Answers are always hard to come by. The challenge is which answers are we looking for and who can we enlist to collaborate to find those answers.

We have to go through the process of defining:

• What do you want to change
• What is your purpose
• What do you value
• How Do You Navigate uncertainties
• What is your role in creating commerce and culture
• How can we ask big questions that lead to progress and challenging each other

The first interview in this section was hosted by Brian Grazer, a producer and Academy Award and Golden Globe winner for his work, including his high profile show Empire. He sat down with actress Taraji P. Henson, star of Empire.

Grazer spoke about how important it is to encourage people at an early age. He could not read until he was in the 6th grade, but his grandmother encouraged him to use his curiosity. He learned to look people in the eyes and reach into their heart. His book, “Face to Face: Art of Human Connection” examines many of these issues.

Despite his accolades, he says that the words have to be interpreted by the character and the actor. He says Henson created one of the most iconic characters of the decade by showing her desire for justice.

Henson talked about her career and her feeling that she was done with TV after her role on “Person of Interest”. She felt that the show was too corporate, had too many opinions and she wanted to be more of an artist.

She went to perform at a Pasadena playhouse and says that her agent made her read the script. She was hesitant about taking on the role of “Cookie” because she felt she had been pidgeon-holed into edgy characters and that she had more depth. She didn’t want to play another edgy character and yet taking on the role of Cookie was just that because Cookie was coming back into the world after a 17 year sentence for selling crack. She said she loves when her characters make her nervous. She tries to humanize her characters and connect with their flaws.

Mental health is very important to Henson. She stands strongly against the concept of perfection by telling people that “Perfection is the perfect lie.” She looks at the fact that mental health is a very under-discussed issue, especially in the African American community. She started a mental health foundation named after her father and needed to find a culturally competent therapist to help.

Ultimately, her key is that people need to listen more. Not just listen in one ear as they are busy tweeting, texting or watching TV. Don’t just ask someone how they are, and then just keep walking.

Liz Phair then got on the stage and spoke about art as a vehicle for the truth. She gave credit to her mother who was a docent at the Art Institute.

In her memoire “Horror Stories” she talks about the urgency created by the last few years and how during the last election cycle, she became that old crabby man who yells at the TV. She wasn’t seeing values reflected in our countries leadership and that the madness was taking hold.

This session focused on three social entrepreneurs who are using their companies to make a difference in the world.

SETH FLAXMAN–Democracy Works

Seth created a voting app that increases voter turnout and focuses on educating people who they are voting for, not just how to vote. They develop alliances with colleges and other organizations.

They have raised over $15M already on their way to a $20M round of financing. As a non-profit entity, they earn money from for profits, with approximately 1/3 of their money coming from partnerships. The balance is split between individuals and other foundations.

They are a source of all polling place data to help people find out where to vote and want to be part of the evolution of the foundation of trust.

MICAELA CONNERY–The Kelsey

Perhaps the most impressive speaker of any of the Chicago Ideas Week sessions we attended was Micaela Connery. Her mastery of the topic and her ability to articulate her vision and achievements set her well above even much more accomplished speakers.

The Kelsey creates housing for people with developmental disabilities. The challenge most of the 6.1 million developmental disabled people looking for housing are the issues of affordability, accessibility and inclusivity. She spends her time organizing the process and securing funding for new projects. Typically, she has found that it is more efficient to build new units than to retrofit older units. In each development, she targets the following distribution of units:

• 25% at market rate
• 25% for workforce/middle income housing
• 25% for affordable housing
• 25% for residents with developmental disabilities

Micaela emphasized how underserved this market is and that most of the residents want to live in integrated housing. She feels that those with developmental disabilities are completely left out of the housing discussion. She thinks this is an important role of philanthropy because it allows someone to push the envelope and take risks that others will not take.

JASON KANG–Kinnos

Jason’s product helps prevent infections in hospitals by “highlighting” areas that haven’t been properly cleaned because his products turn the cleaned area blue for a few seconds. The statistics are staggering when you look at the fact that 1 in 25 people in a hospital get an infection and there have been 99,000 deaths which most of us would classify as a preventable death.

As with all start-ups, Jason talks about the struggle of how to make the company sustainable and how to develop the relationship that are needed to make the organization successful.

Are algorithms good for our lives? They impact everything we do in an age where people live on their phones. Would you be up to the challenge of turning off your phone for a full day? Most people are not! The apps themselves have many positives, but we have all seen some of the negatives that arise from cyberbulling and general haters. Still, they can help us in the case of an emergency and can give us immediate information that is tailored to our interests.

As we look at the decisions that are made for us, we have to be aware of potential traps to make sure that we do not develop bad habits. Brad Keywell sat down with Dick Costello, the former CEO of Twitter and they talked about how we should and should not manage relationships with our digital platform. Costello shared some interesting insights into his time at Twitter and how being the head man created problems because nobody is willing to talk to you. One of my favorite elements from what he discussed was the concept of telling staff that nobody is allowed to say “Dick said _______________”. In other words, if you want to rationalize and support your work and/or behavior, you cannot use the crutch that Dick said something or that you thought Dick said something. He gave an interesting example of how an off-handed comment led to the removal of all plants around their headquarters. At the end, he gave three recommendations which made a lot of sense: 1) Stop treating all Twitter accounts (and other social media accounts) equally; 2) Recently created accounts should be given less weight than reputable brands and long time participants, a step that prevent the spate of recently set up accounts; and 3) Make people earn their way into the eco-system–you will earn the reputation that you have.

Ramesh Srinivasan, author of “Beyond the Valley” spoke about how many major societal advances come out of public projects, the internet being a shining example. He also spoke about how many of the largest companies in the world own nothing, except their systems: Uber, Facebook, Air BNB and Alibaba. He estimates that 47% of existing jobs could be based on AI and machine learning but that the challenge will be making sure that we do not perpetuate existing biases.

Julie Zhou, author of “Making of the Manager” shared her experiences with AI attempts and the challenges of being responsibly intentional.

This session had a ton of great information and it was challenging to capture it all. I think next time I need an AI robot to help me take all of the notes!!

Rolling Stone Senior Writer Jamil Smith hosted this session to look at how we can make changes in our world.

The first interview involved Heidi Stevens and Cleo Wade, as they examined how Cleo decided to make an impact on the women’s prison population. Cleo set forth her definition of HOPE defining it as: “the belief that our tomorrows can be better than our todays.“

Cleo reiterated that it is important to recognize that it is not merely wishing for the best, but working towards the best. You want people to allow for what is possible and to build communities by telling stories. She provides live advice columns for the Women’s Prison Association. One of the things that she does is to ask people “What story would you tell if you knew that it could save one person’s life?”

Cleo’s research has shown her that women are the least visited people in prisons. She is pushing to help preserve their dignity, invest in spaces that help avoid trauma in the first place and to put more focus on how we help them re-enter the world. She emphasized that it needs to be an “us against the problem” mentality, so that we all need to collaborate to attack the problem.

Jamil Smith then sat down with Dan Edelman, founder of the famous Edelman PR firm. He started talking about their research which actually showed that consumers would be more likely to buy products from a company whose CEO stood up to gun violence. He feels that the NRA is actually holding back progress and acting counter to its own interests. He says that most gun owners are disappointed and feel that they are now getting a bad rap because of the irresponsibility. His message is that “it is okay to stand up to the NRA.” His recommendation is to focus the efforts on two critical points: 1) Proper background checks; 2) Safe storage of the weapons.

Edelman believes that the focus needs to shift on restoring the responsibilities that go with gun rights, as opposed to the frequent demand for unrestricted access. He thinks that requiring background checks for every gun sale and removing the rights from domestic abusers would help close some of the loopholes.

His research shows that 4.6 million children live at homes that do not have locked guns. The NRA has helped pass a law that prevents pediatricians from asking a family if there is a gun at home and if it is locked up.

Gun violence kills over 100 people every day. We need to train teenagers to interrupt the cycle of violence in their own homes.

The challenge of the state laws is that guns can cross state lines as easily as cars do. In Chicago, 20% of the guns come from Indiana. So we need to make sure that the solutions are federal because otherwise we are only as safe as the state with the weakest gun laws.

We would all like to know how progress will impact us as we move into the future. This session provided insight into the ways we can envision that future.

Bina Venkataraman, author of “The Optimist’s Telescope: Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age” talked about how despair is a factor because many people in the world feel that they do not have the vision, choices or understanding on how we can make things better. Our job as a society is to make people that they have those choices.

She spent a lot of time traveling around the world examining what people do to make better decisions. She had these two recommendations:

• Learn to imagine: Write a letter to future self. This allows your imagination to take perspective of a specific person in the future. It also gives you the freedom to take on any role you choose in that future.
• Play the long game: It is important to lock in policies for the long term. Giving people predictability is a crucial factor in allowing this to happen.

Architect Massimo Lepore took the stage to discuss what we can do to prevent climate change. He supports many NGO’s that are working worldwide in critical areas. His research showed him that 70% of people will live in urban areas by 2050. One of our tasks is to figure out how we can prevent the abandonment of rural areas. Figuratively, he wants to create a “green wall” movement to help prevent deserts and water.

Throughout the presentation he threw out lots of interesting statistics but the one that might have been most disturbing is that literally a TON of plastic goes into our oceans every 4 minutes. The challenge is that a lot of that waste comes 3rd world countries that are not capable of stopping or reducing that flow.

Virtually everyone in the USA knows how expensive the soaring college costs are and how much pressure they put on the average family.   The process of applying for financial aid is draining on the parents, the student and also takes an enormous amount of resources for the colleges and universities.

MC2 Wealth Management hosted this seminar to show parents a few of the tricks that can be used to obtain more financial aid.  They also demonstrated how applying to a more expensive university can sometimes result in a lower out-of-pocket payment for the parents.

One of the most interesting aspects of the presentation was that the manner of calculating the Expected Family Contribution (EFC) was susceptible to manipulation by the manner in which you hold your assets.  There are many ways to plan for college and the hosts were able to demonstrate how getting an early start on the planning process allows you to get the best financial aid resources.

Perhaps the most useful part of the presentation was the concept of negotiating with the college.  It seems that though the schools will give you a commitment for a certain amount of financial aid, that the student always has the possibility of requesting additional support.  Though the schools do not want it perceived that they negotiate”, what they really do is evaluate” the needs of the student and make an adjustment” if needed to get that child to attend the school.

The key takeaway is that early planning is the key.  Get the facts, start understanding the system early, and start preparing for the enormous expense that can result, especially with poor planning.

As a business professional who has worked in the areas of law, sports, real estate, finance and entrepreneurship, communication is the lifeblood of everything that I do.  Keeping clients up to date, keeping business associates and partners connected to the deal and making sure that vendors perform their services on time all require extensive communication.  Networking to find more business and reaching out to prospects require coordinated communication.

People spend much of their day on email, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media.  When they are not on social media, they are busy talking on their phone or sending text messages.

So you would think with all of this experience and all of this practice that we would be good communicators.  Unfortunately, especially for those of us that like to communicate, this is not true.  Most people are very poor communicators, or at minimum, they are reluctant communicators.

When I leave someone a voicemail, send an email or send a text message, I do expect a response.  I am not talking about cold calls or sales calls.  I am talking about calls and messages to friends, business colleagues, vendors and even to businesses from whom I am trying to purchase products/services.

It continually shocks me that I can send an email inquiry to a business about a product or service that I need and not receive a response.  I am not talking about an autoresponder.  I am talking about a legitimate response.  Some companies have enough systems in place that their autoresponders can basically deal with the inquiry, but in the last several months I have seen small businesses not even bother to answer an email inquiry for two weeks.  REALLY?  Fourteen days?  I don’t think that these businesses are so flooded with inquiries or work that they don’t need to bother.

Yet the business side probably bothers me less than the personal side.  If you don’t respond to clients, customers and employees, sooner or later (and probably sooner), your business is going to struggle.

But when a friend contacts me, I may not always respond immediately, but I always respond.  I cannot imagine not responding.  I do my very best to respond to all of it within 24 hours.  I don’t always live up to that ideal, but it is extremely rare for an email or text to go unanswered beyond that time. Phone calls sometimes can take longer to coordinate or schedule or fit in between other things.  But I know that if I am not going to be able to phone, that I should at minimum, get a text message or email to let the person know that they haven’t been forgotten. 

So what is the solution? I honestly don’t know.  I am not looking to cut off all relationships from the communication slackers.  But it does give me a pause for concern about engaging in any business with these people and on the personal side it definitely impacts how close I feel to someone.  If you can’t even be bother to return a call, email or text, then how badly do you really want me in your life?  The answer? Not much at all.

So I have made a decision to focus more of my time and effort on those who respond.  I am tired of chasing people (work and personal).

Just remember, I am here for you and I will still be your friend.  But I am done chasing.

Wow.  I rarely say that in response to anything on TV these days (unless it was the replacement officials’ absurd call in the Packers-Seahawks game).

But after watching ESPN’s outstanding 30 for 30 Broke” there is not much else to say.  I guess you could say it is sad, scary, disturbing or any of another dozen negative thoughts.  I did not expect to be overwhelmed by it since this is a field with which I have a lot of direct experience.

I have met numerous athletes who have been defrauded  by their agents, financial advisors, attorneys and friends.  Many of them have been victims of ponzi schemes and other types of scams that were perpetrated on them due to their high profile, great wealth and relative lack of sophistication in dealing with these issues. 

I know attorneys who have filed lawsuits to recover the funds from these ponzi schemes, but unfortunately, the scammers have typically spent and used most of the funds for their own personal benefit, acquiring expensive homes, cars and jewelry and also taking exotic vacations and trips.  While it might make the victims feel a little bit better when they find out that the people who defrauded them have been disbarred, indicted, convicted and sentenced, the reality is that they rarely recover their funds.

When I discuss the cases with the attorneys who have filed the lawsuits on behalf of these athlete victims, they almost universally say that the athletes were defrauded by their own advisors, and that the athletes were too ashamed to come forward sooner to get authorities involved or get attorneys involved early in the process.  The athletes (and their advisors) typically did too little (if any) due diligence on the transactions and on the people who are promoting the transaction.

So while we wonder why this occurs, the reality comes down to one point. TRUST.   Athletes really do not know who to trust.  They rely on the information that is put in front of them by their advisors and their friends.  But who are the ones most often responsible for getting athletes into these ponzi schemes or other scams?  These same advisors.

The trick here is for the athlete to develop and implement a large team of independent advisors that can work together to help the athlete conduct due diligence.  This is where the stories from Broke” were the most disturbing. 

One thing that Broke” made clear is that a lot of the problems arise from the athlete’s feeling of invincibility.  We have read that hundreds and thousands of times relating to physical issues whether it is physical altercations, domestic violence, bar fights, drunk driving or others.  

Yet, we expect these same young athletes to exercise better business” judgment, even though none of them have actual business experience (and few of their families have that experience either).    When you think of who most people rely on when they need help, it is the people closest to them.  Their family and their trusted advisors.  The difference with professional athletes is that they do not grow” into these roles over time.  They do not advance in their careers before their earn big dollars.  They do not develop relationships with advisors while the stakes are small and have that relationship mature over time.  Instead, they are left extremely vulnerable to their agents, their attorneys, their family, their friends and their financial advisors.

One disturbing element in Broke” was how often these players described just handing out money to other people.  The sums of money are so large that they lose ALL perspective to the value of money.  Yet, if you asked them how much money they could earn in a year in any job other than professional sports, that perspective might help them understand their spending habits.

But would they listen?  If you go back and watch broke and listen to the stories from Andre Rison, you will see a tremendous attitude of I do what I want.”   And that comes at an extreme price.  It means that the athletes do not even want to listen to the people who really do want to help them.  Everything in their life is about competition.  About bigger and better.  About  having the best.  So it is easy to see why that also applies to their investments.

You want me to take conservative investments.”   Why should I?”   My teammates just invested into a deal that is getting him [10/20/30%].”

And that is how it happens.  The perpetrators of the scams and the ponzi schemes only need one access point.  They find one athlete that they cater to and cultivate a relationship with, and then they use that person to gain athlete to pro teammates, college teammates, high school teammates, etc.  You can see why the ponzi scheme format is so powerful in this environment.  It connects all the victims and they all feel insecure about the investment loses and they do not know who to turn to.  Many of the athletes write off their loses without even pursuing legal remedies.  And by doing so, they do not bring enough attention to the problem.  Lawsuits against these dishonest advisors would facilitate getting federal and state authorities involved.   Given the limited resources of the FBI, the postal inspectors and the US attorneys offices, they are unable to investigate and pursue all of the claims that are out there.  But with some help and with high profile victims, the lawsuits could help institute the proper administrative and disciplinary proceedings against those operating the ponzi schemes and other scams.  By having cooperative witnesses, supporting documentation and good attorneys leading the way, the opportunity to recover funds before they are all squandered would increase dramatically.   Because ultimately, the players really want a few things:  1) to get their money back; 2) to get their vengeance by having the scammers disbarred, indicted, convicted and sentenced; and 3) to not have this situation take over their life.

Hopefully for most athletes, these losses to fraudulent schemes do not constitute the bulk of their wealth.  But many lose money in other ways.  You saw the descriptions in Broke” talking about how many of them lost money in bad” deals as opposed to fraudulent deals.  At the end of the day, the financial impact is the same even if the emotional toll is not the same.

But perhaps the most difficult losses” to overcome are not those from ponzi schemes, fraudulent investments or bad investments.  It is the result of bad decisions by the athletes.   The amount of money spent on cars, homes, jewelry, gambling, strip clubs, alcohol and other luxuries is way beyond proportion to their financial status.  Athletes do not have the same length of earning career as the average business professional.  In football, the average career is approximately 3 years.   That means that most of the athletes never even make it that far. 

In our next feature, we will look further at how the athletes can overcome these negative habits and what advice they should be given early in their career by the agents and families in order to protect them from slipping into the Broke” mentality.

We honestly hope that Broke” becomes required viewing for the all athletes who have professional sports aspirations.   Because we know that many athletes will NOT listen.  But we also know that the more often they hear the message, and the more often it is from neutral” sources, the more likely they are to give it some credence and give much stronger consideration to the steps that are necessary to prevent the losses to ponzi schemes and other fraudulent scams.