Speaker 1:
From the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, welcome Inside the ICE House. Our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange is your go-to for the latest on markets, leadership, vision, and business. For over 230 years, the NYSE has been the beating heart of global growth. Each week, we bring you inspiring stories of innovators, job creators, and the movers and shakers of capitalism here at the NYSE and ICE's exchanges around the world. Now, let's go Inside the ICE House.
Judy Shaw:
Innovation is a spark that ignites progress and transforms the world we live in. It empowers us to tackle the toughest challenges from combating climate change to revolutionizing healthcare and driving economic opportunity. When we embrace new ideas, we can unlock solutions that improve lives, create sustainable futures and bridge gaps in equity. Innovation is key to building a society that adapts to change and thrives in uncertainty.
Our guest today at Ice Experience 2025, Mick Ebeling is the founder and CEO of Not Impossible Labs, where he has spearheaded initiatives to tackle real-world problems and create lasting impact. Under Mick's leadership, Not Impossible Labs has gained international recognition for its bold, life-changing solutions, and has launched groundbreaking projects focused on addressing issues such as food insecurity and Parkinson's symptoms. Mick, thank you so much for being here at Ice Experience and for joining me on Inside the ICE House.
Mick Ebeling:
Thanks for having me.
Judy Shaw:
My pleasure. So, Mick, when you visit the Not Impossible Labs website, the first thing that stands out in bold, striking letters is the phrase nothing is impossible forever. It's a powerful statement that encapsulates the spirit of the innovation studio. So for those who are unfamiliar with Not Impossible Labs, how would you describe your mission and the impact of your work?
Mick Ebeling:
Well, the reason that says that on the very, very first page that you see is that the absolute core essence of what we believe at Not Impossible is a very factual, scientific, data-driven statement, which is everything that is possible today was impossible first. So that premise is a key tenet that drives us in terms of all the things that we're trying to solve when we encounter these super hard, difficult social issues. When we encounter these calamities, these just things, these problems, we call them absurdities that exist in the world.
We know that it's going to be hard. We know that it's going to be difficult, but we know that it's not going to be impossible for. So that focus, that kind of just belief system is what allows us to continue to drive forward when, not if, but when things get really difficult and hard, when we're trying to figure things out, we know that eventually we're going to figure it out. Or we know that someone's going to figure it out and we say it might as well be us.
Judy Shaw:
Now let's dive into the story behind Not Impossible Labs. Before founding it, you led a successful content design and animation production company, the Ebeling Group. Then you crossed paths with a Los Angeles graffiti artist, Tempt and his family, and as they say, the rest is history. So can you share that origin story and what inspired you to create the company?
Mick Ebeling:
So, Non Impossible Labs was inspired by the fact that we, through a series of serendipitous events, discovered this paralyzed graffiti artist who was lying motionless in a bed, unable to talk through any type of technology, unable to draw for sure or do his art. And we were just baffled by that because we knew that Stephen Hawking machines exist, the things that allowed Stephen Hawking to communicate. But this guy, Tony Tempt One didn't have access to that because he didn't have the right insurance, his family didn't have the money. And so we said, that's ridiculous. We need to solve it. No one should be prevented from communicating with their family because of a lack of insurance or money.
So we embarked to create a solution, and the solution was the Eyewriter, which is cheap sunglasses from the Venice Beach Boardwalk, a coat hanger, zip ties, duct tape, brilliant people who came and wrote some incredible code. And we took this sunglasses that had a wire around the side of it, the web camera mounted on the front, focused back on his eyes, and as he would move his eyes back and forth, the web camera would track his pupil, and that allowed him to draw again. And so that ability to do that for us, we just saw it as a project. There was no grand plans, there was no master strategy. We just wanted to help this one dude be able to draw again.
We did it. It was amazing. And then everybody who was on the team flew home. And then as we like to say, we quote, "woke up" the next day and it was Time Magazine's top-50 inventions, people all over the world were heralding it as one of the best health inventions of our time. Ted Talks, it's now part of the permanent collection at the MoMA. And we said, "What the heck is happening right now? We just wanted to help this one dude. And it ended up scaling and going bigger than anything we could have ever imagined."
And that's essentially, that gave rise to us contemplating, "Well, should we continue to do this?" And the short story is we decided not to do it. We said, "We got lucky, this was a fluke. It's fine. Let's just go back to our day jobs." But then we got an email from the artist and the email said, "That's the first time I'd drawn anything for seven years. I feel like I've been held underwater and someone finally reached down and pulled my head up so I could take a breath."
So if you're deciding to or not to do something like that, someone sends you an email like that, do you really have a choice anymore? And so that launched Not Impossible Labs, that was the official like, "All right, we don't know what we're going to do, but here we go."
Judy Shaw:
Now, Mick, Not Impossible Labs has launched innovative ventures like Music Not Impossible, which reimagines how people experience music and sound and Bento, which helps provide medically tailored groceries to low-income communities. How did these ideas emerge from Not Impossible Labs and how do they contribute to the broader mission of the studio?
Mick Ebeling:
So any idea starts through a variety of different pathways. Sometimes it's us observing something that we say, "Wait a second, why does the world work that way?" Sometimes people will pose things to us. Sometimes companies will come to us and say, "Hey," and this has been something that's been of the last eight to nine years, companies will bring us in as these A-Team innovation mercenaries who will come in and try to solve issues within companies. And what we always say is we're always thrilled and excited and honored to solve business issues within companies.
What we always do, and we're very overt about this, is we always try to bake in a societal issue while we're solving that. So we kind of use, it's the yin and yang of Not Impossible. We can solve and we have solved and continue to solve incredible business challenges. But when you bake solving social issues onto that, it gives it just extra rocket fuel to be able to do more, especially from you talk about adoption within the organization. People like to do good. People want to do good. They want their lives to have meaning.
So when companies can do good for society, for their communities, for the world, and do good from a business standpoint, that is a technical term called winner-winner chicken dinner. But that's the main way that things will come in. And Music Not Impossible came up because we witnessed a deaf DJ playing a concert for a deaf audience, which just let me repeat that. A deaf DJ playing a concert for a deaf audience.
And we said, well, what if we figured out how to, rather than having the vibrations go through your ears and hit the eardrum and go to the brain, what if we used a different pathway to go to the brain? Because that's how we hear is through vibration. And so we chose the skin as the eardrum and the skin through wearable technology was able to take on the vibrations and send a signal to the brain. That one has been amazing. One of the offshoots of that is that there's the side effects, if you will, has an effect on Parkinson's tremors and is able to stop Parkinson's tremors, which was completely accidental. It's completely accidental, but an incredible blessing.
And Bento, you mentioned Bento. Bento came about because we were very perplexed by this concept called food insecurity. And we realized that when we looked at this statistically in this country, there was close to 50 million people who weren't able to put three meals a day on the table. And we said, "That's crazy. We got to do something about this." So we basically went and got API access to all of the touch points to access food. So that's any grocery ordering system or restaurant ordering system, and we consolidated those all into a simple text interface so people were able to order food and have it delivered to their doorstep. Specifically right now with groceries and the Medicaid plans are the ones that are financing that food delivery.
And the win-win is that when you feed people well, they go to the hospital, they go to the doctor less. So for the small investment of healthy groceries, you're now seeing a drop in overall costs to the Medicaid plan. So for us, we love it because you're seeing a stimulation back into the local economy with the local grocery stores. We did, 30,000 grocery orders were delivered last month. Within those local communities, that's a lot of business within those local grocery stores. And now you're seeing Medicaid plans spending less money to take care of the most vulnerable population. So we're really, really excited about that.
Judy Shaw:
And at Not Impossible Labs, you and your team operate under the guiding philosophy of help one, help many. Tell me about the meaning behind this phrase and how it shapes both your leadership and the innovative challenges taken on.
Mick Ebeling:
If you ask someone to tackle a massive issue, I just brought up Bento, food insecurity. And if I asked everybody, and as I just did on stage, who wants to solve the hunger problem in this country? You get crickets. Now, everybody in that room I think is a good person. They probably do want to do it, but when you pose the question, who wants to solve hunger in this country, it's so magnanimous, it's so massive, people don't know where to start, so you get this kind of frozen effect.
When you say to someone who wants to solve... I posed the story of a young veteran named Jimmy who lives in Venice Beach, and I asked people, okay, after I told the story of Jimmy, who wants to solve hunger for Jimmy, who wants to buy Jimmy a sandwich tonight for dinner? Everybody put their hands up. So help one, help many for us is a reductive tool to make it so that people can see themselves actually having the potential and the ability to go out and make a difference. But if you ask someone, "Let's solve hunger," they feel daunted. If you say, "Let's solve hunger for Jimmy," then it reduces it down and people feel like a greater access to that solution.
Judy Shaw:
Now, it all started with the Eyewriter, and since then your team has tackled and succeeded in numerous projects, including Project Daniel, Don's Voice and Project Bishop among many others. How do you and your team determine which project or initiative to pursue next?
Mick Ebeling:
We choose what we do based on a lot of factors. For a start, we will always research it very deeply to make sure that the absurdity that we're looking at, there isn't already solutions that exist in the world. Because maybe some of those absurdities have been solved. It's just the right solution hasn't kind of bubbled up yet or gotten enough notoriety to solve the problem.
If we realize that there hasn't been a solution to that, then we will then endeavor to start to understand that what the absurdity is, what the social issues are around it. And then if there's an emotional response from our team, like, "This is something that we have to solve. There's a calling." It's very emotional, like we have to feel like there's a reason for us to do it, then we will start the process, the Not Impossible process, and we call it the Not Impossible way. And that is just a lengthy process of really understanding it and then deciding like, "All right, we don't know what, we don't know how, but we're going to solve this."
Judy Shaw:
Now. The recent AI boom has dramatically accelerated speed, efficiency and innovation enabling companies to grow and achieve at unprecedented levels. Do you see AI as a key driver in your work, allowing Not Impossible Labs to take on and succeed in projects that may have been out of reach five or more years ago?
Mick Ebeling:
I think that humans constantly think that the shiniest thing in front of them is the most revolutionary thing that they've ever seen. So the printing press, the Henry Ford's horseless carriage, the computer, the mainframe, and the personal computer, then cell phones. I think that in the general scheme of things, if you look, if you take a million-year view on society, on our species, you have some really fundamental shifts that have happened, and I think AI is one of those shifts. I don't think it's going to be the thing that transforms us any more than some of the other things that have transformed us, but for the fact that right now the people that are alive for this chunk of time that we're alive, it's one of the most important things that we will experience.
But in 50 to 100 years, there's going to be something else. So with that kind of preface, I think AI is incredibly important. I think that what I have witnessed, because we use it a lot at Not Impossible, is that what makes me very hopeful is that AI left to its own device, left to its own kind of uninfluenced execution is so recognizable as not a human solution. And humanity and creativity will always prevail because you cannot replace that. And it gives me a lot of hope that we'll be able to channel this incredible technological solution, this incredible thing that's going to be able to harness and digest and process and pose potential solves and potential questions. But it will always still have to go through the human. And that human creativity will, I think, always be paramount.
Judy Shaw:
Your introduction to Tempt was the spark that led to the creation of Not Impossible Labs. Many aspiring entrepreneurs and innovators have the passion to create, but may not have the means or know where to start. What advice would you give to those who want to bring their ideas to life but aren't sure where to begin?
Mick Ebeling:
I would tell you that we don't know where to begin. I would tell you that we don't have the means. I would tell you that solutions are based on desire and tenacity, and if you feel that there's a reason to solve something, if there's a reason to innovate, if there's a reason to create something, then that reason has to be important enough to overcome any of the obstacles that will be presented. And that's where tenacity comes in. So my advice would be, if it's important enough, then as we say at Not Impossible, commit and then figure it out.
Judy Shaw:
Mick, tell me, how do you personally define success for the organization? And do you measure it by the number of people helped, the scalability of solutions, or is it something else entirely different?
Mick Ebeling:
Our success is based on the amount of impact that we make. On a macro level, we're trying to create solutions that will have societal effects on massive issues from Alzheimer's to the freedom of expression with Music Not Impossible to national and eventually global food insecurity. There's a whole myriad.
The conference that we're at right now, we've started to contemplate and kind of scratch the surface on creating ways for people, the essential worker to have access to affordable homes and live. So I think that we as a company and we see ourselves as movement provocateurs, we have to try to provoke and catalyze movements and change to take place. And we either want you, we either want to provoke and catalyze you, or we want to start that process and have it begin to actually make change. So that's how we see our role in the world.
Judy Shaw:
And, Mick, as we wrap up our conversation here in Las Vegas, tell me, what's on the horizon for Not Impossible Labs as 2025 continues, and as the years progress.
Mick Ebeling:
We have a lot of different things that we're working on right now. We really want to see those things through. We think Bento is really going to make an incredible difference in the world in terms of... It's funny to say this, but we're using food as a way to catalyze massive change within our most vulnerable populations by changing their health. So it is utilizing food as a means to make a healthier population.
We think Music Not Impossible is going to be incredibly successful. We think that the work that we're doing in Parkinson's, even though right now, we are just on the cusp of really understanding it, we think is going to make a big difference in the world. And we have a myriad of other projects that we're working on that we never know when they're going to hit, but we know that we have the perseverance and the endurance to really see them through. And so we're excited to see when they're going to manifest themselves.
Judy Shaw:
Mick, it has been wonderful to talk with you. Thank you so much for joining me Inside the ICE House.
Mick Ebeling:
Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.
Speaker 1:
That's our conversation for this week. Remember to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen and follow us on X at ICE House Podcast. From the New York Stock Exchange, we'll talk to you again next week, Inside the ICE House.
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