This transcript is auto-generated and may contain spelling and grammatical errors.
Tyler Jorgenson (00:01.472)
Welcome out to Biz Ninja Entrepreneur Radio. I am your host, Tyler Jorgensen. And today we have somebody who many of you may recognize from outside of the entrepreneurship space. You probably have a favorite movie that he’s been in. You may have even watched him in St. Elsewhere if you’ve been around for a little while. But many of you know him as one of the early adopters in the environmental and clean living space. I’m really excited to have on the show today, Ed Begley Jr.
Welcome out to the show,
Ed (00:33.576)
thank you for having me, buddy.
Tyler Jorgenson (00:35.46)
Man, it’s fascinating. I love chatting with entrepreneurs and I love talking through people because everyone has a different path towards this. Do you consider yourself an entrepreneur?
Ed (00:49.614)
I don’t really, I just did stuff for my own personal life that I liked that were clean and green back in 1970 at the start of the Earth Day and all of that. I used vinegar and water to clean the glass and I used baking soda to clean up instead of comet. And I liked it because it was cheap and it was non-toxic. But I never thought I’d ever start a company. That just kind of happened. Somebody approached me and wanted me to put my name on some products that assured me were clean and green and I had them tested by an independent lab.
And they were exactly that. So I had a product line called Begley’s Best for years. And I work with a great company called Lab Pleas. And we have Begley’s Earth Responsible Products. That’s a mouthful, I know. So just if you go in whatever search engine you use and type in Begley Cleaning Products, it’ll come right up.
Tyler Jorgenson (01:32.654)
Yeah. And so you, you kind of stumbled into this, having a product, having a product line, and you have a lot of great stuff. we’re to talk a ton about that throughout the show today. You, you mentioned that back in 1970s, when you started getting involved in being kind of more of a, just thinking about clean stuff or, and, you really never thought about it as something that you were going to do as a, as an advocate necessarily is just things that mattered to you. How have your personal.
How has your personal approach towards clean living changed from 1970 to now?
Ed (02:09.326)
You know, there’s been some winners and some losers, some stuff that now works very well, didn’t work very well at the beginning. They had something called recycled toner cartridges in the early 90s. You keep a lot of the component parts of the toner cartridge itself and recharge the cartridge and you keep on printing. Well, they were terrible. I bought a case of them, they all streaked and it was like, why am I doing this? You know, I want to help and support the recycling market, recycled materials market, but it’s only a case of toner cartridges.
and they all streak and you don’t want to give me my money back. Something’s wrong. They of course fix that very quickly, quickly being in a year or two. there’s been some also had a great water system. The first one I had was it smelled very bad and it got clogged all the time. It didn’t work very well. But I’ve learned from that and I have a system that works just by gravity. There’s no holding tanks, no way it could back up and smell because it all flows by gravity down to the tree orchard. You know, I’ve got an orchard with a bunch of fruit trees on the property.
Let gravity do your work and take that beautiful gray water full of organic matter from the shower and your laundry room and all that stuff. And keep in mind if you have to use some tile cleaner or something in a bathroom area that goes out the garden, there’s a simple switch you can install that is garden and sewer, like a little Y valve. And you switch it over, then you can use something that you need. Hopefully that’s non-toxic too, but you don’t want to stress out your trees with kinetoxic or, you know, strong organic chemicals even.
Tyler Jorgenson (03:23.664)
wow.
Ed (03:36.418)
So they think these things through now. They’re very well designed. Grey water works well. Toner cartridges work well. Solar works very well. Some of the early solar systems too. I’m not talking about the solar system as well in that early solar system with the Big Bang. I’m talking about the early solar electric arrays that were really kind of started by a bunch of pot farmers up in Mendocino County in Sonoma. They didn’t want a meter reader coming by to look at the meter. So they were the ones that put up the first solar panels and batteries and inverters.
Tyler Jorgenson (03:38.874)
Yeah.
Ed (04:05.39)
But they’re very primitive back then. In electronic lingo, instead of a sine wave to the 60 cycle power, it’s what they call a square wave, more of a trapezoid. 60 times a second. So your answer machine had kind of a distinct sound to it. went whee, all the time in your answer machine. You had to play some nice classical music in the background. had whee. So it wasn’t quite worked out, some of the solar inverters in the early days. They got better with those.
Tyler Jorgenson (04:16.975)
Right.
Ed (04:34.446)
And now, know, all that kind of technology keeps getting better and better. All the stuff I tried as an early pioneer now has been really worked out. So I’m glad to have been part of that and was happy to be a pioneer and maybe take a few hits financially, but I could afford to do it. I was working on different TV shows and had the money to invest in such startup kind of situations. And I’m glad I did.
Tyler Jorgenson (04:46.213)
Yeah.
Tyler Jorgenson (04:56.76)
Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I read you were really early on was electric cars, right? You had an electric car long before people were doing that. And you’re still really, really focused on clean transportation. What’s your take on how the world is accepting and evolving in that space?
Ed (05:16.782)
I bought my first electric car in 1970. I knew you couldn’t buy an electric car in 1970. I did just to satisfy my recently deceased father because he was saying to me, don’t talk about what you’re going to do to clean up the air, do something. You want cleaner air? I do too. But what are you doing to make it cleaner? So just opened a phone book. Back then they had something called a phone book and you looked in it you could find phone numbers. And they had yellow pages and other ads for different businesses.
So looked under electric cars and there’s nobody there. Wait a minute, what’s that? A guy named Dutchen Receipts is selling electric cars. And I got a ride out there hitchhiked out to see what he had. He had what are basically golf carts with a windshield wiper and a horn. They sold them in retirement communities. I was the only person who came to visit him with the prospect of buying a car that was under 60. So I was 20 years old then. I bought my first electric car. It a Taylor Dunn.
Tyler Jorgenson (06:00.325)
Right.
Ed (06:14.562)
D-U-N-N, they still make electric cars to this day. They’re really more for like warehouses and what have you. You don’t want to pollute inside of a warehouse with an internal combustion engine, even propane, which is cleaner. You want to drive in something in a warehouse or a college campus or someplace like that. And the retirement community, a lot of people don’t want to get in their big car if they have one in Palm Springs. They just want to tool down to the market or go grab dinner or lunch somewhere in their little electric car. And when you think about it,
Tyler Jorgenson (06:40.9)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Ed (06:43.694)
Here’s one of the best things about electric cars back then and today. You cannot, I happen to know this for a fact, you cannot make gasoline on the roof of your house.
You can, of course, make electricity on the roof of your house. And that’s what I started doing. my first solar system in 1985 with solar hot water, not solar electric. I still couldn’t quite manage the expense of that. But 1990 had the money and the technology improved a bit. So I bought a solar electric system in 1990 and I never looked back. I’ve been making the power to run my house and charge my car now for, what is that, 1990 to now? I think that’s 35 years, is it? I think it is.
Tyler Jorgenson (06:54.021)
That’s true.
Tyler Jorgenson (07:22.288)
Yeah, yep, Yeah, that’s quite a bit. And so in that stretch of time, you, I mean, you were, you’ve been a prolific actor. You’ve worked a ton in the industry. How do you, how have you seen Hollywood start to embrace, you know, lead and clean energy and things like that? How have things been on set? Have you seen an evolution there?
Ed (07:46.848)
It has improved greatly over the years, certainly starting in 1990, which was a 20 year anniversary of the first Earth Day. There was lots of events, lots of press and a know, big brouhaha about, you know, the environment, what we can do 20 years later. But unfortunately, people are standing there as celebrities doing PSAs for things like ride sharing and drive, you know, an energy efficient car. Do we get it? we wrap? You got the stuff good?
Thank you so much. They finish up doing the PSA’s and get in their limo and go home. What? It’s like, it’s not good optics. They weren’t sneaky about it. I did my PSA, wear my limo, I need to get home. And that’s the way it was back in 1990 for a lot of people. They had a wonderful rainforest benefit at 20th Century Fox. It was a nice benefit. They’re raising money, giving it to indigenous people, doing a lot of good things with it. It’s a very nice evening. But I said,
Tyler Jorgenson (08:18.126)
Right. Well, yeah.
Tyler Jorgenson (08:23.119)
Right.
Tyler Jorgenson (08:28.506)
Yeah.
Ed (08:43.49)
We want to do even more for the environment in this wonderful work. I suggest we continue that too. But right over here, see in the corner of this studio, right here, stage nine at 20th Century Fox having the event. You see that pile of wood there? That’s something called Luan. If you stop buying Luan to make movie sets and then throw them in a dumpster, you’re supporting the destruction of the rainforest. It’s nice to do the wonderful, very important laws and get corporate responsibility on board. Those are two columns in which you are going to support environmental, you know, improvement.
The third is activism, to do something yourself. That’s very important. But don’t forget the other two, good legislation and corporate responsibility. Corporate responsibility, that combined with personal action. Now you got three legs to the tripod. You can really do something.
Tyler Jorgenson (09:28.624)
What was it that just initially pulled you into this being such a consistent passion of yours?
Ed (09:37.858)
Well, it affected me every day in my life since I was born. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley and there was horrible choking smog back then. You couldn’t run from here to the street. I’d try my house without wheezing like a young man. I couldn’t catch my breath. And I’m not an asthmatic, Tyler. I’m not an asthmatic now, nor was I then. But that’s the way everybody I knew breathed because you couldn’t catch your breath like 150 days a year. And the rest of it’s plenty smoggy still, but 150 days a year, you breathe like this.
took in short gas, they said, don’t play outside. what’s keeping the outside air from getting inside the classroom? Nothing. When you open a door or a window to do something, it’s all going to come in there too. So when they said they could have something called Earth Day, we’re going to clean up the air and clean up the water, signed me up. I’ve been exposed to that horrible dirty air for decades and I’ve seen the scourge of dirty water. I’ve seen what happened with the Santa Barbara oil spill in 1968. You know, I saw what happened. I was not there.
personally, like Santa Barbara, but I was there. I mean, was watching the news with the Cuyahoga River catching fire in 1969. I thought that was kind of a bad sign, Tyler, when rivers catch fire. thought that may not be a good idea. There’s so much toxic chemical on the river and the surface of the river, because a lot of it’s lighter than water, so it floats on top. anyway, I’ll see you Friday night. They let a cigarette get too close to the river. And they’ve been thinking the river was flammable.
Tyler Jorgenson (10:49.584)
Right, yeah.
Ed (11:04.334)
And the river burned for days. So that doesn’t happen anymore. The rivers don’t catch fire. And even with four times the cars since 1970, four times the vehicles in LA, millions more people, we have a fraction of the smog. We had had four times the cars and millions more people and just had the same amount of smog. go, Sam, we are good. Look what we did. Four times the cars, millions more people. Smog has not gotten one bit worse. We’re champions. That’s not what we did. We went there and beyond.
Tyler Jorgenson (11:17.726)
yeah.
Ed (11:32.194)
four times the cars, millions more people and much, much less smog. Now having said that, though the air is cleaner in my neighborhood and many neighborhoods, the people around the ports of Los Angeles, ports of Long Beach, people near shipping centers, fulfillment centers, freeway interchanges, they’re still breathing dirty and we have to get some relief for those people because they’re suffering to this day with dirty air.
Tyler Jorgenson (11:53.444)
Where do you draw the line of where your personal work starts and stops, right? You focus a lot on making your home and your personal impact, but how do you decide where else you put your energy? Because there’s a lot of things that need help and need activism, but it’s a big project.
Ed (12:14.658)
I’ve gotten better rather than, I’ve gotten away from doing it the way I think I did things for years, which is to do 20 things poorly instead of taking two things and doing them well, but maybe even three. That’s the full plate to do three things. I’m going to clean up the air. I’m going to clean up the water and I’m going to stop eating factory farm meat or chicken or something, know, whatever. You pick your three things and that’s a lot to do. Then hopefully you have some success with those and you move on.
But the years I didn’t know how to say no because the need was so great, the environment was so degraded. Can you do this? Yes. Will you come here for that? Of course. Can you do it a week from Shibuli’s? Yes. Will you be there on Monday? Yes. What about the holidays? OK. You know, just kind of I did anything anybody asked me for. If somebody had a typewriter or word processor, they could get me to go anywhere. So just send me an invite. I’ll be there. It didn’t even have to be that official. Send me an email before email even. There’s so many of facts.
Tyler Jorgenson (13:03.204)
Yeah.
Ed (13:08.714)
only on my answering machine. just would go anywhere. And the problem was I couldn’t just hop on a plane and get there because that was the only place left where I was really using fuel. You know, there wasn’t part of public transportation like Amtrak or a Greyhound bus system. The only way I was using fuel to any great extent was in an airplane. So I wouldn’t jump on an airplane and fly throughout the 90s. I was very good about it. I just would get there with public transportation or Amtrak or something.
Tyler Jorgenson (13:37.744)
How did you do that and still be such a prolific actor? mean, your filmography is significant, right? And so how did you maintain green living and still get to work?
Ed (13:51.406)
It was a challenge and sometimes people thought I was even more vocal, more strident about it than I was. remember one day on the set of a movie was called Page Master with McCully Culkin, very nice young man, having a nice time filming, but this is my second day of filming. I could see the assistant directors with their headsets are talking to each other. Yeah, yeah, I’m here. I’m near the trailers. It’s just a short distance away, so I gotta keep my voice down, but I don’t know what we’re gonna do about it. I know I tried myself, but I don’t know. We’re gonna have a real problem.
I could hear them talking. My hearing was very good back then. I said, is there a problem? said, yeah, Adam, sorry. Sorry, I had to hear that. But we’ve been trying to get the car for this evening’s shoot. You know, we use a station wagon in the shot. It’s supposed to be a family station wagon. We’ve established already with another shot we’ve already put in the can. So we have to match that. And we’ve looked all over America. We can’t find an electric station wagon. I said, so what do you think? I’m going to throw him off the set now because I’ll have to just sit.
It’s on a hill. I’ll just let it roll down the hill. I don’t even have to turn it on. They literally thought I was going to throw them up. I won’t sit in the seat of a car that is not electric or, you know, some other clean fuel. They literally thought I was going to shut down the production or something or pull some power play. Like what kind of power do I have? I’m just like a day player kind of a guy, not a big movie star. I’m a working actor. But another time the same kind of thing. People with headsets. I don’t know. No head.
I’m going to talk to him now. Hopefully he’ll let us go, slide for just a couple of hours with us, but I don’t know what we’re going to do. I think he may be upset. What are you talking about? There’s no car that shoots tonight. I know there’s no station wagon. Actually, there was a whole other movie. And he said, we don’t have the recycling bins here somehow. We’ll have them by noon. I swear to God, Ed, please, please, don’t let them have any trouble today. But thank you for giving me recycling bills, and I’m not going to screw them off the set. me. But thank
Tyler Jorgenson (15:38.211)
Yeah.
So it’s fascinating. That’s kind of the opposite of what I would have expected from Hollywood. They were so concerned. They wanted to make things right, that they were concerned that you were going to create an issue that you weren’t, right? It wasn’t that you were kicking over and making problems. It was just that they were worried about it. Is this something that you put in your contracts and writers that you like, is this part, you know, do you negotiate around environmental things when you were signing deals?
Ed (16:11.434)
If I had that as an attempt in the negotiations, I would have not worked one day since. think there’s enough, you know, there’s a scarcity of work anyway for people in my age range now and certainly other times in my life. So those kinds of demands might be good for a big star to do, but somebody like me, I could demand it, but I would just that I would never work. So I just would ask for things and I found it was much better to do it that way to lead by example and not have a big
Tyler Jorgenson (16:22.608)
Yeah.
Tyler Jorgenson (16:33.017)
Sure.
Ed (16:41.262)
angry kind of a press conference, what have I just ride my bike to the Oscars myself or ride my bike to the Vanity Fair Oscar party. Didn’t say a word about just locking my bike up near the valet area. And also the some, you know, paparazzi spot me doing the head, hold that old helmet up, put the helmet down, hold it, close to the bike. They’re taking all these pictures and it’s a big press event. Me going to the Oscars on my bike. I didn’t hold a press conference. It just kind of happened. And that turned out to be more powerful than having the press conference, you know.
You’re just doing something. People go, what the hell are you doing? I said, well, this is why I’m doing it and here’s why. Smog in LA, know, the Exxon Valdez oil spill in the late 80s and this stuff was really starting to get better known and all that stuff was connected, I thought, to the problems we were facing. Here’s another one. We had a big problem years ago with ozone depletion. Part of that was because of CFC, chlorofluorocarbons. We banned CFCs. warned us.
Tyler Jorgenson (17:32.484)
Mm-hmm.
Ed (17:38.894)
The scaremonger said, you’re never going to be able to buy an air conditioner again. You won’t be able to buy a refrigerator ever again. It’d be too expensive. Tyler, I’m told that they still sell air conditioned refrigerators. Have you heard this rumor? I’ve heard it. Apparently they still sell them. And it didn’t raise the cost much at all, of course. Very, very little. And they banned CFC. That ozone hole did not keep growing and getting worse. It stabilized and began to get…
Tyler Jorgenson (17:54.158)
I have heard it and experienced it. Yeah.
Ed (18:08.278)
reduced slightly. So that’s the kind of stuff we can do if we get serious about it and do the right thing and do stuff because there’s jobs and economic stability and making things greener. It’s energy efficient. If you can still give people a cool beverage and a hot shower and do it more efficiently, what the hell is wrong with that?
Tyler Jorgenson (18:26.458)
Yeah, absolutely. And I’m a fan of efficiency. And I think it makes a lot of sense if we can just be a little bit smarter with our resources. It doesn’t take a lot of, you don’t have to become an evangelist or an extremist to just recognize resources are scarce and we should be good stewards of them. With what you’ve been doing with originally Begley’s Best and Begley’s Earth Responsible Products,
You know, you said you didn’t really intend to start a product line and go into business. What mistakes did you guys make early on and how did you overcome them?
Ed (19:03.746)
thought I could do it all myself, you know, and I was still working quite a bit as an actor and still am to this day. I thought I had more time than I actually had. So I was shipping out of my garage. My daughter, Amanda, was helping with it. My daughter, Hayden, was helping me with it. You know, but I had pallets and what have you in the garage. couldn’t bring my electric car there anymore. I was doing it all myself and it was way too much work. I lined myself with a company that would give me the freedom to go to different events so they had a different…
Green product shows in Vegas or Los Angeles or other parts of the country do that kind of work, making good use of my time and not have to be the one actually shipping the products, actually filling up the bottles or things like that. So I’ve gotten more realistic about what I’m able to do. So now this company, Lab Clean, my friend Mark Cunningham, do all the heavy lifting and I go and I vet the products with him, make sure the clean and green is my original line. And they’re even cleaner and greener because we can test it with independent testing.
more rigid testing than I had when I had just Pegri’s best. Now we’ll be back in Costco again soon I’m told. We had a nice run there at Costco for a while and they change their product lines occasionally and they’re coming back to us soon I hear. And Amazon is selling very well on Amazon right now. Hey, visual aid.
Tyler Jorgenson (20:18.116)
Yeah, here we go. Yeah, it’s good looking product too. Yeah, great branding. Yeah. Well, you I could be a better director. Yeah, that’s fantastic. I’ll have to order some for my dogs here and get some of that in. Yeah, that’s awesome.
Ed (20:22.072)
Sorry, let me a good hand model here. I’m not a very good hand model.
Ed (20:34.24)
I’ll talk to Anthony, make sure you get some.
Tyler Jorgenson (20:36.442)
fantastic. How, you know, I, I, I love that in both things that we talked about, you talked about starting to be more realistic, right? So we were talking about your early personal endeavors into, being more environmentally conservative and in, starting your product, was, Hey, I’m realizing I can’t do it all myself.
So that’s a kind of a constant theme about resources, right? And so now we’re talking about your personal resource of your own time, your own energy. And I see that that’s kind of, it’s interesting to me that in the effort, in the original effort to be more environmentally conservative, you weren’t kind of sacrificing yourself to do it. And now you’re recognizing, hey, my time and energy is also a, resource that I need to be careful with. And you’re asking for help and you’re bringing in teams. and I think that’s fantastic.
What advice do you have to younger entrepreneurs who are trying to be in this eco-friendly, eco-forward space?
Ed (21:40.504)
Well, what was behind that, what turned out to be overextending myself, mistake, you know, thinking I could do everything. was underlying it was a good thing, which is to keep your costs down. That was very laudable and indeed necessary. I couldn’t afford to ship it to the store that wanted to carry it in Santa Barbara is too cost prohibitive. They couldn’t afford to sell it without added cost of shipping. And I couldn’t afford to give them such a reduced price. So what I did was I just bypassed the shipping companies and drove it there.
Tyler Jorgenson (21:51.792)
Mm.
Ed (22:10.158)
in my electric car, which cost me nothing to charge electrically. So I valued my time at zero, you know, and just drove it out there. You know, it’s 85 miles each way to the store that sold it. So you could say that’s inefficient in a way, but it was it was a good way. Those kinds of things are good to grow to grow a company. But then you have to realize at some point I have my limits to as a resource, my time. And you know what? When you’re doing that, when you’re making a mistake in that area, it’s the same thing as
not value what our oceans do or our forests. You go beyond the carrying capacity of the forest by cutting down too many trees. You go beyond the capacity of the ocean by polluting with plastics and other toxic chemicals and materials. Your time has value, your body has value. You want to get spiritually and physically in tune so that you can do the hard work of starting a company. So value yourself as you would any environmental resource. But do the best you can within those parameters.
Certainly when I was younger, could do a lot more. I six paces up there to Santa Barbara and come back and still make, you know, whatever I had to do an interview later in the day in the Los Angeles.
Tyler Jorgenson (23:20.004)
Yeah, I think that’s an important lesson. You mentioned a couple of times that your daughters helped. Do you still have family involved helping you in the business?
Ed (23:31.702)
All my kids helped me in every way. My son is a little further away. Practical asking to come over and help me with the composting. But my daughters live here in LA. So Hayden is great and Amanda’s great. They’re both very attuned to the green space and very deep, dark green warriors. Both of them, all three of them, my son Nick too. People who care about the environment, my grandkids, the same with them. I’m very lucky to have.
three incredible kids and three incredible grandkids. So I’m just blessed. Or do we lose a connection? Let me hear it.
Tyler Jorgenson (24:04.976)
That’s great. Nope, I still hear you. Yeah, I’m good. It records at a different pace. we may have lost you here, but I still hear you.
Tyler Jorgenson (24:17.904)
I still hear you. I still have you on phone.
Ed (24:20.932)
good, if you have me on phone then we’re fine.
Tyler Jorgenson (24:23.024)
Yeah, we, yeah, if we, okay.
Ed (24:26.048)
It’s reloading something. think it’s going to be fine. Let me check your camera and mic.
Tyler Jorgenson (24:30.052)
Yep, it’s all good.
Ed (24:32.194)
Join studios.
Tyler Jorgenson (24:34.67)
There you are. So we’ll keep going. Yeah, all good.
Ed (24:38.03)
Thank you, pal.
Tyler Jorgenson (24:38.958)
Yeah, not a problem. This is all part of the process these days. There we go. Well, cool. So yeah, we got a couple more minutes here. keep rolling. What, you know, I love how…
I love the type of a advocate that you are, where your primary thing is you just focus by leading by example. That to me is really powerful, where you stay flexible on set, you stay flexible with your coworkers, you stay flexible in your life, but you still stay while staying true to your values. I think sometimes people are really good at being loud, but not at being consistent. And it seems like you’ve been really good at being consistent, even if you weren’t always really, really loud.
Are there things that you wish you were louder about?
Ed (25:26.51)
Yeah, I’m glad there’s such diversity of different kinds of environmentalists out there, because I’m good with my thing of being quieter about things and just going to the Oscars and the bicycle and not try to make a big press event out of it. But it happens anyway. Just leading by example, people tap you on the shoulder and what is this you’re doing? I’m good at that. But that’s just one kind of creature in the ecosystem you need.
You a thriving ecosystem. need porpoises, need sharks, you need crabs, and you need sea anemones, and you need phytoplankton, you need different people do different things. And I’m good at what I do and other people are good at, know, staging an event. And some people are really dedicated to it in a way that’s beyond my scope, certainly in my age, to chain myself to you know, offense or something. I don’t know that I could pull that off at this point in my life. But some people are young and motivated.
Tyler Jorgenson (26:15.684)
Yeah.
Tyler Jorgenson (26:19.918)
Right.
Ed (26:23.032)
Some people are older, motivated, in great shape, and they can do that kind of thing. So God bless them, because it needs all of us, a nice diversity of different forms of activism to get anything accomplished.
Tyler Jorgenson (26:33.604)
You know, in other countries, you know, riding your bike is really normal, you know, and, it’s, feel like a lot of the, cities in America are starting to really build bike lanes back into the, into the environment and, and into the city. But, what’s the furthest that you’ve ever ridden your bike to like in a tuxedo.
Ed (26:56.75)
The furthest I’ve ridden my bike in a tuxedo is to the Oscars and back. That’s the furthest ride. that’s only about, probably about 15 miles round trip, maybe even a little less.
Tyler Jorgenson (27:00.461)
Yeah, how far is that?
Tyler Jorgenson (27:08.974)
Okay, that, yeah. But through Los Angeles with, know, do people honk at you and wave and, you know, do you get noticed?
Ed (27:15.564)
Well, no, well, here’s the trick. You go just in bicycle, bicycle gear, bicycle outfits, bike shorts and a bike helmet and all of that to the place near there. We have a friend that has a bathroom. Then you go in the bathroom with your pannier that you’ve carried your tail pulled off the bike. And you go into the restroom where you kind of do a, an Irish shower at the sink, get cleaned up, and then you put on your tuxedo and hopefully people are patient as you’re taking.
Tyler Jorgenson (27:29.065)
got it.
Tyler Jorgenson (27:37.508)
Gotcha.
Ed (27:45.336)
time in a restroom to change. I would try to do it in a stall when I’m not bothering people. So yeah, then you finish up the ride in the tux.
Tyler Jorgenson (27:51.726)
Yeah. And then just finish the ride.
Tyler Jorgenson (27:59.076)
That’s fantastic. Are you working on anything now?
Ed (28:05.206)
I just finished a show, I signed it in today, I can’t talk about it, but it’s gonna be a wonderful show we shot in Albuquerque. Very spooky, wonderful original show. what else? I did a movie for Hallmark recently that was very well received called Holiday Touchdown. Lovely movie. I made a feature film called Strange Darling. It’s a wonderful movie. It’s out on Pay-Per-View now. It’ll be out on some streaming service within a month or two.
But Strange Darling is worth a look at. And also, if I may, I’m going to grab a visual aid here. I have a book that I wrote, To the Temple of Tranquility, and step on it, about my vain attempt to rush tranquility, which of course you can’t rush serenity. It happens as it happens. You can’t rush it. You must experience it and open yourself to it. And it’s a whimsical look and a humorous look at my…
Tyler Jorgenson (28:39.152)
Please.
Ed (29:02.19)
75 years in Hollywood because I even though I only started working when I was 17 I was around at my whole life So I’ve been around Hollywood for 75 years not just around Hollywood born at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital So I have it very much in my blood and my genes. My dad was a wonderful actor and That’s right Actually even better than that born and raised in the valley Hollywood adjacent
Tyler Jorgenson (29:18.436)
Yeah, Hollywood born and raised.
Tyler Jorgenson (29:25.338)
Yeah, yeah, that’s true. So your dad was an actor too?
Ed (29:30.082)
He was a wonderful actor. was in a movie called 12 Angry Men, a great, great film, an important film. And he went and asked her for Sweet Bird of Youth with Paul Newman and Geraldine Page. Did a million great movies and TV shows, won a Tony Award for Inherit the Wind with the great Paul Muny. So he was a great actor and a great father. And he started me on this green path, if you will, because I grew up, he was the son of Irish immigrants. He had lived through the Great Depression. So I just.
Tyler Jorgenson (29:36.312)
very important.
Ed (29:58.958)
had it in my blood. didn’t, you turned off the lights, turned off the water, you saved string, you saved tin foil, you did not waste, you just did not waste. And that’s the way I was raised. So that gave way to the environmental movement for me in 1970, because my dad died within a few days of the first Earth Day. So that really got me motivated to do more and more.
Tyler Jorgenson (30:18.028)
That’s a really good lesson from your dad and it reminds me of one that I used to hear and that’s haste makes waste. I used to use that term a lot and I think it’s interesting because in your book you talk about how you can’t rush. And so that it kind of ties those things together that by rushing is a form of being inefficient, right? And not actually allowing things to work the way. That’s it. There are lot of wisdom in that. I like to ask people on my show,
Ed (30:24.759)
Yep.
Ed (30:37.984)
Exactly. Measure twice, cut once.
Tyler Jorgenson (30:45.616)
Cause to me, business isn’t just about making money, right? It’s about impact and also about creating a lifestyle that you want. Now I know your products and Begley Earth Responsible products isn’t necessarily your your bread and butter, but what is one of your personal items on your personal bucket list that you want to accomplish in the next year?
Ed (31:09.494)
I’d like to get people to take climate change seriously. And even if they don’t believe in climate change, the front door is closed to me for discussion about climate change. I go around to the side door and say, okay, what about making Houston and Bakersfield more energy cleaning up the air and making Houston and Bakersfield more energy efficient? How about lessening our dependence on foreign oil? And how about putting money in our pockets? How about those three things? Let’s not call it climate change. Let’s call it cleaning up the air in all the red states in America. Let’s do that. Let’s lessen independent.
dependent on foreign oil, I know is a big part of the platform of the other party. being financially independent and financially efficient is always a good thing that should resonate. those three things, we don’t have to call it climate change. Do those three things and other good things will happen anyway.
Tyler Jorgenson (31:59.008)
As a father and a grandfather, what’s one piece of advice that you give to your kids and your grandkids that you think my listeners should also hear?
Ed (32:09.228)
Live simply so that others can simply live.
Tyler Jorgenson (32:14.884)
Thank you so much for coming on the show, Ed. It’s been an absolute pleasure. I really hope that people check out, Amazon and go to go to Begley earth responsible products to shop your products and support you guys that way. show us your book one more time. I hope people grab your book and, and so what remind me the name of that again, it is so please guys check that out. Ed, you are a light and
Ed (32:34.35)
to the temple of tranquility and step on it.
Tyler Jorgenson (32:43.084)
and inspiration. I really love that piece of advice you shared there at the end. Thank you so much for coming on the show and to all my entrepreneurs, my biz ninjas, wherever you’re listening, tuning or streaming, it’s your turn to go out and do something.
Ed (32:58.35)
Thank you so much.
