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This is Reinamoto's Podcast, The Creative Mindset.
Welcome to The Creative Mindset, a podcast about the art of building a career through
conversations with the world's leading practitioners of creativity. It's an intimate
journey on how they got started, their turning points, failures, and tips on work and life.
I am your host, Reinamoto, the founding partner of I&CO, a global innovation firm based in New
York and Tokyo. Today's episode is part two of my conversation with Cindy Gallop,
the founder and CEO of MakeLoveNotPorn. In the last episode, we talked about how she built her
career in advertising. In this episode, we talk about her midlife crisis, how she found her
conviction to spend the rest of her life, and how she's designing her own system. So let's get
started. So I want to turn to the current chapter of your career, which is MakeLoveNotPorn. Tell us
a little bit about, I know the backstory of, you know, how you got into it when you were,
I think it was one of the pitches that you were working on BBH, that you came across younger men
and what their patterns were. Oh, right. No, no, no, it was. Okay. So yeah, tell us a quick story
about the origin of it. So for our audience, I have a business, MakeLoveNotPorn, that is a complete
and total accident because I never consciously, intentionally set out to do anything. I very
bizarrely find myself doing now. And the thing about this is that everything in my life and
career has always happened by accident. I've never consciously planned anything. And so I date
younger men, but that happened by accident because 20 years ago, when I was running BBH New York, we
were asked to pitch for an online dating brand. It was called UDate. It had been started in the UK
and it wanted to launch in the U.S. and it put its business out to pitch with a group of agencies.
And, you know, as you know, Ray, in our industry, when you pitch for a client's business,
you have to experience the client's product and the entire competitive landscape. So we all had
to online date. And this was 20 years ago and none of us ever had, because back then online dating,
it wasn't a thing, you know. So the rest of my pitch team at BBH, they were all married,
you know, living with, dating. They all went online as fake personas, you know, created
identities on these sites. I was single. I thought, I have to do this for business reasons. Why not do
it for real? You know, why not find out what this whole online thing is all about? So I posted my
profile on a bunch of sites, very honest about everything, including my age, got an avalanche
of responses, very good for the ego. But much to my surprise, because I had not considered this
a dating strategy, 75% of those responses were from much younger men. And I suddenly realized
that I was every young guy's fantasy, you know. So you were in your 40s?
Yes. I was 42 at the time. Okay. You know, tried to build a woman, high-flying career,
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didn't want to settle down, didn't want to get married, never want to get married, didn't want
children, never wanted children. I just wanted to have some fun, which, you know, I just started
an advertising agency. I was working 24-7, fun was totally not happening, you know. And so,
you know, I thought, gosh, had not identified the strategy, it works for me. So that's how I began
dating younger men, which I've been doing very happily ever since. But then, so how MakeLoveNotPorn
came about was, I basically began realizing through dating younger men, and, you know,
this realization really crystallized about 15 years ago, I began realizing that I was encountering
what happens when two things converge. And I stress the dual convergence because most people
think it's only one thing. I realized that I was experiencing what happens when today's
total freedom of access to hardcore porn online meets our society's equally total reluctance to
talk openly and honestly about sex. When those two factors converge, porn becomes sex education by
default in not a good way. And so I found myself encountering a number of sexual behavioral memes
in bed. I went, well, I know where that behavior is coming from. I thought, gosh, if I'm experiencing
this, other people must be as well. I didn't know that because 15 years ago, no one was talking
about this. No one's writing about it. This was me in isolation, as, as you know, a naturally
action oriented person going, I'm going to do something about this. So 13 years ago, I put up
on no money, a tiny clunky website at makelovenotporn.com, pure as little side venture, that in its
original iteration was just copy. You know, the construct was porn world versus real world. Here's
what happens in the porn world. Here's what really happens in the real world. I launched Make Love Not
Porn at the TED conference in 2009. I became the only TED speaker to say the words come on my face
on the TED stage, six times in succession. The talk went viral as a result, and it drove this
extraordinary global response to my tiny website that I had never anticipated. Thousands of people
wrote to me from every single country in the world, young and old, male and female, straight
and gay, pouring their hearts out, telling me things about their sex lives and their porn watching
habits they'd never told anyone before. And I realized I'd uncovered a huge global social issue.
And so that was the point at which went, oh, my God, I now have a personal responsibility.
I have to take Make Love Not Porn forwards in a way that will make it much more far reaching,
helpful and effective. But I also saw an opportunity to do what I believe in very strongly,
which is that the future of business is doing good and making money simultaneously.
I saw the opportunity for a big business solution to this huge, untapped global need.
And I use the word big advisedly, Ray, because even then, 13 years ago at concept stage, I knew
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if I wanted to counter the global impact of porn as default sex ed, I would have to come up with
something that at least had the potential one day to be just as mass, just as mainstream and just as
all pervasive in our society as porn currently is. So thinking big right from the get go.
So what I decided to do was, I always emphasize that Make Love Not Porn is not anti-porn because
the issue is not porn. The issue is that we don't talk about sex in the real world.
If we did, amongst many benefits, people would be able to bring a real world mindset
when they view what is simply performative produced entertainment.
And so our tagline at Make Love Not Porn is we are pro-sex, pro-porn, pro-knowing the difference.
And our mission is one thing only, which is to help make it easier for every single person in
the world to talk openly and honestly about sex. And so given this mission, I decided very simply
to take every dynamic in social media and apply them to this one area of universal human experience,
no other social network platform will allow, in order to socialize sex and to make real world
sex and talking about it socially acceptable and therefore ultimately just as socially shareable
as anything else we share on social media. And so I turned Make Love Not Porn into the world's
first and only user generated, entirely human curated social sex video sharing platform.
So we are what Facebook would be if it allowed you to socially, sexually self-express,
which it sadly doesn't. If porn is the Hollywood blockbuster movie,
Make Love Not Porn is the badly needed documentary. We are the only window onto the
funny, messy, loving, wonderful, comical, awkward, hilarious sex we all have in the real world.
We are socializing sex, making it easier for everyone to talk about, to promote consent,
communication, good sexual values and good sexual behavior. And therefore we are literally
sex education through real world demonstration. We call ourselves the social sex revolution.
The revolutionary part is not the sex, it's the fact we're making it social.
And being able to talk about it openly without any hesitation.
No shame, embarrassment, guilt. Because I said Make Love Not Porn was an accident, Ray,
but what is no accident is that my background is 27 years working in advertising.
Because I know therefore, you know, I've spent 27 years working in the business of communication.
I know that everything great in life and business is born out of great communication.
Sex is no different. Great sex is born out of great communication.
Can't agree more. A few more last questions.
No last questions because I want to talk about the relationship Make Love Not Porn has with Japan.
Oh, yes, please do.
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And it's very important.
Please, please, please.
Especially because, you know, part of this story has not been told publicly.
And so you have the opportunity on your podcast, Ray.
Because Japan has played a very big role in A, my coming up with a concept for Make Love Not Porn
and B, in what I decided to do.
So for the benefit of our listeners, when I was working at BBH Singapore,
I ran our Levi's Asia Pacific business across the region.
And we also won the Levi's Japan business.
And so I commuted to Tokyo very regularly from Singapore.
So the upshot being that I spent a lot of time in Japanese hotel rooms.
And therefore, I spent a lot of time watching Japanese porn.
And so, you know, I thought, right.
OK, Japan needs what I'm what I want to do with Make Love Not Porn.
So I talked to my Japanese colleagues at Hakehodo about it.
And they went, oh, my God, yes, Japan needs this.
You know, I talked to my Japanese friends.
I said, I would love to put up a Japanese version of this porn world versus real world site.
And, you know, I was working with some amazing, you know, digital
people. But it's funny how much they went, oh, silly son, don't know about that.
But, you know, one of these very nice gentlemen who went, well,
no, you can't talk about it at all.
He said, I know a Japanese woman.
And by the way, again, so long ago, I sadly forgotten her name.
And I must look it up.
He said she used to work as a creative in, I think, Hakehodo.
And she had very unusually for a Japanese woman, she'd started her own digital agency.
And he said she might be open to working with you on this.
So he introduced me to her.
And I said, you know, this is what I'm doing.
And I'm going to be in Tokyo for Ad Tech Tokyo.
I'd love to talk to you.
So she and I met up in Tokyo.
And she said, my agency is very small.
You know, I have three digital developers I'm working with.
They're all men.
And I work with my best friend, who is a woman, who is also our office manager.
And she said, so my best friend doesn't speak English.
And so I showed her your site.
And I translated it for her.
And she said, and then I realized how MakeLoveNotPorn is supposed to work.
Because she said, this woman is my best and dearest friend.
We've known each other since kindergarten.
And yet, we have never, ever talked about sex.
And she said, off the back of looking at your website together,
we had this amazing conversation about sex.
And she said, I suddenly realized how what you're doing is designed to work.
And I was thrilled.
And so I said to her, that's fantastic.
I want to raise funding.
And when I have the funding, I would love to commission you to do a Japanese version.
Now, unfortunately, it then took me two years to raise seed funding for MakeLoveNotPorn.tv.
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And so I had to kind of backburn the idea of doing a Japanese version.
But I knew how badly Japan needs MakeLoveNotPorn.
So fast forward to the summer of, and I can't remember exactly which year this was,
a number of years ago.
But Kiko Tsuyama, who is a brilliant Japanese journalist who's based here in New York,
reached out and asked to interview me for Era, the Asahi Shunbun magazine.
I don't think it's still being published.
And I said, yes, of course.
So she came and interviewed me about MakeLoveNotPorn.
And I said to her, can you please write into this interview
that I am looking for Japanese investors to fund the launch of MakeLoveNotPorn Japan?
Because Japan really needs this.
And I know it would be very successful.
And I talked to a lot of people who really, really got it.
But I need funding.
And I need partners.
So she wrote this into an interview.
It ran in the summer of that year.
And a few weeks later, I got an email from somebody at a company in Japan.
And this person said, we've seen your interview.
We're very interested.
We'd like to propose a joint venture.
We will fund the launch of MakeLoveNotPorn Japan in return for 50% of the revenue.
And I went, bloody hell, I'm taking that call.
So I did a phone call.
And this company was, and I think it's fine to talk about this now.
But this company was called Yappa.
It was a digital, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And what was really interesting, Ray, was how they'd come to call me.
Because it turned out that that interview had been read
by one of Japan's billionaires, a gentleman who sadly is no longer with us,
because he passed away a few years ago.
But this is a number of years ago.
And he said to them, this woman has a very interesting idea
that the Japanese people do not understand yet.
He said, I want to fund it, make it happen.
And the reason he called Yappa was because the team there spoke English.
But they were also a digital publishing company.
And so they had the infrastructure and the ability
to partner to help launch Make Love Not War in Japan.
And so we had this conversation on the phone.
And obviously, I wasn't going to embark on anything like this
without seeing the whites of their eyes.
So I said, we need to meet.
And so they very kindly covered the cost of flying me to Tokyo from Sydney, I think it was.
And they absolutely saw the potential.
So this conversation went extremely well.
And so then they said, this is really interesting.
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They said, OK, we are willing to do this joint venture deal with you on one condition.
And it was a very good condition.
They said to me, you have to find the Japanese version of you.
Interesting.
Because they said, we'll absolutely bring you over to Japan.
We'll put you on TV shows and whatever.
But you need to find the Japanese Cindy Gallop,
who can be the front person of Make Love Not Porn in Japan.
And they were absolutely right.
And so I went, OK.
So I then reached out to my network.
And actually, there were a number of potential Cindy Gallops in Japan.
There absolutely are women like me.
And so we were exploring these options.
So one day, we were having this conversation.
Everything was forging ahead.
Then the next day, I got an email which was headed sudden change of plan.
And they basically said, I'm terribly sorry.
We won't be progressing with this after all.
And they didn't really give a reason.
What I subsequently discovered was that the reason we didn't progress was because
Yosuke Mizawa's company, Zozo, had made an offer to acquire Yappa.
And in that scenario, the last thing you're going to be doing is launching an adult content
venture, especially with due diligence and all of that.
Although, I have to tell you, that is why I applied to Mizawa-san's Dear Moon project.
Right, right, yeah.
So I created an application.
I got through several stages of the application process through to the video stage.
Because the point I made was, you know, as we embark on space exploration,
we're going to be having sex in space.
And when we do that, we need to ensure that, you know, good sexual values
and good sexual behavior happening.
And therefore, we need to make space love, not porn.
And that was why I deserved a place on that rocket ship.
That is amazing.
You know, I'll send you my video after this, so you can take a look at it.
I love that, yeah, yeah.
But anyway, you know, so what I do have now is, I mean, the thing that came out of it is,
I do have a template on how to launch make love, not porn in Japan.
Okay.
And for any Japanese investor or-
So close.
No, no, it was that close.
So ever since then, I am still looking for Japanese investors and partners
who get the enormous potential in Japan.
Let me see if and how I may be able to help.
Yeah.
That'd be fantastic.
I have, my network, you know, it's not that big, but still, it's something.
So I'd love to be able to help.
And honestly, make love, not porn only gets more relevant with every passing year, unfortunately.
Yeah, definitely, definitely.
Because also, so on one of my trips to Japan, I met with an, oh my God,
I'm now blanking on his name, a member of the Tokyo parliament.
And, you know, I said to him, make love, not porn is the answer
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to the plunging Japanese birth rate.
Yes.
The government needs to fund us.
You know, and he agreed, I'll look up his name because we had a great meeting.
And he said he would absolutely see if he could bring it up in parliament.
I don't think he ever managed to.
But honestly, I've been blown away, Ray, by the number of people I've spoken to
in Japan who really get it.
And because, you know, I use technology to make good things happen in the real world.
Make love, porn is all about, you know, improving communication around sex
to improve your sexual relationship, to improve your relationship.
And that is what Japanese people really, really need.
Cool.
So just to wrap up, I really appreciate you taking the time to explain a lot of other
things in your career.
But, you know, this backstory about make love, not porn.
Have you ever told this publicly?
I personally haven't heard this specific part of it.
The make love, not porn, Japan story?
No, never.
Yeah?
No.
Can we use it?
Yes, of course you can.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because it's all ancient history.
You know, yeah, yeah.
No, no, you absolutely can.
All right.
So just to wrap up the interview, one of the last questions that I wanted to ask was,
you know, what advice do you have for somebody who's starting their career?
But I want to be a bit more specific.
If you were to tell a young professional starting, you know, let's say in the early 20s,
what are the, say, two or three skills that helped you in your career?
And given that it's not, you know, 1985, but it's 2022, say somebody who's 22, 23, 24,
what are the two or three specific skills that you would advise them to have or to cultivate?
Right.
Okay.
So my answer to that is not going to be skills, but actions.
Okay.
And again, I want to ground this very firmly in the context of Japan, Ray, because, you know,
when you ask if creativity can be learned, I absolutely believe it can.
And I believe there is a huge appetite in Japan and especially amongst Japanese women
to really throw off the constraints and let that creativity flourish.
And I want to share with you and you in the audience
an anecdote that made a profound impression on me at the time.
So this was something I think like 11 years ago.
I was speaking at the iMedia Summit in Japan in Okinawa.
And I was talking about the future of advertising.
And I was talking about creativity and how to do great work and so on to an audience of
Japanese brands and clients as well as agencies.
And I recall unsurprisingly, I was the only woman on the stage.
You know, all the other speakers are male.
Anyway, so I gave a talk and you've seen me speak in the past.
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And afterwards, it was time to break for lunch.
And I was standing in the line for the buffet.
And a young Japanese woman came up to me.
Bear in mind, this is 11 years ago, Ray.
And her English was not very good, which made what she said even more touching.
She said to me, please, I want to be you.
Please tell me, how can I be you?
Oh, my God, Ray.
I was so moved because this was a young Japanese woman
who had just seen a Western looking woman on stage
operating in ways that no Japanese woman was encouraged to, being really outspoken,
really projecting, articulating my own views, being provocative, being challenging.
And her response to that was, I want to be you.
And trust me, there are a lot of Japanese women who want to be me.
So my advice to them, and this advice applies to
actually young Japanese men as well, to be perfectly honest,
because I believe there are a lot of much more right-minded
Japanese men in Gen Z and millennials.
Because this is advice that I've been giving to young people,
in any industry, by the way.
But ever since, I was speaking at Cannes Lions,
something like, again, gosh, eight years ago.
And in the Q&A session, a young woman said to me,
Cindy, what is the single piece of advice
you would give a young person going into advertising today?
And I said, don't.
And then I said, let me explain what I mean by that.
Don't go into advertising to go into advertising.
Instead, go into advertising to make what you want to happen, happen.
So I said to her, what I'm now going to say in response to your question, Ray,
which is, for any young person that started their careers,
here's what I want you to do.
Go into your industry, whatever it is,
because this advice applies to any industry, not just creative industries.
OK, go into your industry, absolutely take a job at whatever company
is lucky enough to employ you.
And then take a long, hard look around you at your industry
and identify what you think is missing that should be there.
Use your fresh perspective, your objective lens as someone new into the industry
to identify what you would absolutely love to have in the industry that no one's started,
what you think should be there that you could bring to the table, and then start that.
Honestly, if you want to carve out a really happy, fulfilling, creative path for yourself,
you're not going to do it within the system.
You do it by designing your own system.
And so absolutely identify that opportunity.
And let me tell you that through the female lens,
there is so much opportunity in every Japanese industry.
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OK, and then start that for a couple of reasons.
So when I say encourage people to do this, I always say start your own industry.
And I actually mean start your own business.
But I deliberately articulate like that because when you start your own business,
you can make it work any way you want it to.
You can design it around the work-life balance you want,
how you think you can be most creative.
When you design it to work the way you want it to,
you are starting the industry we all want to work in.
And the second reason I tell young people to do this is
the giant companies that dominate our industry,
and obviously in Japan, those are Dentsu and Hakuhoto,
and all around the world, the big global companies,
honestly, they find it really hard to innovate and disrupt
because they are locked into that old world order way of thinking about things.
But what they can do is they can acquire innovation and disruption.
So when you start your own industry, start your own business,
around this huge opportunity in our industry or any industry
that you can identify through your fresh lens, especially if it's female,
and I can guarantee you that if you want this to exist,
there are millions of other people who want it too as well
and will pay good money to use it,
all you have to do is operate that business
for a relatively short period of time
before giant holding company X buys it from you
for an absolute gun-on-fucking-shit ton of money.
And that is the quickest path to wealth creation in any industry.
This was part two of my conversation with Cindy Gallop,
the founder and the CEO of Nate Glavner Porn.
Slightly different from the first part of my conversation with her,
this one focused on the second chapter of her life, of her career.
And there were three key takeaways that I think are useful to the audience,
but also I, as somebody who's in the second half of my career,
I took away as takeaways as well as hints of my own career moving forward.
So three key takeaways from my conversation with Cindy.
Key takeaway number one, midlife crisis is real, don't panic.
Key takeaway number two, first find your calling
and then find your conviction to spend the rest of your life.
Key takeaway number three, if you want to find happiness, design your own system.
Number one, midlife crisis is real, don't panic.
Having gone through a midlife crisis myself,
I actually didn't know when I was in my 20s and 30s
that I would actually face a midlife crisis.
In my mid 30s and late 30s, that's when I started to feel anxious about my future
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and I didn't really know what to do.
And I started to look for my next opportunity
and eventually I decided to start my own company
and that I realized in hindsight was a way to deal with my midlife crisis.
Looking around, people in their 30s and people in their 40s,
a lot of my friends in that age bracket,
I see that many of my friends face a similar mental challenge
of finding what they want to do for the next 10, next 20 years of their career.
But it's okay, midlife crisis is something that everybody faces
and something that everybody can deal with.
So key takeaway number one, midlife crisis is real, but don't panic.
Key takeaway number two is find your calling, then find your conviction.
This actually relates to another conversation that I had
with another guest, Ian Spalter,
where he talked about finding your calling early in his career.
He found his calling to become a designer
and that's what he's been spending the last 15, 20 years of his career
and that has become his calling.
In Cindy's case, she found her calling in advertising in the early part of her career
and then she had her midlife crisis and she found her conviction,
which became Makeup Not Porn.
When she was still working in the advertising industry,
she talked about trying out a dating site
and then that was the discovery moment for her to find her conviction.
It was really interesting to hear Cindy talk about
the moment that she found her conviction
from the little insight of online porn had become a sex education tool,
especially for young men.
That was the opportunity for her to realize,
not just to start a business,
but really to start a revolution and the scale of her thinking is,
even though it's just her individual experience and individual insight,
she has this vision and scale that goes beyond the boundary
of what she might be able to do as an individual.
There's no boundary.
There's no limit to what she thinks she can do.
And that was another revealing moment into the minds of Cindy Gallop,
who is fearless and who must be a role model for many, many women,
especially women around the world,
because the ceiling that she put on her,
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she has already shattered that glass ceiling a long time ago
and it's really limitless, her ambition and her influence.
So in the first part of your career,
find your calling in order to build your career.
And in the second part of your career,
find your conviction so that you can spend the rest of your life doing that.
Key takeaway number three,
if you want to find happiness, design your own system.
This was a piece of advice that she had,
particularly to female individuals building their own careers.
And majority of people, whether you are a woman or a man,
you go into a certain company,
you go into a certain industry to build your career.
But her ultimate advice, if you want to be really happy,
she believes that designing your own system is the way to go.
She, having spent the first part of her career in the advertising system,
she didn't say she was unhappy about it,
but eventually she got out of it and then she realized
that her mission was elsewhere and she found her conviction
and she designed and she's still designing her own system.
So key takeaway number three is,
if you want to be happy, design your own system.
To summarize the three key takeaways
from part two of my conversation with Cindy Gallop,
key takeaway number one, midlife crisis is real, don't panic.
Key take number two, first find your calling
and then find your conviction to spend the rest of your life.
Key takeaway number three, if you want to find happiness,
design your own system.
I hope you enjoyed this episode of The Creative Mindset.
Next time we hear from Paolo Antonelli,
the lead curator of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
So stay tuned.
This was your host, Ray Nomoto.
This is The Creative Mindset.
