#6 Do Good Better with Emily Mason

Foreign.

And welcome to in pursuit of purpose with me your host, tim jones, the grow good guy.

Hey, Kia ora. And welcome to the latest episode of In Pursuit of Purpose with me your host, Tim Jones, the Grow Good guy. And in this week's episode, I chat with Emily Mason, who runs a couple of organizations based in Welling, Wellington, in Aoteara, New Zealand. So she runs Impact Lab and Frank Advice. And in this conversation we're really unpacking a little bit about, I guess, the large number of charities that New Zealand has and how they can be better equipped to make more impact or as Emily so succinctly said, do good, better. And we also have a bit of a chat around the role of business versus charity and maybe who plays what role in. In creating a future society that works for more people in a better way. So to literally do good. So, yeah, sit back, relax, get yourself a cup of tea, get your gin and tonic, get your whiskey, whatever your favorite tipple is, put your feet up and have a chat. Have a listen to this chat with Emily Mason. I think you'll enjoy it. Thanks.

Hello, Kia ora. So with me today I have Emily Mason. So welcome, Emily.

Thanks.

Excellent. Delighted. And you are based in lovely Wellington?

I am.

Which is a nice place. It's. For those of you listening outside of New Zealand. Wellington is, I guess, well, it's our capital, but it isn't our capital. We're like Australia, aren't we? We have a. A bigger city that would like to be the capital and a smaller city that is the capital. Just to confuse everyone.

I like it. Oh, there we go. It's small and bijou. Yeah, very cool. And so tell me a little bit about what is it you're up to? Because we've connected pretty recently. It was maybe late last year all around. I guess the idea of impact, which is kind of aligned to purpose but slightly different. So, yeah, maybe just give everyone a bit of a close to what you're up to and who you're from.

Sure. So I am obsessed with the idea that by understanding impact or what happens when you do something and the difference you can create in people's lives, when you can understand that better, you can do good better. And what that means is I run two organizations. So Impact Lab produces a.

Social return on investment and insight into the good you create in people's lives through the philanthropic dollars that are invested in New Zealand across their lives, across the dimensions of their lives. It's a piece of software and a report that's very quantitative in Nature. And then the other organization that I head up is an organization called Frank Advice and that helps you do good better by bespoke management consultancy around how do you embed evidence in your everyday decision making?

Very cool. And who are you mainly working with for that kind of stuff?

So with Impact Lab we have two lots of clients we work really closely with not for profits and charities and we help them articulate their value. So when you invest in an education program for at risk young people in South Auckland in a particular geography, what does that mean for their lifetime earnings? Health, tax corrections, benefit experience.

And then we put that through a process where we combine it with information on how effective they can be and some service delivery information and it calculates the social return on investment number which they can then use with their funders. One so the funders can say.

For every dollar invested in us, we create $5 of good for New Zealand.

Nice.

So it's a nice easy sell and we've got some great clients who are working with there. So this week I was running a workshop with Kids Camp who are a charity that supply lunches, they supply female hygiene products, they supply shoes and raincoats to schools all over New Zealand.

High needs communities and we ran our onboarding workshop for them. So that's about really understanding what they do. I then went to see a program that works also in underserved communities and delivers music programs. So it was the New Zealand Opera and they were workshopping with a school of, with a school and there's all these young men singing opera with the kids and just, it was just the most spine experience. And we start to say, right, what change are you creating in those kids lives and what does that mean for their future experience? So it's a long way of saying we've got two sets of clients. One are philanthropists who want to create a world where you know the impact that new philanthropic dollar is having so you can increase the value of that impact. And the second group is the charities that we work with who also want to know the good that they are doing, but mainly so that they can.

Improve their service offering.

Wow, super cool. Because I guess New Zealand and Australia were always competing to be the biggest and bestest of the most. And the one stat that I seem to feel, well, that we seem to jockey with them for is the most number of charities per capita.

Yes. We have one for every 170 New.

Zealanders which is neat in many ways because it's. Aren't we a nice bunch of people? You know, we want to try and help do more good, but equally. Equally. I suppose the flip side is why do we need so many charities? Because clearly it means people are trying to do some good where they perceive that there is some not so good happening.

So I think there's, there's some tax structures that support people creating their own foundations and their own charities rather than partnering with an existing charity. But there's also this lack of what I think about as being philanthropic infrastructure. So how would you know how to strategically partner in the NGO charity space at the moment? Because you've got no comparable accessible language for performance and improvement. And I mean that in a very positive way. So who most needs our support to improve education? Where will our dollar go furthest in terms of if we wish to work in Wellington? You can't have those discussions in partnership between funders because that currency and that philanthropic infrastructure doesn't exist. And so that's what we're creating.

Love it. Because I think, I mean, and I say this from someone who has experience of working in the not for profit sector, or Kilmarnock, as we used to call it, the not for Loss, trying to change the mindset of, you know, or for purpose. Exactly. For purpose. Let's, exactly, let's make some impact.

It's. I think it's, yeah, there's, there's a lot of people trying to do good, but helping to zero in on, you know, what is the most effective measure of doing that good and yeah, who is doing it in the best way. I think that's, that's the conversation that I feel that the not for profit sector needs to have in New Zealand. And what are your thoughts around that?

Absolutely. And, you know, my experience at Impact Lab has been going a year. There is no shortage of NGOs who want to understand their good so they can do good better.

That what our challenge is at the moment is seeking the funding for them to be able to access our product and understand what that good is so they can improve. So I think worldwide there's a lack of a standard benchmark about what do you mean by impact and how, how do you describe it in ways that are, compare, fair, comparable and actionable.

And when you can do those three things, then, then you're, then you can start to improve. You know, it moves it on from opinion because, you know, like, you're right about the number of charities. New Zealanders are hugely generous and they, they want to make the world better, you know, and so it's about how do you create a platform that lets Them do that in the most impactful way.

Totally. It's interesting that you sort of talk about, you know, that the global benchmarking because obviously in my business I work with the B core framework, but that, you know, currently is aimed only at for profit enterprises. And I know Michelle Sharp who used to be at Kilmatic, now Vodafone, we had some conversations around, you know, where, where we getting to this. The starting line, I guess, of corporate having to be better at recognizing its level of purpose and impact, but charities having to level up and become maybe a bit more corporate in terms of how they report and you know, how they're utilizing their resources. So yeah. What do you reckon to that?

What do I reckon to that? So we're going through the B Corp process at the moment.

Bank advice.

Yep. It's quite involved.

Yep.

So I guess what I would say.

To that is the tools that are needed for two things even in the corporate sector, the impact frameworks that are available at the moment don't let you compare performance or impact between.

Different investments, different charitable investments. So we solve that problem and that is the same to the NGO. And so our work with NGOs and charities is we've thought very, very hard about how do you create a tool that's accessible so that the burden on the NGO is low.

Yes.

The big data, publicly available econometric data sources. In New Zealand we use the best of the impact evaluation. So I call that our wisdom banks. You know, we go to Stanford, we go to Oxford, around the world and store information. That's the theory and we combine that with the practice. Who is this organization working for?

What outcome and how much does it cost them?

Nice.

Down the amount of information that we need to a really succinct and.

Achievable amount of information for the NGO to collect. I guess the other way we think about it is that we're impact estimators, we're not evaluators.

Right.

How I think about impact is that you can, based on what we know now, you can estimate future good achieved.

And that's something we haven't been able to do before. We've either had to wait for an impact evaluation or we've only had a narrative, you know, and the narrative is great stories about change and change and seeing impact.

You know, they, they're just got, just spine tingling.

Yeah, yeah.

So what you need to decide where to put.

Yes.

To help with that.

Yep. So what, what got you into this kind of work?

So I'm a recovering public servant.

By myself. I'm two years out of government. I spent my life with this view that.

We in government, we were funding.

Organizations and communities with no way of linking that to need, no way to.

Link that to need and no way to link that to impact. So.

So I used to walk around with a graph that basically had.

An increase in line to need and a straight line for funding, you know, so how do we solve this problem? And as the big data sources have come on stream in New Zealand and the cost of technology has fallen, it's provided me with a methodology for cracking that problem. So I think about myself. I try to be the nerd.

My children will only be the nerd herder.

Nice.

So I've spent my life kind of looking for what's the answer to this problem, you know, which is, how do we do good, better. So I'm really motivated to use kind of a back office or intellectual or.

You know, the skills that I've got and that we have as an organisation to really further the work of the.

People on the front line, you know, so. Because when you work with a charity, so for example, we work with pillars who work with, you know, they exist to support children who've been through the traumatic events of their parents, one of their parents going to prison, you know, they are not in it to quantify impact, they're in it, want to work with those children, you know, and what we can do is to support them, to do the best of the activity that they do every day. And what we've found in New Zealand is that they're being asked to report on their impact and the burden of.

Reporting on impact has fallen to those.

On the front line, when in fact the information that you need to understand impact and compare impact.

Was the funder.

Yes. So put the onus on them to create a framework that you can work with rather than each individual. Because I guess that's always the risk, isn't that each individual charity is then reporting in their own manner or in their own style and then there's no consistency. So you can't compare apples with apples for actual impact.

And it creates burden on the. Of the charity.

Yep.

Increase the funders or the investor's level of confidence or give what's happening or give any indication about what kinds of improvement they should be asking for.

Yep.

And another really lovely thing about what we learned with Pillars was that they. So they work with the children of prisoners. They've often been seen as keeping children.

Who otherwise would go to prison out.

Of trouble is worthy. But it's hard avoided, you know, down with our tool is that they're actually at least as much of the good they create is helping those children succeed in education.

So not only are they keeping kids out of trouble, they're creating better lives.

Nice.

Yeah. And that's just such a remarkable. Like, sing to their story also for how New Zealand sees that charity.

Yep.

Just quick, how do I do this work? I feel like, yeah, this is a contribution that we. I can make and we can make through the work that I do that we do together to really help miss the level of philanthropy in New Zealand and what's achieved through that. The philanthropic dollar.

Nice.

No, I mean, that's all super cool and yeah, it's. I just love. I love the idea of do good better. It just. You sum it up so well in. In that expression. So what, what I mean, beyond the. The roles that you did, you know, your. Your recovering government phase, have you kind of always been interested in doing good better, or was it something that came to you later in life?

No, I've always had a really strong sense of fairness.

And.

Being a bit ambitious, I guess, with that sense of fairness and creating a world that's better than what I do. I guess I really believe that knowledge and skill, Skills and.

The kind of work we do is abundant. So the more we do it together and the more we have a shared view, the more we create. So when I know something on my own, how well a charity.

Charity achieves for the people that it works with, that's one thing. If you and I know it together, we can do more with that knowledge than I can do on my own.

Yep.

And so what I do now brings together those two things. And the other thing.

Have I always been interested in this? The answer is absolutely yes. It's taken different forms throughout my life.

That's interesting. And I think, you know that. I'd say. I'd say that you have a very high level of purpose. And I guess my definition of that is this sense of knowing and connecting to how you're contributing to something bigger than you for shared benefit.

Yeah.

And it's. I guess this is what I'm trying to unpack partly through this podcast and other work I do is, you know, how come some people seem to have it? And it's interesting. There's, you know, there's yourself and particularly Michelle from Kilmarnock. It's like it just seems to have been. It's in your DNA. Whereas others, like Andy, who I've interviewed on here, you know, he. He Went through a process and I spoke to another gentleman, not for the podcast, but I'm hoping he's going to say y. He had a very similar experience to me where he was in Sri Lanka when they had the tsunami. And for me, it was the earthquakes in Canterbury that kind of led to this kind of purpose awakening. So just. It's interesting how some people just seem to have it, or I guess, haven't. You clearly had great parents and great schooling where they didn't beat this out of you?

I think about that quite often, actually, so. So I went to a private girls school. You know, it's highly privileged, which is a trendy thing to talk about these days, but I've always felt strongly that we should use the privilege that we've got in service of. Just in service of ourselves.

Yep.

And that all of the work that I've done. So that's why I went into. Into the public service, you know, rather than going to be a lawyer or a doctor. It's not that lawyers and doctors don't do that. They do it in a different way, actually. But I could have gone into being.

A bit little lawyer or a doctor.

And I went to the public service.

Yeah.

And so maybe that's also a scale thing. You can. When you see the big frameworks, if that's done well, you can really help.

Totally. You've got big levers at a higher level.

That's kind of an obsession at the moment. Like, how do we do this? Use the skills that we've all got to do this quickly because, you know, there's no time to lose.

Yep.

Yeah, I have.

Yeah, I have. I think I feel very fulfilled that the work that I'm doing at the moment has such strong purpose and commits to who I really am, because I do big hours often, you know, a lot of travel and a lot of time and a lot of intellect, intellectual effort as well, because we're creating this new thing, a measurement framework for how you do good. Better.

Yep.

And if it wasn't strongly connected to filling my soul, then it would be exhausting.

Yes. And I think that's. That you've summed it up so well, that that is the power of purpose. Like, I'm. I used the example in a workshop the other night. I sort of got people in the room to put their. Put their right arm up and kind of make a fist with their fingers and then release the fist. You know, it's like a quick motion, like as if you're sort of flashing a, you know, type symbol with Your hand?

Yeah.

And I sort of see. How long would you all do that for? Until he got bored. And most people were like, probably a minute. And I was like, yeah, it's probably reasonable. But I said, you know, what if by doing that hypothetically was running the oxygen supply to the neonatal unit at the local hospital, you know, would you maybe do it for a bit longer than that? And it's like, well, yeah, of course I would. It's like, right, well, there you go. That's, that's kind of purpose. Like if you can connect the thing that you're doing to an outcome for someone else that is beneficial to them and is good for you, then that's purpose. And yeah, it's such a. I just feel it's such an untapped resource globally in general. But. But yeah, I don't know. What do you think about New Zealand, do you think? I think as Kiwis we have, like you say, it's innate, like a sense of fairness and, you know, everyone having a fair go. But by, by default, I'd argue by the number of charities that we have that are, you know, discounting ones which have been set up for, you know, tax purposes perhaps, but the number of genuine charities that are trying to fix people at a very small level would suggest that we may be lacking a sense of purpose in New Zealand. What do you reckon to that?

Can you explain a little bit? Tell me a little bit more about that.

Well, I just think we have so many charities, so clearly there are so many people that are identifying a need where they want to try and help either a very small group of people because it's a, it's a community based charity that, you know, might be looking for, looking at a very small community piece of action, or it's a national charity like a kids can or Ronald McDonald House or so on and so forth. And I just look at the scale of charity in New Zealand and the fact that there are so many, which to me indicates that they're picking up the pieces from other parts of society.

Or from other parts of society. Don't repurpose. Because I would say that that one interpretation of all of those charities is that many New Zealanders choose to follow their purpose, which is to serve others, rather than go through a corporate or.

Other or business route to success.

Yep.

I do think there is need in New Zealand that is badly understood and badly serviced. And I do think there is a.

A misery industry. You know, in my darker moments that there are a lot of people who make money from, from keeping misery alive. And that's so my frame for that is that all of the data that I've looked at over the last five, six, ten years, which is the New Zealand level data view. So $55 billion that we've got matched to individuals in New Zealand, we don't know who they are, but we know how much government spends on them.

Yep.

And this information's in the public domain, so other people can go and have a look at it if they like. And what that shows is that spending on most of New Zealanders or need of most of New Zealanders is the same. So for 85% of us, our need is about the same. But 15% of it, it looks like a hockey stick. If you're using a graph, that's a hockey stick rather than a straight line. And that, that 15, that half of the money that's invested in New Zealanders in the social sector is spent on 15% of the population.

Wow.

You know, and that means we're not doing good enough. Quite.

So how do we crack that? Because for that 15, if you think about it in a positive sense, you know, you would acknowledge, putting aside his personal behavior, that Tiger woods is easily the best golfer that we've seen in more than a generation. Right. And that the next golfer below him is significantly not as good as him.

Yep.

And the next group below them, not very, very, very good, but not nearly as good as him.

Yep.

And the rest of us are just rubbish golfers.

Particularly me. I do not get me on a golf course yet.

Yeah. If you think about that in reverse, where the needs of a few are so different to the next group and that most of us are just the same. What does that do to your worldview and how you resource supporting those needs of a few? You know, because it's not a marginal improvement that will get you there. It's 101% changes.

It's a drastic improvement. Yeah. So sorry. There you go.

It's a drastic improvement and it's a very individualized.

Nuanced support.

Yeah. So when you think about. Sorry, when you think of that philanthropy and purpose, you link what you do with the value that it creates, not just the cost.

Yes, yes. Which I guess is maybe the older sort of business way of looking at.

What'S the cost, but what's the return on investment or what's the true return?

To be honest, we haven't had that data before. Right. So now we've got these new jobs.

Yeah. Yeah.

Then we should be using them to. Using the Empirical insight that they generate to make the front line, to change the support we give the front line.

That's super cool. I think I love. Well, I don't love what you said, but you know, that misery industry, I do feel that that is. There is. There is a high risk of codependent relationships being built between charities and the people that they're serving in the. It's like you say, I need you to still be, you know, kind of needing help so that I can provide you help so that I can feel satisfied.

Yeah. Then you can add on in the philanthropists who just want to feel good from. To get. Giving those. To give into those charities, you know, so you get this virtual circle of feeling.

Yes.

Which is important.

Yeah.

But you need to underpin that with does this work?

Exactly that. And like, yeah, like you say, if you're going to put resources towards solving something, let's actually solve it.

Yeah.

So on. I've got a couple of questions brewing for you. One of. So one of them, based on the research that you're doing, like, with, with that 15% that need the most help, like, is, is there. I appreciate, like, it's individualized but. But is there a general area of silver bulletness? Like, is it lack of how, you know, good housing or lack of education or lack of like, is there one overarching area that, you know, kind of people listening, if you're in New Zealand could go, okay, look at that. That's an area that actually I have got some, you know, skills or some resources and I could maybe get in contact with Emily and or some other groups and actually try and fix this stuff.

So I can't answer that definitively yet. So because we're going through the process of creating impact values or outcome values. So what happens when you change someone's life? What's their lived in terms of their lived experience? What's the difference when they're educated and when they're not, when they're out of jail, when they're not, when they're well charged. So just creating those values and we've got an impact bank and it's pretty successful.

So I guess we've been able to quant. What I would say at the moment initially is that interventions that work with the completeness of somebody's life, so they work with people, they don't work in a service line. So they're not about education, they're about the community that they're serving and they work across the areas of challenge in that person's life.

Yep.

Those are the ones that have the biggest impact. So. Because if you solve the problems in someone's life across their health, education, you know, debt questions, and you help them move into better employment, that creates a virtuous cycle of more tax paid, less child support, less time in jail, less time on the benefit. And all of those things accrue back to the fact that they've got a stable life where they can be stably employed.

Yeah.

So it's not employment that's the answer. It's a program that works with the complexity of someone's life.

Yeah. Because we are pretty complex beasties at the best of times.

And, you know, AI, AI isn't coming for the jobs that are, you know, a whole warehouse works with robots until you introduce a human.

Yeah.

We're not predictable. And if you can't predict control for it. Yeah.

Although I was having a conversation, I sat next to Liam Malone, the former Paralympian, and he's been. He'd spent the last like 12, 18 months in the world of AI. And you know, the person on the other side of him said, oh, you know, so Liam, one of the robots comes to take our jobs and he said, oh, well, you know, don't worry about it. It's all going to be military, you know, kind of equipment to begin with. And to which I replied, though, but that, that presumes that the robot would actually want our job because if these robots are that smart, they'd actually look at it and go, you know what, I'm going down the beach, mate, to go hang out with my other robots because that job sucks.

Yeah. I think we've got a long way to go.

Yeah.

And we'll also have more challenges to solve. Right. So, yeah, I guess I'm a strong optimist. So you're asking about purpose.

I still have faith that the world can be better.

Yep.

And so I'm still curious about how can you do that? And so when new opportunities come around for me to behave differently and in service of doing better, I grab them.

Yep.

You know, and so I think curiosity is a really.

Key behavior that.

We should keep as adults. And I feel sad that not so many adults have. That are still curious about how the world could be better.

Yep. Yeah, I think that's. I mean, you know, my background is in sales and, you know, as, as a relatively natural salesperson. Curiosity, you know, curiosity and empathy are the two probably biggest skills that you need because you need to be genuinely curious about someone's life and how, how I might be able to help them.

Salesmen are the ones who can take no most 100.

Yeah, I'll definitely throw that in as the trium convert of sales success. Yeah, just keep on going. Yeah. And I think you're right. I think as typically as adults, you know, you're, you're put on a path and, and you don't kind of question that. And I think in general, I mean, interesting, I feel I went to a similar type of school that you went to but in the UK and, and very much you, you would, you were kind of taught not to question too much. There was kind of like a barrier of, of the amount you were allowed to question. There were some things that were just kind of taken for granted that you would accept.

And I look back on that and I think wider, you know, looking at the wider society. Yeah, it's. But I guess partly I feel we're all just so busy trying to survive. Yeah, I've done some digging. There's a really cool guy, Dr. Tim Morgan, and he runs a blog called Surplus Energy Economics. I think I might have mentioned it. But you. Do you read him?

No, but I will.

Yeah. His stuff's really cool. And what, what he's basically saying is in most Western countries life is harder for like that when you look at your, your actual take home salary compared to what your parents were taking home, it is, it is harder to stay ahead. And you know, I look at that anecdotally amongst you know, sort of our peer group where most, most families, both parents are working. Whereas when I grew up, certainly in our kind of socioeconomic group, most of the mums were stay at home mums.

And you just kind of go different ways. That's why we do need different ways of doing good better though. Tim.

Exactly, exactly. Totally. Yeah. But I think that that's maybe one reason why people lack that time, you know, just lacking the time for curiosity and that time just to connect with someone who's maybe not as fortunate as them and work out, you know, how can I help you? You know, everyone's kind of so busy and I guess I'd argue you throw that on the back of a good dose of neoliberal economics and, and you know, the whole, it's all about the individual look after yourself, away you go. And that kind of dissolution of community and, and kind of looking out for everyone as much. I kind of feel like there, I.

Think there's definitely something in the collective people, people that I've met that I've most connected with in this work and I take A very technocratic, you know, you can hear it in my language, economic perspective on measuring. Good, measuring impacts. But the ones I've connected with most are those who have a collective view of society. So I talk about it as being, you know, if you understand an organization's impact and they're not performing very well, you could vote them off the island. Right. Which is not what I'm advocating for at all. But you can also, if you take a collective view of society, your role is to support them, to belong, to.

Get back into the tribe. Yeah, yeah.

You know, because there's. Because you are a collective and you are responsible for the collective. And I think. I mean, that's what I. How I talk about this with my children, you know, how do we. Why you do. Why do you do what you do, Mum? You know, because. Because we are. No man is an island.

Yep. That was when I was just about to drop in, but you beat me to it. Yeah, but I think that that tribal example is one that I. I'm increasingly using. Like, if. If you imagine us being a tribe and. And this is our little, you know, piece of land that we're sitting on, and we've all got our roles and responsibilities to ensure that we all do better together than if we were trying to survive on our own. If one of you is constantly coming in and kicking over the fire and throwing the food away, you know, at some point you have to have a conversation and go, hey, Emily, look, you know, we. We appreciate you helping us here, but could you stop kicking the fire out and throwing the food away? Because, you know, we kind of need that. And I think you're right. That's where I see, like on the corporate stage, I think there are lots of corporates who are, you know, they've lost their way from the tribe and. And they're kind of going out doing what they want to do. And this, all this stuff, you know, the not for profit impact measurement, B Corporation, all of this is trying to, I guess, hey, you know, everyone, come on, let's just have a. Can we have a quick chat? Because, you know, what you're doing over there is not quite conducive to us, us all surviving on this planet together. That's right, together. Yeah. We all want to do this. Yeah.

Yeah. You need to be. You're not. Not just sustainable, but regenerative, you know, is another.

Bingo.

Think about it.

Yep.

And then someone was telling me the other day that the Chinese premier says, win, win, win.

Right.

The capital wins, the people win. And those that you need to work with.

Win.

Yeah. The triple win. Love it.

Yeah, me too. And I was surprised that you know, with the Chinese background and you know, the way the society's kind of moved in the last generation. That was a piece of wisdom that I'm appreciating.

Nice.

Yeah.

But I think.

Yeah. There's. I wasn't going to say about that. There was.

I've lost my train of thought. It was kind of around that. The tribalization. But no, it's gone. I'm sure it'll come back to me.

I guess the other thing I'd like to say about your. Is it Tim Morgan?

Yes.

So we'll go and have a look at him. That I think about how I manage my teams is managing for their discretionary energy. So when you talk about purpose, if you can give people as much of the thing they are good at to do.

Yes.

Linked to a clear mission for an organization.

Then you really will get the.

Best out of those people.

You know, they'll be happy, you'll be happy and the business will thrive.

Exactly that. Yeah.

So there's opportunity for kind of the for purpose sector to. In the corporate sector, you know you can have like both Impact Lab and Frank are businesses where limited liability companies. We're not charities which some have suggested we should be. But you know, to thrive you need all three of those things.

Yes.

And I, I think it works for both of the businesses that I run.

Yep.

As well to.

Ability to. To manage for their.

Discretionary energy or they. You know. Yeah.

Yep. I think that's the thing. It's you know that purpose. There are so There are so many benefits to purpose. And I'll put links to my website where I kind of outline them. But yeah. Aligning the individual with the organization with something bigger than the organization that. That's kind of the key to purpose. But. But I guess. Yeah. In the general. In the wider corporate world, I guess it's that. What is that contribution that we're actually making? I think sometimes that has been lost sight of or the contribution has just come back to where we're making as much money as we can for the shareholders. And by doing that you're creating some outcomes that benefit some people but not the. Which is part of the reason why B Corps are called benefit corporations. Because it's. How are you benefiting the wider society. But I remembered my train of thought now is regeneration, the regenerative organization. That's the thing. It's. It's. There's. I'll put a Link to this as well, that they are. I believe they're a B core in Mexico that does kind of impact investment. And they talk on their website. They have this beautiful model where they talk about, you know, some businesses are still. Well, they talk about some businesses being destructive. So, like an arms dealer is. Is a destructive business. Like, there is no. There can be no positive really, to anything that they're doing. Although I suppose you could make some arguments that, well, you know, in 1939, we kind of had to step up and defeat Nazism, semantics aside. But then they talk about extractive being sort of the. Sort of the next less shit, basically. So where you're kind of extracting from the planet, but you're making something out of it. And then they kind of swing down into CSR where you still might be creating tremendous, you know, badness through your business, but hey, you're. You're offsetting your carbon. And then on the other side, they sort of start swinging through to like, B corporation, where you're at least measuring and really having a good, good idea of what contribution you're making at what expense. But the top layer is that regenerative. And, and I totally agree. It's like if. If every business is not aiming to be regenerative at some point, it's a net negative world that we live in, and that is unsustainable.

That's right. Yeah. And one of the strongest indicators of what we value is capital.

Yep.

Right. So one of the biggest sectors that we've got in order to be more purposeful and more impactful is through the corporate sector who have access to so.

Much of that capital.

Exactly. That, and. And resources as well. You look at, you know, a company with maybe a thousand or five thousand employees has got the human. I kind of hate the word human capital.

I was meaning cash, actually, but I.

Mean, but that's the. No, but I mean, they have dollars, they have equipment, they have resources, they have buildings, they have so much. And there's a really cool TED talk by a guy called Rick Warren. And again, he kind of really simplifies the idea of purpose. He says, you know, and I guess this is alluding to what you said earlier on, you know, you had a privileged background, you have some skills, you have, you know, you're an articulate young lady who knows some stuff. I could choose to use that answer.

To life, the universe and everything this year.

Well, there we go. Boom. Just send it through. Yeah. Statistically proven through your Framework.

Guide to the galaxy.

Exactly. I put a link to that for that, for the young people who don't know that one.

You could have chosen, like I said, you could have chosen the path of, you know, say corporate lawyer, where, yeah, you're making some contribution. But fundamentally it would be about maximizing the revenue for an organization. And that's what Rick Warren talks about. You have tools of influence at your disposal. It could be your skills, it could be your money, it could be physical things that you have and just deploy them to make the world a better place. And I think this is the irony and I don't know, maybe it's sort of people like you and me who are of purpose and I sort of say on purpose as a kind of almost like a drug to us. It's so simple. Like, why would you not just. You've got this skill, like, why would you not just use it for good, yet there's others who. It's not as easy to do that. And I think that, you know, that's kind of what I'm trying to inspire people by talking to people like yourself to say, wow, yeah, you know, I could maybe do what Emily's doing or maybe I should give her a call because I've got some smarts that could help this.

Yeah, I hope so. So, you know, you're recruiting. I do want people to help. I particularly want philanthropists who want to understand philanthropy differently, help people understand philanthropy differently and help.

Philanthropy understand people differently. So both sides. And I want NGOs who are interested in understanding their impact. And, you know, our process is a three month process, but so it's not very long, but really engage with when we learn about our impact, what's our next action?

You know.

So, yeah, I mean, if people are interested, I'm absolutely happy to have a talk with people. I think so. Yeah. I think the other thing about this, you know, these kind of opportunities to speak with you, Tim. Thank you. Is that we get. We can set examples for people who might be thinking, I've got these skills for good.

Yeah.

They've come through an environment where those professions.

The only examples they've had in their lives, you know, So I would say my mum and dad would find it very difficult to articulate to their friends what I do.

I've given up trying to explain to my mom just like, yeah, but although there's something in that, because someone did say, like, if you can explain to your grandma or granddad what you do and they get it, then your marketing is on point.

That's right. Yeah. So to do good, better, is that for me, you know your worth. Know your worth so you can do good better.

Love it.

And then I go and I use data and I use maths and I go into community and I work with them and then it's like I design.

Yeah, yeah. I think you've touched on something really interesting there. And like in the purpose coaching that I do with people, you know, one of the things I get them to do is to look at, you know, take some action and find a purpose project. Like you have some skills. So yeah, I'm doing, I've got a group I'm working with currently and a couple of them have got tech skills and I was like, you know, okay, so you've articulated an area of frustration in the world where you would like to make it better. Go and find some charities that are working in that space and just go and volunteer. Like go and offer an hour a week, like I'll just come and do some databasing or let me just review some of your, you know, your tech stuff.

Absolutely. So I had a sabbatical a few years ago and had this idea about nerds and needs.

Love it.

Yeah. However, turns out someone else was already doing it. So Plug for Holly Norton and co at collaborate.

Yes, I've spoken to Holly last year sometime. Yeah, very cool. But yeah, that's the thing, it's like just start because I think, I'm pretty sure it's Gandhi who had the quote, you know, you find yourself by losing yourself in the service of others. So you know, take that skill you've got. Don't necessarily do what I did, which was quit the day job and then have a midlife crisis and then try and build a business out of ashes. But I suppose there was something Phoenix like of that that was quite cool in on many sort of metaphysical levels. But in terms of paying the mortgage it's been a bit tight, you know. But yeah, go and test yourself, go and apply the skills that you've got. Go and look for ways that you can deploy that and test it and see if you get fit. You know, that's definitely a really key thing.

Yeah, that's right. I guess our journey is probably similar there. Right. So you know Frankenstein. So Frank advice is mine isn't a business, it has to thrive.

Yep.

It has to survive. And Impact Lab is also a business and it's so it's, you know, it's skills and effort. You know, you're putting money where you're now because you're putting your day to day effort into this and you know, my family's livelihood depends on me being something.

Yeah. No pressure.

Now, actually, the coaching that I've had this week, we talked about the fact I used to be a scuba diver. So it's the teacher to scuba dive. And I was really struck with the idea about when you scuba dive, you're so purposeful. Right. So it is calm and quiet and you can do nothing but scuba dive because the consequence is that you die.

Yes. If you, if you stop do that.

Right. You're entirely dependent on your buddy and you're entirely dependent on being very present in the moment. And I think if we thought about our work in that same way, how do I be entirely present in this doing the things that we collectively need to stay alive?

Yep.

How would that change the decisions about what you do every day?

Love it.

And so that's what I'm practicing at the moment.

Love it. And I guess because, you know, one of the indicators of purpose is your ability to get into a state of flow, particularly in a work environment. And interesting, because I'm also a scuba diver, you'll know that. Totally know what you're on about. And I think the other one that always, I always remembered from scuba diving training was take only pictures and leave only bubbles. So there is, there is also that element of like, just don't stuff it up when you're under there because it's like this pristine world that we haven't completely destroyed everywhere yet, so.

That's right.

Yeah. Yep. And you often. I mean, I did a lot of my scuba diving in Central America. You know, it's usually with local people.

Yes.

Locally owned businesses. And you get around real sense of, you know, how. What all of that feels like. Yeah.

So maybe there's a new slogan, Scuba and scuba to save the world or something.

Maybe, maybe you should look in to see a free scuba diving training for humanity. I mean, you know, because I think, I mean, another thing that I get people to do is like an empathy walk. Go and go walk with someone that you haven't. That you wouldn't ordinarily, ordinarily connect with and just see the world from a different perspective. And I kind of feel that diving gives you that you're literally, you're going into a different world. And like you say, you're typically doing it it away from home, where you're interacting with someone else in a different community who typically cares about their biodiversity, which is why they want to show it to you and give you that experience.

Yeah.

There you go. Who knew scuba diving could Be so deep.

That jokes are free. So one last question, because I know you've got to shoot away, but there's a tension that I have in my mind. There's a part of me that goes, you know, we. Historically, we've known that this idea of service and do the right thing and be good and do good better is a massive human driver. And the humans that have lived that life are the humans that we recognize, like your Gandhis, your Martin Luther Kings. Yet we don't seem to ever get there. So if we did get there, if we. If. If you and I did our work to such an extent that. That, you know, we've solved all the socioeconomic problems, and every human in New Zealand is living a life fully on. Of contribution and purpose, would. I guess it's like, could we actually ever get that? Or is the human condition such that we would try and destroy it before we got there?

So I don't think the human condition is that we would necessarily destroy it, but I think.

The world is a system, and my background's in geography. And so if you think about a beach, the beach will, after a storm, will always return to equilibrium.

Yep.

So in the end, the sea and the sand and everything else, or if you take sand out of a beach to make the Wellington beach pretty, which is what they do from Nelson, the beach will return to that. The Wellington beach will return to its normal sandless state.

So. So I think we would just adjust our parameters. Yeah. So I think it's one of the. It's not a binary thing. We will never achieve perfection. But the point isn't to achieve perfection or to achieve perfect purpose. The point is to get in that flow. You know, we're in that state where.

That'S what brings us all together. As she.

Like it. Very cool. Yeah.

So one more thing I would say on that. So we know that the world is better. Right. From 100, 200 years ago.

Yep.

More people are educated, less people are dying. More children are surviving into adulthood, you know, in. In more. Yeah. In vast numbers, you know, and we know the world is not yet good enough stuff.

Yep.

So the combination of those things is why we will always. The striving to be more purposeful. Yeah. You know, the work that you do, coaching people to be more personal and finding those opportunities is just crucial.

Yeah.

Yeah.

As well. Yep. I kind of tend to agree. I kind of feel like we had this discussion part of the MBA program that I'm teaching at UC this week. Someone kind of said I. My stake in the Ground was purpose should be so big that you never achieve it. Like, it should be such a big ideal that it's going to always drive you forward and, you know, you're really ever unlikely to get there. And we had a bit of a discussion around that. But I still stand by that. And I kind of feel that you've kind of summed that up, you know, because. Because you'll reach a new point and then from there you will see other things that you did not even know existed and the world and exactly that. And everything's changing around you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, that's why I think purpose is perpetual and it's always going to be a need for it. There we go.

I agree.

Well, look, we're coming up. I mean, we're a little bit short of an hour, but I know you have to go because you're a super busy person and you know, saving the, saving the planet is not easy. So you need to get to your next meeting. But hey, look really good to, you know, connect a bit deeper and learn a bit more about you and the amazing work you're doing. I'll obviously put a heap of links to your various organizations and if you're happy for a LinkedIn link, I will put that in the, in the notes. But yeah, thank you so much and thank you, Tim.

Very interesting conversation.

Can't wait to see. Can't wait to see you be another B corp. So, yeah, no pressure.

We're on. We're on the way.

Awesome.

We are part of the sustainability trust and a living wage employer and we were finalists and the equal pay awards. So we're certainly making strides in the right direction.

Nice. So you've done most of the groundwork.

But we're never done right.

Exactly. There's always more to do.

Thank you so much. It was great.

See ya.

Cheers.

And that's a wrap. Hey, thank you so much for listening in to my podcast. As I say, I'd love to know where you are on your journey and pursuit of purpose. And if you've got any questions that you'd like me to try and answer for you or people you'd like to me to interview on this podcast, please do let me know through a message or a comment. Also, do connect with me on other social media platforms. You'll find me on Facebook, LinkedIn and on YouTube. For more information about me and what I offer through my business, Grow Good. You can also go find me at www.growgood.co. that's GrowGood.co. if you want to get in contact with me. My email is really easy. Timogrogood, I'd love to hear from you. Until next time, go well and keep on pursuing your purpose.