This week, David talks with Herston R. Fails, a creative problem solver, technologist, and the newly minted CTO of Storytailor.AI, an easy-to-use AI story creator for children. Herston gives insight into how he practices intentional behaviors in everything he does, from meeting new people to picking his clothes for the day.
In this episode of the KC Leaders podcast, host David Maples interviews Herston Fails, the new CTO of StoryTailor, an AI-driven storytelling platform based in Kansas City. Herston is recognized as a technologist, connector, speaker, and futurist who has hosted events to bridge the gap between tech experts and novices. Herston emphasizes the importance of accessible technology and encourages early involvement in tech development to ensure inclusivity and to seize opportunities for success, both culturally and financially, within the industry. Some of our favorite key takeaways from Herston’s engaging episode are:
Herston… you called it, so we had to do it! The word ‘Intentional’ was counted 16 times.
Do you want to know Herston’s opinion for Best BBQ in KC? Well, the answer is a little more complex than you may expect!
Hurston has been connecting, meeting, and engaging with individuals with intentionality, and the pay off is glowing! Check out some of Hurston’s favorite places in Kansas City, and some of the amazing people he has connected with over the years!
Be sure to check out the KC Leaders Resources Page for even more BBQ, activities, initiatives, events, and places to explore!
All episodes of KC Leaders brought to you by Catapult Creative Media
Hey, Kansas City. Welcome back to another episode of the KC Leaders podcast. I’m your host, David Maples, and I’m so excited today to have Herston fails on the show. Herston Fails is the new chief technology officer of StoryTailor and AI platform and startup here, located in the Kansas City area. More than that, he’s a technologist, a speaker, I would say he’s a futurist. And he actually, I think, most importantly, has hosted a lot of events around town that help bring various parties together and understanding technology and is bridging kind of the divide between those who understand technology and those who do not. So, Herston, thank you for being on the show.
Thank you for having me, David. I appreciate it.
I Want to… I want to dive in here for a minute. Just the beginning. So, StoryTailor.
Yes.
Okay. Chief Technology Officer, it’s a brand new thing for you. And I met JQ, who’s the founder of the program.
Correct.
And plug here. If he hears this episode, we’d love to have you on the show.
He will hear this. I texted him before I came.
Excellent. So, StoryTailor, I want you to talk about in your own words, but I just want to say, I just got a gush about this for a second. Casey. Leaders in my other life, we’re building a generative AI platform, very different than StoryTailor, more business geared. This is a platform that creates custom stories where your child can be the center of their own story using generative AI. And I’d like you to talk about it just for a minute.
Yeah. So, at a high level, the platform allows you to build stories dynamically while utilizing some tooling via AI. Of course, a little bit different from traditional prompt based story building in that these stories are unique to prompts that are on the back end systems. And so while you are, in fact, inputting information that you want to show up in the story, there are some guardrails just to make sure that individuals are protected. And so there’s actual layers of true, what I would call true prompt engineering that’s happening on the back end where there’s actual inputs, and then those inputs generate outputs, which is very different from what you would see with, like a chat GBT, where you go and enter in some information. You get random and oftentimes obscure feedback. If you’re not specific and don’t know exactly what to put in. This kind of takes that extra layer of work out of it and makes it just more fun and immersive. So the end result is something that you can actually read to a young person without issue. And we give you an ability to make some edits once that story is generated, if you’re not necessarily pleased with everything that comes out, if it’s maybe too whimsical and that does happen on occasion, but you can go in and make some edits to that story and then save it and then go back and read it, and you can also generate additional layers to that story. So, like, let’s say you read the story all the way through, and you’re like, man, I’d love to see how much further this adventure can go, or my kid really loved this part. Let’s see how much further we can take the saga. You do have the option to continue that story, and it’ll take all of the things that you already entered and just add on another layer to that story. So it’s really sophisticated and will be more sophisticated in the future as we expand our feature offerings.
I think it’s a really cool piece of tech, and it’s very different than our own platform that we’ve been building. It does share some similar things on the back end, actually.
Of course.
Similar things. But that being said, I’ve already shown this to like, ten people. Awesome. And they said, oh, yeah, I’d love to do this and get my kid involved with this and actually make my kid like, imagine a bedtime story, if you will, where your child can be the center of the story or even use these kind of tools with their parents help to generate their own stories and own adventures.
Absolutely.
I think it’s a really cool piece of tech, a nice piece of kit, and I just thought it was really cool.
Same.
So really cool stuff. So that is at StoryTailor.AI?
If you do a search for Storytailor.
We’Ll have links to this in the show notes, below it, and on YouTube. So that’s StoryTailor. T-A-I-L-O-R.AI. So wanted to talk and dive a little bit deeper. I met you at a speaking engagement just a little bit over a week ago, and the reason I really wanted to get you in studio now is I want you to talk. So I saw you in this room using technology, introducing people to the Boston Dynamics robot, kind of dispelling some of the myths around artificial intelligence, robotics, drones, all these technologies. Because as we know, in most of the mass media, it seems like a lot of people dwell on the negative kind of connotations of these things. I mean, science fiction, right? Of course you got to have a bad guy if all the robots in your science fiction are all really helpful. I don’t know what you would end up with at some point.
Yeah, the storyline is not nearly as compelling.
I mean, bicentennial man is probably one of the few.
Yeah. And if you remember AI. Yeah, AI, actual movie AI, that showed a very different perspective of where robots could potentially head. But yeah, even then, they kind of villainized the concept of sentient intelligence through technology and it took a wild turn. If you’ve never seen that film.
It’s a great film. It’s a Spielberg vehicle, and I think Jude Law has a role in it at some point.
Yes.
And I think he says as a robot, they made us too fast, too smart and too good. And the humans were jealous. There’s something to that point in the movie. And again, it’s that whole villain kind of thing.
Absolutely.
But it’s a good movie. It’s very interesting. And I would say it was probably years ahead of its time.
Agreed.
Thinking about that. But that being said, I didn’t mean to go off on a tangent there, but I would like to know a little bit about your background because you’re not a Kansas City native.
I am not.
So how did you end up here?
Like most people, a job brought me here, specifically the spinoff from Sprint, which was embark at the time. And so I actually worked in Wake Forest, which is just north of Raleigh. Ironically enough, it is not where Wake Forest University is. Wake Forest University is in Winston Salem. So a little bit of fun trivia there for those who are not from North Carolina. But I worked at the embark office there. They were the landline service of Sprint, and they had just spun off into a new brand because I guess Sprint wanted to offload that company at the time or that part of the business model at the time. And then another, or positioned opened up here in Kansas City. So I was an intern there out of college, graduated from North Carolina, A&T State University in Greensboro, historically black college. I would say number one, but it’s fine. People argue that I’m giving a talk.
At a Southern conference next week, and.
They would, sure, I’m sure, respect all HBCUs. There’s certain level of shared love and knowledge when it comes to the existence of HBCUs. But yeah, out of college, went to embark, had a position open up in Kansas City. My goal was to get out of North Carolina at some point. No disrespect to North Carolina and some of my people who are there, but there are parts of it that are a little less enjoyable. And I lived through some of those interesting experiences, especially in the late 90s, early 2000s, there was some tension when it came to what people call racism, but just general bigotry.
Sure.
So there was some wild stuff happening there. My dad was a pastor, and so it made for some unique things that took place. And so after seeing that, I was like, okay, I got to go and see new skies. And Kansas City opened up as an opportunity, moved out here, went to work in embark, was there for maybe a few months, and then, of course, they had reorgs. Didn’t even know what that meant. Out of college basically means, hey, we’re going to lay you off, but we’ll give you some money so you can live for a little bit of time. And that kind of started my journey here along marketing and all kinds of things. And I’ve had some really interesting positions over the years that have allowed me to learn a pretty wide array of things.
If I’m not mistaken, if I looked at your LinkedIn profile, kind of, I stalked you a little bit online and tried to figure out what was going on about you. You’ve kind of always been involved with. If there’s one single epicenter point, it’s always been related to technology type driven things.
Yes, absolutely. So I have actually been interested in technology for a really long time. And by that I mean, like single digits age. If you contacted my mom or asked her at some point, she would easily tell you, hey, yeah, he’s been interested in robotics, he’s been interested in electronics. He’s been interested in computers and design and everything that I’m doing now. I have actually been interested in, or was interested in when I was really young.
But here’s the thing, it’s funny. Steve Jobs famously said, you can only connect the dots looking backwards. You can’t project them into the future. And it seems like you’re a person of the age who’s exactly positioned where you need to be based on what’s changing in technology right now.
Yes. So that actually comes from a curiosity that I intentionally cultivate. I’ve been in some corporate environments where they don’t cultivate that curiosity, and it can be very challenging for a person like myself. I see how more things are connected than how they’re separate in most corporate structures. That’s not how they’re built. They’re built to construct silos, to keep different things separated, with the idea that they will somehow create uniform success by staying in their own lanes where for me, I’m like, no, I can see how disparate things are connected. And then I work to bring those things together to help people understand that there are more opportunities that are available if they so choose to explore them.
Based on where you’re at now, from working at Sprint as an intern to now chief technology at a really promising startup, what do you find most rewarding about what you get to do?
Inform people. I’ve told you before, and I’ll say it again, I believe the lowest hanging fruit feeds the most people. I think a lot of times, especially in technology, we’re very pie in the sky type people. We see so far out, and sometimes it’s so far out, even when it’s up close. Right. So VR and AR, virtual reality, augmented reality, and then mixed reality solutions, just as an example, we started to explore them. And then when people didn’t adopt right away, we began to be frustrated, and we kind of went on to the next technology, and we hadn’t really truly fully explored what the opportunities were in those spaces. And this, again, just a singular example. And so, as I see technology shifting, I’ve had a lot of conversations with people who feel like, okay, we’re not necessarily included in the way that this is being built. And why is that? And my thing is, let’s not wait until things get built to then get frustrated and angry because we don’t see ourselves there. And then the narratives and the story start to get built post the development process. I’m saying we can get involved earlier, but I understand that not everybody knows what’s happening. Not everybody’s familiar with the language. Okay, let’s bring everybody as up to speed as we possibly can, explore opportunities, and then we can take off from there to help more people get engaged in the processes of building these technologies, but also being involved in finding some success as well as some financial opportunities in the space.
It’s really interesting building technologies that address bias, that are inclusive. It’s interesting when these pieces of technology, and from my own experiences and my other podcasts, even there’s bias if children don’t see themselves in the movies. My wife is a designer and a creative, and she talked about why into the Spider Verse, she thought was a very important movie. It’s an animated film, and I think in the Marvel universe, inclusion was a was until we had some of the later movies, Like Black Panther, et cetera. There was no inclusion originally, early on. Am I wrong in that? I’m not trying to vilify.
I think. I think Marvel did a good job in terms of trying to slowly begin to introduce different ethnic groups into the universe, but Marvel is a bit of an outlier in that. One, it’s fantasy. But then, two, they actually had beings from other planets, right? So there’s a level of inclusivity that comes just by nature of the fact that there really are different races of beings that would unify to take care of or accomplish a singular goal. Now, was a lot of it projected through a predominantly Anglo gaze? Yes, but that’s because Stanley was an Anglo male. Now, there were other animators and creators during the time when Marvel was being built as an entity that started to introduce a lot of other characters of color, but it takes time in their timeline to build them into the infrastructure, because that’s kind of the nature of the way that they built the comics. Now, comic book nerds. Don’t get mad at me. I don’t know all the timelines. I don’t know all the splits. I will admit I don’t have a treasure trove of original comics from certain periods of time, but I’m just looking at things from the perspective of how they’ve built out the narrative in film.
And they did include a lot of the stories that are starting to incorporate more people into the fold. And there were outside social pressures that led to that. I mean, we can’t be disillusioned and think that those things did not have an impact on it, but if we’re honest about that specific entity, they were kind of starting that path anyway. It’s been more difficult when it comes to actual technology than the fantasy world, because it’s still not uncommon that when I walk in the room, I’m the only person. Sometimes I’m the only African American in the entire space. Oftentimes, I’m the only person with melanated skin in the place. And you’ll hear me use certain terms, because I try to be very intentional about my own awareness. When it comes to Ethnicity, nationality, culture, I’m not one that gets too deep into the race part of it. Not because I don’t believe in racism as a construct, but I think we fall back on the idea that, oh, it’s a social construct, and we leave it at that.
Sure.
While it continues to kind of continues to kind of not pay homage or even take into consideration the different ethnicities and cultures that make us. So it can be very limiting. And so while I understand the history of it all, again, had to learn it and grew up in a household that was steeped in it, I started to understand the humanity part of it, and then try to offer a level of respect when it comes to that part. And then everyone doesn’t have the same type of singular identity. Sure. And so I’m just prefacing what I’m saying with that. You’ll hear me say brown people. You’ll hear me say African Americans specifically, because those are the specific groups I’m talking about. And while I understand singular terms like black and brown, they are very reductive, because not everybody either recognizes themselves as a singular color. And some people are perceived in a specific way ethnically, but they’re not necessarily that. So, with respect to everybody and where they come from, I use very specific terms. So I’m laying that out now.
I did want to say one thing about this, and this is not to add on. I just remember my wife graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in fine art and animation in 2002, I believe it was. She was the only female in that program. And I just remember one of the nights they were inviting her. They didn’t invite her. She showed up. They were playing counterstrike. All the boys were playing counterstrike on the computers, in the computer labs.
Okay.
And she wasn’t allowed to play.
Interesting.
And it was really weird. It was like they couldn’t let. And I know things have changed. I mean, we had that terrible Gamergate thing a few years. Mean, it’s just interesting how these things are changing. And I’m glad to see women starting to be included in the tech sector. But still, if you’re in Silicon Valley, if you’re not a white, mean, that’s kind of. It is changing a little, but, well.
It’S not really changing as much as we think it is. I think the measurements shifted, and so people take great pride in the most minor accomplishments.
So we promoted one person in our company, and…
1000%, it’s nominal and relatively insignificant when you look at the actual data itself, because people are chasing major numbers with minor percentages. So if I hire one more African American person, well, I have 100% increased my diversity in a group, and statistically, that’s accurate. But you only had three people on staff, and so you hired two. Yeah. Okay, guys, I know that map did not match, but my point is, that’s how a lot of companies are measuring ethnic success and diversity and inclusion. So it’s wild.
So, to restate this, I have one African American man working on my staff. I add a second one, I’ve doubled.
Correct.
My racial diversity.
Yeah.
I mean, that, technically is. The math is correct.
The math checks out because you can’t have half a person that’s insane, though.
That’s insane.
It’s absolutely insane. It’s asinine. It’s mildly annoying, and it kind of undermines what people’s intelligence is. And unfortunately, I’ve been in places where I feel like that was the celebration. Oh, we hired one more African American person. We are now diverse. It’s like, no, and also, diversity is not solely linked to your perceived ethnicity. That’s where it gets tricky, because people will say, well, we’re diverse. Well, as an example, if I was a KU grad, no diss to KU. But just as an example, if I was a KU grad and I was from here, lived here my whole life, but everybody that I was around was also KU grads who also lived here their whole life. Technically, I am ethnically diverse. Yes. But in terms of my thinking, it’s 100% possible that I don’t think any different from anyone around me. So in terms of perspective, there’s no shift in that which doesn’t allow for me to understand outliers and other use cases where we could add value in a community.
So you’re talking about not just racial identity or nationality or religious background and upbringing. You’re talking about a difference of diversity in thought and opinion.
Yes. And lived experience.
Because that does make a very different…
Absolutely. See, because I’m not from Kansas City proper. Right. I view the city in a very different Way. And again, this is not to disparage anybody who lives here, but what I found very interesting is there’s a lot of area-based tribalism.
Yes.
And so there’s this thought that, oh, I live on this side of the state line, I will never visit the other side of the state line. And it’s like, well, there could be millions of dollars opportunity on that. It’s like, yeah, but I’ll never go over there. It’s like, okay, well, that seems not that smart from a business perspective, nor from a lifestyle sustaining perspective.
It’s interesting because Kansas and Missouri have both very different traditions, and I’m not originally from here. But you know, if you live into independence versus Olathe versus Raytown, all these different areas, and I’ve only kind of just been experienced. I love the city. I feel like a lot of stuff’s going the right way.
Me too.
But it is interesting sometimes in this podcast right now, we are technically in the quote unquote Northlands. I didn’t know what that like, and I don’t understand that because I grew up around Atlanta, Georgia, and everything was 2 hours away. Yes, In Atlanta, it’s sprawling, everything. And so for me, I’m like, I can be downtown in seven minutes. That is nothing. And somebody’s like, oh, you’re north of the river. And I was like, I don’t. Is that the bridge? I don’t know? I don’t know what that mean. When it’s seven minutes, I’m like, that’s nothing. I could probably ride my bike there!
There’s a very Interesting Language in the area, and It’s not until you really understand how that works, how to navigate it. And I want to be clear about something, too. There is a very specific type of history attached to the way that people feel. And I do not want to negate those feelings because there is a very true lived experience for generations that people have had here. So while I understand why people may feel a specific way about what side of the state line they visit, what cities they will go to and contribute to or not, I respect that. But on the other side of that, that also kind of holds the cities back a little bit, just in terms of how far we could progress if we could find true common ground. The only challenge is that, and I think this goes back to what you stated earlier, there are unresolved issues, like in most cities. Again, I’m from North Carolina, specifically the Triad, High Point, Winston Salem, Greensboro. Greensboro has its own unique history. Again, it’s the east thing. So it’s on the east side of Greensboro versus the west side of Greensboro.
There’s very specific, unique differences. And the architect of that divide is from here, you know JC Nichols. And so when you know the history of that, that was one of the first things I learned when I was here. I was listening to KCUR. I don’t know if we can plug them, but sure, yeah, KCUR is awesome. I was listening to them and they were breaking down the story of the Covenants and just redlining and all the stuff that terms that I had heard, gerrymandering all the terms that I had heard. But the origin story I was not as familiar with in terms of what created the structure. It wasn’t just racism when they say systemic racism. It’s about constructing an actual system, much like computer based systems that run very specific functions and conditions. So I’m kind of like bridging the gap of technical language and what we know to be human existence. And they make these things so that they run on their own, but they build it into law and very specific type of structures. And a lot of that stuff is still pervasive today. And so this goes back to what we talked about with biases and systems.
Again, back to the connected things. This is how my brain works. And so, a lot of times, the reason that we see those disparities, those challenges, those issues with bias in programming is because we live in a programmed kind of society. And so that stuff translates into jobs. Those jobs are often, especially in our world, are in the technical space. And people have these biases and these bins that they’re not as aware of. It’s not at the front of their mind, but it’s ingrained through different levels and tiers of indoctrination and just teaching over time. And so now it’s just a progression of a system that’s happening outside, now showing itself inside. And so that’s what we’re seeing when we look at AI, when we look at any of these emerging technologies that are exclusive or seemingly exclusive. We’re just experiencing what we’ve already had on the outside. It’s just accelerated in this system because computers are truly binary. And that’s the trick. That’s where it gets a little hairy.
So it’s a real challenge. It’s really interesting what you’re saying there. And full disclosure, the producer on this podcast right now, currently is in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Right.
Nice, Devon. But it’s interesting. I’m originally, I grew up in Georgia, but I’m from Birmingham, Alabama, which, I don’t want to say anything bad about Birmingham.
It’s got its own unique history. That’s the best way to say.
But redlining and “bombing-ham”, Alabama, as it was called for a while there, is a known thing, and these things are systemic. They’re in our systems, and we have to find a way to break those things moving forward. I think any city that really wants to be kind of a city of the future needs to think about. I think the experiences can’t be diminished. I think it’s important to know where you came from. But I think it’s incumbent upon all of us to see if we can fight against those systems and say that’s not how it should work in the 21st century.
Right.
That’s at least my thoughts on it.
Or if we use our lingo and language, disrupt, because sometimes it’s very difficult sometimes to fight an undercurrent.
Sure.
Right. And so what you have to learn how to do is how do you swim on top of the water? Right. What does swimming on top of the water look like in some of these spaces? Because sometimes you have to overcome those challenges, but not fight so hard to rebuild broken systems. It’s very difficult to do. I’ll put it in my own language. There are times when I’m building a project and I’ve gotten super far along in it, right? And I forget what the name of. There’s a specific type of. I don’t know if it’s a bias, not a bias. There’s a specific type of psychological dynamic where you feel like if you continue to do something and you suffer a loss, that it is a total loss. Right. And that often blocks us from moving forward. And so what I found is that sometimes you got to scrap it. I just recently got off a project that I was doing something creatively for. And a part of the process was I created this texture for this project and this particular texture, it does not work outside of the program. You actually have to do what’s called baking these images and then relayer them to make them work.
Well, if I was going to fight against the program, I would keep trying to force the program to do what it does not want to do and what it won’t do. Instead of saying, okay, how do I swim on top of the water with this? Because the undercurrent is too great. Okay, so if I’m using a procedural texture, which is what it’s called, I have to export each of the layers of the procedural texture into their own images and then reintroduce them into the model. Now, did it take me time to do that? Absolutely. But if I wanted the end result of having the model fully textured, this was necessary to get that done. So I had to address that issue by going in and fixing it. And again, that’s not to say I should go into this software and reprogram it to allow for procedural textures to work outside of it, that doesn’t make sense. And that’s oftentimes what we do in our spaces. But to fast forward to what’s happening right now and the reason why I do a lot of what I do. Systems are currently being built.
Yes.
And before exclusion and changing of narrative and remanufacturing of story can truly take hold, because in a lot of these technologies, Bias has already played a legal role in people’s lives. There’s already been false identity arrests, and you can go look it up. New York Times did a whole story on it. There was a gentleman who was falsely identified by a computer vision software built into a camera. And it said that he had committed a crime because based off of something else that happened, he met a certain threshold of similarity to the person who actually did it. They took him into custody. It was a whole thing. And they were like, oh, yes. Of a false or mistaken identity. Right. This has already happened. We’re not talking about super far out in the future, but it’s so early in the development of these systems that we do have an actual ability to have a profound positive impact on the outcomes that happen within five to ten years. But we should not sit around and wait so that we can then be mad at us not being there. And that’s the shift for me, mentally, to your very first question. That’s why I do what I’m doing.
It’s kind of like, just to boil it out from the listeners a little bit, it’s kind of like complaining about gluten being in what you were baking after you’ve already got the cake there.
Absolutely.
You have to address these systems when they’re being built. It’s really hard to fight against the technology after it already exists. And we already know from a training standpoint, we know, and I’m getting a little far afield from KC Leaders. We know that predominantly all these imaging systems were chained on Caucasian people a lot of times initially, and so false identity. HP had the terrible. Several years ago, they had the false identification of black people and confusing them with, I think, primates.
Yeah, Google had a similar challenge.
It’s just you wonder who’s sitting around this room, and I don’t necessarily. It’s partly the systems. Nobody thought about it. Nobody thought to ask, hey, did we test this on a different group of people? When we do human subject testing with medical devices or medical things, we’re supposed to be testing them on a lot of different groups, et cetera. So we have an idea if there’s a bias that shows up, because you can marginalize a group of people very easily and end up with very bad outcomes. And I feel it’s important to have diversity of background, experience, race ethnicity, and all these other things in the room when we’re making those initial baking decisions, for lack of a better term, and I’m so glad you’re in this space. I want to ask right now, this is all tied into what you’re doing. What are you doing? What ways are you contributing to make Kansas City a better place to kind of live, play and work?
Absolutely. So I’ve gotten very involved in Keystone Innovations Collab with Kevin McGinnis and everything, and as well as Craig with BXKC, we’re building an ecosystem of creatives, of just individuals in the area. It’s a fantastic place where you can actually go physically and meet and share ideas and thoughts? My contribution to that space is we have an emerging tech talk or segment that happens on the fourth Wednesday of every month. And so what happens is we kind of line up speakers and a specific subject matter that gets covered to help inform people of things in the emerging tech space. We have full on presenters. And then what I typically do is I’m in the 07:00 hour. I do kind of a super high level of some type of emerging tech. We talk about the myths, we talk about the key terms to bring everybody up to speed. And then we talk about opportunities, right? We don’t sit around and hyper focus on all of the negative things. We’ll leave that to external media. We’ll leave that to other individuals. And let me be frank about this. A lot of times that negative narrative that you receive is from people who are not actually in the space.
They’ve not actually done anything in the space, right? So for me, I get intentionally involved in these things so I can speak from experience. So I have bought an NFT before. I’m familiar with how smart contracts work. I’ve gotten into the AI space. I understand how the prompts work. I understand what a large language model is. I understand the impact, the potential impact of computer vision on our everyday lives. I was able to work with Evergy to get the robot in person, to get the spot robot from Boston Dynamics. Evergy calls it Sparky, to a place where people can see it in real life. I tried to facilitate. Not tried, I did. I facilitated them bringing their drones out so people could actually see a real drone fly around if they had never seen it before. Let’s put this technology in front of people so that the movie narratives and the external narratives from, again, people who are not familiar with the space so they can actually see what it is, and then start to think about, how can I utilize this in my life? How can I overcome fear that nine times out of ten was manufactured from somewhere else?
And now look at this as a place of opportunity. That’s my contribution to this. And right now, that contribution is relatively small to actually the size of Kansas City. But I think eventually we’ll be able to expand what it is that we’re working on, specifically my own personal mission of making sure people that are informed. I think we’ll have an opportunity to see that grow so that more people feel empowered and less disenfranchised and disempowered by the things that they’re experiencing right now. That’s my aim and goal. When I hit that stage and when we have those sessions. That’s what I’m trying to do every time. And I should also note that Keystone has speaker sessions and a bunch of other events that happen throughout the week. Every Wednesday, like clockwork, five to 08:00 there are always sessions every week that happen. And I would encourage anybody who listens to this, technical or non, just come and sit in on some of those sessions, because people are creating amazing things. People have really cool, lived experiences that they hit the stage and they share. And if you have a really cool experience, you can also hit the stage and share it if that’s one of those things that you want to kind of get out into the public.
So that’s my role, one that I can point exclusively to as a technical consultant. So a lot of that external work and extra work that I do, I offer services to groups and organizations that I feel like they need because I’ve been in the professional and corporate spaces and found that those services are not often given or afforded to people who really need them. And I want to make sure that they get that as well. So when I do my videography and all that kind of stuff for my different clients, or if I do brand or identity design or I do periodic website updates, I understand in most of those instances, and a lot of those groups that I work with are nonprofits. They don’t typically have access to people who do that on a long term basis. And so it gets very difficult to maintain that. And in a highly technical world, if you don’t have somebody technical that you can talk to to help inform you of things, it can become very easy to get lost. And so I just try to remain a resource. I try to remain available to a lot of those companies or organizations that need that type of help because I understand that, one, they’ve probably been misinformed, and two, I don’t want them to make an investment in something that doesn’t have any long term returns for them.
So that’s the role that I play, both in professional capacity as well as the work that I do in the community.
I met you through the Keystone Collab and just, I guess just to plug something on the KC Leader’s podcast, it’s been requested that as we’re putting the show notes together and putting all these things, we are going to be putting together a resource guide kind of within the website so anybody can go there. We’re going to have a map with different locations around town just to help amplify the voices already out there. There are a lot of good places out there to find the resources. But we felt like that was something we had it requested and we’re doing it on the show and that’s one of the things we’re working on. Is there another initiative or project you want to talk about? Keystone Collab? We’ll have in the show notes. We’ll have it down there. Is there another thing you’re involved in you think is really dynamic and cool?
So there is a ticketed event at the Nielsen Atkins Museum. I had the honor and pleasure of creating a 3D rendering that will be minted as an NFT in celebration for the 90th Anniversary of the Nielsen Atkins Museum. That event will happen on the 16 November. But again, it is a ticketed event because they’re only going to mint so many NFTs. So you have to have that in order to show up. It’s open to the public. Yes, but you also have to have proof that you’ve purchased a ticket for the event. I’m trying to be very explicit about that because I don’t want people to show up to the museum that night and think I’m just going to get in. No, you have to have acquired a ticket.
All right, so when this episode is airing, this will be next week. It’ll be next Thursday, the 16th. And this is airing on, I believe the. I have to look at the date, but this should be Tuesday. We were recording this a week before that or just a few days ago.
Got it. So you may miss it, but it’s okay. Just know that it happened and it was cool.
It was cool. This episode will be up a week before that. That is our guarantee.
Okay, cool.
But if you can get a ticket, as we do on our socials, we’re going to have links to that. So you can get tickets if they’re still available at that point in time.
Right.
It’s a great event. I’d recommend everyone to go out. Don’t miss it. You can meet Herston in person there.
Yeah.
And it’s really cool. And if you’re part of the Kansas City community and you haven’t had a chance to go to the Nelson Atkins Museum.
Yes, please go.
It is a phenomenal art museum. I say it’s in probably the top 20 in the United States. It’s amazing. They have actual water lilies by Van Gogh there. I mean, they’ve got one of the giant triptychs. It’s a very cool museum. It’s an amazing space. And I think everyone should experience if they can.
And if I can plug something. So the leadership that’s changed more recently has put a ton of effort into being actively inclusive in the art that shows up there, which is important. I’ve got a couple of people that I know who actually have pieces that are up there. If you’ve never seen work by Chico Sierra, you should absolutely check it out. He’s one of the most phenomenal artists in Kansas City. Warren Harvey is also another one. I don’t think he has a piece in there yet, but he deserves to have a piece in there. There are a few artists around the city that do some amazing work, and Kansas City is full of fantastic artists, too. Let me preface it with that. The reason that this museum can be the way that it is and you can have so many incredible pieces that are there is because you have that energy of art here in Kansas City. And I will say what’s really unique about the Nielsen is that they have the older part of the museum and then they had an addition that’s more contemporary. So it plays a fantastic role. Like, it bridges that gap between older pieces, your Rembrandts, that era of time, the more realistic oil paintings that you would come across, the Impressionists, some Cubism stuff.
But then you can go into the more modern branch and see art from local artists as well as more contemporary artists. And the way that they kind of cross the generations when it comes to artistic representation is amazing. It’s a jewel that I don’t know that people in Kansas City really understand the value of, at least not right now. But it has been noted in some national forums and nationally syndicated published material that it’s like one of the top museums, top ten museums in the country. It’s incredible. And I just don’t know that enough people go and really experience that museum the way they should. And it’s open to the public. They do have paid exhibits from time to time. Again, the event that I’m doing is paid or ticketed, but there’s a ton of just free things that happen there. And you can just go in and look at the art. It’s beautiful. And there’s a cafe there, so if you want to get a coffee, you can do that, too.
That’s the amazing thing about Kansas City. There are so many quote unquote hidden gems in the city. And I think that’s a problem because we had Lisa Pena on the show. She does these urban hikes through Kansas City.
Yeah, Lisa’s awesome, too.
And they show and she takes people to stuff they’d never seen. We got a couple of muralists. We want to get on the show. There is so much in this city. It’s like, you turn over rock, you’re like, I didn’t know that was there. They had the Negro Baseball hall of Fame is down there. We have a jazz tradition. There is just so much. And I don’t mean to go too overboard with this, but this is a cool freaking city to be in. Absolutely. So I’m going to shift gears for just a second. What kind of unique opportunities or challenges do you see for Kansas City in the coming years?
I’ll start with the challenges, and then I’ll go to the opportunities I want to finish.
Sounds good.
Okay. Challenges. Like in most major metropolitan cities, we still have some pretty clear socioeconomic divides, and a lot of times, those also play across ethnic divides and just disparities in that space. Again, this is not uncommon to any larger or metropolitan City. That’s kind of the unfortunate nature of it. And we’ve already talked about, at a high level, the history of that. So we still are trying to navigate that challenge. And again, it’s been built over time. It will take a lot of time to disrupt and or rebuild. Know, we get, I don’t know, a group of Avengers in an array of space. And I’m just using that as a term because we talked about Marvel earlier to assemble and maybe shift some things from a socioeconomic standpoint and then just general societal challenges, the narratives that surround both what it means to be in this part of town versus that part of town. I live in Wyandotte County. Unfortunately, we get a lot of that, a lot of backlash and a lot of flack, and I’m not a huge fan of it at all. And that challenge is persistent on both sides of the state line and sometimes at the state line.
So we still have a lot of work to do to try to overcome that and find commonality, especially in places where we could both elevate each other. And by that, I mean both parts of the city, Kansas side or Missouri side. So there’s a lot of work to be done there, as well as a lot of the narratives. And it’s not narratives based out of conjecture. It is fact. With the whole east of Troost trope that exists, it’s annoying. It’s frustrating. I am in contact with and work closely with a lot of people who are putting in real work, ground level work to overcome the challenges of that narrative and the idea of the disparities that come from, again, tropes, just negative tropes that they don’t really speak to what’s actually happening.
I heard this probably within my first month here being in town, I was told, oh, ‘you don’t go east of Troost at night’ or something like that. And I don’t want to misspeak this. It has to do with some kind of. It’s almost like a racial dividing line or something like that. Is that it, or is it economic?
I can’t speak in super depth of the history because I’m not from here.
Sure.
So with respect to everybody who has a much deeper history than me, and I would even encourage you to maybe invite someone I can fish around for some more historian.
I would love to bring some people on.
Yeah, I’d prefer to get a historian, but I’m going to give you, like, the top level, as it was described to me, is there was, of course, during this may even go back further than that, because you also have to understand the history of Missouri and that state line as a divide, also became the divide between enslavement and freedom during the period of enslavement, right across that state line. Free state versus what they called at the time, slave state. Right. And so there’s still that history there. Well, if you take that and extrapolate it over time, you go through post enslavement Jim Crow era on through. And I mean, I hate when this happens, but for the sake of the time, I’m time jumping to the civil rights era because there’s a whole litany of years in there that people dealt with challenges, struggles that were manufactured, based off of a mentality. Right. So it’s steeped in that part. Then you have the whole covenants thing that then took red lines. And through both redlining and gerrymandering, you took people and forced them to certain parts of the city, typically for economic reasons, but most importantly, to continue to play into the racial divide part of things. Then 71 was run through the city to further reinforce the divide, because it’s much more difficult for you to cross a highway than it is a street.
Yeah. It’s the same reason why in cities you always look at major divides, waterways and railroad tracks.
So it’s railroads in Greensboro.
In Birmingham, Alabama, its railroads.
So east side, west side, there’s literally a railroad that runs right through the middle. And that’s the divide. That’s when you know you’ve crossed into a different side of the city. So in this case it was highway. And then you also had Troost as another dividing line, and that became the whole east of Troost thing. So essentially what happened again, high level, please, I encourage you. Bring a real historian up here. I will. But there was intentional disenfranchisement by removal of resources. And as that began to be essentially bled out of these areas through a bunch of different things from taxes and abatements and all kind of stuff, you know, the ‘rigmarole’ of the bureaucracy that comes with city governments. Over time, people were the jobs, the economic infrastructure was both dismantled and removed. And so you displaced. Not only displaced people, but you also removed their ability to live by pulling out the economic part of it, because a lot of these areas were thriving in their day. And just like you saw in Tulsa, Wilmington, North Carolina, Greensboro, North Carolina, a lot of cities around the country. I believe that it also happened in New Jersey.
And then you have some stuff happening in Philadelphia, where they bombed areas. That kind of stuff was happening everywhere. In some places, it was actual bombs. They literally bombed a city. They literally set stuff on fire.
I mean, Tulsa, the Tulsa 1921, total bombing. And a lot of people don’t even know that happened.
Government sanctioned?
Yeah, absolutely.
So that happened. But that didn’t just happen in Tulsa. It was happening everywhere. But in other places where people wanted to be a little less overt, they took the covert route and said, okay, so what we’ll do is we won’t allow for business loans beyond this point, or specific businesses will get loans over here, but ones that allow for a diverse array of things, they will no longer be allowed over here. So if you want to drop a liquor store over here, you want to drop a laundry mat, no disrespect, but you want to drop things that make areas look socially disadvantaged, we will fund that. But when it’s time to fund, like a coffee shop or a sit down restaurant or clothers or tailors, things of that nature. No, we’re not going to allow for funding based off of Zip code, based off of street. We won’t allow for loans to happen. And I can’t prove it. But again, talk to a historian. I would imagine that there was a potentially concerted effort through different financial institutions to not allow for that to happen, because a lot of these people were connected. You have a lot of families that are tied into these institutions, and they speak to each other, and it’s essentially a situation of strategic networking to disenfranchise people, to allow for others to remain.
So there’s that underlying that undertone of Kansas City that still has yet to be addressed. Some of it deals with overall guilt. Some groups do not want to be affiliated. They don’t want it to be known that they played an active role in the full on disenfranchisement of an entire area of a city. Because if you looked at it at a super high level, it can also be looked at as like social genocide because deaths happened and literally tragic things have happened to families over time.
If I can share a brief story. So, in high school, in the mid to late ninety s, I worked at Taco Bell, but I was building computers, and I got hired by a real estate offer to do all the real estate office to do all of their IT infrastructure.
Oh, I think I see where this is.
And I was working late one night in a cubicle next to me, a couple of real estate agents, and I’m not going to say the name of the agency I was working for. It doesn’t matter. But if you happen to listen to this show. Neil, Dottie. Hi. The point about it was that I heard them over talk one night. They said, oh, do you know what Tim did? And so I’m sitting there working on running cable after hours. They said they’re going to move. He’s talking about moving a black family into that neighborhood. He can’t do that. This is in the 90s, man.
Yeah.
And it literally was. And I think that was my first. And I was, what, 16? That was one of the first times where I said it was something I heard and I said, that shouldn’t be happening. And I just remember I was in that office and I’m some no nothing kid. And I heard that. And for those of you out here who think that these things don’t happen, these things actively happen today. And I’m not lecturing. They happen. Just look around, open your eyes. It happens. So to the next question. How do you help overcome that? How do you approach fostering, like, unity or collaboration within the things you’re doing? How do you overcome that?
So this actually goes to the second part of your question and opportunity as a direct connection to this. So the way that I change that is I’m very intentional about the connections that I make with people, and I work hard to offer value to those folks, but then also connect them to other people who are doing similar or aligned work. So that’s one of my own personal missions, and I try to do it daily in terms of making those connections and ties. So my active role is in. Okay. Hey, I know you have a fantastic podcast. David has a podcast. Okay. I have a friend, Lewis, who is a technologist, brilliant human. He and his wife Arlene are creating something amazing. I don’t know that you all have met.
No.
What typically happens is people say you should meet someone and then you never hear anything else about it. What I try to do is say, I have a friend that I think you should meet. Let’s set up a time. What’s your availability? Yeah, I hop right into availability and then I say, okay, let me quarterback this. So I’ll send a message and then I’ll say as a group, hey, when can everybody meet? Right? Then I say, okay, cool. We’ve established times. Let’s establish a location. I try to do this thing in rapid secession, right? So we don’t get so caught up in our daily lives and schedules that we forget to make that connection. And my whole thing is I make the initial connection and then I’ll step back. I don’t have to be involved anymore. If a friendship and a relationship and a partnership and all that stuff bloom and blossom from that, cool. If nothing comes from that, also cool. The point is you were connected to that person in real human life and were able to establish something. And why real human? Sometimes that means in person. Sometimes that means virtual with respect to the times that we live in.
But if I can make it happen in person, I work very hard and intentionally to do that. And it’s not uncommon that I’ll arrange a meeting with someone and then I’ll talk to a friend of mine and be like, yeah, are you free this day? And they’re like, yeah, cool. I’m going to be at this spot and then I’ll reach back out to the person. Hey, so look, I know you and I are having a meeting and we’re going to talk about very specific things. But is it cool if I invite this other person? Because I really want you two to meet and I will create impromptu meetup sessions with people who I just think should at least know that each other exists. That’s what I do. And then I’m also intentional about spreading out who I share my dollars with. Active patronage. I will go to equally minded and I will sit with Dantavius and have a cup of coffee, or chai, by the way, the chai at equally minded, top tier. All right. But then I’ll also go to my buddy TJ over at kinship Coffee in KCK and I’ll sit down, chat with him.
And we’ll have full on conversations. And I’ll spend money there. And then I’ll go over to Cafe Corazon and I’ll spend money there. And then I’ll go over to Cafe Ca-Phe, and I’ll spend money there. And if one of my friends is selling merchandise, I’ll buy it. Intention, active intention. And it’s not just limited to people who I know in the area. I start with Kansas City. So if I know people in Kansas City who are doing these specific things, I’ll make sure that I make them a priority in terms of how I spend my next dollar. If it’s in a space where I feel like I need something, I’m intentional about that. Chico Sierra, who I mentioned earlier, I’ve bought pieces from him. Like I’ve bought four pieces from him before the murals and before this other stuff because he’s been brilliant a long time. And I’m like, oh, my gosh. And so I hopped on Facebook. I comment, your work is brilliant. And then he says, I’m selling things. And then I say, how can I buy them? And then I arrange to buy those pieces and then I go and pick them up from him and I keep those pieces.
I’m trying to figure out where I’m going to hang it because I don’t have a lot of wall space, but that the next phase is to hang them into something or like hermetically seal them, because at this point he’s going to be it. But I do that with as many people who I come in contact with as possible, and I make very specific recommendations to people. So you say to me, Herston, I want to communicate with a historian in the educational space. I’ll say, fantastic Spark Bookhart is who you need to talk to. I’ll arrange a meeting between you two and I’ll try to get him up here to be on your podcast. Let’s do that. Because he is an educational mastermind historian, the level of depth that he knows about, especially KC,MO School history… He has an entire organization built off of empowering parents through the parent power lab. And all the work that he does through the parent organizing institute is fantastic. I’ve sat through a couple of his sessions and I’ve learned all kinds of things about superintendents who were here, what happened during these periods of time, why were there so many superintendents that happened during this era versus, like, he goes deep into that stuff.
So that’s what I do. I say, David is interested in these things. I know this can be the frustrating part in my experience here. And I’ve been here almost. See, 2006 is when I got here. So I’ve been here that long. And so as I’ve kind of matriculated through the system, I’ve been in different nonprofit organizations and all that kind of stuff. Nothing irritates me more than for a person to have the contact and then hoard it, even when I know you need it. So we’ve had a conversation and you say, Herston, I’m building a situation. I’m trying to elevate the city by speaking with Leaders in Kansas City. And I’m like, awesome, I’ll come on your show. It’s not uncommon for people to come on your show and you never hear from them again.
That is true.
And then you’ll say, I’m still looking for leaders. And they’re like, that’s awesome. Good luck on that. Hope you find them. Whereas me, I’m like, oh, I’ve got five leaders in my head right now that I will, hey, you need to go up to David’s.
I want to crowbar this stuff open, man.
And that’s the part that I think eventually will help the city. The more intentional we get about sharing not just our financial resources, but also our connected resources, the better the city will eventually grow to be. We can realize that full potential, but we have to be intentional. And that’s where I try to fill that gap.
Is there a personal experience or lesson? What got you here? I haven’t heard many people say that they’re intentional about putting people together. I hear a lot of people say, oh, you need to meet this person. And then the thing for me is I have to follow them up all and kind of annoy them and say, can I talk to this person? So where did you come up with this? Why is this important?
Honestly, I just got frustrated over the time that I was here. Not necessarily. Well, let me back up. Early, early on in living here, I established very quickly that Kansas City is a amalgamation of circles. Right. Sometimes those circles form a venn diagram and there is overlap. Right. But oftentimes, and I don’t know if this is like a scarcity mindset or what, but people will feel like, oh, because I know this person and it took me potentially this long to establish this relationship, I must now hold on to it with every piece of fiber and grip that I have and not avail this knowledge base, group base to anybody else because it took me this long to earn it. You have to earn it. It’s a common mentality. And it’s not just in Kansas City. You said you came from Atlanta. Atlanta is very similar, even Greensboro very similar to that. Different because Greensboro is a smaller city. Atlanta is a massive city, so very different. And then you have socioeconomics you have ethnic differences. It’s very different. But if we put that in the context of Kansas City, I am trying to make more of the circles that I’m connected to overlap more to where they almost seem like they’re singular.
And I work very hard not to allow some of the ridiculousness that can pop up in some of these relationships to cloud the ability for that to continue to happen. It is not uncommon for me to be having a conversation with an individual, and they voice some type of tension or issue that they have with someone else. And I’m like, hey, have you spoken to that person? No, I haven’t said anything. So do they know you feel like this? No, they don’t know that I feel like this. I mean, you might want to reach out to them. And I don’t play both sides to the middle. I’ll say, hey, I don’t know that they understand that the way you understand it. And here are some other considerations to just put out there again, outside looking in, and I’ll let them know. My whole thing is my one and a half cents, right? You can take it or leave it, but this is my one and a half cents on this particular situation. Now, can we come to common ground? Is there space for common ground? And sometimes there is. Sometimes there’s not. But I still hold my relationships with both groups, with both people, because I don’t find value in the tribalism.
Again, that goes right to that tribalism part that I talked about earlier. That happens in circles, too. So what I attempt to do is make sure that it doesn’t happen, because I’ve seen it during my matriculation here through all the different avenues, from my time in retail to my time in marketing to my stint that I served in a nonprofit. I was a member of 100 black men of Greater Kansas City, and then I was the president for four years. And there were some interesting things that I learned about circles and people and networking and that kind of thing. And those experiences really opened my eyes to the value of being intentional about connecting, even when the world is actively working to disconnect.
So what is one actionable idea or piece of advice you’d like to share with the listeners?
I think this goes back to what I said before about intention. We should all strive to be a little bit more intentional in some of the things that we do, even the things that seem insignificant a lot of times in that perceived insignificance is the most value. And so I. I work very hard to educate myself on a wide array of things understanding that that information will be usable at some time, regardless of how trivial it seems in the moment. I allow myself to rabbit hole on a wide array of things because it helps me to maintain that connectedness. As things shift, technology shifts, perspectives shift. Have you seen Dune? The movie Dune?
Yeah.
Okay, so, you know, in Dune, when he’s learning about how to navigate the sands, and you have to move, like the sand to prevent the sandworms from eating you. Right. I kind of follow that concept, but from a learning perspective. And so when I met with JQ recently at Barnes and Nobles, I picked up a few different magazines. Three of them were on artificial intelligence. One was on timepieces. Now, that might seem weird to some people because I’m looking at an analog form in a timepiece. Like true timepieces, not digital watches. Like, Audemars Piguet… you know. High end watches, you know, Dave Bethune, I’m a huge fan of Bethune. I kind of just recently got on to them. And so the fascinating thing about timepieces and their intricacy is that they pack a lot of artisanship, a lot of craftsmanship, in a very small package. Like, you wear it on your wrist, it’s super small. And to a layperson who’s not paying attention, a watch is a watch. I can determine by looking at someone’s wrist if it’s a timepiece or a watch. Got it. There’s a difference in craftsmanship. This apple Watch is a watch.
Yeah.
If I see someone with a very specific brand on their wrist, it’s a timepiece. Even, like, Hamilton, a Longines. Like, you have to know that’s a timepiece. Regardless of perceived value, it’s a timepiece. There’s a difference. And then there’s those that people know. Richard Meal and Rolex, fantastic brands, also artisanship. All of that more easily recognizable. Then there’s those outlier brands Brigade, and you’re like, do you know what that. So I do that across the board, and that allows me to have the kind of flexibility that I need to hold whatever kind of conversation. But then I also know about Hoka shoes. I dig deeper into the sneaker culture. So when I see someone with a specific pair of shoes on, I’m like, okay, you have a very specific taste when it comes to those types of things. But I do that across the board. Jewelry, everything. So even as I looked at your ring, like your wedding ring, what’s unique about the twist in that is that it’s unusual for a couple of reasons. That form is not typically placed inside of a men’s ring. Or a band, it doesn’t mean it cannot be. But that decision to get a band that twists tells me something interesting about you. And it would be my entry point into a conversation with you if I didn’t already meet you.
And you’re one of the, maybe the fifth person. It’s a mobius strip, and we had them designed. My wife’s matches.
There you go. And so those are, like, the nuanced things that I pick up on, and I go outside of some of the common things. Right. So, with you, I’m not necessarily going to go to your shoes. I like your boots. But that’s not where my focus would be, because I don’t think, and I’m assuming that when you put them on, you thought, these are the unique identifiers for me when I walk out of the house. No. But your ring, that choice that you made, however many years ago you made it, there’s something unique about that that speaks to me, and I’ve had this happen so many times with just people I’ve come in contact with. I once had a coworker that I worked with. She’s an awesome person. I don’t want to call her name, because I don’t know if she’d be cool with that. But she had on this necklace, and this particular necklace was from Tiffany and company, and it was a bean specifically. That was the name of that charm. And it’s a Picasso. It’s one of the relatives of. Descendants of Pablo Picasso. I don’t know if it’s, like, his daughter, granddaughter.
Anyway, she’s an artist, and she did a line for Tiffany and company, and that particular piece was the bean. So I saw it, and I was like, okay. Of all the things, like, I scan a person, and of all the things that she might have on, that’s the outlier. That’s a unique piece, because everybody’s not going to know what that is and everybody’s not going to get it. I said, is that a bean? She was like, yeah. It’s like, from Tiffany Company. Yeah, from the. Yeah, yeah. She’s like, so I got this because the nickname for my daughter is Bean. Right. Seemingly insignificant. No one else in the room saw it. Never even asked about it outside of that. And there’s a human connection piece that comes with being able to identify those things. And so that’s a part of. I hope that answers your question. A part of that for me.
So, for you, the actionable piece of advice is just, like, observe kind of the people holistically in their whole being. There were choices that went into what you put on today. Not maybe every piece of it, right? But there were choices like your glasses, for example, the way you do that, the way your lenses work, et cetera. That is an intentional choice. This man took things. I don’t want to get off the topic here, but there’s a movie called Joe versus the Volcano from years ago, and I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it, but there’s a scene in.
This is Tom Hanks in Tom Hanks? Yeah.
There’s a scene in that movie where he’s talking to the driver, and he’s like, what kind of clothes should I wear? And he’s like, the driver, the chauffeur, whatever it is, says. You’re asking me what kind of clothes you should wear. I mean, clothes make the man. If you don’t know what kind of clothes you need to wear, you don’t know who you are. And I’ve always thought it’s one little snippet in this comedy, which is, you don’t need to put this in the thing. But it’s this one piece of advice in the film that I felt was somewhat profound to me whenever I saw it initially. And I was like, literally, there’s a reason behind the things we do. And I think that’s important to kind of connect with people and find out where there is my wedding ring. The fact that you notice that is really flattering. Number one, we’ve only had probably four or five people ever talk about it. They were either in jewelry or you just got married and somebody’s like, of course, checking out your ring. And that was a thing for. So how do you stay informed, connected and engaged in the Kansas City community?
How do you do that?
I hate to keep saying it, but it’s intention. So I find people who are doing things impactful in the city, and I communicate and connect with them to see if there’s common ground where we can both add value to each other in some form or fashion. And then I get active on trying to create that value for them. So that’s what I do in the city. And then I try to put myself in different positions. Sometimes I get invited to different things. So, for instance, the NFT project with the Nelson, that actually came via a recommendation by somebody added me on LinkedIn because the call was placed out to, there was a gentleman who made the request believe his name is Jeff. Jeff made a request. Lewis, my friend, added me and said he might be a fantastic person to connect with, had a communication with Jeff. Jeff said, oh, this is cool. I also happen to be a technologist who’s also creative. So that commonality led to me being included on the project. But that was an invitation, again, seemingly insignificant invitation, because a lot of times we overlook stuff like that. Things will pop up, people at you, and you just ignore it, or you just go drop a simple like.
But there’s no follow up. And so we miss a lot of those opportunities. My wife, Cynthia, like, there’s this gentleman who on occasion has these dinners. His whole thing is, bring somebody with you, and we want to sit down and have interesting conversations and just see what everybody’s up to. Very simple. There were times when I turned down the invitation to go, and then there were times where I was like, no, I’m going to go. I’m going to show up to this dinner and sit and talk and have conversations. The conversations are almost always interesting. I meet really unique people from around the city who I’ve never met in my life, and I don’t have any direct ties or connections to. But then we meet over food and have a conversation, and then we continue to go on about our lives. Sometimes we, you know, link up on LinkedIn or some social platform, and we stay kind of tapped into each other and we follow. What I also find enriching for me is I will be on LinkedIn. I’ll have a first degree connection who achieves something, and it may be a person that I’ve never met in real life.
I will still congratulate them as if we’ve known each other for years and say, onward and upward. I really am excited that this new thing is happening for you, and you seem to be excited. You’re at least excited enough to post it on here. And so congratulations. And it doesn’t take anything to be positive. I don’t expect to get anything from it. A lot of these people, like I said, they don’t know me. In real life, we’re first degrees because we found some general common interest. But you know how that goes on LinkedIn. You find somebody, they do something cool, you’re like, hey, you want to connect? Yeah, sure, let’s connect. Cool. No problem. But very few people take it a step further. Again, I’m not perfect at this. I’m trying to get better at it. But when someone connects with me on LinkedIn, one of the things that I try to do, this little hack for people who are trying to figure this part out, when you go and you connect with somebody and they accept your connection, thank them for accepting you into their network and then let them know that at some point in the future you’d love to contact or connect with them.
Sometimes it can be immediate, sometimes they’ll be like, yes, we need to meet now. Other times I’ll be like, cool. Appreciate that. They may just give you the thumbs up. They may completely ignore you. Not the point. The point is that you established a connection through gratitude for them even accepting it.
What do you love most about Kansas City and what makes it stand out from other places you’ve been?
Geographically, it’s central to the country, so you can get almost anywhere within two and a half to 3 hours, which is probably one of the most undersold things when it comes to the city.
I can be in downtown Times Square if I get a 05:00 a.m.. Flight.
Absolutely. Yeah. And I don’t know that enough people understand the value of that logistically, when it comes to just business. I don’t know why more companies aren’t headquartered here, honestly. We do have a significant amount of top tier companies that are here, but it’s wild with the amount of land that exists on both sides of the state line, how central we are now. People might not necessarily be a fan of the weather, especially in the wintertime, respect. But just in terms of general logistics, the ability to ship and move things, it’s no wonder that Amazon has so many hubs here and they plan to get more. And it’s no wonder that Meta is building one of their data facilities in North Kansas City. Like all of this stuff is not unusual to me, but I’m surprised more companies aren’t doing that. And I’m also surprised know the states don’t take on like the Delaware approach of taxation. The boom that could happen here would be astronomical. Absolutely nuts. Which goes to my second thing. The density of talent in this city is grossly underrated because you have so many technical companies here. I don’t know that at a high level, this area is really viewed as deeply technical because you have a high concentration of engineers, programmers, entrepreneurs here because of that, just grossly underutilized.
And I just don’t think the city really focuses enough on that now. That’s changing. We talked earlier about one of the new designations of the city as being a tech town, so that’s awesome. In order for us to really see how far that goes, we’ll have to get over some of the ego stuff. We’ll have to come to grips with some of the realities of the historical stuff and find a way through. And then trust not only in leaders, in singularity, but in ourselves, to navigate those waters and find the commonality through intention to grow into what we could be as a city. But there’s so much value in that. And again, the trippy part is very rarely do you have the technical density and the artistic density that we have here. Again, grossly underrated. If you just go around downtown Kansas City and just see the sheer number of murals and just art pieces that are just up, I don’t think the city gets enough credit for that. And I don’t think the city gives itself enough credit for that universally. I think we got pockets. Yeah, you got the crossroads crowd.
Crossroads is cool.
Crossroads crowd, though. It’s a crowd, it’s a situation. Crossroads crowd doesn’t necessarily vibe with the financial district crowd, which doesn’t necessarily vibe with the city or the river market crowd is very interesting in that way. People like us and it’s weird. I think it will take a contingency of outsiders to help the city understand the value that it has. That goes to the diversity part and the inclusion part and the equity part. But you actually have to empower all of those things to function in their true capacity to see the value. And I think that’s where a lot of companies are getting it totally wrong.
What steps would you suggest to someone who wants to make a difference in KC?
Evaluate the networks that you’re already connected to and determine how they may potentially add value to other networks that you are also connected to, even ones that you’re connected to in a very loose level. You don’t have to have the most established relationships to make sure that all of them work, but you can be, again, intentional. And I’m sorry, there’s probably going to be like an intentional counter on this, and that’s fine. But attempt to make those things work together in some form or fashion. And you don’t have to be aggressive about it. Just feel how it naturally works together and then work to make those alignments happen, even at a very basic level. So if it’s just hey, David, I’m going to start a group text between me, you and Lewis. So you all can just start that conversation. Okay, cool. It started. Now I’ll back out. Be ready to back out. And don’t look for any type of credit necessarily for the things that are happening, but celebrate when things are going well, not just for you, but for others in the area. And you’ll find that over time, that same energy that allowed for that greatness to happen there will eventually make its way back to you in some form or fashion.
And it’s not necessarily about an expectation. It’s just been my experience, especially as of late, when things in life started to shift. The energy that I was putting out, especially the stuff that I was doing at Keystone, there started to be a lot of intersection and overlap, and I think anybody can benefit from something like that. And I’m like this close to constructing a formal rapid connection course. I’ve been ruminating on it. I kind of did a test of it at Keystone one night. There was a speaker that wasn’t able to make it and so I had already had the whole idea of rapid connection anyway, but I wanted to kind of put it to the test and I think people got some value out of it so I could find a way. So the way I talked to you about scanning and finding small things, I would love to teach more people how to do that just so they know how to explore that part of it and make those connections.
That’s a really interesting idea. So when you look out into the KC landscape right now, who are leaders, influencers, what have you, or just good humans who inspired you?
We do not have enough time for that. Just in terms of the list of people I know so many fantastic humans. It’s my short list. Well, of course, my wife, she’s doing some amazing and profound work, especially when it comes to helping people share their story and their experiences. And the work she’s doing with launch Crate and even the work that she’s done recently with Don Carter and the Joy in pain tour, deeply transformative work. I went through the last session. I had an opportunity, of course, to see the first session that they did. And then the last session, they were significantly more seasoned and they had the rhythm and flow and everything down. And it actually helped me as I’ve had to transition out of the full time gig that I had into the work that I’m doing now. Just the way I’m able to now reframe things has been very helpful. So if you get a chance to see Cynthia Fails speak somewhere, I know she’s going to be at the Global Entrepreneur Week next week, actually on Thursday. So the same day that I present in the evening, she’s presenting in the afternoon hours for Global Entrepreneur Week.
So go and sign up for that because you do have to be registered. It is free, but go and register and go and check out her session. I know she has some overlap with Don Carter’s session, so maybe bounce between both sessions, but absolutely check out hers just in reestablishing joy. I think I’ve mentioned a couple of names already. Spark Bookhart with Parent Power Lab. Edgar Palacios with the LEC, Latinx Education Collaborative. Cornell Ellis with Block Brothers. Liberating our communities. All three of those organizations work in the educational space. Spark focuses more on parent advocacy, while Edgar and Cornell focus on educational representation for people of color. Cornell focuses on African American male representation in the classroom. Edgar Palacios focuses on the Latinx representation in the classroom. Because the numbers bear it out. We need more individuals there to empower our young people who identify in those respective ethnic groups. And then Laura Palacios, Edgar’s wife, she’s a fantastic human. Gosh, so many people. And please forgive me, guys, there’s so many of you all. It would be difficult. JQ Sirls and of course, the work that we’re doing with StoryTailor is a huge deal, huge opportunity to help expand story and narrative to include more people, which has not been happening in the past, and also to reengage imagination.
I think it’s important to do that, be able to continue to hold onto that childlike wonder or reengage it. As you get a little bit older, it gets easier to detach from that. Keep an eye out for Lewis Bird and Arlene Birds. Their story is going to be. Oh, my gosh, you guys have no idea. They have a documentary that they released. I will send you the link. We should absolutely link that up so people can go and watch it because the battle. Just hold on, guys, strap in. It’s going to be wild. I get goosebumps talking about what’s getting rid. I wish I could tell you all more. More will avail itself. But the work that power couple is doing is phenomenal. Mark my words on this right now. Phenomenal. Watch.
Absolutely.
There’s so many more people. Your sister.
Yeah.
Is doing amazing work. She just assembled a group of AI Avengers. I guess that’s happening.
We’re the AI Avengers.
We are the.
Probably we’ll get that trademarked and there’ll be T shirts.
There should absolutely.
I mean, that actually would be really funny. We could totally do that.
Yeah, it’s right there. We should do that.
We should totally do that.
And I can design. It’s fine. We have plenty of designers. Who else is doing amazing work? The museum. Most of their groups and organizations I’ve already mentioned are already doing fantastic work. The Nelsen-Atkins, their whole movement at Nelsen-Atkins Museum and their entire movement and everything that they’re doing over there, it is 1000% worth a look, watch, gander, experience; all of that. So again, most of the groups, organizations and people that I’ve already mentioned, you should absolutely check them out and if you want more, a list of them people, and maybe that’s something to think about, some type of informal directory.
We’ve already started putting that was suggested for the podcast
Because I know you mentioned it.
Yeah.
I think finding a way to centralize that and have it managed.
We’ve been talking about that for a while because it feels like all these things are in so many different places, and I’m not trying to displace anything. I just want to send people to where they need to go.
Kansas City, on both sides of the state line… I love to look at Kansas City like a galaxy. There are so many stars, both known and unknown, that just exist in this city at varying levels of their stardom, but Kansas City is truly a galaxy. There’s been some amazing talent that has come out of this city that are known at a national level. The young man, Kalyn, who was doing work with Ellen, he’s from Kansas City.
I did not know that.
Yeah, KCK, he went through the Kaufman Scholars program. That’s the only reason I know about that because my wife told me about him early on. So he’s a product of Kansas City. Janelle Monet, Kansas City, Kansas, Don Cheadle and Eric Stone Street. Everybody you typically see who shows up at the parade, Paul Rudd, all those people from it’s wild, the galaxy that is Kansas City, and there’s so many more budding stars that are coming out of here. Davion Ross with Shock Tracker. I don’t know if you’ve ever communicated with Davion Ross, one of the most underrated pieces of tech and entrepreneurs coming out of Kansas City. It has been a crime on this city that we don’t know more about the work that he put in with shock tracker and everything that’s there. I’ve seen so many people just develop amazing pieces of technology that come out of the city and it’s just not known. So I think coming up with a galaxy directory of all these stars might make some sense.
That’s a really good idea. So we’re going to put that on the site. They’d already been talking about doing that. And I was just like, yeah. Our booking manager the other day suggested she’s like, you know, we need. And when they mentioned a coffee shop. Oh, brings me to the question I almost forgot to ask. Yeah, best barbecue in Kansas City?
Okay, so my answer is a little bit complex for two reasons. One, my parents are Midwesterners. Even though I was born in DC and raised primarily on the East coast, we always had Midwestern barbecue. Sorry, North Carolina people, many of y’all who I love. Some of y’all, mmm. But there’s this weird claim that North Carolina has amazing barbecue. I’m sorry, it’s not true. They do not. If you’re not a pulled pork person and you don’t love deeply vinegar based dressings or sauces and coleslaw. I love coleslaw, by the way, but I don’t eat pork anymore. But even when I did, pulled pork was overrated. My dad was making brisket at the house in a smoker. Like, for real. Like he would stay up for hours and smoke a brisket. I did not understand the significance of that until I got much older and of course moved to Kansas City. And I’m like, okay, I get it. That culture different is different in the Midwest. So to get back to your specific question, I like each barbecue place for their own things. And then there’s these weird little outlier places that people don’t really know about. So Gates is fantastic.
On the experience alone. You have to experience Gates if you come to Kansas City. That’s just a fact. I’m not going to give you the hints ahead of time for people who come in from outside the city because you have to experience it for yourself. But Kansas Cityans, you know, and you’re probably laughing at this part right now. But also on days where it really hits Gates’s fries, unmatched. Wings, specifically at the downtown gates, because they don’t serve the wings everywhere are fantastic. I have not had them yet, but the natives who really know the onion rings from Gates, I heard, are fantastic. I will try them at some point. But beef on bun on bread is my order, if you’re wondering. Q 39 is good. If you want to get swanky, it’s typically very loud. But their barbecue, the way they do their meats, is fantastic. Jackstack is probably best known for their sides, and that’s fair because their sides are solid. A fan of their barbecue as well. It’s cool. Sit down spot. If you want to celebrate, I typically go to the one in the crossroads. And if you’re going to do Joe’s, you got to do Joe’s.
So let me. Not if you’re going to. When you do Joe’s, if you don’t, go to the one at the gas station in KCK, might I add, in Kansas City, Kansas. If you don’t go to that one. You’re doing yourself a disservice. You must go to Joe’s that’s attached to the gas station. It’s no longer a gas station. Like they don’t distribute gas anymore, but you still have to go to gas station. Joe’s got it. It’s Paramount. Hack: order before you go because the line gets ridiculous and the ridiculousness starts at about 10:30 a.m. Almost every day that they’re open. I’m talking about out the door, round the corner line, Kansas City Joe’s, formerly known as Oklahoma Joe’s at the gas station. You must go to that one. There are some other Joes around the city. The gas station one is the one.
Link to all of this. And we’re going to have an interactive map on the website. I just announced that we’re doing it, so we’re doing it. We’re going to have an interactive map on the website. What suggested last week for us, and we’ll get that in there where we can put all these things in there. I’d like to interview the people who run these different barbecue places at some point.
So honorable mention. Hickory log in Kansas City, Kansas. Not a lot of people know about it. It actually changed management. And I’ve spoken to the owner of the Hickory Log and I hear they do karaoke nights on Wednesday, but I haven’t actually gone to experience that yet. But I’ve had Hickory log. It’s solid. There’s certain parts that I prefer from different restaurants. So if you got into the actual cuts of meat, each place does things a little bit differently. The burnt ends from Jackstack are fantastic, but pretty much anything you get from Joe’s is on. And I already told you my Gates order. Yeah.
So with that, we brought you to the end of another episode of the Kansas City Leaders. I’d like to thank my guest, Herston fails.
Thank you for having me.
Or as he likes to say, never fails. For those of you out here who want to be involved in the show or support our initiatives or support these people, please get in the website, email us. We do respond to your questions online. And I would just like to finish this up with. Herston is one of those great humans who’s working to connect people in the city. Chief technology officer at StoryTailor, Futurist, and the last thing I wanted to say, I don’t think I talked about on this, is that I met him at this Keystone Collab Wednesday night event a week or so ago. And if you could have seen the audience, fairly diverse audience. Not just that, but when we talk about diversity, I’m talking about the age. There were people who were 70 plus years old there, and there were children who were three to five. And just to watch them interact and watch him manage that, if you haven’t seen Herston talk or have been involved, I’d love to put you in contact with him again, thank you for coming on the show today. And I just can’t thank you enough. It’s been wonderful.
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. The persistence, I also appreciate because life “life’s”, yeah, and it can be hard to keep it all together. So thank you all for getting everything coordinated. I really appreciate it.
Thank you for listening to the KC Leaders Podcast. Please remember to like, share, subscribe, and leave a review wherever you listen. For more information about this podcast, you can visit kcleaderspodcast.com. And don’t forget to check out our other great podcasts, like The Buck Stops Here, streaming now on all major platforms and at thebuckstopsherepodcast.com.