about
that. So good example. [DC] You invested in this? Because I have
a program with this coming up which I wanna tell you about.
[CB] So Hussain walked into my office and I put up all the capital for Job on a Jambox,
and I've invested all the way through them. They just came to me, two young guys, and
they said, "We have idea for a headset." And I invested, and I gave them three and a half
million dollars, I think at the time, and I invested all the way through the ups and the
downs. And now... [DC] It's the up now. [CB] Now it's the up and also Jambox has done very well, which is music. So I like to
invest in extraordinary individuals that just instinctually hit me, and then I also like to invest in incredible
products. [DC] So let me tell you, I actually have a
meeting scheduled with Hussain. [CB] He's great. [DC] And his partner, Alexander, whom you must know. [CB] Yeah. Yeah. [DC] Here's my idea
-- you know, half the world is suffering from obesity and diabetes, the other half is malnourished.
So what I'm doing is a calorie exchange. For every pound that you lose, somebody gets fed
in Africa and India and other parts of the world. [CB] And Samba. [DC] And Samba. Okay, we'll talk about that.
[CB] That's actually great. I love it. [DC] Then we give this as a gift to people, who sign on to help feed the hungry in the world. So like
people have a carbon footprint, we're going to create a calorie footprint.
[CB] I love it. I think it's actually, as you know... [DC] And we're calling this "Weightless",
by the way. The Weightless Program. [CB] Have you met with Hussain?
[DC] I've met Husain, but I have a meeting scheduled.
[CB] He's an amazing guy. I love him, and he's also a really good heart guy. I actually,
that would be an extraordinary project for this.
[DC] Can you give him a call for me? [CB] Yeah, I'll call him tomorrow.
[DC] Tell him, you know, I wanna talk to him about this.
[CB] Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a really good friend. I'm not really involved with him in all the businesses
today, but we're very close. So that gives me tremendous joy and I have numbers of them,
whether it's Voss Water, or it's Color Kinetics in LED lighting, and now Powermat which is
gonna change the world of power and technology. [DC] All these new technologies. [CB] So Powermat, we're now doing, actually
we should talk about how we can exchange the power of recharging your battery with the
power of love and perhaps we can help in many ways but there's no ambiguity that will work, and Hussain is
an amazing person. [DC] What other investments? So you've got
all these technology investments, you've started with apparel and fashion...
[CB] Well, I get very lucky, and remember everything comes out of people for me. So if I meet that
person, if I send out the emotion, I was the first you know, I put the capital up for Guggenheim capital,
and I'm fortunate that I sold that. I was fortunate in hotels. I built the Fiana hotel
with Allan Fiana, who's another incredible genius in Argentina. My dear friend, Louis
Dubin, who happens to be here actually warned me not to do it, and he was probably right,
but I just got lucky. So I invested in hotels. I'm investing all over the world but everything
I wanna do has to be extraordinarily disruptive. And it's people, it's all people.
[DC] Yeah, you seem like a very disruptive guy to me, but listen, there're a lot of people
watching us, and a lot of them these days are social entrepreneurs, they wanna go into being
entrepreneurs, but they also want to make a difference in the world. What advice do you have to a
young person, who's just in college, or just getting out of college, and they want to be
really cutting edge entrepreneurs, but they want to make a difference?
[CB] Well, I think that they should be actually not fraudulent, at all in their hopes. So I've actually, finally,
found my passion at the age of 60, but nothing that I would ever do would be to be fraudulent
to my customers. So if they have a belief in something they care deeply for whether
it's cancer, or whether it's organic food, or whether it's helping people that don't
have enough that has to come from their heart, they then need to tie that to a brand, or to
a product. So I just invested in a really good company that does organic cereal. Then
when you plant a box, it grows a thing, Little Ducks Organic. He's an amazing guy, he's got a real vision how
to give back to children. So I think it's really important to figure the business model
out, figure out where within that business model you can help the society and then do
it. So I actually I love the Paul Newman, I really think that... [DC] That's a good group. [CB] It's a great model because they gave a 100% away. In many cases
I don't think he, or the group got the credit that they were due because amazing. So, I think entrepreneurs
can't do that. [DC] You know, I frequently go to Silicon
Valley just to brainstorm on ideas, on technology and well being, technology and neuroscience,
technology and the new genomics and all of that, the combination, the coming together
of bio technology, nano technology, information technology, cognitive technology. But I'm
sitting in the restaurant, next to the bar, listening to all these people who
are coming and doing pitches, and they start to talk about exit strategy even before they
come up with a business plan. What do you think of that?
[CB] I actually think, I love you brought this up. It's my number one thing. If any
one ever talks to me, ever about an exit strategy, I have no interest. There is no exit strategy.
There's a customer strategy. I really think it's foolish, and I think it's not the way. When I look at a business,
I look at an entrepreneur, I think 25 years out. I never thought when I invested in Hussain,
I never thought when did Liquipel which is the new... [DC] So you're not looking at the money right away?
[CB] Never. [DC] Which is what most investors do. Don't
they? What's it called? Return on investment, right?
[CB] Yeah, I don't even. And by the way,I think it's a very foolish way to do, and I hate copy cats, so be disruptive,
be creative, do things differently, but the exit strategy is not, it should be... and by the way, it's taken
me a long time to learn this. We didn't have exit strategies, when I started.Vision 25 years
out, create a brand in your head, work every day to get to that 25 year number, and the
exit strategy will take care of itself. Tori and I never started our business thinking about
selling it. We only started our business to make an amazingly, unique product for the
customer. [DC] Good to know. So all of you young people
were thinking about making money. Money is the by-product of your passion for greater
good. Is that what you're saying really? [CB] It's totally a by-product of every aspect
of your life. It's circular, it's not one thing. So try to really understand yourself,
your real ability, and don't be delusional, and certainly don't be ego-maniacal.
[DC] You have a new property, somewhere off the coast of Bali, a new resort.
[CB] Yeah. I'm very fortunate. I'm coming late to actually giving in the way that I would like
to give. Actually from my heart and from my passion. I've always given money away to all
the different charities and things like that, but I've never felt this kind of emotion and
somehow I got lucky and ended up on an island of Samba, and I was fortunate to buy a resort
called Neowatu, and Samba is the forgotten island in Indonesia. It's the size of Massachusetts.
It's large, and it's 400 years back in time. [DC] Wow. 400 years back in time?
[CB] At least. Maybe more actually. [DC] So you were watching social evolution
taking place right before your eyes. [CB] Very quickly, and very good and very bad.
I love what you said because you went back to Hussain and you said, "We wanna give food
away on one side, and we want people to be healthy on the other". Samba's the greatest
example of that, and I think about this a lot. We, in New York and we, all over the world
wanna lose weight and wanna be healthy and wanna have a healthy side. In Samba, they
just need a little bit of protein. They have no protein. They eat a vegetable in the ground
and they actually don't eat many times a year and particularly when there's no rain. So
I think it's quite a dichotomy of your brain because...
[DC] Well, lets bring the weightless program to Samba.
[CB] I think it'd be an amazing program. I'd love to help sponsor it. I'd love to help
feed these kids and more importantly feed the adults. [DC] We'll do it. [CB] I think it's really exciting.
[DC] Tell me a little bit more about Samba. [CB] Well, Samba is the most beautiful island
in the world, in my opinion. It looks very much like what you would imagine out of an
island back in the 30s and 20s that you saw in movies. It's got serene water falls, beautiful
people, amazing birds, most fish in the world and particularly spear fishing, and fishing. It's got the
best surf wave I the world. It's got, we're building beautiful spas, but more importantly, the people trade. So
there's no money. There's over 480 tribes. [DC] Unbelievable. [CB] They trade their animals, and you can't get
married in Samba unless you have a water buffalo. So your daughter is very valuable to you and
many my people that worked for me, she came in with the biggest smile in the world
because she got 4 water buffalo, seven horses, but she wanted me to know that on her wedding
day, her husband would bring 10 more water buffalo, and actually I get goose-bumps because she
made her daddy happy, she was in love with her man but it was all a society of animals
because again protein rules. So there's really no money there. There's nothing but trading
but there's still tremendous joy. [DC] A barter economy, eh?
[CB] All barter. [DC] So what are your plans with this resort?
[CB] We're gonna build four more resorts on the island. We wanna protect the island
if possible. We're working with the Indonesian government to build something very special
for them. We wanna try to preserve the beauty of the 400 years back in time. We don't want
it to be the Miami beach or the Bali or whatever, we want it to be pure and beautiful, so...
[DC] What's the resort called, Chris? [CB] Neowato. [DC] Neowato. [CB] But we're building an organic
resort for families to come so they can live just like the Sambanis and farm their own
gardens. Do spear fishing, have somebody help them where the animals live underneath them,
we're trying to build an integrated sports resort where we can bring sports athletes
around the world. [DC] Let's bring a well being centre there.
[CB] I would love, I've thought many times of that, if we, I would love to bring one and more importantly I'd love to have the clarity of this environment
to help us all be sort of healthy. As you can see I'm not as healthy as I should be.
[DC] Connection with nature. [CB] Yeah, it's actually way beyond connection
with nature. You probably know more about this, but I was sitting in front of this water
fall that no one, no white people ever get to see and it was hundreds of thousands of birds there,
almost to the beat of the waterfall and that was extraordinary to me.
[DC] So in the last 2-3 minutes, I wanna do what I like to do. That's my thing. I wanna
do a soul profile on you. Are you okay with that?
[CB] Anything. [DC] So I'm gonna just ask you a few questions
and I want you to say one or two words. No more.
[CB] Okay, that's gonna be tough for me but. [DC] But try.
[CB] Okay. [DC] Who are you?
[CB] Big heart. [DC] What do you want?
[CB] Nothing. [DC] What's your life purpose?
[CB] To be loved and love others. [DC] What will be your legacy?
[CB] Sweetness. [DC] What's the most joyous experience you've
ever had? [CB] Moments with my children.
[DC] So what's unique about you? What are your unique talents? Other than investing.
[CB] Empathetic linking. [DC] So you started with that in your childhood
with the radio, huh? [CB] Very linking.
[DC] What do you look for in a relationship? [CB] Trust.
[DC] Do you believe in a higher intelligence? [CB] Yes.
[DC] Well, thank you, Chris. Good to know you.
[CB] Thank you very much, I enjoyed the meeting. I'd like to thank you and it was very enjoyable.
[DC] Thanks. I'm Deepak Chopra and we had Chris Burch and I hope you learned about investing
and about the human connection, about creativity and about making a difference.