Investable Oceans, Finance, and Blue Economy with Ted Janulis

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Ted Janulis, Founder and Principal of Investable Oceans about Finance, Investable Oceans, and Blue Economy.   Read his full bio below.

Help us continue to create great content! If you’d like to sponsor a future episode hit the support podcast button or visit www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com/sponsor-form  

Showtimes:
1:32  Nic & Laura talk about getting into investing
11:12 Interview with Ted Janulis Starts
13:07  Investable Oceans
23:54  Finance
31:03  Blue Economy
35:32  Field Notes 

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This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Ted Janulis at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ted-janulis-47a609196

Guest Bio:

Ted is Founder & Principal of Investable Oceans, a platform that seeks to simplify and accelerate market-based sustainable ocean investing across all asset classes and sectors of the Blue Economy

Ted has served in various executive positions, including CEO, at a number of financial institutions over a 30+ year business career. He is President Emeritus of The Explorers Club in New York City.

The oceans have been one of Ted’s passions since he was young, including a life-changing year after college when he worked with scientists, explorers and filmmakers as the 1981 Rolex Scholar of the Our World-Underwater Scholarship Society.

Music Credits

Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa

Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Transcripts are auto-transcribed

[Intro]

Nic 
Hello and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental enthusiast Nic and Laura. On today's episode, Laura and I discuss getting into investing. We talked to Ted Janulis about finance investable oceans, and the perils of youth. And finally, reindeer have ultra violet vision, which I initially read as laser beam vision. Not the same thing. So,

Laura
Pink Floyd vision.

Nic
Right? Yeah, just slowly laying waste. But researchers believe that UV vision could enable reindeer to distinguish food and predators in the white out of the Arctic winter in the twilight of spring and autumn. Oh, how about that? That's pretty cool, right?

Laura
Yeah.

Nic
I take that one. Hit that Music.

[NAEP Event News]
Laura  
Okay, the PAEP, which is the Pennsylvania chapter is hosting their next Webinar featuring Vlad. Oh my gosh. Did you guys make this up? Vlad Odarchenko, Senior Project Manager environmental and sustainability at ACT engineers Inc. on implementing sustainability. On Thursday, March 31. At noon, Eastern Time. The PAEP is continuing to offer these monthly educational webinars for free to members, and $20 for non members check it out @www.paep.org.  We appreciate all of our sponsors and they are what keep the show going. If you'd like to sponsor the show, please head over to environmentalprofessionalsradio.com. And check out the sponsor forum for details. Now let's get to our segment.

[Nic & Laura Segment]

Nic 
So Laura, our completely organic start to our segment today. We talked to Ted about finance. We talked to Ted about learning how to finance and i Yes, I said that the way I wanted to do but it's a really complicated thing. And it's not taught in any basic level. Like you almost always have to learn externally on how to actually invest, how to actually be a part of the investment community. And there's a lot of challenges with that the internet, it makes things a little easier when you think you and I both came through it a different way. So maybe we can talk about how we learned and then kind of come back at the end and see what new approaches there are to finding more about finding out more about getting involved in finance.

Laura 
Right well I would say I didn't learn till I was ready to learn. I didn't have a lot of opportunities to invest when I was younger except for the fact that my grandfather was very big into stocks. He had owned his own company. It was plumbing company that still exists actually. And he put money into a mother it's not a trust fund. I'm not a trust fund kid, but this is like a little bit of money for school, you know, and he would always try to tell us like you need to invest and he would, you know, I knew he played stocks or played stocks. I don't know, did stocks whatever that is called. But really, I didn't. He would tell me to go talk to an advisor and I would go talk to my advisors but I really felt like they didn't do anything. They would say what do you want to do? And I would say, I don't know, you tell me what I'm supposed to do. And they their business was not an education. Do you know what I mean?  So, I would always leave those meetings feeling like I wasn't heard and well, okay, I guess, I guess I don't know. I don't know what's happening with my money, like I was just very in the dark. You know, and I worked for a government for 10 years. So then I had money in a 401k and like, you know, investment plan and but I still don't have any control. Or say in where that money was going or what it was doing. Not how much level of risk I was putting it into words even back then I wouldn't have even known to speak. Yeah, you know, and then one day, I needed to change that money out of that account since I no longer worked for the state of Florida and put it somewhere else. And so all of a sudden I really needed to know what do I do with this? So I actually read Tony Robbins, Master your Money, something I don't remember what it's called. It's Tony Robbins book, and it changed everything for me. He just very plainly spoke about what your options are, what to look for, which then when I go to speak to a financial advisor actually gave me the knowledge I needed to ask intelligent questions and to know when they were not giving me intelligent responses.

Nic
Which is more important.

Laura
So yeah, so that's kind of how I learned I'm no I'm not doing things perfect. I know. Like, we will see when I, when we talk to Ted, there's still a lot I don't know, but I still feel more informed than the average person.

Nic 
Yeah, but I think you know that how you come about that information is really important. It really is also tailored to the person right and so so for me, my career, I guess my path towards investing really started more when I got my first job with a 401k and I'm glad you brought that up because it's exactly what got me kind of sparked into thinking, Oh, what is actually happening with my money and I worked for a company that had its own stocks right and every year those get, the company gets evaluated and those stocks get a market share increase, you know, and in theory, it's better than the market, always. So you could put 100% of your stocks in this employee on stock. The challenge with that is the Enron right for those of us for those you don't know Enron had the same exact model, and the company went bankrupt. But you can only buy those stocks once a year. Right. You can only sell once a year. When they went bankrupt. No one could sell their stocks. Their stocks went from having millions of dollars in value to $0 in value. And my brain was like, that's a nightmare. How do I know what's an acceptable amount of risk for me? And I just devoured the internet, you know, and I read so much, and it actually helped me in lots of different ways because I was only thinking of it in terms of 401k and this employee owned business, but it ended up teaching me a lot more about what I should be doing with the money that's sitting in my savings account. It's not doing anything for me. And the only thing that I wish would be different is that I wish I had learned that 10 years earlier, because it just the you know at the compound interest, you know, the earlier you start, the more you will make and that's just how it works. And the more time you wait between when you do something, the less you do. And Toby agrees with me which is great. But yeah,

Laura  
Toby has decided to stick his face up here and critique what you're saying. Yeah, you need to invest in cat food.

Nic 
Yeah, so as much as I can eat

Laura 
Invest in Chewy. That's what he's saying.

Nic  
Oh, yeah. Nice, nice plug there. But yeah, and I think that was kind of like, it's eye opening. I think we both had that. It sounds like we both had the exact experience, you know, where it's, Oh, wow. There's this there's a whole new universe out here that of things that are really important. It can be overwhelming, I would say and, you know, one of the things I learned just doing my own research about the kind of investor I am like I'm not somebody who's going to sit there and day trade, you know, and like try to beat the market. I just don't have the patience or energy for that. And

Laura  
That's the kind of stuff Tony Robbins talks about in his book. So you know, he's like, very few people who day trade are going to beat the market. So unless you have some special tools, skill, knowledge, whatever, you probably shouldn't bother, or if you just like doing it, you know, like, go for it. But in most cases, he gave very practical advice for like, how can you at least meet the market and not get screwed? And all the different ways that like, the funds and account managers can kind of, you know, you say you're getting 8% return, but on the back end of all the trades and all of the managers who take their piece, maybe you're only actually getting 3%, which is not very good. So, so And for anybody who's a total newbie, I completely recommend this book. Because the internet for me is like there's too much Who do I trust, who's I'm really telling me what I need. Same thing with the financial advisor until I found one I felt I could really trust. That was the same thing they've all just been because they they have interest in selling certain products and a lot of cases and sometimes I have met ones who are like new to it and they don't even know, they don't even know because they go through training to tell you what the answers are. And sometimes they don't even know and being informed at least lets you kind of spot that. And who knows, you know, the economy is down now and everybody's kind of riding the low but at least I have an idea of what's happening and I'm not like pulling it all out because I don't know what the heck I'm doing.

Nic 
Yeah, and you know, and I will say, those of you that that are intimidated by reading a book and you want to use the internet then my advice is read a lot of it because you'll see similar themes pop up. And so you'll start to trust some sites based on on that, but you'll you will see the same things come up over and over again. And you should have you know, a frame of reference, that's it's coming from different sources. That's just, you know, as a scientist, it's kind of like what we like to do, right? I need all my references and not just one reference because it just doesn't make sense. So that's kind of how I did it. And I think that's, yeah, don't be intimidated by it. But like Laura said, to don't read one article, and then be like, Yep, I'm good. I got it.

Laura 
Yeah, and you have to keep learning. There's so much now with crypto and everything else. There's a whole another level of learn so and in really it's kind of like we talked about LinkedIn like there's no one right way you can't copy how somebody else invests, you can't just take someone else's formula. It's it all depends on your needs, and what your goals are with your money or your life really, because like how much you want to save for it all. It's all dependent on like, when do you want to retire what kind of lifestyle you want to have and then that's so that's what makes it so complicated. It's not just a matter of like, how much to save today, but like, when do you want it later and it's so much.

Nic 
I know, right? Look at us talking finance on an environmental show. I love it. So I don't know, it may be a good place to wrap it up.

Laura 
I went into my environmental job with the mindset that a lot of people have is like, I'm not here to make money, right? But I hate when I hear people say that now, because that's just a defeatist attitude. And you can have an environmental job and at least have a cushy decent, you don't have to sacrifice things, you know. Right. Right, and having a good way to save your money is part of that.

Nic 
Yeah. And you know, you need to manage your expectations a little if you want to be out in the field all the time. Maybe that's not gonna make you as much money but you have to as long as you're okay with that, and that's fine. But yeah, you can definitely make money in this career. Absolutely.

Laura  
Yeah, cuz I think that's the other mindset is like, I'm never gonna have that much money to play with so I'm not it's not even a matter of that. You know, if you can put, depending when you start to start early for $5 a week away, you know,

Nic
Yeah, the earlier start the better.

Laura
Yeah, that's our advice for today.

Nic 
Alright, cool. Let's get to our interview.

Laura
Yeah.

[Interview with Ted Janulis Starts]

Laura 
Welcome back to the show. Today we have Ted Janulis, founder and principal of Investable Oceans on the show. Welcome, Ted.

Ted Janulis  
Thank you so much for having me. Delighted to be here.

Laura  
Awesome. So our first question for you is one you might not be expecting, but I was reading an article about how Harvard changed its curriculum in the 80s and I have all of these memories growing up of watching different movies you might recall about what it's like to go to universities like that in the 80s. And so what was your experience like going to Harvard in the 80s?

Ted Janulis 
Well, you're right. They did big curriculum reform, right in the years ensuing after that. And there's the whole question about, you know, what is a core curriculum with a foundational knowledge base that people should have? And that's clearly shifted, you know, remarkably over time, and the way classes are taught now is very, very different. I think there's a lot more interaction, a lot more reversing things where you're expected to know things when you show up so you can really go to the next level as opposed to more rote learning. So there's been some incredible innovations, but back then it was this idea of what is a liberal arts education and forcing people gently to go out and make sure they did a certain amount of coursework outside their chosen major.

Laura 
Right. I think you must have read the same article. That's exactly what it was about how you could kind of get a you could get a degree from Harvard without actually really learning any core stuff.

Ted Janulis 
But by the way, there is a remarkable book by the gentleman who completed all the coursework for four years of MIT in one year without matriculating and he basically got all the syllabi, and then went out, read everything, took all the tests, and effectively got a degree in one year, although they probably didn't give him a diploma. But it's, you can really try it, if you want to.

[Investable Oceans]

Laura 
That's interesting. You started this blue economy sort of platform. When did your connection with the environment start?

Ted Janulis 
I can actually I've thought about that a lot. And I can trace it back to 1964. World's Fair. There's a really popular show called Sea Hunt back then and they had a scuba diver and back then scuba divers are very new thing and I was just a toddler but I remember looking up and seeing this person floating up in the sky. And ever since then, I've been obsessed with the oceans. In fact, I often say there's I think there's an ocean gene that some people have where you can't walk by a body of water without splashing, diving, doing something in it. And that works itself different ways. Some people are sailors, some are boaters, some are fishers, some are scuba divers, but there is that kind of activity. I feel I always had that. So that combined because I took a break from that and then went into finance somewhat unexpectedly from my perspective, and spent 35 years there and then the two more recently came together as people asked me questions, financial questions about the ocean. I spent time more and more time on the topic and that's what ultimately led to Investable Oceans.

Laura 
That's great. I just anybody yesterday sorry, Nic, about our evolution or evolution. From fish. So maybe that's where our enherent love of the ocean comes from. I did also want to mention that Nic is joining us remotely from his travels so he may sound a little different than you might be used to.

Nic  
I really wanted to do a British accent there. And make that difference. I'll refrain but it's really cool to hear. Hear that and we really want to dive into that path because you you have this level of ocean you went into finance and so then you ended up combining your interests which in really creative ways, which is really neat for us as environment professionals. So how are you able to make that all come to be?

Ted Janulis 
It was started as so many things do with a series of smaller experiences. So as people would ask me questions about financial things, it might have been about offshore wind or it might have been about new generations of tourism boats or all the things you can imagine across the whole sectors of the so called Blue Economy. The more and more I looked at that, the more it occurred to me that there were in fact, projects and companies that were market based, meaning you can invest in them without thinking you were sacrificing in yield versus comparable investments, but at the same time, even though I could see those, they were very spread out. And like I said there would be might be offshore wind or it might be aquaculture or it might be energy, all different kinds of things. And the idea behind Investable Oceans was to put that all in one place. So we built an online community where investors can come and mostly geared at this point towards accredited investors. But we were trying to expand that and get more offerings that anybody can partake in. And then the other hand bringing companies from different places that are doing innovative things largely in the earlier stages of their lifecycle as a company, but not at the very, very beginning. That's a sort of different world.

Nic 
Yeah, gotcha. And would you say that, like there's lots of ways to invest with lots of ways to become involved and engaged. Can you kind of like walk us through like the spectrum of that like where you know where the left and right bumpers. are for people who are interested in investing?

Ted Janulis 
Yeah, great question. And maybe there's two different dimensions we can talk about. If you go to the About section of our site. There's a very simple little sort of line chart. And if you imagine a continuum going from left to right, all the way in the right side are market based investments where as we said, you don't expect that discount in yield. You expect all the good things that happen on top of it. And then all the way on the other side. On the left side is philanthropy or forgivable loans or things where you don't expect any return but you do expect responsible stewardship of your funds. The issue is in the middle of there is this huge, important area and people call it blended finance they call impact investing. There's a lot of ways to describe it, but it means that it's sort of a hybrid of those two things. And that can come in different forms. That can mean that you're investing in something and maybe instead of a compound, so maybe 15 or 20%. Maybe you look at a five or six or 7% expected return and these returns always expected because you don't know till the end how you actually did so that's one way to look at the continuum is across the risk spectrum, if you will, and what kind of return that you expect. The other way to look at it is what kinds of investments and this might be where you're heading is what is that are the mutual funds. Are they as adventure as a crowdfunding? And the answer is it comes in pretty much all flavors. The reason you don't see the same size and climate for instance, you see enormous funds and enormous outlays and that's because climate has a big set of issues that are readily identifiable like greenhouse gas emissions and whether you're a big corporation or individual or whoever you are, that's something you can measure and attack and it's very important potions while they're twinned with that, that same effect there, the other side of the climate coin, it's still a bit harder to get your minds around what is what is an ocean company.

So if you're starting out then it's easier to identify. It might be a startup that improves the efficiency of fisheries or it might be one that helps anchor turbines for offshore wind or it might be something that replaces insect protein, gets that into the aquaculture chain. It could be any number of those things, but because the company is smaller and has a mission, it's easier to kind of label it an ocean company. By the time you get up to the big companies that dominate the stock market. They do many, many things. They have an impact on the ocean, but that's kind of embedded in all these other things. So it's a little harder to say even the biggest companies that have an impact even away from extractive fossil fuel companies. Even if you look at consumer goods, companies, they're all involved in the ocean in one way or another, whether it's their shipping or their packing or their supply chains. They're all involved in the oceans, but it's just harder to identify them as an ocean company. And that's why you don't see as many funds that are labeled ocean. But you do see a huge amount of innovation going on in the whether it's with accelerators, incubators, the funds that are smaller, you see a lot more that's labeled that way. So if you care about the oceans and you want to invest in the public markets, the stock markets there are if you anytime you invest in something that's helping the climate, you're helping the oceans, because the ocean's issues are there. So much of it is from greenhouse gas and carbon more broadly if you include plastics, but if you think about whether it's a sea level rise issues coming from warming, or you think about acidification, they think about overfishing so many of these things in one way or another are tied back to the carbon chain.

Nic 
Exactly. Yeah, exactly what I was hoping for or that answer and you mentioned risk which I think is something that always fascinates me. And when you're younger, you're you're allowed to take on more risk and the older you get less so for these smaller companies that are just starting up. Are those that like more of a higher risk thing. Is that something that someone who's about to retire shouldn't be investing in and should they focus more on that climate side of things, or is it really a individual?

Ted Janulis 
That's a it's a great question. Part of it is about proportionality. Clearly, someone shouldn't put a huge amount of their savings into a given company or a given enterprise. What we're finding interestingly, for people who were sort of my my generation, they're also they're interested in learning about the company. Sometimes they become advisors, sometimes they get involved in it, they go travel to visit the companies. And so it becomes a broader thing than just the invested amount. So there's many to your point. There's many, many factors that come into play. But it is true generally that the smaller investment site, you know, companies do fail and some make it and some don't. And so that's why if you think about the smaller investment opportunities on our site, I don't know if your listeners would know the distinctions on accredited investors or not, but just in sense,

Laura 
I wouldn't. So, I would guess at least half of us no.

Ted Janulis  
So, your regulatory bodies of the country have a series of regulations to protect people from going into investing in higher risk things. So there's a thing called accreditation, which means that you have a certain amount of income for the last two years and or a certain amount of net worth in excess of your dwelling. If those two things are one of those two things happens. Then under the regulations, you can talk to companies that are doing these private raises, and they might be a half million, they might be a million, they might be 10 million, but there is that basic qualification. Now, confusingly, there's also crowdfunding on the other side. And for that, if you go out publicly and want to raise amounts of money it's a different set of regulations. So there's still you know, whether or not one is riskier than the other. It still comes back to me for proportionality. And do you understand the kind of business you're looking at? Do you understand the context more broadly? And I think the punchline is if you don't feel like you do, you're probably better off going in some kind of managed product, where professionals who are doing it every day and staring at the proverbial screen and doing the due diligence and they've got expertise. That's a good way to go for a lot of people because it gets pretty complicated pretty quickly in our case, because we want to cover the whole spectrum to mix metaphors, the blue economy, we can't hold ourselves out to be experts in everything. So we've developed relationships with the incubators and accelerators. There's probably up to 200 organizations around the globe that are in this, this sort of necklace of innovation that goes all around the world, and they're everywhere. They're in South Africa, they're Israel, they're both coasts in US actually the middle coast to for for those who are around the Great Lakes, and these are places where they stimulate this activity, they work with emerging companies. So we work a lot with them to try to screen companies and identify companies that we think would be good on on our site.

Laura 
That's really cool.

[Finance]

Nic
And so it just it's funny because this hearing this you know, is really, really interesting. Your career start, right? And then maybe I said earlier, but what made you go into finance in the first place. It's really great to see how you're taking that and broaden it out to the community but why choose finance?

Ted Janulis 
Yeah, honestly, that was just one of those things where I can't really tell you I was involved. I was at a some larger corporations over time, and we did these training programs. And at one point, I was doing the vice president program and I would routinely ask people how many people thought when they were in high school that they'd be sitting in this type of seat now? And it's just unbelievable, like, routinely 80 to 90% of people say, You know what it took a turn. I didn't really know. I was a pre med philosophy major. I went scuba diving for two years after college and then I ended up in business school and I can't tell you exactly why. So all these accumulations that happen along the way, you know, you can have the best plan in the world, and by the way, some people do plan their lives incredibly well and just, you know, know exactly what they want to do. But there's so many of us who over time sort of find their their way through different paths. And so it's hard to say like, was there a hard turn from, you know, one thing into finance, it just sort of happened along the way.

Laura 
We love to hear those stories. Because like you said, I think it's probably the 80/20 rule. 80% of us probably have that experience. And there's another 10- 20% of us who are like, Yeah, I knew what I was gonna do the whole time.

Ted Janulis 
And by the way, that's not it's not just a matter of sort of, there's a preparedness element and a working hard element. I'm not saying that well, we'll just, you know, go where you will in fact, the one quote that I've got, you can't see this but I'll read it. I've got on my desk. It says 'the reason most people do not recognize opportunity is that it usually goes around wearing overalls looking like hard work". Thomas Alva Edison, Thomas Alva Edison, you know, not only invented the phonograph and the projector and the light bulb, but had massive, you know, massive miscues along the way and 1000 experiments that didn't work. So, when I talk about how you it's I'd also don't feel like it's just a matter of faith, you're gonna end up somewhere you can't control it. You can absolutely while the paddle around on the wave while the wave is moving.

Laura 
Right. Perfect. Love that. Yeah. And I, you know, we were wanting to have someone to come on the show to talk about this kind of stuff. I went to an advisor decades ago, and when I first had a real job, and I was like, Oh, I have a 401k and I need to do something with money or something. And I asked him, I said, I don't want my money to go into you know, I'll be honest, Walmart, I don't want my money to support certain types of companies. And he looked at me like I had two heads. He was like, I don't know what you're talking about. Like I this is a mutual fund. This is where your money goes like. And I feel like I'm hopeful that you know, that's becoming more common and people are more conscientious of where their money is going and care about where their money is going. Do you feel like that's becoming more mainstream and or is it still just a real small amount of people?

Ted Janulis 
No, I think look there you can look on the television. And see, you know, people talking about the huge amounts of dollars that are going towards ESG and sustainability and at the same time, some skepticism about some of the labeling and what are you really doing with that? I do think it's the case. You know, there's a sort of well repeated idea that there's a generational shift going on, but also, it's a combination of gender and generation, where if you look at the polling numbers over a prolonged period of time now it's shown that there's going to be more conscientious purposeful investing. So the asset management industry that makes these products ultimately has to produce things that will sell, they're sellable so there is a sort of, there's two sides of it that have to come together over time increasing awareness, which creates the demand, then they'll create more products and that's should be a virtuous circle. I think we are hitting some bumps right now as people are, you know, rushing towards those concepts that about labeling and things but I do think there's a lot of very thoughtful very realistic science based offerings out there. And again, back to the the oceans piece of it. I think a great step in, since oceans or we love working on oceans, but a lot of people won't find that when they talk to, their sales representatives. When they're all talking about climate. Everybody's gonna talk about climate and sustainability. And by the way, that's not to say that, you know, he does also S and G and the social issues and justice and equity. All those issues are really important by the way, they're related to the ocean as well. But I think if you look at that, if you're interested in that, and you're engaging with the person who you talked about finance, climate is a great way in because if you do good things on climate, as I said before, then you're you're really attacking the oceans issues as well.

Laura 
Right? So let me ask you a novice investor question. If I am a conscientious investor, and I'm considering either working with my local financial advisor or whatever, or going to your site and doing something like that. How do I make that choice or what kind of person is coming to Investable Oceans specifically? Or do I do that through my my advisor?

Ted Janulis 
Yeah, well, remember that when you say your advisor, you can always as your own thinking evolves, you can always check out other advisors and there are actually teams now embedded representative teams, within all the big firms that will say that they specialize on these things. And you know, it's fair to say like, show us how you do that, because not, not everybody does. It's uneven, like so many things. With respect to coming to our site. We started with a focus on these accredited investors, which is an narrower band, if you will, that's around these emerging companies. But exactly what you're saying we we've had a lot of people come to the site who aren't accredited. And so that's why if you go to the site, you'll see you'll see podcasts and books and films and other things because people learn different ways. It's the old Cousteau chestnut that you protect what you love. And so we found that and processing information different ways we were drawing more people to the site. So we do want to come out with more things that are you don't have to be signed up as an accredited investor to do so. Maybe I would answer that question. More like oh, yes, come to us. I do. Think coming to us. If you are still investing small amounts of money and you're earlier in your investing path, it's still really good to get an advisor but over time, we hope to get to a point where we have a broad enough array of offerings that are publicly available so that we can say, come here for specifically for that.

Laura 
Cool yeah. I did find there was a lot of educational stuff on there too. And interesting things to to check up on.

Ted Janulis 
Yeah, we're making kelp smoothies in a couple of weeks on Instagram. So we the uptake on these things is just people are excited about helping and preserving the oceans and being responsible stewards. So, it's fun.

[Blue Economy]

Laura  
Very cool. Yeah. So let's switch gears a little bit. By the time this comes out. You'll have completed the Blue Economy Summit at Duke University. And I guess we're giving a shout out to Coach K's last season. That is a note in there from Nic. I don't even know what that means.

Ted Janulis 
Nic, are you a Duke alum?

Nic 
No, no, but I have like my best friend's family is they all went there. So it's really close to my heart. So

Ted Janulis 
Yeah, my wife has an alum, which is how I ended up involved with the Nicholas School of the Environment. But yeah, Duke fans are I'm sure every school says Syracuse I'm sure says the same thing. But I've never seen anything quite like Duke basketball fans.

Laura 
Yeah, no, I know some serious Syracuse basketball fans.

Nic 
Yeah, let me Cameron's crazy, you know they have a name and it's it's crazy. You know.

Ted Janulis 
The cool thing about what Duke is doing is both at the professor level, but then also at the student level. They're working across all the schools. So there's a school environment, but there's also a policy school. There's an engineering school and medical school and basically they're looking at oceans in a very holistic way. Oceans at Duke is their moniker and they pull together people from different disciplines to solve these issues that the problems that don't know to stay in one box and wander around. So they've done it at the faculty level. But now the students have done the same thing. So they're having this summit this upcoming week with all kinds of great speakers and bringing students from the area it's the first time they're doing it, but I love the multidisciplinary approach because that that's what the the oceans are a kaleidoscopic and they embrace all these different elements. And so that's a it's a great program they put together.

Laura 
Yeah, that's cool. And like we talked about, that'll be done by the time this comes out. But you'd also mentioned a couple other upcoming events and an octopus photo contest. So you want to touch on those.

Ted Janulis  
Sure, sure. Well wearing a different hat. The Explorers Club now for this will be our sixth year has done a thing called the World Oceans week. And you may know that World Oceans Day which is a UN sanctioned event is always June 8, and this year that falls on a Wednesday. So the forest club started programming around that and we've done a full week of offerings and yes, the octopus, we decided to have three ambassadors. And the first one, which I can only tell you one is the octopus and we are working with a group called Octo Nation that as is a worldwide scope and celebrates and educates the 300 species of octopus around the world. And so we're doing octopus only photo contests on to our knowledge, the first one that's been out there, but we're doing it to sort of broaden the appeal and get more the sorts of people in. We're also doing I don't know if this might be of interest to some of your listeners, but we're doing actually an oceans Bootcamp on the Sunday before World Oceans Day where someone from the UN is going to go through all those those sorts of issues that you hear about, but you don't always get the learning on like what is BBNJ or the high seas or what marine protected areas? So we're doing something for early career ocean professionals. And they're coming from multiple different organizations, including one called ECOP, early career ocean professionals, it's part of UN  fellows, etc. And we bring them all together and then try to help them network so they can talk to other people because, again, there's they're all over the world. Some are right out of college. Some are probably in college, but then you also have people who are in their careers either during their graduate work or early stages. And we're trying to connect those people up as much as we can. And we have all kinds of other programs that can go through them all but I saw you had Callie Veelenturf on recently and Callie is actually hosting an evening that Tuesday evening is going to be about rights of nature. And as you may have seen, Panama just a few weeks ago passed some landmark legislation that actually ties rights of nature into existing frameworks. Incredibly exciting stuff. At sustainable seafood we do broadcast out to classrooms around the country. But yeah, it's a lot of fun and a lot of engagement. And we're looking forward to it.

Laura
That's incredible.

[Field Notes]

Nic 
Yeah, Great, great stuff. You know another one of the things that's really fun for us in the show to talk about our experiences in the fields, we have a little segment called Field Notes, and maybe we're going to change it to Field Sales here. I don't know but do you have any wild encounters maybe something that happened to you in the Philippines

Ted Janulis  
it's funny when you were saying like, what are the things you've done that basically in the regret category like embarrassed or dangerous. So unfortunately, as I reflected on that, it took me an alarmingly long period of time to go through them all. And I'm sure this was when I was fresh out of school. I did find my self and I'd done some of the scuba program afterwards and I found myself in the Philippines as part of a staff for a photo dive tour. And some of the customers the clients thought that it would be really good if Ted did an underwater impression of Medusa the mythological character with snakes for hair. And so there there is a version of the sea snake in the Philippines. And I just I checked the last night just to make sure it's it's the second deadliest snake behind the mamba. Now, having said that, Now, having said that, they're not aggressive, they don't bother people. The only time you would ever like run into a problem is if for instance, you took four or five of them with your bare hands and stuck them on your head, which is what I did. I still can't believe number one, I can't believe I did it. I would never do it today. But for two reasons. First, I wouldn't do it because I would not do it because it was really dumb no matter when it happened. But also I think I look at nature a lot differently now. And it's so interesting to reflect back on the objectifying of nature. So I've evolved a lot along those lines. And I think we have as a society, I think the way people do animal encounters now and their respect and thinking, here we are talking about nature's rights. So I think the world has evolved a lot so that was a ancient experience in many ways. Glad to have it behind me don't suggest anybody repeat it, but that did happen.

Nic 
Yeah.

Ted Janulis 
I've got you know what I've got to decide handy. But I'm never going to show it to anybody mostly mostly for the reason that that's not the way I you know, I relate to nature in a very different way now as it was a long time ago.

Laura 
Yeah. You'll be like the woman who was caught riding the manatee in Florida and basically got publicly flogged for it.

Ted Janulis 
Yeah, yeah. And so a lot of change. And change for the good from my perspective.

Laura
Yeah, yeah.

Nic  
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You know, I think I, I grew up in the Steve Irwin era, you know, it's like I look at this, you know, and they're picking up everything and tossing it around and just totally different now. You're absolutely right.

Ted Janulis  
Interesting, by the way. Think about zoos as an example. We did something, a program of zoos a couple of years ago now. But they're big. We did aquarium specifically, but they're all evolving and they're involved in research and they're trying to be respectful of animals, obviously the big animals, they've definitely tacked on that. But we have we have certain routes, the world is changing. And we have to do our best to adapt to that and grow, to hopefully not throw out good stuff that happened. But be very mindful of the way that the world is changing and sensibilities are changing and get to a better place.

Nic 
Very, very well said. And you're also an avid reader. So what kind of books do you have?

Ted Janulis  
That's what my people some people garden, you know, some people do other things and I putter in my library, and there's a couple of folks including Umberto Eco painted images of libraries as aspirational. And they should be the books that you haven't read and want to read. So my goal that I've sort of taken on is to have my library be absolutely packed with books, any which one I've walked by and say, I want to read that right now. So I'm getting there. Probably 75 or 80% of the way there. There's two problems with it. One is that now I see all the books I've got to read. And it's intimidating because there's so many great books. And the other thing is it's hard to walk by it now because I just end up pulling books down. And then right now I'm finally at through the first book of Don Quixote, which I had managed to miss for years and decades and decades. But you know, it was just sitting there on the shelf and got my attention. And so it's working a little bit. I enjoy reading of all kinds. And by the way, there's some great ocean reading and if you go to our if you go to the Investable Oceans site, we have 100 plus books, that are all kinds of elements, anything from visual interpretation of the oceans, to artists, to scientists, to fiction, etc, etc.

Laura 
That's wonderful. And for people listening, he's got some beautiful bookshelves behind him, just full of books. And I believe that we got you on the show because you are acquainted with Admiral Tim Gallaudet, who was on our show before and maybe through the Explorers Club. Is that right?

Ted Janulis 
Tim is a member now and actually has participated in World Oceans week. He's fantastic. I mean, encyclopedic knowledge, knows everybody real vision of what he wants to do, which I'm sure is what he went over with your time with him, but also like one of the nicest people you'll ever meet. He's just, yeah, fantastic. But that kind of energy around blue economy and the shape that he uses for it around sort of making sure that the US agenda, not not sort of, you know, territorial sense, but the facts are, money gets raised and spent and projects happen often aligned with our governments and the agencies etc. So he not only knows the science and overall blue economy, aspects of things, but he also has a great way of framing the ecosystem we live in here in the United States.

Laura 
Yeah, absolutely. But I was wondering, with the Explorers Club, what's the most incredible journey you've been on?

Ted Janulis  
So I had the the opportunity a few years ago to, we call them flag expeditions. The club has been around since 1904. And its members are all over the world. And they do everything oceans, space, mountains, jungles, valleys, you name it and first to a number of those places, whether it's North Pole, South Pole, the moon, etc. And we have over 200 flags, and the flags get checked out. When you go on an expedition you apply for flag and if you qualify, you get it and you take it out and bring it back sort of the notion of the return that goes back to you know, that's back to the Odyssey and other cultures have that notion and then the flag generates its own history and genealogy. And then we're does something really cool like the Kon-Tiki flag, we retire it and now it's up in our in our main hall. So we did check out a flag and took it down to Cuba and islands of the Queen which is a spectacularly beautiful area parts of it. The US divers haven't gotten there so much over the years because for a long time, as we all know it was restricted. Other countries weren't as restricted but there are parts of Islands of the Queen that are just spectacularly beautiful and Virgin in the ways that many parts you know just can't be because of the access to them. So that was a pretty memorable trip.

Laura 
Oh, that's awesome.

Nic  
Yeah, it's great that we get to do that. And we're I think we're all really thankful that we have the opportunity to travel and to hear all these other stories. And we've heard a lot of great things from you today. And I know we're just about out of time, but I'm gonna give you the the platform here. Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you'd like to?

Ted Janulis 
Well, I one thing I see and we've talked about it a little is a real thirst for connection for people who are emerging, if you will, and my advice there are so many good groups now. That are doing good work and reaching out to them if you're if you're one area, if you're interested now in the oceans, but you're interested in, in climate or terrestrial things or you're going the other way. I have found that like people are incredibly receptive, if you reach out to them, and just you know, ask them for, you know, a little bit of their time. And I do this all the time that folks who reached out to us and Investable Oceans because it's these are still good, you're paying it forward. We should be doing these things. So I would just encourage you if you're in a transition or nearing the end of one program, thinking about the next one, just don't be shy about reaching out to folks in especially I can tell you the ocean world. It's just amazing how much people help each other well feel like we're in a common in a common ecosystem and wanting to make things better.

Nic 
That's the great great last answer, and it ties right into my lap but before you so dependent educational again, thank you so much for your time. Where's the best place for people to get in touch with you?

Ted Janulis 
Sure. Well, the easiest is just by first name Ted@ investableoceans.com. That's my email if you go to the site that you can also connect us to us there but um, my read my emails, I'm always happy to respond and always happy to help out where I can.

Nic 
But thank you for being here. It was really great. We had a great, great time with you learn a lot. And that's the whole point of the show. So thank you so much for being here.

Ted Janulis 
Well, thank you so much for having me. And I think what you're all doing is just spectacular. So kudos to that and keep it up. And hopefully there are ways that we can think of funny, meaningful things to do together in the future.

Laura
Sounds great.

Nic
Absolutely. We'd love to.

Ted Janulis 
Thank you.

[Outro]

Nic 
That's our show. Thank you so much, Ted for joining us today. We learned a ton about investing in finance in the environmental space. How cool is that? Don't answer?

Laura
Sorry.

Nic
No, no, that was me. I was just trying to go to the next. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe rate and review. See you everybody.

Laura
Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai