Rapid fire fun: Pinky Cole & Philippe Cousteau Jr. live from the Masters of Scale Summit

SAFIAN: Hey everyone, it’s Bob here. We’ve got a special two-part episode for you today, both parts recorded live at the invite-only Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco. They are two playful yet thought-provoking segments with two very different leaders.

First, we’ll hear from the founder of Slutty Vegan, Pinky Cole. I ask her four questions inspired by four provocative Slutty Vegan menu items, followed by a lightning round. In the process, Pinky shares great insights about how to capture consumer attention in today’s marketplace.

Next, I play the role of a potential investor, talking with ocean storyteller and entrepreneur Philippe Cousteau Jr. — grandson of the explorer, filmmaker, and inventor Jacques Cousteau. Philippe tries to convince me that I should invest in the oceans, to blunt climate change and also take advantage of untapped business opportunities. Philippe’s wit and passion deliver some really entertaining and important listening.

Now, let’s get to it! I’m Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.

[THEME MUSIC]

SAFIAN: So who could we possibly identify to bring up here and try to follow that tremendous act? Someone with just as much energy and just as much joy, and with a little bit of spark.

Are those the right words? I’m trying, Pinky. So, who’s going to join me up here is the founder and CEO of Slutty Vegan, Pinky Cole. So, Pinky, come on up.

We’re gonna have fun, right? All right.

PINKY COLE: Hi, guys.

SAFIAN: All right. You guys ready?

COLE: Can I just say really quick?

SAFIAN: Yeah.

COLE: We are here to imagine what the future looks like. I’m like, okay, I need to play that at home when I’m tired.

SAFIAN: We’re going to do this as a game. It’s gonna be a fast-paced game. I’m going to ask you four questions. Each one is going to be themed off one of the Slutty Vegan menu items, all right?

And then we’ll go to a rapid-fire round where I’ll give you one word or phrase in response to each of my prompts, okay? You ready?

COLE: Yeah, let’s do it.

SAFIAN: All right. Question number one, which is what I call ‘the one-night stand.’ That’s your signature bacon cheeseburger with slut sauce.

COLE: Yes.

SAFIAN: My producer wasn’t sure I would say slut sauce, so I just want to say it again: Slut sauce.

COLE: It’s a safe space.

Copy LinkCapturing consumer attention with edgy branding

SAFIAN: Now, obviously, you are not shy about grabbing attention, and you want Slutty Vegan to grow to be an even bigger national presence. But there may be some towns around the country that might not want to see the name Slutty Vegan across their main street. So, is that okay with you?

Like, do you want to win over those people, or do you feel like, well, that’s just not where we’re supposed to be then? Like those are not my people?

COLE: You know, it’s interesting. So I was just having a conversation in the lobby of my hotel just now, to be honest. And she was telling me about the wine industry.

And when she was telling me about the wine industry, she said she needed to fly to the winery because there has been a dip in sales, and she couldn’t understand why.

And I said, why is it? Is it because people who like wine, they like it in whatever condition, right? So I realized, I created a brand initially because I wanted to make vegan food accessible to people who otherwise couldn’t afford it.

But then I realized I started putting the food in places where people couldn’t afford vegan food, because naturally vegan food is more expensive, right?

So what I’m doing now is finding that healthy balance because the economy is turning, people are split down the middle. Half of the people stop eating because they’re stressed, and the other half start eating if they’re stressed, right? I don’t know which one it is, but you know, I’m both sometimes.

But now finding that healthy balance so that I can serve all people and create a universal brand where people who need the access get the access and the people that can afford it can come and enjoy the food.

SAFIAN: And if you’re put off by the word slut, do you just like, that’s enough? Either get excited or go somewhere else?

COLE: It ain’t for everybody. You know what I learned in business is either you’re going to love me or you’re going to leave me alone. And that’s really key, and it’s worked for the last six years so far.

Copy LinkAdvice for how to create viral moments

SAFIAN: All right. All right. Question number two. The Hollywood Hooker. That’s your chopped Philly steak with jalapeños.

COLE: Yes.

SAFIAN: You have to try it. They’re great.

So, social media technology is evolving so quickly. A lot of business people aren’t as confident as they would like to be about how to grab people’s attention.

You have created a lot of viral moments, lines around the block for your stores, pop-ups. Do you have advice for this group and others about how you make an impression, how you think about being able to do that?

COLE: Keep it real. What I’ve learned in business, I didn’t go to school for marketing, y’all. Can I be honest?

I was a producer for The Maury Show. I chased people around for a living, right? But what I learned from that is, I was able to meet people where they were.

Right. It doesn’t matter if you’re black, white, rich, or poor — got a lot of money or a little bit — like these people, you can learn something from everybody.

And as long as I can meet people where they are, I can create a safe space. And when I create that safe space, you want to tap into anything that it is that I’m doing.

So when it relates to marketing, being honest, being open, being real, being vulnerable, which oftentimes businesses don’t know how to do because vulnerability means that you’re weak, but that’s not the truth. Vulnerability means that you’re real.

And when you’re real, people want to stay connected to you because they understand that you’re human. And that is one of the keys that drives the marketing and will make people continue to come back.

SAFIAN: I mean, you also make it fun.

COLE: Yea, absolutely.

SAFIAN: You go into a Slutty Vegan, it’s like a party.

COLE: Yes, we’re calling you a slut.

Copy LinkCan personal branding distract consumers from the company?

SAFIAN: I know you’re going to have an eclipse soon playing in there. All right, question number three. The Fussy Hussy. That’s the name of another burger, The Fussy Hussy. Okay. So, you’ve said that Slutty Vegan made you into an accidental celebrity. Do you ever worry that the attention you get personally distracts from the business or distracts from the progress you want to make with the business?

COLE: Is this therapy?

Because it’s funny that you asked me that because before coming into this industry, I already had my dream job, right? So my idea was to create burgers and fries and help people to reimagine food. But then I realized people fell in love with the person behind the brand unintentionally.

So then I built my own community here by way of my personal brand. And the brand is continuing to grow. And they’re the same, but they’re not the same.

There’s a benefit to that and a curse to that. And I’ll be honest, the benefit here is that no matter what, you can always drive traffic from over here and bring it over here.

Right? Like it’s a give and take, so you’ll never have one without the other. But the curse is, and it could be a good thing. It’s an opportunity. The curse is when you’re creating and building a brand, you have to define which one it is that will make sure it is the bread and butter, right?

And as long as the bread and butter is safe, it will make room for every single one of those other things that you’re working on and trying to do. And that was a hard conversation I had to have with myself because it feels good for people to know your name and know everything that you’re doing, but at the end of the day, the business is what matters most.

Copy LinkWhere the name Slutty Vegan came from

SAFIAN: I mean, that choice of naming it Slutty Vegan, it like, it defined the brand in that one name.

Did you realize that when you picked that name?

COLE: I was sitting in my two-bedroom apartment, and weed was involved. This is an adult place, okay? Listen. I’m not by myself. But in that moment, I’m like, Oh, this is good.

That was good, but this is good, right? When you think about something that historically has just been so green and very clean, you’re like slutty vegan; these two things aren’t supposed to go together. But when I merge the two most pleasurable experiences in life, and that’s sex and that’s food — did you eat today? Did you … never mind. Anyway, when you merge those two things together, you come up with a recipe for people to ask questions. And if you can get people in and locked in, however you get them, now there’s psychology that happens. You can teach them what it is that you want them to know.

And I’m on a mission to be in the driver’s seat to help people see that vegan food can be cool and it’s not boring, and you can live a healthy lifestyle with vegan options.

SAFIAN: All right.

COLE: Yeah.

SAFIAN: All right. So question number four.

Copy LinkHow is Slutty Vegan a silent protest?

SAFIAN: So question number four, The Sloppy Toppy. That might be my favorite menu item name, I have to say. All right, you’ve described Slutty Vegan as a silent protest of sorts. Can you explain that? What is the brand protesting? What does the work represent?

COLE: That’s really good, you got good questions.

So let me, I’m going to be totally honest with y’all. As a Black woman pioneering a space where you don’t see many women, let alone Black women, in the hospitality space to scaling a business to this manner, right?

I have a, it’s almost like it’s a fiduciary responsibility. I have a responsibility to help bridge the race gap. Don’t ask me why.

I just feel like God just told me to do it. It felt good in my spirit, and I love to see people together.

So when I create this brand, this brand is just not for one type of people. I’m creating a brand for people who are older, people who are younger, people who are smart, maybe people who may not have had a lot of education for white people, for Black people, for Asians.

When you walk through the door, I don’t care about none of that. So, when you talk about protests, I met my husband. My husband also owns a chain called Big Dave’s Cheesesteaks. He’s scaling and franchising as well.

So when I met him…

SAFIAN: Just note that. Cheesesteaks and vegans in the same house.

COLE: Vegan. Don’t make sense. So, I met him during the George Floyd riots because somebody busted the windows out of his restaurant. So I reached out to him, and I asked him if he needed help. So it connected us. So what I realized is when people enter my space, they feel joy. Right? There is no color to joy. There’s no tax bracket to joy.

There’s no socio-economic background to joy. When you’ve got joy, anything is possible around you. Do you understand what I’m saying?

And if I can create that by way of a brand, even if it’s vegan comfort food that you’re eating, if I can create that and bring people together in the name of joy, then I know that I’m walking in my purpose, and I’m really helping to bridge the gap holistically.

Copy LinkRapid fire questions

SAFIAN: Well, thank you. This has been great. It’s time already for the rapid-fire round. So I’m going to read out a list of topics. For each topic, you say the one word or phrase that comes to mind. Are you ready?

AI.

COLE: Scared money don’t make no money.

That might have went over your head. Okay. Keep going.

SAFIAN: The presidential election.

Nobody wants to touch this, huh?

COLE: The presidential election, don’t expect to get any press from November 1st to December 31st.

Kamala, excuse me, I’m sorry.

SAFIAN: Elon Musk.

COLE: Skip.

SAFIAN: McDonald’s.

COLE: Slutty Vegan.

SAFIAN: Slutty Vegan.

COLE: Billion dollar concept.

SAFIAN: Pinky Cole.

COLE: That’s a lot of words.

Dynamic, pioneer, innovator, beautiful, mother, CEO, sister, friend, here at Masters of Scale, and one of the most powerful women in America.

SAFIAN: Pinky, thank you. That’s great.

Pinky does know how to keep it fun! But she hasn’t broken through the noise by accident. There is a considered, dynamic story that she’s spreading, and it’s working. She’s being an unapologetic version of herself. And we can all learn something from that. Coming up after the break, Philippe Cousteau tries to convince me to invest billions of dollars into the future of our oceans. Stay with us.

[AD BREAK]

Before the break, Slutty Vegan founder Pinky Cole talked about the responsibility she feels as a Black woman in the hospitality industry, the underestimated power of joy, and more. Now, I play a fun, fast-paced, Pardon the Interruption-style game with ocean storyteller and former Rapid Response guest, Philippe Cousteau Jr. And there’s plenty to learn. Let’s check it out.

All right, Philippe. Well, that, that, the video of the woman surfing was like perfect timing. Perfect introduction. Perfect setup. Perfect setup. We have not talked all that much at this event yet about sustainability and climate change. Philippe, you are the grandson of the legendary sea documentarian, Jacques Cousteau, and an advocate yourself for ocean exploration and investment. You believe passionately that oceans are not being invested in the way they should be. That we’re squandering opportunity.

What we’re gonna do is we’re gonna pretend that I am an investor with a lot of capital. And you have ten minutes to convince me to put that money toward the oceans.

PHILIPPE COUSTEAU JR: All right.

SAFIAN: So I’m going to ask you about six different topics related to oceans for each one. Sorry, five different topics.

I thought I had that wrong. And for each one, you’re going to have 90 seconds to answer. So it’s going to kind of be like, for those of you watching, pardon the interruption on ESPN.

It’s going to be a little bit like that.

COUSTEAU: I have notes, so I’m ready to keep it, keep it tight.

SAFIAN: All right. You’re ready to go. Yes. Or as we say, are you ready to dive in? All right.

SAFIAN: I know it’s terrible dad jokes.

Copy LinkOcean investment vs space investment

Let’s start the clock. Okay. Question number one. So investment in space exploration, a hundred times more than ocean exploration. Why is that? Like, what are we underestimating?

COUSTEAU: So listen, it won’t be a surprise. Of course, I’m a huge advocate of ocean exploration, and believe it should be our focus, but it’s not, as you pointed out, because much of the ocean still remains a mystery. It surprises a lot of people. We’ve mapped every crater on Mars, but have only explored about 20 percent of the ocean.

So that is our real frontier.

But we’re investing billions of dollars in the belief that in some magical future of space exploration for humans, or that we can achieve somehow multi-planetary life. It is nonsense from any perspective: scientific, technological, economic, biological. The hurdles to any serious human exploration of space are enormous.

And the rewards are paltry. Three years round trip to Mars? 10 times that to Europa, 500 billion of flights. Even if we sent a spaceship every single day for the next thousand years, we’d maybe save a few million souls. But what about the remaining 99.5 percent of the Earth’s population? And then, of course, there’s the issue of what we do when we get there.

Terraforming? Not possible. Who wants to live on Mars and eat potatoes for the rest of your life? Not me. So, we need to be thinking about how we invest in our oceans as the source of solving our problems.

SAFIAN: That was perfect. Wow. See? And you beat the bell.

COUSTEAU: Boom. I beat the bell.

COLE: Perfect.

Copy LinkCan our oceans help solve climate change?

SAFIAN: All right, number two, sea levels rising. Are the oceans just victims of climate change, or could they help in some way?

COUSTEAU: It’s a great question, and let’s level set here everybody, right?

The greatest threat to our planet is climate change, not AI. Climate change is an ocean problem. I’m going to say that again. Climate change is an ocean problem, and therefore we cannot solve the climate crisis without restoring and protecting the ocean, period. All too often, we look at terrestrial solutions like planting trees, but honestly, f*** trees.

So it should be a bluer future, not a greener future.

We have a bias to green and land because we’re terrestrial creatures. I get that. But instead, we should be thinking blue because nothing exists…

No green exists without the blue. To paraphrase a famous quote of politics, then think about this: it’s the ocean, stupid. Here’s the exciting part. The ocean is also a source of extraordinary economic potential and growth.

It’s our largest carbon sink. It creates most of our oxygen, provides food for billions of people. The Amazon may get the headlines, and it is a critically important ecosystem, but it roughly absorbs about 25 percent of the world’s carbon. The ocean is 60 percent. We keep on planting trees, but mangrove forests absorb six to eight times more carbon than terrestrial forests.

They benefit coastlines, they provide nurseries for fisheries that feed millions of people. So while we see the headlines about bleaching coral and collapsing fisheries and the like, while the ocean is a victim, it is also our greatest ally. And this isn’t just about protecting coral reefs. I warned Bob I’d go a little long on this one. It’s not about protecting coral reefs, whales, or fish for the sake of nature. It’s about doing it for the sake of humanity. I want to give you one quick example. In the1990s, Somalia was a failed state. Without a navy to protect its nearshore fisheries, illegal fishing fleets from Russia, China, the EU began pulling out hundreds of millions of dollars worth of fish every year.

The fishermen, who had made their livings, had fed their children off those fisheries, were now destitute.

They armed themselves to fight off these illegal fishing boats, and got money in return for those ships. The light bulb went off. Al Qaeda in the Maghreb, Al-Shabaab began arming these fishermen and enabling this piracy that has cost the global economy trillions of dollars, tens of thousands of lives over the last 30 years.

There’s a Department of Defense report that summarizes it simply at the end. It says, for a few million dollars of fisheries conservation investment, all of that. And now it’s happening again in Senegal and West Africa. We are fishing out communities, driving illegal migration into Europe, or driving those people into the arms of the terrorist organizations that are tearing the Sahel apart.

The oceans are critical, and if we don’t invest in them, we pay the price.

Copy LinkThe economic opportunity of the ocean

SAFIAN: All right, next topic. Can the byproducts of our ocean impact other industries, other areas, manufacturing, healthcare, like what else can we do with the ocean?

COUSTEAU: That’s a really important question because, as I mentioned just a minute ago, this isn’t just about protecting the ocean for the ocean’s sake. This is about recognizing that whether or not you care about climate change or altruism, whatever it is, the ocean is an enormous opportunity to make money and to secure our future at the same time.

Listen, feeding the world, global seafood markets are expected to reach close to a trillion dollars by 2030, with annual growth over 9%.

Currently, only 50 percent of that is based on aquaculture. The opportunity to grow and feed food and feed people in a sustainable, regenerative way is enormous.

Materials and construction markets could be turned on their heads through plastic alternatives from seaweed, from companies like Sway, or environmentally carbon-negative concrete pioneered by folks like Partanna. Ocean-based energy, pharmaceuticals — think that AZT, one of the early treatments for AIDS, was derived from a Caribbean reef sponge.

Financial markets regenerating and rebuilding coral reefs, like our company, Voyage C Ventures, can drive untold billions of dollars of investment. Because governments and individuals around the world are realizing trillions of dollars of real estate, hundreds of millions of lives, are on the line. Protecting those investments and lives is an economic opportunity that is worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

It cuts across innovation and growth in virtually every industry you can think of. The opportunity for investment in the ocean and extraordinary returns is enormous. On the flip side, the consequences are catastrophic.

SAFIAN: Alright…

COUSTEAU: Just under the wire, ish.

Copy LinkRevolutionizing ocean narratives in media

SAFIAN: All right. So you’ve often talked about how to capture the public’s attention about oceans. You need to have a good story. Hollywood, often stories about the oceans aren’t quite as compelling maybe as the stories about space.

How do you think about how Hollywood and our impressions of the ocean have been impacted?

COUSTEAU: Well, I always say that, Gene Roddenberry has a lot to answer for, and I’m friends with Rod, his son, who, by the way, is a big ocean guy. And listen, I grew up on TNG — any TNG fans in the audience, right? Come on, Picard the best, but the biggest challenge that the ocean faces is the fact that it’s out of sight and out of mind.

And frankly, we’ve been dreaming about the stars for millennia. And the ocean has been a black abyss below, which about 600 feet, it’s pretty much dark all the time. And it was really only 70 years ago, when my grandfather invented scuba diving, underwater cameras, and launched his eponymous television series and films that the world got a glimpse of the ocean. It’s been only a single human lifetime that we’ve truly been exploring the ocean. And frankly, space gets to cheat because the reality of space is nothing like the movies, but Hollywood has seized on this fascination of space and space colonization and created all these fictional narratives about how interstellar exploration is possible and can save the human race.

It’s absolute nonsense. We sit here on this extraordinary miracle of nature. William Shatner. I want to paraphrase him. You probably know he did the Blue Origin flight.

And when he came back, this is what he said: I turned my head to face the other direction to stare into space. I love the mystery of the universe, but I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there.

It’s down here with all of us. It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. Every day we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration. Instead, it felt like a funeral.

Copy LinkThe importance of solving climate change with ocean solutions

SAFIAN: So, so as our time starts to run out here, what do you want us to remember, like space, oceans, like what do we need to act on?

COUSTEAU: So I don’t want to continue talking about interplanetary lives. I want to close by speaking about your lives, the lives of your children and of your grandchildren. Theirs are the lives that we should be talking about, theirs are the lives that we can see, that we can touch—the lives that we should do everything we can to protect now. While near-Earth space operations do have value learning about and protecting this planet, the manned space exploration is hubris.

The gulf between investments in the ocean and our investment in space is insultingly enormous. But that is where the opportunity lies. What my family has been warning about longer than any other, the threats to climate and biodiversity that are now coming home to all of us are also wake-up calls to the enormous potential of space exploration exists if we invest in the systems that make life on this planet possible. Six years ago, my wife and I co-hosted a show for Discovery Shark Week. We returned to the Bikini Atoll, where in the 1950s, the United States detonated 23 nuclear bombs, destroying everything above and beneath the surface of the ocean for miles around. The worst fire and brimstone that humanity could engineer.

And yet, because of the radiation, it became a marine protected area, like a national park in the ocean for the last 60 years. And when we returned there, the thriving coral, the schools of 70 and 80 reef sharks swirling around us was like nothing I had ever seen. We had destroyed that area, but nature is resilient if we give it a chance.

So if you walk away with one message from this discussion, I want it to be: sustainability is bulls***. It has become an impotent byword for doing less harm. You are some of the smartest people in the world forging ahead with AI and social media. You’re creating enormous wealth and solving seemingly intractable problems, but none of that matters if we don’t solve this problem.

Instead of sustaining the way the world is with collapsing oceans, runaway climate change, disappearing biodiversity, climate conflicts, illegal migration driven by resource degradation, we should be investing in the technologies and innovations that regenerate and rebuild our world.

So help me help you. We are headed pell-mell towards three degrees of warming. And scaling solutions is a race against time that all of our lives depend on.

And I’ll end with a simple dream that my grandfather and father shared with me growing up: that every child born has the right to walk on healthy soil, to breathe fresh air and drink clean water in peace and security. That’s a vision that I hope we all share for our children. And the only path to achieve that vision takes us on a winding road to the wonders and opportunities of the ocean.

SAFIAN: Well, Philippe, I guess what I could say is, consider me an investor. I’m in. I’m in. Philippe Cousteau, everyone.

COUSTEAU: Thanks everyody.

SAFIAN: Yes, Philippe dropped an f-bomb on our Masters of Scale stage. But that’s only because he’s so passionate about the oceans and so anxious to get everyone’s attention focused on climate change. If the word sustainability really has become a weakened concept, then I hope the community of business leaders listening to this show can step up and breathe new life and urgency into it. As Philippe compellingly explains, you don’t need to be an altruist to get excited about oceans in the same way we do about space. You just need to open your eyes to the opportunities here on our home planet that are being underleveraged. Facing climate change isn’t necessarily about scrimping. It’s about abundance, an abundance in blue that is all around us. I’m Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.