In this episode of the Polestar Podcast by VELA Wealth, Jonny Imerman speaks with Kevin Parton about his journey with fighting cancer at 26 and how this battle has brought him to where he is today. They talked about Imerman Angels’ impact on the cancer community with their one-on-one free community support system that ensures nobody goes through cancer alone. They also discussed the incredible journey of CLŌZTALK, a B-Corp Certified T-shirt company co-founded by Jonny, specifically designed to help non-profit organizations grow by making comfortable ethically made shirts.
Podcast Highlights:
- The inspiring journey of Jonny Imerman, fighting and beating cancer and co-founding Imerman Angels to help the cancer community with ongoing support.
- The impact of Imerman Angels and how it’s helped approximately 38,000 people through their cancer journeys.
- Dive into the creation of CLŌZTALK; a B-Corp-certified T-shirt company Jonny co-founded with his brother Jeff, with the mission to help more nonprofit organizations share their message through meaningful and ethical T-shirts.
- Celebrating CLŌZTALK’s achievement of helping nearly 500 nonprofits get noticed.
- Jonny shares his advice on starting and building meaningful businesses and initiatives with passion at the center for ultimate success.
About the Guest – Jonny Imerman
Jonny Imerman fought testicular cancer for 2 years in the Detroit area in his 20’s. He had a loving family and friends, but he never met another young adult who beat the same cancer. Jonny and a group of like-minded advocates and supporters co-founded Imerman Angels in 2006, a nonprofit that introduces someone fighting cancer to another person who fought the same cancer. Since 2006, Imerman Angels has made over 34,000 matches in more than 110 countries and facilitated endless honest conversations about living with cancer.
In 2017, Jonny Imerman and his brother Jeff Imerman co-founded CLOZTALK to raise brand awareness for great nonprofits. CLOZTALK is an online clothing and apparel company that produces and sells high-quality, made-on-demand, charity-branded apparel for nonprofit causes at CLOZTALK.com. Reach out to Jonny through his LinkedIn page.
About the Host – Kevin Parson
Kevin Parton, CFP professional, specializes in personal and business financial planning, tax reduction, and estate planning. Kevin diligently concentrates on client education as a powerful strategy for building financial certainty. As no financial situation is the same, Kevin and his team monitor clients’ plans and implement personalized strategies to reduce their personal and corporate taxes, and protect their income, assets, and loved ones against the financial consequences of a serious illness, injury or death, ensuring clients maintain financial certainty and peace of mind. To read more, please visit the VELA team page.
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The Podcast Transcript:
Kevin Parton:
Hello, I’m Kevin Parton and I’m here on the Polestar Podcast with the wonderful Jonny Imerman. How are you doing today?
Jonny Imerman:
Hi buddy. I was going to say you’re wonderful! I think you’re more wonderful than I am. Great to see you. I love that you’re rocking the Imerman Angels’ T-shirt. Thank you, sir, we appreciate the love.
Kevin Parton:
We don’t record the videos here, just the audio. But I wore my Imerman Angel’s shirt to represent you and the organization. And I see you’ve got the CLŌZTALK T-shirt on! I know you walk around with that shirt on all the time.
I’d love the opportunity to share with our listeners a little bit about you. I’m going to try to do you some justice.
You and I met at the Summit event in California several years ago, you were a highlight of that trip, you were the center of everybody. I think you connected me with 100 other people, and it seems that that’s the impact you have on the lives of people around you and speaks volumes about who you are.
But back to your story. You started, at least as far as I know, all the way back when you were 26. You’ve got a foundation that you’ve built up, which is phenomenal. You’ve got a subsequent not-for-profit organization called CLŌZTALK, and that’s been your journey for years. There are so many more pieces in there that I want to get to, but I’m going to turn it over to you because it was great hearing the story from you. Tell me a little bit about yourself. Tell our listeners who are you. What is Imerman Angels? How did this all come to be?
Jonny Imerman:
Well, Kevin, you’re one of those great energy guys, it was a pleasure seeing you [at the conference]. We’re similar in that we love people and we’re inspired by what makes people tick and what makes them go. I mean, what’s more exciting than human beings that are alive? I think you and I both loved that event. It was like an idea festival, as I like to call it. But there are so many ideas and visionary people there, and it was just fun connecting with you and seeing all these other people and how everybody connects.
Our quick background is: that life takes crazy turns, and you sort of have to learn and do something with it that’s positive. That’s part of the goal. I was diagnosed with cancer at 26 in the Detroit area. I grew up 20 minutes from Canada, in Detroit, we’re right over the border. So even though I live in New York now, I have to come back to my core from time to time, which is a much calmer vibe. You were in New York not too long ago and you know that we got to escape because we need more of that good Detroit or Canadian vibes.
Kevin Parton:
And you were just in Vancouver!
Jonny Imerman:
Just in Vancouver, at the B-Corp conference at the Convention Center, it was incredible. So many good people and a lot of speakers were local Vancouver people, which was really cool. One of my favorites was the presentation by Sonia Strobel, Co-founder & CEO of Skipper Otto. She was incredible and she created an amazing B-Corp in Vancouver.
But my quick back story on how I got involved in social impact was that I got diagnosed with pretty advanced cancer at 26, and I went through chemo and surgeries. At the end of it, I thought, what’s the positive here? What’s the meaning? What’s the purpose?
A group of young survivors and I met randomly at the hospital, as we were all finishing our treatments. And we realized the positive was our story. We know a journey that we didn’t know before. We should be giving this back to somebody. Going through the same thing, and we should be a Big Brother or a Big Sister. We were scared, but now we’re on the other side of it! We know more. So, we created this thing, Imerman Angels, which you are beautifully representing today. I appreciate you, Kevin.
So, anyone, anywhere on the planet, any age, any cancer, any stage level, anyone living touched by cancer, we can introduce you to another person who’s had a similar journey and fought the same cancer, and let you know that hope it’s on the other end of it. Or reassure you that they’re thriving for 10-15 years with it because maybe it’s incurable. That’s okay too. But if you’re doing okay in 10-15 years, you’re living with the cancer, you still have a voice to be a Big Brother or Big Sister to somebody sick.
So, that’s the goal. It’s a one-on-one buddy system. No one fights cancer alone. There’s a survivor out there to help every person that’s sick with the same thing today, we just needed a system. A nonprofit that’s called Imerman Angels to match them up. So, everybody’s connected to somebody who’s been there. It’s always free.
Even if language is a problem, we have people who are interpreters who can help with interpretation. But we do have survivors in Switzerland who speak 7 languages. We always find a way to make sure people can connect and communicate.
Kevin Parton:
That’s awesome. I love that it’s grown over time and this has been your life’s work and continues to be. But where it is today, I was looking on your website, there are more than 38,000 people [about twice the seating capacity of Madison Square Garden] that have had a diagnosis and have been paired with someone who could advocate for them or speak with them. That doesn’t happen overnight and most certainly isn’t how it started. So, I’d love to hear that story, so what you had said, there were four of you who had got this idea of “how do we give back?”. Can you talk a little about the journey of taking that idea and turning it into what Imerman Angels is today?
Jonny Imerman:
Absolutely, Kevin. It’s always a team and I think anyone who’s a Co-Founder who says, “I built this”, well it’s never only one person. So, it was a group of us, and we were all in the hospital, and we all realized that every one of our stories if matched to the right person at the right time, could move a mountain for them emotionally. So, we all banded together, and we thought, let’s just keep recruiting survivors, and then it became this community of thinking, let’s get more survivors in this state, the next state, in Canada, in Europe, wherever. And we just started to snowball, saying “Hey, here’s what we’re doing, if you know any survivors, they should be in the network. They can be an Angel with Imerman Angels.” And the snowball just kept growing, and so now we’re a community of over 14,000 cancer survivors worldwide, and we have thousands of people over the years that we’ve matched. But the goal is that no one goes through cancer unaware. The goal is that people are aware that programs like this are free and that there are survivors out there who really want to help them.
Kevin Parton:
That’s beautiful. One of the things you said is a realization that no matter the support network that you often have, it can still feel very much like a lonely experience because if you’re not talking to someone who’s walked that walk before, even if the intentions are great, it’s a different feeling. I’m sure that makes it even more conflicting to try and have a conversation with someone who’s supporting you as family and say, “I still feel alone”. So, you’d look to fill that gap there for people. It is amazing.
One thing that I’m curious about is regarding the actual structural organization itself. How does it scale? You started as four people, and now you’re all over the world. How did you take it from level to level? I would imagine like any organization you have to have tiers of people and communication and technology. Were you prepared for all of that? Was it “fake it until you make it”, learn as you go? What has that journey been in allowing it to expand with the demand?
Jonny Imerman:
We’re still faking it until we make it. I feel like you just keep trying things and see what works. I think most entrepreneurs feel that way. When things work, you just keep going with it. But we learned at an early day though, Kevin, that if this person, for example, Amy in Michigan has stage 3 cervical cancer, and there is a woman in Toronto named Susie has beat Stage 3 cervical – if you put them in the same room, we knew the connection would be immediate. And both sides usually would reach back to us and say “Thank you, what a great introduction. Suzie’s incredible, her story was motivating. I know I can beat this. I know what’s coming.” And then Susie says, “Oh my gosh. I talked to Amy for two hours last night. What a similar story we have. It was great to be able to share what I know to help her. I feel so much better about myself.” And the takeaway is, that everybody benefits. It’s a mutually beneficial thing.
So, we held on to that. That was the only thing we knew when we made these intros. The feedback loop was short, and they would tell you how much it helped them, Kevin. So, we thought let’s just keep doing it. Since then, it’s kind of been faking it till we make it. Just keep building a structure.
We’ve gone through four different iterations of migrations of our tech system and we’re constantly updating the tech. Right now, we use Salesforce, and it works really well. I don’t think we’re going to have to do it again, but you never know. I’ve learned after doing four migrations that anything is possible.
We keep doing it, growing and recruiting volunteers, survivors, board members, and supporters – great people like you, who wear the T-shirt and talk about us, we know we help more people because of people like you. This way we try to keep touching as many people as we can, raising awareness, and then when things could be better, we’ll just keep trying to fix the system. But you know, it’s always hard. We always make mistakes. We hired a CEO who runs it, that’s a lot smarter than I am. Thank God! She is great.
And I’m still involved every day to some degree, I do a lot of external stuff. But the team really is running the day-to-day operations, and if you really care enough about the mission, you hire the best people who can make the most matches, quality matches, that are best for people. That’s really what it’s all about.
Kevin Parton:
Which is a very valid point. I spoke with someone the other day who talked about having worked themselves out of their position. They had a start-up, scaled it, and then recognized that their skill set didn’t take them beyond that. So, to what you just said there, that’s my next question. What exactly is your role now? What do you spend your time doing to represent the foundation?
Jonny Imerman:
Thanks for asking. Today it’s about mentoring people, which is why we started. I love talking to other younger guys going through testicular cancer or other cancers. I have one guy here in New York who has a totally different cancer. But we’re friends of friends and we just bonded, and he can get a mentor with Imerman Angels. I’m still going to talk to him, we became buddies quickly. So being that Big Brother is probably my favorite part of what we do. Also, as a board member on the team I am helping with advice, and helping open doors. I’m going down to Virginia in a little bit to do a speech at a group called Sentara Health. They have a group of hospitals all through Virginia and North Carolina, so I’ll take trips and I’ll do external work. The goal is to spread the word to the hospitals or give speeches to a company that really wants to have us in their system to be able to send employees when they get diagnosed. Anyone that wants to know more about what we do; I do external stuff like that. Then I flip them to the team and let them manage the operations of everything. So, it’s part-time and a lot of my time is now spent on the CLŌZTALK. We have about 500 nonprofits that we’re passionate about making their T-shirts like the one you’re wearing and making them cooler. And that’s what we do.
That’s why I was in Vancouver for the B-Corp conference last week. We learned with Imerman Angels is if people are talking about you, if you can bring up in the conversation a mission, an important nonprofit, it’s going to grow. Whoever’s listening, they’re going to know someone who needs it. So, maybe they want to be a donor, maybe they want to volunteer. But if people are talking about a nonprofit, they’re winning, and that’s our goal. Is just to create conversations about nonprofits through cooler logo apparel.
Kevin Parton:
Very interesting point. I remember when you were telling me about CLŌZTALK, one of the things you mentioned is there are a lot of organizations out there who will have shirts, but they’re not made well. I can tell you, having spent a ton of time volunteering last year for the Alzheimer’s Society, I did a big campaign for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, I’ve done charity runs, I had a closet full of the starchy cotton shirts that, of course, mean well, but I wouldn’t wear them outside of volunteering and I wear this Imerman Angel shirt all over the place because it’s so comfortable and it’s just that little gap, right? Go a little bit of the extra mile and make it something nice. To your point, now you’ve got people wandering around advertising something they’re proud of, and you can merge those two. People love wearing good, comfy clothes and they love to have something that they represent. Well, if you can merge them, what better fashion statement could it be? Instead of having a name brand or something else, you’ve got that not-for-profit organization, that you’re passionate about, that you can walk around representing.
Jonny Imerman:
You’re exactly right, KP. We’re going to wear clothes anyway; you’re going to the gym anyway. You can wear a plain shirt, or you can wear a logo for something bigger, that matters, helps other people, saves the next animal, or helps someone with cancer. There are so many ways to use this as a tool for good versus just wearing it.
In addition, I would say, we’re a B-Corp. So, our whole mission is to be more sustainable and more eco-conscious. So, making the T-shirt with four recycled water bottles in every shirt, a long-sleeved shirt, and a tank top, it’s not perfect, but it’s greener than a lot of the other stuff out there.
Kevin Parton:
So, let’s go back a little bit. What was the pivot that happened? You’re building Imerman Angels. Where did that idea come from of CLŌZTALK and how did that start?
Jonny Imerman:
It happened right from our nonprofit. We thought we had to get the word out for Imerman Angels to recruit more survivors. We wanted to raise awareness that “we’re here, survivors join us!”, because we needed survivors first, to get them plugged in to help somebody sick with cancer. You don’t want people who are sick with cancer coming to Imerman Angels and saying, “Do you know a survivor like me?” and respond with, “Well, we only have seven. We don’t have one like you.” So, we had to recruit first.
So that was our strategy. We were in Chicago at the time, I was there for about 15 years. The whole team and I came up with this idea: let’s make our T-shirts cooler so people are proud to wear them. They’re nice and comfortable, people wear them at the gym, at a Cubs game, walking their dog in the city, a city like Vancouver is great for it. I love that you wear it all the time, dense urban centers are the best because most people see it and then some people ask, and I think Canadians and people in the South in the US are the best, maybe the West Coast too, because they tend to ask, they’re just friendlier.
New York is a great city and I do love it, but a lot of people have their heads down, you know. So, it’s not as much. It’s a little harder here, no doubt about it. But the goal is to get people to talk about it. And that’s what we notice with Imerman Angles. If our friends wore them and people asked about it, all of a sudden, people were joining us and helping us, and survivors were finding us. Everything just started to roll. If we could get our friends to wear the T-shirt, then we said, let’s do this for all nonprofits. And we have about 500 nonprofits total that we partner with. They’re all US-based now, but one day we, of course, want to be in other countries like Canada and Europe and so forth.
Kevin Parton:
That’s where this conversation started, at least around the shirts, is I was looking to get some great comfy Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada shirts, and you’re not in Canada yet, so I got an Imerman Angels shirt.
Where is the future for CLŌZTALK? We talk about big visions and missions. What do the next 10 years look like in your mind for CLŌZTALK and where it grow?
Jonny Imerman:
We’d love to be worldwide. We would love to have nonprofits everywhere to be able to have a page with us that doesn’t cost them any money. We don’t require them to spend money or do anything. Most of them see this as value. So, they take our page that we build for them, our designs, and the whole system of making them on demand and drop-shipping. But it’s up to them how they want to promote it when they want to promote it. We realize every nonprofit is different and we never want to be pushy with how they do it, but we do believe if they see the value in getting their logo on more ambassadors and more bodies, their awareness is going to grow, and their impact is going to grow.
Kevin Parton:
How do you do that? How are you finding success? You’ve got 500 organizations. That’s no small feat, but how do you then expand outside of the US and start to get more global reach?
Jonny Imerman:
We’ve had some Canadian companies reach out to us, which is great. But I think a lot of it is going to be us reaching out to them saying, “Hey, we’re able to be in Canada now, we’re able to be in Europe now. We can build you a page.” We’re going to have a lot to figure out on our end because of logistics and shipping internationally. There are more costs on that because we shipped from Milwaukee, WI, which is very close to Canada, and that’s where everything comes out of and it’s made on demand.
And then there’s the vetting process. We are very clear on our website that every one of our nonprofits is a vetted 501(C), so they’re all in good standing with the government. And every country has different levels of what you need to be a registered nonprofit. So, we’re going to have to figure out how all that works. We want people to come to our site and trust that any nonprofit they find on CLŌZTALK is going to be vetted and legitimate and the money is going to the right place and that it follows the traditional norms of nonprofits and that it’s not anything that they’re going to regret supporting. We want people to trust every brand and nonprofit that’s on our site.
Kevin Parton:
All right. Well, I mean, Imerman Angels is great, and I love hearing that story, and we’ll get back to that in a minute. And CLŌZTALK is awesome, but I do want to focus on you a little bit and hear more about your journey. So, at 26 years old, to have a diagnosis, a serious one, and to go through two years of treatment, I think it’s safe to say that changed the trajectory of your life.
Jonny Imerman:
It really did change me in every way. Like I quit my corporate job. I used to work in commercial real estate in Detroit. I moved from Detroit to Chicago. I was there for 15 years, I’m so glad I did. It was an incredible journey there, I started something I never thought I would. Never thought I’d be a co-founder of an organization; I would have been too scared to do anything like this. But then you go through cancer and you’re like, wait, I could die. Or I could start this, and I still won’t die. Even if it fails. It’s not that bad. Everything seemed in perspective to be not that scary anymore. I think it’s very common for young adults who go through cancer, or any trauma, it can be a lot of different traumas. But your tolerance for risk and doing what you love really changes. They both go up a lot. People can do what they love because they realize life is not forever. You’re able to tolerate more risk because I’m not going to die if this whole idea turns out to be a dream that just can’t really work. And so, I changed a lot. I was also dating someone for a while. We broke up. Great girl. She’s now married, lives in Detroit, and has three kids. But, you know, it wasn’t the right girl.
Everything sort of became clear in my mind what I wanted out of life at that time, and I think a lot of us as young adult survivors, feel if you go through it younger, it’s actually better because you have more of your life to live differently and enlightened. At least we feel we have more percent of our life to live a little more grateful.
Kevin Parton:
I’m kind of glad you used the term better because I was going to ask if there’s a silver lining in it. You talked about realizing there’s nothing as grave as death and so you can be a founder, you can start something. There are many people who don’t have a cancer diagnosis, who don’t have a near-death experience and who live their lives in perpetual fear of whatever the biggest thing is that could happen to them, relatively speaking. So, when you said it’s better that it happened younger, and well, you’ve had almost half your life now, which still baffles me. If anyone looks you up and sees how good you look, they’ll realize that what you’ve done for your body since 26 years old, is astounding. You look younger than me and have more energy than five of me.
Jonny Imerman:
No, listen, you’re taller, faster, and stronger. Have better hair than I do!
Kevin Parton:
So, what would the lesson be to take away from you? And I won’t put words in your mouth but having gone through this diagnosis and the experience you’ve had for the last 20 years, talking to anybody who’s maybe feeling stuck or is fearful of making a decision because that’s too scary for them at this point in their life. What would you tell them?
Jonny Imerman:
One of my favorite words to answer this question, Kevin, is the word: Connect. I think you just got to connect when you’re going through life’s hard times. Connect with other people who are further down the road, maybe a mentor, other founders, or other creators, and learn what they’re about. Explore what that’s like and meet other people that have been through similar traumas or journeys, but that are just further along. I’m such a believer in the power of humans connecting where everybody benefits. Because at some points in life, when we were younger for example, we were mentees, we needed to learn and there are people further along that we connect with to figure out our trail.
As you get older, you realize being the mentor feels equally as good, maybe even better in some situations. Where you can give knowledge back and steer the younger or newer people to something better. And so, when you’re in doubt or there’s a trauma, or you’re considering making a big life change, I think it’s all about having conversations and connecting with other similar people who’ve had similar journeys and learning from them.
And a lot of the time doing this gives you the courage if you want to be a co-founder, or whatever it is you want to pursue. It sometimes gives you courage to know that can be done and you realize “Whoa, look at all these other people, look what they’ve built. Maybe this is possible?”
I was definitely scared when we started Imerman Angels and I was scared years again when I co-founded CLŌZTALK because I thought, it was scary again and I had to get myself back in a mindset that in some ways I’d forgotten. And I realized when I was sick, I wasn’t scared. But that fear of starting something new can still creep back in over all the years just because you’re separated from it. It had been 22 years since 2001 when I was diagnosed. Being a Co-Founder I think is scary, at least for me it is. But I’m so glad I’m doing it. It’s not for everyone, it’s scary. There are some people out there that love that risk right away. But I think the goal in life is if you’re able to do what you love and overcome your fears, that’s the greatest life because you get to wake up every day and do what you want to be doing. I think life is too short to live in other ways unless you have to for other reasons, but I try not to live that life.
Kevin Parton:
You’re right. and that advice seems so much more impactful coming from someone who’s had a serious cancer diagnosis like you’ve had. That internal dialogue with yourself of “What if this is it?” and then you made the choice to start two separate organizations and now you travel the world, you see so many things, and that advice of do what you love and follow that passion is so important. And you’re a living example, you did two things that maybe you weren’t phenomenal at the beginning…
Jonny Imerman:
I’m still pretty bad at it. I found a good team. That’s the key. You have to be bad at some things and own that you’re bad at things sometimes, as a co-founder. I think we are all bad at the beginning because we’ve never done this before, it’s hard.
Kevin Parton:
A lot of our listeners are entrepreneurs and are also philanthropic and want to give back or maybe start their own foundation, and you’ve kind of done both. You’ve created a not-for-profit foundation, and you now have another organization. For someone who’s looking to start a start-up or found a company, what’s the biggest takeaway you could give them at that stage of branching out and starting something new?
Jonny Imerman:
The number one thing I tell people before you ever try to be a co-founder or build something is you have to pick the right idea. You have to love the idea. I don’t mean for like a week or a month or even 6 months, it should be around a year. You got to think about this idea for about a year and then a year later, two years later, if you’re still passionate about that idea after you’ve looked at other ideas and still feel like “No, I’m coming back to this idea”. That’s how you know that it’s the one for you. Because there are many founders out there, unfortunately, where it’s a flash in the pan, I can be like that. I get too excited about an idea, but two weeks later, you realize I like this other idea better.
It has to be an idea that you are more passionate about than anything else and you have to also understand that you’re going to be working – which is great, again, if you picked the right idea – but you’ll be working seven days a week, all the time. And I’m so impressed with people like you Kevin. I’m single, I don’t have any kids. I’m impressed Kevin, that you’re married, have children, run a company, take care of the family. I mean, I think it’s so hard to do without those things, but for people like you who do that in addition to having a life outside of work, and still get it all done, I give big props. Because when you’re starting something especially, you got to be all in and the ones who can juggle all of it, those are much bigger people than me. I’ve never had to do that part. And you want to be a great dad, involved, you’re still a super healthy guy, and you go to the gym. I mean getting it all in and being a co-founder is tough. You better love the idea because it’s going to be hard to get it all in, but you can do it, again, if you pick the right idea.
Kevin Parton:
That’s great advice. It reminds me of the story of how sometimes you feel like your time is fully taken up. The image I have in mind is a glass jar with rocks in it, and you can’t fit any more rocks in it, so you try to pour some sand in, and then you think it’s full and you pour some water in. So, you’re as busy as you are until something else comes along and fills your cup further. I thought I was busy till I had kids, then I thought I was busy until I owned the business. But you just have to grow with it. And what jumps to mind is you must be willing to do whatever it takes. Rarely will you have to do everything that you could conceive of. But if you’re willing to do whatever it takes to make that special thing succeed, and if you’ve got the passion for it, then you’ll be able to take it as far as it needs to go.
Jonny Imerman:
How did you know that this business was the right one for you? Was that a quick decision? Did you take your time? How did that whole process happen?
Kevin Parton:
It took 14 years to get my feet wet. Where I was working before, there was a little bit of entrepreneurship but not to the extent that I think I learned I loved, but it was still in the finance industry. My passion for finance came from my upbringing and seeing how money is at the epicenter of everyone’s life in different ways. It means different things to different people, and there’s a psychological component to it and it just fascinated me. And there isn’t a ton of education out there about it in the standard avenues. And one of my core values is leadership and another core value is education. So, this profession offers me an opportunity to lead by example, to lead in life, and to educate.
But then to leave where I was before and become a partner in an independent financial wealth management firm and build that, that scratched another itch as well. Because the things that I think are most important in this industry, to the average person, and to business owners; which being one myself makes it easier to help. I can have the largest impact on the environment I am in now. It’s been a labor of love. I need to educate, it’s something that I want to do, and I have been willing to do whatever it takes.
You can talk to my wife about it. We still negotiate when I should be checking emails and replying to things. There isn’t necessarily an off switch. And I walk that line trying to make sure that it’s not to the detriment of my mental health. But when you don’t feel like something is work because it’s the only thing you could see yourself doing, then it just becomes this constant feeling of as long as I’m giving my attention to everything else that’s important; as long as my daughters and I get to connect and I can create a life with them, as long as my wife and I can connect, as long as I get to spend “me time”. Then it doesn’t feel like I’m punching in and punching out of a job. It’s just the ebbs and flows.
So, I think you’re right. Everything is a spectrum and at some points in my day or the week I spend more time with my kids, there are other times when I spend a lot more time doing work-related things, but you have to be passionate for all that to make sense.
Jonny Imerman:
That is a great answer and I love how you’ve been at this for 14 years. You’re the perfect example of knowing what you were getting into and making sure it was something you love. You gradually had the buildup and then ultimately made the decisions. That to me is a well-thought business owner where it wasn’t rash because it’s really easy to think, this idea is cool, then two weeks later, you’re jumping for it. And I’ve unfortunately seen too many friends of mine do that and then six or eight months later, they shut down and it’s not because it wasn’t going to work, it’s because they didn’t love it enough.
Kevin Parton:
Well, I could talk to you literally forever, and I hope that there’s not nearly as much time in between. I want to end with one question because purpose has come up a lot over the course of this conversation. You may have had more time to think about this, and if not, then Jonny on the spot; when you are gone, what do you hope people remember most about you?
Jonny Imerman:
Thanks for the question and I’d love to hear your answer to that too. When I’m gone, I hope that the people served by my friends, my family and the people that co-founded these social impact movements have built. I hope that they continue to get help. To me, that’s what it’s all about. You can take out any one single piece of the wheel, but the wheel keeps turning. Hopefully, these missions with CLŌZTALK and Imerman Angels are so much bigger than any one person, and that’s the goal. And that’s how I hope that I’ll be remembered. Let me ask you the same question. It’s a good question.
Kevin Parton:
I’ve done a lot of reflecting on something like this over the last little bit. So maybe it’s unfair that I asked you the question, but six months ago I would have answered that question based on what I wanted people’s opinions of me to be and I heard somebody say something recently where they said, “if they were to be remembered, it was to be unapologetically themselves”. I don’t necessarily know exactly what I’m going to love to do in five, ten, or twenty years, but when I’m gone, if someone was to remember me by saying, “he cared immensely about the things that he cared about, and he was more concerned with pursuing those than making everybody happy”. I think that was that would be a life well.
Jonny Imerman:
Well said. It’s just authentic, right, and pure. You’re a good person. Your intentions are pure, Kevin. I can tell in the first 3 minutes we hung out. But you just keep doing you and be unapologetic about it. I think that’s beautiful.
Kevin Parton:
Jonny, thank you so much for taking the time to share your story. You’re doing amazing things for people who deserve it so much. Take care and I’ll catch you soon.
Jonny Imerman:
You too, keep spreading the love and I’ll be back there in Vancouver soon. L
Take care, brother. Stay well, hug your kids. Thanks, buddy.
Kevin Parton:
Thank you. Cheers.