#26 Nic Turner - The Only Author In The World Who Doesn't Want You To Buy Their Book :-P

Foreign.

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

Go. So apparently we're live. We'll soon find out in a minute. I've got my LinkedIn Open over here, so I'll. I'll know when we actually are live.

Awesome.

Nicola Turner. Hello. Thank you for being here. How are you today?

Yeah, good. Stoked to be here, Excited about it.

Excellent. And I just realized when I sent you the text just before that we had actually connected in a previous life when I was doing some stuff with conscious consumers or what is now cogo.

So we do. Now that you say that. Yeah, yeah.

Genuinely small world. So there we go. So yeah, for people tuning in, who are you? What do you do? Why are we here talking?

Why are we here talking? So my name is Nicola Turner or you're very welcome to call me Nick and I'm a Capricorn and I like long walks on the beach. This is a dating podcast, right?

Yes, yes, purpose dating.

Just don't tell my husband. So no, I think probably more relevant is the fact that I spent the first 15 years of my career working in the fast moving consumer goods industry or the FMCG industry. So essentially the industry that puts products on our supermarket shelves and my job in that industry became all about understanding shopper insights, shopper behavior, and then using that insight to orchestrate things to get people to buy more. And then about 10 years ago, and it was a wellbeing trigger, but we being myself and my husband, started on a sustainability journey, sort of started going. It really became a journey about questioning every aspect of our consumption because that's our impact on the world around us. And my personal values and what I was doing for a job just started getting a little bit too divergent. So I started questioning how I could kind of fuse those two things together. So the kind of standing joke now is that I used to be about understanding shopper behavior to get people to buy more and now I'm about understanding human behavior to get people to consume less. And it's a weirdly similar kind of approach, but just with what I can consider to be a more kind of purpose driven outcome. And yeah, I have a social enterprise called Mainstream Green that works with councils kind of in the consultancy space and running some campaigns for them. I do a lot of speaking gigs in organizations and businesses just to get them really excited and give them some tools around how to be more sustainable. And then I do public facing stuff. So I had a book come out in January. I do live. Yeah, thanks yeah, yeah. So that's kind of it in a nutshell.

Super cool. Quite a lot to unpack there. But I think a. I mean, certainly for me, a seemingly frighteningly similar journey to kind of purpose. You know, I had a very similar thing about 10 or so years ago. It's kind of like, what am I doing? Why am I. What am I actually contributing to? And is what I'm contributing to worthwhile?

And that's partly why I'm doing this podcast or this interview series is to help more people realize that actually there's quite a few people that have those moments in their corporate career, and you can do something about it, and it is pretty good on the other side. So thank you for being open to sharing that journey. And I also love the. I kind of feel like the same for me because I do quite a bit of sales training. And again, it's kind of like the sales training, the psychology of how and why people buy, use that as a force for good, to help them have a product or a service that they actually need, rather than something that the. Those dodgy coloring in marketing people make you want to buy something because they think, you know, you think you want to have it.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I think a big part for me as well is how do I. I didn't want to start again, you know, and I felt like I'd learned a lot, and consumption is the way of the world, and there's a trillion dollar marketing industry out there that I kind of, you know, I had immersed myself in. And so it wasn't about going against that. It was about. Yeah, absolutely. As you say, how do you use that insight as a force of good? So, yeah.

So was there, like a specific moment? Like, for me, there was a specific moment. I was standing in an operating theater. So I used to be a medical device rep before I sort of had my midlife, early midlife crisis, purpose epiphany, kind of two sides of the same coin. And I distinctly remember the moment I was standing in an operating theater. The surgeon, the orthopedic surgeon was being particularly belligerent, more so than on any normal day. And I just thought, you know what? I'm. I'm done with this.

I.

And I went home after that. It was like at lunchtime, I went home and said to my wife, I'm done. I'm out. I can't do this anymore. Did you have, like, a specific moment? I call it the. What's the polite phrase would be the FTS moment? The f. This scheisser. Moment when you kind of like flip the table. It's like, I'm done. See you all later. I'm out of here. Did you have like a moment like that?

No, I wish I did. And I think I'm just going to orchestrate one just so that I can say that I did.

To feel like you had the full experience.

Yeah, I feel like I want to flip a table now. So, no, I didn't flip a table. No, mine. I don't feel like there was a single sort of lightning rod moment. It's definitely been a little bit of a creep, I guess, versus a, you know, a significant event. But the one, the trigger that I kind of am able to pinpoint it to. And I have honestly considered making up a story because it's really not a rock star moment. It's not a flip the table moment. It's not a. Oh, my gosh, it's. My husband started getting very mild dermatitis on the ring finger on his left hand. That finger changed everything for me. So, yeah, and it was really a wellbeing journey for us. So it was one of those things where he got it. He went to the doctor, got steroid cream, used steroid cream, cleared up like that, stopped using, it would come back. So it was kind of this. Clearly we were treating the symptoms and not the cause. And then somewhere in the Rolodex, in my mind, was something I'd read or heard, which is, on average, through the products we use, we're putting over 400 different synthetic chemicals on our skin every day. So that was our trigger. And it started very much as a personal wellbeing journey, but then it kind of opened up, you know, and sustainability purpose, whatever you want to call it, you know, I think everybody comes at it from really different gateways, but when you get in, you kind of realize that everything's connected. Right. So it became a journey about consumption and those sorts of things. So, yeah, it was a wellbeing thing. It was my husband's finger. It was not flip the table. But it's been a. Just a journey of connection, I guess, over the last 10 years. That continues to evolve, I think.

I mean, it's that kind of moment because I was emceeing a conference a couple of weekends ago now in Christchurch. I've just tagged Ewen Wong, who's the amazing orchestrator of that event. And it's all about Enviro, it's called Enviropast. And it's all about getting to people thinking about plastics in the environment. And it's Professor Shaw. I think it's Ian Shaw. I can't remember his name. He's a toxicologist in Canterbury Uni. And he. He talks. His talk is frightening. When you get to learn about the amount of plastic that is surrounding you and how devastating it is, not just only for you as the human, but more broadly for society. And I think, again, for me, it was that. For me, I had that moment of realization that. So for me, the industry that I was working in, some of the major companies and even some of the surgeons involved with these companies were complicit in essentially killing patients in service of making more money. And you kind of. You have that disconnect in your head, and you're kind of like, this isn't me. And it seems like that's kind of what you were having. It's like, you know, enough to sort of be dangerous about what's actually in the products that you're selling. And suddenly you do a bit of research, you have a bit of awareness, and it's like, hang on a minute. This is not working in the same direction that I fundamentally feel. And I think that's a really common. A common thing. So what was your first sort of steps? You did the research, you were working for these organizations, trying to sell as much of this kind of stuff as possible. What was. What was your first step?

Yes, our first step was how do we start looking at the products that we're using on our skin? Because that's. Obviously, we're kind of. Our. Our challenge was. And so we started by Chang hand. So that's it. That was kind of the first step on the journey, I guess. And then my trigger was, because I'm really.

My position on what I do is how do we mainstream sustainability? How do we make it accessible? So. And that was a really big part of my journey is. And a few times I kind of went too hard too fast. But what I realized really quickly was that that just freaks everybody out and is not sustainable in itself. Right. So my tickle was kind of, okay, change the hands. Like, oh, that seems to help. What's next? Every time we ran out of a product, that was kind of the trigger to go, actually, do we really need this? Because I've spent 15 years convincing people that they needed a different product for every limb and on their body.

Right. It's like, hold on a minute, you know? So it was very much a journey of simplification as well. And that kind of led onto the fact that, oh, my gosh, it's you know, we don't need all of these different products. So that was saving us a ton of money, a ton of time, because we just weren't shopping, you know, the way that we. We were previously. And then also there was less packaging waste going into our rubbish bin and that felt good. So then it was, what else is in our rubbish bin that we could reduce? I kind of went down that rabbit hole of. Of waste reduction. And then it kind of segued from there into, well, what about all of that bigger stuff in our life? So the furniture and the kids toys and the clothes and all of that other kind of broader relationship with stuff, and started reading up about minimalism and L. And started going down that rabbit hole.

Nice.

Hello, listeners. Many apologies for the.

Pretty ropey editing at about the nine minute mark, but on the live stream we had a few dramas with Nick's microphone and speaker connection, which does a bit of reverb and stuff going on. And we essentially spent five minutes trying to get her to reconnect and disconnect and do all sorts of stuff, which ultimately led her to restarting her computer. So there's a five minute bit of nothingness I have edited out. So, yes, enjoy. Thank you for listening. So we were talking about simplification, starting on something really small and not being overly aggressive, which are three things that I also did badly, when I call it my. I had like a hard Brexit from the corporate world. I kind of had this flip the table moment. It's like stuff you all. You're all a pack of bastards. I'm out of here. And, yeah, I was quite so angry at, I guess, what I felt other people had led me to become. It was almost like a bit of a grief process or a bit of a change process, you know, sort of five steps of change or sort of go through grief.

And I think it's kind of natural when you feel like to a degree you might have been hoodwinked by, you know, the companies that you've been representing and. Or the people that have led you to choose those paths of working in that company. So hang on a minute. You didn't. You didn't tell me everything that I maybe would like to have known for me to have made a good decision about. Or do you feel you were genuinely oblivious to? I mean, because I was kind of oblivious to a lot of the social and environmental things that I've caused, yeah. Do you feel you were kind of totally oblivious to it or was there always a part of you that's Kind of like, well, plastics, not great, but I'm happy to keep getting it out there.

I think there was definitely a time where I, I was oblivious. And I also think.

There'S not like working with some really big corporations as well. I think there's not a whole lot of bad people sitting inside these big ivory towers planning how to stuff the world. That's kind of what I reflected on as well. I think I didn't feel like you, in terms of people weren't telling me. I think nobody was really thinking about it. I don't think they were intentionally doing it. I think it just. Consumption has become such a normalized part of, of our society, in our world that everybody just kind of was in there to do a good job.

Yeah.

And that's. And I don't think there was a lot of consciousness around it for me or for a lot of people in there. I think it's probably different now because I think things have shifted a lot in terms of some things. But I think, yeah, 10 years ago there wasn't the same visibility and, yeah.

I mean, I guess for me, well, there was in a couple of companies. There definitely seemed to be some people who were in their ivory towers with a sort of Machiavellian, like, literally, you know, how do we round up some small children and make them clean some chimneys today? Because that just sounds fun. But I think for me it was more in general. It's that kind of the corporate focus on, on just maximizing revenue and, you know, if your focus is solely on how do we make as much money, not, you know, rather than, you know, is this good for the person that will set you on a path of decision making that means you make more money and you don't think about other considerations whether. And I guess it's kind of like the sins of omission and the sins of commission. You know, do you, did you, you know, do you know that the plastics are quite bad for the planet, but it's the cheapest thing we've got, therefore it's going to make us more money or. And I think there's probably a balance. There's probably some people, clearly some people who, you know, were the production end or the, the plastic specialist would have had some inclination of the chemical makeup of plastic and what it could potentially do. But for you, working as sort of like a marketing or product manager or something, trying to just get as many products into a store, you kind of take for granted that it's been tested and this is all good. Yeah. So I Guess it's typically a mix of the two.

Yeah. And I. So when, during my transition phase into, you know, what I do now, I, I segued into a role at Regional Council. So that was kind of. I was coming back from maternity leave with my second child and I went. I just can't face going back into corporate. But so I took a job, took a contract at Regional Council and I still remember my first week there going, oh my gosh. Like, the measures are not purely financial. This is incredible. Like, it felt incredible. But then after two weeks I'm like, this is really hard. Because profit was. It's easy, you know, like it's really tangible and it's super black and white and people understand it. And so after a couple of weeks I was kind of in the state of disarray going, this is really complex. And how do you measure well being and how do you, you know, it just wasn't as kind of. The hallway wasn't as defined and as narrow as it had been in corporate. So I can also kind of understand, you know, that, that it's just profit is, it's black and white. People get it, they can measure it. And yeah, beyond that, it gets a little bit trickier.

Michelle Sharp, formerly of Kilmarnock Enterprises, now unicef, you know, one of her go to phrases is, well, there's two parts to it, I guess, like if, if doing good was easy, everyone would be doing it. And the other part of it is, what. Why is doing good so hard? And it's. I think that's, that's the thing. It's like it's relatively easy to work out how to make more money. You cut corners, you cut costs and, or you try and sell more on the other side or a bit of both. And it's like, it's pretty well documented and I guess it's sort of during the 70s, the whole sort of concept of, well, we're running a bit lower money, let's fire most of the, most of the company, we'll save some money. Like easy to make more money. It's way harder to sort of go, okay, actually how do we make maybe not quite as much money, but also ensure that everyone has a good job and they have a livelihood. We don't destroy an entire community by, yeah, making everyone redundant. I think that's part of the thing, just that the sort of the trade winds fall. I mean historically in business for the last, you know what, 100 years of capitalism as it is, it's sort of just, yeah, make as much Money, have at it.

And I'm not saying, you know, and it was a. It was obviously capitalism as a choice. And it's, it's the, you know, the kind of the norm we have now. And I'm not saying that's right or wrong, but it's become such a strong norm that when you kind of start, I think that it feels.

Yeah, totally. It's like the fish in water, isn't it, people? You just take it for granted. There's a really good. He's a British documentary maker called Adam Curtis, and one of his documentaries is called Hyper Normalization. And that kind of looks into this idea of like things that are just hyper normal that you just take for granted as it's. That's how it is, you know, it's like gravity. It's like it's just a thing, it just happens, you know, you don't stop and think about it or wonder if gravity could happen in a different way, because it can't. But there are other kind of systemic things that you just kind of go, well, it's always been like that. Therefore, it's always been like that. Yeah. So, yeah, simple steps. Take some action. Don't be angry about it, don't be angry at the world. I think these are all very good first steps for people wanting to make that step change. And I think also you sort of very similar to me. It's like you had a set of skills that had been crafted and honed in a corporate environment. And it's like, how do you flip those skills and use them as a force for good? That's. That was exactly, yeah, my journey. So, yeah. So you started working in the regional councils and what sort of work were you, were you doing there?

So that was on waste minimization. And I, it was a really, really good stepping stone because it got me inside councils, like council was. I learned so much, but one of the things I learned was that I love working with councils, but being in a council wasn't the right fit for me, but it allowed me to see enough to go, okay, I can see where I can fit and where I can help and how I can kind of find a niche. So that gave me.

The background and the bravery, I guess, to then go out on my own. And a big chunk of my work is still with councils and because they, especially in waste minimisation in particular is. There is funding, there is the central government waste levy, there is a remit for all territorial authorities to be doing waste minimization. So part of it was Also that it's like they need to be doing it, everybody. There's a lot more focus on it, a lot more resource on it, and I can kind of help in that space. So that was like, yeah, I was quite strong. A lot of my focus was in the waste reduction space to begin with. But then I have gone broader. One, in terms of I. In kind of reflecting on my own journey and two, in terms of reflecting on my skill set is what I talk about is mindful consumption. Right. It's like I said before, consumption to me, it's kind of that overarching everything when it comes to our impact. Because I think people, everybody kind of, kind of gets. Most people kind of get climate change and get, you know, get sustainability, but they feel quite big and quite high and that can be quite difficult to relate to on a personal level. Whereas if we, you know, I kind of bridge that. That gap by going, it's all about the consumption choices we make, how and what we consume is our impact. That's our relationship with climate change, that's our relationship with sustainability. So that's become the lens that I've talked about. So that might be the clothes we wear or the food we eat, or the electricity we use, or the way we get around, or the manufacturing that goes into the things that we buy or the waste we create. So that consumption lens has kind of become my focus. Waste is absolutely a big part of that. Everything's connected. But that become the lens and the language that I use.

Nice. And that's, again, such great, great advice. Because it is. It can be really hard. You kind of go, climate change.

That'S quite a big thing for me. You know, I know, you know, Jacinda's working on it and maybe Boris, who knows what Boris is working on. You know, some of these people, like, you're all smart people, you're connected, you're. You're hopefully working on some of this stuff. It can be quite overwhelming to sort of think, well, what do I do then? You know, like with the whole EV thing right now, it's like, well, you hear some people say, well, the most sustainable car is the car you've got, and run that vehicle into the ground. But then you kind of go, yeah, but it's an old car that's pumping out stuff. So do I. It's. And I think that's the. When. When there's overwhelming options and things to. To consider. When you are a busy mum, dad, parent, child, daughter, whatever, son, you know, we're all busy just trying to get, get through our lives and, and you know, do the best we can. It's, it is pretty overwhelming. And yes, I think that's really, really sage advice. Again, just, you know, pick. Look at the. Take control of what you can rather than being overwhelmed by all the things you can't do.

Yeah.

Just on that. Like what where do you see? Because if you look at sort of like there's, I guess there's like global things like the UN, you know, you know, UN SDGs looking at, you know, life on land and water, then you've got, got the sort of central government level things that they can influence. Then you've got local government things that they can influence. And then at the individual level, clearly it's, it's, it's a combination of working with all of them. But yeah. How sort of connected do you get a sense that the whole, the whole thing is in terms of sort of mindful consumption? Because I mean, I remember it's quite funny, you listen to sort of. I think it was the budget, maybe not the previous one, but the one before. And within two sort of breaths they were saying business confidence is up. We're really happy about this. You know, people are spending, the economy's going really well, but we're mindful that there's some mental health issues in New Zealand. And you kind of go, well, maybe it's the fact that people are living a life that they don't like so much, which means they're buying. They don't need to compensate for the. Yes. How do you. There's lots of questions in there, but. Yeah, first one, how do you see the connectivity between the individual, the household, local governments? Because the big one for me is kind of like the recycling. You know, the pressure is on the consumer to either buy an alternative product or sort the waste out themselves. Whereas really the easiest thing would be you just put everything in a container and someone will go and sort that and make. That will go away for you. Or central government would sort of. Which I guess they are kind of increasingly say you don't get to make that product out of that material.

Yeah. Products, your end production. So yeah, I mean I, I always come back to the consumer just because that's what I know, that's what I get. That's what I relate to. That's where my skill set is because. And that's kind of my epicenter and not because I think that that's where all the change should come from at all. I think the change needs to come all the way along the chain. But I think what people underestimate is how much power we do have as consumers.

Yep.

So if you look at the plastic bag ban as an example, you know, if you really kind of trace that back to where it first began, you know, it first began with people being really frustrated with how bad plastic is for the environment. Right. You'd see all the stuff on social media, you'd see stuff out in the environment. We were learning things about the toxicity of it. We were, you know, all of those kinds of things. And people were getting upset and frustrated about that. And maybe they were posting on social media or maybe they were emailing their local supermarket and complaining, or, you know, there was your boomerang bag kind of concepts popping up. And so supermarkets were going, oh, this is important to our customers. Right. Because having been in the supermarket game, it is highly competitive. It is all about market share. So if there is, you're constantly looking at what's your customer demand? You know, what do. How do you better service that to gain that market share? So for them to go, oh, actually this is important to our customers. We're seeing this kind of appetite for things that then they obviously started doing their own kind of plastic bag, you know, charging for plastic bags, et cetera. Then central government goes, well, this is important to consumers or the general public. Businesses are behind us because they're starting to do something about it. We better do something about it. And then the plastic bag ban kind of came in place. So all of them had a role to play. But I think, and I'm assuming, but I think if you really go back to the epicenter of it, it started with consumer demand or consumer dissatisfaction. And I also, you know, having worked inside a consumer goods product as well, it's all about. You were constantly going, what's the consumer demand like? I think consumers sit outside going, oh, businesses. It's all about businesses. Businesses have to make the decisions they need to drive the change. You know, consumer goods companies, which is what I know, are going, what do our consumers want? How do we possibly keep up with our consumers? And everybody's kind of feeling like the other one's got the power. So, you know, any smart business and consumer goods as an example, would be going, oh my gosh, there's a consumer demand for more sustainable products or low waste products or whatever that might be. How do. It becomes a race to kind of create product innovation in that space. So, but again, it kind of, for me, that all comes back to the consumers. Yeah.

Well, no, it doesn't all come Back to it. That's not fair. But that's. I think we have a lot of power and I think we need to be coming at it from all angles. But my, you know, my kind of heartland where I spend my time and my energy is on that consumer. But because I think there is a lot of people there.

Yeah. Nice. And it was interesting at the Enviropath conference we had the. Is it the honorable Eugenie Sage? I think it is, but she was like, just call me Eugenie.

This was really refreshing, hearing a politician saying this is that, you know, individuals will drive business, which will drive government policy.

Which has kind of always been my. My thought is if. And that's partly why for me, the. The purpose on the individual level is so important, because if you are a better person with higher levels of awareness of yourself and your impact and your connectivity with each other and the planet and what have you, that will lead you to make better purchasing decisions, which will lead you to demand more from the businesses that you support, which will then in turn influence government policy so that they get elected, essentially. Yeah. I just put a note there. Coco, or conscious consumers, which we connected with a while back, that they like, that's one of their big things, is helping you understand and. Yeah. Understand what you're passionate about and also helping you find and connect with businesses that care. But also, if you're a business, it's a really great tool for you to understand what your customers care about so that you can start that conversation. And it's good to know that Catherine loves Coco. So go Catherine.

Awesome.

To navigate. Right? Like, that's so for consumers. So I think, you know, having platforms like that, that help make it easier to navigate and kind of do that due diligence for you.

Yeah.

Amazing. So, yeah, I think it's an awesome platform.

So let's delve into some of the psychology then. Like for. I mean, when you're educating consumers, do you, like, let them in on some of the tricks that they're being exposed to in the soup in the supermarkets? Because when I'm teaching sales training, but also when I'm. Because again, the psychology of sales training, understanding other humans is deeply connected to the psychology of purpose and understanding who you are and how you connect with the world around you. And I always say to people, if you want to have a really great lesson in the tools of influence, go and walk around a supermarket. Because. Or any good retail environment, because the whole environment has been set up to try and make you spend more money.

Absolutely.

So, yeah. Do you Delve into that in your sessions with people to sort of let them in on the tips and tricks that they're being exposed to.

Yes, yeah, sometimes, absolutely. And I think the really interesting thing is that broadly people are kind of aware of it. You know, like we kind of know. And as you say, it's not just supermarkets. It's any well designed retail environment. It's good business. Right. So science stuff. So the interesting thing is, I think we're broadly aware of it. You know, most people that milk and bread and all those basics are right in the back corner for a reason. And it's the beautiful fresh produce and the smell of rotisserie chicken or the smell of Mrs. Higgins cookies or whatever that is. I think people are kind of broadly aware of that. They might not be aware of all of it. You know, like, we used to do a lot of work on shelf placement. You know, simple things. Like it's got to be between hip and eye level. But I think if you think about that, it's pretty obvious, right? Because we, unless we're really looking for something, we don't. We time pour well, we don't look on the shelf, you know.

Pilot, which is what you were saying before, right. As life is so busy that I think if people kind of stopped and think about. Thought about this stuff, they'd kind of inherently know it and I think kind of do. But again, it's kind of irrelevant because we just operate on autopilot. So I think most of us just kind of fall into the succumbing to it because. Yeah, and it's really interesting. I really go to the supermarket. So we go food shopping every six to eight weeks. And my husband's currently at home kind of doing, you know, his. The lion's share of domestic stuff. So I haven't been to a supermarket in months.

Right.

And I went recently and I'm like, oh my gosh. Like, it's such an intense experience now in terms of how do you navigate all of these different products and make better choices? Like, it's pretty full on. So much of our daily behavior is in that subconscious or that unconscious part of our brain. It's autopilot, Right? So, yeah, I think absolutely, I kind of let people in on it, but I think they already are. The hardest thing is how do you kind of flick that switch into that conscious part of your brain to disrupt that and start making more conscious choices? And so my example with the supermarket is my journey was very much I started by every time I was going to the supermarket Focusing on one product, taking an extra 60 to 90 seconds standing in front of that category. So say it's toilet paper, right? Standing in front of that category and going, how can I make a better choice? And again, there is no perfect choice. You know, I talk a lot about don't let perfect get in the way of good. Because you. Before you can tangle yourself up in knots, if it's like, do I sell my car and buy a EV or what do I do? And I use the example of toilet paper, right? You stand in front of the toilet paper section. Section and you're like, okay, I could buy double length toilet paper because it's twice as much product in the same amount of packaging, right? So I've just halved my, my plastic. Yeah.

Never thought of that.

No.

That's genius. It's like.

And you have to change the roll half as often, which is a massive win when nobody else seems to change.

So it could be that choice or it could be, you know what, I'm going to choose a brand that's made in New Zealand or I'm going to choose a brand that have FSC Forestry Stewardship Council, you know, certified sources in terms of where the pot comes from. I'm going to buy something that's made out of recycled. Clearly not recycled toilet paper. It's recycled paper.

Well, recycled, yes, but reused maybe not.

Or I'm going to buy one that's not perfumed or bleached because then it's less chemicals. You know, all of those are better choices. But as you said before, one, don't get overwhelmed with which is the best because it's also. Your family's also got to be good with using it.

Yeah, yeah. Don't get the tracing paper.

Exactly. And there's price is going to come into that equation as well. But to me, if you are making a conscious choice, it's going to be a better choice, even if it's not the perfect choice, because there is no such thing. And that was kind of my journey is just choose one product at a time. Because so I used to do. And occasionally I still do them. Zero waste home tours through my house here in Cambridge. And one time somebody messaged me afterwards and went, I've just spent three and a half hours in the supermarket going through all of my products and I'm like, don't do that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you clinically sane still or are you. I don't do therapy that. You need to talk to someone else about that. Yeah.

Because that's. Whereas, you know, it's really easy to go, oh look, changing my toilet paper purchase decision, it's not going to save the world and it's not going to save the world. Of course it's not. But one it's, it's a gateway.

Yep.

You know, to other change to it just, you know, it how it's change and making a change feels good no matter how small or insignificant is it feels good and it will always lead on to other changes. And also I'm so passionate about the power of social norms. You know. Right. Like I changed my toilet paper. I mentioned it to my sister, now she's going to change her toilet paper and then you know, that's right. So yeah.

And that's. Yeah. Knowledge is power. And like you say you change one you, you might tell, you know, that then helps me make a bet that that initial decision a better one more quickly which means I'm then equipped to make a get into my second decision more quickly. Yeah.

Yeah.

What are your thoughts or do you have any insight on. Because obviously you know, greenwashing is a thing under the sort of the B Corp stuff. I'm trying to my cameras back to front. There we go. B Corp stuff. You know, there's a lot of claims are made by companies about how good their product is. And again, you know, for. I guess it's interesting that it's called fast moving consumer goods but it's almost you're also a fast moving consumer because you're so busy, you're so harried, you haven't got time to, to go on Google and go well okay, they're claiming that this is made from, you know, you know, really good pick on the toilet paper. They're claiming it's made from FSC and if you've got FSC then you know, we'll take it that you, you have got that certification. But it's easy to see a claim, see a brand name eco or green or sustainable in it and you kind of just go, oh yeah, it must be okay. So yeah. What advice would you have for you know, people wanting to make better decisions and who are worried about the greenwashing or brainwashing side of things.

And it's, it's really interesting. I was having this conversation yesterday actually in terms of the most powerful thing we can do is actually to slow our consumption. Right. It's to. And this, I was talking about this in the context of fashion where the most powerful thing, the most sustainable thing to do in terms of our wardrobe, our clothing or our fashion is to have less and wear it more, you know, that's the most powerful thing we can do. Yeah, but that's, that doesn't really fit the capitalist model of selling more. Right. So it's a hard thing to market. So I think that's kind of the lens that we need to come at it from. It's not just about, I'm buying this product, I'm going to switch to buying more stuff, sustainable product. Actually, the most powerful thing we can do is to slow our consumption. And I'll use health and beauty as an example, just because that's where I spent a lot of my career.

My job, or as an organization. It was always about how do we get people to add one more product into their routine. Right. You're using eight skincare products, how do we get you to use nine? You're using nine, how do we get to use 10? You know, so actually I just flipped and reversed that in terms of, okay, If I'm using 12 products now, how do I take one out? How do I take one out? How Do I take one out? So I think that's actually the most powerful thing we can do is actually just to slow our consumption instead of going, I need to just stop buying what I'm buying and start buying more sustainable products. But that's kind of not the glamorous side of sustainability.

Yeah, it's kind of. But it's equally sort of frighteningly obvious, isn't it? It's just like I have. Have less stuff. And again, I think for me, this was, it was interesting, you know, when we were in lockdown last year and some organizations were trying to claim that they were essential. And it's like, well, that, that's just an interesting thing, isn't it? Like is. And, and for me, with a purpose lens at an organizational level, if you weren't deemed to be an essential business, then why does your business exist? Because if it's not essential for a human.

What is it then? Is it, is it just marketing fluff where you've created a thing that you can make people buy through the trickery and tools of sales and marketing and the tools of influence? For me, it's just a really interesting thing to think about. Does a human need your product if the human doesn't actually need your product?

I'll try and find the link to was in the British press maybe a month or so ago talking about how a group of lawyers have come together to basically create a legal, legally defined description of ecogenocide or ecocide. So it's a thought I've often had that, you know, what would it look like in 10, 15 years time when there's maybe a Nuremberg style trial based on climate change and environmental destruction? And they'd say, well, Nicola, you were working as a category manager for, I think you were a Procter and Gamble. Was that who you want to come? You know, so you're working at P and G. You knew that climate change was a thing, you knew that plastics were bad, you knew that they were massive endocrine disruptors and yet you still were selling more and more each year. Could you, could you describe to the court why you were doing that? And you kind of go, well, we've now got a legal definition of what kind of ecogenicide is. Clearly they're doing that for a reason. So that they can start going, hey, no, actually this brand or this product or you as an organization are doing this. So.

Yeah, interesting to ponder. I think for a lot of organizations, you know, what's your true reason for being? Is it just, is it as a vehicle to make more money or is it actually serving someone and I think linking consumers who are increasingly savvy and realizing that actually I don't need to buy as much stuff and I'm actually happier.

An interesting kind of crossroads to see where that might, might all go.

Yeah, yeah, fascinating. And I think we are in this, just looping back to your question about greenwashing. It is, it's, it's super hard to navigate at the moment. So I think so much onus is put on the consumer to do that and we're kind of in that tricky space where it's like we don't have, you know, standards around packaging or compostability and all those kinds of things. Yeah, we're in this kind of, yeah. This big kind of of gray space where I think change will come. But at the moment it is to navigate like these apps and things like Coco, as you talked about, I have one called Chemical Maze on my phone because look, science never my strong suit. So reading, you know, ingredients and things. So I started using that to, you can just input the ingredient name and it kind of gives you that traffic lighted, you know, smiley face or angry face or everything in between. So there are a few tools that I use like that and you can obviously read up on companies and things like that. But yeah, we're in a little bit of a tricky space at the moment because everybody's becoming more aware of it. But there aren't necessarily super easy to use, you know, ways Yep.

It is. It's hard, isn't it? This adulting is not like what they said it was in the brochure. I feel, particularly in this modern. Modern world.

Yeah. From that. Because, like, the space that I work in is behavior change. Right. How do we actually change human behavior? And the tricky bit is.

Sometimes we've kind of got to take half a step backwards to go forward. Right. So, like, you know, I've done, through the work I do with councils, we've done work in the hospitality industry with cafes and things around coffee cups. And you'll go into a cafe and they are so stoked with themselves because they feel like they're doing the right thing by getting sourcing compostable coffee cups. Right. They're spending more on them, they've spent time. They're really, you know, and they feel like it's the right thing to do. But obviously compost. Compostable cups are still highly problematic. One, they're still disposable. Two, we don't have the infrastructure to be able to, you know, actually. Actually compost them.

Yep.

You know, do we really know the impacts of compostable packaging yet? No. You know, it's almost just. Again, it's just we're just switching our consumption. We're not challenging our consumption or disposability of it. So you kind of got to unpick that and go, actually, that's awesome that you've started using compostable cups. But, you know, and you've kind of got a. And. And it's not. People don't want to feel bad, you know, like, my big focus is how do you make people feel good about change? How do you make good? But you've kind of got to take that, you know, you've got to give people. And I don't like overwhelming people with how bad things are, but you need to have a little bit of context around the why it is.

It's a really fine line, isn't it? Between. And I think this is. For me, this is historically where the sustainability world has got it wrong, is that it's like we're going to hell in a hand basket. You're part of the problem. You need to change what you're doing. And people don't like being shouted at. They don't like being told that they're part of the problem. And it's. It's. I think when I. Because, like, in my sales training, I sort of teach about Robert Cialdini's six tools of influence.

Okay.

You know, how do you get people, you know, it's, it is, I guess, like mind control to a degree, but again, use as a force for good. And it's hard to influence someone if, then, you know, if you don't have alignment with them. And I think what's really interesting is when you look at. Because for me, you know, humans are fundamentally driven by two emotions. It's either fear or desire. And I think sustainability has thrown the fear, you know, at people. Like, if you don't stop what you're doing, the world is going to burn, your children are going to die screaming in an inferno. And that's confronting. And people are kind of like, why don't. This is all too much. But what I find really interesting is I kind of like watching marketing and advertising just to see the trends. And the one for me that I think really sums up how the business world has nailed this is insurance. Because historically it was always, if you don't have insurance and your house burns down, you're gonna have nothing, so you should get insurance. Whereas now particularly the, the AA advert with the whole born free, it's like, you know, you do what you want, live your best life, go crazy, but don't worry about it because we're here to help you. And I think, yeah, that's, that's something which I think Ben and Coco is definitely nailing, and I think by the sounds of it, you're nailing is let's, let's approach this from a positive angle of you feeling good by doing good with small steps that are easy for you to take, rather than sort of you being shouted at by some eco warrior who knows everything about the planet. That's. Yes, it's a real.

Yeah, it's a real balance. And I think also, you know, and having, you know, my background in corporate as well, which would be similar to yours, is sales is all about selling the benefits. Right? You know, you're selling the thing, you're selling the benefits that it brings. And that's been an interesting journey for me as well in terms of how do you. Because often saving the planet is not enough of a benefit. It's cool. People say that that's what they want to do, but it really, it's not super personal, you know, like not relatable on the individual level. So that's definitely a big part of it. But for me, it's also been going well, what are the other benefits? What are the benefits that I've found in my journey and how do I position those to other people? So for me, it's, you know, slowing our consumption has fundamentally simplified our life, you know, and it saved us a heap of money. It saved us a heap of time, you know, because things like we just, you know, one survey found that we're going to spend eight and a half years of our lives shopping. Wow. You know, so that's a big thing that we just don't do anymore. We only go food shopping every six to eight weeks. You know, we reroll shopping for things and that. What's the benefit of that? Well, it's more time with our family. You know, we're kind of reconnected to the more important stuff in life that's not things. And, you know, I found that that's a real sweet spot that resonates with people. But yeah, that was a learning for sure in terms of when I first started out, it was all about come and learn about sustainability, be more sustainable. And people are like, yeah, nah, no thanks. Or you just end up preaching to the converted. Right. Whereas if you're like, actually, you know, give me, like, I haven't spoken to one person, one parent who doesn't want, who is, doesn't feel overwhelmed with the amount of toys and stuff that their kids have.

Right, yeah, that's a pain point, you know, so that's when, you know, like, if I'm marketing my book or my workshops or anything, that's where, you know, where I'm kind of targeting is. Okay. That's a pain point that people can personally relate to. And by the way, it has a benefit of reducing your impact as well.

Nice. Smart. Yeah, I think that's. Yeah, you're 100% right. It's like, what's in it for you? Above and beyond trying to save the planet.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Really cool. So zero waste. How do you.

Obviously buying less is the start, but to have a zero waste house, like for me, looking at the amount of rubbish that we just put out, put out in our bin on Wednesday night or. Yeah, Wednesday night for Thursday collection.

Yeah. How do you do that? What would be the steps to getting to zero waste?

And look, zero waste is an oxymoron, right? We're never going to be completely zero waste, but so we put out the equivalent of one wheelie bin of rubbish a year. We're a family of four. Yeah, yeah. We burn the rest. I'm joking, I'm joking.

With our old tires and we just put some diesel on it. Yeah. I mean, it's zero waste. There's nothing left. The amount of petrol we put on it.

I love it. Spoken like a proper sales and marketing person. You wanted the outcome.

Yeah, yeah. Actually we could get, we could literally get the euro if we did that. No, no we don't. So I mean, the big things that we do, I mean, you know, coming back to kind of my council lens on things. Most waste audits will show that the biggest proportion of a residential rubbish bin is food waste. You know, so food waste is a. Yeah, it's a massive problem. One, we're wasting food. Absolutely. We can start composting and worm farming and, you know, put pressure on our council to collect the food scraps. But the most powerful thing we can do is just to eat the food that we've got, buy less, get better at eating it. Put things in the freezer if they're going to go off, all those kinds of things. So that's a really. And I was kind of brought up that way anyway, so I found that that came quite naturally. So that's been a really big part of that, you know, just having, you know, very little food waste or composting what we do have. So it's been a big part of it. The way we purchase our food is a really big one as well. So we buy, we're part of a buying co op, so we source.

When I say we're part of it, like we place an order through it. There's a wonderful lady who does all the hard work.

Because for me a change has to take the same amount of time and money or less, otherwise it's not going to stick for us. And that's pretty much my husband's motivation. He's very driven by time. So I think, you know, that's an important part of any journey of change is knowing your why and knowing the why of the people around you so that you can find solutions that. So, yeah, buying a lot of our food in bulk and I'm not talking about buying things by the pallet load, I'm talking about, you know, even if you're at the supermarket, you know, double length toilet paper is a good example, or you're buying a 500 gram bag of rice, look down on the bottom shelf and you'll find that there's, there's five or 10 kg bags down there, which is a whole lot less plastic for, you know, more product. So, yeah, kind of that bulk mentality and then the big one is just that, that mentality of making do.

So I think, you know, whenever, if I go, I'm going off piste a little bit here, so Stop me. I need to. But, you know, if whenever I'm at a party and I start talking to people and I tell them what I do, one, they get really uncomfortable and look really awkward and guilty because, you know, probably would not, and start making excuses as to why they're not more sustainable. But the number one barrier that comes up is I'd love to be more sustainable, but I don't have the time. So a big thing for me is also to demystify and unpack this concept of convenience, because in our, you know, and we've talked about this already in terms of. People are really time poor. Convenience is just, you know, rules everything. But I kind of feel like we've been sold a little bit of a dummy on convenience in terms of, you know, you look at supermarkets, when I was growing up, supermarkets were open five and a half days a week, you know, kind of business hours. So everybody learned how to drive in the supermarket car park. Don't know how to drive now, but, you know, supermarkets weren't open on a Sunday, so you could.

Now they're open seven days a week, if not 24 hours a day.

Yep.

Right. So. And the perception of that is that it's more convenient. We just. We're shopping more now than history. You know, we can go whenever we want. So, you know, very few of my kind of friends in my social circles.

Wouldn'T. This is a double negative. Wouldn't go to the supermarket multiple times a week. So most people go to market multiple times per week. Right.

And, you know, last night and the night before.

Yeah, Case in point. Right. You don't end up just going to buy the one or two things you need. Right. You end up buying, you know, you're like, how did I just spend $142?

Particularly when I take my daughter, like I did the last two nights, like, come on, let's go to the supermarket. Let's have a quick. Let's go. And she's like, oh, can I get one of these? Can I get one of these? It's like, all right, all right.

Because it's like the store is orchestrated to do that, you know, so. So I think for, you know, for me, it's a big part of it has been unpacking that and demystifying that concept of convenience to the point that I now know that if I don't have to leave the house, house, that's the most convenient thing I can do.

Right.

And a lot of that is reigniting our concept of resourcefulness. Right. In terms of Ah. You know, we kind of. When it comes to food, it's like, what do we feel like for dinner? Oh, I feel like this. But we haven't got this, this and this. So we'll shoot it and get it.

Yep.

Whereas if we flip that and go, what have we got?

Yeah, we're having this.

Yeah, exactly. And it's not going without. It just fosters quite a nice sense of creativity. But it's, you know, for me. And that's more convenient because you're not having to leave the house. Even, you know, we. We eat takeaways from time to time, for sure. And even when we get takeaways, I'm like, I actually could have cooked something.

Yes. Yeah, I heard that. I think it was Fridays, like Friday nights. I'm typically so cooked. After a week of talks, podcasts, events, stuff, you're crawling into the weekend and it's kind of like, my wife's the same. She's kind of like, like, should we just do Ubereats? And it's like. And last Friday she was like, oh, I'm not massively hungry. And I'm like, well, I'm not gonna. There's no point getting takeout for if it's just me. And so I kind of was forced into having to make do with what we had at home. And I sort of made like a mini pizza with a leftover wrap, you know, that my daughter hadn't had in her lunch that week. And there was some grated cheese and a little bit of salami. It's like took me 10 minutes to make a pizza and it saved us probably 100 bucks of food. That is probably. Probably bad for us. Not that, you know, necessarily homemade pizza is good for you, but. Yeah, I was tired. It was comfort food.

That's awesome.

Yeah, it's interesting, this whole, I think we. The modern world is this convenience, consumer capitalist world where the expectation. I think perhaps in New Zealand we're a little bit more sheltered from this than you hear of. Some of the things that happen in particular, like the US and maybe around in Europe where, you know, you can order something on Amazon and if it's not there that afternoon, you're shitty about it. You know, at least here we still have that. It might take a week. You know, we're kind of used to that.

Yeah.

But I think this is the real. The real mindset shift that we need to get around is, is it's not going to be doing more with less. It's actually doing less with less as a mindset. That will not only be better for us, but also better for the planet. And your wallet and, and the whole, the whole thing. Yeah. And I think what you're doing is kind of leading into that, which is super cool.

Yeah. And I think that's the thing. We have become really wired for that. And it feels good, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

Something. You get it. You had that endorphin release, you know, science. Right. It feels good. And, and that's what we're surrounded by, that narrative. Right. Whereas what I found is, you know, and I, I wrote about this in my book, actually. But I remember when I was 14 years old and I wanted a pair of Levi's 501s and I was earning $4.60 an hour and they cost $120, so it took me a really long time to save for them. But man, did I want them, you know, so I saved for months. I got them. I did so much research, you know, I finally got them. I wore them to within an inappropriate inch of their life. You know.

They got turned into shorts and then they eventually got made into a handbag. And, and, and man, you know, that. Was it instant gratification? Absolutely not. Was it delayed gratification? Absolutely. Did it feel good? Oh my gosh. You know, I still remember and it seems ridiculous, but I've literally got goosebumps now remembering back to that because it was something I'd waited for for a long time and I think we've lost that as well. Like, instant gratification is wicked. I get it. It feels good. But there is an alternative, you know, that. And I do a lot of my shopping, clothes shopping secondhand. When you find that, that thing like, holy moly, that feels good.

Yeah. Nothing. Yeah. You've hit on so much there. And I often refer to, in my sort of purpose stuff, you know, this, and this stat was from a couple of years ago, maybe three or four years ago, so it might be more now, but globally the advertising and marketing industry spends about $500 billion a year trying to convince you that you're not good enough unless you have the latest and greatest thing. And as the individual, you don't have $500 billion of anti jamming software, you know, sort of to block that. The stuff I remember, this is a cool one. It was, I think it was in Aussie the, the Harvey Norman advert that used to be like, go, Harvey, go Harvey, go. He tried to sue them because he said that the jingle was so invasive into his head, he couldn't get it out of his head and he's like, you have invaded my mental real estate to the level that I can't shift it. I haven't asked you to be in my head, but you're there all the time. And it went, it went to court, I'm pretty sure. But in the end they said, no, we're not. You know, there's no case here. Although, you know, didn't, nothing happened for him. But it's an interesting thing to ponder on.

It's like, you know, and I was lucky enough to do a TDX talk last year and that was the angle that I took was actually there's been no marketing campaign for sustainability. There's a market, there's a, you know, a trillion dollar marketing campaign for consumption, but there's no, you know, imagine, as you say, imagine if that budget was put behind mindful consumption. What would that look like? What would that sell?

Maybe we should, maybe we should do this because I, I would love to get a cooperative of people who see that, you know, less with less is the way forward and start buying up some ad space. Like imagine having a big, buying a big billboard together and just having on it buy nothing today, ring a friend and say hi, yeah, you know, or I've seen in some, I think it's in the US there's some people who like there'll be an advertising hoarding that is blocking a really beautiful view of nature. And so what they do is they take a photo behind the, the ad and then they put the, the scene that has been blocked on the ad onto the ad so that it makes.

Kind of like guerrilla sort of anti advertising. Maybe we should start a thing here. You know, I'm sure between us and Coco and some other, you know, some other people, we do pretty well. Yeah. Ruth van der Brink is saying it boggles my mind that so many resources are put into vaporous non productive stuff.

Yeah, yeah. That's really interesting, isn't it? But it's, it's such a strong norm and I mean lockdown was an interesting social experiment in that respect. Right. Like how people actually went because you couldn't consume in the way that you normally could. That was a massively positive thing. And so many people, you know, were seeing the benefits of that. And I was cautiously optimistic, incorrectly cautiously optimistic that they would either carry on beyond that. But, but I think the narrative is so strong around consumption against it.

But it's, yeah, it's really, really hard because like I say, I refer back to the.

Like the government, like on one hand yeah, business confidence is up. On the other hand, you know, mental health's up, or, you know, mental health is up. It's like none of you looked at the research in terms of. Of rabid consumerism. You know, spending money increasingly more of that is based on debt that you will never pay off to buy shit. You don't need to make yourself feel happy because you don't like your life, which is essentially.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Although, you know, and the. And the other argument that kind of comes in is, well, if we buy less, then what's going to happen to, you know, businesses and things like that.

Yeah, yeah.

Again, it's like, you know, you look at. I remember at one conference, might have been a Weisman's conference, Wishbone Bikes, you.

Know, I think I was at the one in Christchurch. I think I was at that one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You spoke at it, actually. Yeah. And I remember them talking about the fact that they were really going to embrace the fact that the secondhand market for their bike. So about putting a trade me feed onto their website so that people could see that there was still value in them and it made business sense from the point of view of. People could then see the value of the investment. Because they're a high price. No.

Yep.

But it was also fostering that reuse and that continuation. And then they obviously looked at the simplification of component parts so that repair was easy and stuff. And it was smart business as well as, you know, not necessarily about selling more, you know, adding value and creating a connection with their products. So. So, you know, and reuse and all of those things. Like, I think there is. Just because it's not kind of traditional sell more, make more model. There is such, you know, from a more mindful consumption model, there's still such a mess, this opportunity. We just got to think 100.

Because it's the whole. Have you read any of David Graber's stuff? He's the jobs guy. You know, he sort of defines most of the jobs in the modern world. I think there's like four or five. There's like the flunky and there's like these other descriptions of jobs that are jobs for no reason other than that it's a job that's been made to kind of make another human feel better rather than actually, you know, true service to the community or society at large. And I kind of get that sense, is that there's so many people in bullshit jobs. And I've said it a few times on this podcast, it was a YouGov survey from British government and it's something like 43ish percent of people surveyed in Britain felt that their job provided them with no meaning and in fact they considered their job was more than likely contributing to destroying the planet. So we've got people, which is potentially where you were headed. Like if you'd stayed, if you, if you kind of been forced to stay in corporate for whatever reason, you know, whether it was, you know, financial circumstances or just lack of courage to sort of step out and, and just tip the table a little bit rather than flip it, you could see how you, you could be. And there's probably some of your colleagues who are still there who are just like, I don't see a way out. But I kind of know that what I'm doing now is not great. And so for me it's like, is it, it's, it's. I'm amazed that more people don't have a mental health crisis than we actually have because of how we're doing it. And yeah, how do we create this kind of de growth economy where we have noble jobs that are actually worthy of humans doing that aren't just a job that's creating a financial return for someone at the end of the chain whilst destroying the planet. And it kind of feels like.

No one's really having that conversation. I mean, people like us are, but at a high level. All you ever hear every election is, well, we're going to create jobs. It's like, great. Are they going to be good jobs? Are they going to be good jobs that are creating something that human needs? Or is it you're just going to set up another factory making widgets to sell them to people that don't really want to buy widgets.

Interesting. Yeah. And I think a big part of it is also the thing that's popping into my brain at the moment is social enterprises like All Heart, who are repurposing a lot of, you know, corporate kind of furnishings and materials that would have otherwise, you know, and creating jobs in that way and that's finding value and stuff that's already there as opposed to finding value and things that are, you know, so, so yeah, it's totally possible. It's just looking at value in a different way, I think. So it's. Yeah, we definitely need to shift the dial on that one and shift our.

Thinking for sure, which, you know, you're a part of that. I think increasingly businesses like Wishbone, you know, that are being brave about it and I think they are a great Example because like we had one of their push bike or what they called the scooter kind of bikes for our daughter. It lasted, you know, and then obviously it converts into a tricycle. So you're kind of getting two products for the price of one. It is just bulletproof and it's currently boxed up in the attic. And my wife's like, no, we're keeping that for if, if our daughter has kids because it will last. And, and that's a very different mindset from the organization that's required. And I think historically that's what it used to be. You know, you, you'd, you'd inherit your grandparents furniture. Yeah. Because it would last because it was designed to last hundreds of years. Whereas now you're lucky to have one desk or one table that would last even your lifetime, let alone a move between two houses because it's so flimsy.

And so we've got more businesses selling more stuff but then we're also losing so many things like you know, your repair services and your.

Yep.

Makers kinds of things. So yeah, to me it's a little bit, you know, the balance has gone out a little bit. And I think, you know, just kind of looping back to businesses as well. I think, you know, my attitude is not that everything needs to change. My attitude is how does everybody and every business have an attitude of being better in terms of wherever you are, wherever your job is, even if you are in an organization where, you know, the output might not necessarily be something you agree with, how do you try and influence that for the better as well? It's never going to be perfect. But how do you make that better? Because that's my attitude is it's not a black and white. Everything must go and we must do this. It's wherever you are as an individual or as an organization, how do you focus on being better? And if everybody has the attitude, then that's amazing. And when I first started working with corporates, I'm like, oh my gosh, how do I change my, all of my content to be organizational specific? Right. Because I've been very focused on individual. And then I was like, I'm starting to talk to more and more organizations, more and more corporates. How do I, I've got to change my content. And then I went, why do I need to change my content? Because an organization is a group of individuals.

Individuals love it.

And if I can appeal to. And change starts within organizations because of individuals. So if I can talk to a, you know, a room full of 300 people and, and even one or two of them as individuals go, oh, I'm into this, then they create that ripple. Effective change within their organization as well. So.

Yeah, yeah, I had exactly the same with the purpose stuff and it's, it's very, very similar for me. It's, it's, you know, even, even an organization that might from the outside be the most bullshit organization that's selling stuff that nobody needs. At some point, someone invented that product or service because they thought someone might need it or there might be a benefit. And so step one for me is find the meaning and the contribution in what you're doing. There has to be some contribution at some level, then work out. Okay, well, whilst we're delivering that, what are some of the unintended consequences? And actually, you know, the most meaningful interactions we've had with our customers, quite often it's tangential to the, like the core product or service that they're offering. Yeah. When we do that for a not for profit and we see that they have a really big impact in their community, that felt good. But when we're just kind of selling the same thing to punters who actually don't need it, perhaps as much, it doesn't feel as meaningful. It's okay. Right. Well, now you've got a sense as to where you might be able to start pivoting. I hate that word. Pirouetting was the word I was using during lockdown. It just sounds more fun. I'm gonna have a pirouette.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like, which is why it's grow good. It's like, find some good that you're doing. Connect to the good, understand how that makes you feel, why that's important for someone else, and then build on it. Do more good. And, and I think it's, it's. For me, it's hopeful because doing good is contagious. And people fundamentally, we're designed for contribution with, we're designed to do good. It's just that all the other stuff, we're busy and all the rest of it.

The term that I hadn't used for a long time, which was that law of attraction as well. Right. Like, it's just.

Yeah.

It's so powerful. And I do what I do because I fundamentally believe in the rapid effect of change and wherever you are under the door and organization that. Yeah. Don't underestimate the power totally. That you will be able beyond what you even know.

So 100%. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the same for me, like, because I Had a big. I was kind of like, how do you do organizational purpose? Because it's like, oh, it's complex, but exactly right. An organization is just a collection of individuals who've chosen to coalesce around a shared vision or product or service or idea. And so if you influence a core group in the middle, they will just become attractors of the next group. And then those that don't want to play in the new paradigm will either vote with their feet or it'll be, you know, it'll be kind of uncomfortable for them to be in an environment that now has a vision and a purpose and a sense of doing something better and that they'll go and go and find somewhere else.

Yeah. And just. So, yeah. Ruth Vanden Brink just kept smashing the comments. She was reading something saying that demand worldwide increased over lockdown, which is why we've got so many shortages. And I think that was a big. I think people did feel kind of repressed for so long that it was kind of like, I just now need to go and buy shit. Now that the shops are open, I need that retail therapy rather than maybe doing the deep personal development work that they needed to do to realize why their life wasn't sufficient. And, you know, that for me, that's kind of where I'm playing at, trying to help people realize that keeping on buying stuff isn't. Isn't the. Isn't the solution to the thing that's in your head that's telling you you're not good enough or you're not on the right track.

So how can. How can organizations or individuals get hold of you to come and do some amazing mainstream green work with you?

Yeah. So just find me at Mainstream Green. So I'm on MainstreamGreen, Co NZ, or I'm on Mainstream Green on all of the socials and on LinkedIn. And mainstream green is just me. You won't be diverted to the HR department or the finance department. I do sometimes get those emails a. To the finance department.

It's me, myself and I. Sorry, I'm just busy making a cup of tea for the CEO currently. Yeah.

So, yeah, Main street and Green. You'll find me super easy just by searching for that. And let's just have a, you know, let's connect, let's have a Krero. Because I think that's where. That's where everything happens. I'm a big believer in the power of conversation. So even if it's like you don't know what we were just. Just, you know, sort of Banding about that idea of, you know, let's start a campaign or something. It's like that's where all the good stuff happens. Just the power of conversation.

So let's start. I think that's, that is a big take home message for everyone is, is I just finished this couple of cohort or program with two cohorts through NZTE getting organizations all around B Corp stuff and getting them introduced to the idea of, you know, doing, doing more good. And a real take home message, particularly from Chris Herbert who is a really cool person in helping organizations tell the story of the good that they're doing. It's like you just have to start, just take the first step. It's going to feel awkward, it's going to feel clunky, you're not sure if it's the right one. But taking a step is better than like you say that kind of paralysis analysis of oh yeah, but do we do this, do we do that? It's like pick the one that's meaningful to you that you think you can do.

Oh, and having my own business has been such a learning in that space. You can sit around and every kind of campaign or event or anything that I've done, you try and design it to be perfect and then you put it out into the real world and it, when you socialize it, it's totally different. So I've kind of learned that you just, you've just got to put stuff out there and be human and be helpful and accept the mistakes totally.

And at the end of the day the thing for me, I guess you might have this as well when you're giving talks and doing workshops is they, they don't know what you were going to present. So only, only you know that. Oh, that slide wasn't the slide I was thinking of putting in but I changed it the last like they don't know that and it'll be the same with your, your customers or. Yeah. If you're a business wanting to make change, like they won't know the 10 options that you were considering. They'll just look at the one that you did and if it's even half good, they'll go. I think most consumers in general are supportive of organizations that are trying to make authentic steps, steps in the right direction.

And I feel, I think that's absolutely right. Yeah. And I did some work with a pharmacy, I'm based in Cambridge in the Waikato and did some work with a pharmacy down here. And they, the first thing they did because so many businesses I work with are terrified of taking that next step because they're like, we need to have a strategy or we need to test this. We need to have the perfect this, we need to have the perfect that. And it's like, as long as you do it in an authentic and an open way, people are going to relate to that. So this pharmacy was, okay, we're just going to start now. And they went out and they took a photo of their skip bin, which was full of all sorts of stuff that didn't need to be in there and kind of overflowing, and they took a photo of that skip bin and they placed it on social media and they went, we are starting today on a journey to reduce our waste. This is what it looks like now. We're not going to get it. All right. But, you know, we really want to bring our customers on for the journey. And the outpouring of support was incredible, you know, because it was really, really relatable and it also gave them some accountability to keep doing it as well.

Yeah, love it. Fantastic. Hey, well, we, We're a bit overtime, but we had some tech issues. Yeah, look, thank you so much for, for, yeah, having a natter, having a chat. Love what you're doing. I think there's a. There's sort of a coalition of people. We're all sort of pushing in similar directions and I think we're increasingly. Our concepts are being increasingly mainstreamed. So good on you for nailing mainstream green. Yeah. Any. What's. Any sort of final thoughts, comments, suggestions? Like if people want to do something, obviously other than buying your book, reading, watching your YouTube, YouTube, your TEDx talk, any parting words of wisdom, advice for people?

Oh, this one would be just borrow the book from the library because I recognize the irony. Don't buy stuff, but buy my book.

You know, how refreshing. Like, yeah, actually you should all buy five copies of my book.

I love it.

Go to the library, get my book.

I've actually got two, three copies actually, with the old school library cards, like with the envelope library card on the COVID Making their way around New Zealand. So you can get on that. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, borrow my book would be great. Just don't tell my publisher.

Sounds really like you're giving all these talks but no one's buying your book. It must be us. Our marketing is clearly rubbish.

Yeah.

Very supportive. Thank you. Have fun. So, yeah, absolutely. I think the biggest thing for me is just to flick a switch, you know, break that autopilot wherever it feels good, you know, change should feel good. So just use either something that's really frustrating you or something that you're really drawn to and just flick a switch and make a change. And it doesn't have to be perfect. Just start.

Love it. Fantastic advice. Hey. Well, thank you, peoples of the interwebs, for tuning in and apologies for our technical difficulties. But yeah, thank you so much, Nick. That was super cool to reconnect with you and it's good to see, you know, good to hear you're doing well. People are interested in what you're doing as well, because we need more people to be interested in that. So, yeah, thank you so much. I don't know who who my next. I've been a bit sporadic with my bookings on this thing because life's been busy doing lots of workshops and talks and stuff like that. So, yeah, don't know who my next guest is. Watch this space. Give me any recommendations of who you'd like me to have a chat to. Cognizant that I've had a lot of very awesome Wahini on my stream recently, but not many fellas. So come on, fellas. Who. Who are the followers? Doing some good stuff. Paul Evans. I should probably get you on. Oh, yeah, he seems like a decent rooster.

Oh, Paul's incredible. Yeah, amazing. And thank you too to you for all the amazing rushes you do as well. So thank you. Yeah, really proud.

Awesome. Oh, we'll catch you later.

Awesome. Cheers.

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 timogrogood. 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 purpose field performance in your life.