"Your Job is Not to Redline!" Innovation and The Legal Department Mick Ebeling, Founder & CEO Not Impossible Labs

If this episode doesn’t wake you up about what it means to be a business enabler, nothing will. Mick Ebeling, three-time award winner of Time Magazine’s Best Invention of the Year, has literally changed the world. Through their “help one, help many” approach, Mick and his team of innovators at Not Impossible Labs have built technology that has changed countless lives:

Their inventions:

Return the joy of music to the deaf
Helped a paralyzed artist draw again
Provide affordable, ongoing access to prosthetics for those most in need, and off-the-grid, in war-torn South Sudan.
Connect the hungry with sustainable sources of food

In this conversation with Stacy Bratcher, Mick shares why understanding the big picture and connection with humanity is fundamental for innovating. Put down your red pen, turn off track changes, and learn how to be the lawyer who helps turn the impossible into reality.

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Listen to the podcast here

About Mick Ebeling

As the Founder of Not Impossible Labs – an innovation studio tackling seemingly impossible problems and creating real-world solutions for the sake of humanity – Mick has spent over a decade driving a movement of purposeful and life-changing innovation.

His “Help One. Help Many.” method has led to some of the most internationally celebrated inventions, including The Eyewriter, Project Daniel, Don’s Voice, and Project Bishop, as well as Bento (formerly Hunger: Not Impossible) and Music: Not Impossible – now successful spin-offs under the Not Impossible Labs portfolio.

At the core of Mick’s philosophy is the belief that stories have the power to inspire meaningful change. As a highly sought-after keynote speaker, he takes audiences on an unexpected journey, sharing how he brought his groundbreaking inventions to life. With every talk, Mick leaves people feeling deeply inspired, energized, and motivated to take action so they too can make their impossible into NOT possible.

His approach of COMMIT, THEN FIGURE IT OUT, is the mindset that fuels Not Impossible Labs, where innovation, technology, and story come together to push boundaries and address critical human needs. Through his work, Mick continues to inspire, educate, and empower individuals, organizations, and communities to drive action, and make the impossible, NOT impossible.

Mick’s book, “Not Impossible: The Are and Joy of Doing What Couldn’t Be Done,” recounts his life and journey of performing a simple act of kindness that turned into a lifelong mission to change the world.

Transcript

I’m excited to welcome Mick Ebeling. He’s the Founder and CEO of Not Impossible Labs, which is a social tech incubator whose stated mission is to create technology for the sake of humanity. I’ve seen Mick speak two or three times. I was telling them before that I can’t go a fourth time without making a bigger contribution to the world because he has changed a lot for many people. Mick, I’m happy to have you here. Welcome.

Thanks for having me.

Mick Ebeling and Not Impossible Labs

As we were getting started, we were talking about the purpose of this show. The target of this episode is to spark innovation and how lawyers can be better supports to founder, CEOs, and other business people who are trying to move a business forward. I heard you frame this in the context of do mode and I want to get into that. Before I do so, I wondered if you could give just a brief background of one of the stories that drove you into Not Impossible.

Not Impossible started because of a date night gone awry. We had our date night hijacked and we ended up meeting being exposed to a paralyzed graffiti artist who had Lou Gehrig’s disease. One thing led to another and we ended up getting involved with his foundation and his family. After we learned he had no way to communicate except through a thing called a letter board, which is a piece of paper with the alphabet on it. The caretaker runs their finger along it and when their finger gets to a letter, the patient wants, the patient blinks.

I was like, “That’s crazy. That’s absurd. We got to do something about that.” We decided to create something that could change that. I brought a team together and we built a thing called the Eyewriter. It is a cheap pair of sunglasses from the Venice Beach Boardwalk. I’m holding it. A coat hanger, duct tape, zip ties, an old web camera, and some amazing code. This device that was less than $100 was able to allow this artist to draw again for the first time in years.

That set this tidal wave or this cascade of this momentum of us continuing to create as you said technology for the sake of humanity. We’ve done that ever since. We’ve created the world’s first 3D printing prosthetic lab. We’ve created devices that allow the deaf to experience music through their skin. We’ve got probably a dozen or so other things that are in the hopper now.

I’m going to get into the power of story a little bit later but as I said, hearing you speak and seeing some of the stories hit me at a core level that innovation can change people’s lives. I want to talk a little bit more about the Eyewriter. I remember you had made a promise to this patient that you were going to get him a Stephen Hawking machine, which is an audacious promise. As you said, you cobbled together what sound like basic materials into what became Time Magazine’s invention of the year in 2010. How did you approach this gargantuan project? Did you think you were going to like Home Depot and you’re going to pick up a Stephen Hawking machine?

One of the reasons we’ve been able to accomplish all the things that we’ve done in many years of being in existence, is this thing that we call Beautiful Limitless Naivete. We didn’t get the memo that we’re not supposed to be able to pull off the things that we pull off. For us, it’s this process of seeing something that we call absurd things that you see and you say, “That’s not right. The world shouldn’t work that way.”

It doesn’t make sense that there would be an artist who lives basically a dozen miles from where I live in Venice Beach. He’s in Downtown LA, and he can’t talk to his family. He can’t draw, write, can’t communicate, and do the things that he loves but there’s people who can. This guy didn’t have the right insurance or money, he can’t do it. That’s absurd. What we did and what we now do is we just say, “That’s not right. Let’s change it.”

That is this moment that we call Commit, and then figure it out. That’s not about having degrees or diplomas or credentials or any type of fortification of the fact that you should be able to do this or that society says you should be able to do this. This is about being a human and saying, “That doesn’t work. I’m not going to sit idly by and let this happen. I’m going to at least try.” That is our process if we commit and we try to figure out who are the right people, what’s the right way to approach this, and we’re not afraid to fail. It’s okay to fail as long as you dust yourself up and keep going.

That’s our process. The other part of it is that we have a mantra called Help one Help Many. We don’t start by trying to solve the entire problem for all paralyzed patients who can’t afford a communication device. We try to solve it for one patient. When we do that and we do it powerfully. We tell the story of that thing that we had made, then that has the ability to then scale because other people have a chance to see what we’ve done. They can take it and run with it as well. Those are the principles that we implement whenever we’re trying to solve any of the things we’re trying to solve.

The best attorneys can see what the end goal is and figure out collaboratively how to get there. Share on X

The Power Of Frictionless Innovation

That mindset has yielded amazing results. I’m wondering again about lawyers. We were starting that as we were getting set up here. I think your team called it Frictionless Innovation. It’s one of the approaches that you have. It got me thinking about my role and the role of my peers, which all lawyers are friction detectors. I’m looking down the road. As you’re talking about getting a team together. I’m thinking, “Who owns the IP? Do all these people work for Mick? Do they have agreements? How is he going to commercialize?” If you’re somebody whose job it is to see ahead, I’m looking ahead to see what are the snags that could occur. How can you reframe your mindset into trying to move forward being frictionless?

I appreciate attorneys and good attorneys but I appreciate attorneys who remember first that they’re human, especially in healthcare. We’re trying to solve human issues. If someone can’t get care or get treatment or has something that could help their life but for the fact that there’s some legal concern, then that is going to prevent them from getting it. That’s fucking ridiculous. We lose, especially in the profession of law.

We lose the force for the trees many times. The best attorneys that I know have the ability to see what the end goal is and then figure out collaboratively how to get there. To say that, what’s the IP? That wasn’t why we started it. We started this because we wanted to help somebody and how do we grapple with? Started to debate that. He would have died before he ever got a chance to have this thing. I credit the tech team who I ended up flying in because they taught me about this concept of open source.

I knew what it meant but like, I know this guy named Linus Torvald and Linux and it’s open source. That was about a very rudimentary understanding but they put their foot down. They’re like, “We’re releasing this open source.” I was like, “I don’t know what it means, but let’s go.” That was a huge reason why Eyewriter was successful. It’s because anybody could have access to it. If we are concerned about things that aren’t human, then those are the types of decisions that are going to get made.

If we put humanity or humans first, then we’ll be able to create something that works towards that. There’s compromise and ways to get creative. There’s structures to put in place but again, as we were saying beforehand, we won’t start any conversation when we’re doing contracts. We have a foundation which is a non-profit and we have a for-profit which is labs. The reason we’re able to do a lot of the things that we do is our for-profit business is able to continue to be ongoing and evergreen. We’re able to create solutions that can continue to provide value for who we work with and provide value and revenue for the company.

It has to start with why we’re doing this in the first place. We won’t start any call or any relationship until we get on the phone with the lawyer who’s drafting the document so they can hear what it is that we’re doing and why we’re doing it. If anything comes back from them that is contrary to why we’re doing this, then we remind them. They will say, “Maybe we can do it this way. Maybe we can do it that way.” If it feels like it’s a pissing match and everyone’s trying to get behind their castle walls and keep lobbing grenades over the wall until someone says fine. That’s not a relationship that we want to be in. We have the very distinct privilege of being able to walk away from things if humanity isn’t put to the forefront.

Legal Hurdles In Healthcare

That strikes me again. I know your background was in film and production. I’m wondering about picking that one and the humanity and packaging that in a story. I imagine that is rocket fuel for breaking down those walls.

We have an example of a project in the past. I had this amazing relationship with the then chief marketing officer of this large automotive company. I have nothing to do with that automotive company and I had come back from a trip where I got to witness one of the largest rehabilitation facilities in Mexico. I went into one of their rehab clinics for his pediatric rehabilitation. It was some of these kids come in with the most extreme circumstances.

This hospital which is 100% free is able to give them rehabilitation and provide care. I noticed this device that was like an engine hoist. It had this big metal thing that came over and then these straps that came down. It was like a kid in a jumpy. It was like one of those little jumpers for toddlers but it held the child upright. Underneath the child was a treadmill. It was designed for kids with pediatric cerebral palsy or pediatric CP.

What I learned is it was called a gait trainer and the stat that came back or I was told, that if a child uses one of these things, a child who’s diagnosed with CP uses one of these things consistently and consecutively for a period of a year, in the formula of gait training years, which was below 5 or 6. If they do it in those formulative years, then they will be able to walk unaided in the future and that’s transformative. They’re not going to be wheelchair ridden. They’re not going to have like a big contraption. I’m like, “That’s crazy. That’s amazing.” I looked around like, “Why do you only have one of them?”

He said, “It’s because they’re prohibitively expensive.” I’m like, “Are you kidding me? It’s an engine hoist with some straps and some robotic legs that make the legs walk and a treadmill. I can build this thing on eBay.” It wasn’t that easy but that was the commitment figure it out moment. We went on to spend months developing this. In the course of that time, my point of contact there who was this incredible woman who went on to become president and CEO of Aston Martin in the US. She’s like just a force of nature. She left and when she did, the lawyers took over and guess what? Guess how many kids have used that device? Zero. Zero people have used that device.

Even in Mexico?

That device has never been used because it never got out of the prototype phase because there was some issues and we reached this lager jam. Everybody walked away everybody from it. Now, when we do contracts, I bring that story up no matter what we’re doing and I call it the name of the company that we worked with. I won’t say it on the show. That’s the thing. We will never repeat and we’ll never forget.

What does the clause say, like, “We’re not going to invest eighteen months in our energy?

It means that the IP that we create is either owned exclusively or mutually controlled by us so that nobody can ever prevent a kid from walking because of some bullshit legal.

You weren’t allowed to take that IP. They didn’t want to use it and then they wouldn’t let you take it.

Correct. Now this thing is in mothballs. I’d love to say there’s three sides to every story, your side, my side and the truth. At the end of the day, kids aren’t walking. Kids aren’t using this device. We’ll never go back there. No matter what happens and no matter what we do, we always have to have the ability to deploy this for the sake of humanity or technology for the sake of humanity. Whatever it is we’re creating, we have to have the ability to deploy it.

If contractually we’re not able to do that, then we walk and we say, “We’re not going to invest our time, our passion, our emotions, our talents and our gifts into something that could potentially be held up for some BS legal reason. I’m saying this because there’s a call to action there for every attorney, especially attorneys in healthcare. It’s to remember what the purpose of healthcare is, health care. If there’s a way to make sure that you’re always pushing humanity to the four front, then things can be solved.

That that’s where the legal profession becomes more of a craft and an art form when you have the ability to find solutions and navigate potholes and friction points so that the end user, the member, the patient, or whoever has the ability to have a better life because of whatever it is that we’ve created or doing.

I’m thinking about that example if there was alignment with that company because for sure, lawyers can be dream killers. We can be house of no, but at the end of the day, the client is the one that makes the decision. It’s something I would say for a practice point for folks in my role, which is a general counsel role, it is always clear who’s making a decision. I feel like my job is to tell you what the risks are and to help you get to where you’re going. I’m a business enabler but at the end of the day, the lawyers probably did have a big hand in killing it but I do wonder whether there was alignment with that.

I don’t think your job is to just tell where the risks are. Your job is to get the deal done. I feel like when lawyers tell me, “If an asteroid hits the Earth.” You’re like, “This has never happened, so why are we even talking about this?” “We just want to bring it up.” “Let’s not bring it up. Let’s stay say true to what is probable and what is functional to what we’re trying to do.” I would say across the board if every call started with, “Before we begin, let’s all make sure that we’re on the same page of what we want to accomplish.”

If it’s debating and winning page 7.11 subsection A, sub-subsection II, then that’s not the reason we’re here. The reason we’re here is to what? To make sure that kids with cerebral palsy can have the chance of walking again. If it doesn’t serve that purpose, then let’s move on or let’s at least ground it in that. You have to be able to ask yourself the question after every point, does this achieve what we want it to achieve? If it doesn’t, then it’s not worth debating. If it does, then let’s debate it and let’s come up with a compromise. Let’s come up with something that works. The way we’ve always done it or the way that healthcare works. It doesn’t put the patient and the human first.

When you put the human first, doors and obstacles fall over. Share on X

I can tell this is like major point of frustration for you and I’m sorry for those experiences.

It’s not frustration. I am here to tell you that I’m no longer frustrated anymore. This is what I want everyone reading to take away from this. When you put the human first, it’s amazing how the doors or the obstacles fall over. I’m not frustrated. Every single time we do this, a successful partnership happens on the other end. The company that we did a deal with is a massive company. We got a deal done in fourteen days and most of that time was just navigating call times. It was because everybody was busy but we got it done.

I said to them, “Have you ever gotten a deal done this fast?” They said never. It never happens this fast. I was like, when humans talk to humans and they try to figure out how to solve something for other humans, then that’s what we want to be. As humans, we want to feel like our life is contributing to others. It’s making the world a better place. It’s not red or blue. It’s not Jewish or Christian.

It has nothing to do with any of this. We want our lives to mean something and to contribute. When we’re giving that opportunity, we will jump on it. We’re like moths to a light. We want our lives to mean something. That can happen in the legal side as long as we ground ourselves and what we’re trying to accomplish.

Partnering With Big Companies

That is powerful and I know you’ve done partnerships with big companies like Zappos, Intel, HP, and all these other big companies. I wonder if there’s any experiences that stand out for you where you feel like the lawyers were trying to help get things done.

Honestly, every relationship that we have had after that automobile company going fiasco and tragedy, every relationship we’ve had has been successful. It’s like, “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.” I’m poking my face. The doctor says, “Don’t do that,” and stops hurting. There’s not a single entity that has failed where we haven’t come out the other side in a way that serves the end and the reason why we’re doing this partnership in the first place because we ground it in that.

It’s because you start with the X, Y, and Z clause. You lead with that so people know.

The clause is a manifestation of and an articulation of why we’re doing it in the first place. The clause serves the purpose and the purpose is we want to create a way for kids with cerebral palsy to be able to walk. How do we do that? We want to create a way to be able to detect landmines more accurately in Ukraine. We want to create a way to reduce veteran suicide and to reduce anxiety, stress, and mental health issues within the armed forces and with veterans.

That’s what we start with, we want to. If we start to get into page 7 subset 11, and if we go down, which we need to. You need to dig in but we can always pull ourselves up and go, “Does this serve the end goal?” If you’ve got a team of lawyers on the phone, there’s going to be a couple and usually junior people who are going to like a pitbull hold on to those clauses and hold on to the words that are being used. You need someone who has that perspective and the seniority and the ability to say, “Let’s just take a step back here. Does that serve it? What can we do? What about this?” It becomes a dialogue. I fucking hate red lines.

Me, too. That’s my job.

It’s not your job. Now I’m getting heated. Red lines are not your job. Red lines serve a cooperation. Red lines are designed to serve communication. Red lines serve a common goal that both parties enter into to achieve. If it’s just like red line, red line, and red line. That’s not achieving it. Get on the phone and have a conversation, “What did you mean? You struck that. What is your concern? Why would you strike that? Why is that an issue? Why would you put that in there? If I can better understand that, maybe there’s ways for us to create something that feels more representative of what your concerns are.”

That doesn’t happen unless you, as an attorney, proactively provoke that type of communication and I’m willing to bet the first time you do it, they’re going to be like, “That person’s drunk. I have no idea. This is crazy.” They want to get on the phone and talk this through. They’re trying to understand. When a human talks to a human, great things can happen. When party A is talking to party B or country A talking to country B and their interests are the most important thing. You create fiction and that’s when things get a little difficult.

Challenging The Status Quo

I found the title for this episode, by the way. I want to talk about where maybe lawyers have helped you get creative. I’m thinking and this is just a shooter. I don’t know if this is going to land or not, but one of the stories that resonated with me was Music Not Impossible. I don’t remember the patient’s name but somebody who was a musician and had Parkinson’s.

Through this device that Not Impossible helped develop, he could play the piano again and feel music. I saw it at during the Not Impossible Awards, in 2019 or 2020. It struck me that it could be a medical device but then you would never get it to market. I got the impression that maybe you flipped or thought of that in a different way to make it more of a viable product in the market.

We created a device that allowed the deaf to experience music through haptic signals on their skin. The byproduct of that, an accidental byproduct of that is that with certain patients, it completely abated any of the way the Parkinson Simpsons presented themself through dyskinesia, dystonia, freezing, gait, and tremor. We looked around and we’re like, “This is amazing.” We went into clinical trials and the outcome of the clinical trials were inconclusive.

I remember the day that I spoke to the PI who was working on it. He said, “I’m sorry. I know this is going to be bad news, but we did a trial.” There’s 50 people in the trial. It was a multinational or international trial, so we did it here and in Netherlands, two of the leading researchers in this space. They said, “Out of the 50 people, the 25 were helped.”

That’s pretty good to me.

It wasn’t statistically significant. There wasn’t statistically significant enough of the way that getting something through the FDA that gave them the reason to continue. We were bummed. We were disappointed. We went silent for a minute. One day, I got a phone call from this guy who had heard me speak and said, “My dad as Parkinson’s and I saw that device that you had. I was hoping that maybe this thing could help him. How can I how can I get it?” I went through the story and told him like, “I’m sorry. We’re in clinical trials and 25 out of 50 people we’re able to be helped. It wasn’t a statistically significant.”

He said, “I’m sorry that didn’t work out but that’s not why I called. I don’t care about your clinical trials. I just want to help my dad and maybe my dad could be one of those 25 people.” It was the biggest wake up call for us. It was like I can’t believe that we subscribed. I went on this rant a second ago talking about how lawyers need to maintain like put the patients first and figure out what’s going to be the best thing for them. I forgot and was a total hypocrite and realized that I was doing something because I was abiding by the rules of the FDA. I was abiding by the rules of clinical trials. I was abiding by these things.

We went, “What happens if we just try to help people with it?” We took our clinical trial devices that we had. We had about 100 of them and we put them into the market. We started helping people and we got it out to people. Sure enough, it worked on some people and it didn’t work on others. On the people that it worked on, it was transformative. We remembered why we did this in the first place, which was we didn’t set out to create a Parkinson’s symptom abatement device. We asked accidentally stumbled into a device that might be able to help people so we got to try to get it out to help as many people as possible.

That, for us, was a good reminder to the fact that sometimes you can get sucked into the slipstream of process, of how the world works and how this profession works or how this industry works. This is the way that you have to do it. When you take a moment and pull your head up out of that slipstream and go, “That’s not why we started this in the first place. We wanted to accomplish this so it could help people.” It gives you the ability to have perspective and rebel against those status quos that we’ve all accepted as reality.

Reality is a fictitious prediction of what the future is going to be. Now, there’s probability in there but gravity is one of the few things that we can count on consistently. There’s lots of things that could happen, especially within healthcare that can change and alter the way that we currently work within the industry. Those status quos can get blown to bits AKA the pandemic. Status quo is blown out of the water and what happened? Patients are put first. We were able to navigate things and what happened? We essentially achieved and we’re able to suppress a pandemic in how many months? We came up with a with vaccine in how many months? Not years.

When a human talks to a human, great things can happen. Share on X

We have the ability to rebel and to refuse to abide by status quos. You just have to be aware of what those status quo are and then say, “What if there’s a different way of thinking? What if there’s a different way of operating?” Consider it. Maybe there’s something there that can completely transform the way that reality of the industry or the reality of the circumstances. All of a sudden, that’s how true innovation and transformation takes place.

Mick’s Pump-up Song

In that note, I’m going to ask you a softball. It’s a question I ask all guests and it’s about music. I ask all guests what their pump-up song is. I’ve used music my whole life to get excited and pumped up. Before this, I listened to Destiny’s Child, Independent Woman. I don’t know why. It just what I wanted to hear. Mick, what’s your pump-up song?

I have a lot of pump-up songs. It just depends on my mood. I listened to my son. He’s is a musician. He put out an album that I am listening to a lot and it’s just It’s so good. Now, I’m incredibly biased.

Let’s get his name and what his album is.

The group is called the Pokkitt. It defies convention and his name is Bo Jameson King Ebeling. I’ll listen to that. I’m listening to Jacob Collier who is this incredible musician. When you listen to his music and you listen to the intricacies of it. It’s like a great stimulation of creativity. When I’m listening to music, I like to dissect the different parts of it and it’s intricate. I’ll go old school hip hop. A tribe called Quest. If I’m feeling like I need to get a little bounce. I’m all over the place.

I’ll check out your son. Where can we find him? Is he on Spotify?

He’s not. You could tell him he’s got to start posting this stuff.

Isn’t he like Gen Z or something?

He is. Hit him up on Instagram then you can tell him you want to hear his music.

Thank you for being here and sharing. I know that I am walking away with a reminder to pull up. I’m going to think about how to use that humanity angle to reframe some of our conversations with people who are trying to do business with. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Thanks for your time.

Episode Resources

Named Fortune’s Top 50 World’s Greatest Leaders and honored with the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian of the Year Award, Mick Ebeling is a groundbreaking innovator recognized as a 3x recipient of TIME’s Best Inventions, dedicated to redefining what’s possible and inspiring you to do what’s never been done before.

“Your Job is Not to Redline!” Innovation and The Legal Department Mick Ebeling, Founder & CEO Not Impossible Labs