Transcript
Speaker: All right, welcome back to this new passion of mine, the Phoenix podcast.
Speaker: And I am super excited to have someone who I highly, highly respect and who I'm honored to call a friend of mine, Johnny Emmerman.
Speaker: Johnny, I don't know that there is a story as inspirational as yours.
Speaker: And what you did from your time of struggle, let's say...
Speaker: to impact others is just unbelievable.
Speaker: So without further ado, I want to introduce Johnny Emmerman.
Speaker: Welcome to the Phoenix podcast.
Speaker: JV, always great to see you.
Speaker: Thank you so much for having me and thanks for the kind words, but you know, we'll talk about it.
Speaker: They always say everything we do is a team sport and you're a part of this team and you have been a player on this team for a long time.
Speaker: And it's amazing what people who care and survivors can do together to help people with cancer.
Speaker: So let's get into your story.
Speaker: You know, tell me a little bit about you, where you kind of came from, and then how you got into this world.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't want to say it because I want you to introduce it.
Speaker: For sure, man.
Speaker: I'm a very lucky guy.
Speaker: You know, I was diagnosed.
Speaker: I grew up in Detroit area originally, so I was living in Detroit.
Speaker: I went to Michigan for college.
Speaker: My family's from there.
Speaker: I probably would have never left Michigan.
Speaker: I was pretty happy.
Speaker: A lot of my friends I grew up with were all there.
Speaker: But my life kind of changed, JB, when I was 26 and I'm in a bar, three guys and three girls in Ann Arbor, shooting pool, having fun, typical Saturday night, nothing out of the ordinary.
Speaker: And all of a sudden, out of the blue, it felt like a person took a knife and stabbed me violently in my left testicle.
Speaker: Worst pain of my life.
Speaker: I dropped the pool stick.
Speaker: I literally doubled over.
Speaker: I couldn't stand up straight.
Speaker: The pain was crippling.
Speaker: And long story short, I finally get to the hospital and figure out what's going on in my body.
Speaker: And it turns out that it's advanced testicular cancer.
Speaker: So for the next two years after that, about 26 to 28, I did about eight hours of chemo every day.
Speaker: About six months of chemo total.
Speaker: But Monday through Friday, the first week of every cycle, eight hours a day.
Speaker: Chemo, and then I had two surgeries.
Speaker: One before to take the testicle out.
Speaker: And then one on the back, we thought I was clear, but then about a year after the last chemo, I had four tumors behind my kidneys.
Speaker: So I had to go back in under the knife and they had to slice me in my abdomen from the sternum down to the pubic bone.
Speaker: And they took four tumors out behind my kidneys, took all the organs out to get to where they needed to and then put them back in.
Speaker: The human body is incredible how it's able to sustain stuff like that.
Speaker: And then you can still go to the gym and run marathons and do all this stuff.
Speaker: But
Speaker: Human body is a pretty strong thing.
Speaker: But I think what you're talking about, JB, the most important part is, you know, what do we do as survivors to help other people?
Speaker: Like, how are we working with teams and people to, like, make the cancer world better?
Speaker: Like, find a crack in the system.
Speaker: Who better than those who lived through it to find the crack and say, this is broken.
Speaker: Like, this could be better.
Speaker: And what happened is a group of young survivors and I, we met randomly at the hospital.
Speaker: And we're like, we got to give back.
Speaker: The way to give back is sharing our stories as a motivator, kind of like a football coach motivator, but someone who's been there to somebody who was just diagnosed with the same thing.
Speaker: So we built this thing called Emmerman Angels.
Speaker: It's a 501c3 nonprofit since 05.
Speaker: And guys like you and so many others have helped this thing grow.
Speaker: And we simply find great survivors in the community.
Speaker: And then we find someone that's sick with cancer,
Speaker: And then we connect one-on-one the most similar people.
Speaker: Someone who's been there, someone who's just starting the fight.
Speaker: Who do you want to know when you're starting the fight?
Speaker: You want to know someone who's walked the walk, earned the stripes, and they're back in the gym.
Speaker: You know, it's kind of like, show me that guy or show me that girl who's actually doing okay.
Speaker: When you were playing pool with your friends and you had that horrific pain, what did you think?
Speaker: What was the first thought in your mind?
Speaker: I have no idea.
Speaker: Yeah, you know, it was pretty crazy.
Speaker: I think in my mind, I thought, I definitely, not even I think, I know it went through my mind.
Speaker: I was playing basketball that morning and I used to hoop a lot.
Speaker: And I was like, oh, this is probably, I got need in the groin.
Speaker: I got need in the nuts, you know, delayed pain.
Speaker: Obviously it just started hurting.
Speaker: I must not have realized it at the time, maybe because the adrenaline.
Speaker: And I literally rationalized it away.
Speaker: Like this can't be anything serious.
Speaker: The word cancer never entered my mind until I was sitting down in the doctor's office with the doctor after running all the tests, JB, running his hands through his hair, crossing his legs,
Speaker: sitting down with me saying, look, kid, I know you're alone.
Speaker: I know you're in your 20s.
Speaker: I'm sorry to tell you this, but you have cancer and it's advanced.
Speaker: That was the very first moment that I was like, whoa, this is kind of serious.
Speaker: How long were you in tests before they told you what they thought it was or what it was?
Speaker: I was probably, that's a great question.
Speaker: I was probably there for a couple hours.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And they were doing a blood test.
Speaker: Look at my blood.
Speaker: They did a sonogram, like an ultrasound right on the testicle.
Speaker: A physical exam, like feeling for any bumps or lump on the testicle.
Speaker: All these things probably took an hour and a half to two hours.
Speaker: And at none of those points, did you ever think of the C word?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: That's a great question.
Speaker: It never entered my mind, JB, until the doctor said this word, cancer, the C word.
Speaker: That was the first.
Speaker: That moment...
Speaker: What was your thought?
Speaker: At that moment, I literally looked at my life and I'm like, oh my God, I could die.
Speaker: I did.
Speaker: It did flash in my mind.
Speaker: No doubt.
Speaker: You know, I could die.
Speaker: And then what happened was I started driving home to go to my mom's house.
Speaker: My immediate reaction, you know, I live in Detroit at the time.
Speaker: My mom was not far away, my brother.
Speaker: And I was like, I got to go to family, right?
Speaker: Like when we're scared or in trauma, not everyone's like that maybe, but
Speaker: My family's like that.
Speaker: And I was like, go to family, like go to family.
Speaker: That's the safe zone.
Speaker: That's what I would have done too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You would have done my mom.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You called your mom.
Speaker: 47 years old.
Speaker: I probably would have called my mom first and then my wife.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I mean, cause like, that's where, like, that's where comfort is, right?
Speaker: Like, you know, go to someone older that you love and trust.
Speaker: So were you in the hospital by yourself?
Speaker: By myself.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: By myself.
Speaker: So you get that, you get the C word.
Speaker: You're crushed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm imagining.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What does your mom say?
Speaker: My mom, I still remember like where we were.
Speaker: I remember everything.
Speaker: Like it was yesterday because time does stop.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I do remember her being, I could just tell she like, like bristled a little bit.
Speaker: Like just, she was stiff, but she was very calm.
Speaker: And she said, we're going to figure this out.
Speaker: Let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Speaker: She's very rational, my mom.
Speaker: She never yelled.
Speaker: I've never seen her yell in my life.
Speaker: She just stayed really calm.
Speaker: It was probably really good.
Speaker: It probably helped me.
Speaker: And what was your mentality when you realized now this is going to be part of your life?
Speaker: What was your mentality at that moment?
Speaker: You know, in that moment was, I remember thinking this.
Speaker: My mind also went to this place.
Speaker: Well, I can get really angry about this.
Speaker: And guess what?
Speaker: It's not going to solve anything.
Speaker: And I was just like, I never, some people going to cancer have these anger moments and you have to honor it.
Speaker: you know, don't hold that in.
Speaker: You feel that, let it out.
Speaker: It's there for a reason.
Speaker: I just, you know, I, I, anger was not part of this.
Speaker: This was like, I need, we need to figure this out.
Speaker: We need to like meet with some of the best docs around.
Speaker: We need to research.
Speaker: Um, you know, my family stayed calm, helped me stay calm.
Speaker: That was really fortunate.
Speaker: And, um, I didn't really go through that anger stage.
Speaker: I sometimes I'm afraid to tell people that because I think it is somewhat common that people get angry and, you know,
Speaker: Sometimes that's unhealthy and that's normal.
Speaker: I just, my, my family immediately was like, okay, stop everything we're doing.
Speaker: Let's start researching.
Speaker: And again, this is 2001.
Speaker: So Google, the internet is not 2024.
Speaker: So we're like, you know, dial up internet, but we're like, okay, we got to Google.
Speaker: We got to find out like who's out there.
Speaker: Who's the guy that invented the chemo for this cancer?
Speaker: Um, who are the best docs out there for this testicular cancer?
Speaker: We just pragmatically as a family just came together and we're like, we got to figure it out.
Speaker: Two questions.
Speaker: The first question is, when I went through my home fire, I remember there was a very definitive moment when I said, I'm not going to let this defeat me.
Speaker: I'm going to be the one who defeats this.
Speaker: And I'm not going to, I'm going to be the one who, you know, steps up, fights this and, you know, comes out stronger than I was in the beginning.
Speaker: And do you recall a moment?
Speaker: Like, I remember exactly where I was exactly when I thought that.
Speaker: Do you recall a moment when you sat there and said, cancer ain't got nothing on me?
Speaker: Well, glad you're okay.
Speaker: First of all, and you, that's who you are, JB.
Speaker: Your attitude is, is strong and solid.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: I'm not surprised at all.
Speaker: That was what you thought through that home fire.
Speaker: You know, without my family and without them stopping what they're doing to be loving and supporting, I think I mentally would have gone to a much worse place.
Speaker: But they really helped me stay positive.
Speaker: It helped me feel confident that we're going to figure this out.
Speaker: We had some doctor friends that gave me confidence that we could talk to about it and what to do.
Speaker: And it just sort of started figuring itself out.
Speaker: But there's no doubt about it in the beginning.
Speaker: I was terrified.
Speaker: I'm scared.
Speaker: My brain went, oh my gosh, there's something growing in me that I know kills people.
Speaker: And I didn't really know what testicular cancer was in 2001.
Speaker: So if you take the setting, J.B., Lance Armstrong won his first tour de France in 99.
Speaker: So by one, he had won two, and he was about to win his third, but I don't think we knew that in October when I was diagnosed.
Speaker: So he was new on the scene, and he was, like, by far the guy, in my opinion, who was the biggest advocate for testicular cancer, the first big one.
Speaker: And probably still today, I mean, he's probably the face of this cancer.
Speaker: And, but like, I just didn't know.
Speaker: A lot of us didn't know.
Speaker: I didn't know it was a young guy's cancer.
Speaker: I didn't know that chemo in the early eighties, late seventies, the doctor and university of Indiana on Bloomington or not Bloomington in Indianapolis was,
Speaker: Dr. Larry Einhorn, that hospital, that doctor invented this type of chemo in the late 70s, early 80s, which took the numbers from, you know, an 80, I'm guessing 80 plus, 90 plus percent death rate into a much more treatable cancer where most people lived.
Speaker: And so, you know, it just took us a while to kind of piece this together and do that research.
Speaker: I remember everyone had the Livestrong bands on there.
Speaker: I did.
Speaker: I had those forever.
Speaker: Me too.
Speaker: Me too, dude.
Speaker: Me too.
Speaker: I have another question that could be a little bit difficult.
Speaker: They asked me this question and it kind of matches.
Speaker: If you go back, is your mom still with us?
Speaker: She is.
Speaker: Thanks for asking.
Speaker: She is healthy and well.
Speaker: Everod.
Speaker: Everod.
Speaker: asked me in my first episode, what would you say to your mom now?
Speaker: Because I did the same thing.
Speaker: It was a moment when my family came together.
Speaker: I said, the Bauman boys mounted up, you know?
Speaker: And we all got in, and I had a brother who was staying at the house when they were boarding stuff up.
Speaker: Another one was doing this.
Speaker: We all kind of came together, and it was, you know, in this moment of tragedy, I think you can either break or, you know, come together the strongest you've ever been, and that's how my family was.
Speaker: What would you say to your mom now, knowing what you, you know, she was there for you at that very first moment, and you are now today what you are because of that calming force that she provided to you in the most horrific moment of your life?
Speaker: Well, I'm glad that you had the same thing and that you have a loving, giving mom, kept you in a good space.
Speaker: And the Bauman family came together.
Speaker: We're like, we're going to do this together.
Speaker: And clearly you have, right?
Speaker: Um, my mom just grateful, you know, that she made it priority one in her life for a couple of years.
Speaker: Um, she stopped whatever she was doing.
Speaker: She drove me to the cancer center every single day.
Speaker: And those weeks on chemo, it's eight hours a day, seven days, not five days a week, Monday through Friday.
Speaker: It's like going to work eight hours a day, plug in, you're there.
Speaker: She stayed with me the entire time.
Speaker: I mean, I don't know how many people could physically do that because of work or life or just would even want to do that or care enough to do that.
Speaker: So I obviously feel a tremendous gratitude and I'm really lucky.
Speaker: I would probably bet that some of your most memorable conversations with your mom ever were probably going to or from in that car, in those car rides to or from chemo.
Speaker: A hundred percent.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: A hundred percent.
Speaker: I'm not going to ask you about that though.
Speaker: But it's 45 minute car rides both ways, man.
Speaker: It's a lot of time.
Speaker: So one more general question I have to ask you.
Speaker: Growing up in Detroit, did that make you a University of Michigan fan?
Speaker: I am.
Speaker: I went to Michigan.
Speaker: I grew up a Michigan fan.
Speaker: My mom went to Michigan.
Speaker: You were going to say you're in Michigan State or Spartan, I don't know.
Speaker: Right, right, right.
Speaker: We're all Michigan.
Speaker: all right so um obviously the most difficult moment of your life um you decide to fight and you beat it let's just you can say you beat and um
Speaker: Now come Immermans Angels.
Speaker: You have some friends who you're going through this with.
Speaker: They had their own cancers.
Speaker: And you guys had to come together and create Immermans Angels.
Speaker: Tell me about that process and how that came to be.
Speaker: Yeah, you know, JB was one of these things where randomly at the end of treatment,
Speaker: a group of young kids who are also in the twenties, like we all randomly met at the hospital and we're like, we got to do something.
Speaker: Like we got to find purpose in this.
Speaker: How do we just like do this every day?
Speaker: And then we leave the hospital.
Speaker: We never come back again.
Speaker: Like that's just, it was almost like it felt weird to do that.
Speaker: Also felt like, Whoa, look at there's still people fighting.
Speaker: We got to go back and help.
Speaker: We wanted to find meaning and purpose.
Speaker: And so, you know, this group of young survivors and I became buds and we're like,
Speaker: We have stories.
Speaker: This is our gift.
Speaker: It became really clear.
Speaker: Like the stories we have, we can share the story to blaze the trail for the next person.
Speaker: Because we knew that once they started that first couple days of cancer, you have no idea where you're going.
Speaker: It's like you're blindfolded in the forest trying to figure it out.
Speaker: And are you still connected with those original people?
Speaker: So many of them.
Speaker: One of them, I just, he lives in New York actually also.
Speaker: And I just went to his comedy show.
Speaker: He's a standup comedian on the side.
Speaker: I just saw a show the other night.
Speaker: He's hilarious by the way.
Speaker: He's also like a venture capitalist.
Speaker: He has like his venture capital company, standup comedian.
Speaker: He's I'm so proud of him.
Speaker: He's only 30.
Speaker: He's a young kid, but I mentored him when he was like, I don't know, 23, 24.
Speaker: So he's one of my more recent ones, but he's local here.
Speaker: We've stayed really close.
Speaker: He's also, he and his sister and his dad all ran the marathon for Emmerman Angels, which I know you, JB, know the Chicago Marathon as good as any of us.
Speaker: We spent so many times volunteering as our DJ, an incredible, incredible gift.
Speaker: You said to make it clear that I wasn't running.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You're the smartest one there.
Speaker: You're the smartest one there, Jamie.
Speaker: Much better.
Speaker: Yeah, much better to do that than run.
Speaker: And so a lot of these guys I stay in touch with, you know, the connection is so strong and it's so deep.
Speaker: You know, you're talking about real life and real fears.
Speaker: Am I going to live?
Speaker: Am I going to die?
Speaker: Is my mom going to have to like live a life knowing her kid died in the 20s?
Speaker: Like these are the fears and these are the stresses.
Speaker: And so, you know, when you have
Speaker: a bunch of people who just understand and get it, and you relate to each other, you're going to connect on such a deep level.
Speaker: So yeah, the friendships are incredible.
Speaker: It's some of the best part.
Speaker: I feel like we help them, but we also gain.
Speaker: Everybody gains.
Speaker: It's mutually beneficial because these friendships feel good to everybody on all sides.
Speaker: I want to talk about the size of Emmerman's Angels because...
Speaker: It's not a small thing anymore.
Speaker: It may have started with a few friends, but what, 60 countries, every state, I mean, what's the, I don't know what the count is up to right now, but, um, how many, do you want to fill us in on the kind of the size and the scope of how big you're in angels?
Speaker: 115 countries now.
Speaker: So yeah, 115 countries, um, every color, race, religion, background, age,
Speaker: We have people in the nineties, literally sharp in the nineties who some of them beat multiple cancers, like three different cancers.
Speaker: And they mentor for any one of those because they've been through it all.
Speaker: And then we have kids, sadly, little kids that get cancer and we can match the parents up with who have a kid with cancer with another set of parents that say, oh, my kid beat the same cancer.
Speaker: So, you know, it's all ages, all backgrounds, anywhere in the world.
Speaker: It's always free.
Speaker: anyone touched by cancer and any relationship to it, we can find you, your twin.
Speaker: Someone like you, who's just three, four years ahead.
Speaker: They may live in Switzerland, or they might live right in Logan Square in Chicago, but they're good people.
Speaker: And that's the reason why, JB, our whole idea works, because gratitude of the survivors and the families.
Speaker: They're so lucky and grateful to be here, and they want to give back, and they want to help.
Speaker: I don't know what it's like to have cancer.
Speaker: I don't, I haven't been in that kind of that situation.
Speaker: Um, but a few years ago I had a issue, a digestive issue, and I found out I had to have part of my colon removed and, um,
Speaker: it was right within a week of a moment when a guy that I went to high school with, uh, was battling colon cancer and he had to have the exact same surgery.
Speaker: They took out the exact part of the same colon, you know, colon together.
Speaker: And he was having the surgery a week after mine.
Speaker: And, uh,
Speaker: And we hadn't talked in a long time.
Speaker: I mean, we were friends in high school, but that was a couple years ago.
Speaker: We're just going to go with a couple on that one, you know?
Speaker: But we had this special relationship for a while that, you know, we'd both gone through that same surgery.
Speaker: And I'm like, you know, the first day isn't that bad because you're still on all this medication, you know?
Speaker: Day two is not going to be good, though, you know, when it starts to wear off and that kind of thing.
Speaker: And we started, we had this excellent relationship.
Speaker: So I can only imagine...
Speaker: that relation, I mean, mine was a simple surgery.
Speaker: I mean, someone going through cancer goes through years of a fight.
Speaker: And so I know it was a special moment.
Speaker: Tell me what it's like to be that mentor and what you would think would be that like to be that mentee.
Speaker: Well, I'm glad you're okay.
Speaker: Most importantly, that you're healthy and you got through it.
Speaker: What a beautiful thing that you guys could connect on that level and you can help.
Speaker: And I mean, mentoring in the medical space applies to everything.
Speaker: It's like anything that's scary, whether it's a surgery and a resection, whether it's cancer, whether it's like you got diagnosed with diabetes an hour ago.
Speaker: It's like, well, how does this work?
Speaker: Like, how does like, you know, Synthroid work?
Speaker: You know, how do I take this new medicine to give me, you know, thyroid?
Speaker: I mean, like, how do you regulate that?
Speaker: Like, there's just so everyone's scared and there's so many questions.
Speaker: So, but yeah, that's, that's really our model that it can be anything, but any type.
Speaker: of, you know, of cancer.
Speaker: It's, we only do cancer, as you know, JB, it's all cancer.
Speaker: But I will say there's a lot of other groups out there that do one-on-one for spinal cord injury.
Speaker: Like we work with them, we share best practices, everybody's stronger together.
Speaker: There's another one-on-one group for transplants out of Colorado, the American Transplant Foundation.
Speaker: They're actually a closed talk partner as well and in the Menangels.
Speaker: So anyone needs a transplant, you gotta get a lung transplant.
Speaker: You're like, oh my God, like who do I talk to?
Speaker: And I'll talk to somebody who's had the transplant.
Speaker: So all these groups, you know, in the backend, there's a lot of synergies, there's a lot of overlap.
Speaker: We're working together, we're sharing best practices.
Speaker: You know, we pool resources as much as we can together so we can help the most people.
Speaker: It's the epitome of collaboration.
Speaker: And it's kind of the beauty of the nonprofit space.
Speaker: Is it difficult personally to be one of those men, to be a mentor?
Speaker: You know, difficult to some, yes.
Speaker: But I would say therapeutic almost to all.
Speaker: It is therapeutic.
Speaker: I mean, there's no doubt I healed JB by going back to the cancer center, by meeting other young people with cancer, by sharing my story, answering their questions, talking to them at Sunday night, 11 p.m.
Speaker: when they're nervous.
Speaker: Like, I benefited too.
Speaker: I realized every time I told what I knew to help them and I knew all the answers because I lived it,
Speaker: I felt better.
Speaker: So I didn't realize it until after.
Speaker: Therapeutic, I would say almost everyone.
Speaker: Healing, almost everyone.
Speaker: Is it difficult to some?
Speaker: Initially very difficult and that's okay.
Speaker: There's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker: It's scary.
Speaker: And if you have children and you're wondering, am I going to die?
Speaker: Just like I thought the same thing.
Speaker: And you have dependents, you're like, what's going to happen to my kids?
Speaker: Who's going to care?
Speaker: Or what if you're a single parent?
Speaker: Like my friend Jen Smith, sadly, who was a single parent living in downstate Illinois.
Speaker: And we all became very close with Jen.
Speaker: And she's divorced, raising the kid pretty much on her own.
Speaker: And she gets stage four breast cancer, right?
Speaker: We can all imagine.
Speaker: You are.
Speaker: I think she was more worried about Corbin, her son, than she was worried about her losing her own life.
Speaker: Who is going to really love this kid as much as the mom?
Speaker: and take care of the kid.
Speaker: The dad really wasn't involved.
Speaker: So it can be very hard to be a mentor in situations, especially when someone doesn't make it because sometimes you make it and you mentor somebody else and they don't.
Speaker: This is just numbers and this is just humans.
Speaker: That can be scary to a lot of people as well.
Speaker: How many people do you think have gone through the process as a mentee?
Speaker: I would say we've helped, I'm guessing, well over 50,000 people.
Speaker: I think it's got to be.
Speaker: I mean, even in the beginning, we were doing thousands.
Speaker: Now we're over 4,000 a year.
Speaker: But we've been around 20 years-ish, even before we became a 501C.
Speaker: So every year, and there's a lot of them in the beginning.
Speaker: We weren't even recording recording.
Speaker: who we were matching.
Speaker: We were just like, this person, hook up with that person.
Speaker: It's like, I know somebody, my friend's cousin, Amy, you know, she beat that.
Speaker: And we were just like, we didn't really record it, but it was happening.
Speaker: And we knew it was happening.
Speaker: We were doing it.
Speaker: We were trying to figure out yesterday.
Speaker: I was talking with Dave Wotham, who obviously you know who he is, but no one else knows.
Speaker: Dave is, he heads Team IA, which is your race team.
Speaker: or your running team.
Speaker: And we're trying to figure out how long I've been involved.
Speaker: And I think it's at least 10 years.
Speaker: I'm not, I don't know.
Speaker: So I think this might be my 10th year.
Speaker: I'm not 100% sure.
Speaker: So I'm not going anywhere, I promise, I swear.
Speaker: We're blessed to have you, brother.
Speaker: Listen, we are lucky and grateful.
Speaker: You've met tens of thousands of people.
Speaker: Is there one person in your mind that just, whose story just, you never forget?
Speaker: I'm very lucky.
Speaker: It's a great question.
Speaker: I've heard amazing cancer stories.
Speaker: I've heard people overcoming just about everything.
Speaker: It makes me a believer, JB, that when I talk to other people, like I sincere, when I say, I feel like I know at least one person that's beaten every kind of cancer.
Speaker: Like there's just, there's at least one.
Speaker: And if there's at least one, then there's hope, right?
Speaker: It's been done before.
Speaker: It's possible.
Speaker: So that's the kind of hope you always want to give to people.
Speaker: And I've seen enough to believe that and feel that and be sincere when I say that to people.
Speaker: There's so many incredible stories of overcoming.
Speaker: You know, one of them that is just amazing.
Speaker: I just, I always think of this one.
Speaker: It was a guy who, there's so many, but this one comes to mind right away.
Speaker: There was a guy who was thinking he was healthy, just like me at 26, felt totally fine.
Speaker: And all of a sudden, you know, his appendix burst, he goes in to take the appendix out.
Speaker: The doctors are in there.
Speaker: They're doing surgery, JB.
Speaker: Cut him open, cut this, you know, pretty standard procedure, take the appendix out.
Speaker: The doctors look over about an inch and a half to the right.
Speaker: There's the pancreas and there's a massive tumor in the pancreas.
Speaker: And while they're in there, didn't even stitch them up.
Speaker: While they're in there, they cut it all out.
Speaker: Guy's still alive today.
Speaker: Thank God.
Speaker: But how many people are going to have an appendix burst if you're going in there and then you see this?
Speaker: Because pancreatic cancer is so hard to detect.
Speaker: And it's so deep and buried in those organs.
Speaker: And it's one of the most deadly.
Speaker: We're going to be talking with Dino, who heads Project Purple, which is a pancreatic cancer charity.
Speaker: And one of the things he says is that one of the problems with pancreatic cancer is it's not detected until...
Speaker: it's almost too late, you know, or it's a very difficult time to treat.
Speaker: So someone was looking out for that person.
Speaker: Someone's looking out.
Speaker: I mean, if you don't become a fatalist after that, I think that there's a purpose for your life.
Speaker: I think you kind of miss the signs.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: How does someone find out more information about Emmerman Angels?
Speaker: Emmerman Angels is at I-M-E-R-M-A-N, EmmermanAngels.org.
Speaker: You can always call 866-IMERMAN, I-M-E-R-M-E-N.
Speaker: If you know someone who's a survivor who wants to give back, get involved, become a volunteer, we have over 14,000 worldwide, but we want 14 million.
Speaker: They're out there, you know, more than that even are out there.
Speaker: So please encourage them to be a part of this.
Speaker: Join the team.
Speaker: They'll get, you know, they'll be on call when we need them and they become a metric.
Speaker: Together, we're strong.
Speaker: But also anyone that's sick, if you know somebody sick with cancer or a family member, maybe your spouse has cancer and they're not ready to talk yet, but you need help.
Speaker: We can connect you with another spouse.
Speaker: It's like, oh, I went through this.
Speaker: My spouse went through this.
Speaker: You know, I'll share my story.
Speaker: There's always somebody.
Speaker: But if people know our website, that's the easiest way to send people to the site.
Speaker: They sign up online.
Speaker: We set up a Calendly link and set up a time to chat with one of our team members.
Speaker: And then we take it, our team takes it from there and helps them out.
Speaker: I always add an S.
Speaker: So I apologize for that.
Speaker: That's okay, man.
Speaker: Here's the good news.
Speaker: We actually bought the URL with an S. If you put it in there, it goes right to us.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: You have an interesting shirt on.
Speaker: I do.
Speaker: You're wearing right now.
Speaker: Tell me a little bit about Closed Talk.
Speaker: So Closed Talk, JB, was born out of how we got awareness and marketing for Emmerman Angels.
Speaker: The way we got the word out, we did a lot of things, but the one thing that clicked the most, I feel,
Speaker: was in downtown Chicago.
Speaker: We were young.
Speaker: We were scrappy.
Speaker: We were most of us single men going out all the time around people.
Speaker: And we're like, we got to spread the word.
Speaker: Let's make cool t-shirts that people see it, where I'm at the gym, where I'm at a Cubs game, a Sox game, a Bears game, you know, where I'm running on the lakeshore training for the marathon.
Speaker: And the more we got our friends to wear it,
Speaker: By the way, the secret sauce is black and white.
Speaker: If you make it black and white, everything's cooler.
Speaker: Take any logo, Amberman Angels or anything.
Speaker: Take, you know, the word Google.
Speaker: Everything looks cool.
Speaker: 100% agree with you.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's just cooler.
Speaker: It's black and white.
Speaker: Everybody, when it comes to clothing, people like black and white.
Speaker: Simple, clean, less is more.
Speaker: And we got our friends to wear it.
Speaker: And over time, we're like, all these conversations were created.
Speaker: It connected people because somebody would say, I keep seeing that logo.
Speaker: Like, what is that shirt?
Speaker: And the person said, this is my favorite nonprofit.
Speaker: Let me tell you what they do.
Speaker: And my cousin is a cancer survivor.
Speaker: And this is why we do it.
Speaker: If you know someone, send them in.
Speaker: Awareness became clear, JB.
Speaker: That was the number one need in order for us to help more people.
Speaker: And so what we did is my brother and I said, let's create a separate entity.
Speaker: Close Talk is a B Corp.
Speaker: And those of you who don't know what a B Corp is,
Speaker: It's newer, so don't worry.
Speaker: But a B Corp is a company, but it's the highest level of our mission is to solve social problems.
Speaker: It's a certification.
Speaker: There's 7,000 in the world.
Speaker: There's about 2,500 in the U.S. And basically, it's a global community of businesses that say a very big part or all of our mission is to solve problems in the world or help nonprofits.
Speaker: So what Close Talk does is we
Speaker: I have a mission.
Speaker: We only have clients as nonprofits, partners as nonprofits, about 500 nonprofits.
Speaker: We design their T-shirts.
Speaker: We design their hoodies, their hats, and we make them on demand.
Speaker: We run an online store so nonprofits don't have to do any of this.
Speaker: Get them out of the game.
Speaker: Don't let them make the shirts, not their fault, but if you let them make it, no one's wearing it.
Speaker: And even if they sell it, it's like, but if no one's wearing it, it's going to go to the landfill eventually.
Speaker: It's bad for the earth too.
Speaker: So we only want to make stuff.
Speaker: It's a little more expensive, but it's higher quality.
Speaker: It's just the logo.
Speaker: It's super clear.
Speaker: It's clean.
Speaker: It fits people well.
Speaker: It's just, we use next level t-shirts out of LA and the whole goal
Speaker: is that people love them, keep them, wear them.
Speaker: You're going to the gym anyway.
Speaker: Rock a cause.
Speaker: Spread the word.
Speaker: Don't just wear a plain shirt.
Speaker: We want people to think differently, that they can do good.
Speaker: You're volunteering by doing nothing.
Speaker: Just wear it.
Speaker: A lot is good.
Speaker: A lot of good has come from that day.
Speaker: Thank you for saying that.
Speaker: Yours too, man.
Speaker: You've been through a lot.
Speaker: I've been through a lot.
Speaker: And, you know, we both realized, like, we probably wouldn't change it, as crazy as it sounds for both of us.
Speaker: Like, I mean, you can speak for yourself, but, like, I bet you feel the same way.
Speaker: Like, there's a purpose in everything.
Speaker: And I would never change my cancer experience.
Speaker: Look at our friendship, man.
Speaker: Like, I'm lucky to know you, brother.
Speaker: Would we have connected this way?
Speaker: Maybe not, you know, probably not in Chicago.
Speaker: And like the good people are attracted to causes that do good.
Speaker: And there's 1.5 million nonprofits in America.
Speaker: And so anyone out there who's like, I'm feeling a little lonely.
Speaker: I'm feeling out of purpose in my life.
Speaker: I'm feeling down.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: Start volunteering.
Speaker: Even if an hour a week is all you have.
Speaker: Even if you can't go anywhere to do it through Zoom, you will meet the best quality people, just like JB, because quality people who care about people outside themselves, that's their orbit.
Speaker: Their
Speaker: They're in a nonprofit.
Speaker: They're on the board.
Speaker: They're volunteering.
Speaker: They show up at 4 a.m.
Speaker: like you do to DJ at a marathon.
Speaker: I mean, who else do you want to be friends with than people like that?
Speaker: I think that's how we make people happier is these connections between the people.
Speaker: That's, in my opinion, where the best people are.
Speaker: So one last question and then I will let you go.
Speaker: But looking back at your whole experience, is there one lesson that you learned that kind of was that defining moment, I guess, that defining lesson that you learned from your experience?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: You know, it's a great question, JV.
Speaker: I've learned so much in this journey.
Speaker: And one of the biggest things that comes to mind right away is
Speaker: is if you care what's best the most for the people with cancer, if you believe in the mission and your core and your soul in every cell, you've got to own it to say and recognize when the organization has grown to a point that there's somebody better to run it than you.
Speaker: And you know, you've got to get over yourself.
Speaker: You can't believe that
Speaker: Any one person, which is the founder, I guess, of any group is always the best person to take it from love, maybe level one to level three.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: But sometimes level three to level seven or 10 or whatever it is, is a different person.
Speaker: And I realized that along the way.
Speaker: that my organizational skills have a lot of potential to be better.
Speaker: I realize that I'm a little bit all over the place.
Speaker: I love these marketing ideas to help us spike and grow, but I can do that on the outside.
Speaker: Let's hire a CEO who's a real winner and a real leader to run the organizations and make the hard calls on how to operate the organization.
Speaker: And that we found, as you know her very well, and Stephanie Lieber,
Speaker: who's done wonderful things for us.
Speaker: And I think I am happier in my role external and doing things like this with you and helping find more people.
Speaker: But the people who really operate the day-to-day, that's Stephanie.
Speaker: That's the 16 people who work really hard and the awesome volunteers just like yourself.
Speaker: There are not many people who are as inspiring as you are, Johnny.
Speaker: I mean, you've inspired me so many moments.
Speaker: So I appreciate our friendship.
Speaker: I appreciate you doing everything that you do for everyone.
Speaker: I mean, just 50,000 people's lives have been changed because of that day.
Speaker: when you had that, when you were in the pool hall, you know what I mean?
Speaker: Did you ever think that, that, you know, you'd change that, that many lives.
Speaker: So thank you for being here.
Speaker: I so appreciate that.
Speaker: And I so appreciate everything you've done.
Speaker: And I invite everyone else to come back.
Speaker: If you want to get ahold of Johnny, can they do that somehow?
Speaker: Or what's the best way to do that?
Speaker: Anyone can reach out anytime.
Speaker: The best email is J O N N Y Johnny at close talk.com.
Speaker: C L O Z talk.com.
Speaker: or Immermanangels.org.
Speaker: They're both Johnny, J-O-N-N-Y.
Speaker: I check the Close Talk one more often, but the Immermanangels one does work.
Speaker: I'll just get to it eventually.
Speaker: But anyone has a question for me or is as a nonprofit in the cancer space or beyond, I'm happy to be helpful.
Speaker: You know, that's part of giving back.
Speaker: You know, we're lucky that we've been able to build something as this team that's around.
Speaker: And let me tell you, I've made every mistake in the book.
Speaker: when I can share it to help other social entrepreneurs not make those mistakes and help more people faster, better, always game for that.
Speaker: And I know JB's built the same way, man.
Speaker: You know, we both get that.
Speaker: It's like anything you've learned, mistakes you've learned, if you don't share these things, like it's wasted.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, thanks again, Johnny.
Speaker: I appreciate your time.
Speaker: Honored to know you, brother.
Speaker: Honored to call you my boy.
Speaker: Stay well, brother.
