September 4, 2026 – Off the Record Alex Guirguis and Wired for Peace Jeremy Pollack, PhD

00:00 Intro 1: In the AM, broadcasting from AM and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration Award-winning School for Startups Radio, while we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now, here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk or passion, Jim Beach.

00:20 JIM BEACH: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another exciting edition of School for Startups radio. I hope you’re having a fantastic day out there, making some money, growing your business, and making America, reliant even more on us entrepreneurs. We are the backbone of this country. Don’t forget it. Two fantastic guests today.

00:44 JIM BEACH: I’m very excited. First, Alex Guirguis is with us. He has built Off The Record. It is a matching service for you and attorneys. It started off doing tickets, parking tickets, and such. And now it is anything legal. It is an amazing story and I’m so excited to share it with you.

01:09 JIM BEACH: After that, Jeremy Pollack is with us. We’re going to talk about peacebuilding. Wired for peace is his method or his thesis. And we get to talk about my favorite word in the world, neuroplasticity. I just love the fact that we can make our brains better and self-regulate better in all of this.

01:34 JIM BEACH: I am working on it myself, and we all need to do it. So I can’t wait for you to meet Jeremy. I have time for one more word about my ongoing AI discussion. The last time I talk to you about AI outside of one of the interviews. I was pointing out that they are escaping the sandbox all the time and hiding and trying to prevent their masters from catching on.

02:08 JIM BEACH: Second thing that we really need to notice and focus on. They have already gone upside down financially. The last valuation of OpenAI was at $865 billion and they blew through all of that money already. All of that money that they raised is already gone, but they are not going to be able to get the $100 billion valuation that they need to raise the next round.

02:39 JIM BEACH: And so they are just like with a car upside down. They are in a financial problem right now, and if they don’t go public, they are entropic. One of those 2 is going to lose. The other one goes public. It’s going to be fascinating to watch if we live. Be right back.

03:04 JIM BEACH: We are backing again. Thank you so very much for being with us. I wonder how many of us have gotten a ticket on the way home from a vacation. I certainly have. I wonder who paid the largest ticket. Oh, leave me your thoughts on that one. My friend, and our next guest, Alex Guirguis, had that happen to him too.

03:30 JIM BEACH: He was on a ride home and ended up with some local speeding tickets that you get home and then you have to deal with the tickets far away and it’s just a pain. It became a business. He is the co-founder and CEO of Off The Record. It’s a legal tech company that makes it easier for people to hire local attorneys.

03:56 JIM BEACH: They help fight traffic tickets and all sorts of other things with their SmartMatch system. They have. I mean this number is unbelievable. 1,000 partner attorneys across 50 states. And 97% of their outcomes are favorable. Very impressive. Alex, welcome to the show. How you doing?

04:16 ALEX GUIRGUIS: Jim, it’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

04:22 JIM BEACH: So you and all the rest of the team came from, where did you work prior to this?

04:30 ALEX GUIRGUIS: We, so uh, 2 of the 3 co-founders. No, no, no. We were at Amazon prior to this.

04:36 JIM BEACH: Something like that.

04:38 ALEX GUIRGUIS: Something, you know, we worked in the, we were the tech that built the Amazon warehouses. So oftentimes it could feel like trash collecting.

04:49 JIM BEACH: But you were with Amazon. So pretty damn impressive.

04:53 ALEX GUIRGUIS: Two of the three co-founders were with Amazon and our third co-founder was at Microsoft at the time.

05:00 JIM BEACH: Pretty good pedigree there, Alex. All right. Did I describe the situation correctly going the way home from a vacation?

05:09 ALEX GUIRGUIS: Yeah, so that’s what happened to us. And, you know, I believe you mentioned that it also happened to you.

05:17 JIM BEACH: I want to mention that my ticket was. $1,500.

05:21 ALEX GUIRGUIS: $1,500. I’d love to know where you got your ticket.

05:26 JIM BEACH: Sylva, North Carolina.

05:27 ALEX GUIRGUIS: There, yeah. North Carolina, they have high fines. So we also were in a state that had that had high fines. We were taking a road trip from Seattle down to Crater Lake in Oregon. Uh, you know, the fines and the tickets in Seattle, they’re not that expensive. They’re maybe 150 bucks in Oregon. The fines are three, four, five, $600.

05:53 ALEX GUIRGUIS: And what we found out is that Oregon is notorious for giving out of state drivers out of state license, like license plates that are not Oregon, uh, traffic tickets. That’s how they set speed traps. And I mean, that’s really how they kind of fill up their municipal budgets. Um, we were, this happened on the way back.

06:18 ALEX GUIRGUIS: So we were, this is after the camping trip. We’re all driving back up to Seattle. Every single car, got a ticket on the way home. And, you know, we’re not driving together. No one’s racing. This is like going 5 over going 10 over. The highways in Oregon are empty, so you’re kind of tempted to speed a little bit.

06:43 ALEX GUIRGUIS: And every single car, we find out later, every single car got a ticket. We felt that there was something wrong with that picture. And so we start, we, we, we, we went looking for lawyers and we actually looked for an app that does what Off The Record now does because we figured, you know, it’s like 2014, almost 2015. Someone must have built this.

07:10 ALEX GUIRGUIS: Someone must have come up with a solution for this. And um, it didn’t exist. So we tried hiring lawyers the old-fashioned way. That was a pain in Oregon. And, you know, a light bulb went off and we started thinking about, you know, could there be an app that helps you fight your traffic tickets.

07:33 JIM BEACH: Is it only for tickets? That kind of thing or does it do other things too?

07:40 ALEX GUIRGUIS: Yeah, so it’s been an, you know, we’ve been around for over 10 years now and safe to say it’s been, uh, the journey has been a roller coaster. We launched with just traffic tickets in Seattle. Uh, so not a big market, right? I mean, you know, just Seattle, just traffic tickets. It was well received in Seattle.

08:04 ALEX GUIRGUIS: So what we did is we expanded to the rest of Washington State, and again, it was just traffic tickets. Uh, it, you know, it did well in Washington, so then we started popping from one state to the next, California, New York. At some point, we decided, you know what, we can do a lot more than traffic tickets.

08:29 ALEX GUIRGUIS: We can also do other traffic matters. And so that’s what we started doing now. We are available in the entire country we are a nationwide service and we handle the entire spectrum of traffic and criminal matters. So traffic tickets, DUIs, suspended license, but also non-traffic. So everything from jaywalking to uh, prostitution, to money laundering, to uh, surfing, uh, surfing while uh, well high, which we’ve actually contested.

08:59 JIM BEACH: Well, how do they know that? How did they know that you’re, do you mean like surfing the net or surfing the waves?

09:08 ALEX GUIRGUIS: Surfing the waves?

09:10 JIM BEACH: Oh okay. And they figured that someone was high while they were doing that.

09:16 ALEX GUIRGUIS: Oh, yeah. Something that people don’t realize is this is just kind of wild actually. The acceptable blood alcohol level when you are driving is 0.08, right? Most people know that. So that means you can have a beer or two. The acceptable blood alcohol level when you are doing anything else. So when you’re on a boat, for example, or when you’re surfing or when you’re riding your bike, the acceptable blood alcohol level is zero.

09:48 ALEX GUIRGUIS: So what we see oftentimes, especially in the summer, is you’ll have people out on the boat and, you know, the captain will wave to the Coast Guard with a beer in hand, thinking it’s.08. This is my first beer. I’m okay. They’re not. They get they get a DUI for that because it’s zero. And so, same thing.

10:13 JIM BEACH: Nationwide, Alex?

10:14 ALEX GUIRGUIS: This is this is nationwide. Yeah.

10:17 JIM BEACH: Wow. Did you hear last weekend about the grandfather who was taking the family on a boat ride at night and killed all the grandchildren?

10:27 ALEX GUIRGUIS: I did not. Where did that happen?

10:30 JIM BEACH: I don’t remember where it was. It was… Maybe it was Florida or something like that. But it was, you know, what my family has done 4000 times. Dinner, have 2 or 3 nice glasses of wine at dinner, and then go watch the sunset as a family on the boat, you know? And every single one of us there was buzzed, you know?

10:56 JIM BEACH: And so, but now granddad kills kids by accident. Oh my god, what a disaster. I’m assuming it was alcohol related.

11:05 ALEX GUIRGUIS: Yes, yes. I think, you know, the parents were there and the parents were, you know, it was a family outing type thing and no one was doing anything wrong or bad or anything like that, you know? There’s, uh, you know, it’s, it’s obviously very, uh, unbelievably sad. There’s, uh, these things are going to happen in, in a society with 300 million people. You know?

11:33 ALEX GUIRGUIS: It’s unfortunate, but it’s also life.

11:36 JIM BEACH: It’s good to be a homebody, Alex.

11:39 ALEX GUIRGUIS: Sometimes, sometimes.

11:40 JIM BEACH: They say nothing good happens after midnight. My God, was she right on that one, you know? Just no reason to be out. So let’s get back to Off The Record. So you have this epiphany moment, and all 3 of you are, you know, what they call the smart group. And what happens next? So talk to me about the build process please.

12:06 ALEX GUIRGUIS: Yeah, so here’s the here’s the epiphany moment, which it wasn’t, you know, it was more of a light dimmer that slowly went on rather than a flicker of the light switch. Um, I went around once we got back from uh, Oregon. I went around talking to lawyers, traffic lawyers, traffic ticket lawyers, and the question I asked them was, hey, um, if an app like this existed, like a platform where where that connects uh, drivers with a traffic ticket to uh, lawyers, would you be interested in in participating?

12:44 ALEX GUIRGUIS: And every single lawyer told me the same thing, they told me, I’ve already thought about this. It’s a great idea, if I knew how to code, I would have already done it. And so that was a, that was, you know, as green of a signal as I could get. And so then, you know, it was just a matter of, um, taking the risk and starting to develop.

13:12 ALEX GUIRGUIS: I was at Amazon at the time. I believe I quit Amazon in, it was January of 2015, and then we launched the service in September, October of that same year, 2015. And we got our first customer half an hour later. So the app uh, hit the App Store, you know, on on, uh, on some day in September of 2015 and half an hour later, our first customer booked a case.

13:42 JIM BEACH: Wow, that is so cool. So amazing. And how big are you now, Alex? Do you mind sharing something that, you know, some indication of how big?

13:53 ALEX GUIRGUIS: So we are, like I said, we started just in Seattle with a dozen attorneys. We are now a nationwide service covering all traffic ticket matters, criminal matters, the entire spectrum of criminal matters. We have, I know you mentioned we have a 1000 partners. We actually have over a 1000 law firm partners all across the country.

14:17 ALEX GUIRGUIS: We fight more traffic tickets. I mean, we’re the we’re the premier service for handling traffic tickets. So carriers and trucking carriers, CDL drivers, professional drivers all come to us for to handle their traffic tickets. Um, I don’t know if that gives you a sense of how big we are.

14:38 JIM BEACH: How many employees you got?

14:41 ALEX GUIRGUIS: We, so we’re a lean team. We had about 50 employees 2 years ago. We’re down to 27 now.

14:49 JIM BEACH: Wow. Is that all because we have enough?

14:52 ALEX GUIRGUIS: Yeah, yeah. So again, we are a product-led tech company. My co-founder and I are both very tech savvy, very tech forward. We automate everything we can. And in today’s, you know, I’m sure you see what’s going on around us with AI. It’s, uh, it’s just, Put everything on turbo. Put automation on turbo speed.

15:16 JIM BEACH: Alex, did you see the article that came out about a couple of weeks ago? 2 different sources, the most recent that I can think of off the top of my head. I’m not thinking of it. He’s the same guy that wrote the book enshittification. You know that term blankification that we’ve all started using with the S word?

15:41 JIM BEACH: He’s the first guy that came up with that. And he’ll his name will come to me in a second. He’s just written a new book that claims that 95, 97% of Fortune 500 AI projects are completely phantom lying up and down the ladder. The CEO knows that his CIO is knowing the CIO knows that the managers are lying to him because they would all get fired if they didn’t brag about it.

16:12 JIM BEACH: [Unclear phrase in audio/raw transcript.]

16:14 ALEX GUIRGUIS: Yep, yep. So, you know, books about you. Here’s here’s because I have I have a bone to pick as well. Um, we’re a startup, right? And so we’re not looking for funding right now, venture capital funding, but it does frustrate me that all the venture capital money is going to companies that claim to be AI first.

16:39 ALEX GUIRGUIS: When in reality, their product, their service has nothing to do with AI. But they know that if they don’t say they are AI first, they’re not going to get the funding. So, you know, everyone claims…

16:54 JIM BEACH: You are 100% right, Alex, and I see that maybe more than anyone, except for the venture capitalists, because I get everything across my desk, right? And, you know, last year it was a trash company and this year it’s trash with AI, you know, and so it is it’s ridiculous. I’m on…

17:16 ALEX GUIRGUIS: Absolutely. And I’m honestly surprised that a lot of VC firms are not a little bit more sophisticated and don’t do a little bit more digging and due diligence before handing over, you know, tens, hundreds of millions of dollars to companies that are, you know, if they want to invest in AI, invest in AI, but make sure that the company you’re investing in is actually AI.

17:44 ALEX GUIRGUIS: Uh, turns out that uh, most companies aren’t yet fully uh, AI first or even AI enabled. With that said, I will I will say this. I do believe that AI is being used in, you know, at this point almost every company and is providing some value, but it’s not the value of the, you know, your You’re going to fire all your employees and it’s going to be a, uh, a single person $1 billion company.

18:15 ALEX GUIRGUIS: I don’t think we’re there yet. Uh, but it, what it is right now. It’s a fantastic tool for companies and employees at those companies to use. All of our, you know, you’re at Off The Record, we have a corporate Claude account, a corporate OpenAI account. Everyone has unlimited usage of tokens. Uh, we encourage everyone to uh, augment their work with those tools and we’re seeing great results.

18:45 ALEX GUIRGUIS: You know, the product designers are able to design faster. The developers are able to code faster. So there is value to AI, but it’s not, uh, the magic wand that, uh, people would, you know, have you believe it is.

19:02 JIM BEACH: Right. Cory Doctorow is the person I was referring. Name to. enshittification. And whatever his new book is, I didn’t pull up that. I went through enshittification, he is the guy who put out that data on AI. So, um, you know, I ask AI frequently, how many people are doing what I’m doing? And, you know, it beats around the bush for a while and it says, you’re very, very, very, very, very, very rare.

19:33 JIM BEACH: And I’ll tell you what I do. I’ve been telling the audience this for months now because I’ve been doing this for months. I have written, I don’t know, 10 books and I got 80% done with all of them. And then they sit because I don’t like that part. 80 to 100 part, which is perfect for AI.

19:57 JIM BEACH: And so I put it into AI, but here’s what I do, Alex. I do it again and again and again and again and again and again.

20:08 ALEX GUIRGUIS: Yes.

20:09 JIM BEACH: And so I’ll put the same chapter through 10 times. And then I’ll put it in a different platform to see if it’s AI written or not. And Claude came back and said, no, it’s not AI written, but it was AI edited extensively. And I wrote, yeah, god damn, that’s good enough for me. That’s the standard, you know, that’s the standard I’m going for.

20:36 JIM BEACH: I read that Claude is not doing well financially. Any thoughts, Alex?

20:41 ALEX GUIRGUIS: You know, I, that’s news to me. Last I heard they were pulling in something like [unclear dollar figure]. Honestly, I forget what the time frame is. But, um, no, I, I don’t, I, I love the tool. I’ll say that. Today.

20:58 JIM BEACH: Which one do you like the best? Which one do you use the most?

21:04 ALEX GUIRGUIS: What is my default? I use them all, but Claude is my default. Um, I use Claude. I use, I use chat.

21:13 JIM BEACH: Like my personality more?

21:15 ALEX GUIRGUIS: I like I like the personality. I like the interface, honestly. I use Claude Desktop quite a bit. I feel that Claude Desktop Claude Code and cowork work really well together. Um, but you know, I also use uh, I use cursor and underneath cursor. We have Grok as our model, which has been working well recently. But I don’t know if you heard the news, but SpaceX bought a cursor.

21:45 ALEX GUIRGUIS: And now, now Grok became the default model underneath cursor. You can always change it if you want to, but when that switch happened, [unclear phrase], and it does a great job. It’s a lot cheaper than Claude, so why not? Uh, you know, when I’m on the web, when I’m on the browser, uh, Gemini is a common tool.

22:09 ALEX GUIRGUIS: You know, every time we do a Google search for using Gemini at this point. So, good, eating them all.

22:18 JIM BEACH: Do you know the Gov Works story?

22:21 ALEX GUIRGUIS: I do I don’t think so. Refresh my memory.

22:24 JIM BEACH: 2001. Two fellas raised $70 million to build a ticket app. And they were so high and mighty that they allowed a film crew to follow them from that earlier than getting the money on. I think they raised like 60000000 and then the film crew started following them. And by the end, they went through every penny and didn’t launch a site that could do anything.

22:52 JIM BEACH: And it’s called startup.gov. Oh, wait, the movie is called Startup.com, and the company was GovWorks.com. Um, 2001. An absolute must see for someone in your very special niche, Alex.

23:05 ALEX GUIRGUIS: I absolutely will. When you say ticket app, do you mean an app that does what Off The Record does today?

23:14 JIM BEACH: Yeah, speeding tickets.

23:16 ALEX GUIRGUIS: That’s so interesting. I’m surprised I haven’t heard of them. We’ve had competitors, you know, along the way. When we launched…

23:25 JIM BEACH: Or you were born, Alex. How old were you? You’re not 30 yet, are you?

23:31 ALEX GUIRGUIS: Do I sound under 30? I’m 43 actually.

23:34 JIM BEACH: Okay, okay. I thought you were, I’m looking at your picture. Your picture looks a lot younger than that, so…

23:43 ALEX GUIRGUIS: I may need to. I’ve been blessed with good hair, but I may need to update that…

23:50 JIM BEACH: I don’t know, I don’t know which one. Yeah, I don’t know.

23:55 ALEX GUIRGUIS: Thank you. I appreciate that. And just that audience knows we’re, we’re not, we’re not even looking at each other right now. But I may need to update my profile picture.

24:09 JIM BEACH: Audio. Audio, only.

24:09 ALEX GUIRGUIS: No, so we had a competitor called Fixed and I wouldn’t even call them a competitor. They were handling parking tickets. They also raised, I believe it was $8 million and at the end, had nothing to show for it. Uh, so, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a pet team of mine just because when they went under, it actually hurt the rest of the legal tech industry, including us.

24:38 ALEX GUIRGUIS: Right? So we were, we had, uh, we were interviewing with YC at the time and we were down to like the last, uh, I don’t know, it’s, it started with 3000 companies. You know, they’re normal cohorts. Usually in our cohort, I believe, started with 3000. They invited 500 back for interviews. We were down to the last 250, I believe.

25:04 ALEX GUIRGUIS: And I’m pretty sure that the, they knew fixed very well, obviously, the fact that they had just gone under, uh, is what really harmed us. They brought them up in our interview. In fact, you know, they failed with $8 million What makes you believe you’re going to be successful? So, it is a pet peeve of mine.

25:28 ALEX GUIRGUIS: How many rounds of fundraising have you done and how far did you get bootstrapping? We got really lucky in the sense that we wanted to be profitable as soon as possible. So we were profitable by year too. And we didn’t raise any money until year four. And it’s really because we really liked the investor and he, you know, was very interested in giving us some money.

25:57 ALEX GUIRGUIS: We, uh, at the time we were getting sued pretty frequently, you know, we work with lawyers, so it’s just, uh, part of the, uh, what we have to get used to. Entrepreneurs sometimes. Just part of life. Part of life for entrepreneurs, but when you’re one of your customer base is lawyers, you should expect to be sued more often.

26:22 ALEX GUIRGUIS: And so we, you know, until now we get sued once or twice a year for no good reason, real. We’ve never lost a lawsuit. We’ve always come out on top in every single lawsuit. But the reason, and we talk about a $1.5 million back then, this, this is about, I don’t know, like, I don’t even remember which year, it was 4 years in, so maybe 2019, 2020.

26:50 ALEX GUIRGUIS: And, um, We took we took the money as a safety net, uh, in case more lawsuits came uh, in quick succession. So, yeah, we’ve won every lawsuit, but they still cost money. You still have to defend yourself against us. We ended up not, we ended up not really, you know, we had that safety net. We never really dipped into it uh, until uh, a couple years later.

27:19 JIM BEACH: Decades ago, when I started my very first business and we were at a dinner party with, you know, a bunch of couples in their late 20s and I think I was the only business owner there. Everyone else just had normal jobs. And some reason, law came up. One of the friends had passed the bar or something and my wife said, you know, Jim talks to the lawyers all the time and blah, blah, blah.

27:51 JIM BEACH: It turned out I had 14 lawyers, Alex, that were in my that I had spoken to in the last week.

27:59 ALEX GUIRGUIS: Wow.

27:59 JIM BEACH: And so, uh, there’s just certain industries if you bump up against the legal process. You just have to get used to it and understand that it’s not you. It’s just the world. When I was a kid. My brother and I knew the Fulton County process server by name because he sued my father or served my father so many times.

28:25 ALEX GUIRGUIS: Is this, Jim, I have to ask, is this Fulton County in Georgia?

28:31 JIM BEACH: Yes, it is.

28:31 ALEX GUIRGUIS: I lived in Roswell. I didn’t realize we had that connection.

28:36 JIM BEACH: Yeah, I lived in Roswell for 7 years back in the day.

28:41 ALEX GUIRGUIS: Yes.

28:42 JIM BEACH: And Cobb County next to us is the lowest standard to get arrested in the United States. By that, what I mean is crimes that no one else, no other principality or community arrests you for, they do. So even stuff going to be a $500 fine. They still arrest you, make you go through all of the junk, you know, and they’re just, I don’t want to say, I almost use the NAZ word.

29:12 JIM BEACH: Boy, they’re strict.

29:14 ALEX GUIRGUIS: They are strict. Well, I’ll tell you this, Jim. Georgia was a big surprise to us because, you know, there’s some markets that we expect to be big, California, New York, Texas, Georgia is in our top 5 markets. We, you know, we didn’t expect that, but it’s so traffic tickets, you know, just issues, legal issues are there are so painful that everyone needs to hire a lawyer to contest them.

29:43 ALEX GUIRGUIS: And so that bumps Georgia up into our top 5 markets.

29:48 JIM BEACH: Well, you remember my cousin Vinny, that movie?

29:51 ALEX GUIRGUIS: Absolutely.

29:52 JIM BEACH: That’s not too far from the truth, you know, from the small communities of the South 10 years ago or 50 years ago. 70 years ago you had deliverance movie where they all ended up getting killed. And at that time that wasn’t too far from the truth. You know, that song, you know? Anything?

30:15 ALEX GUIRGUIS: Yeah. Unfortunately, A lot of places make their money, as you said, from the tickets. Yeah, and you know, I think I think this has become obvious to everyone in the country at this point, but… And there’s no good solution for this. Yeah, there’s a lot of injustices. In the country. Uh, we as a country, we like to say that we are a country of law and order and justice for all, and that’s not actually the case, and we see that on a daily basis.

30:51 ALEX GUIRGUIS: Money speaks, your access to the justice system speaks. Not everyone in the country has the same access to the legal system and just justice in general. And that’s part of the reason we started Off The Record was to level the playing field. So that it’s not just affluent folks who can afford to fight their traffic tickets.

31:15 ALEX GUIRGUIS: I’ll give you an example. When we launched in New York state, The average cost to fight a traffic ticket and say New York City was over $500. Today, through Off The Record, you can fight a traffic ticket with the same, if not better level of service for 99 bucks. And this is true across the country. We’ve brought prices down in New York.

31:42 ALEX GUIRGUIS: We’ve also brought prices down in Georgia in every other state. So this is a well-known thing in the legal industry, it’s called the access to justice gap. Not everyone has the same access to justice. We are trying to bridge that gap a little bit day by day.

32:03 JIM BEACH: I love it. I love it. Alex, great job of IDing a problem. I love how your origin story makes sense and it’s right there with the niche and I have felt that pain. A great job of the build. So, and a little bit of technology, expertise thrown in and you’re going to be…

32:26 ALEX GUIRGUIS: Jim, I appreciate it. It’s uh, it’s been, it’s a pleasure.

32:30 JIM BEACH: How do we get in touch, find out more, get my tickets taken care of?

32:36 ALEX GUIRGUIS: Jim, you, our website is Off The Record.com. You can also go to your App Store, whether on iOS or Android and just search for Off The Record. Where the, our claim to fame is the app that fights traffic tickets, but more broadly, we will connect you to a lawyer, no matter what your legal problem is.

33:00 JIM BEACH: Fantastic. Thanks for being with us, Alex, and we’d love to have you. Up next, we are going to talk about peacebuilding with a new book called Wired for Peace. We’ll be right back.

33:15 INTRO 2: Well, that’s a wonderful question, actually, Jim. Oh, my gosh, I love the opportunity to do this. Thank you, Jim. Wow, that’s a great one. You know, that is a phenomenal question. That’s a great question, and I don’t have a great answer. That’s a great question. Oh, that is such a loaded question. And that’s actually a really good question. School for Startups Radio.

33:54 JIM BEACH: We are backing again. Thank you so very much for being with us. Very excited to introduce another great peacebuilder. Please welcome Jeremy Pollack to the show. He is the CEO and founder of Pollack Peacebuilding Systems, and author of a new book called Wired for Peace using 7 neuroscience-based principles to resolve conflicts. Dr. Pollock has had a very successful career and doing exactly that, helping companies have peaceful working organizations. He helps strengthen leadership and builds cultures of trust collaboration and safety.

34:20 JIM BEACH: Jeremy, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

34:23 JEREMY POLLACK: I’m doing well. Thanks for having me, Jim.

34:26 JIM BEACH: My favorite word used to be 2 words. Veritable plethora. I just love those, but it was replaced by neuroplasticity is my new favorite word. The idea that my brain isn’t stuck being so stupid forever.

34:37 JEREMY POLLACK: Yeah, exactly. Well, it’s neuroplasticity is the underlying mechanism of all learning. Everything we know, everything we learn is all due to our brain being able to change its wiring.

34:46 JIM BEACH: That’s just so exciting. Could I actually learn to be more peaceful with the Physical change that goes along with that in my brain? Does my brain actually change?

34:55 JEREMY POLLACK: Yeah, well, I mean, The brain changes in so much that different parts of the brain, we, you know, you, it’s, there’s a sort of old adage that says, uh, neurons that fire together wire together. And what that means is different parts of the brain, the brain’s made up of all these neurons and then neurons make up what we call neural circuits and neural circuits make up what we call neural networks. So different circuits, fire together in different patterns and ways.

35:20 JEREMY POLLACK: And that’s what makes our experience and our behavior, the ways that it is. And if we want to change that stuff, we sort of recondition the brain to get wired differently. We help the brain start to fire circuits in different patterns or with different associations. And so in a sense, it’s definitely changing because there’s different things happening in your brain when neuroplasticity is taking place. But it’s not like your brain shape is changing, essentially.

35:44 JIM BEACH: But do any of the neurons inside actually change? Uh, synapses develop?

35:48 JEREMY POLLACK: Yeah, yeah, I mean, that’s part of neuroplasticity is strengthening synapses or strengthening synaptic connections. So certain, you know, certain neurons firing together and communicating with one another, they either become inhibited and sort of die down or they start firing at higher amplitudes and connecting better. And so those connections are getting stronger or weaker. And that’s what happens during neuroplasticity.

36:08 JIM BEACH: All right. And how does peace play into this?

36:10 JEREMY POLLACK: Well, you know, There’s so many aspects of our our general interpersonal and intergroup relationships, cooperation, collaboration, just basic communication. All of that is produced by the way we, obviously the way we behave and that behavior is produced by the neurons in the brain, by the way that our brains are wired. So everything that we do, whether we’re getting into conflict or we’re getting into peace, is a product of the experience that our nervous system produces.

36:35 JEREMY POLLACK: And sometimes we forget that. Like we’re, we kind of think we’re responding to the thing in the world and it’s the world, it’s that thing’s fault or that external stimuli fault. Actually, what we’re experiencing, whether it’s peace or conflict or a desire to destroy or the desire to create and collaborate. All of that is just a product of the way that our brains are working in that moment and whether our brains are essentially feeling safe or detecting a threat and the resulting neurochemistry that happens, um, after such a perception.

37:03 JEREMY POLLACK: So peace peace is, I always like to say, you know, peace ha- peace starts internally. It always starts inside each of us. Very hard to be in conflict with another person if we’re at peace within ourselves and it’s very hard to be at peace with another person if we’re in conflict with ourselves or or feeling conflict. So it always starts with us. And so that’s that’s a, you know, product of our nervous system.

37:26 JIM BEACH: Yes, that’s the part that sucks that it’s always our fault. It always starts with us. It’s so much easier to be peaceful. If I could blame you.

37:35 JEREMY POLLACK: I know, right? It could be.

37:37 JIM BEACH: So what are the principles? Start diving into this a little more, Jeremy. What are some of the principles that resolve these conflicts?

37:44 JEREMY POLLACK: Well, I mean, so I start out. I mean, in my book, I talk about the first principle is the one that’s been talked about probably the most in conflict resolution, and the rest of them, I dive into because it just hasn’t been talked about enough, but the first principle is really, really important. If there’s anything you can remember, is to, you know, if you if you hope to build peace or you hope to resolve a conflict or you hope to just communicate a little bit more effectively with someone, you have to self-regulate first, you have to calm your nervous system.

38:15 JEREMY POLLACK: If you’re in a place where, you know, you’re feeling defensive or you’re feeling emotionally charged, it’s going to be very tough to be able to communicate effectively with someone. So that’s principle number one really in a nutshell is you need to learn how to self-regulate it.

38:29 JEREMY POLLACK: Self-regulation comes in a lot of different forms and techniques, and you can try a bunch of different stuff, but at the very least, you know, giving your body and brain messages of safety is key to you calming down and things like slowing down your breath and relaxing your face and your shoulders, and just reminding yourself that you’re okay, and you can handle this, like those types of techniques, just really basic stuff, just help to calm the body down, and that’s important when you’re trying to interact with someone effective ly.

38:58 JIM BEACH: Okay, so self-regulate. Basically, it just sounds like you’re buying time here to calm down. Is that correct?

39:03 JEREMY POLLACK: Yeah, and some sense, yeah. And especially if you can’t calm down, you should give yourself some time. Like don’t try to interact and resolve a conflict and communicate with someone if you’re charged. If you if you use techniques to self-regulate and calm yourself down and it’s not working, you just really want to fight. You really want to get heated. Just give yourself a pause, give yourself a permission to take some space before you engage in that conversation.

39:28 JEREMY POLLACK: That’s that’s number one. Absolutely. Once you’ve done that, then the rest of the principles that I kind of go over are actually applicable, but nothing is applicable until you’re regulated. Um, and then once you’re regulated, you can start going into things like, you know, how do you implement curiosity? Uh, curiosity is the opposite of certainty. And certainty is what often gets us in trouble during conflicts. I know I’m right. I know I’m the one who remembers things correctly.

39:53 JEREMY POLLACK: I know the right way to go. Uh, they’re wrong. They did things wrong. I did things right. Oh, that sort of thing. Um, if I can get out of my certainty and into a little bit more of curiosity where I’m a little bit more open-minded and open to someone else’s perspective and experience and history. Uh, that’s important. And it’s, you know, from a brain perspective. It’s it’s pretty true because our brains are so unique. Each of us has a very, you know, unique experiential thumbprint called a nervous system.

40:22 JEREMY POLLACK: And what I experience is very different from what you experience, even if we’re basically involved in the same event. So it’s important to remember that. Our perceptions and our experiences are very different, even if it’s the same stuff happening to us.

40:35 JIM BEACH: But as the boss, Jeremy, 8 people saw it one way. And so I have some certainty here that this employee needs to be reprimanded.

40:43 JEREMY POLLACK: Yeah, and and by the way, well, I’m not saying this is not to say that something did or didn’t happen. All it is to say that someone experienced something in a particular way. So if you’re the boss and you’re saying, well, this is the way it is where, hey, 8 other people saw this, and I know that this happened, even though that person said it didn’t happen or something like that. At the very least, to stay curious and open-minded to the experience of the other person, not to say that they’re right.

41:11 JEREMY POLLACK: But just what were they experiencing? What was their perception? How did they not experience what 8 other people did or what 8 other people saw? Staying open-minded and curious about that helps bridge the gap during conflict rather than just kind of coming in and saying, you’re wrong, you saw it wrong, you don’t remember it right, and here’s what to do next. It’s just a different type of approach when you’re trying to build peace.

41:34 JIM BEACH: All right. Not only is it going to work if I can pause myself and self-regulate. I guess why mediators are so popular these days.

41:42 JEREMY POLLACK: Yeah.

41:42 JIM BEACH: Yeah, in law and stuff.

41:44 JEREMY POLLACK: Yeah, exactly. Well, so, and mediation is effective really because, and, you know, only if the mediator is a trusted person. Um, it’s very tough to resolve a conflict as a mediator if you don’t have rapport and you don’t feel like a safe source to ground in by the parties that are involved. So it’s all about, it’s all about safety. And yes, if you, if you don’t self-regulate and you’re defensive, you come at someone, there’s no way for you to be curious and there’s no way for you to really be perceived as safe because you’re in a defensive mode.

42:15 JEREMY POLLACK: So it’s all about figuring out how to help people feel safe and so they can calm and then get into more effective techniques like curiosity and effective communication and collaboration.

42:24 JIM BEACH: Let me ask you this. If in a mediation, you feel like you lost at the end. And that you would rather just have gone to battle and had the trial. Is that a common outcome where one or both parties just feel like they got screwed? I did a mediation and I felt very much like it was, the ending was too ambiguous. I would rather have lost or won than being ambiguous in the end. Does that make sense?

42:48 JEREMY POLLACK: Yeah, that does make sense. I mean, I mean, well, so I’ll just say, I am not a, the mediation that we do is called transformative or relational mediation. We don’t do anything that’s legal or financial. And so I imagine, yes, that people go through mediations. And, and, and I’ve heard this too of like, you know, it’s either ambiguous or someone feels like they compromise too much. And I would say that that’s not a successful mediation if that’s, if that’s what happened.

43:14 JEREMY POLLACK: That sounds more like arbitration or something. For me, in mediation, it’s all about giving everybody a lot of agency, a lot of choice, a lot of power. And so if we walk away from the mediation and it’s successful, it means that everybody feels like they got their needs met, they got their concerns heard, and everybody has agreed on a path for that they all believe is at least worth trying.

43:36 JEREMY POLLACK: If one party, if one person thinks like, oh, man, I, you know, I didn’t get much, nobody heard me, uh, uh, we don’t have a clear path forward, or at least not one that I agree with, that’s not a su

43:53 JIM BEACH: All right, number three, are we up to number 3 on your list now? Curiosity and certainty number two?

43:59 JEREMY POLLACK: Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, we also, I also talk about just general, you know, communication, which is important, and one of the things that we talk, you know, in terms of brain science is just that communication, it happens in so many small little ways. It’s not just about the things we say, but it’s about how we say them, the style, it’s about the context in which we’re operating, what’s in the environment when we’re talking, what’s the history of this.

44:23 JEREMY POLLACK: So like there’s so many little nuances, body language positioning, facial expression, tone, volume. And that, so if we’re looking to build peace, I often like to think, you know, how do I build peace in very small ways? How do I think about this in a just a little step-by-step fashion? Even if it’s just next time I talk to this person, all I’m going to think about is changing the tone. Or all I’m going to think about is keeping my volume at a normal level and not raising my voice.

44:51 JEREMY POLLACK: That’s the only thing I’m going to focus on when I’m communicating. And then after that, if that gets easy, then I’ll start to work on one other little thing. And I just build peace in these very small ways. That’s, that’s sort of the, the idea of, uh, you know, using my self-awareness to to bridge the communication gap. Um, And the next piece is something that I talk about a lot even before, uh, this book, but really, uh, dive into the neuroscience of care and trust.

45:17 JEREMY POLLACK: Care is really, really important for conflict resolution and trust is a bigger concept and it’s a longer-term concept that’s important for conflict or transformation, which means rebuilding the relationship, rebuilding trust. But at the very least, we don’t, you know, what I kind of go over is, we don’t really need to, Parties often when they go into mediation or they go into conflict resolution or communication, they don’t necessarily trust each other.

45:40 JEREMY POLLACK: And it’s going to be a while before they trust each other, if at all, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t at least resolve some of the acute issues that are before us. What’s really necessary to resolve some of the acute issues, which is a conflict resolution process, is the idea that we actually care enough about one another’s needs or concerns to do so and to implement solutions that would make sense for everybody.

46:03 JEREMY POLLACK: If we don’t feel like, if I either don’t care about the other person’s needs or concerns, or I don’t feel like they care about mine, conflict resolution is going to be very, very difficult. So I, so that’s the sort of 4 principles, care is extremely important for resolution and trust is actually very important for transformation, and that’s more of a longer term strategy.

46:23 JIM BEACH: Okay. That makes sense. It does. It does. I’m really realizing that there’s some people that I just don’t want peace with because I’m sitting here. You’re talking about care and trust, and I’m thinking about one person, and I couldn’t care or trust that person ever, you know? Ever. And so how can I mediate or have any sort of peacebuilding, if I start off by acknowledging, I will never trust that person? I guess I can’t.

46:47 JEREMY POLLACK: Yeah, that’s a really good question. So here’s what I would say. There’s, there’s, um, well, first of all, I would ask, is, is there an imperative to stay in that relationship? And if you said yes, I…

46:58 JIM BEACH: Oh, okay.

46:59 JEREMY POLLACK: Okay, well then here’s here’s there’s a third dimension here of conflict processes. One is called conflict resolution, which is where we’re looking at acute issues. One is called conflict transformation, which you go over, and that’s looking at larger systemic issues and building trust over time. And there’s a third dimension called conflict management. Conflict management assumes or um, uh, uh, generally implies that there is a conflict that’s ongoing and it probably won’t be resolved because the parties either don’t care or trust each other and they don’t care to try to care trust each other.

47:29 JEREMY POLLACK: So conflict management, what that involves is now figuring out, okay, what are some of the negative consequences of this conflict? And can we figure out ways and get creative in figuring out ways to mitigate those consequences? Acknowledging that the conflict will remain, and that’s okay. We’re going to deal with the conflict and it’s just going to be ongoing. But what are some of the problems that it creates and how do we start to set boundaries or rules, regulations, or whatever it is, to mitigate some of the negative effects of that conflict.

47:58 JEREMY POLLACK: And especially some of the potential worst outcomes. So that’s what I would say in that case. And that happens, you know, that happens in international forums, that happens in interpersonal things. A lot of times it requires some rules or regulations agreements or even sometimes a third party that regulates the, I’ve dealt with this law with, you know, co-parents that have to kind of communicate and they’re never going to like each other and they have to just get a court order that regulates their communication or whatever it is.

48:26 JEREMY POLLACK: So what is it that’s going to help regulate and set boundaries and rules so that we mitigate the worst potential outcomes of the conflict. That’s that’s the third third route.

48:36 JIM BEACH: I feel like that’s where we are right now with Netanyahu and all of the international leaders, they just hate each other so much that there’s no chance of them having peace.

48:45 JEREMY POLLACK: Yeah. Yeah, unfortunately, yeah.

48:47 JIM BEACH: And there’s not a mediator like Jimmy Carter, in 79, who is love him or hate him, we have to give him kudos for being a great mediator in in 79 with Sadat and Begin, what was that other guy’s name? I can’t remember. I forgot.

49:00 JEREMY POLLACK: Anyway, um, Yeah, you know, I mean, I mean, you look at that, like, look at things like that where you’ve just got such a history of violence. Um, you’re, it’s going to be very, very tough. It’s going to, it’s going to take a lot of motivation to figure out how to transform that relationship and it’s going to take decades and it’s going to take transforming nervous systems. And it’s, you know, so it’s very tough. And so you’re right.

49:25 JEREMY POLLACK: Conflict management is an absolute imperative. And you’ll see the third party regulators and that sort of thing are things like the UN or maybe the US or, you know, actually the US is kind of getting involved at this point, but there’s they’re trying to mitigate the worst possible outcomes by using different types of international rules and laws and stuff like that. So that is where we’re at with a lot of that conflict is in the management side of things.

49:50 JIM BEACH: All right, let’s take bring this back to entrepreneurship. Is it always the boss who should be the mediator, the final voice? Is that how that plays out necessarily? Can I give that responsibility to someone else if I’m the boss?

50:02 JEREMY POLLACK: Yeah, I mean, I, it, well, I don’t think it, I don’t think it’s an always thing for sure. So you shouldn’t be always. But um, I would say that the burden of… If you’re in an authority position, you have power over people. That you have the burden of being the one to try to build peace. It shouldn’t be the other way around. So if you’re taking on authority or responsibility, it’s really your responsibility to stay humble and to stay curious and to try to resolve conflicts.

50:29 JEREMY POLLACK: If you don’t feel confident or competent enough to handle a particular conflict because it’s very complex or you don’t really understand the person’s perspective or you’re bothered and you’re defensive, whatever the reason, then I think it’s very important to bring in someone else, whether that’s someone from HR or another leader or maybe even an independent consultant or mediator. So it shouldn’t be an always thing. It should be really on a case by case basis, but in general, absolutely a leader should be the one who, uh, for lack of a better word, um, is the bigger person, essentially.

50:59 JIM BEACH: Right. That’s kind of the, that’s awesome. One of the characters says, well, I am not the bigger person. I think it’s Steve Martin says that.

51:08 JEREMY POLLACK: Yeah, sounds like a mess.

51:09 JIM BEACH: All right. We’ve got one or 2 more of these, uh, principles that we need to get out, and we talk about collaboration and new solutions real fast one at a time.

51:19 JEREMY POLLACK: Absolutely, yeah. Collaboration’s extremely important and uh, You know, it’s we’re sort of built, we are as human beings, our brains are built for collaborating. Everything we’ve achieved that’s just really great has been through collaborations or accumulations of knowledge. And so a lot of times we feel like we are naturally conflict-driven or naturally war-driven or something, but really our most natural state is in cooperative states. Most of the time we are cooperating with most people.

51:43 JEREMY POLLACK: It just, you know, we tend to focus on, you know, problems and conflicts and just go, oh, why is that always happening, but really most of our time is spent in cooperation. At least I hope so for most of us. And so it’s just kind of clearing away some of the, I don’t know, the cobwebs of conflict to get back to our natural, peaceful states and be able to collaborate with each other. And that’s really important. Collaboration really is just about, uh, making sure that everybody feels like they’re part of the process.

52:12 JEREMY POLLACK: So if we’re trying to resolve a conflict and build peace, it’s not me imposing solutions onto someone, but it’s bringing them in, asking them about their experience, getting them to collaborate on solutions that they can agree to as well as I, as well as me. So that’s the collaboration piece. And the last piece is really about getting creative and using our using knowledge of our brain to figure out how to think outside of our typical structures, our typical boxes.

52:37 JEREMY POLLACK: We often get stuck in these conflicts and we think, well, the only way that this is going to solve is by doing this, or if this person says this or does this. [Unclear phrase in audio/raw transcript.] Yeah, you can think it, you can think it, but maybe that’s probably not the best solution. But hey, you can write as many solutions down and kind of do a process of elimination of what’s going to work and what’s not going to work.

53:02 JEREMY POLLACK: Yeah, getting outside the typical structure of our solutions and the way that we’re perceiving a conflict is helps us get creative in problem solving.

53:10 JIM BEACH: Excellent. Jeremy, congratulations on the book. It is 5 star rated on that Amazon thing. How do we get a copy? Find out more, hire you to come help our organization, not kill each other and all that stuff, please.

53:22 JEREMY POLLACK: Well, easiest. Yeah, easiest way is to come to my website, pollockpeacebuilding.com. You can find us there and my books on there and you can also find it on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

53:32 JIM BEACH: Fantastic. Jeremy, thank you so much for being with us. Great information and I’m wired to be in a better place now. Thanks a lot.

53:40 JEREMY POLLACK: Hope so. Thanks, Jim. Appreciate it.

CLOSING
53:42 JIM BEACH: We are out of time for today, but you know what we do. That’s right. We come back. Be safe. Take care and go make a million dollars. Bye now.