Adam Garone (Founder Of Movember)

0:0095-7 the sound I'm Matt. We're all growing vastaches here. So we all are clean shaven this morning. I missed my beard. I had a beard for the past couple of days and now I'm all smooth. It's okay because Movember has started. Yes, the month of Movember, it's no longer November in honor of prostate cancer. A bunch of mates from Australia decided to create something called Movember to raise awareness for prostate cancer, much like females have with breast cancer awareness month in October. We have the CEO and one of the co-founders, Adam Guerroni in studio. Thanks for having me. Welcome to the country I guess. Yeah, I based myself out of LA but I find myself in Canada a lot because the campaign is just huge here. Right, well here we're already in the lead out of all the countries in the world. The campaign in Australia is four years ahead and Canada and Australia are going

0:50back and forth for the number one position in terms of funds raised. At the moment, Canada is number one. If you head to movember.com you check out Mo Money and you can see which countries are ranked number one but Australia is just waking up. So it's going to go back and forth throughout the month but it's so good to see Canada and another country challenge Australia for the most funds raised. Is it always the two of us or are there other countries that get in like pretty high? Like are the states doing well? Yeah, yeah, states doing well. The UK is number three at the moment. So the four big countries are Australia, Canada, US and UK. Cool. Well those are the big powerhouses that's what I expect. Yeah, we're in about 10 countries now so it's you know what started as a joke over a few beers has become a global movement. So started as a joke. Yeah in 2003 it was my

1:38brother and a few mates and we were talking about 80s fashion and how everything manages to cycle back and a few more beers and the conversation turned to whatever happened to the moustache. Few more beers in the day ran it out with the challenge to bring back the moustache and Mo in Australia is slang for moustache so that's where we get Mo Vember and the rules still stand today. You got to start today clean shaven right first of November and then for the entire month growing moustache and the first year we did it 2003 we didn't do it for any particular reason. It was just a bit of a joke to bring the moustache back and I was surprised at how many conversations are created by just growing a moustache and how much controversy. So at the end of it I said to the guy who was just like your boss wouldn't let me go and see clients my girlfriend he's not long ago my girlfriend was not happy with it. Because of moustache? No. Yeah no. I said to the

2:26guys at the end of it you know it was a lot of fun but we could put growing a moustache toward a cause and at the time I was inspired by the women around me and all they were doing for breast cancer you know you only need to look at what happened last month in october which is national and international breast cancer awareness month to see the amazing campaigns and cause marketing initiative supporting breast cancer but prostate cancer 30% more men are diagnosed with prostate cancer than women are breast cancer. So it's as you know the mortality rate is about the same so you just think about for a minute the difference in awareness and fundraising for breast cancer versus prostate cancer so we like to think of our moustache is our our hairy ribbon and that's the way we drive awareness and fundraising and our aim is to bring prostate cancer awareness and funding up to the

3:15same level as breast cancer. Do you sport a moustache year round and just shave it off for the month? Yeah you know three or four months of the year leading into the campaign so I had a moustache up until this morning and shaved it down in in preparation to grow it back for movember. How hard is it to shave off is it is it sad is it a sad day to get rid of it? Yeah I mean I had that moustache for about four months so I got pretty attached to it but shaved it down and you know our tagline is changing the face of men's health so we literally challenge men to change their appearance and that becomes a talking point so if you normally have a beard or a goaty a whole idea is to shave that off that'll become a talking point at the start of the campaign and then when I as you grow a moustache the moustache becomes a talking point so what like doing a runner or a walk for charity our commitment is to grow a moustache for 30 days and for the people who don't know it can't you can't

4:02have a go to your beard? No no it's all about nothing in touch no no no it's all about the moustache and you know the first week it's the rules are pretty liberal because you want to grow out a bit of a as much facial hair as you can then carve into moustache. What is the most sister? Yeah you know what how girls getting molds? What's been amazing is the support we've got from girls and they're such an integral part of the campaign the vast majority of them of course don't grow moustaches. The vast majority yeah there's a couple there's a couple of go around yeah I'm sure there are the 80 plus generation Yeah yeah country Australia maybe I don't know. I've never been a near country man. So the girls a couple ways I can involve one is to get on to movember.com register a team and then recruit guys to join their team and rally the guys around them. What we find a lot of girls doing though is

4:49supporting their guys but making a small donation because a lot of girls are so happy now that guys are actually taking the initiative taking responsibility for their health and actually doing something tangible for it. So when they see that they jump on board and you know make a small donation or you know words of advice and you know to all the girls out there if you see a mowbrower guy growing a moustache this mow member no matter how good about they look just give them a wink and a lot of appreciation because they're doing something good. Because it does look dirty for the first couple of weeks. Yeah absolutely. But you know and that becomes a talking point. Yeah that's very true. And then once everyone has their moustache there's a big gala party for everyone. Yeah that's right on December 3 and the way that works is you register at movember.com you raise a hundred dollars you get a free ticket raise two hundred dollars you get a second free

5:35ticket. And the night is it's really a celebration of the journey everyone's going on and we have you know an open bar for a little bit and pricing and we have prizes for Miss movember best dressed girl and then the man of movember of course for the guy that has the best moustache and we also have an encouragement award for the guy with the worst moustache as well. It's cool. We're still trying. Yeah yeah. Grow the facial hair as well. Yeah. That's awesome. We do something on the show called Five Questions. Five quick questions. One more answers. It's time to put another celebrity on the hot seat on 95. Seven. This is the sound. Today's guest joins us from Melbourne, Australia of the Los Angeles most recently. He's the CEO and co-founder of movember which helps raise awareness for prostate cancer around the globe. In Canada we've already raised over a million dollars for

6:25this fantastic cause this year alone last year forty seven million dollars was raised eight million that came from Canada. If you haven't signed up at movember.com please do so grow a moustache for the month like all of us here. This is Five Questions with Adam Gironi. Handelbar moustache or pencil. Hanobah. Lenny or McCartney. McCartney. Lenny McDonald or Wendell Clark. Lenny. Favorite moustache of all time. Hulk Hogan. Oh good one and one word movember. Awesome. That was Five Questions on 95. Seven the sound. Listen weeknight to 515 when Matt Grill.