Jeremy Weisz
I want a T shirt that says you can’t see atoms.
Dr. Hoby Wedler
Oh, man.
Jeremy Weisz
Everyone in the science camp needs a T shirt. They do that says see atoms.
Dr. Hoby Wedler
If I had known you, when we had the whole the whole science camp going, and you’re gonna be my marketing guy. There you go. Absolutely.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah. I was one point and someone told you couldn’t do something. I want to I want to keep on that trajectory. But I want to go back actually your parents and On the flip side, your parents had high expectations for you pushed you What was it was a point where they pushed you and you got frustrated. Like, I can’t do this and they just pushed you they were not going To accept that from you,
Dr. Hoby Wedler
you know, we would. So first of all, they’re very understanding people and, and they but they did, they did, you know, want us to do well, so it was all about them doing exactly what they wanted us to do. So they would, you know, my dad worked as a as a manager of the basically power transmission system up and down the state of California and you need to be at work, you know, 12 hours on 12 hours off, sometimes days, sometimes nights. And the other thing is, we would always do all our own work on the house. So my brother and I became carpenters, plumbers, electricians, all that while growing up, and that was our parents way of teaching us how to do stuff, which is just awesome. So it was not abnormal to get done with school, work on homework. And as a blind person, you know, homework might, you know, schoolwork might take a little bit longer. And I really figured that out when I was in grad school. But you know, things things take longer. So I come home from school, spend four or five hours on homework at night, and then go out and work on the house for you know, three to four hours and then spend all day every day on weekends, either working on the house or doing homework, and sometimes it just got to be too much like guys, I got a, I got to be able to just, you know, get this work done. And I’m sorry, I didn’t say I’m sorry. But it kind of takes me longer, and I should be able to have the opportunity to get just just get my work done. And then and then relax, relax a little bit. They kind of said, No, dude, we’re all working this hard. And then my brother, I think had some of that for some of that family for himself too. And you just power through man, if you push yourself through just a lot of hard work, you get, you get good at hard work, and it doesn’t feel like work anymore. And you just plow through and, and life is about hard work. And it’s set a good example. So it’s not, this is what’s so great about my parents, or why I never really felt like they were pushing us super hard. He’s because they, he worked just as hard. So if they set the work ethic, and we just matched it, you know, but that was I often got frustrated when they would try to describe to me that I was that I was blind and that, you know, I would do thing, I still be successful. But I’d have to do things differently. It’s like, you know, first few years of my life, I didn’t really until I think I was about 10 I didn’t really know what it meant to happen to be blind. And then I kind of realized and you know, those things were frustrating. And on the flip side of that, they really helped me realize, hey, you can you can do pretty much anything anyone else can do, you just might do it a little bit differently. And, you know, blindness for me, man, this is important for me to say this right here in this public forum. blindness is just a nuisance, it’s just a lack of efficiency. So I think about the world totally in a sense of efficiency. And if we maximize efficiency, that’s, you know, when we’re, when we’re doing the best work we can. And when you’re blind in a sighted world, you just lack a little bit of efficiency in terms of looking at things and be able to be able to easily identify them. But I really do believe that. That’s all it is. And, and that’s, that’s sort of the direction that my that my parents took with it is, hey, we’re gonna sometimes you just got frustrating, it’s like I do things differently, you know, I can’t necessarily spend hours you know, figuring this out, you mopping the floor, for instance, because I and my mom is a teacher, the visually impaired Actually, she took that job on as a special ed teacher after I was born. She was amazing, because she brought all the stuff she used at work into the into the house, and you know, all the philosophies and all that and she’s like, Hey, you can clean the floor, it’s gonna take you a little while and I’m gonna teach you a technique. For reason. There’s no excuses for not being able to clean the floor. Like, that’s, that was tough to hear when you were eight years old, but man, it’s true. And now I’m, I’m so much better for years. I gotta give you one more. One more example of someone telling me I couldn’t do something I want
Jeremy Weisz
as many as you have that to me. So yeah,
Dr. Hoby Wedler
I’m an avid cook. And I grew up in the kitchen, I grew up I didn’t realize I was doing this but really honing in on my palate, and learning how to how to cook and how to use knives and, you know, to chop things. And, you know, that was sort of my my space. And my parents actually hired me to make large large pots of soup for the family every every few weeks, and they would take these soups to work. And that was that was my job starting when I was like nine years old. So I always loved cooking. And I had a passion for science and for you know, life science and animals when I was in high school. And we at the Petaluma High School campus had the only student operated Museum in the country. It was a wildlife and natural history museum still exists. It’s a great place. And as part of that part of that museum was was treating, you know, caring for live animals. And the instructor who was there for all four years when I was there, and shortly after I graduated got totally busted for embezzling a lot of money. She was she didn’t like having me in class. I was sort of a burden to her. She wouldn’t like to think about ways for me to do stuff she would tell me you know, she talked to students like me, but not me about you should get a career as a Ranger, you know, law enforcement straight now is love that stuff. And I thought about it a lot. And I went to her one day and I said, you know, do you think some of these careers are possible? And she said, No, no, that risk is too high. I’m sorry. That’s, that’s that conversation does not apply to you. Shit, really? Okay. And then it got worse and got into the museum. This is where it gets gets really funny. I got a new museum class that was in wildlife management, which is just a classroom class. Then I got into the actual museum program as a docent knows that I was a tour guide. People liked my tours, and they would request me so that was a big part of what I did is lead tours through the museum. But I believe in learning how to do animal husbandry and I wanted to feed animals, man, I wanted to prepare food. So I would like other students would use the knives in the in the workroom to chop, you know, they’re super adult really annoying knives to chop food for reptiles because they need produce through smaller chunks, right. And then she saw me using using the museum knives and said you can’t be in here. So but she, you know, you’re you’re not allowed to use our knives. I said, Oh, okay. Why is that? Well, you can’t see what you’re doing. You know, what I’m a student, just like all these other students don’t have the same thought I fall under your insurance policy, the same one? She said, No, this isn’t, this isn’t good. And I took this to the high school counselor. And they said, I don’t know if that’s right. But she can, she can do that. And we finally came to an agreement with her that I could bring my own knives. And that would allow me to allow me to cut food. I mean, none of the other students could use my knives, they were hoagies, knives, knives, whatever you want to call it. So I made sure to bring in the sharpest, baddest knives, I could I could find in my kitchen. I’m like, you know what? I’m going to show them or I’m going to bring the best
Jeremy Weisz
daddy, you can go on
Dr. Hoby Wedler
naughty, his homies nice. Teachers, like, you’re nice. And then he realized that that he brought in the rot in the knives that actually cut, you know? So just taking that, that example, people say no, you can’t and sort of turning it around into into an educational possibility. I had one instructor, my first ever chemistry class at UC Davis. And this is the only instructor has ever told me they said, you know, you shouldn’t you shouldn’t be studying chemistry as a blind person. It doesn’t. It doesn’t make sense. And I don’t know, you know, whenever I would ask a question. It was just like, the most annoying thing to this guy. Just so irritating. So I and He even told me who you know, why is a blind person taking chemistry. When I had him sign my accommodations document. This is my like my freshman year at UC Davis.
Jeremy Weisz
Welcome to freshman year.
Dr. Hoby Wedler
Yeah, like, Hey, I decided I wanted to major in chemistry. I’m going to take this as a challenge and do everything I can to thrive and succeed. And, of course I did. And I know other instructors like that at all. But that was someone telling me No, I don’t think you should do this. I don’t think you can do this and saying, Okay, I gotta I gotta show you that I can. So there’s a little bit of a little bit of competitive nature there. It’s like, are you think not okay, we’ll figure this out. You know, but it’s, it’s fun. It’s the challenge is what it’s all about. And that’s, that’s what I think it’s so important in our lives that we live is to just challenge ourselves. And, you know, the motto that works for me is, is always challenge yourself to do something that you either dread doing or think you can’t do, and just take it in baby steps and you’ll you’ll get there
Jeremy Weisz
Dr. Hoby. You know, one thing It makes me think about is some of the work you did with Francis Ford Coppola’s is winery’s, how did that come about?
Dr. Hoby Wedler
That was fantastic. So a, there’s a man who was new to being totally blind. He actually had a benign brain tumor. Really good friend of mine, he was just blind architect, actually, man by the name of Chris Downey. So Chris lost his sight in 2008. And he was a super successful architect, sight architect, and actually did a bunch of work for Francis Ford Coppola. Now Chris knew that I was from Sonoma County, which is a big wine region and I, I had sort of excite excited myself on a good palette and on, on being able to pull things out of wine that were unique, and he knew that I had kind of an enjoyment for wine. So in 2009, just a few months after he lost his eyesight, I was actually able to help him a little bit with you know, traveling and navigation and that sort of thing. And, you know, he’s a go getter, so I’m not at all going to attribute any of his postponements, success, you know, post sight loss success to anything I did, but I think I like to think I was able to mentor him a little bit. He definitely is, has served as a mentor for me since. But, yeah, so we actually hosted a we were both mentors at a program put on by the National Federation of the Blind Science Program in 2009. And that’s how we met now. Like I said, I’ve done a bunch of work for Francis. And before he lost his sight. And when Francis came to Chris and Chris had lost his sight and came to him in 2011, and said, Hey, you know, I really want to I went to this kind of gimmicky program in Asia where, you know, sighted people led us through a blindfolded little exercise, we’re able to walk a few feet across a room and find a treat and unwrap it. And just kind of gimmicky. Francis said, I want to offer something like this at my wineries, but I don’t want it led by anyone, it’s got to be led by a blind person, I want this to be authentic. So can you know, you know, anyone? And Chris said, This guy, it? Absolutely, you know, that knows about wine, it’s from the area that I’m sure would be would be interested in this. So Chris, kind of floated it by me. And I said, Yeah, it’s something interesting that I got a call from Francis’s right hand person saying, hey, you want to position with us, like, you know, co innovating this tasting experience with Francis. And when, when that happens, when you get that phone call, you just say yes. And then you hang up and you say, Oh, my God, what did I just agree to do? That happened. And then what was so much fun is that Francis really let me build the experience on my own. And it got a lot of exciting traction with, you know, with the press. And then with the with the trade team, with the sales team at Coppola, we actually spent luckily for me, I studied computational chemistry as a graduate student, with an extremely understanding and inkind advisor. And really everything that my laptop here in front of me is actually my laboratory as a computational chemist. So my advisor said, you you do what you do what you want to do. And I traveled the country with with the Coppola team, and then eventually with a bunch of other other brands, once this whole experience expanded while in graduate school, and that’s that’s sort of how that how that got innovated. And I still do a lot of blindfolded work both with wine and in a lot of other industries and actually even taught high school students how to sort of build empathy by working with each other one under blindfold and one sided, both saw, you know, cutting wood with power tools, and then taking that word and turning it on an electric wave using using some sighted assistance. But having 100% of the work be done by 5% under blindfold. So, the blindfold what I’m getting at is when people aren’t distracted by their eyesight, temporarily taking away that eyesight is an amazing way to way to show that you know what can happen when we when we aren’t distracted by it. It’s a pretty amazing thing
Jeremy Weisz
to actually talk about some of the the comments people would make as far as they go through the the wine tasting. Yeah, blind and wine tasting. What were some of the things the breakthroughs people had, experiencing like that?
Dr. Hoby Wedler
So funny. So I had one particular person who said, I do not like Chardonnay Don’t try to make and I said, Okay, well, you know, not everyone’s gonna like these four wines are totally harmless. If you don’t like it, here’s a spit cup, you know, it’s no problem. This woman tasted wine and said, Whoa, this is this is really nice. Yeah, it’s, it’s cool. It’s got some green apples and all these different things. You know? Yeah. And I love it. It’s a white wine. But But I really liked it. I said, Yeah, did you know that was a Chardonnay and her reactions, just watch this really sharpen up? Like, no, I like it, you know. So people have these preconceived notions of what they like and don’t like based on what they see. And maybe she had a bad Chardonnay, 20 years ago or something. And she started drinking Chardonnay after that and really liked it. One of the things that I’ve heard people say that, when they, when they don’t have their, their eyesight, they notice so much more about not only the smell and taste of wine, but about like the sounds of the room around them, what’s going on around them, they find themselves being more aware, and more just sort of able to focus on what’s happening. And it found things and wine flavors and aromas and wine in wines, oftentimes, if they’d known very well, but these, they’ve never noticed these certain flavors and aromas. So that’s been, that’s been really inspiring him in and sometimes people say, that’s the most inspiring wine tasting I’ve ever been to because I’ve learned how to, how to think about wine differently. And, and I’ve learned a lot about myself, you know, when you hear comments like that, it’s like that. It just makes you feel good. It’s, it’s an exciting opportunity to open someone’s mind up a little bit and, and show them that, hey, your palate is good, too. You know,
Jeremy Weisz
Dr. Hoby you know, you have mentored people who are blind or visually impaired. And like, for instance, Chris came and, you know, lost his eyesight. Um, what was some of the advice you gave him and on him in a kind of practical front, what were some of the tools that he needed now implement in his life, maybe just start with what some of that advice because that’s I can’t even be begin to imagine what that’s like, you know, having that something and then just having it taken away, and then having to cope with that on an emotional level to
Dr. Hoby Wedler
you and me both. I mean, that’s, that’s a really funny thing. And it’s kind of ironic, because so many people asked me, would you like to get your site back? And I’ve never had eyesight? So my answer is no, that’s going to be a whole new thing for me to learn. And like for you, so we’re asking you, you know, would you ever want to lose your sight? Of course not, because it’s a whole new thing for you to learn. So I can’t take any credit for it for Chris’s amazing success. Chris laid in, you know, laid around, laid in bed for about, I don’t know, two days, in typical Chris style, and sit back with us, I got to get up and get moving. And I just showed him some, some travel techniques that worked for me sort of early on in his journey. And, and, and helped him just sort of saying, Hey, man, this is all possible, you know, by seeing another blind person out there just doing it, I think I hope was a was a good, you know, thought provoking thing for him to say, Yeah, I can do this. And Chris surrounded himself with really positive thinking, progressive blind doers, you know, so, so one of the groups that I really want to talk about who I’ve done a lot of mentoring with is, people who are were blind or visually impaired, who were younger, who had been told they can’t do science, or they shouldn’t study science, because it’s, it’s too visual. You know, and my whole goal with accessible science with a nonprofit that we founded back in 2012, was to show students that no matter how visual something might seem, or people might tell you it is you can plow through and you can get this done. So we would, we would have students do indicative hands on organic chemistry for a whole day, and use their sense of smell rather than their sense of eyesight to identify when reactions went to completion. And I was like, you know, we did things like Ester formation from carboxylic, acids and alcohols. And anyway, I won’t get into the nerdy stuff, I’m sorry about that. Then we’d also have have the students listen to talks given by professors who are using chemistry every day for their work, and who come tell these students I know, you don’t need to see to be a great scientist. And it’s just that that’s the sort of fastest sort of mentorship that I’ve really liked to offer, you know, that we’ve mentored over 80 students through the nonprofit, and it’s just really exciting. I don’t expect them to become chemists, if they, of course did that would be an honor. But just just to sort of open their minds up a little bit more to the world and to show them that anything’s possible and you need to advocate for yourself and just get out there and, and do it and have some fun while you’re doing it. This. This is sort of the the part of mentorship that I’ve involved myself in, sort of, you know, as a graduate student, myself, trying to open those doors that were open for me for some of these students that might not have those sorts of role models in their in their lives, maybe it’s their parents or their teachers. So there’s some discouraging factor there. And it’s nice to break those break those barriers down. A lot of students that we’ve entered a chemistry camp, had never worked on a stove had never been allowed in the kitchen, talking about 17 year olds, Dr. Jeremy people that totally should have been learning about how their food gets cooked. So I always included a cooking hour, you know, where students would learn how to cook their own burger. You know, for some of these students, this is like ground breaking, to stand next to a hot girl. And do this, what you and I might consider very simple cooking tasks. It’s just like, eye opening and groundbreaking. And the other the other group that I am mentoring now, which is actually really fun. I’m on the board of directors as vice president of a center that’s it’s here in Northern California called the Earl balm center of the blind. And we help it mostly adults who are losing their vision or who have suddenly lost their vision. And it’s, it’s amazing what, you know, the depression that people go through. But then by seeing and being around people who have sight loss, who say, hey, it’s not going to be that bad. Let’s just teach you the things, several things you’re going to need to think about and learn to to get this done. You know, it’s amazing, some of the things that that we teach people how to do is, you know, it sounds it sounds simple, but how to spread peanut butter on a piece of bread, you know, to make their own peanut butter and jelly sandwich. That’s hard when you’ve been able to see your whole life and all sudden you can, how to use a cane, a white cane to feel the ground in front of you, rather than use your eyes to walk confidently, you know, it’s all this stuff totally matters and it’s totally relevant to these people’s, you know, need to live life and one of the things that we see a lot of is that people’s families because they’re, they’re loving and they want to help, you know, you’re helping too much. So a lot of our work is really saying he stepped back. You don’t have to you don’t have to do this and sometimes struggling through something and muddling through it, and taking that challenge on rather than just, you know, letting someone struggle through something rather than just doing it for them at hoc. It’s such a better teaching technique. So that’s some of the teaching and mentoring that we’ve done. But I just think that
Jeremy Weisz
I think that goes across the board. I mean, even with kids, like, you know, enabling them when they’re struggling, I mean, it’s it’s, you know, grit. Yes. It’s what, you know, the the book about grit, right. Totally.
Dr. Hoby Wedler
Wow. And do you have kids at home? Dr. Jeremy?
Jeremy Weisz
Yep, totally. Okay.
Dr. Hoby Wedler
Yes. Awesome. So you, you live it and breathe it?
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah. And, you know, I’m the, I love that, that, um, you know, sometimes if I find myself, you know, stepping in, I have to think, Well, you know, some of the biggest breakthroughs come from you have to struggle and have that, that grit. And I remember the Angela Duckworth book, grit, you know, and one of the things I wanted to talk about was his Senspoint. And you come with such a unique perspective. And I hope you just walk us through there is a project with glass involving glass, if you want to talk about that.
Dr. Hoby Wedler
Yeah, no, I’d love to love to chat a little bit about that case study. So that was, that was a lot of fun. And by the way, Senspoint and our sister brand Tucker Branding are really becoming much more sort of branding and brand strategy companies. A lot of the work that I did in the early days and Senspoint like the case study I’m about to tell you about is it sort of work that I’m actually bringing under my own personal brand, I’m bringing under HobyWedler.com. You know, just because it’s sort of it’s sort of my, my stuff that I’ve innovated just as a person. So let me tell you a little bit about this glass project. So AGC is one of the largest class companies in the world, make a lot of glass for the for the automobile, automotive industry, a lot of glass for the building and construction industry, and audit glass for the tech industry. So I’d say about 50% of the windows in your house in your car were probably made by these huge Japanese class company. So a large tech company from other tech giants based in Cupertino here in the Bay Area in California, went to their glass supplier AGC and say, their industrial design team. So we need glass. It feels more silky.
Jeremy Weisz
And it’s glass. I don’t even know where to start with that. But
Dr. Hoby Wedler
yeah, so they’re like, a glass, it feels more silky? I don’t know, we just sell glass. What do you mean? Is it No, no, we need to glass, we’ve been directed by our head of ID to find a glass that is more silky. We want a different feel on our next release of smartphones and computers and their trackpads. Let’s call these companies. We don’t know where to go with this silky glass? I don’t know. So they contacted a group of insanely creative people. And that’s a company called Ideal. I don’t know if you heard of them. Yeah,
Jeremy Weisz
I do. Yeah,
Dr. Hoby Wedler
yeah. So they’re, you know, big global design company, they committed to creating creating impact. And they’re just like the kings and queens of design thinking. And they said IDEO is gonna be able to figure out what they mean by silky glass. And I said, Hmm, that’s interesting. Well, we don’t necessarily know about silty glass, but we know some people Oh, hey, we know the sensory Guy hoby. Let’s call him and I said, Oh, silky glass right at my right up my alley. Let’s do this. So we we got to working on this project. And this is a collaboration that took a little over a month. And they just said, we need to figure out how to convey glass texture to our client. I said, Oh, that’s interesting. Let’s, let’s first define a metric for how we how we describe glass texture. And using several different samples of glass with different coatings on it, we were able to identify a two dimensional way of describing glass. So one axis on that two dimensional plane goes from similar smooth, too rough, okay. And the other goes from an rough I mean, sort of tractive sort of granular, the other goes from super sticky to super slick sticky, meaning your finger kind of sticks it sticks to it and doesn’t move around very much slick, meaning your finger just slides right across it. And in rough meaning like I say, granular and smooth meaning just a really smooth like, polished surface. And by the way, you can have a smooth glass that’s super slick, but your finger just slides across. So one access is smooth are off and the other is slip sticky to set it to slick. And we took four glass samples and we decided that it would be awesome to have a day where we brought all the designers now The industrial design team, all the designers from this tech company through and showed them how we define glass texture. Glasses a little bit intangible, we don’t go around feeling glass all the time. But we eat things. And we drink things. And we talk about the texture those things on our palate. So the texture a piece of cheese, if I said, Hey, Dr. Jeremy, I’m going to give you a piece of cheese, describe the texture, you probably use words like soft or hard, or who kind of grainy or ice and smooth, creamy, you all these different ways you might describe cheese, right? If I can have your piece of fruit, do the same thing, the texture of an apple would be described differently very differently than the texture of a ripe peach, you know, just wood. So I said, we’re gonna help these people figure out what silky glass means by pairing for glass textures, which we overlaid on a on a on a touch touchscreen, with four different cheeses at one station, four different fruits and another. And we’re gonna make everybody come back. So this is all throughout the day, we had hundreds of people come through, right, we said at the end of the day, everybody’s got to come back. Because we’re going to do a wine tasting. And we’re going to pair each of these four glass textures with a different wine. Or we’re going to talk about how those wines feel on our palate, and how that relates to how what the mouthfeel is and how that totally relates to the texture of the glass under your fingertip. So through this exercise, by some industrial designer saying, whoo, I like the creamy cheese or I like the grainy cheese, you know, whatever, we’re able to come up with exactly the glass that they used in their in their lease. This is back in 2018 2017 excuse me, in their release of their of their next smartphones and trackpads amazing. It’s kind of fun, and it’s just outside but maybe a little bit out of the box thinking and it’s kind of quirky and weird like I am so so that I love is a lot of fun.
Jeremy Weisz
Thank you for describing that. And there’s another interesting example in in Barilla
Dr. Hoby Wedler
Oh, man. Yeah, so for those who don’t know, Barilla is a is a pasta company. And they’re a giant, they’re now in over 150 countries and, and they’re they’re doing a whole whole lot of pasta production, but also sauce production. And I’m getting angry. Yeah. Right gorilla said good old Italian cooking, you know, they um, they created a brand new line of sauces. So for the United States market. Typically, historically, I should say, all of the sauces that they made for the US market were made in the United States at their, at their big plants in Iowa, New York. And we said, Wait a minute, maybe we can. Maybe there’s a they said I shouldn’t die. You’re not taking credit for this. They said you know, we need a we need a super premium sauce. And what are we going to do for that we’re going to, we’re going to source ingredients from Italy. We’re going to have the sauce made in Italy at our plant in Parma. And we’re going to sell this as a super premium sauce here in the United States. And the sauces your listeners can go find them in most most stores around them are called Vero Gusto. Yarrow gousto g us to now I did a blindfolded tasting event for their sales team. And then for their sort of internal team back in July, where we paired the sauces with you know, with a few, a few different ingredients and under blindfold so people can get it getting a better understanding of them. And they enjoyed that. They had a whole PR plan for how they were going to sort of launch this. And it was it was going to be a dinner where they invited a lot of a lot of, you know, influencers and media, but it was just going to be a classic type of Italian dinner where they say Isn’t this great, and then send them home with some sauce. They said, we’re gonna make this a little bit more fun. So he called me. And this is a branding project that we did actually with with Senspoint very much with Senspoint. And what it really was is a product activation, along with a key experience. The experience part was me, the whole product activation partners totally Senspoint. We ended up working with a company called Edelman, who you probably heard of they’re also a, you know, fairly large creative agency crisis management agency, that sort of thing.
And they are the PR partner in this or the PR partner on this project for Birla. So we worked with Adelman and we said, okay, but let me go back and tell you a little bit more about these sauces. So that tomato sauces, they’re all tomato based. And they’re they’re all the ingredients are sauteed. So they’re not just boiled in with the sauce. They really have some truly exquisite flavors in them. And the other thing to note here is that each of their four sauces and each sauce has a hero ingredient from some region of Italy. So They have a cCalabrian pepper sauce with Calabrian chilies from the south of Italy. Basil, Genovese basil coming from Genoa. Tomatoes that are a really nice sweet tomato called the datterini coming from the area right near Parma in the Emilia Romagna region. And finally, oregano that comes from Sicily, the island, just immediately to the south of Italy. And which part of Italy Of course, south of the mainland, I said was we need to put together I was able to sell them and you know, put put to them an idea of, we need to put together an experience that features each sauce. Next to it’s your own dream. And we need to do this, the whole tasting part under blindfold. But while people are under blindfold, we need to transform the room into having all the art fixtures that we might, you know, that might be reminiscent of this brand, have all the product branding all over really create a super premium field with a live bar so far with live herbs and peppers and whatnot hanging from it. And we really went all out, painted the floors. And the fun thing is Dr. Jeremy, we did all this while they were under blindfold. So we blindfolded people in just a white boring room. So let me go back a little bit here. I actually went to Italy, and with my business partner, and collected all of the hero ingredients that we used in Italy from region and did some really exciting thing. So I can collaborate where the capital of the chili capital of Italy we interviewed the president of the academia did pepper and Chino, which is the literally the chili Academy. They have this so we found him did a whole day interview with him. Just got some amazing sound bites, we interviewed herb farmer and a regular farmer in Sicily while walking through his his fields. And we put together this immersive experience with actual ingredients here ingredients from Italy paired with each sauce, it came along with sound bites from the trip to Italy with all these different people talking or sounds of the waves hitting the Sicilian shores. And just when everyone was under blindfold, we blindfolded them in a white room and then brought them in and sat them down at tables that were preset with all this stuff. And over about an hour and 15 minutes I literally transformed took people to Italy, it with sound and smell and taste with all these your ingredients and all the sauces. And all the while while this is going on. The crew was transforming the room from what they saw, which was a bare, boring white room when they came in to this beautiful, you know, very representative, you know, landscape of of the sausage made basically made them feel like they were in Italy. And and really what we did is we blindfolded them in a room and we walked them a few rooms over into the room where the where the event was actually taking place. So we didn’t have a bunch of noise of the room being transformed. But the sensation to the people when they took their blindfolds off, and they saw all this amazing stuff, we turned up the music and it just became a great party. The sensation that they had was, oh my gosh, you guys transformed us while we were under blindfold. So created just a super impactful brand launch and a super impactful exciting opportunity to really showcase you know, something like a like a pasta or like a like a sauce in general. And, and that sort of thing is really when when I get to have fun, and I get to sink my teeth in and just just really, really have fun with something. So that’s what we did there. I love it. I’m deserving.
Jeremy Weisz
But I’m talking about you know, it relates to what you’re doing flavor elevation.
Dr. Hoby Wedler
Yeah, man. So it’s, it’s really interesting I look at I look at a lot of a lot of people out there especially during during the pandemic, who are now forced to, to cook at home and who maybe don’t, don’t love cooking, or people who love cooking and just want a little extra I my passion. I think maybe I said earlier, but I didn’t I have the heart of a teacher. My goal is to get people excited about things they didn’t even know they were excited about. So I want to do this through flavor. I love food and drink and getting people to try things maybe they haven’t tried before. And I love teaching so I’m starting mostly an e commerce, what I call flavor elevation company. And we’re going to be we’re not launched yet but as soon as we are it’ll be all over my social and anywhere you can, you can go to find me. We are going to basically start a rub and spice company and I’ve got three products that we’re starting with. One is a really super cool lemon pepper. It just lifts the flavor of vegetables might be grilling or roasting. A great rub for fish. All these things, you know Rosemary salt, which
Jeremy Weisz
it tastes that’s my favorite by the way.
Dr. Hoby Wedler
You’re gonna be stunned when you taste this Rosemary salt because it it’s salt that adds so much crazy flavor. It’s so simple can impress all your
Jeremy Weisz
customer on me for sure. I eat rosemary salt Dr. Hoby no joke on a daily basis,
Dr. Hoby Wedler
but it’s so good to know. So good to know. And this one’s got a little oregano in it, it’s got a little Sage in it a little bit of lemon zest, you know, it’s really, really fun. And then another just an essentials rub, which is a rub that I came up with a recipe of about a year and a half ago, that’s just, it really elevates the flavor of meat and vegetables like crazy whether you’re grilling or, you know, growing grilling chicken, grilling pork grilling, tofu, you know, whatever it might be, this really lifts and enhances enhances flavor. So my whole goal there is to just inspire people to really build quality into their kitchen and, and launch their flavors to the next level. You know, and just have fun with it.
Jeremy Weisz
So I have one I’ve two last questions. Dr. Hoby, first of all, I just totally appreciate your time. And your stories. And I want to point people towards your websites. One is Senspointdesign.com where else should we point people towards? Let’s
Dr. Hoby Wedler
point them to HobyWedler.com, there’s going to be a lot of new stuff there currently, that just redirects to Senspoint. But in about a month’s time, that won’t be the case. And that’s where I’m going to be doing all my all my tasting work, you know, you can easily that’s where I’m going to be pushing the speaking work that I do. And I’m also starting a coaching program actually around awareness, really helping people to become more aware because I think sensory literacy, which is what we talked about in my TEDx talk, really leads to an amazing sense of awareness. And I truly believe that awareness leads to full inclusivity. And I’m doing some coaching on that. And all that stuff’s going to be coming out over the next month or two, on Hobi weidler.com. Okay,
Jeremy Weisz
everyone, check out a HobyWedler.calm that is HobyWedler.com Check it out, check out their past episodes out. I’m Dr. Hoby. I always ask since inspired Insider, what’s been a low moment? And on the flip side, what’s been a proud moment? So start off what’s been a low moment that you had to push through?
Dr. Hoby Wedler
It’s a great question. And I need to think through this because there have been, there been a few lows and a few a few real highs. For me, personally, I think, a low moment with running a business is just having to dig down and figure out how to market that business. And, and not you know, what I’ve done, I’ve done started things that have not gone through to fruition, and we put a lot of time and sometimes money into something that doesn’t, it doesn’t necessarily come to fruition. Well, it’s it’s the entrepreneurial nature, and you got to fail fast. And sometimes those failures feel low. Another low moment was when I was sort of in the thick of my graduate studies. And just thinking, Oh, man, I have to get assistance, reading papers. This is so hard. How am I going to get through this, you know, almost almost tempting myself to to not go through the PhD. And man, the high moment was getting that PhD and realizing that with the support of amazing mentors, like my graduate advisor, getting Dean tantillo really saw a future for me before I kind of saw it for myself. Those are the highs. When you when you break through something and you realize that you can, you can actually do it, it just feels so good. Another another load to be honest with you was thinking about thinking about going to college and feeling that daunting feeling of living independently. When I was finishing up high school, that was a really hard time. How am I gonna be
Jeremy Weisz
scary for anyone.
Dr. Hoby Wedler
It’s scary for anyone. And I’ll tell you what, what gave me the confidence to do that was what I learned in my junior year of high school, how to walk first, from school to downtown to the local bus depot and wherever I needed to go downtown. And then when I learned how to walk from school, back to my house, almost two miles away from school, I knew how to get from my house to school and school to downtown to the bus depot, I could get anywhere. And that’s when I had that confidence. But it was still scary thinking about going away and making this work. What’s funny, Dr. Jeremy is that when you do something and you push yourself into it, and you you just chip away at it, man, that load quickly becomes a high because you challenge yourself. And if you don’t try, you’ll never know what that success feels like, you know, so you got to try. And the high moments are when you succeed and you just feel so good about what you’ve accomplished in accomplishing that first year of Undergraduate Studies. And then just knowing that I’m free here, I can do this and, and just pushing through all the way through to the end of grad school. That was a high. And now that we’re there’s another really exciting high on the horizon, I think which is, which is getting all our businesses sorted out and just moving forward and going forth. And I’m really in that challenge mode right now. hunkering down going in or going through some changes. We just started starting This sister brand new Senspoint, we’re starting this flavor elevation company, I’ve got my personal brand that I’m just saying, you know what, let’s do it. Let’s get all this out there. This is a time of challenge, I’m not going to call it a low moment. But this is a time when I’m feeling like, I need to learn how to market I need to need to figure all this stuff out, I need to become better at this than the other. But it’s the time where I know that success is coming. And I can just feel it, I can almost almost taste it, you know. And it’s that it’s that feeling of really challenging yourself. And then thinking really hard and working really hard. And then and then coming out the other side. So we’re in that we’re in that that real challenge phase at the moment, but excited about the future. And I just want to encourage all of your listeners to never stop challenging yourselves. Don’t make up excuses. And never Lower, lower the bar on yourself or those who you mentor or those who you employ, or whoever it may be in your life. Everybody including yourself to take responsibility. Love each other, be positive The world has no time for negativity got to just be our positive selves as much as we can be. And no excuses. Just push on through.
Jeremy Weisz
Dr. Hoby I want to be the first one to thank you everyone. Check out HobyWedler.com and more episodes. Thanks again.
Dr. Hoby Wedler
Dr. Jeremy, thank you so much. It’s a huge honor.
