Tye Farrow

Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: Hi, I’m here with Ty, thanks so much for joining me today.

Tye Farrow: Great to see you. It’s been a while, that’s for sure.

SSR: I know, so nice. Even though it’s virtual, it’s still so good to see you.

TF: Yeah, it’s true.

SSR: We always start the podcast at the beginning. So where did you grow up?

TF: I grew up just outside of Toronto, Canada, but an hour away in a beautiful small town on the north shores of Ontario at sort of a river edge, a very tight downtown walkable city, like a New England town, a sort of a British plan with white lots. But, after I was born, my father, who is an architect, retired. He built a Richard Neutra-style house. So, we moved in and being on a street that was all traditional houses and this Richard Neutra house that had this beautiful brick wall of handcrafted bricks with a gap in the middle that you went into a courtyard and the glazing beyond, it was very different.

And it was, I remember walking down the street and somebody saying, your parents must not be social, because there are no windows on the front. And so, I think it’s interesting growing up in a small town, but in a building that is very optimistic, very open, certainly on the inside and outwards, but clearly that was the beginning of something as it related to design. And I think sometimes things that are a little different than maybe what’s around it or in its context.

SSR: So your dad was an architect, is that where got a lot of your influence from?

TF: I mean, certainly growing up in the early years of high school, I worked in his office. He had quite a significant firm in the city of Toronto that had quite a reach in being young, doing all the drawings, in fact, all the illustrations for major projects. It was the early days, and I suspect something that really developed this love of the environment around you and how it can change and significantly influence, I believe your outlook as you move forward.

SSR: Right. Was your mom creative as well?

TF: I wouldn’t say in the similar sense, like she didn’t work. She was, I think it was in the years that you were thought to tend the household and look after the children and the house was very beautiful and very modern and a lot of Scandinavian furniture and perfect. And quite particular not in an obsessive way, but I think she had her hands full on that side of the front, which was very important and that sometimes you don’t see as much these days for a whole variety of different reasons or it’s more complicated, I think. That’s for sure.

SSR: For sure. So did you go to school for architecture? Was that the path you took in terms of education?

TF: When I was in high school, I set up my own advertising company looking after all of the businesses downtown. I was very busy going to school, as well as running that within this community. And so I had, I don’t know how many clients, but certainly, probably about 20 of them with all the print advertising and everything else. And that was interesting, but I think along the way that you began see it was somewhat temporal, that it was something that came and went. And I think the idea of moving into something that was obviously tied to the community in a different way in architecture, that it was more permanent, it would have more influence as opposed to something that was there and sort of finished.

And so I went to the University of TorontoI went to Europe and worked and then went back to Harvard and did a degree at the GSD in architecture and urban design and then went back and did a degree in architecture and neuroscience. And just before the pandemic in Venice as a fly-in student while running the practice, but I suspect I’ll go on and explore some of the ideas that came out of that, do it in the form of a Ph.D. But I need to get organized on that front, but the idea of the intersection of the two, ensuring that the noodle is continually challenged on what your interests are.

SSR: Amazing. So wait, can we go back to the fact that you were a high schooler and you had your own advertising agency. How did that come about? Was that all you. What was kind of the push that made you do that at such a young age?

TF: Well, I was working in a small business as a kid that was doing things. And I thought that how they were expressing themselves and connecting to the community around them probably could have been better. And so, I proposed to them that maybe they could communicate through their advertising in a different way. I did some sketches, and I came in and said maybe you could do it this way. And they were very excited about it. It ended up getting into quite a big campaign. And then other people thought, wow, this is amazing, would you do the same for us. And so, I think it was a result of you had an idea on how something could be better. And so you had the voice to say, well, what do you think of this? Can we give it a try? And I think that in fact has a relationship to a variety of things that we’re doing today, I think that’s continued through from the early stages on trying something and trying to change something and then getting some currency as it moved along.

SSR: So you went to school. What was your first job out of school? Did you work for a bigger firm or what was your path before forming your own practice?

TF: So, as I said, my father had quite a successful practice and I worked there, but when I did my thesis at the University of Toronto, one of the architects that was coming to teach, it was a practicing architect in Toronto, arguably one of Canada’s most celebrated architects, a man called Eb Zeidler. And he designed Eaton Centre and the Galleria and transformed that and a lot of building types in the hospitality sector, in the office sector. And so I did my thesis under him, and we really connected. And we were very much in alignment. He had a very big practice in the city offices across Canada. And in fact was at the point in his career that was expanding internationally. When I finished the thesis, he asked if I would work for him, that he had a major competition in Cologne, Germany called MediaPark, which was a big old railway lands.

And so we were submitting and competing against Jean Nouvel and a variety of significant people. And we worked through the summer and did that and submitted it. And then I left and went to London and I thought I have a job, but I’ll give it a go. And so I went to London and I was interviewed by Foster and by Richard Rogers and James Sterling. And that was in the ’80s before Black Monday in the crash. And they really didn’t have a lot of work. Terry Farrell was a post-modernist at the time, was doing a lot of major projects in the city. I started working for him, but then I came back at Christmas and Eb Zeidler said, we’ve been listed for the project in Cologne. Would you take a leave of absence from London and come and work for me to submit it.

We submitted and we won the competition. And at that time then, I went back and worked in London again for a while. And then he said, would you step in office? We’re setting up an office in London, would you come and work for me with one other guy? And so it was amazing then to set up an office in London when there was a lot of amazing things happening and working on projects in Kings Cross or Canary Wharf or some really significant projects at a very young age was amazing because they were all at a major scale. And so, then I did that for a while, and then I applied to the GSD at Harvard and then did a master’s of architecture and urban design there.

But I think clearly, the influence of the scale of the city and getting out of your backyard, getting out of Canada, working in Europe, I think being in Europe at a time, that was very frothy. That was the period when Prince Charles was battling all of the moderns and the addition to the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square was very controversial. Foster and Rogers had really some exuberant schemes and Prince Charles, I think said it was a car bungle on the face of an old friend. But in the newspaper, like The Times, there would be a full-page response from these architects against Charles, saying that we should be looking at things that are more forward and optimistic and to be in the city and to have the debate that everybody was discussing architecture was amazing.

SSR: So amazing. And what was one of your favorite projects that you worked on with Ed over in London?

TF: I think the one project that we won, this one in Cologne, again, it was railway lands, but what we created was, the whole basis of it, was creating a square and a lake in a park, and then surrounding that. So the buildings weren’t the object, that they were really the piece that surrounded the public space, and it was residential and offices and a variety of other things. But I think what was it very influential that it wasn’t per se about the architecture, it was the architecture creating a new major civic space in the city and a major park and lake that hadn’t existed on industrial land.

And I think the basis of that has really informed all of the work that we’ve done moving forward, in the sense that, it’s the places clearly in between that are the most important parts. And arguably that one would say right now with the pandemic and leading going through that, I think we’ve reimagined a lot of public space and discovered it’s the important piece of the piece. And so I think that certainly has infused everything we do and continue to do.

SSR: Why did you decide to go back to get your masters at a Harvard?

TF: I think it was that a.) I was playing it in the zone of the city, and the idea of not just doing another master’s of architecture degree, but again, to challenge you in a different zone that that you touched on, had an interest in. I think certainly London is an extraordinary city because it’s all about these squares. And even if the squares aren’t public, they are extraordinarily immersive and it’s a very different type. And so, again, it’s the space. So going back to Harvard and Rafael Moneo was leading the course there. Rem Koolhaas was in regularly. I mean, it was a real hotbed, and to be immersed in that was amazing. It just obviously upped your game. The other thing that was great was it was living in another city. I was living in Boston at Charles and Chestnut Street, just off the Common and commuting into Cambridge. It’s not only the school, but it’s the experience of being there and taking that away with you, that was, I think, very important on the experience.

SSR: Right. And so after Harvard, is that when you set up your own firm or was there another step?

TF: I came back, and I worked for Eb Zeidler for a while, and then I joined my father’s firm. It was a good size firm. We were very busy. And at the time, he was doing a lot of projects in the healthcare sector. And so I was pulled into projects. I’d never designed any healthcare project, but I was brought into those. But the CEO of one of them wanted me to design a major building as opposed to the senior designer in the firm because I wasn’t coming at it from that perspective. The guy who was the senior guy at the time, we thought very differently on what the role of architecture was. And I had thought I would probably spend the rest of my career in his firm. And at that stage, I thought, he thinks it should be black. I think it should be white. And it’s not that I didn’t believe that it was about being a right or wrong. And so at that stage, I thought I’m going to go set up my own practice. And I’m not going to battle with him. I have a different belief. I believe strongly in the underpinnings of what you do. So I left and at that time, which was interesting was the CEO of that hospital had a major cancer center coming out. And he went to my father’s firm and said, ‘We’d like to continue to work with you, but we want Tye to design it.’ And so we’re going to go out for a proposal call or they said, so will you bring him in as a joint venture firm? And the senior designer said, I’m not working with him, he’s an outside firm. So they want out for proposal call. That firm lost the work and we gained it.

And it’s an interesting story about collaborating and the importance of being open to different opinions and maybe not dying on a cross at certain stages. And so that launched us into a zone we had no experience in, but the projects were recognized, I think globally as very influential in changing what were usually miserable buildings that you didn’t want anything to do with. If you went to a cocktail party and they say, oh, what do you do? And you say, well, we design hospitals, and I think you could see their eyes hover. But these were very significant in, or at least we were told, they were seen to be significant in changing the whole idea that these places as a result of the architecture. And the feedback from the CEO of the one hospital was that they were trying to do, hire people from the whole East Coast significant hospitals, and now these doctors would walk in and say, ‘I feel something different here. I’m feeling as if I’m part of something bigger.’ And I think that’s important in everything we begin to do.

SSR: Why do you think that was such a novel idea? Why do you think hospitals hadn’t thought about the relationship between building and one’s health?

TF: At the time, there was a real idea that, and arguably, we’re just moving out of it, that hospitals and medicine were pathogenic based. It was patho and genesis, patho disease and genesis the origin. They were all about stopping something bad from happening, that if you had an illness, you were a container that was holding this illness and the medicine was a machine to deal with that. And the whole shift from a pathogenic view to what we were doing was a salutogenic view and saluto health. And again, what are the causes of health? And that, in fact, we then went to a conference by a guy called Alan Galani. The economy for design and health, where we began. There, I began to see that what we were trying to do was in fact the basis of salutogenesis, which is the basis of all our work.

And in fact, those two healthcare buildings got the top awards, and I was chosen by that body as one architect from 35 countries to get the first architect award from the Academy of Design and Health. But it was at an inkling that you began to realize that there were other elements, that the environment not only had an effect on your body, it not only effect on the natural environment, but on your mind, on how you feel, and how you can feel better. And it is a fundamental basis. In fact, that’s what led me. I discovered really the neuroscience architecture thing that again, had parallels to what I was trying to discover. And I thought, well, let’s jump in. Not particularly different than jumping into the urban design degree at Harvard, was then going to the University of Venice, one of 15 students that were chosen from around the world.

It’s one of only two programs in the world that is focused on that. And flying in there a week a month was amazing and being taught by the top neuroscientists in the world, sociologists, physiologists, psychologists, architects. Steven Hall was one of the pros, but you’re 15 people and interacting with these people and debating and discussing is amazing, again, to try and deepen one’s understanding of the physiological and psychological aspects of environments and how we can use them to create the conditions where we thrive, where we work, where we heal, where we live, where we play. There’s arguably no more important time than now that we are feeling vulnerable. And the space has the ability to give us that extra spring in our step.

SSR: This might be a silly question, but what were some of your biggest takeaways from that time in Venice? Was there one kind of big takeaway from your time in that amazing program?

TF: I think the main thing was sort of twofold. One is you often hear of evidence design and what are the facts that are confirming if we should go this way or that way. And design, as you know, sometimes can be very difficult around that. And intuitively, we know this stuff in our stomach, we can feel, we know that it’s intuitively ripe. The amazing thing was going into this program was, and what my thesis was based on, is that the facts confirm from a neurobiological standpoint. With FMRIs, we can scan the mind and know how we react that are cognitive and precognitive things. But the basis, which was the thesis, and I did very well in that program. In fact, I’m teaching there now, was that we construct our person to place relationships, you and your environment.

We construct them the same way on an emotional standpoint and in the mind that we construct person to person and relationships. So the way the qualities of this discussion that we’re having together, that you feel open and engaged, and you feel that you can share, and you feel confident around that, the qualities of those things, instead of an abuse relationship are the same ways that we construct our relationships with physical space. And they tie back to, if you think of mentors that you had that were generous, and the relationships had a lot of vitality and variety to them, they were authentic. They were optimistic in a sense of occurrence but they were also natural and solid and still in silence. Those are the same qualities that we have enriched relationships with physical space. And so, they were intuitive, I think within me, but now I’ve got a full-time neuroscientist that is working on research.

There will be a significant book coming out in a year’s time that we have sponsors that are backing it on four continents. It’s an area that there hasn’t been a lot of emphasis to it. But I think it’s important because once we bring it forward, I think it will allow people to connect the dots about the things as designers and architects that we intuitively know. But in fact, for the clients when you begin to get into this discussion, they can really connect to it and say, yeah, I remember somebody who mentored me, who was authentic and genuine. And so I think what we’re trying to do is once people see it, you can’t unsee it.

SSR: You’ve been at the forefront of this idea for many years about how buildings can help with your health. And now this is obviously the next layer that you’re adding, which is amazing. Can you go back a bit to talk about your cause health movement? I think that’s a really important conversation.

TF: Well, I think the architecture and design industry is very much focused on the ecological aspects of health, which is clearly very important on a whole variety of different fronts. But for me, the analogy of how do you activate optimal health, the analogy is like a house that has a roof on it and that roof is optimal health, but it’s supported by four walls. And one of those walls is how design impacts ecological health. And we know there’s a significant piece. So that’s one wall. The second wall is how design has an impact on physical health. And so the whole rise of chronic diseases in the 1940s was the way we designed and created suburbs and a car-dominated area. And it raised, it came forward into food deserts or I would call them food swamps. There is a lot of food, but all of it is very bad for you.
That’s the second wall.

The third wall is design and its impact on societal health. And so, a professor of mine from Harvard has a great book out that was discussing how, if you look at Black Lives Matter, for example, that we designed and segregated and separated people very intentionally, by the way we created cities. And so clearly design can have a significant impact on civic or civil health or all of the EDI, the way we create messages through our buildings, either you’re familiar with and you’ll feel comfortable but a lot of other people won’t be. And the last wall that supports optimal health is this idea of mind health. And so the basis of the firm is what causes health? How can we construct health. How do buildings make us feel and how can they make us feel better?

What if mind health was the basis of judging every public space and every building? What happens if we no longer tolerate design that cause disease and I’m using that specifically, uncomfortable depression and boredom. And what if we created high performance buildings and human performance buildings, which were accelerants for optimal health? Why is this relevant to what we build? There is no such thing as neutral space. What we create either causes health or enhances our experience of the world or it takes away from it. If you go back 5,000 years, health was the basis of everything we do. If you look at ancient Chinese medicine as a fundamental basis of it, what was it tied to, it was about cultivating harmony. If you look at Aristotle, it was about Eudaimonia. This idea of human flourishing in 300 BC. If you went to Hippocrates, who is arguably the father of medicine, it wasn’t just about treating disease. It was about diet and lifestyle, ancient Romans, think of the baths. And then in the 16, 1800s, all of the herbal medicine and a variety of things, they came there.

But then we shifted to a pathogenic view, which we discovered germ theory in the 1870s and the cholera epidemic, not particularly different than where we are now. But in 1910, there was the Fetzner report that came out that said, if it wasn’t evidence-based medicine, it was witchcraft. And that sort of shifted into the wellness movement and Phil Knight and Nike having shoes for running. And so, I think it’s the whole idea that we need to come back and we are discovering the role of health and wellbeing. And the pandemic has clearly shown that it’s the one stage that we felt very vulnerable in what we did. And the whole mental health rise, it’s the whole shift of beginning to ensure from a salutogenic basis, is how can we actively cause health? And that’s in the four walls that support it, is the fundamental basis of what we do in every project. That is the discussion that we start with.

SSR: Speaking of that discussion, so what is your process? So you start with that question and then how do you, I mean, push clients or push ideas or continue to evolve this amazing thought process that you’ve established?

TF: Well, our process is we never come in with a design, ever. And so we start there. In fact, we did one last night with a new client and we start off with the thing called a common ground in a critical eye session. And so we started out last night and it is an academic organization and they have a program to facilitate a variety of things on their campus and that’s all established. But we started off when we came in and we said, what’s the ultimate purpose of this project? Why are we doing it on? When somebody says we have to accommodate this program, it needs to be done on time and budget. Okay, those are all fundamental things. But what does it have to do about your vision your value? How is it going to be when you walk onto the campus? What is the building going to radiate to you?

How is it going to speak to who you are and your values of what you want to communicate? And there was a very intensive discussion and that has students, it has teachers, it has faculty, professors, it has graduates. It has other people. Why is this important? And once you start the discussion, once you get up to the discussion at that level, then it changes the whole conversation. And the second layer is we say, here are all the words that you communicate on who you are, that are collaboration and values and openness and known and loved and these things. And then we’ve put up photographs if they’re existing building and say, this is what you’re saying, and this is what the space is. And I’m not there to critique it, I just put it up and say, you tell me what you see.

And some of them, everybody laughs and says this is crazy. And then we show pictures of other buildings. Show competitors or others and say, these are your words, these are pictures. What do these things communicate? It’s called a critical eye because what we want to do is give them the tools to be critical about what we bring forward. Then the next session we bring in a big model of the campus with foam blocks and cardboard, and we say, where should the front door be? And we get somebody who says, let’s put it here. And so by using the blocks, 40 people around the table can rearrange it. We come out with five different schemes. Out of that process, we draw it up and then we come bring them back. And so this whole co-creation process is fundamentally important. Because what it shifts away from buy-in that the architect is trying to sell his vision to somebody, to believe in because everybody has seen all of the options, and we’re leading towards an area, and we never go backwards.

And in fact, we move from brittle fragile support that somebody says, why didn’t you do that instead of something else, where people in the group will pipe up and say, wow, we’re doing this, we went that direction because it’s better because of this, this, this, this, and this. As a result of it, we usually get projects that are much more robust or I don’t mean farsighted than they would have been going through another process.

And in fact, this project in Jerusalem is on a city of over 5,000 years across the street from where the prime ministers are buried, and it looks like a butterfly. It’s all made of timber in a city that’s all made of Jerusalem stone. And we have to go in front of the chief architect who looks after a city, but we did this with a client and the CFO of the client. We went through the planning process. Then we began looking at what it should be. And it comes from two things, the butterfly and an old Jewish fable about a wise man and a cynic. And it also comes with the metaphor of the butterfly coming from a caterpillar that changes. But just the fragility of life on a building that begins to communicate that in the heart of an ancient city, that here we were talking about a butterfly to the CFO of one of the world’s great organizations, and now it’s called a butterfly. And everybody else talks about it. All of that is very important on being able to go through journey together.

SSR: Is there one project that you think exemplifies what you all do?

TF: We’re working on a Venice archipelago project. And so it grew out of spending time in Venice. And I was there when the big flood occurred and having water literally up to your waist and trying to see a city to continue on. It’s extraordinary. As I walked back from a class every day, it was in the fall, it was in the night. And what was amazing was all the lights were on in the shop fronts. But above the shop fronts, all the windows were dark. And what we began to realize is a couple things. Venice has evolved and growing since the 1100s. It was little islands or heights, and it grew and grew and grew, and it stopped in around the 1950s or so.

Venice in the 1960s had a population of 175,000 people, but now it has 55,000 people. But pre-COVID, 55,000 people were coming to the city every day as tourists, the same amount of people that live there. Right now, a third of all the floors in the city are unoccupied because of flooding. And within 20 years, a third of the entire space will be underwater. There’s no employment, there are great universities and nobody’s staying there. And so the Archipelago Project is a continuous 20 mile-connected ecological necklace of new and existing islands that wrap Venice. It begins to expand and continue the history of growth. But this necklace, it keeps the cruise ships out because Venice is dealing with the flooding, the flooding of water and of tourists.

It’s not just ecological, but it has an employment overlay because the necklace is a continuous 20 flowmeter new park. But within the park, it started with pavilions. So they’re creating food security, they’re creating jobs from people from the university that you can stay. It’s trying to address not only ecological health by stopping the flooding, but there’s also locks between the islands, think of Amsterdam. So they’re still porous and the water goes back and forth, which is important in the laguna. It’s creating mind health in the sense that it’s a de-central park. Then the Venetians can leave the dense city out into the natural area, not just blue, but green spaces, but then it’s creating employment and it’s creating food security. And so all of these things are intertwined together to create a different future from Venice, which right now is envisioned as better tourists, richer tourists, tourists are staying longer.

All the guys in my class at the university, they all leave because the only jobs that are there are in restaurants. The apartments are very expensive because they’re all rented out to Airbnb. And so the city has to change itself, and it has to be economic, ecological, and growing out of a cultural co-creation process. And so, like all of our projects, those things are firmly intertwined, but we need to change it because Venice isn’t going to be here in our lifetime.

SSR: Crazy. Well, amazing that you’re trying to solve or to save an amazing city. I can’t wait to see. So, what’s kind of the process, the timeline for that? I mean, it seems like a massive undertaking.

TF: It was presented at the Venice Biennale. We’ve got an NGO and a very important architectural firm there. And we’re aiming towards getting the community co-creation process, going to begin to imagine a different future for Venice. And that, I think is with all our clients, is how do we begin to imagine a better future? And we can do that.

SSR: And you work across hospitality, you work across urban planning, you work across education and obviously healthcare, how did these disciplines inform each other in your office? I mean, are you taking ideas and cross-pollinating? I mean, obviously all of them have your underlying cause for health and how buildings do better, but how does that enrich your process?

TF: Oh, it’s amazing because one of the healthcare facilities we did, it’s one of only six radiation treatment bunkers in the world that has a massive skylight in it. So when you walk in and you’re at one of the most crucial times of your life, that skylight comes down onto a garden. And so you see the polyps that if a cloud goes in front of the sun. The room begins to pulsate, right? What does that communicate? All it communicates is the idea of life. And I think it’s very human. How do you create places where there’s a sense of belonging? When you look into the hospitality side of things, what’s the idea of authenticity. We need to view the spaces we create as a relationship.

What I mean by that is think of a row, a street that has a very thin sidewalk, no trees, no benches. The retail’s boarded up and cars are zooming past. Think of a street that maybe has cobblestones, it has street trees, it has cafés, it has a bench to sit on. If you would characterize that as a personal relationship. Well, the first one is abusive and the second one is generous. The whole idea of generosity and authenticity, thinking of our places, viewing them as a relationship. And so, the next time you look at a building, look at it through the lens of saying, okay, if I was going to see this space, is it authentic, or is it shallow? Is it loud and flashy or is it embracing? Think of a natural relationship where you and I just want to sit and have a coffee and talk and spend time with, or is the space communicating something else? And I think that’s the basis of all these things we work across that begin to cross pollinate at a city scale or to at a very intimate scale of a room.

SSR: Is there one part of the process you love the most?

TF: There’s really two and they’re equally the same. And the first one is this co-creation with 40 people and the dynamics. And so I think it’s sort of the birth thing of a project, seeing something that comes to life that was never imagined before. That part is fantastic. In fact, with this butterfly in Jerusalem, it’s under construction and whenever there’s a site, I’m always o site talking to the trades, seeing it going up and learning the building and the craft side of it. And that’s on major projects or minor projects. I spend a lot of time there because I can absorb, but also I can begin to see, we work extensively. I work all in fiscal models, we have a lot of computer models and the rest, but so I can put it together, take it apart.

When you get onto the construction site, you begin to say, is it the way that I imagined it talking to a trade and seeing a lot of the buildings, just the absolute enthusiasm that somebody says, I’ve never done this before and they want to talk and they want to spend time and they want to take their family here to come and see it because we’ve just finished a ceiling that is a wooden ceiling. That is like the wave of a water that has over 200 pieces. The radiuses they’re all different. And when you walk into it, it’s as if it is like water or under a rippling tree. The guy who’s the millwork guy, I was so excited about doing it and I was so excited to play learning from him and it was fantastic. And so I think both the birth thing, as well as engaging with the traits and seeing things coming to life is what stimulates me.

SSR: Love it. Well, it must be so cool to be creating something that people who do this for a living create these things for a living are getting excited, right? They’re seeing something different. They’re the new way of looking at an old problem, right?

TF: But that then translates into the people that are using the building that say, this one building looks tree-like and when you walk in, you watch people’s eyes go up and it is very natural in the basis. What we need to do is inspire hope, in a world where we’re very much focused on our phones, back to the idea of spaces and neutral. When you come into something, maybe you don’t know what the difference is, but you think there’s something different here and there’s something that I’m feeling different as a result of it. And that’s what we need to do, because often it can be the exact opposite that it makes us feel uncomfortable.

SSR: Amazing. Well, I hate to wrap this up in the sake of time. We always end this podcast with the question that is the name of the podcast. So what has been or what are your greatest lessons learned?

TF: I think the greatest lesson is to believe that there’s water in the swimming pool. And what I mean by that is when we’re early in our career, when we’re starting out, you’re standing on a diving board, and you don’t know if there’s water in the pool. You think you’re going to jump in and you’re going to hit the bottom. Or the question is, are you going to be able to swim or is the water cold, or is it hot or is it what it is, but you have to jump, and you have to fundamentally believe that you can jump off the board. There will be water. It may not be warm the way you thought. It might be cold, or it might be fantastic. But I believe fundamentally, and I have found throughout my career that there always is water.

And the other piece is that often these things that are a setback that you didn’t get that job, or you didn’t get that opportunity. What I found is usually when you think, oh, this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. In fact, it’s quite the opposite, and if you’re open to beginning to look and discover, you may very well find that it has created a fork in the road that has opened something that you would never ever imagine of doing. So jump off the diving board and take these things that are often very disheartening and they still happen and be open that they will take you into a path that is the next extraordinary chapter that you’ve never imagined.

SSR: Amazing advice, I love that. And I’ve never heard that. So I might steal that now. Tye, I love catching up with you. Thank you so much for taking the time today and congrats on all the amazing work that you’re doing. Can’t wait to see it all come to life.

TF: And how fantastic to see you and more so that luxury of being able to spend some time with somebody in a very close discussion. It’s really a high point of the day. So enjoy, lovely to see you.

SSR: Oh, good to see you. And I’ll have to do this in real life sometime soon. Well, thank you so much.

TF: Great to see you, and it was a lovely to spend some time chatting together.