#23 Katie Patrick - How to save the world!

Foreign.

And welcome to Purpose Fueled Performance with me, your host, Tim Jones, the grow good guy.

So kia ora peeps. We are live on LinkedIn. That's the theory. And joining me this week on PFP TV is Katie Patrick. Hello, Katie. I guess I normally just start off by asking, well, who are you? What do you do? Where are you from? Let's, let's just go, go there. All right.

So you're not going to introduce me? Usually people love the. This is so and so.

It's way more fun. It's way more fun because you know, you know you who you are more than I know who you are. So who are you? What do you do?

Who am I? Who I. Okay, well, my name is Katie Patrick. I'm an environmental engineer and a designer and I specialize in behavioral psychology and gamification of environmental data. So I look at environmental data, like forest data, energy data, carbon data, water data.

Pollution data. And I'm highly interested in the intersection between how we measure this data and then how we design it in a, in a feedback loop type of way, kind of like a Fitbit. So you would see the data and then you'd be like, oh my God, look, I'm producing more trash than other people. I better do something about it. So it's really this intersection between the design of data and the, the behavioral interface design. And both those two areas are quite complex and deep things to understand. There's a lot of theory behind it, a lot of computer science on the data side and a lot of psychological theories on the, the behavioral side. So I bring those two things together, which I think is a truly a magical, wonderful place to look at sustainability through. And I have my book how to Save the World, which is about that. And there's plenty of other stuff about me, but that's my starter intro of myself because Tim introduced me. So I do it all on my own.

So how did you get into that? I mean, I can't imagine because you're originally from Australia, you're living in the US right now, although we were just sort of talking in the pre, pre room that you've been in Costa Rica for the last four months. I can't imagine because I think we're roughly probably about the same age. I mean, there certainly wasn't an A level course in the UK on, you know, environmental data and behavioral change type topics. So how, how have you bought all that together? Did you train in that or have you kind of created this idea?

Well, from what I can see, I'm the Only person that I know of in the world who explicitly kind of puts themselves out there as the design of environmental feedback loops. Like, I had to come up with this phrase, Fitbit for the planet designer. Like a lot of people using Fitbit for the planet. That's not something like I invented. It's kind of been going around, but I've just adopted that as calling it this type of design because it's a bit more specific than just saying I do like app design, or I'm just a user interface designer. It's very much around the data. And no, it's a very nascent space. I do feel kind of like I'm the only one who specializes in it. Although other people do study it, they don't sort of perhaps go out and call themselves that publicly. They might call themselves, you know, a research. They might be doing research or they might actually work in it, but they've got a different title in an organization. But the story of how I got here was just really layering on one domain of knowledge after another. So I started off as an environmental engineer. I was very passionate about sustainability. Kind of came from a pretty deep kind of eco activist space. Wanted to save the earth and all that.

But then, you know, I wanted to do it professionally. So then I worked in as a green building engineer. So on commercial buildings, you know, very conservative kind of establishment. You know, big engineering and architecture companies are like that. But back then, that was in the early 2000s, really, the only thing that you could do in was really energy efficiency of office buildings. Like that. That was the job. Like, you would look at an architectural drawing and then you would sort of use some software to figure out how many kilowatt hours it used and maybe recommend like some light changes. Like, it was like the most boring thing I could ever imagine doing with my life. And back then there was like an architect called Ken Yang. He was like one of the first kind of biophilic architects to have a book out there. And I was just fascinated by the idea of like, you know, eco cities. Like trees on the tops of buildings and little like archways that would go from one building to another with like, Hanging Gardens of Babylo and something really futuristic. I had this incredible vision in my mind. An idea of just doing energy efficiency audits and like, commercial. I thought I was going to die, like, no way.

So then I started a media company because I really wanted to rebrand sustainability. So that took me into this very creative pathway. Well, not creative, it was really entrepreneurial, but it was essentially in the creative and in the media industry. So I was constantly producing content and kind of selling the vision of sustainability. But then everything started to go more sort of the Silicon Valley startup way. You know, Facebook emerged and then Twitter and, you know, the startup and the social media thing was this big thing then. And media was naturally moving all digital. And so the natural way was to start, you know, learning app design. What can we do with websites? What can we do with video? So I was moving into all that and I started to really think about, like, well, if I really want to start changing people, like, that's what I'm here for, you know, making videos and articles and blogs. Like, I don't know if this is doing anything, you know, like, I really want to fundamentally change the numbers. And I started to really think about, you know, it's kind of like from that Simon Sinek, that video that made him famous, the Golden Circle, which is why. Why are you here? Why are you here? And I'm like, well, because I want to change the numbers. Like, it has to. If it doesn't, like actually, like plant a tree or it doesn't actually get a solar panel put on or save water, like I'm wasting my time here. So I really started to think about, like, well, how can I, like, show the numbers to people? Can I, like, show the kilowatt hours on the wall or something? Or could you have a shower and it would show you, like a little screen that told you, like, how many, you know, liters of water your shower had used or I started to think through all of the different touch points in the. The engineering architecture of the modern world, you know, in cars today. Measure the cars. No. Does the car know how many. How much fuel it's using at any time? If you could do a trip and you drive for 15 minutes, does it tell you? I think the Prius might tell you, but I don't know. My car definitely doesn't tell me. Just a regular Volkswagen. And then I just found that pretty mind blowing, you know, I was like, oh, my God, we do not have the data for all this stuff. It's not being collected. My wall does not show me the kilowatt hours or the CO2 I'm using. My shower doesn't. Nothing does. You know, and the deeper I looked into this data infrastructure, I realized how much of it was missing from. It just wasn't there. Like, you could not get it. Some of it is there now. Some of it was there before. It's in PDF documents. They're like, sure, you can get that. Just download the Excel spreadsheet. If you're trying to build an app, downloading an Excel spreadsheet does not work. You need an API. You need a proper API you can request and it updates in real time and you can code it into your app. And I realized that was missing and that was really where I started to get very interested in this. And I started looking at the way games were developed and behavior design apps. I went to a game design startup once and this woman said, you know, you should be really looking at behavior change apps. And I never really thought about what behavior change was. And she's like, oh, there's this whole thing of like habit design, habit design and behavior change. I started looking that up in Amazon and looked at all these apps and I was like, oh, this is like a whole, like field of people that focus in behavior design apps and habit design. And I realized this intersection between behavioral psychology, game design, had a lot to offer, and getting this environmental data and designing around this feedback loops, you know, with this intersection of these very fields that could have quite a magical potential. And there was still, and there was quite a lot of academic research in the space that had not filtered outside of the academic world, as academic papers do often tend to just stay only with other academics. So I started finding more of these papers and revealing all these very fascinating insights that I felt I could bring to the world. And this has just fascinated me. So that's what I do. I find the insights, I bring them to the world. Hopefully I can share this knowledge, you know, with people more and help inspire people to start thinking this way. Because it's, it's enormously powerful and has great capacity for change. All these, all these things that are quite common in other industries. Like, it's very novel in sustainability, but a lot of this stuff is very normal in other industries and they do it all the time, but we've been very slow to adopt it in sustainability. Sustainability.

So much goodness unpacking there. I think.

Yeah, you, you were just bang on the money because it's so hard to know. I think there's, there's a lot of people, a lot of organizations who want to do more good, but they don't know, currently don't know how much good they're already doing. So it's hard for them to know, are we the good guys or the bad guys currently? And then in terms of that sort of impact measurement, impact assessment, where do we, what do we try and change? And are we actually getting meaningful outcomes that are making Things better because it's really easy to think you're doing good, but actually be causing, I guess, as you'd say, unintended consequences in other areas. So I think that's a really, really crucial thing is just helping people get clarity on, well, are we moving the numbers in the right direction? And yeah, you're right. I think historically sustainability has just been like either a dark pit of academic or academia people really, really deep in the, in the data and the numbers. Or it's like you were, well, we swapped out the lights to LEDs and we've saved a kilowatt hour this year. Woo. We're going to save the planet. And it's kind of like, well, neither's working clearly. So that's super cool that you, you've kind of created your own niche in that.

Yeah, that's just, it's super, super cool. So what's, what does that look like today? What do you, what specifically are you doing? What sort of projects are you creating or working on right now that bringing this all to life?

Oh, well, one thing I'm really excited about is this startup I have called Energy Lollipop. And I got excited by this. It was about a year and a half ago, I was working on some software design to try and bring in more solar. It was a way of selling and sizing solar more efficiently and cheaply than it's done before. And all these people try to communicate energy and carbon in all these different ways. Or like look at the ratio between like wind and gas and solar and coal. And why don't you show like how, you know, just all these kind of like crazy numbers. And I was like, listen, you just need the CO2 that all the buildings, it needs to be one number, like just not how many megawatts of solar. Just like the number. Right. So I was like, well, let's just put the number of CO2 that the grid is putting out on a big screen and we'll make it big and round. It look like a lollipop on the street. And I got this idea because along the 101, when you're driving into San Francisco, there is a, a van. I think it's Combi van. I'm not sure what brand it is, but it's got Lyft, you know, the, you know, like Uber. The other you have it.

I don't think we have left here, but we have Uber and some others. Yeah.

Oh, it's Lyft. It's like a direct competitor to, to Uber and they have this Giant truck, like on a pole and you can't miss it. Is there advertising on the side of the freeway? And I'm like, why can Lyft put a giant truck on a pole that we can't miss? But I can't see the carbon dioxide emissions from my city on a screen. I can see the stock market, I can see the weather. There's so much data, there's so much advertising at me all the time. Why and why can't I say anywhere? Why has nobody in this whole field of climate change figured out how to put the carbon dioxide on a screen so we can see it on the freeway or anywhere? And so I thought, I'm just going to make this happen. This is such a missing gap in our world. So I've purchased this screen. It's about a 1 meter diameter big screen and we've got the data feed. Luckily in California we can get the data from the ISO, which is a electricity operating organization. And I'm going to tour it around California. It'll tell you what the CO2 emissions are at any point in real time, just like a Fitbit for the planet. I'm going to show everybody and see how they respond to it.

Nice. So you're going to like park it up in different locations and get the local feed from that location or more generically like California feed store.

It will be only California because we cannot get. Nobody in the world can get the carbon emissions of their own neighborhood or town. Which I think is a crisis and something I really want to work on. I've made a lot of inroads to talking to government and different utilities to try and figure out how to make this happen. But it's going to be quite a push. It'll probably take some legislation and be quite a big deal to get the electricity utilities to release. So you would be able to have like one number for your city or your town. We don't currently have that. And so part of this push with the energy lollipop is to start to advocate for that. Because you're right, the first thing people will ask is, well, why does it say all of California? And why doesn't it say like my town that we're in right now? And it'd be like, yeah, well, let's lobby for that.

Because it's exciting. Because if you could get your own, say if you lived in a smaller town, you know, or if you're in a city or a neighborhood, you could legitimately, with some work, really impact that number. Like you could see the whole Idea of the feedback loop is that you can see the result of your action in the number and you could legitimately do that. You know, you have some meetings, you work on it for six months, you meet once a month, you know, you work with the schools and the churches and all the groups and everybody's really into it. You know, group of people, groups of people, when they motivated can be very powerful and seeing that feedback is a fundamental thing to human psychology to keep them motivated. So I think that this neighborhood score is, could be enormously powerful with activating people totally.

Because I'm just thinking with my kind of B corp impact assessment hat on, you know, you can companies ask, you know, are you measuring your carbon footprint? And I think increasingly a lot of companies are thinking about their carbon footprint and I guess even you know, on our power bill because I clearly, I work from my home office, you know, on our power bill they, they, I think I'm pretty sure that they'll say, you know, this is your energy usage, give or take, this is kind of like your carbon emissions. So I guess there is a relatively analog way that you could maybe start collecting that but you're not going to get that real time data and I guess it's a bit of a snapshot potential potentially and it'll take a lot of legwork. But yeah, that would be super, super cool to be able to collect that. I mean I know like Christchurch City Council where, where I'm based, you know they're really looking at this kind of stuff, you know, climate commissions and working out how do we. So I don't know if you're looking for other test places. Let's see if we can maybe, you know, get one going in New Zealand for you. Who knows?

I am, we might need to send it over though because I don't think I'm allowed to visit New Zealand. No one's allowed in right now are they lend it to you?

You can, I'm sure we could. Well let's, let's see what we can do.

Get someone to chip in for shipping and tour it around and yep, I'll.

Talk to my mate Scott Cotor, who's business development manager at Meridian Energy who are all about renewable energy and I don't know, we'll see if we can get something.

Where is, where is the, where does the power come from in New Zealand?

So it's really interesting. So I think about 85% of it is, is classified as renewable. So we've got a lot of I guess old school hydroelectric that was Built, you know, some of it sort of like 100 years ago, give or take. And then we've got quite a bit of wind. Wind power. And then the remainder is coal and other bad fuels. So we said about general grid is about 86, I think percent renewable. So we're not bad.

Yeah, that's good. So your energy lollipop might only show like a little bit of numbers, but, you know, we still have to get rid of the last little bad bit.

Yep. Yeah, yeah. So have you. Did you. I mean you sort of said you started out as a bit of an activist environmentalist from an earlier. Was that from like a super early age or did you kind of go a bit through the corporate mill and then kind of go, actually I want to be more of an environmentalist. Or has this been like from day one you've just been all about saving the planet?

Yeah, kind of. It started pretty early. I mean, I spent my childhood being very invested in art. My grandparents were sort of masterful artist. My grandfather was a graphic designer back. But that was before you had computers and you actually had to be able to paint a billboard by hand with perfect fonts and perfectly photorealistic pictures. I had to actually be really good artists. And my grandmother was a fashion designer where you had to draw everything yourself.

Yeah.

So I got kind of brought up in this very. And my mother also, you know, was. She didn't have like a job as an, as an artist, but the primary.

Home culture was that of being a good technical artist. But in that I just remember all of the, the, the messaging that was around that time. I was born in 1980. So, you know, we had a lot of very strong environmental messages then. There was, you know, stuff about like anti nuclear, you know, do you remember the atoll like that was. Would have been big in New Zealand as well. There was a huge campaign from Greenpeace about the Mirror Atoll. Like I was 14 when that happened. There was a lot of stuff about wh.

You know, pictures of whales being harpooned by Japan on the news. That was very upsetting. We had all of the, the famines. There was a lot of marketing for the skeletal children from the famines in Africa. Very upsetting, you know, wanted to help. So I was just very, as a child, very affected by that. So my earliest, you know, kind of like career thoughts at being 12 or 13 when I kind of got over the idea I would be an artist, it was all, you know, kind of about the planet and it always has been. But also, you know, it's I'm always, you know, there's one side of me that's deeply in sort of the arts and creative and culture and pop culture, and the other half is kind of like deep in sustainability.

It's interesting. You got. You've got that mix of.

Science, environmental, engineering and what have you, but the creative, the artist. I mean, that's quite a unique skill set because generally people are normally, you know, they're arty or they're sciency, but you seem to have got a mix of that. Have you cultured that, do you think, or is that just you?

No, that's just very much me. And it's like a difficult thing. If you are like one of those people like me who you are kind of like equally split on both sides. It's a challenge to find a place for yourself in the world because the world isn't really built for people like us. You know, it's. If I'm only doing technical work, like I'm working as like a computer programmer engineer, I just feel a complete spiritual death that I'm not doing what I was here for. And if I'm just hanging out with designers and designing stuff, I feel an equal sense of intellectual death that I'm not really using my mind properly. So each of these places are these feelings of very feeling like it's not right for me, you know, at a really deep level. So I really had to push very fiercely to find this new path for myself. You know, I said this kind of like Fitbit for the planet designer path is unique because I had to really, really push at sort of a really deep level inside myself to find where I would fit in the world where I could be doing both things simultaneously. The computer science of sustainability and also the design interfaces, where I am doing both these parts of myself at the same time, which is the only place that I'm really going to be happy. You know, we all kind of end up as I suppose, user interface designers or founders or graph or, you know, data visualization people, you know, people like me.

We've got a question from Peter or Pete Leach, but I'll get to that in a second. So I just want to dive a little bit more into. Into this because I think this is a real on with my kind of purpose hat on. This is a really. This is a really critical thing like following the calling that you are feeling compelled to follow and navigating the path. There might be many people like you who haven't had that courage or ability or I guess the true connection to who they could be who are stuck, you know, still in that engineering office doing, you know, slight tinkering, tinkering to energy usage on big buildings who have a deeply creative side of them that they can't express.

It's. I think it's just sort of acknowledge that it's really cool that you've. You've had the ability, I guess. And did you have to fight for that, or did you feel that you were in a position where you could kind of follow your. Your calling and create something for yourself? Yeah. Or did you have to kind of really fight for that?

Well, I mean, I just first want to say that I think, you know, like, I write about this in my book, and it's become a real pillar of the way I live my life, which is that I think you need to put your creative genius zone, whatever that is for you. And even if you don't know what it is, you just need to try to figure out what it is, put that at the center of your life work, you know, and make it, like going to the gym, like, every day. And I do it through just asking these, what I call these big, like, wonder questions, which is a phrase I borrowed from someone else. We just say, like, what is the most creative thing I can do right now? That's, like, for the greatest good of the universe, and just see what comes to you. I don't know. I have a lot of stuff that comes to me when I ask that really open kind of question. And I think, you know, if you sit on that question for long enough, something will come to you. And so just try to spend. You know, like, sometimes you're just walking out the street, and then you'll be like, what is the most creative thing I needed to do? Well, I think I just really need to look up green walls today on Instagram, and I need to make a collection of green wall pictures, because I just. That's what it is for me today, you know, and then, you know, that leads to one thing, and then you meet someone and then you learn something, and you're just kind of, like, making sure you're investing in that flow every day. I think that's just, like, a fundamental thing we all need to do so you don't end up eroding that kind of having, like, it's like a cancer instead of a grow, a fertile growth, you know? But with me, you know, like, people often say they're like, oh, you know, you're so. You're so strong. You're so confident. Like, it's Completely not true. The deep. I've gone so deep into this space now not because I'm was courageous, it was because I was lost. You know, I came to Silicon Valley, I didn't have the confidence to be a technology entrepreneur in the bro tech VC scene. I just was overwhelmed with anxiety. I was in the scene, but I couldn't. I wasn't like turning up at VC being like, give me $3 million and here's my pitch deck. And I was just too shy and I just wasn't feeling it. And I was just really. I just didn't know what to do. I didn't feel I'd broken up with my fiance four years. I was in my mid-30s. Like, I just, I wasn't in my home of Australia where I grew up, but I knew that I had to go forward. Like, you can't just go back, you have to keep. You know what they say, the only way out is through. And the only way that I could find through this period in my life was to just dig into my creativity. I was so anxious, like, I didn't feel that I'd found it yet. And so I was just like, just do creative flow every day. And that's what I started doing. It was about seven years ago. And I would just be like, well, today I'm going to just design a game. So I'm going to do is design a game Today I'm just going to like write an article. Today I'm going to make a video. Fuck that. I'll just do a podcast, you know, like, what am I interested in today I'm just going to read some academic papers and I just did scurrying and digging until it's kind of started to form.

Nice. There's so much, so much gold in that because, you know, when I'm doing purpose coaching with people, you know, there's so many, so many great concepts. You know, it's like from the, you know, the Knights of the Round Table kind of ethos, you know, you must enter the forest where it looks darkest to you. Now you kind of have to go into some tough times to find out who you really are so that you can become who you could become. But also linked to that, I think is, you know, you have, you know, you have been born and the chances of you being born as you are so infinitesimally small that you should not actually exist. So it's like you've been put here for a reason. What is that reason? And I think, you know, the fact that you were Able to connect to that and go, it's not mucking around with LEDs, I'm going to keep picking on that. You know, I'm not here to muck around with LEDs on a building design that actually, when actually the fundamental design of the building is what needs to change, you know, and you're so right. You know, if you lean into that curiosity. I'm a big fan of sort of Jungian psychology and the whole idea of, you know, what is curiosity? Why do we have curiosity? Because if you think there's a guy, I can't remember his name, but he did, he's done a whole lot of research on sleep. And you know, the fact that humans sleep for six to eight hours every day defies evolutionary principles because to put yourself in a position of complete insecurity for eight hours when theoretically any predator can come and eat you doesn't make sense. So what his, his theory is is that sleep must therefore be the most important thing for a human for long term survival, because that trumps you not sleeping and being safe. And I think when you think about curiosity, like again, on an evolutionary perspective, if you're too curious, you end up falling over the cliff edge or you stand in the middle of the road and go, well, does a car actually hit me? If it, if it runs into me, I want to know. But that element of curiosity, I think is, is part of that deep evolutionary need for you to work out who you should be. And following that, you know, following the curiosity, following the ideas that pop up, is a really, really key part of the journey that I take people on when they're looking for more meaning and purpose in their life. Because I guess to paraphrase Jung, you know, the, the thing that you're drawn towards is his theory was it's the best potential version of you calling, calling you towards itself. And I think you have just epitomized that. It's like you felt compelled and drawn that there was something bigger that you could connect into that could create so much more contribution and good. And I think you're just a living, breathing example of it.

Oh, that's very kind of you, thank you. I would actually, I have a video that I made about this which is about that, you know, the kind of like the universe is expanding since it started to begin, you know, billions of years ago. And if you see this kind of evolution of the universe even before life, like all of the atoms and all of the forces of the universe were evolving even before life started, and that we're kind of just like part of that flow and the universe. One thing that is consistent about the universe, it's always evolving and becoming more complex. It's becoming more artful. All of the creatures, you know, that we have now are much more complex than they were, you know, millions of years ago. And that, you know, where does kind of part of this incarnation of that flow and to see your bring it back to, like, basic sustainability day to day, like, sustainability is not like we're fighting the system. Oh, we have to, like, clean up. You know, you take a completely different paradigm to that and be like, well, how do you continue the flow of the universe? How do you serve the flow of the universe in your great greatest sense of creativity and innovation and joy? What can you create that's wonderful and channel that through you? It's a completely different paradigm to come from. Very happy, wonderful space.

Yes.

When they're like, oh, we have to stop that. And those people are bad, and they're kind of like, you know, who's got energy. Energy for that? You know.

Yeah. And I think that's what I love about your vibe in your book in particular, you know, it's. It's because I think historically sustainability has been that. It's been the slap on the hand. No, stop doing that. No fun. You know, don't do anything. Everyone just stay at home. Don't breathe, you know, destroying the planet, you know, don't have kids. We're all destroying the planet. Whereas I think that's. And it's something that I've struggled with. And when I first was kind of went out, went on my own and was trying to work out, like, how do I save the world and what part can I play on that? In my initial branding, I called myself a professional agitator. And it was like, I want to get in there and, like, you know, dig in people's ribs and go, come on, what are you. Why are you being such a dick? Like, wake up, man. Like, you're the problem. And massive thanks to a good mate of mine, Michael Philpott. He was just like, dude, you just. You just like, you just look like an angry guy shouting at people on the side of the street. No one wants to hang out with that guy.

And you're like, well, we all kind of started there. I think in some way, I think we do.

Because you do get angry. I guess it's all part of that change process and. And almost like the grief process of like, oh, my God, why can't everyone else see how ridiculous the whole thing Is, you know, I've got another mate of mine on Facebook. He's all about, you know, the jobs, David Grabus, you know, kind of stuff. You know, why have we got four and a half billion people doing jobs that are meaningless and, you know, aren't actually contributing to anything real and a value and yeah, it's easy to attach to that and get quite angry and sort of feel like you've been duped and like, who's. Who's actually in charge of this show? Why are we all doing this? But you're right. And now I try and bring the energy, the happiness, the vibes and it's like, actually, you know, purpose and saving the world can be the best party on the street. And we have. We'll have a ton of fun and we'll save the planet instead of actually, you know, doing something mediocre over here and not having that much fun, really. So, yeah, I think you're just encapsulating so much goodness in. In all of that.

Oh, so go you and that. Yeah. And that way of getting sort of angry at other people. I mean, ultimately in your life, like, it's not about, you know, everybody else. Like, it's about just what you can do in your life. Like, humans do things by copying other humans. You have to become an example. Like people. Sometimes people poo poo. Like individual behavior change, but really individual behavior change is a huge part of how everything change changes. You can't get away from that. So basically, if you can channel your highest form of creativity and contribution and innovation in a way that inspires everybody around you, that's how you do it. Like, being angry at other people, like, that's very primitive and annoying. Like, what are you contributing to the world, you know, by. By doing that and you can, you can motivate someone. Say if I wanted to get everybody in this apartment block to, I don't know, go plastic free or get an EV. Do you think if I went around, there's like 30 apartments here. If I went out to everybody and got really annoyed at all of them.

Yeah.

Banging on the really negative and depressing. Or I was really depressing. I said, like, climate change is terrible. The earth is going to be on fire. You know, like one of those, like, Jesus people on the street, you know, like, this is. I just want to tell you how bad climate change is. I'm really worried and it's really important that we all get electric cars now. There's only like three electric cars in the parking lot and all the other cars Aren't like, I don't think that would be the best way to connect with people. You know, like I could connect. Firstly, I got to get myself electric car. I got to go plastic free. And then I just want to build relationships with people. Be like, hey, you know, I'm doing this thing. I was thinking we could do this. You know, there's a whole lot of like psychological ways that are very friendly, very open. I will focus, you know, all based on building relationship and good vibes and social sharing and creating a new identity of adoption. It would have to be a really positive, a positive thing in order for it to work.

Totally. Yeah. No, 100%. So we've got, we've got a question from the crowd. So Pete Leach, he has asked question. Oh, I know what I can do. I can even. We can go better than that. We can put it on the screen for you. There we go. So have you seen the documentary Seaspiracy? If it's true, why aren't we focusing on saving our oceans? So thoughts on that?

It's not a good question for me because I haven't seen it. And also because I don't work on oceans, so I don't know that much about them.

Dodge like a true politician.

I'm. I'm sorry. Sorry, Pete. I don't know. But I. All I can say is from my own self, why I don't work on oceans. Well, I don't like the beach that much. More of a. More of a forest.

If the beaches go, where are Katie's.

Okay, more of a forest girl. Bit more of a forest girl than a beach girl.

But I mean, I think though that one thing that has humans have been doing very well at, to give a decent answer, is decarbonizing the electricity grid. And I've been drawn to the electricity grid as well because kilowatt hours are really easy to measure. Like most places can measure kilowatt hours. The sensors are kind of pretty well made. You can do it. And then the mechanisms to doing that is like solar, wind energy, closing power stations, that's something everyone can get into. It's kind of like a machine that we can all tinker at. Whereas other issues like agriculture, the ocean, forestry, these are harder things to measure and harder things to activate people on. So I think the movement has been slower in those because they're, they're not just like a nice clean machine like the electricity grid.

Yeah. And I guess it's. I mean I have seen conspiracy in the LinkedIn comments. I've tagged Bubba Cook, who is sort of working with the Marine Stewardship Council and WWF on a lot of sea stuff. It's, I think like a lot of environmental challenges. It's big, it's complex and there are no easy, quick wins. You know, in terms of fishing, you know, theoretically there is. Well, you can make the argument that sending one massive trawler that goes and gets a whole lot of fish in some ways is more efficient and less environmentally damaging than having a thousand small one man fishing boats go out. You know, there is econ again, but it's like there's good and there's bad because that means, well, there's one trawler, which means there's now 100 or a thousand guys who don't get to go and fish, which means they don't kind of have a job, which means they're not contributing to their local village or town. So it's really, really, really complex. I think the. Where I got to, I had a bit of an email exchange with Bubba and he was, I was kind of like is, is really the best thing kind of just to buy local and buy in season. And he's like, yeah, I mean if tuna is a non native fish to your city, maybe you just don't have it so much because, you know, the, the environmental footprint of getting tuna to a, a landlocked city in the middle of the continental U.S. you know, it's kind of not meant to be there. You know, what's the local fish that you could get or you know, pick something else. So yeah, see spruce. I don't know. There's been some interesting. Some people say it's complete sham, some people are saying no, it's pretty accurate, but there was just some stats that they kind of over inflated. But I think this is why what you're doing, Katie, is so important. It's, it's like let's actually get the data, but let's get the right data and then let's work out if we, if we change this, what happens on the other end. And I think like I said, we've had so little of that or we've had it, but it's been hard to find.

Yeah, well, I'm always on that causality, but I'm, but I mean just to like, I mean, I, I wouldn't know. I don't know if there is any way to really measure fish. You know, they can measure fishing boat activity, but you know, some things. That's why I said the electricity grid's really easy to measure. So that's why it sort of gets a lot of, you know, a lot of people work on that. Whereas you know, the oceans, I mean it's a hard thing to measure. You can't get that immediate feedback loop. You can't make a change and be like look, we did it, we got 10 down. You know, these are very challenging system systems to work on. But I mean I don't understand why everybody is still hooked on eating animals so much. Like we've really got to get over this. Like, I mean I'm not, I eat a mostly vegan diet. I'm not one of those like extreme, what do you call them crazy extreme vegan types. But I do think everybody's got to go like there shouldn't be any excuse for not being like 80 or 90% plant based at least. Like everybody can do that. And if you really love meat, you want to eat it, eat it like once a week or once a month. But the bulk of the diet should really be made of plants and not animals and, and not fish, you know, so we just eat too much of it.

Yeah, it's crazy. Listen, because as part of the I co teach an MBA program at the local university here in Canterbury on creating impact. Impact led enterprises. And it's, it's really interesting when you get down to like why in particular kind of sushi kicked off and I think there was, I think it was tuna in general. I think, I'm pretty sure Bubble can fact check this. The like tuna was a really poor man's fish in Japan and it was, I think it was sometime in the 80s. Someone kind of figured hey we can probably package this and sell this and they kind of created the modern sushi box idea and it just exploded in the US and the rest of sort of Asia. And so suddenly tuna just sort of became, you know, sushi and tuna became a thing whereas before it hadn't become a thing. So yes, it's interesting how I guess marketing and, and consumerism can drive trends which create massive negative externalities based on a whim.

Well, they can start making the, the imitation sushi. You can get it down. It's like plant based sort of.

Yep. Like impossible.

Yeah, they've got like an impossible sushi now. It's, it's time to do the marketing and to spread and take over.

So is that because obviously they're all, they're all California based companies, aren't they? Impossible is that.

I'm pretty sure they're west coast. Is that easy to find in the States?

Yeah, there's A lot of it totally. You go to Trader Joe's, Safeway, there's a huge refrigerator full of frozen fake meat. There's a, a lot of variety of fake meat. I personally am an enormous fan of fake meat having been a vegan leaning person since I was 12 years old and it's made a total difference. I can eat all of the standard American food now with the fake meat and the fake cheese.

It's great and it tastes good.

Yeah, I think it does essentially.

Yeah. Because I mean over here you can see a couple of, there's a few, there's increasingly more. So I'm, I'm trying to totally on sort of the 80 vegetarian. So we've got like this like a meat free burger patty which is like quinoa and chickpea, like little patty. Tastes pretty good. There's also, there's a local mushroom company that's kind of really trying to get into like mushroom based burgers. So it's like a lot of mushroom with some lentils and beans in it. Yeah. Some hemp burgers. Yeah, there's, there's some stuff coming through but the, the, the fake meat stuff. I think there's a chicken based brand in New Zealand. Haven't tried that one yet. Yeah, it's, I'd say it's getting here. What's interesting there, there's a quite a big, I guess a lot of people would call them a dairy company based in Canterbury called Sinlay, who are a big corporation. But what's really interesting is they're now branding themselves as a milk company, not a dairy company because they're kind of recognizing that bovine milk might not be the future so it might be another form of nut milk. So yeah, I think that's because New Zealand's, you know, are certainly top two exporter is, is milk based dairy, you know, like bovine dairy products. So it's a real area of contention which we will try not to open up and you won't have much to comment on anyway. I wouldn't imagine on the New Zealand dairy industry. But yes, it's interesting to see how we need, we might need to transition locally here from one of our big export products.

Well, I think it's very exciting that a dairy company is now identifying as a, as a meat company because that's a very bold thing for a company to do that's always done things a certain way. It's a massive, that's a complete 100% change in every single process and most of them seem to not want to do that they want to kind of stick with or a lot of these are just owned by big corporations. So you know, like, I mean silk is an almond breeze, like the really big supermarket brands of, of non dairy milk here. And they're all just owned by the same enormous corporations that own like hundreds of brands. So they'll own dairy brands, nut milk brands and oat milk brands and vegan brands and meat brands. And they're just one of many brands. So I don't know, it doesn't really matter. But yeah, I mean, getting companies to choose, you know, to realize what they're actually trying to provide for people rather than the mechanism, good for them. Hopefully it works out.

Yeah, no big shouts to Hamish Reed, the director of sustainability. He gave a talk at one of the, the lectures, lecture nights at UC and shared their kind of future plans for their sustainability. And it's truly phenomenal. Like if they get even, probably 20 of it, it's game changing, next level kind of stuff. So yeah, there's, I think there's the thing. It's really, you know, but it's the same. This is why I think, you know, organizational purpose and doing good at an organizational level, it's same as the individual. You can, you can stay with the sunk costs of. Well, I've, I've trained to be an environment engineer. I don't like my job. I realize that this is not the future. I realize that I'm not going to be happy here. But I'm so connected to the identity of me being an environmental engineer. And what would mom and dad say if I quit my job and moved to the States and wanted to start a tech company? You know, all of those thoughts are the same as what go through a senior leadership table. Well, you know, we've been a, we've been this kind of company for 50 years or you know, worse, 200 years. And my great granddad, you know, was firm that we would have to stay doing this forever and ever and ever and ever. And you know, it's that fine line between the sunk costs and, and you know, maximizing those versus what we have to change. I think it's, I think the parallels are the same between organizations and people. You get stuck on the thing that you're doing and you can't see the wood for the trees as to what you could be.

Yeah, well, often like the world decides it for you. You know, like, like my media company in Sydney closed. I mean, two reasons. One, because the economy changed and it was not financially viable anymore. Even though it had been a multimillion dollar company for a few years and, and two, because I was completely burned out, I was completely fried and I needed to take a year off, a year of just really doing nothing. So it was kind of like sometimes it's, it's not that you decide, it's that the world, if you don't get it right, the world decides for you, you get sick or something will change. It kind of forces you to ultimately have that transition in your life 100%.

So I guess back to sort of the rest of work you're doing. What are the biggest mistakes that you see individuals or.

People trying to do good in small groups or even bigger organizations? Like, what's the big mistake most people are making?

Well, I mean, I'm just going by the biggest mistake in my book, just because it's there and you can read about it quite easily is the one thing I talk about which is the value action gap, which.

Really everybody. It's kind of a tragedy that it's not common knowledge. And I really think it ought to be. It really needs to be common knowledge, which is that we all make the assumption that if people just know about something, if you just know about climate change, you just know about the oceans, if you just know about this, you know about that, then you will change, you'll just do everything differently. And humans don't work like that. Like, you can, it's tested, it's been tested many times over. You take people, read a book, watch a documentary on climate change, follow their energy related climate behaviors and you'll see, you won't see any, any effect. And it's very easy to test. They'll try putting out a whole bunch of different flyers that researchers will make. Five different flyers, five different designs. They always use the like, I think they call it like the biospheric appeal is the psychologically technical term. The biospheric appeal means you should do this because the earth matters because of climate change, because of the planet. The biospheric appeal in many studies I've read always gets zero result. It's like nothing. Like, well, sometimes if you're asking someone to do something, you'll get like maybe 10% of people respond. But whether you put the biospheric call in there or not, it doesn't. It's just because you're asking somebody to like, please don't litter, please don't litter. Because the earth matters doesn't make any difference. And so we all make the mistake that going for this like, call to The Earth is strong. It's not like, I mean, we care, that's fine, it does lead to caring, but it doesn't lead to action. And action design, behavior, Design is a totally different profession to getting people to care. If your job is to getting people to keep them awake at night and cry about something, sure. But if your job is to actually get someone to put on a solar panel, change their ev, go plastic free, put in an environmental campaign in their policy, change a law, write to a politician, completely different style of designing to go about it. And so look up value, action gap, information deficit hypothesis. There's Wikipedia pages on it, you can read about it. Don't fall into the trap that getting people to care about the planet, getting people to know about the planet is going to lead to action. It is, doesn't go anywhere.

And then I guess like, you know, within that it's like, well, is writing to our politician the most effective tool? Like, if you've got 100 people who are suddenly activated, where do we go? Like, what's the biggest, you know, return on investment? I guess for the, for the time. Because I think this is, again, it's part of the challenge. People, people kind of might care, like you say, they might care if they kind of got to know about it a bit more. But then people are busy, they've got their own bullshit going on in their own lives and all the rest of it. So actually making time to go and do something, you want to make sure that you're asking them to do something that's effective, that's going to actually get an outcome.

Yeah, well, so you need to really think about that. That's why sort of the book starts with looking at the data, looking at, you know, what's something that you want to work on can be divided up into like a hundred sub issues. So choose a sub issue. And the thing that really.

The way to see change is to look at it through social connection. Everything is relationships. One thing is that people copy each other. So any way that you can create something that can get people to copy each other, it can be putting things on Instagram. Look here, I'm doing my thing on Instagram. Oh, look, I'm doing it. You're getting people to mimic it. You know, you make posters and your graphic design and all of that. And the other one is copying each other and sorry, comparing to each other or competing with each other, which is saying, oh, this is how my data compares to everybody else. You know, if like 50 people in my community get this average am I doing 20 worse or am I doing 20 better than everybody? It's called social comparison, social norms and be like, oh, I'm doing worse, I better do better. This everything is through the social lens. That is how people change. So before I was saying, like, what if I wanted to get everyone in my apartment block to do evs, the first thing I would do is build a relationship with everybody human, one on one relationship. And then start using some of these mechanisms. Like, well, do you know your car uses 20% more fuel, is 20% more polluting than the average car? And you know, I ranked, I got everyone's cars and then I ranked their carbon emissions on a leaderboard. And this is, you know, your car's actually kind of down the bottom. You know, maybe you could do this. Nobody could help, but it would be through the lens of the relationships with everybody else. And that's kind of like understanding one of the mechanisms for change and also the, the reward center of the brain. People want to, people want to make an action and then they want to see that the action works, which is the feedback. Like, I turn off my lights, then I get a text message that says, hey, your carbon emissions have been cut in half. Good job. You know, you're seeing that feedback. And so we want to see feedback for our action. So that's why things like fish in the sea are very difficult to attach to because we can never really see them. We can't see whether they're doing well or not. You know, want to try and build where we can this idea of the reward system and feedback and giving us compliments and smiley faces and good job. Into this pat on the head. Yeah, yeah, yeah, into this. And you can kind of like build that in, you know, and when you know what those things are, and I lay them out really clearly in my book, I think you can just put in some basic pillars of behavior design so, you know, you really start to make progress.

Nice. There's a whole sub conversation happening in the comments about meat, meatless meat, which is really cool. General consensus seems to be. So Steve was sort of saying, yeah, the guy, Pat Brown from Impossible Meats says, you know, the ground product is going to reach a crossover with ground brief in the next few years. So essentially his product will be dollar for dollar the same as a normal burger. Kieran was saying, yep, because that's a problem with fake meat because, you know, the social impact of, of if it's more expensive, it's maybe hard for someone on a lower socioeconomic bracket to get into this stuff Steve's saying. Yeah, he thinks sea spiracy, some of them claims have been exaggerated and Steve has just finished off by saying, yeah, when, when the impossible product is as cheap as normal meat, things are really going to kick off. Which is, I would imagine, is all true. Yeah. I guess the other thing with, with fish, like, how do you actually count, you know, to count the number of fish, like, how do you not double count fish? It must be impossible because, you know, you look at a shoal of fish that are, you know, moving around, it's like, yeah, there's definitely 15.

Maybe there's like some way that ocean ecologists do it, but I'm not even going to go there because I really don't know. I would. No idea what I'm talking about with that.

I'll give a shout out to my housemate from university, Ben Raulston, because this, this, this scared me and it still scares me to a degree. So he was doing a zoology degree and as part of his final year he had to do an industry placement. And the industry placement he chose was with, like, a bug spray company. They sold, like, insect repellents and traps and stuff. And he was asked to do a study on, like, to work out the average number of bugs in a house in the uk. And he basically didn't do any work on this. And the night before, you know, he had to come up with a number. He asked. He basically asked all of us in our flat in Cardiff, boys, how many flies have you seen this week? I don't know. One. Anyway, he basically made up a number and he got published as a, like a white paper through the company and it was even reported in, dare I say, at the Daily Mail. And he came back just like, guys, I think I've made a bit of a.

My work is now in the media. I just basically made it up. So.

Okay, well, it wasn't published in Nature Journal.

Yeah. So, yeah, just. I kind of feel that's. That's maybe the same way that fish get counted. At least Ben's now policeman.

We don't want to insult any marine biologist.

No.

By assuming that that's how they do it.

Totally. I mean, it must be. I'm just curious. Maybe, Bubba, if you tune into this, you can let us know how we actually count fish. Cool. So, biggest mistakes. What's, what's the. What would be your. Other than obviously, go and buy Keddie's book, because it's amazing and it will answer all the questions that you have about doing more good, more effectively and actually I love how you on the front of you but you how to make change in the world the greatest game we've ever played. And I kind of agree. You know, my background's in sales and I sort of say, you know, trying to convince people to go to the path of purpose and doing more good is the biggest sales job I've ever had. You know, you've got to try and convince people that there's a better way of doing something when then when they're very, very fixed to the way they have been doing it. And I think the other big thing is that sense of identity that people attach to. Well, I am this. And if I have to now say that everything I've held be true is not as true as I thought it would be or as I thought it to be, that's quite confronting. So yeah, that's kind of my, my big sales job. But in terms of what would be the one thing you'd say to people who are wanting to maybe transition to do more good? Like if there's a environmental engineer sitting in a building still in Melbourne crunching numbers on LEDs, what would be your some advice to someone like that?

Well, I mean just go through the steps in the book. I mean my, my book is sort of laid out in this 10 step process that you can take anything, any branch of anything, if you want to work on forests or you know, coral pollution, energy, buildings, cars, and just go through it. And it starts off with deeply looking into the numbers. You know, like most people don't take a really deep dive into the numbers and nothing has helped my creative entrepreneurship like doing this. And the more I look into numbers, the more ideas I get. And then you just ask yourself, well how would I change these numbers? Like recently I started mocking up some images of putting these lights on electric vehicle chargers that show a different color based on how sort of polluting the grid is at any time, right. And I've got a lot of these Photoshop mock ups of even building applications, you know, real computer applications around this. And I never thought about car charging because I always in my mind I put cars in with transportation and I was working on buildings and cars of transportation. So I just had a mental wall up not thinking about cars. And then as I started to look in the data, like we started to get people's electricity data, started to put them in the application was interviewing people looking at them and I'm like, I'm like oh fuck. Like cars, electric vehicles create a lot of carbon, like not compared to the petrol ones. But if you don't own a car, you might have a reasonably small carbon footprint. You have an electric vehicle in there and it goes up like because people. And the reason it goes up is because people charge them at night, when in the evening, when the. When the CO2 is very high. And so when looking into the numbers that closely, with that much granularity, I was like, oh, my God, we need to start making these colored lights and working with electric vehicle charging companies. And I realized that none of the vehicle charging companies are really doing it. Like the tiny little bit, but not much. Tesla doesn't seem to be doing it. There's this huge wave about to happen with electric vehicles. Going to put all this load on the grid, it's going to create all this CO2, but it doesn't have to do because we've got plenty of solar here. And I'm just like, oh, my God, this is crazy. This is a huge entrepreneurial opportunity. And like, anyway, point of the story is it came from looking into the numbers more deeply. More deeply. How do we fix it? What's the idea? Just keep doing that. And then, you know, you can read the rest of the book to figure out different ways that you can augment that, but that's the primary sort of mechanism. And then looking at different ways to make the change fun and gamified, you know, progress bars, animal characters, color, all that.

Yep. Have you read a book called Influence by a gentleman called Robert Cialdini?

Yes, of course.

Good.

I've read all the behavior change books on Amazon.

I bet you have. Yeah. Because I remembered, you know, one of the ones he talks about in his book is the. In hotel rooms when people, you know, throw their towels to be cleaned every day. And I think it was it they, they. The little paper or plastic reminder that they say they tested it in. One said, hey, you know, please consider the planet by not choosing to have your towels laundered every day. And it had very little change in people's behavior. And then they tested another one which said something like 80% of people who stayed in this room chose to reuse their towels every day. Would you consider being one of them? And because people wanted to fit in with the crowd, they're like, oh, well, most people don't wash them every day. I guess I should be the same. So, yeah, I think you're just a really interesting intersection of data and humans, which is. It's kind of. It's so obvious that that's what we need. Yet so few people are Doing it. Which kind of makes me think you're definitely on the right path.

Well, the thing is that I just learned it from other industries. Like they do it with health trackers, right? There's a whole field that works on this. You know, they do it with, you know, like when you're speeding and there's that sign on the side of the road that tells you how fast you're going and if you have a speed limit, it says slow down. I mean, they're doing it with cars on the side of the road. It's very simple technology like this stuff is about. It's just, you know, everybody who works in sustainability has come from environmental science or environmental law or environmental planning or architecture or electrical engineering. I mean, we do not learn anything, absolutely nothing about behavioral science or human influence or storytelling or sales. Like, we just don't. It's not in our vernacular of study at all. Like even like the Hero's journey. I mean, I was like in my 30s before I'd heard of the Hero's journey of how to communicate properly. And I'd also spent five years running a media company doing professional, sort of high quality level environmental communications.

We're in a bubble. It's crazy. We have to get, get out of the bubble. Get out of the bubble.

Would you see yourself wanting to be involved with educating the next sort of generation? Like, I could see that you could. I mean, I know you've got online training on your, on your website, but I mean, really. Because I think you're right, you know, cross, cross silos, I guess, in terms of education and getting people thinking. I mean, I saw this, I spent 10 years selling medical devices and you'd be in a hospital and the neurosurgeons would actively seek to not connect with the orthopedic surgeons. Yet they're both doing spinal surgery. One's coming at it from, you know, use of microscope and looking for the nerves. The other's coming at it from more of a mechanical orthopedic background. And you kind of go, well, if you two actually work together, you'd have the best outcome for the patient. Because you're, you're considering a breadth of issues through two different lenses, but with the shared vision of, of the best outcome. But the ego kind of all got in the way. And it's like, no, neurosurgeons shouldn't even be doing spinal surgery anyway.

Well, orthopedic surgeons, they're just carpenters. And it's like, well, you're not putting the patient priority here. Are you. You're putting yourself and your own sort of pride. So. Yeah. Would that be something that you'd like? I kind of feel like someone like you needs to be helping as many people as they can become like you.

Well, I know people in the world, there's a whole dark side we want to. We don't want to get into. It all comes at a. It all comes at a cost in some other sort of way.

Life's not all perfect all the time. So, no, we don't want everyone to be more. More like me. The world would become very dysfunctional very fast if that. There would be parking tickets all over the ground. There would be, like, things not lining up properly, dishes in the sink unpaid. It would be really. Yeah, yeah. We need. We need all of the. More like, structured thinkers to balance out the people like me who are very, like, expansive sort of ideas people. But yeah, like, I've got a. I would encourage everyone to sign up for my podcast, how to Save the World, because I have a really cool episode that I just edited that's coming out next month with a guy called Jesse Shell, who wrote a book called the Art of Game Design. And he just talks about this, like, he's so eloquent and insightful into this one topic, which. Bringing in different spheres of knowledge so you can innovate. Because if you think about one thing that is pure creative innovation, it's game design. And that's what I love about learning from this. Like, the only thing they need to do is be awesomely creative. They literally don't have to do anything else but be cool and fun and engaging. And if they fail at that, they've failed at everything. So they just take it really seriously. Obviously same with, like, film, you know, like, it just has to be good, right?

So, you know, this whole, like, really thinking deeply about how to be more creative, how to tell better stories, how to engage people, you know, it's like, central to the DNA of that. That craft. So he talks about that a lot. And you know what? In sustainability, we talk about it absolutely. Never. Never, ever, ever. So, you know, if you think about it, if your job is to, like, save forests or the whales or the trees, you know, I think about it, if you were a great creative force, you know, how would you do it? You know, what could you learn from Hollywood style storytelling? What could you learn from game design? And you find that you can bring wonderful things into it that are really enriching and it becomes a wonderful craft as opposed to, like a fight, you know, so, yeah, people just got to, like, just really, you know, just go to the complete opposite field. Something that you never thought you'd be interested in, read about it, and then think, like, how would I bring that back home? You know, how would I bring this back to what I do? Even if you do something that would be considered boring, like insurance or policy, a lot of people work on local government policy. Very important and influential space. You know, I think about, you know, what could you learn from? I was leading to a podcast just before we started this on sports psychology right now. I hate sport. Never played sport. I hate everything. I cannot hate more than you can possibly hate sport.

Is that why they. Did they deport you from Australia for being an Australian and not liking sport?

No, I left. I don't like the beach, I don't like the port, and I don't drink alcohol. So I'm very un Australian.

Very un Australian, Yeah.

People tease me all the time. I don't fit into the culture there. So. Yeah, but, you know, I was really curious about this. I'm like, okay. People are so into sport. It's crazy. Like, and I think it's dumb, like, running around after a ball. Why would anybody want to do that? People seem to really like it. They've got a whole field of sports psychology. You know, like, maybe I should learn sports psychology and then figure out how to bring it in to what we do. And they're very into, like, leadership and teams and all this nuance in their psychology, and we can really learn from that. So that's something that you could learn and then bring it back in. I mean, evolution only happens when fields intersect. When we're all just in our environmental science degrees, you know, like, great. Do we really need another environmental science degree just on its own? Do environmental science and do, I don't know, just do something crazy like performance art and put them together.

Yeah, so, yeah, totally. Right. Because. Because when you're kind of squeezing the lemon of the environmental science knowledge and you're getting down to the nth degree of one little topic that no one. No one's. Like, no one's read the 10 research papers that came before your one, which has taken this to the finest point of the wedge, it's like, yeah, totally agree. It's in the sports, though. I think. I think that's interesting. I think for me, I mean, I did play a lot of sport. I guess it's. For me, I'd link it to that kind of hero's journey. It's. It's that concept of, you know, living out the. The potential ideal of the hero and getting to kind of figuratively or if you played rugby, actually fight other people to test yourself for that kind of warrior archetype. So I think that's. And I think that's why so many people like watching sport, because it's like. Like I. I'm sitting on my couch drinking beer, eating crap food whilst watching some amazing athletes perform. And in my mind I'm telling myself I could have been that guy, but I just didn't get that lucky break at varsity or uni or school or whatever. And I think that's why, particularly for guys, it's. It's such a massive. We're living vicariously through the heroes that we watch on the. On the pitch. And then you chuck in a bit of sort of general mcismo and nationalism on top of it and it's like, fantastic. Everyone's a winner.

Yeah. I think, Ben, I asked once, I had a very insightful boyfriend once who worked in film, and I was like, why did men love to watch violent films? Like, I can't stand violence. Like, I just. Not even for one second, I can't deal with it. And he said, you know, he said all men have a deep kind of inner sort of genetic itch to be that guy, to fight, and they can't do it in our normal society. So we vicariously watch it. He's very articulate in the way he explained it. So we like to watch it because we get to live that. So when you think about, you know, sport and violent films, I mean, women are not that. Not as much attracted.

Yeah.

To. It's not very cool to kind of divide men and women anymore. But there's one of those things that it's like, well, why are guys, like, so in sports or into violent films? Because you get that. That. That sort of deeper sort of itch to. To fight kind of out.

I think it's genuinely. I think, you know, I sort of ponder and you kind of go, well, if you look at the entirety of history, we've basically. At some. At some place, and if not all over the world, we've been trying to kill each other on a really regular basis.

I mean, humans have been very violent for a very long time.

Yeah. So to me, it would suggest that it is not that far beneath the surface. And I think if you look at most drunken towns on a. On a Friday or Saturday night, it's. It's at the surface, people just want to have a go at it. So I Think, But I think for me that's, that is part of this kind of process that humanity needs to go through is that raising of consciousness and, and realize that for me, you know, saving the world like that the competition is not me versus you, it's you and me versus no planet. And I think that's all part of what you're doing. And hopefully what I'm trying to do is, you know, help people raise that level of consciousness and realize that there's other battles that you can fight where we need that warrior kind of archetype, that warrior spirit. But instead of punching another bloke in the face, go and punch climate change in the face.

Yeah, perhaps. I mean, I personally don't relate to that at all. I'm not trying to punch anyone, anyone. I'm just perhaps the incarnation of my childhood which is just drawing flowers. I just want to do like cool art people like. And now my art is more technically based and kind of more behaviorally based, but it's still just kind of like cool stuff I want to make. But no, I have no desire to fight.

To fight or attack.

But yeah, maybe that's what everyone's sort of going, going through the process of every hundred years. This is kind of like shedding of the old ways and then, you know, emerging of a new style, new, new paradigm of being.

Yep, definitely. Well, we're at the just over the hour mark and I know you've got to go and you've got to go pick up your daughter, I believe. Is that what you have to do?

I will, yes. I have to go and get back from school.

Very cool. Final words of wisdom for people listening in. I feel like, I mean go buy your book it seems would be the logical thing. But yeah. Anything else you, you sort of want to think about, talk about before we closes up the call?

Oh, anything that I think I've already talked about so much. I can't. You can't give people like these open ended things. You have to ask like specific questions, otherwise they're like.

No, I just would like just people to. I've been putting out more material on Instagram designs and more podcasts. Got a couple of really interesting podcasts coming out on my Instagram. That's @KatyPatrick. Hello. And you know, download the Energy Lollipop Chrome extension. It's for California, but you can see what happens to the grid in real time. And then, you know, possibly we can, you know, do it for, you know, other states and countries in the world so you can sort of See a really good example of this Fitbit for the Planet style of design. And, you know, I'm always pretty chatty on dms, so people ask me questions and I'm pretty, pretty friendly like to hear from people. So.

Cool.

That's it.

Fantastic. Awesome. Well, I'll put some links to your book, the lollipop extension, Instagram and your website on LinkedIn and on YouTube and on the podcast. But really great to see you again. It's been quite a while since we've connected. Great to see you doing well. Yeah, really excited to see what happens for you in the next couple of years. And let's see if we can get your lollipop to Christchurch.

Yes, I want to see that. Find someone who can sign off on a little bit of a budget. It doesn't need to be much. Someone who works in government who can sign up just a little bit, we can send it down.

I reckon there'd be some funding places we could go to, some sponsorship and.

Once they see it, they'll just be like, that is so cool. We'll have like 20 of them all over the city. And you're a professional sales guy, so no one will sell it like you.

No pressure now.

Yeah, absolutely.

No pressure now. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Hey. Well, thank you, Katie. Thank you, peoples of the Interwebs. Thank you so much for everyone's questions today on the Sea Spirit. A lot of interest in fake meat, so I don't know, I'll see if I can get Bubba on a on one of these next up or maybe someone involved. I've got a connection with some fake meat people actually I just made in the last couple of weeks, so. Yeah, thanks for tuning in. We'll catch you next time. I don't think I've got one running next week, but, yeah. Katie, thank you so much. Keep being amazing, keep doing what you're doing and we will catch you soon.

And that's a wrap. Hey, thank you so much for listening into my podcast. I hope you found it informative and inspirational. I'd love to know where you are on your purpose journey and if you have any specific questions or people you'd like me to interview to help you on that journey, please do let me know. Also, feel free to connect with me on other social media platforms. You can check out all those links in the show notes below. And if you want to see how I might be able to help you specifically on your purpose journey, you can go and check out my website, www.growgood.co or drop me a line by email timogrowgood co. All those links will also be in the show notes. I would genuinely love to hear from you. But anyway, until next time, go well and keep seeking that purpose. Fuel performance in your life.

It.