Episode 9 – Disrupt Your Now with Lisa Kipps-Brown

Meet Lisa Kipps Brown an entrepreneur, an author, and an expert on web access and accessibility. She is no stranger to disabilities as her father was blind and showed her constantly that his blindness was no more than a nuisance. You will discover how she entered the business of creating websites and how she has tirelessly worked to ensure that her work was inclusive for all.
 
Lisa will share not only her life journey, but she will describe why disrupting your now is an important opportunity for all of us to explore. You will even learn her views about the importance of web access and how she accomplishes it today including using accessiBe and its artificial intelligence website product to make her job more successful. Lisa is a real technological visionary and, yes, unstoppable.

Some directories do not show full show notes. For the complete transcription please visit https://michaelhingson.com/podcast

About our Guest:
Author of Disrupt Your Now and Boomer Cashout, and marketing strategist behind the only NASCAR team racing to combat veteran suicide, Lisa Kipps-Brown helps entrepreneurs solve big picture problems with disruptive strategic thinking.

Her natural talent for transforming basic ideas into disruptive strategy and valuable collaborations has people like Forbes 30 Under 30-listed blind PhD chemist Dr. Hoby Wedler calling her a “cognitive powerhouse.” Steve Sims, author of Bluefishing, says she’s a unicorn who bridges the gap between digital natives and digital immigrants.

Since starting her web & marketing strategy company in 1996, Lisa has been a pioneer in business use of the web. Take it from one of her clients: “if you’re not afraid of challenging the status quo, Lisa Kipps-Brown can help you build a business that’s sustainable and means more than money.”

She’s the expert you’re missing, and likely didn’t even know you need. No gobbledygook, guaranteed!

http://lisakippsbrown.com
http://disruptyournow.com

About the Host:
Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.

Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children’s Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association’s 2012 Hero Dog Awards.

https://michaelhingson.com
https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/
https://twitter.com/mhingson
https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links
https://accessibe.com/
https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

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Transcription Notes

Michael Hingson  00:00
Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I’m Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that’s a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we’re happy to meet you and to have you here with us.
 
Michael Hingson  01:20
Welcome to another episode of Unstoppable Mindset, the podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet.  Today, I think we get to do some unexpected things, at least I hope so that’ll make it even more fun. But we will also talk about inclusion and diversity. Our guest is Lisa Kipps. Brown, who I met earlier this year, she’s got an interesting story to tell. And we have lots of interesting experiences to discuss some of which we’ve kind of collaborated in from a distance and somewhere I think she’ll just tell you things that you’ll find interesting. So Lisa, welcome to unstoppable mindset.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  02:00
Thank you so much for having me, Michael, it’s great to be with you.
 
Michael Hingson  02:05
So let’s start with the usual tell us a little bit about you in general, share some things maybe they that you’d like people to know about you.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  02:16
Okay, well, I’m an entrepreneur, I’ve been an entrepreneur since 1990. And in 95, I used to be an accountant. And in 95, I discovered web design. So I ditched all the accounting stuff I was doing. And in 96, I started a web design company. So ever since then, I’ve been doing web and marketing strategy. And I’m now you know, because of all the platforms out there that people need less coding, and so forth. Most of what I do now is big picture strategy for companies, helping them disrupt their own business, so to get them out of a rut.
 
Michael Hingson  02:56
What got you into web design? I mean, why did you decide to do that from what you were doing?
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  03:01
Well, I would, at the time, I owned a business that I was consulting with other small businesses. So I was working on big picture strategy anyway, but mostly within kind of the financial area. And I was also the financial controller for an international software company. But I didn’t like accounting. I was really good at it, but I just didn’t like it. And one of the young guys, I was the only American working for the company. And one of the coders was like, Oh, you ought to check out web design. Well, I’m 60. Michael. So back when I was in college, when you took coding, you took Fortran, which meant he had to sit there and do the punch cards. I was like, No way. I’m not doing that. Well, we also did basic and that was on a PC, but you still wasn’t like immediate gratification. But he piqued my interest enough that I looked into it. And I realized, oh my gosh, I could combine my business background and my creativity and my low threshold for boredom, let’s call it and I could combine all of those things and help businesses in a way that other people wouldn’t be able to just because of the variety of my background, so I ditched everything accounting, and have been and have been doing everything pretty much web based ever since.
 
Michael Hingson  04:28
I remember being in college at UC Irvine and the first computer that I was really exposed to was an IBM 360 Of course we had IBM Selectric terminals and of course you’re right Fortran and and some other things along the way. And then basic did come along. I never did learn COBOL but I did take Fortran although I don’t remember a whole lot of it now and probably
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  04:58
wouldn’t be very easily. I hated that, you know, the punch cards and everything. But I love the logic behind, you know, when I was actually coding with web design, I loved it because it was like solving puzzles. But I didn’t have to go through the misery and drudgery of sitting in line and doing the punch cards and having them compiled. So it’s funny how if you can figure out what you like, like inside of yourself, not the task, but why you like things and why you don’t, it will really help you find your thing in life that you’re meant to do.
 
Michael Hingson  05:34
I remember, the first time the university got a card punching device that had an 80 character display. So you could actually put all of the characters in, proofread it, and then push the button to punch the cards. Oh, wow.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  05:54
See, we didn’t have that. They may have already had it. But they may have made us do what we were doing. Because it was like, computer science 101 or whatever. I just know, I hated it.
 
Michael Hingson  06:06
I think yeah, but I think it was, was probably pretty sensible to have the punch card device with a display because it meant you didn’t waste as many cards. It didn’t change the logic or anything. It only said, Okay, did you really mean to put these characters in before you push punch. So a lot of times this, of course, none of that was usable by me directly. But I remember being involved with a number of people and observing them and talking with them. And they said it was such an an amazing improvement. Because now they made many fewer mistakes. By the time the card got punched, yes. And so that when it got punched, if it messed up, then it was a different kind of a problem. It wasn’t a typo. Typically, it was perhaps a little bit of an error in logic or an error and understanding something about coding. But you’re right. Programming is a wonderful way to explore and think about puzzles. It’s all about logic. And as we know, the machines do just what we tell them or they did them. But we now have the the arena where we’re moving more into artificial intelligence. And the day is going to come when machines really will be more unpredictable to us. Because they’re thinking among themselves. Of course, science fiction writers have been writing about that for a while. And as late as Dan Brown and origin and other things like that. And of course, Ray Kurzweil talks about the singularity when we marry our brains and computer brains, and then it will be really interesting to see whose will will win out.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  07:53
But yes, it will be.
 
Michael Hingson  07:57
It will be interesting. But computer programming was was very fascinating. I took one year of information, computer science, and it was all required part of our degree programs and physics and so on. And and used and we use the computers a lot, we use the 360. Then we got a PDP 10 into the system. And of course, all of us just worked at remote terminals, albeit sometimes in the computer science building in the computer room, but a lot of times in physics, our access was through remote terminals in a completely different building. So it was a while actually once I joined UC Irvine before I actually got to go in and and visit the computer room and experience it close up. But it was a lot of fun.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  08:49
Yeah, it is. And you know something else funny about it. When I was in college I never studied. Well, I didn’t in high school either. But I drove my my roommates crazy because I would never study but I always got A’s and B’s, because I just learned really easily. Then when I discovered web design, of course back then there was no Google. And there was really no resources online even without service to the learn. So I would buy all these coding books, and go to bed with my coding books. I mean, by that time I was 35. And my roommates, if they came to visit, they were like, Oh my gosh, I cannot believe you have a book and a highlighter. And I said well, it just goes to show you if you find something that you really are interested in, you know that it makes all the difference in being motivated or not.
 
Michael Hingson  09:40
I don’t remember for sure the author but one of our computer science teachers told us that one of the standard jokes they had for a while was that when you enrolled in ICS one information computer science one. The first night the professor would say You know, our textbook is entitled Introduction to Programming. And I think the author’s name was Ken Ingram, I’m not sure. But you need to read chapter one. And he told us about it, because Chapter One was literally half the book. Oh my god, you had two days to read it. It’s pretty clever. But still, you know, we all learned and, and I very much enjoyed. What? Taking computer science courses, physics and so on. Did because there was logic to it. And it did create and answer puzzles. And it was always fun when you when you got a puzzle that you had to, to work on figuring out whether it was programming it or especially when you get into physics and dealing with a lot of the theories and expanding on them. It’s all about puzzles.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  10:54
Yes, for sure. Just so was your major physics?
 
Michael Hingson  10:59
Yes. I love that. My master’s is in physics.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  11:02
Okay. Okay. I didn’t realize that. That’s cool. So it
 
Michael Hingson  11:07
was a it was a lot of fun. And I did, I did pretty well with it. I did study a lot I needed to do that. Partly, I think for me, also, was that I had challenges with access to information, of course, being blind. Yeah, especially back in the 70s. And even earlier, but for me, the 70s information was not readily available. And when I needed a physics book, I had to get the professor’s to tell me what they were going to use in class months ahead of time, which they were very resistive to doing. Because Oh, we want to wait till the last possible. Second, we want to get the latest thing. And I said, Look, here’s the problem. And some of the we’re not very sensitive to it. And I had to invoke pressure from part of the the university administration. And there was a person, Jan Jenkins, who later became Jan Jergens, who was the person who ran the Office of Special services for persons with disabilities at UC Irvine, and Jan told me early on, I’m not going to do things for you, I’m not going to do things for any of the people who come in here, I will facilitate for you. If you’re not able to get a professor to give you the information, then I am the the person at the university who can help make that happen. And and I think that’s always been the way it should be done. We have too many, we have too many college programs out where the the office does everything you want to take a test, we’ll set it up for you. You You need something you just tell us we’ll do it. If students don’t learn that level of independence to do it themselves, if they don’t learn to hire their own readers and fire their own readers. And yes, we still need people to read material from time to time, although there’s now other technologies that help but if you don’t learn to do those things, it doesn’t serve you well later in life.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  13:09
For sure. So the books, the books for your courses, did you were you able to get them in Braille? Did you have to have somebody read it to you? Or did you buy an audio book or what the
 
Michael Hingson  13:21
problem was, especially in math, and physics, and so on is doing it. And they were available in recorded form sometimes. But that doesn’t really work. You know, you don’t, you don’t study or analyze from an audio book, you need to be able to go through it, you need to be able to search it, you’ve got to be able to go forwards and backwards and sideways and so on. So the only way to really do it is Braille. Yeah. And Braille is a technology that any person who is blind should use and I define blindness. And we’ve talked about it on these podcasts a little bit. But I define blindness as a situation where if your eyesight is diminished to the point where you need to use alternatives to print to do things, no matter what the alternatives are large print, closer to television, or braille or whatever, you should consider yourself blind and learn blindness techniques. Because if you don’t, especially if you’re losing your eyesight and you lose the rest of it, then you’re going to have to be retrained. And psychologically you haven’t made that leap. So for me, getting the books in braille was important. And the reason we needed to have the information and access to the books months in advance is that back in those days, people would hand transcribe the books. My favorite transcriber, a lady named Eleanor savage who I finally got to meet years and years later, but Eleanor actually took a cruise every year around the world and what she did is she took her brailler and most of the time as part of that cruise she was transcribing physics books for me A great idea. And and she and she was great at her job. She knew the mathematical code, the Nimeth code for Braille mathematics, she was able to transcribe the books. And as a result, I was able to have the mostly on time, which, which was great.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  15:19
I totally agree with you, Michael, about people making. Basically what you’re saying is people need to put themselves out of their comfort zone, because that’s how we grow. And like you said, you need to be prepared. I have, I have a vision issue that it doesn’t interfere too much with me now, but I never know when it might. And so I do things like when I get up at night, and I will do this anyway. But I don’t ever turn on the lights when I get on it. Get up at night, I do things like that, to force myself to think without seeing being able to act without see.
 
Michael Hingson  15:52
Right? Well, what what got you into this mode of really thinking about doing things without eyesight?
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  15:59
Well, my father was blind, he was not born blind, he started losing his sight when he was eight. And both of his retinas detached. So by the time he was, I guess, probably 16, he was totally blind. So of course, he never saw us, or anything. But growing up around him, he was just daddy to us. You know, we didn’t think about him being blind, because he was just there, he rode horses, he shot guns, he owned his own business, he even mowed the grass. And because he would mow barefoot on because he could tell with his feet, which grass was longer and which wasn’t. So when growing up around somebody like that, I didn’t realize how different he was because as the city was just daddy, and you know, all of his adult friends would always be like, Oh my god, your father is so amazing. And I’m like, okay, whatever, you know. And it wasn’t until I was an adult that I really realized how amazing he was. But I’m never ever one time in my life ever heard him say I can’t do that. He had a lay a full woodworking shop in our basement with the lathe and all this stuff. So the point of that is that when you grow up around somebody like that, it’s like osmosis, you just naturally think differently, because you’re around somebody who was constantly adapting and figuring out how to do what they want to do, even if people think they shouldn’t be able to. And so I realize how him losing his sight. Gave me and my sister such an advantage, just because of growing up with him.
 
Michael Hingson  17:45
So he learned to solve puzzles.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  17:49
Yes, yeah.
 
Michael Hingson  17:52
In every sense of the word, because that’s, that’s what it’s about. I wonder what people thought when they saw him mowing the lawn barefoot. Oh, wow.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  18:02
They probably were, well, where they live. We live in a rural area. And their house was beside my grandmother’s and my aunt so I don’t know if really anybody saw him besides him. But people have seen him do a lot of things that they just cannot believe that he has done and um, I mean, he rode like he would do trail rides, the whole weekend long and it’d be like on his horse, it’d be like 35 miles each way. And things like that. The house that I own now is actually on a lake and when I was growing up a friend of his and it I found out after I bought it that at one of the parties that his friend had that a bunch of them were going to go waterskiing with daddy wanted to drive the boat. So they took him around the lake a couple times for him to get his bearings, and he drove the boat for the site admin to water. See, I’m not saying that was a good idea. But that was a it didn’t surprise me at all that he did. And I’m sure there was a sighted person sitting beside him just in case something had gone wrong. But you know, yourself. It’s almost almost like sonar y’all see, but you see in a different way than we do.
 
Michael Hingson  19:14
Yeah, I was thinking that probably someone sat next to him because it would be really hard to hear. Maybe not too hard. But when you’re getting close to the shore, so you make the appropriate turn. There are sounds and you could learn to tell the difference from being in the middle of the lake when when you’re there as opposed to being at the shore. But if it were me, I would want someone to be there just to make sure I had that information. Right now. Maybe it’s because I haven’t learned to do that.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  19:47
No, I cannot I didn’t ask his friend that was telling me I can’t imagine that they didn’t have somebody beside him but just the fact most people would never dream that somebody has can’t seek to do something like that. It’s like going to our cabin in the mountains, it’s 120 miles from our home. And you know, he’d been going up there his whole life riding in the car with different people. So if he had somebody take him up there who had never been before, and it was just them in the car, he could literally tell them every turn, yeah, like, oh, about, you know, a half a mile up the road, you’re gonna go around the curb and a dip and blah, blah, blah, and it blew people’s minds. But as I said earlier, he it was so ingrained in him, because he felt it and, and heard it. And that was the way he could visualize if you will, to give directions to somebody else.
 
Michael Hingson  20:47
Sure. Um, I know, and I can do the same thing. What really amazes me is having now used a guy dogs, most of them can be asleep on the floor in the back seat or, or up between our passenger seats in our in our van today. But they could be asleep on the floor, and wake up when we turn on to our street. Uh huh. I think that’s even more amazing. Because for me, knowing where I am, when I’m traveling to and from a place on a regular basis, frankly, that’s easy. Yeah. And I think that it gets back to the point, that eyesight is not the only game in town. And the reality is that we don’t, as a, as a people choose to learn to use the alternative techniques that blind people do, that might enhance our own lives, as people who can see. And that’s why one of the reasons it’s the best training centers for blind people teach partially blind people to travel under blindfold. And then they say, Look, when you go out in the world, as long as you can see, you still have that eyesight, but use your cane in conjunction with it, and enhance what you do. And the people who adopt that philosophy, find that it really makes a great difference in how well they can function and how well they do function. Because they’ve learned the techniques, and they’ve psychologically accepted that there’s nothing wrong with being blind.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  22:26
I love that. That’s great.
 
Michael Hingson  22:29
So it makes perfect sense to do. And, and it’s, it’s something that I wish more people would would recognize. And it’s kind of why I adopted in our book, Thunder dog, in this section called guide dog wisdom. One of the lessons that I say we learned from Roselle on September 11, is don’t let your sight get in the way of your vision.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  22:52
Oh, yeah.
 
Michael Hingson  22:55
Because it happens all too often.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  22:57
And, and an example that I think all of us can relate to, is Google Maps, or any map thing, somebody will be driving, and they can see the road signs or whatever. But if the map tells them to do something, and even if they see it, they’re like, oh, but the map said in people, you know, it’s relying too much on other things. And so that’s not a really, that’s not the same thing. But it does show how people will rely too much on something at the expense of something that’s basically right in their face, telling them what to do.
 
Michael Hingson  23:36
Right? Well, and there’s nothing wrong with going by what the map says. But what we don’t learn to do is to use all the information to our senses. To accomplish a task, we don’t use everything, we rely on one thing, we don’t look at everything that’s available to us to make the most intelligent decision that we can make.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  24:00
Right? So an extreme example of that would be if a street says one way do not turn in the map and saying turn, obviously you’re not going to turn. But you know that that’s an extreme example, and I haven’t been with anybody that does that. But I’ve even been with people that know where they’re going. And they will still turn at a different place just because the map tells them to even though they’ve been to the place a million times. So it’s it’s pretty funny how people give up their own control by defending and things like that.
 
Michael Hingson  24:33
I have been in cars where people did exactly what you just said they go by the map as opposed to and they have turned the wrong way. Fortunately, they weren’t very busy streets. So we we survived. But still, people do that, rather than looking at everything around them. And I really wish that as a people we would teach ourselves and our parents would spend more time teaching us To observe and think and question and analyze, because, as you know, from dealing with puzzles no matter what they are, that’s what it’s about.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  25:10
That’s right. I’ll give you another example of something that he did with us that we didn’t think much about it at the time, but we would have been learning from, he would play basketball with us. So we had a basketball goal that he actually built for us, he, you know, dug the hole and put the pole up and everything and the concrete, and he would play like horse and around the world, those kinds of things. And we would knock on the post of the basketball goal, so that he could get his bearings where it is. And then in his mind, you know, he would calculate the height and, and he would shoot, and he was really good at it. So think much about it. But, but when you see somebody doing those things on a regular basis, and never saying, Oh, I can’t do that. I mean, literally the first time he did it, it would, he would have been like, he probably just said, Let’s go play basketball or shoot basketball. And, um, so when you’re around people like that, you just absorb that way of thinking, in that no challenge is too big.
 
Michael Hingson  26:21
And, you know, even if you don’t accomplish everything in the challenge, you learn from it.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  26:28
That’s right. Yeah, a lot of NASA we learned the most from our failures, don’t we?
 
Michael Hingson  26:33
We do. And, and what’s a failure? It’s an opportunity to learn, like, What’s the mistake? Was it a mistake when you made it? Probably not. People would judge it as a mistake. But the real question is, you did it, what do you learn from it? And if it was a mistake, can you improve upon it? I was talking with someone this morning, we’re actually working toward writing a new book, called standard dog is out there still, which is our my story of being in the World Trade Center. But we’re writing a new book. Originally, I talked about our thought about calling it blinded by fear or not. Because most people really are blinded by fear. And when I say blinded, I mean that they tend to just totally let fear take over and they can’t deal with moving forward. They don’t know how to make decisions. They lose perspective. But we actually changed the title of it. It’s actually now been submitted as a proposal. So we’re hoping that a publisher will pick it up. But our our latest title is a guide dogs Guide to Being brave. And we’re doing it from the standpoint of Roselle, who was with me in the World Trade Center, of course, on September 11. But we talk a lot in the book about life choices. And do we go back and analyze and I was talking with my my colleague who’s helping to write the book, my co author, Carrie Wyatt can’t. Can you trace your life back to the choices that you’ve made? Can you go back and look at your choices, and see what brought you to where you are and what you learned along the way? And we both agreed, most people can’t do that. And what started it was that I made the comment, I can go back and look at my life. I know the choices that I’ve made along the way, especially the major ones over the past many number of years now being close to 72. But I know the choices that I’ve made, and I know what I’ve learned each time from those choices. And that’s invaluable.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  28:42
Yes, it is. And I remember, this is just one small example for people out there. I remember you and I speaking this past summer and you were talking about being in an airport or something and you said you wanted to get lost. So that then you could learn your way around or something to that effect you didn’t somebody to just lead you to where you needed to go, that you needed to find it on your own. So you can learn from it
 
Michael Hingson  29:09
did a lot of that in the World Trade Center. And the value was that it got to the point where I couldn’t get lost in the World Trade Center. With within a few seconds of just doing some listening and observing. I always knew where I was.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  29:23
Yeah, because everything sounds different from the different angles in the floors. And not that I can’t hear it that like y’all can. But I think I am more aware of it than most people out here things in our house. I’ll be like, What is that noise and my husband’s like, what noise? And then I’ll just go looking and looking until I trace track it down and I’ll find some little something you know, yeah. That’s pretty cool, though that you couldn’t get lost.
 
Michael Hingson  29:52
Well, and the the reality is that that you could learn to do that. You know, people always say To me, well, you’re blind. So your your other senses are heightened. And someone at one of the training Senator center centers, senators, they need training. One of the training centers that I’ve visited over the years said, Is that No, it isn’t a matter of heightened senses, other than you’ve trained yourself to heighten your senses. And the the fact is that any number of sighted people have done that look at SEAL teams look at a lot of elite military people look at people who are very deeply involved in something or other, they become focused, and they’ve trained themselves to deal with a lot of those things.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  30:46
Yeah, follow through. Yeah, when I get up in the night, and I don’t turn in the light. So many times you would think he would remember because we’ve been married 34 years now. But very frequently, it’ll wake up my husband, he’s like, wait, you want me to turn on the light? I’m like, no, no, turn it on. Don’t turn in. I want to do it in the dark. You know, I just like the challenge.
 
Michael Hingson  31:09
Or, or better yet, and why aren’t you learning to do that? Exactly.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  31:13
Yeah. Why do you have to turn over life for everything. And, you know, Daddy would be in the basement. He had a dim down there, and he would listen to music all the time. And somebody if somebody came to see him, and they might say something like, How do I turn the light? And he’s like, why do you need light? I don’t have a light. You know, he’d always give people a hard time. You don’t need a light
 
Michael Hingson  31:32
to waste of electricity. Exactly. Yeah, well, Dick herbal Shimer, who is my geometry teacher in high school, who we’ve stayed very long time friends with, tells the story, and I had actually forgotten it. But he came over to our house. Once, when I was in his class, as I say, we became very close friends. And he wanted to see our ham radio setup. And my father and I were both ham radio operators by then. And we went into the den where it was all set up. And he said, I remember saying, Well, you know, I’m not able to see it very well. Can I turn the light on? And I? And I said, Well, why? Sorry, I forgot. But we’ll accommodate you, you know, but yeah, it is it is what people are used to. And every time you have a power failure, what’s the first thing you do you go find a candle or a flashlight, rather than maybe learning not to be so quick to use those and and raising your own senses simply by training yourself to listen, or to observe in other ways?
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  32:40
Yeah, and a lot of times it’s not even really that dark, even if it’s in the middle of the night because the moon or you know, so be it’s just such a habit for people to feel like they have to have that light.
 
Michael Hingson  32:54
Now then there are some people who are really scary share Heckerling, the founder, or co founder of accessiBe, tells me that one of his best friends who is blind is one of the chief coders that they work with. And this gentleman, being blind, can write code, carry on a conversation with you, and be listening to music all at the same time. Yes, scary. I don’t have
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  33:26
to do that. I can type and carry on a conversation at the same time. And but I don’t know if I could pay attention to music, but I’m just so used to that, you know, because my husband would be like, You’re not listening to me. I’m like, yeah, yes, I am. That’s cool.
 
Michael Hingson  33:45
Well, I can type in carry on a conversation at the same time, sometimes I do realize that accuracy might not be as good or, or I know that I made a mistake. And I have to go back and correct it more as I’m typing. If I’m carrying on a conversation at the same time.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  34:01
Code is way different than just, you know, for me to just be typing something. Do writing code is way different. Because you really have to be right with that.
 
Michael Hingson  34:13
Well, again, you you develop a mindset and you develop and train yourself to be able to do that. I’m sure. It’s very doable. It’s just not something that I’ve learned to do. So I just choose to be jealous of that guy who can do it. Yeah. It’s a life choice.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  34:30
Man, you do other things that he’s probably jealous up. So
 
Michael Hingson  34:35
I guess probably so. So, you know, you you’ve done some writing, you’ve written some books, right?
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  34:45
Yeah, I’ve written three, the latest one release this past summer in July.
 
Michael Hingson  34:52
What is that one called?
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  34:53
It’s called Disrupt your Now the successful entrepreneurs guide to reimagining your business and last
 
Michael Hingson  35:00
Tell us about that, if you would, please.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  35:02
Okay, well, over all of these decades of helping business owners, I realized that a lot of the people that I work with, they start a business and they’re like, Yes, I’m gonna be my own boss, and I’m gonna, you know, control my life, and yada, yada, yada. And then before they know it, they realize they built a business that they don’t even like, they don’t want to own, but they’re trapped. Because I’m like a job, you can’t just walk away. And my theory on it is that the reason they do that is because they’re paying too much attention to what everybody else is doing, instead of what they want their life to be like. So you know, people within an industry, they’ll look around at competitors, or whatever, and they’ll think everything they’re doing, I need to do. But if you want a different type of lifestyle, then you need to do it differently than they’re doing it. So like for me, even though I own a web design company that you know, there are a lot of agencies out there, they have a lot of employees, I have never wanted to have many employees, because I don’t like managing people, I don’t want to be tied to one place geographically, which was another reason I really loved web design when I when I on, discovered it in. So there, I like for my life, I like to be able to adapt it as I go. So like when my mom got Alzheimer’s, I can adapt my business. So I like having a really agile business that I can change on a whim that somebody else who’s building a business to sell, they’re going to need to make different decisions than I did. And if we are copying each other, then we’re not going to end up with what we wanted. So that’s why I wrote the book disrupt your now. And really I tell people stop thinking someday or one day and start thinking right now, what are some things that you can do now to start making your life and your business what you want it to be?
 
Michael Hingson  37:11
So let me name two people, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates. Why were they successful?
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  37:19
Oh, well, part of its timing part of its doggedness, part of its vision and creativity, I’m sure that you’re
 
Michael Hingson  37:32
well, and what I was thinking of was just in terms of what you’re saying, they chose to be different. Or Jeff Bezos is another one. They, they, they envisioned what they wanted. And they were open to exploring ways to make it happen. I mean, look at what Jeff Jeff Bezos did, even though he doesn’t always make things as accessible as we would like. But none of them do, actually. But Jeff Bezos created this company, to sell books, and to then later to sell other things online. And I remember for years, Amazon was not very proud, well, was not profitable. And he kept saying it’s going to be and he kept doing various things until he made it successful. And make no mistake, it came from him. Yes. Steve Jobs apple. It started out and originally, the Macintosh wasn’t necessarily the the greatest thing. But he worked at it. He had a vision. And then Apple took off,
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  38:47
right? You know, with an Amazon, I actually the first book I wrote, and some other books that I didn’t write, I actually sold those on Amazon and back in the 90s 97 to 2000, before I sold the company, and that was when most people didn’t even know hadn’t even heard of Amazon yet. You know, but, um, so I’ve been following him for many, many years. But and that’s the thing, it’s like people don’t, they don’t understand how to think differently, just like we were talking about with our senses. They get so ingrained in making decisions based on the ways that they think they’re supposed to make them that they don’t look at alternatives. So I’ll give you a business example for me. So in 97, I was working with a client whose she owned the company that had had print products and it was a set of technical books, gods and and of course, they will print books and her husband had died of cancer. She sold up inventory, she could not afford to take it back to print. So she was gonna go bankrupt and started talking to her. Why have these three questions, Michael that? So I’m going to stick this in here at three questions that I use that I realized I got out of growing up around daddy. The first is fly. The second is why not in the third is what if. So with her without me thinking about it, I’m like, Well, why don’t you figure out a way that you don’t have to pay for it? And she goes, Lena, oh, how can I ever do that? Well, I actually got books pre ordered, gave people 25% discount. So by the time she had to order, she had enough money, she didn’t have to pay for it. But then I was like, why not figure out a way that you can do have this product, but having in a version that you don’t ever have to have print? And she’s like, How could that be possible. And remember, this is 97 I so I know, we can figure out a way that you could turn the the books, each individual page into a file online for people to download, because a lot of the people that used it were marine surveyors and yacht brokers and stuff. And of course, she thought I was crazy. But I said, if you did that, you could update it constantly. You wouldn’t have to wait a year or two to add the next volume. And then lastly, what if we could actually create an entire new revenue revenue stream for you? So long story short, I developed a system for her to turn the books and the individual it they later ended up being PDFs. At first, they weren’t just images. But we sold subscriptions, and yearly and monthly subscriptions for professionals that needed it. But we sold daily subscriptions to Joe Blow that was interested in just researching boats, like having a glass of wine. And he’s like, Oh, I think I want dreaming of having a bed. You know, we want to be able to look at technical line drawings and stuff. So we created a whole new business model. And this was in 9798. Nobody, that all of the subscription based businesses back then online, were basically internet service providers like AOL, stuff like that. And I actually sold it right before the.com bubble burst. So that’s an example of nobody would have back then no, nobody would have ever thought about taking a book and turning it into something digital. And I doubt I would have if I hadn’t grown up with my father, you know, just having that different mindset.
 
Michael Hingson  42:44
But also, you had the opportunity to ask those questions, because someone came along who had a problem? Yes. And you recognize the inspiration that came into your mind about why why not? And what if? And it seems to me the most powerful of those three questions is what if, yeah, because that’s the one that really makes you vision?
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  43:04
I agree. I love the whole idea. The why is the part that people are like, are you crazy? This is why it’s obvious why I’m doing it. And the why not? Is then they really, it’s pushing them out of their comfort zone. Oh, you know, like her? How can I have a book that’s not printed? So it’s like the why the why not? It’s easing them to that third class question. What if? And what if is the disruptive question that think of something like your wildest dreams of what if you could do something this way? What would the craziest idea be? And there’s probably a way that you can actually make it happen?
 
Michael Hingson  43:45
Yeah, the what if gives you the general question, then you get to the details.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  43:52
I’ll give you an example, not entrepreneurial. And so I was working with a woman who had been laid off from a government job. And she said a half to get another job and government because of the retirement plan, and so forth. And but she had been really unhappy in the job. And I said, Why do you want to get back into a similar situation when you were so unhappy? And you know, you automatically have the bureaucracy and the six steps of promotion? Why not try to find something simple or something better in the private sector? And what if you could get a job with a fast growing private company, that literally there’s no limit to your ability to grow that they could even create a position for you once they get to know you? So she ended up after several months of me coaching her and adapting her skills, translating her skills over and so that she would understand that yes, she did have the skill set for this. She took a job with a private company, and she’s making 60% more a year than she was making. I’m like, you can take every bit of that and invest it into a retirement plan, you know, instead of being stuck down at the lower level, just so that you can have this retirement plan.
 
Michael Hingson  45:19
How long ago did you do this?
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  45:21
This was this year.
 
Michael Hingson  45:23
Okay. And so the question is, since you obviously, keep in touch with her right now, is she happier?
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  45:29
She loves it there. And the really cool thing, Michael, is that it’s b2b. So as she’s working, she’s working in this place, that there’s really unlimited potential, because of the kind of company it is, but she’s also working with business clients. So she’s making great contacts, that that also increases her opportunities in the long run, because you never know who she might meet, that they might decide they want her. Her world is just so much bigger now.
 
Michael Hingson  46:06
And she gets to be creative. And maybe when she was in the government job, and I don’t know, but I’m assuming from my experiences in dealing with the government world, she, her creativity was very possibly greatly stifled. Now, she might have to relearn to do some of that. But she gets to be creative.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  46:26
Yes, be creative. Again, he can in people think creative means art and stuff, no creative thinking, and thinking strategically and thinking differently than than other people think. And she’s really good at that. But you’re right, it had gotten very stifle. So now she’s having to nurture that part of herself again, because she does have the freedom to use that talent.
 
Michael Hingson  46:53
Well, and the other part of it is, what’s wrong with questioning? Why What’s wrong was saying, Well, yeah, that’s the way we’ve always done it. But why do we need to do that? Why not explore something different? Or of course, then take it to the what if we did this instead. But But bottom line is, what’s wrong with questioning and exploring, and making yourself and others think more creatively and thinking about all the various options to get the best solution?
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  47:31
Actually, I think there’s nothing wrong with it. And I think if more companies and even the government, but let’s just stick with business, I think if more companies encourage their employees to think entrepreneurially, the then employees would be happier, they’d be more productive, they would end up in positions that they’re better suited for. And the company would end up more prosperous and more valuable, if they would just allow people to think entrepreneurially. And instead of everybody being afraid, they’re going to do something wrong. And everybody thinking bureaucratically,
 
Michael Hingson  48:10
there’s a TV show that that Karen especially likes to watch, and we binge watched three episodes earlier this week, I in one of them, someone was hired to manage our actually be head chef at a restaurant. And in this restaurant, everything was done a certain way. The ketchup would go in the middle of the plate, so you could put it on easily your steak or your french fries. And what this person did was put the ketchup on the side. And management couldn’t understand and wouldn’t accept the concept of doing something different. And maybe there’s a reason for doing that.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  49:01
What was that show?
 
Michael Hingson  49:04
It shows that people aren’t open to new ideas are open to exploring other ways that may be better.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  49:11
For sure. Now, I mean, what is the name of the show, though?
 
Michael Hingson  49:14
Oh, what was the show? It’s called a million little things.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  49:18
Oh, I need to watch that. Okay, I need to check that out. That sounds really good. It’s
 
Michael Hingson  49:23
put on a few years, and she she especially really likes it. So but I think it’s a very relevant point. Why is it that we have to do it a certain way and you know what, it is possible that maybe there was a lot of analysis and there was a lot of thought that went into doing something in a certain way, but then explain it will help people understand it, because if you do that one of two things will most likely happen. One is they’ll say oh, okay, or they’ll say, Yeah, but what if we look at this? Yeah, and, and both of those are reasonable scenarios. But it starts by accepting the fact that it’s good for people to learn and understand and analyze.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  50:19
Yeah, you You are so right. Let me give you another example. Because I think it helps people learn when they have different types of examples, but I love that capture point. Um, so last year with the Cares Act, most communities when they got money for businesses, they would just divvy it up and somehow decide which businesses got how much money. So it would be a certain number of businesses, small businesses, that got you know, a chunk of money. And it just kind of stopped there. It helped them and help them keep employees on but it didn’t do anything exponentially in the community. So I worked with one of my colleagues who, by the way, the tourism director there used to work for me. So I know what a creative thinker she is. And she went to her County and said, Look, I have money left in my tourism budget, can I take that and match it with the Cares Act money that we’re having, and figure out a way that we can do a matching gift card campaign so that the money could also benefit, it could benefit more businesses. So what we ended up doing is, we developed a system that you could go on as a citizen and buy a $40 gift card for any of the businesses that were participating, but you only pay $20. So you as a person who lived in that community, were automatically saving $20. And then $40 went to the business, whose gift card you were buying, right? So the net effect, we turned $900,000 into 2.7 million, because they did the matching. And what was really cool is most people think, Oh, well, gift cards, they think shopping and restaurants and stuff. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But we had businesses in their like daycare centers, Dentist medical centers, car repair, fuel oil. So imagine the the family who, you know, may have low wages anyway, but also maybe worried about keeping their jobs. And all of a sudden, they’re able to buy these gift cards and get their childcare for half price for a few weeks. So I was really proud of that, that and you know, it’s just sitting there and go, and why do we just want to give the money to a few businesses? Why not figure out a way that more businesses can benefit? And what if we could figure out a way that citizens could also benefit from it?
 
Michael Hingson  53:11
Why is it that bureaucracies and governments so stifle creativity? And so strongly disincentive people for being creative? Or maybe the better question is, how do we change that mindset? And I know that, in part has to come from getting the right leader to really run it. But it is so unfortunate that we we so poor, are so pervasive about not encouraging questioning, and creativity and so on. It’s just so unfortunate.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  53:49
Yeah, it’s like, this is the way you do it. This is it, do it this way. And growing up, we’re taught to be like that, in school and everything, these this is what you do. These are the rules, and you’re supposed to do it. And, you know, I think part of it with business starts with efficiency and so forth. But I think a lot of it is fear. Because you think about it with a company, a manager, whether it’s a middle manager or a top manager, they are afraid to change things because they are being judged on the performance up, and rightfully so, you know, they need to the company needs to be profitable, but it makes them more afraid to try anything that might be disruptive in a good way. You know, and but that’s how the big changes come about. It’s not the small things like you know, just making something that looks a little bit better. It’s the disruptive changes that that changed the whole focus for industries.
 
Michael Hingson  54:50
Well, and they also fear that somebody come up will come up with a better idea than they have had, or maybe a better way Doing things, and this other person will get the credit and they will lose out. Yeah, and we don’t recognize that a leader who truly leads also knows when to let somebody else take the lead on doing a project. And that the real leaders are the people who can direct and guide and inspire. But may or may not necessarily have the right idea or the only or the best idea, but will encourage other people to come up with ideas. And in fact, that may catapult someone else into a great position. But the true leader who adopts that mindset, is never going to fail. And they’re and they’re always also going to feel really good about what they did to bring this person into the, into the limelight, if you will.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  55:57
100%, I’m in total agreement with that I had a great, I have a guest on my show the other day on my Disrupt your Now show, a woman who has developed a disruptive platform for human resources. And it is so cool. And that is her whole thing about helping companies start thinking differently in managing their personnel and turning away from performance reviews, and all those things that people ate, and making it more people based and smell things along the way. So we had a conversation about this exact thing about allowing people to be more entrepreneurial.
 
Michael Hingson  56:40
I remember working for a company once, and I worked in a remote office, the founder and owner of the company are one of the two founders, but the president of the company was back seeing how we were doing and we went to dinner, and we were talking about salaries and what people made. And he conveyed the message that it was really unfortunate and crazy that salespeople made more money than he did. And he could not understand why anyone would think it’s a problem, that the President didn’t necessarily make the most amount of money in a company like that particular one, and that, that salespeople could make much more money, even if it’s just in one month. But he couldn’t understand how that could happen. And why that anyone would find that acceptable.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  57:43
Yeah, I’ve seen people like that, too. And they don’t understand that if, if you don’t have the people making whatever it is you’re selling, if you don’t have the people who can sell it, you don’t have a company, so he wouldn’t have a job if it weren’t for those people. But people at the top, a lot of those people have too much too big of egos and too much self importance. And they automatically think that there’s so much worth so much more, rather than, hey, I owe my position to them, I owe my success to them.
 
Michael Hingson  58:19
And in the long run the executive, if they make the company successful by hiring people, who may be in the short term make more money than they do. Those people, if they’ve structured a right will be fine. financially.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  58:36
Yes, yeah. everybody ends up better off,
 
Michael Hingson  58:42
of course, and that’s as it should be. It’s, it’s all again, going back to the mindset, and how we choose to approach what we do and how to approach life. And so having the concept like disrupt your now is, is so important. And I could say it’s unfortunate that we have to have that kind of a concept. But we do because we get so locked into a pattern that we don’t look at alternatives. I’m a great Star Trek fan. And I remember watching some of the Star Trek movies like The Wrath of Khan, which, which I thought was probably about the best of the Star Trek movies. But one of the things that was talked about in that movie a lot was how people thought. And I don’t know whether you watch any of the science fiction movies, but one of the the villain, as Spock put it to Captain Kirk, once tends to think in two dimensions. And of course, you’re in space, which really means you can do three dimensions. And by changing Kirk’s mindset with that, they won and we’re able to succeed but we We don’t tend to be nearly as open sometimes as we should be.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  1:00:05
Yeah, I need to go back and watch that, Michael, because I’d forgotten about that. It’s been years since I’ve watched it. It’s just easier to go, you know, the path of least resistance, get up and do the same things. Like we’ve always done them. It’s just easier and most people prefer easy. Most people don’t really want excitement. And I’m one of those people. One of my biggest fears is boredom. Just like I like making things exciting. And I like figuring out different ways to do things.
 
Michael Hingson  1:00:39
I’m not sure it’s necessarily easier. If you have a mindset that encourages you to if some people say, think outside the box, if you think differently. In fact, if you’re constantly doing that, you may find that that’s easier anyway. Because you’re you’re looking for the easier way to get where you want to go. And both of those are part of it.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  1:01:07
Yeah, definitely. And I can tell you doing things, the accepted way is definitely not easier for me. It’s, oh, gosh, it’s like, it’s like torture, because I’m always looking for just it doesn’t have to be necessarily actually a doing something differently, son. And that’s what people have a hard time understanding. I just like looking at everything. Why are we doing it this way? You know, why is it that way? Why can’t it be another way?
 
Michael Hingson  1:01:43
And again, as long as you look at it that way, and you’re open to options, you may find that the way you’re already doing it is the best way.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  1:01:56
Right? Yeah. Cuz then you’ve got verifications.
 
Michael Hingson  1:01:59
There’s no need to change, just to change, you should change because there’s a reason to change. Exactly. Yeah. And I’ve been in situations where people say, Well, yeah, maybe we’ve always done it that way. But we’re going to do it this way. Because we should try something different. Why?
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  1:02:15
Exactly. Yeah. And I’ll tell you, that is a big problem, when new blood comes into a company, because they want to make their mark, you know, and they want to be like, Oh, we’re gonna do this big thing. You know, it might be a manager of a product line or whatever. You know, Pete, nice, er, manager or whatever. But they want to come in and do they want to try to come in and do things their way so that they have a win that then they can brag about? But many times, it’s it would be better off leaving it like it is and finding something different to go after.
 
Michael Hingson  1:02:54
Right? That’s the other part of it. Well, I have to ask you about your involvement in NASCAR and some projects with that. I know that’s how we originally met you we were introduced by Herbie wetzler who we’re also going to have on unstoppable mindset. But tell me about NASCAR and what you’ve done and what what the project is.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  1:03:19
Yeah. So this is another thing that came out of those three questions on calling Garrett is a young NASCAR driver. Three years ago, his dad contacted me to talk about strategy. I don’t know if the listeners know very much about NASCAR. But it’s a brutal sport, the drivers have to bring their own sponsors in. And they’re basically free agents. And once a sponsor comes into NASCAR, there are very few truly new sponsors at the higher level. Usually what happens is a new sponsor will come in and then once they get in there, they realize, oh, this is really cool. You know, and then other teams try to poach them or they start looking around. So it ends up everybody’s going after the same buckets of money. So with him, I said, Why do you want to go after the same same buckets of money, you’ve got to figure out a way that you can make yourself be the only driver that could do something for people? Why not figure out a way that you’re the only one and so nobody can take your the partners who truly are the best partners for you. Nobody can take them because they are not able to do what you are able to. And then the what if became, what if you could help other people while you’re doing it? Because he really wanted his career to me more than entertainment when he was older. He and his dad had had that conversation that they really wanted it to have a bigger meaning. So we ended up I’ll fast forward through but we ended up on Promoting racing for heroes and the Rosie network, which are two nonprofits that help veterans and military families and racing for Heroes is suicide prevention. And they provide free mental and physical health services job training, job placement in the Rosi Network provides entrepreneur services. So we were working on this, we were promoting them pro bono, we crowdfunded the first race for 2020, we beat our goal, we had never crowdfunded, we beat our goal of 200,000, and were able to raise enough to pay for stem cell treatments for veteran with multiple sclerosis. So that made history two things of making history right there, the Crowdfunder in the stem cells. Then we brought in the first service disabled black owned, small business sponsor, we also um, we had a the opportunity for micro businesses to be part of the marketing campaign, if they gave just $10 to the crowdfund or they got to use a badge in all of their marketing, it had the NASCAR logo on it and Collins logo. So that had never been done before. And that was for veteran owned and military spouse owned businesses. That was another way for us to give back to them. And then this past summer, as you know, we had the first Braille paint scheme in NASCAR in the first blind, don’t sponsor and I am very happy to say that access to be was one of the sponsors on that car. And that car was all about access, access to resources, whether it’s online, or healthcare or education, or whatever. But um, oh. And we had the first blind gun sponsor, who was also Hopi Wendler. So even with COVID, we have made NASCAR history in five different ways, that are all about helping other people and that are all about bringing some kind of access to people, whether it’s healthcare, job training, entrepreneurial training, yet, all those different things. And I’m just really proud to be a part of it. But it’s very personal to me on many levels, because my husband is retired Navy. So I know how hard it is when they transition out of the military to fit back in, you know, into the civilian world. My grandfather killed himself when I was five. And my grandmother tried to when I was three, I mean, three years later, when I was eight. So the suicide prevention, I know had the ripple effects. And that that has, and then, of course, daddy being blind, and me being able to have Hobi, and except to be on the car and having the Braille paint scheme. All three of those things are just so important to me personally, and it just makes me feel really happy that we’ve been able to do it.
 
Michael Hingson  1:08:12
It sounds exciting, of course, it’s a bigger challenge to having to do it during a COVID environment in the COVID year, but you’re persevering?
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  1:08:22
Yes, we are right now we are fighting to get funding for next year. And you know, still with COVID going on, we’re not able to do we have really wanted to rely mostly on crowdfunding, but like everybody else, we’re having to adapt. Because people, you know, average people are less able to give to campaign. So we’re turning more to corporate sponsors again. But unlike other, whether it’s a nonprofit or sponsorship type thing, unlike all the other people that are going after those buckets of money, we approach it as a b2b service. We talk to potential partners, and we’re like, what is the biggest problem that you have in business? And how can we help you solve it, it might have nothing to do with the race car at all, you know, but by them sponsoring the car, they have access to all of us all of we we have experts who can then help them in their business. And we’ve done things like help a convenience store that find and vet and locate good veteran products to carry. And if you think about that, that would be hugely expensive to do. Because first you have to do the research to find the products and make sure they’re good and make sure it’s not something that’s already in a bunch of stores. Then you also have to vet the veteran because there’s so much stolen value So we have about 50,000 businesses, veteran and military spouse owned businesses in our network, and the Rosi network, one of the nonprofit’s we promote, they actually already vet businesses to make sure that they truly are veteran or military spouse owned. As a matter of fact, they do that for Google. Also, they’re the exclusive provider of that for Google. So with this convenience store, we already have this huge network and we could readily recommend products to them. The Rosi network knows their financials knows what you know, they were able to recommend businesses that were stable, and then they also the company didn’t have to worry about something blowing up in their face. And you know, it turning into a PR nightmare, because it’s not really a veteran
 
Michael Hingson  1:10:55
is definitely exciting. I know accessiBe was was proud to be a part of it. And and hopefully you’re you’re continuing to communicate with them. And I hope that that does continue. It’s definitely a noble cause and worth doing. And one of these days, maybe I’ll try to drive a car.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  1:11:15
Yeah, well, I told her when we were at daytona. I said, I wish daddy could have been here. He died in 95. I said, I wish she could have been here. But the only problem is he and Hobi would have been fighting over who got to drive the car track.
 
Michael Hingson  1:11:30
So if I were there, if I were there, we’d have three. So yeah,
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  1:11:34
yeah, we’ll get you there. But yeah, we definitely need to get you to a race next year, Michael. And I just want to say that we appreciated so much excessively partnering with us, to help us be able to afford that race. The first race was at Michigan that they were partners with. And I just want to say how much it meant to me personally, that they were all about how can this help other people they weren’t about, Hey, y’all gonna bring us customers, not that we don’t want to help bring customers. But I just was really impressed with accept subbies philosophy that they want to help increase access across the board to people.
 
Michael Hingson  1:12:20
Excessively it’s definitely been very entrepreneurial in its attitude, and I think and its vision. And as it grows, part of what I get to help do is to continue to promote that spirit as chief mission officer and it is important to do access to be knows the challenges that we face. And our founders know, the challenges that they’re willing to take on of trying to make the internet fully accessible. And, you know, excessively is added a number of different services and features to what it originally had, which is what we now call an artificial intelligence solution. People call an overlay but excessively has gone way beyond that, which is really cool. We’ll have to get somebody from excessive beyond to talk more about that. We did have one person on Rafi glance who talked some about it. He’s one of the partner managers and so we we’ve done some, but we need to do more of that. Yeah. It’s, it’s a fascinating thing. And you’ve, you’ve experienced this whole issue of accessibility on the internet.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  1:13:29
Yes. And I love that excessively realizes that there are enough customers for everybody, you know, and the more that companies can collaborate, and help each other help customers, it goes back to what we were talking about earlier for companies to allow employees to think entrepreneurially the more that companies individually are able to think entrepreneurially about collaborating with other companies, the results are exponentially greater than trying to do things on your own. And I just love that they have that attitude.
 
Michael Hingson  1:14:09
And we all learn from that. I mean, that’s one of the things that’s a great benefit for accessibility is that as we associate and collaborate with people, we learn, because we see what other people are doing, and we do get to, to experience firsthand what they’re doing, why they’re successful, and add some of those thoughts and processes to what we do, which is really great. Well, we’ve been going on for a while. So I am going to spin so much fun. We’re gonna have to have you back.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  1:14:38
I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for having me. Happy me, Michael.
 
Michael Hingson  1:14:43
Would you tell us if people want to reach out to you or they want to learn about how to get disrupted now? How do we do that?
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  1:14:51
Okay, my website is Lisa Kipps brown.com L I S A K I P P S B R 0 W N.com. Or you can go to disrupt your now.com. And that goes directly to the page about the book on my site that’s easier to remember. disruptyournow.com So and then I’m on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube everywhere, just look for Lisa Kipps. Brown.
 
Michael Hingson  1:15:21
If people want to learn more about the the whole race car project and so on, do they do that through your web pages are a better place for them to go,
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  1:15:29
they can do that. But they can also go to Collin Garrett racing.com, that spelled C O L i n g a r r e TT racing.com. And we’ve got all the information on there. It’s news, things about the first the first that Colin has had things about crowdfunders that we’re working on and stuff like that, and anybody that owns a business or is works at a business that might be interested in partnering with us, I would love for you to reach out with me and see, reach out to me and see if we can figure out a way to help you find collaborators to to expand your own business.
 
Michael Hingson  1:16:15
Well, that is great. And we really appreciate having you and of course, if people want to learn about accessibility, they can go to www dot accessibe A C C E S S I B E.com. So Lisa Kipps Brown, thank you for joining us on unstoppable mindset. And I think we can really say we talked about inclusion, diversity and the unexpected and it doesn’t get better
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  1:16:38
than that. Yeah. Thanks a lot, Michael. Appreciate it.
 
Michael Hingson  1:16:41
Thanks, Lisa. And again, you’ve been listening to unstoppable mindset. We’ll be back again next week with another unexpected and fun episode and we hope that you’ll join us and listen, we hope that you’ll join us too.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  1:16:56
Thanks.
 
Michael Hingson  1:16:56
Bye, everybody.
 
Lisa Kipps-Brown  1:16:58
Bye all.
 
Michael Hingson  1:17:05
You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you’ll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you’re on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you’re there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.