Joe Howard

“Make for yourself a teacher and acquire for yourself a friend, and judge everyone favorably.”
— Ethics of the Fathers, 1:6

When Rabbi Joshua ben Perachiah, the head of the Sanhedrin (the Assembly of 71, the equivalent of the Supreme Court) taught those words in the second half the the 2nd century BC, he probably was not envisioning me sipping champagne on a rooftop in Tel Aviv sometime in the spring of 2009.

A dark-haired British gentleman approached me and introduced himself. The name was lost on me, but when I asked him what he did, he responded that he taught companies how to be creative. I laughed, wrote him off as one of the many consultants who frequented technology events in the Silicon Wadi, and went to find a refill for my champagne flute.

The next morning, I found myself drinking some Russian pepper vodka at a technology conference. I remember chatting with my friends, when this gentleman approached us and reintroduced himself to me. I apologized for forgetting meeting him the previous night, and made an excuse to walk away.

Four months later, I woke up in a hotel room in London, a few blocks from Paddington Station, to my Skype ringing on my laptop. “Hello, this is Joe Howard,” the voice on the other end of the line said. “Who?” I genuinely inquired. “We met twice in Tel Aviv, once on a rooftop, another time in a conference. I believe you were drinking both times.” “Oh, hi.” “Can you come to a meeting?” he asked.

Admittedly, I have a horrible problem: namely, I say yes to just about anything.

“Sure.” One should note: I did not ask what the meeting was about, who it was with, or how he tracked me down. I took down the address and time, made some small talk about the weather in London, and ended the call.

Later that day, I took the Tube to the address he gave me. I arrived at a very fancy-looking office building, near the Thames. I probably should note that I was wearing flip-flops, a t-shirt, a pair of ripped jeans, a blazer and sunglasses. In certain circles, I guess I’m known as the “paragon of professionalism”.

The company, if it were in the United States, would have probably been in the Fortune 500. Their total sales for 2009 was around £22 billion, but in my defense, not in the department I was asked to meet with. They only accounted for something like a 20% raise in revenue from the previous year.

I walked into a conference room on a floor somewhere in the middle of the building and saw a sea of middle-aged white men smartly clad in bespoke suits. Joe, or some other dark-haired gentleman, was waving at me, while saying in a British accent “Hey Ezra, it’s me - Joe!”

He introduced me as “Ezra Butler, from Tel Aviv, who will be speaking about the future of television on the Internet.”

I did what anyone would do in my situation. I asked for a whiteboard.

The thing about having a whiteboard is that it makes you omnipotent and omniscient. I wouldn’t be surprised if whiteboards have cured cancer, ended world hunger, or cracked the secret of ensuring that unattractive people on the street don’t make eye contact with you.

I improvised an hour-long lecture, drawing plans that (upon looking back) appear to be very similar to what Netflix looks like in 2015. I spent another hour or so answering questions. Then someone suggested we all get a drink.

I wasn’t fluent in British at that time, so I was unaware that getting “a drink” actually meant “many drinks until inebriation or death”. I learned that this dark-haired gentleman named Joe actually had studied archeology in university and worked in some very big and impressive advertising agencies. I believe I was drinking red wine that night.

A few days later I receive another call from Joe, this time inviting me out to a pub in the middle of the afternoon. We spoke for hours. I think I drank cider. We said that thing that people say when they part from a new acquaintance, namely “Give me a call next time you are in Tel Aviv.”

I checked out of my hotel a few days later, and headed to the airport. I had been really proud of myself that I had stayed exactly on budget, because all my money was in an Israeli bank account, with an Israeli debit card I couldn’t use outside of the country. I arrived at the airport, ready to board the plane and fly home.

Which was when I found out that my plane was actually the next day and whoever booked my hotel room messed up the reservation. I guess you can say I panicked a tad. I tried calling a friend, but he was holed in a 5 star hotel room recuperating from contracting the swine flu in Ibiza. No one else answered my calls, and the credit on the SIM card was quickly dwindling.

I called Joe, and in under a minute described my predicament. He cheerfully offered me a couch in his flat, and told me where to meet him later that afternoon. He took me out for dinner, set me a couch in a room surrounded by piles and piles of books, so many that I couldn’t choose which one to read first, ordered me a black cab to take me to the airport in the morning on his account and handed me £100, just in case I needed to get anything on the way.

Joe began flying to Tel Aviv every month. He decided that I needed to learn improv, so he started a class where I could learn. We met as frequently as he flew in.

When I flew to London again a few months later to organize a Hanukkah party at a casino, he was in Tel Aviv, and happily left the keys to his flat for me in his local pub. The bartender gave me copious amounts of free alcohol and locked me inside when I fell asleep on a couch at 2am. While going through my phone months later, I saw that some patrons had drawn on my face and taken photographic evidence.

Our friendship deepened. We drank one night at the Brasserie in Tel Aviv until way after all of our friends left. We were chatting about how ex-pats quickly appropriate certain activities, yet retain other deep-rooted practices, and drawing random ideas on a napkin. I think he told me I should save that napkin. I didn’t. (Come to think of it, I recently thought about that conversation while consulting for a startup serving ex-pats in Dubai.)

I remember turning to him at around 5am and saying “Joe, it’s getting light out. We shouldn’t be still drinking Mojitos.” He looked at me, and I will never forget what he asked me, “what should we do about it?”

“We should switch to Bloody Mary’s.” “Bloody brilliant, mate,” he answered with a wide grin. I took a cab home at 8 am, woke up at noon, ran a brainstorming session at 2:30, and fell asleep at 5, until midnight.

I woke up starving, because I had not eaten at all. I went to a high-end burger restaurant and ordered the late-night special with a gluten-free bun. The burger arrived burnt. It was the night I came up with idea for my first startup “Happy / Not Happy”, and he was the first one I called. He was more than a mentor. He was my confidant and my best friend.

He was excited for me, encouraging me every step of the way. He was the one who was there for us when tensions got heated with my extremely patient business partner. He was the one who consoled us when we were brutalized in the startup competition in which we were finalists. He was the one who suggested I leave the bar that night at 3am after having way too much dark rum.

I remember the night he got back from Turkey, where they apparently tried to kill him with almonds and pistachios, and we had dinner at an Italian restaurant which served rolls laced with sesame seeds. He didn’t die.

We would chat for hours on end. He would teach me about the work he did with renowned zoologist and ethologist Desmond Morris; regale me with advertising campaigns he did when he was still with the various agencies, teaching me the theory behind why they worked; and tell me stories about working with various politicians, governments, and international corporations, answering any question my inquisitive mind would have.

He remained my mentor as I built a website which tested creativity. He always supported any idea, no matter how far-fetched it was. He would just say “yes, and?”

As a Second City-trained improviser, he would get annoyed whenever I would say “but”, as that is a blocking mechanism. Years later however, he wrote in an recommendation letter that “when Ezra says ‘but’ it’s not because he is trying to block your idea, it’s because he is about to make it even better.”

Joe started bringing me into various projects he was working on. I helped him in whatever way I could, in an attempt to try and repay him for helping me. But soon enough, even though he had moved to Tel Aviv, I would leave for Los Angeles.

Over the next year, our conversations were infrequent, but when they occurred over Skype, they lasted for hours. One day, though, he mentioned that he was working with a renewable energy company in Latvia, and moving there. The conversations resumed in full force. We chatted about the various possibilities for the technology on a nearly daily basis. Each idea was crazier than the previous one, which only invigorated us more. He offered me a job in the company, and for the beginning part of my contract, paid my salary out of his own pocket.

He introduced me to Amsterdam. Many wonderful ideas were explored in Amsterdam, I even recall a few.

We make each other more creative. Our ideas, when we would be working together in our endless chats, were more than good. Later that year, I attended an author talk in Los Angeles about creative duos, and upon reading the book realized it described us. (Today, when I jokingly asked a mutual friend if I was the most creative person she knew, she responded “One of the most creative! I don’t want to offend Joe!”)

Even since I left the company, he still is the one I call when I have a problem or I need to talk. I still try to help whenever there is something I can help on his side as well. Our conversations still last hours on end, only finishing if someone has to go to sleep or walk a dog. We both puppy-sit specific dogs. One time, we were chatting on Skype when the dogs, on two continents, started barking at each other.

Most people only quote the first two clauses of Rabbi Joshua ben Perachiah’s adage. “Make for yourself a teacher and acquire for yourself a friend.” Joe Howard has taught me more than anyone else in the world, and in turn, has become one of my best friends in the world. However, I still remember our first conversation with regret, because of the third clause, “and judge everyone favorably.”

When I was guided by my preconceived notions, I judged unfairly. I was projecting how other people treated me onto him. And I think that he saw himself in me.

Of course, the story would have been very different if we’d started chatting on the rooftop in Tel Aviv and continued our friendship from there. It probably wouldn’t have been as interesting.

Joe has never been guided by status. His opening gambit wasn’t made out of ego, it was the simple statement of fact, an understatement of fact, even. He still teaches creativity. He is a director in Saatchi & Saatchi’s Ideas Academy, teaching creatives from all over Europe how to actually have good ideas. He is a sought-after speaker and instructor for corporations, NGOs, and people who have him sign an iron-clad NDA. He teaches improv every chance he gets. He’s privately consulted with some of the largest companies on earth and has helped certain politicians win major elections. His campaigns have won Cannes Lions and other awards.

In our improv class, he taught me the difference between “high status” and “low status”. Scenes don’t go very well if both actors are playing the high status role, a lesson not only for the stage, but for life itself.

Years after the rooftop, while we were eating a steak in Amsterdam, I asked him the question that had been on my mind: why did he invite me to talk to his clients? I had done nothing that would indicate that I knew anything about the future of television on the internet.

He told me two things that night that I had never known. The first was that he believes in pushing people into the deep end, and letting them sink or swim. Apparently, I swam, because I was still there almost six years later. The other thing I learned was that he was actually the keynote speaker at the technology conference I had originally met him at.

It was probably better that I hadn’t known.