About this Episode

Russ Avery is an eco entrepreneur, sustainable marketer, and CEO of purpose-driven brand consultancy Avery & Brown. With over a decade’s experience of marketing sustainable brands, including six years in-house at two large corporate sustainability consultancies, Russ not only has a deep knowledge of sustainable and ethical marketing practices, but also of the sustainable and regenerative business movement.

Quote: Is sustainability becoming obsolete?

The global scientific consensus and the latest IPCC report confirms that we are way past the point of needing businesses to be 'sustainable'. Instead, we need businesses to be regenerative - whereby they give back far more to society and the planet than they take.

I envision a world in which every business is regenerative - that's the world I want to live in.

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Avery & Brown is a specialist brand consultancy and marketing agency which puts people and planet on par with profit. They work solely with ambitious, sustainability-focused (and increasingly regenerative) businesses which share their bold vision for a better world.

They currently partner with clients in the UK, Europe and North America. Their team has 30 plus years’ of combined brand, marketing and design experience, and they have been immersed in the world of sustainability since 2010. 

https://www.tiktok.com/@averyandbrown

Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam 0:00
So what role does marketing have to play in some of the inequality and health challenges that we currently face in your view? And how can we do better?

Russ Avery 0:08
Yeah, so there's absolutely no doubt about it. Historically, marketing and advertising has been a massive part of the problem. There's just no two ways about it. It sounds crazy when you actually take a step back to think about it, doesn't it that we will actively buy things and consume things which we know are bad for us. But of course, we've seen a cool advert or a great marketing campaign for it, and it makes us desire that thing. So 100% marketing has played a massive role in where it gets interesting for me is how it now can and must be part of the solution. And I mentioned earlier about how we can achieve that by working on positive campaigns which are honest and authentic and which you know, don't greenwash, to educate people.

Katherine Ann Byam 1:00
This is season five, the great debates of our times, Season Five will be centred around the great debates. And we will be comparing and contrasting different viewpoints on various topics that are consuming the public discourse at present. The reason I've decided to take this approach is because, we or at least many of us, are losing the skill of debate. And I think this is an essential skill for us all to practice once more. I don't see how we get to the point of saving the world and saving our planet, if we don't know how to discuss our differences. I also think that the solution to most of our challenges is somewhere in the spectrum of views but never at either extreme. I will be working with guests to curate the content and discuss beforehand, I will understand their positions, their areas of genius, and navigate my questions around that so that the conversation is challenging and stimulating without being combative. I hope you enjoy Season Five of Where Ideas launch; The Sustainable Innovation Podcast. For us, Avery is an eco entrepreneur, sustainable marketer and CEO of purpose driven brand consultancy Avery & Brown, with over a decade of experience, marketing sustainable brands, including six years in house at two large corporate sustainability consultancies. Ross not only has a deep knowledge of sustainable and ethical marketing practices, but also of the sustainable and regenerative business movement as a whole. Russ, welcome to Where iIdeas Launch.

Russ Avery 2:28
Thank you so much for having me, Katherine. It's great to be here. And I'm a big fan of the podcast. So it's a pleasure to be in such good company.

Katherine Ann Byam 2:36
That's awesome. I'm always excited to hear that people have listened to my podcast. I don't know why. I know that the statistics are great, but every time someone tells me I get excited again. So thank you for sharing that. We've been connected for some time now on LinkedIn, I discovered your work through Howard Gunstock at Carbon Capture and your content is extremely engaging. I don't know if you remember this, but you posted a video of your daughter singing a song from Keane since then I've updated my Spotify playlist with Keanes music, so, I'd genuinely forgotten how good they are. So thank you for that.

Russ Avery 3:08
You're welcome. Yeah, that was actually a really nice surprise for me too, because my daughter recorded that with my dad, her granddad accompanying her on the guitar. So it was a lovely surprise when my dad sent me that video. And it was during cop 26 last year. So I just thought it was a perfect song to be used as a soundtrack for a quick video. Thanks in large part to that great line in the song. This could be the end of everything. Yeah. And so I just put it together. And yeah, it's it was quite nice piece.

Katherine Ann Byam 3:36
It was magic. It was it was internet magic. Absolutely. So you mentioned on your LinkedIn profile that you've been involved in the sustainability transition since 2010. So I'd love to know your why. And also, if you could tell us a bit about your statement that sustainability is out and regeneration is in?

Russ Avery 3:54
Sure. So to answer the first part of the question for me, it was all about discovering my why and my purpose before I even really knew what, what those times meant. It was 2009 and I'd been doing various temp jobs for two years since graduating. I graduated with a degree in languages and I had no idea what I wanted to do for a career as most of my friends didn't either. It's pretty common, I guess. So I'd been a runner at a film production company, I'd worked for a small charity, I did some admin and archiving for a law firm. I even did a year at Deloitte in forensic accounting. So it's definitely safe to say that I was jumping around from job to job with no drive or job satisfaction. You know, it was a terrible job market. It was a global financial crisis. And none of my friends were getting jobs that they wanted to do, either they were all recruitment consultants or estate agents so yeah, in 2009. I really after doing two years of these temp jobs, I really took a step back and thought about what I actually cared about. And I kept coming back to wildlife and nature, which I've been passionate about since as long as I can remember as a boy growing up on the west coast of Scotland, and that was it. I made up my mind, I had nothing to show for it or prove in terms of academic qualifications in you name it geography, biology, sustainability, whatever it was. So I went back to university to study for a degree in Natural and Environmental Sciences. And I started applying for jobs at the same time while I was there. And that's when I managed to get my foot in the door at a small ocean conservation nonprofit called Sea Web in 2010. And the rest is history. So that's how I kind of discovered my why I really went back to what I was passionate about, and decided that I had to make a career in that in some way and get my foot in the door. As for posts that I've written about sustainability kind of being out and regeneration being in I haven't written any of those to be deliberately controversial. They've all just been cases of publicly sharing, like what I'm thinking and publicly sharing the journey that we're on at Avery and Brown. So the term regenerative business has been around for years, but I'd never heard of it when I first shared it in early 2021 in a LinkedIn post, and perhaps unsurprisingly, loads of other people hadn't heard of it, either. So the post just seemed to really resonate. And in a nutshell, I'd written about how I didn't think that sustainable business was enough anymore. And that if we listen to the climate scientists, which of course we should do, it's way too late in the day for that, we don't just need businesses to be less bad, we need them to do more good. So for me, no matter what the academic definitions of regenerative business might be, mine was, and still is that we want to be a business which gives back more to society and the planet than it takes. And I think it's that simplicity of message which led to my original posts resonating with so many people.

Katherine Ann Byam 6:41
Yeah, that absolutely reminds me of net positive by Andrew Winston and Paul Polman, I don't know if you've read the book. But the book has just given me so much in terms of insight into how we need to be thinking, how all big businesses need to be thinking. And to be honest, most aren't there yet, many are trying and they're making progress, but most are not there yet. And that's really a concern, because it comes down to that bit of a conflict that I also have, like, as I'm in the process of returning to traditional work (we'll talk about that later) but as I think about the companies that I go to, and as I interview with companies, they're on such different spectrums of where they are, I know that they're all trying to be better, which is why there's a potential role for me. I wouldn't go back if I didn't see a role in potential. And I know that we all need to help even the companies that we don't necessarily like the ones we think of greenwashing, etc, we need to help them do better. But it's still difficult if, therefull heart isn't there. So I wonder if I have the capacity to do the change management I need to do. So maybe if you can give some insight as to why this topic has become so huge and why it's such an important thing for marketing at the moment.

Russ Avery 7:56
Absolutely. Yeah. So quite simply, I just think it's the greatest issue of our time. So the climate crisis, and the associated crises which accompany it, including ecological collapse and increasing social inequality are without a doubt the greatest challenges that humanity has ever faced, and they permeate through every facet of life and business. And that, of course, includes marketing. And the reason sustainability is such a big marketing issue is because of the huge impact marketing and advertising has on people. And you know, people are central to the problem and must absolutely be central to the solution. So what people read, watch and hear every day has a profound effect on the way they behave, the actions they take the way they spend their money, etc. So marketing plays a vital role in how people not only understand but also how they react to the many facets of sustainability, whether that be choosing to buy so called sustainable goods and services, and we'll come on to that later when I talk about greenwash, or where and how they invest their money, for example. And so on the notes of greenwash we couldn't have this chat without raising it. As sustainability has become more trendy, we've witnessed an increasing prevalence of greenwash and for those who might not know greenwash is when brands use false misleading or unsubstantiated claims in their marketing and advertising. And I would say greenwashing is mostly deliberate. But sometimes it can be accidental, which raises a really interesting point about climate education and carbon literacy and that sort of thing. Because it's sometimes the case of people simply not knowing the facts, or how to talk accurately about something to do with sustainability. And I think we'll we'll revisit that later as well. And interestingly, one of my most popular posts on LinkedIn this year was about that nuance of language. And it went something along the lines of; you know, please remember that there's a huge difference between saying something is good for the environment, and saying something is less harmful to the environment, because there seems to now be an increasing number of cases of brands saying the former, when what they really mean is the latter. So you know, anyone listening to this, think about whether your product or service is actually good for the environment, eg whereby it helps restore it to actively benefit in some way? Or is it just that it's less damaging to the environment than other similar options on the market? You know, it sounds like a small thing. But that actually is a big thing. And, you know, thankfully, advertising and marketing campaigns can be shut down now for their use of greenwash if it gets reported. And we can talk about that a bit later on. But yeah, that that important distinction can save you a lot of time, money and general bother. And I guess, yeah, that for me is why sustainability or regeneration, those kind of catchphrases are so important in terms of marketing, it's all about behaviour. And how 7 billion people on the planet are acting, behaving spending their money and ultimately taking action or not.

Katherine Ann Byam 10:57
It's interesting what you say, because, well, one of the facts is that not 7 billion people are looking at these marketing campaigns. In fact, it's roughly maybe two and a half, maybe 3 billion. The rest are way below the poverty line and can't afford any of this stuff. Which, which brings me to some interesting ethical questions that I that I'd like to run past you. So my first one is this entrepreneurship is psychologically associated with creating this game changing business, these massive business models that transform everything, products and services or hybrids, but earning well while doing it. And that tends to be the focus, becoming the next unicorn. 1 billion in revenue. You know, getting this great valuation tends to be the goal for many people starting big businesses, and even for small businesses. It's about you know, getting that seven figures, etc. In your view, should we encourage the continuation of this thinking because I feel as if it's broken from the rest of the sustainability conversation? I mean, there is this part about carbon, but there's also this part about the social good. What are your thoughts on that?

Russ Avery 12:03
Such a great question, Katherine. So, of course, this is just my opinion, based on my own desires and drivers in life. But I honestly can't think of anything much worse than having an overarching goal of like wanting to be a billionaire. This ridiculous kind of culture of billionaire hustle has spread like wildfire since the dawn of social media. Even though most of what we see on there is totally fake. You know, unfortunately, we live in a world where people will literally rent supercars for the day, so they can take loads of photos of themselves with it for their Instagram profile to make others think that they're far wealthier and successful in their definition of success than they actually are. And you know, if that's not utterly mad, I really don't know what it is. But where it gets interesting is if purpose driven entrepreneurs want to get wealthy and build big businesses so that they can increase the positive impacts that they can make to people on the planet. In other words, by building a regenerative business, right, that really excites me. And that's the camp that I definitely fall into, you know, I don't have big desires for Avery & Brown to grow super, super quickly so that we can make seven, eight figures. I want to grow, you know, funnily enough sustainably and slowly and the right way for us. But I think we need to talk about cases like Patagonia because it happened so recently, Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia is an absolute sustainable business pioneer, as we all know, but recently, he announced that Earth was becoming you know, the major kind of shareholder of Patagonia and that billions of dollars will be put to, hopefully good causes by protecting the Earth's last wild spaces, which he cares so passionately about. It's a real case study of growing a business. And you know, there are people who are quick to shout down Patagonia, by the way, you know, using synthetic materials in its, in their clothing and stuff, but we need to celebrate progress not perfection, because you know, what is perfection anyway, so it's a real case study of how you can grow a huge, huge business with insane profits, but actually do something amazing with those profits. So your average billionaire would probably use that money to buy their next luxury yachts and their private jet and another house, etc. But there is a different way and it is out there. And we're seeing examples of this now and that that has to excite me because you know, we have to stay optimistic about these things and, and hopeful so I know a lot of great purpose driven entrepreneurs out there who are currently running small businesses like ours, but you know, one day these could be the next Yvon Chouinard's, which is super exciting, and what they're gonna do with their profits really excites me because they'll be trying to contribute to towards the Sustainable Development Goals ultimately and trying to make the world a better place instead of buying luxury material goods, which are just feeding the problem.

Katherine Ann Byam 15:05
Yeah, it definitely is complicated. Let's move to the second part of this question because it's in a way more marketing related. But when we look back into the history of marketing, as the Global Game Changing has become fundamentally since the 50s, roughly many link some of the greatest marketing campaigns with behaviours that haven't been good for the planet. So to give some examples, diamonds are forever. I saw the story on Netflix, and I was flabbergasted at how this campaign came about, and the selfishness that drove it and the success attack. I mean, it's still something that women desire for their weddings, which is just absolutely nuts for me, then when we look at things like Coca Cola, you know, you want to feel refreshed Coke is it. We saw people like Ronaldo push away the coke bottle when he's doing his conferences, etc. So with Coke, it's it's it's really about having this fizzy gas, sugary alternative to water. And it uses so much water as well, which is such a big challenge for us right now. So how can we do better? How can we really move this along? You know, we even had the depiction of advertising we saw in Mad Men, you know, the tobacco lobby and things like this, what role does marketing have to play in some of the inequality and health challenges that we currently face? In your view? And how can we do better?

Russ Avery 16:24
Yeah, so there's absolutely no doubt about it. Historically, marketing and advertising has been a massive part of the problem. There's just no, no two ways about it. You've already mentioned some of them, Katherine, in your question there. But the obvious ones would be tobacco, literally used to be advertised as a health benefit. So a cigarette a day keeps the doctor away and stuff like that. Alcohol, of course, which continues to this day, but is more regulated than it used to be, gambling. And then the big one for me would, of course, be overconsumption, marketing has played a direct role in the terrible inequalities in the world, and the environmental degradation of the planet, because it has forced us albeit sometimes subliminally, to buy crap that we don't want, need, or is even bad for our health. I mean, imagine, it sounds crazy, when you actually take a step back to think about it, doesn't it that we will actively buy things and consume things, which we know are bad for us. But of course, we've seen a cool advert or a great marketing campaign for it, and it makes us desire that thing. So 100%, marketing has played a massive role in, in the global inequality in health challenges that we face. And again, where it gets interesting for me is how it now can and must be part of the solution. And I mentioned earlier about how we can achieve that by working on positive campaigns, which are honest and authentic and which don't greenwash, to educate people.

Katherine Ann Byam 18:02
So let's move to a more positive note, shall we tell us about some of those campaigns you are currently working on, or have worked on in the past that are making a difference to what marketing can become?

Russ Avery 18:13
Absolutely, as I was saying, the reason I'm excited about the role that marketing can play in the future and being part of the solution to all these challenges we face, is because of the reach and the impact that it can have when done correctly. So what really excites me are marketing campaigns, which drive education, which share best practices, and which ultimately inspire and empower their audiences to maybe ask the right questions, but ultimately also start taking action and start taking positive action. That's really exciting. An example of a campaign that we've worked on in the past is the hashtag tackle the crisis campaign, that was our kind of biggest campaign today in terms of the global reach that we had. So it was done on behalf of our client; Elodie. And it was so simple, which is probably why it was so effective. And it was a user generated campaign, which encouraged people to promote brands and individuals which are providing planet positive solutions, and also to share positive and uplifting environmental news. And it had the very simple aim of helping to tackle the climate crisis by promoting those positive solutions, but also keep people's climate anxiety at bay. So really tackling those two important issues at once because climate anxiety is a real issue now, especially for those who work in sustainability, but also just for the general public who are clued up about the issues. So it was a campaign which simultaneously educated, promoted better alternatives and better options, whether it was sustainable and ethical goods or services, shared positive environmental news of which there is loads around, but we forget that because obviously If we're glued to the media, then we're just fed the deluge of doom and gloom news stories about how bad the state of the world is, which is true, but there needs to be some balance there. So we were encouraging people to promote and share these positive environmental news stories which they'd been hearing about or which they knew about themselves, of which there are 1000s. Because there are so many good people out there trying to do good things. And even the kind of more global positive news stories about the reintroduction of species or species which have recovered due to protected areas and stuff can get really bumped down the newspapers and the, you know, the news feeds, so they needed to be brought to the fore. That was a really good example of a marketing campaign with a really hugely positive impact. And it's still kind of going on to this day, because the beauty of the user generated aspects of the campaign is that people are just using the hashtags tackle the crisis whenever they share something positive.

Katherine Ann Byam 20:56
Yeah, I get that. I'm going to ask you a question that I didn't prepare you for. So sorry about that. But Tik Tok, so we talk about education as being essential to the sustainability movement. And in a way Tik Tok has been well, quite fundamental in the education of our youth, today with very short videos, with social justice topics, I think they do very, very well. I don't think they do as well on environmental topics. What are your thoughts about how we can capitalise on this massively growing, exciting, medium to communicate the best messages for youth?

Russ Avery 21:37
Wow, amazing question. So quite timely, as well. So Avery & Brown, we're brand new to Tik Tok, we quite literally joined it about two weeks ago, I think, and I'm very new to it personally as well. And the reason that we decided to go on to Tik Tok, and investigate it and be on there as a brand is simply because of everything you've just said about the number of people that are being reached on there. And that we knew that there was some good creators on Tik Tok, who were having success in terms of their reach, like views and engagement, who are talking about sustainability related issues. So we thought, well, we absolutely need to be on there and trial it for us. And I think the answer to your question in terms of how we can leverage it, is we need to be where the people are. So more brands like us need to at least investigate these new channels, which are popping up to see if they're viable channels and mediums for us to share our messages, so that we can reach more people who care. And yeah, it's interesting, we've shared I think, I think you'll find three videos on the Avery & Brown Tik Tok page at the moment, but purely in terms of the views that they've had, they're much higher than when we shared them on LinkedIn, and Instagram, which is really interesting. So we're definitely going to stay on Tik Tok in the short term. And where it's going to be interesting for us is sharing more of our messages about educating people about the climate crisis and sustainability and the role that both individuals and businesses can play in tackling it and see, see what happens. If we start getting incredible views and engagement there, then we'll know that it's a really good channel to reach maybe beyond the echo chamber that we, that you get stuck with, particularly on LinkedIn, for example, I don't know if you find this, Katherine. But while we can get good engagement on our LinkedIn posts, and I've been on LinkedIn for years, and building up a personal brand and publishing content, almost daily, as you know, you still see the same people like liking, commenting and engaging and it feels really difficult to reach beyond that echo chamber. Otherwise, we're all just talking to each other about the stuff we already know about, right. I think new channels like Tik Tok, which I know isn't that new anymore, and they'll be something else soon. I'm sure. I think we are we need to explore these for for the benefit of the bigger picture.

Katherine Ann Byam 24:00
Yeah. And it brings me to another question that they didn't tell you about. But it's kind of around the direction of Facebook at the moment and the metaverse. And I'm not sold on it. I think Mark is, but I don't know if the rest of the world is. And I don't know if it's actually a good place for us to start thinking about how we would prepare a strategy for for that type of reality. What are your thoughts?

Russ Avery 24:26
Yeah, I mean, I'm happy to say hands up. I know, almost nothing about it, because it personally just doesn't interest me that much. I get it. But the concepts for me of yeah, this virtual reality world that we can all kind of interact with each other in is just lost on me as someone who wants to protect, you know, what's right outside there, like in the real world. So there will be incredible use cases for the metaverse, which I don't know about because I'm not the person to talk to about that. That I'm sure will be of benefit to certain sectors and demographics. But I don't know what they are. And I'm just far more concerned like you are Katherine with the real world and doing whatever we can to protect it and solve the issues that we know about which are out there. Yeah, that's an interesting one. And I'm sure Mark's got other ideas. But hey, get him on the show next, right.

Katherine Ann Byam 25:23
Yeah, if only, you know, it's interesting and it's my final comments on this topic, but my godson, so I don't have kids, but my godson spends a lot of time with his friends playing fortnite, or things like this. So I see that it has relevance, especially for this generation, at this certain age where, you know, the pandemic happened, and they spent a lot of time in their houses not being able to see their friends. They've sort of built this relationship and this whole new world playing games online. And I see that this generation that's coming up now could potentially be that Metaverse generation, right, they could be the ones who you know, really get something from spending time with their friends in these kinds of virtual reality situations, you know, like Ready Player One, stuff like that. So I can see it becoming a thing. But the question is, will we get there? Will we even get there? And that's the problem that we need to solve first. Right. So on that topic, I'm going to ask you now should marketing be regulated in your view? Yeah.

Russ Avery 26:18
So here in the UK, like fortunately, all marketing and advertising must be an accurate description of the product or service. It should be truthful, honest, and socially responsible. And you can't include false or deceptive messages or leave out any important information. So at least we've got a head start on what I'm sure the cases in other countries. And in the context of our conversation today around sustainability, and regenerative business practices and marketing, there's something called the Green Claims Code now, which is great, because everyone must now ensure that any environmental claims on goods and services don't mislead customers, and that they can be substantiated, which you'll remember from when we talked about greenwash earlier. So it's pretty simple, actually, all claims must be truthful and accurate, and clear and unambiguous. And that is such a wonderful thing. Because on LinkedIn alone, I've been seeing more and more people sharing posts about adverts, which they've adverts in marketing campaigns, which they've spotted where they've questioned it. And it's led to amazing discussions in the comments. And then more often than not, we've also seen that actually, the Advertising Standards Authority have stepped in and the green claims code has been brought into effect and the marketing campaign or the the advertising campaign has been has been shut down. And that's brilliant. Fortunately, consumers are becoming much more savvy to greenwash and much more capable of spotting it or at least questioning it, which is the first part of that education. And then, you know, that's one of the ways social media really comes into its own, in a good way, is being able to share that and ask your your network and your audience what they think, or if in Indeed, it is illegal and should be taken down and it leads to a great discussion. And it helps educate others, because they go oh, yeah, I didn't really think about that. But that is, you know, how did they get away with that? That's really positive, in my opinion. And I'm really glad that we're seeing these, these greenwashing campaigns being shut down. Because remember, more often than not, they are deliberate, because they're being done by the bigger firms which know exactly what they're doing. And they are trying to mislead us. And then there are a few instances where it's a really interesting grey area, because the company the brand, hasn't done it deliberately, it's just been the kind of slight nuance of language. And that's where they need expertise of sustainable marketers, and people who are clued up on greenwash and what you can and can't say, to help them with their campaigns. So you know, we exist to help our clients do that. And we don't, we don't have to do it that often because we're more brand consultancy focused. But we do help run marketing campaigns as well, of course, and so it's something that we need to be acutely aware of in the language that we use on behalf of our clients to make sure that their compliant.

Katherine Ann Byam 29:09
Wonderful, thank you for sharing. And what I'd love to do now is to take advantage of your knowledge. And have you share sort of three foundational approaches perhaps, that you use when preparing a branding or marketing campaign for, a for purpose brand. So to help our listeners who might be either interested in social media or doing their own small businesses that are purpose led?

Russ Avery 29:35
Absolutely. Number one would have to be sticking to your why and your purpose. And it sounds obvious, but it seems to be really easy to forget. So that's why it has to be my number one tip there. So assuming that your brand has completed some comprehensive brand strategy work and your purpose driven business, which knows your why and your purpose, which again, sounds obvious, but we'll talk a bit about that later. You have to make sure that any campaign that you're doing harks back to your why and your purpose so that it has not only the right impact for your audience, but the right impact for you. Which leads me on to my second one, which is staying true to your vision and your values. So what are you actually trying to achieve both as a business and with this campaign? Is the campaign helping you to achieve your vision? And by staying true to your values, I mean, does the campaign have the right tone of voice and the right values, which you talk about on your website, which we've seen instances of the campaign, maybe using slightly different language, which puts, sets your brand in a different light than the way you talk about yourself on the about page, when you talk about your values and your vision and stuff, you really want to make sure that they're aligned, so that the campaign looks like it is actually, from your brand, how you talk about yourself, and that can be executed in multiple different ways. So I mentioned tone of voice there, here's your overall branding. And there's reflecting the language that you use in your purpose statement and your vision statement and stuff. And this is completely applicable to any brands, not just a for purpose brand, but don't forget to put yourself in your audience's shoes. So you've got to really think; how is this campaign going to be seen or heard, when I'm actually the audience when I'm reading that social media post when I'm looking at that billboard. And, you know, perhaps I'd argue that that is even more important for purpose brands, because of the positive impacts that that could go on to have because actually, it's not a campaign by Coca Cola. It's a campaign by a for purpose brand, which is probably trying to achieve something really positive in the world. Maybe that's the argument for saying that, harking back to your purpose, your vision, your values, and putting yourself in your audience's shoes is even more important for, for purpose brands, because of the positive impacts that you're trying to create.

Katherine Ann Byam 31:56
What advice would you give to green eco sustainable regenerative startups that are entering the marketplace? Now? Do you feel like it's too crowded?

Russ Avery 32:04
That's a really interesting one about whether I feel it's too crowded or not, I don't feel it's too crowded with exactly the right kind of brands that we need, I think there's still a huge opportunity out there for the really amazing purpose driven ones who are going to be, you know, the next big purpose driven companies of tomorrow. There are however, a lot of sustainable in inverted commas brands popping up. But this is a whole nother answer. But there are too many of them which, like clearly jumping on the bandwagon a bit. And they've just put the word sustainable and sustainability in some of their copy. But when you when you scratch the surface and dig a little deeper, they're nothing of the sort in terms of the way that they operate and stuff. So unfortunately, that is just something which happens whenever anything becomes trendy. And let's face it, sustainability is becoming trendy, which is why more of these brands are popping up. Because these days you people feel like you need to be seen to be doing something. So if their business which isn't doing something, some of them will just lie about it and drop in a few words here in there for the advice I'd give to green eco sustainable regenerative startups entering the marketplace, now, if you focus on your brand strategy at a deep level, I promise you, you will instantly set yourselves apart from 99% of your competition, it can seem really obvious that if you are a green eco or sustainable startup, purpose is something which is completely fundamental to your business. But actually true purpose is obviously more than skin deep. So whether you're a startup or an established business, a rock solid brand strategy is an essential foundation of any great sustainable brands. And it's about knowing yourself at a really deep level, and answering lots of key questions about your purpose, your vision, your mission, because you can be a sustainable startup, which knows what its end goal is, but it hasn't answered enough questions about itself and the way it's going to operate, if that makes sense. So they know that they want to achieve something good in the world through what they're selling, whether that be a product or service, but actually they haven't paid much attention to their own brand strategy, which is about realising your potential and exploring what's possible. So getting to know yourself and your priorities inside out, who exactly you're talking to, so really niching down on who your audience is, who else is talking out there, that's obviously your competition, and that brand strategy stage can extend as far as your budget allows, but ultimately, the more you can afford to spend on it in those early days, the better your foundation for growth is going to be and you'll really help set yourself up for for that long term success. So that's why we have such a thorough four stage approach. Three, three of those stages are foundational groundwork we do before we start the actual marketing. So all the campaigns and the general or ongoing marketing activities are all in what we call stage four, which is execute. But our stages one, two and three are doing a huge amount of groundwork getting under the bonnet of the business and understanding it at the deepest level possible working with them on their purpose, vision, values, tone of voice, etc, brand identity before they go and jump ahead and do that. And that's what's helping our clients to kind of see success and grow and not feel like they've plateaued or growing too quickly by skipping these crucial steps that I think every business needs to focus on. But, again, I'm biassed, but I'd say it's even more important for the kind of planet positive brands that we're looking to work with.

Katherine Ann Byam 35:39
Wonderful Russ, this has been an insightful session. I've loved our conversation, can you share with my listeners how they can get in touch with you?

Russ Avery 35:46
Sure. Thank you so much, Katherine, people please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. You'll find me on LinkedIn just by searching for Russ Avery, our website's Avery & Brown.com. And you can find us on LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok. Now just using the handle at Avery&Brown,

Katherine Ann Byam 36:03
Perfect thanks so much.

Russ Avery 36:04
Thanks, Katherine.

Katherine Ann Byam 36:08
This podcast is brought to you today by the brand new Women In Sustainable Business Awards that kicks off in 2023. If you're a business owner who's starting a business with principles of sustainability in mind, and you want to preserve some lost skills, some handcrafting, artisanal work, or you're a social media manager supporting purpose driven brands, or you're creating fashion, or something that is relevant to the sustainability and green transformation, you are more than welcome to join us, and to get involved in these awards. Check out our group, on Facebook; Woman In Sustainable Business, or follow the podcast; Where Ideas Launch, on Instagram to find out more.

About this Episode

Davey and Daphnah help Eco-minded, sustainable conscious, and changemaking businesses maximise their impact through virtual assistance that goes beyond the basics. 

They help you get organised, connected to your customers, visible to your audience, and take on the mundane tasks eating up your day, as well as offer advice and tips on how to improve on your sustainability road map.

Eco & Ethical Outsourcing Workbook

Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam 0:01
Being a VA is such an integral role to any business. You know, you're, you're involved in every decision you're involved in supporting everything to come to life. And I can see how this can really connect with you when you find the right customers, right?

Davey McConnell 0:15
Definitely. So it's, I love the moment when you're, you're in a call, you know, like meeting them for the first time, and they're telling you about their business. And they're just like lighting up. And because I love what they're doing and what they're talking about. And then, you know, like, we start talking about what we can help them with, and then they're lighting up because they're like, they can see all the new things that they can do and the time back that they'll have to focus on those things that they love. So it's, it's really, I just love it.

Katherine Ann Byam 0:47
This is season five, the great debates of our times, Season Five will be centred around the great debates. And we will be comparing and contrasting different viewpoints on various topics that are consuming the public discourse at present. The reason I've decided to take this approach is because, we or at least many of us, are losing the skill of debate. And I think this is an essential skill for us all to practice once more. I don't see how we get to the point of saving the world and saving our planet, if we don't know how to discuss our differences. I also think that the solution to most of our challenges is somewhere in the spectrum of views but never at either extreme. I will be working with guests to curate the content and discuss beforehand, I will understand their positions, their areas of genius, and navigate my questions around that so that the conversation is challenging and stimulating without being combative. I hope you enjoy Season Five of Where Ideas launch; The Sustainable Innovation Podcast.

Davey and Daphnah help eco minded, sustainable, conscious and change making businesses to maximise their impact from virtual assistance that goes beyond the basics. They help you to get organised, connected to your customers, visible to your audience, and take on the mundane tasks eating up your day, as well as offer advice and tips and how to improve your sustainability roadmap. Davey, welcome to Where Ideas Launch.

Davey McConnell 2:13
Hello, Katherine. Thanks for having me.

Katherine Ann Byam 2:15
Really wonderful to have you. This is a super long overdue meetup. We met about two years ago when I joined the group, Women in Sustainable Business, it was not my group at the time, I think you already there, if I'm correct. And it's been amazing to work with you, to see you grow, to see your business grow with Daphnah. So it's really a pleasure to have you on the show.

Davey McConnell 2:38
Yeah, the same, I've been admiring your work over the last few years, and just kind of seeing how much you've grown, and honestly, the amount that you're able to accomplish is just very impressive to us. So it's really an honour to be here.

Katherine Ann Byam 2:57
Thank you so much for that. Let's start with your why. And I know you and your partner that have been digital nomads, but I know a little bit less about what brought you to wanting to support sustainable businesses. And I have a feeling that that's a really good story. So tell us a bit about your journey to making sustainability a core value in your business.

Davey McConnell 3:18
Yeah, so we were digital nomads. Yes. And now we've kind of settled down a little bit, but travelling is still in our hearts. But yeah, it was starting the business was kind of a means to make that happen in the first place to be able to travel the world. Because we met while travelling we were, I was living abroad, but in terms of, you know, focusing on sustainability in business, it kind of started as in, me it was when I was very young, my father was very outdoorsy. And so we were very outdoorsy children. And so I spent lots of time in nature. And you know, it's like a little hippie-ish. And, and then I have this heart, this just breaks at every injustice, and so seeing the things that have happened to our planet and people it's, it's just something that I personally cannot stand for and something that I focused on a lot in college. It was one of my first jobs was an assistant in the leadership programmes department and we organised volunteer programmes for students and a lot of that was planting trees in Detroit or helping out in the food banks and the urban gardens and educational programmes for the local children. And it eventually transitioned into you know, the Study Abroad programmes so I was coordinating those as well and trying to create volunteer programmes to go abroad. And, and help with different environmental projects as well to, you know, in the Dominican to prevent invasive species and educating people on how to do that within their local community. So it was, it's been something that's just been on my mind and a part of my life. And so when we decided to start the business, and you know, they tell you to niche down, right, there's just thinking about, like, if I'm gonna make a business, it, it has to have some kind of greater purpose. Like, I'm not somebody that's just doing something for the hell of it or to, you know, make a quick buck at it. Everything means something to me. So this was something that meant a lot to me. So it was, it was kind of a no brainer for us.

Katherine Ann Byam 5:40
Tell us about some of the businesses that you support and why they excite you.

Davey McConnell 5:44
So we are working with a variety of different businesses, you know, these are either service providers, copywriters, branding, coaches, consultants, but I want to tell you about a couple of them that really excited me. So we, you probably know, she thinks she's been on the podcast, Michelle Miller, from Minty Maid and the Green Marketing Academy. I just love Michelle as a person, first and foremost, but I'm, what she's doing in the marketing world, and the sustainable business world is just so inspiring, in The Green Marketing Movement, it you know, it's it's the future is the way that that all businesses need to be thinking about the way that they run their businesses and how they interact and with the world, and impact the world, and the people. So it's really, it's really exciting to be a part of that be a part of her team. And to kind of see how she, how she's growing. And we also are working with a sustainability consultant there in the, in the UK. She's also a digital nomad, kind of travelling around making her impact. Her name is Livvy Drake, Sustainable Sidekicks. So she's inside different businesses and like even event organisations and helping them create sustainability policies and things within their businesses. So just kind of helping her in the back end, being able to run her different educational programmes, has been really great and inspiring to see, she focuses a lot on behaviour change, so that's, you know, teaching people how to actually talk about taking action in a way that will be effective, you know, like we can, she talks a lot about like you can, you can be negative, and doom-zy and all that good stuff, but it's not really going to get people to take action. So teaching businesses on how to communicate that a lot better. And then there's another woman in New Zealand, Katrina Wolff, blue borage gardening, she's doing a lot of stuff with regenerative soil, and teaching families about biodynamic gardening, to help, you know, with their health and connecting back to nature, and it's just, they're all just super, very inspiring to us. And we just love being able to have some kind of impact in their business to help with the impact overall.

Katherine Ann Byam 8:14
Yeah, that's amazing. I mean, even for me doing this podcast, when I talk to some of the people that I have on here as guests, I feel so inspired to reflect on my own business and see what more I could be doing. And I think that this is part of what you get as being a VA is such an integral role to any business. You know, you're, you're involved in every decision, you're involved in supporting everything to come to life, and I can see how this can really connect with you when you find the right customers, right?

Davey McConnell 8:43
Definitely. So it's, I love the moment when you're, you're on a call, you know, like meeting them for the first time, and they're telling you about their business, and they're just like lighting up, and because I love what they're doing and what they're talking about. And then you know, like, start talking about what we can help them with. And then they're lighting up because they're like, they can see all the new things that they can do and the time back that they'll have to focus on those things that they love. So it's, it's really, yeah, I just love it.

Katherine Ann Byam 9:12
And what has been sort of your major successes, and perhaps major challenges as well, in establishing first a digital nomad agency as you, as you were previously. And I think this is a space that many people are interested in. I mean, a lot of us start businesses for a bit of freedom. We can debate whether businesses give you freedom or not, but but there is an element of freedom in the way that you work, etc. But what does it take to make this work for you guys?

Davey McConnell 9:39
One of our major successes would be that we were able to survive solely on this income there. I mean, it took some time. We were teaching English for a while and the day that we were able to quit teaching was the best day ever. I mean it, I loved all the little kids, but it was, it was really great that we were able to be self sufficient and knowing that, that we were making an impact at the same time. But it was definitely very challenging. Because we were learning how to run a business at the same time. And I was doing it on my own. In the beginning, you know, Daphnah was, was teaching and this was initially my idea, and I was just working long hours just trying to figure everything out. And eventually she, she offered to help me out with some things. And I think that, that was, that was kind of the turning point where we were able to, you know, increase our capacity, I could increase my capacity. So I think coming together in joining forces is, is what helped to really make it work, as well as community, you know, finding other entrepreneurs that we could talk to and relate with really helps you feel not so alone, while you're running a business because it definitely could be very lonely, especially starting out during a pandemic.

Katherine Ann Byam 11:09
Absolutely. When you first onboard a client, what are some of the first things you try to help them do. And as a business owner, myself, I often know how hard it is to let go of the reins. So tell me a bit about one of the first things you sort of prise away from business owners.

Davey McConnell 11:30
Definitely had a few clients like this, but some of the first things that we help them do is just to try to organise their thoughts and think about their priorities, really. So we use the project management system, Asana, so if a, if a client doesn't have their own system, we're try to get them into Asana, where we are able to then set them up with their own space, where they're able to access all their different files and links in spaces for, to put different things. So that we're all on the same page, that we, that there is a process, and there's a way to communicate. So and then it makes them feel like they're like, they're not alone in this process, they're able to brain dump, essentially some different things that they'd like help with, and then we're able to kind of talk through it. So I think really, it is just giving them that space to kind of talk about it, because a lot of them have been going at it alone for a long time. And they aren't as aware of the possibilities. So sometimes they come to it thinking that they need one thing, but then it turns out that it's really something else, and that we can help with, you know, X, Y and Z as well. And so it's just kind of getting them to start thinking more about those things, and what are their priorities, you know, as well as getting them to get access into their different programmes that can sometimes be a, you know, a process. And I think that that starts to really turn the gears as well to like, okay, like they're in there, I don't have to worry about it anymore. And they can start to lay off that control a little bit.

Katherine Ann Byam 13:22
That's great. So give my listeners some insight into outsourcing mastery and how to set up for success.

Davey McConnell 13:28
Yeah, so there is definitely some good and bad ways to go about outsourcing, I suppose. And we've talked about this a lot with different people in our network, there's a way to set yourself up for success, definitely. And what we've created is an eco ethical outsourcing workbook. And it's a place for people to really dive into their foundations of why they want to outsource, what they think they want to outsource, or what they think they need. And it's a way to just really dive into those priorities, to dive into their processes. And, you know, thinking about what do they like to do in their business? What do they not like to do? What are the tasks only they can do? And what are the tasks that are making them money? And to really try to reflect on all of that, and then to decide, you know, who would be the best fit? You know, is it somebody that do they want somebody that can do multiple different things? Do they want to focus on an expert? Is it ongoing help that they need? Is it just project based? So inside the workbook is a way for them to kind of work through all this thought process and at the end of it, they, they understand what they can outsource what they can keep and how to go about it. Especially in, In a way that's going to be sustainable for them, outsourcing is definitely a way to keep your energy sustainable in your business in the long term. And, you know, we talk a lot about hiring people in an ethical way. Because, you know, it's, it's very easy to, to take advantage of some people from different countries. And it's so, it's just kind of thinking about the Sustainable Development Goals. They talk about, you know, fair employment, equal employment and things like that. So, you know, as eco ethical focus businesses, you know, that's something that we hold as is very valuable to us. So we can talk about that in the workbook as well to make sure that, you know, we're all doing our best, and we're doing business in a good way.

Katherine Ann Byam 15:47
This is really cool. And I'm pretty sure that after this episode, I'm gonna go download your guide. So I want to move to another question, when it comes to social media, I've seen both of you do such an amazing job on Instagram, in particular, the way you show up is so powerful, I really want to congratulate you for that. What do you think ethical brands are sort of struggling with, and need to be more conscious of, in their social media and how they present themselves?

Davey McConnell 16:19
I think, right now in social media, there is, there's a lot of, a lot of weird feelings around it, you know, in terms of a lot of changes that the algorithm is making, the different platforms. And so I mean, I think that it really is about just kind of trying to get in front of the right audience for for some brands, and kind of understanding the differences between the platforms. And so I think that for ethical brands, some of the things that they could try to focus on, or at least be more conscious of, is to not be afraid of sharing their brand values, and to, to make sure that that's coming through in all of their content in the way that they share their content as well. And when we work with clients on social media, we're thinking about, you know, is the content authentic? Is it transparent? Is it inclusive? Is it sharing their values in a way that is relatable to their audience? Is it? Is it being marketed in an ethical way? You know, are we not using pain points and making people feel shame? Are we empowering our audience? Are you providing value to your audience? So it's, it's kind of thinking about the way that you share your, your content more than anything. And I think that when you use your brand values in that way that you're able to then attract the people that relate to that and resonate with that and therefore you're attracting, you know, the right customers and the clients. So that's, I think that, that's the biggest thing is brand values all the way.

Katherine Ann Byam 18:10
Yeah. No, I feel you on that I think the social media space has really become for want of a better word, frustrating, but it also speaks to possibly, really understanding and this is, it's a hard question to answer, I think, but really understanding what the market needs. And whether or not your service has a place. You know, I've had that experience of starting projects that completely failed, I've started a few that have completely failed in the three and a half years that I've been in business. And part of that is that you don't have the capacity to do the research. Or you think that even though the research didn't turn up enough, it's still out there, like you still see the problems out there. So you, you want to address it, but you, you're not necessarily figuring out how to, how to access and only access that audience when you're running an algorithm. So I do understand what you're saying about that. And there's loads of ways to do to do it. And the way people built, built businesses in the past was through you know, networking and networking events and getting in front of people in a more personal way. And I still feel as if that's still not as possible on social media. For me I feel as if the only time social media really works is when we do things like this right when we when we get in front of each other. And we talk or we get together in groups you know, we have networking events or like you run for example your co working event. So I don't know if you want to share a little bit about about how that aspect has helped your business?

Davey McConnell 19:43
Community is one of the biggest things that we will shout that from the rooftops always, community and using social media, it's right there in the name social, if you're not using it in a way to connect, really connect with people, then, you know, what are you doing on it? So it's really that way of, I think social media is a really good addition to a businesses or brands overall marketing strategy. I don't think that we can solely rely on it. I think that it's a it's a piece in a larger puzzle, right? So, yes, it's very difficult to grow and reach all the people you want and, you know, grow as much as you would like on there. But it's not the only way. And it shouldn't be the only way that brands are marketing themselves. There's podcasts and blogs, and SEO and email marketing. And like you said, networking, networking has been one of the biggest referral sources for us. And I mean, granted that we built our network based on our Instagram presence in the very beginning. But now most of our, most of our inquiries are coming from referrals. So I think that when you use social media in a way to connect with people, those people then will, you know, help you grow your business in the future. So just kind of like being social in that community, you know, our Ecopreneuer Community, the Facebook group, and the events that we run. Those are, those are solely just to connect with people. We're not using them to sell our services. It's just because we need community, everybody needs community in this entrepreneurial journey. So you know, and then that comes through people see that your values like that, when you're just kind of being real.

Katherine Ann Byam 21:47
Yeah, absolutely. This is going to be my final question. And it was originally intended to be a question for both you and Daphnah, because I was expecting to have you both on the show today. But I want to talk about this because it's something that I also sort of experienced. So you talk very openly about your personal relationship, on your website, and on your socials. And I wanted to ask two questions around this. So I also work with my life partner, but he's way less keen about being open about the fact that we are together in our marketing, we are biracial, we are multicultural, and part of me wants to advocate around it. But another part says, my personal life is my personal life. So what are your thoughts about separation of work and life? I mean, even, you know, in your relationship and in your business, and how can we be authentic in public, while still keeping our boundaries? If you understand what I mean?

Davey McConnell 22:43
Yeah, I understand what you're talking about. And, you know, honestly, it is a personal decision. And, and I think that the, the amount of your life that you share, you know, on, on your business platforms is a very personal decision. But again, I think it comes down to brand values, you know, is, is it something that your brand stands for, you know, around, you know, racial issues, and, you know, being authentic and real. And, you know, not to say that if you don't share it, you're not authentic? That's not what I'm trying to say. But it's, you know, it's taking a stand for some things, and it can, it just kind of comes down to how you feel about it personally, you know, I don't think that you can feel guilty for not doing it or not, and if your partner's like, not really about it, then you know, that is what it is. I think that like for us, it was very much so that, you know, we're working together, you know, day in and day out, always together. And we just like to have fun. And we wanted to share that two women, that are married, are able to have a business and we're able to grow and we're able to, you know, advocate for the things that we care about, and I think that visibility for, you know, the queer community is very important for us. That's a value that we personally have. And we have a platform, we have our business. Everybody with a business has a platform, and whether we like it or not business is political and so in, whether we like it or not, these are our personal sexual orientations and the way that people, are, identify, it is political, whether we like it or not. So we feel that very strongly and we use our platform, our business to, to talk about those things, it's not our entire business. But we we make mention of it because people need more visibility. And when people see that there's queer people or inter-racial couples talking about these things, and they're showing up and being real, then it can inspire other people. So that was something that was important to us. And it's, it's a very personal decision for everybody. So I think that whatever you feel in your heart, whatever you, y'all are comfortable with, like, that's what's authentic. So, yeah, I, I understand why your partner would feel that way. But um, you know, that's, that's between y'all.

Katherine Ann Byam 25:43
Thank you so much for all that you shared with us today. I think it's been a lovely conversation. Thank you for showing up, even though I know that you're going through some things as well, personally, and like, how can my listeners get in touch with you both?

Davey McConnell 25:57
Yeah, so you can definitely find us on Instagram. We're not as active as we used to be because Instagram is very tiring these days. And we're trying to focus a little bit more on email marketing. So if you go to our website, the eco helper.com You can subscribe to our emails. You can also then download the outsourcing workbook if you're thinking that that's something that's right for your business, or can follow us on Instagram and try Linkedin is well to you know, try to broaden our horizons a little bit there.

Katherine Ann Byam 26:36
Thanks so much, Davey. Lovely to chat.

Davey McConnell 26:38
Thanks, Katherine. It's been a pleasure.

Katherine Ann Byam 26:43
This podcast is brought to you today by the brand new Women In Sustainable Business Awards that kicks off in 2023. If you're a business owner who's starting a business with principles of sustainability in mind, and you want to preserve some lost skills, some handcrafting, artisanal work, or you're a social media manager supporting purpose driven brands, or you're creating fashion, or something that is relevant to the sustainability and green transformation, you are more than welcome to join us, and to get involved in these awards. Check out our group, on Facebook; Woman In Sustainable Business, or follow the podcast; Where Ideas Launch, on Instagram to find out more.

About this Episode

Michelle Miles is the Founder of the Sustainable Wedding Alliance, a purpose driven business with the singular aim of making the wedding industry more sustainable. 

The Alliance works with businesses of all sizes to help them to understand sustainability, what it means for them, and how they can develop long term sustainable strategies that will benefit people, profit and planet. 

Businesses that become members are assessed on their sustainability processes and procedures, and receive a personalised action plan to make appropriate changes. Membership also includes accreditation, for those businesses who achieve a minimum standard.

In addition to working with responsible businesses, the Alliance educates and inspires couples to plan sustainable, conscious weddings. 

She is an Associate member of IEMA and holds a Foundation Certificate in Environmental Management. 

Michelle is passionate about creating a more sustainable wedding industry, through education, support and accreditation. 

Michelle also runs Fusion Events and Weddings, with a focus on organising environmentally conscious events and weddings for clients across Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Wiltshire.

Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam 0:01
What are three sustainable wedding tips that you could give to some of my listeners who might want to get into this?

Michelle Miles 0:08
So if you're thinking about your own weddings, top tip is start thinking about the season, what is it about that season that you've been drawn to, and then go all in on it, make sure that you are only using seasonal produce, make sure you are buying from a flower farm that is growing local, that is looking after their land, that is putting back into the environment. Buying local flowers isn't just about the flowers. It's not just about, you know, having grown and not flown and reducing their carbon footprint. It's also about biodiversity in our country. You know, having these massive amount of flower farms in our country. We are improving our countryside, we're ensuring that pollinators are getting what they need, we're ensuring that wildlife tunnels are being created.

Katherine Ann Byam 1:00
This is season five, the great debates of our times, Season Five will be centred around the great debates. And we will be comparing and contrasting different viewpoints on various topics that are consuming the public discourse at present. The reason I've decided to take this approach is because, we or at least many of us, are losing the skill of debate. And I think this is an essential skill for us all to practice once more. I don't see how we get to the point of saving the world and saving our planet, if we don't know how to discuss our differences. I also think that the solution to most of our challenges is somewhere in the spectrum of views but never at either extreme. I will be working with guests to curate the content and discuss beforehand, I will understand their positions, their areas of genius, and navigate my questions around that so that the conversation is challenging and stimulating without being combative. I hope you enjoy Season Five of Where Ideas launch; The Sustainable Innovation Podcast. Michelle Miles is the founder of the Sustainable Wedding Alliance, a purpose driven business with the singular aim of making the wedding industry more sustainable. The Alliance works with businesses of all sizes to help them to understand sustainability and develop long term sustainable strategies that will benefit the triple bottom line. In addition, Michelle also runs fusion events and weddings with a focus on organising environmentally conscious events and weddings for clients across Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and Wiltshire. Michelle, welcome to Where Ideas Launch.

Michelle Miles 2:31
Thank you so much for having me.

Katherine Ann Byam 2:33
Really awesome to have you here. We met in my Facebook group, I think it's been like a year, I'm not really sure. But you joined the community. And now we're collaborating on a super meaningful project the WISBYs. So I'm really, really happy to have you and I really value the experience you're bringing to the team as well.

Michelle Miles 2:49
It's absolutely amazing to be able to work with you on that project. I think that it's going to be we're really excited about the launch, obviously. And it's been a long time in the progress and the planning. And yeah, I'm really excited for it launching.

Katherine Ann Byam 3:05
So let's start with your wwhy, Michelle. So tell us about your reason for founding the Sustainable Wedding Alliance and what this sustainability and conscious journey really means for you personally as well.

Michelle Miles 3:17
That's probably good to go back, right back to when I joined the industry. So I left school at the age of 16, wasn't particularly into the world of academia, I realised quite quickly that it wasn't for me. So further education wasn't going to be right for me. So I went straight into events at the age of 16. I've now been in the industry for a couple of decades. And it's got to be, going back about 10 years that I really started to notice, and it really didn't sit well with me, about the wasteful element of events. So in particular, I worked on a lot of large scale festivals and production, heavy events. And so I was seeing both from the back end of the organising of the events, but also from the front end, from the public side of things and how the convenience culture had really played into the wasteful nature of events. And so kind of started to feel quite uneasy being part of that. So I've had a decision, I had to either get out and go do something different, or try and change it from within. So me being me, love a challenge, decided that I needed to start making some changes. So I founded my own business, left, the corporate world, had to have a bit of a side hustle for a little while until I could build it, like many, many other businesses, but really started working hard to try and find the right clients and work more consciously. So I then had a daughter, it became even more clear to me and my why changed it became about leaving a legacy for her. And then my son a few years later, and absolutely at that point. You know, I couldn't do anything other than only work on events with clients that really cared and got it, and also to I used to work with clients that would push the boundaries on stuff. So it wouldn't just be enough to run their own sustainable event. Actually, it was about making a larger impact beyond them. So then that started to translate into the weddings work that I was doing, noticing lots of couples looking for more environmentally friendly options. Green weddings, as they were called back when they started to become popular, and then in to suppliers and actually talking to venues, and caterers, and planners, about what they could do in their business. And then that is what really sparked the idea for what can we do to help more of these businesses, there's clearly a community of businesses, we're like minded, we're all working towards the same goal, how can we start to make this bigger and get an impact, and then the pandemic happened, and then everybody downed tools, and nobody in the weddings and events industry could work, virtual weddings, were never going to be a big thing. So it gave us a little bit of time. And I'm a positive person, I like to take the silver linings where I can. And for me, that's what COVID gave me, it gave me the headspace and the time to sit down and work out what the alliance would be, and how it could have the biggest impact and help the most people. And whether that was businesses or couples, we very much came down on the side of businesses recognising that actually, we're a 14 point 7 billion pound industry, as an industry employing over 400,000 people, you know, absolutely massive. And, you know, we as businesses could really make an impact on every wedding that we're involved in. So the Alliance got formed back in 2020. We then started with working businesses, to connect people together, help them work on where they're at in terms of sustainability, teach them what it means to be sustainable. And then I'm really excited to say that last year, we launched our accreditation, so we actually now work with businesses to understand what they're doing, how they can make it better. And then we can accredit them based on an international standard for event management, we then go in, and we actually look at what they're doing. And then they can work towards something. And for couples, they can look at businesses and say, amazing, they've got that standard, we know that they're working to a sound standard, we know that they're working to that minimum level, and it's been independently verified. So for couples to be able to look for something, because let's be honest, no couple understands ISO 14,001, they don't know what that means for their wedding. Whereas we hope that by having a specific wedding accreditation will allow the couples to understand that that couples doing everything they can to be sustainable.

Katherine Ann Byam 7:45
That's brilliant, and really powerful. I like the the angle that you've taken on this, I want to probe a little bit on the data, I want to understand a little bit about what this industry size is in terms of impact on the environment in the UK, specifically.

Michelle Miles 8:00
Absolutely. So I work with different organisations over the globe. So in the States, there are a couple of Wedding Alliances, specifically at the Green Wedding Alliance that are based in Chicago, they have a fantastic pool of people that they work with, and they're collecting their own data, over in Australia and New Zealand, there's another organisation called Less Stuff, More Meaning, that again, doing amazing things. And what they have actually done is they've developed a wedding carbon footprint calculator, and they've developed it for use across the globe. And so actually, there's no point in reinventing the wheel, we all want to work together to achieve the same outcome. And so what we do is we recommend our businesses and couples to go on to that calculator and work out their own wedding footprint. And then in exchange for that, obviously, we're getting a building and brilliant data set to understand what it is about weddings, that is most carbon intensive. And because it is, you're able to allocate where you're actually having your wedding. We know that in the UK, the average wedding produced 14 and a half tonnes of carbon equivalent emissions. That's quite massive. That's in one year, obviously, that is near enough the same as a UK household for a whole year. And when you think about the amount of weddings that take place, and post pandemic it was, it you know, it was an unusually high figure of over 550,000. But on an average year, it's between 250 and 300 weddings. So if you think about what that means that's over 3 million tonnes, like that's absolutely insane. That's nearly a million cars, diesel cars, you know, that's absolutely insane kind of figures. And I think that people completely underestimate what actually happens at a wedding and they underestimate the amount of people and the travel that takes place, the food that they eat, the wastage that's involved. And I think there are so many, well know there are so many things, and small things, that couples can do, but also businesses can almost enforce on couples that will make massive savings in emissions.

Katherine Ann Byam 10:07
Wow, this is such a big topic for waste in particular, and food waste being what it is, in terms of representing, you know, one of the most significant ways we could we could reduce our footprint, etc, you feel like weddings really can make a difference in this regard. Tell us about some of the wedding events you've worked on, and why they matter, the impact you've had, for example.

Michelle Miles 10:29
As the, as a sustainable planner, I've been really blessed to be able to work with conscious couples, you know, couples have come to me that have the mindset of, we want to do better, we want our wedding to have a positive impact and not a negative one. And so although they come to me with that mindset, actually, it's still quite a challenge to think about what sustainable swaps they might be able to make, and also why they need to make them and explaining how much of a difference a plant based menu can actually make. And I think that's always been my biggest challenge. You know, as a, as a sustainable planner, it was my biggest challenge in working with businesses, it's my biggest challenge, breaking down what they think they know, and actually explaining the facts and the reality around sustainability. And many people don't want to hear about some of the harsh truth. And I think it's really important that people are open. And I mean, I'm talking about people that are already in this mindset of you know, we want to do better. But actually, it's quite difficult to hear some of the facts. Every time I tell people that a wedding, you know, average wedding, it's 14 and a half tonnes they're always so shocked. I'm like, why are you shocked? When you are thinking about 100 people travelling to a location, eating three courses, all of which have some form of animal product in, you know, what, what is it that? Where do you think it's going to be? Where do you think it's gonna fall down? You know, so it's really, really tricky. And it's definitely the biggest challenge I've had. But it's also where I can have the biggest impact, you know, looking at what a business needs. Now, thinking through putting plans in place and a framework together that they can then work with, that's become my day to day life. And that's become where I can have the biggest impact because for the businesses I'm working with, if I can impact what they're doing, and we can make changes for them, then they've got a supply chain, they've got customers, they've got stakeholders that they're then influencing. And so it's, it's, you know, it's a spider's web, it's about you know, not being, it's not linear, it is absolutely circular, you know, the more people we talk to, they talk to, they talk to, they talk to, and it grows.

Katherine Ann Byam 12:45
Yeah, that's powerful. If you were to be given, for example, a pot of money right now, with no strings attached, where would you invest it to make this movement that you're creating more powerful?

Michelle Miles 12:58
Absolutely, my biggest problem is always time, you know, having the time to be able to do everything that we want to do. So I'd invest in people, you know, I don't think there's anything better to invest in, bringing additional team members on board, giving existing team members more training so they can expand what they do. But being able to expand how we reach people, but in a really manageable way. You know, people have said to me, you could get external funding, you could go and you can get an investor to come into your business. But actually, I started the alliance with funding from my previous business, because I didn't want to take outside investment, because I wanted to be able to control the growth of the business. You know, so for me, the growth comes from the people, people's ideas, people's connections, people's experiences. And I think that is the best way to ever invest in your business.

Katherine Ann Byam 13:57
You are currently doing an award yourself. Tell us about it.

Michelle Miles 14:02
Yeah, we're really excited. So we are launching this month with the first ever Sustainable Wedding Awards. So it has been a long time in the planning, even before I launched the Alliance, this has been in the planning. And I want to do it right. I didn't want to rush it. I didn't want it to be half hearted. I wanted to be able to put everything into it. So I've run award ceremonies for clients for years and years. And now it's our time to be able to recognise everything that the industry is doing. So, the most important thing for me is about recognising everyone. It's not just about reward, it is about recognition. So it's not all about the winners. It's about everyone that gets involved and recognising how many amazing things are happening in our industry. We will use all of the applications, all of the finalists, all of the judging comments to show people in our industry, and beyond, all of the amazing things that are happening. And so yes, it is absolutely about recognising, you know, those leaders and those people that are absolutely making amazing strides towards fantastic things. But it's also about promoting sustainability in the industry. And so we're really proud that we are working along the awards trust mark standard, we hope to achieve an outstanding rating for that. It's about being open and honest, our judges are from all over the country, there is no bias involved. We, all of our judges, judge the categories independently, everything is judged by more than one judge so that there's no bias. And everything is reviewed, then by an external, independent. So for us building, that process has been really key, really important. And waiting until we're able to bring the right people on board. And everything will be honest and transparent. So you'll be able to see, all the criteria will be available upfront, we're really excited that we won't be charging a admin fee for this project. And the reason that we're doing that is because we're very lucky to be able to be supported by our partners, for us to be able to do that. But in the same way, you know, all of our team have to be paid they, we've worked out how much it costs for all of our team to be able to work on this project for the very many months that we've been working on it, and actually is a substantial figure. But it's something that we're really pleased that we're able to do. And this is definitely the right time to do it. There is definitely a movement change, there is definitely, our industry are starting to take notice. And we feel like now is the time that we can hit them in the face with it, show everybody what amazing things are happening. And hopefully bring those people that are sitting in the wings and waiting to get involved. Hopefully, they'll jump in and they'll start making changes.

Katherine Ann Byam 16:57
That sounds awesome. I want to tap in now to some tips that you could give us because you clearly have such a vast amount of experience with events. And with weddings, specifically, let's start with the events, what are some of the things that make a sustainable event successful?

Michelle Miles 17:14
So you know, another silver lining coming out of the pandemic; hybrid events, right? I mean, if we could all move to a hybrid event model, you know, giving people the opportunity that aren't local to the event, the opportunity to still engage with the event, and engage in a real way, not just watch it on a webinar, but actually feel like they're getting the same experience virtually as they would do in person. It's something that as an events industry, people are investing heavily in to be able to achieve that. There is still some work to go. But I think absolutely ensuring that people can access your event in a way that works for them is really important, the saving on travel emissions alone is going to be absolutely huge, not having as many people in person, being very aware of what you're feeding people, and also looking at and measuring the actual events emissions. Now how on earth can you run a sustainable event, if you don't know what its impact is? You know, ensuring that you're working with the right partners to be able to measure it, to be able to produce it and then have to offset anything that's left, is you know, is really, really important. And it's something that is becoming increasingly unpopular, popular. But it's something that you know, shouldn't just be popular, it should be a must for all events going forward.

Katherine Ann Byam 18:39
What are three sustainable wedding tips that you could give to some of my listeners who might want to get into this, who might be thinking about their own weddings?

Michelle Miles 18:49
So if you're thinking about your own weddings, top tip is start thinking about the season. What season are you getting married in, why are you, why have you chosen that season? Have you chosen it because it's your favourite season? Have you chosen it because the light is at its longest? Have you chosen it for the food, the flowers? What is it about that season that you've been drawn to, and then go all in on it, you know, make sure that you are only using seasonal produce, make sure you are buying from a flower farm that is growing local, that is looking after their land, that is putting back into the environment. You know, buying local flowers isn't just about the flowers. It's not just about, you know, having grown and not flown and reducing that carbon footprint. It's also about biodiversity in our country. You know, having these massive amount of flower farms in our country. We are improving our countryside we're ensuring that pollinators are getting what they need, we're ensuring that wildlife tunnels are being created. It's not just about, and I think many people think, you know, they, they always go to carbon emissions. How can we reduce carbon emissions, but actually it's about so much more than that, and there are so many businesses within the wedding industry that, that, that's important to them. And you know, and it's a really good example with flowers. So sticking to your season as an absolute must, you know, really think about it and go hard on it, you know, really, really talk to your suppliers. And then the other one is talk to your suppliers; is ask the question, you know, in your checklist, when you're walking around the venue, add in the question about sustainability, where's your energy coming from? And then it's that your lights aren't on sensors that they're on all the time? Why? Why are they on all the time? Do they need to be on all the time, you know, there's so many things that we can be asking people at the beginning of your wedding planning journey, that will make a massive impact on the footprint at the end of it. If we make all the decisions up front and make sure they're all right, and be really conscious about the choices, then actually, everything's going to be much easier for you, you know, find a sustainable venue, they're going to have caterers that are, know what they're doing, they're going to be able to talk you through a plant based offering, they're going to be able to talk you through a lower waste offering. You know, so it's about finding the right people and asking the right questions.

Katherine Ann Byam 21:16
I absolutely love that great tips. My final pivot in this episode is going to be because the majority of my listeners are female business owners or senior managers. And at the moment in the UK, we're going through so much, what are your thoughts on how we can raise the consideration of ESG to those that are making these sort of critical decisions? Like I feel as if we've been talking a lot, you know, there's, we've hosted cop 26, you know, we've made so many commitments already yet today what we see is completely different. And how can we raise that consciousness?

Michelle Miles 21:56
It's so difficult, isn't it? Because right now, in the UK, I feel like our government is lost. I feel like there has been so many changes in the last few years, that there's no real leader, and where everything is falling down is around growth. And it's not about balance, and they've got it wrong. You know, we should be looking to balance our country as the triple bottom line. That's what you should be doing. And the balances are all out. And it's really tricky, I think, as a, you know, as a business owner to see where you can have an influence and to see what changes you can make beyond a local election. But you know, how can we, you know, okay, I can email my MP, but how much good is that going to do? How do we get them engaged? And I think, over the pandemic, it was really obvious that the wedding industry in particular didn't have a voice. And so you'd, the events industry fell very closely with hospitality, and they had a voice in government. The wedding's really didn't. And so during the early stages of the pandemic and the lockdowns, there was a fantastic Task Force formed, and they're still in existence, the UK wedding Task Force, and they are essentially a spokesperson, a body for the weddings industry, to try and push and get answers on things that are important to our part of the world. And so they are the people that have got us the data on how much money is spent on weddings, how many people are employed by our industry, because we don't even have our own zip code. And so it's really, really difficult to understand what, what actual size and scale we have and how much of an impact we are having. So they also pushed, and we got to be so grateful for this. They pushed for an all party parliamentary group for weddings. And we're really, really proud that we are part of the Council of Representatives for the UK wedding Task Force. So we can take our voice and what we're hearing from our members about sustainability and how we feel to government, and we can take it directly to them and have a conversation with them. And we are talking about being in the room with people from bass we're talking about being in the room with Penny Morden, who was recently in the, in the running to become the leader of the Conservative Party. These are real people that can affect real change. And so because of that Wedding Task Force, it feels like we actually have a voice and it feels like that we have the opportunity, and now a seat at the table, because we haven't up till this point. And so I'm really proud and I encourage anybody in the wedding industry to get behind the Task Force and everything they're doing with the APPG and to make your voices heard, because if we don't know how you fail then we can't predict government and we can't force change.

Katherine Ann Byam 25:04
This is really powerful. I love this idea. I did not think about forming a task force around some of the projects that we're doing. But it absolutely makes sense. And it sounds like it's already having great traction. So congratulations on that, and, like really reassuring that, that there is some some good efforts happening. Thank you so much, Michelle, tell my listeners how they can connect with your work.

Michelle Miles 25:24
So you can find us on our website. So Sustainable Wedding Alliance.com, you can find us on Instagram, and also on LinkedIn. And you can also reach out to me on LinkedIn as well. I am Michelle Miles events. And you know, I'd love to hear from anyone, in the UK or not, some of our members are global, so you know, I'd love to hear from you guys about what's happening in your part of the industry and what you're doing to make a change.

Katherine Ann Byam 25:53
Super, really wonderful to have you. Thanks for joining us.

Michelle Miles 25:56
Thank you.

Katherine Ann Byam 26:00
This podcast is brought to you today by the brand new Women In Sustainable Business Awards that kicks off in 2023. If you're a business owner who's starting a business with principles of sustainability in mind, and you want to preserve some lost skills, some handcrafting, artisanal work, or you're a social media manager supporting purpose driven brands, or you're creating fashion, or something that is relevant to the sustainability and green transformation, you are more than welcome to join us, and to get involved in these awards. Check out our group, on Facebook; Woman In Sustainable Business, or follow the podcast; Where Ideas Launch, on Instagram to find out more.

About this Episode

They are our present and our future, although it’s not quite in their hands. This is the generation that’s already bringing change to pale, male and stale boardrooms around the world, but will they run out of time? We talk about careers, sustainability and the journey of these young women to create a future they want to be a part of.

Serena Coccioli 

Serena is a Colombian-Italian who graduated in Ecological and Environmental Sciences from the University of Edinburgh building her sustainability career.

Belinda Ng 

Belinda is a youth advocate for sustainable food systems who has just completed an MSc in Environmental Technology from Imperial College London. 

Kailin Jo Spencer 

Kailin is a senior at the University of Washington – Seattle focusing on sustainable curriculum advocacy within the Foster School of Business and researching small business sustainability.

Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam 0:01
I recently read an article about what the rich are doing to save themselves from the rest of us, and climate change. What are your thoughts when you read stuff like this?

Serena Coccioli 0:11
I mean, sometimes we like to point the finger at billionaires, at people who have a lot of money. But really, we all need to take a step back. And sometimes it's more about taking action like we're in this together, we have to find a solution.

Belinda Ng 0:23
I think I can offer a counter perspective to Serena's, which is that I think it's a very unfortunate reality of capitalism and the world that we have today, there are a very small amount of people that are a lot more privileged. And in many ways, money is an enabler of their current lifestyles. And it's what's been a huge cause of the issues that we have right now with sustainability., and these people have the capacity to save themselves, sucks.

Kailin Jo Spencer 0:47
The ones that are building themselves the bunkers, I say alright have fun, but the ones that are investing in some technologies that will assist in us being able to live with the damage that we've already caused, thank you.

Katherine Ann Byam 1:04
This is season five, the great debates of our times, Season Five will be centred around the great debates. And we will be comparing and contrasting different viewpoints on various topics that are consuming the public discourse at present. The reason I've decided to take this approach is because, we or at least many of us, are losing the skill of debate. And I think this is an essential skill for us all to practice once more. I don't see how we get to the point of saving the world and saving our planet, if we don't know how to discuss our differences. I also think that the solution to most of our challenges is somewhere in the spectrum of views but never at either extreme. I will be working with guests to curate the content and discuss beforehand, I will understand their positions, their areas of genius, and navigate my questions around that so that the conversation is challenging and stimulating without being combative. I hope you enjoy Season Five of Where Ideas launch; The Sustainable Innovation Podcast.

Today, I am blessed to have three amazing talents joining me for this show. I have Serena who is a Columbian-Italian who graduated in Ecological and Environmental Sciences from the University of Edinburgh, building her sustainability career. I have Belinda who is a youth advocate for sustainable food systems who has just completed an MSc in Environmental Technology from Imperial College in London. And I have Kailin who is a senior at the University of Washington, Seattle, focusing on sustainable curriculum advocacy with the Foster School of Business and researching small business sustainability. Thank you so much, ladies for joining me, welcome to both of my podcasts, this episode is airing on Do What Matters, The Career and Leadership On Purpose Podcast, and on Where Ideas Launch; The Sustainable Innovation Podcast. So I'm really, super chuffed to have you all with me. So I'm gonna start with Serena. Serena, I met you on Instagram, you had been following my podcast Where Ideas launch for some time. And you decided to work with me on your journey and on your pivot. So I wanted to learn a little bit about what you've been up to.

Serena Coccioli 3:16
Of course, yeah, it was. Thank you, Catherine, for the introduction for this opportunity. Yeah, we connected quite a while ago now I don't remember exactly, but it was amazing that we connected straight away, and you were straight up inspiring to me because of your incredible career and all the things you did sustainability related environment related, but also policy and changes and, and getting into interesting fields as well that then related all to what you're doing now, and all those experiences are coming together. So it was inspiring. And I guess I see myself as at the start of that. So when I first came across your podcast, and we got in touch, I remember I was looking for work, I was looking for a job in sustainability. I was also looking at opportunities to help other people. And what I'd already learned from my degree in environmental and ecological sciences. So it was a really, it was a really exciting time for me because I was looking and I was working so hard every day and trying to find something and I really appreciate the connection. And then we had that chat about like where I was, looking at almost like a business audit, like what are you doing now? Where can you take this? Where can you go? And it was really, really insightful. And I remember thinking, wow, like I have so much potential to just keep doing what I'm doing and also look for a job and getting experience in the field. And I think for some time I thought that they were at odds like I had to just focus on one. Whereas I brought those together and now I'm living the best of both worlds I guess and getting more experience as I go. So yeah, that's pretty cool.

Katherine Ann Byam 5:03
Yeah really, really well done. And you know, I look forward to learning more about your journey as we go, as we go through this. So I'm gonna switch now to Belinda. So we met on a hackathon. And it was a sustainable hackathon. It was a carbon capture conversation, and you won to place in my career club. So I just wanted to talk to you about about your journey since then.

Belinda Ng 5:24
Yeah, I think, gosh, it really surprises me how fast time has gone by like, it really just seems like not that long ago, that the Hackathon was finished. And the whole experience of being part of the Courageous Career Club. As Sarena mentioned, I'm also at the start of the career. So it was a really good opportunity to get to understand more about different perspectives from people that have been working for quite a while. So yeah, it's been quite a crazy journey since then, wrapping up the masters and figuring out what the next step is.

Katherine Ann Byam 5:55
Yeah, I know. And we're gonna get into that, for sure. And Kailin, we met when you were doing research and my community, Women In Sustainable Business, what's happened with that research? And where are you taking it now?

Kailin Jo Spencer 6:06
So my research is focused on small businesses sustainability. And I got to connect with Katherine via an interview, and I interviewed her as an expert with my environmental studies capstone project. And I found that the kind of main solution is something that you're already working on, which is collaboration and getting people together to share their ideas and their experiences and their resources. Because small businesses don't have the revenues that these large corporations do to invest in research technology, and all of those things that would further sustainable business operations. But I'm now kind of focusing inwards on my school, University of Washington, and looking at how we can increase sustainable curriculum and focus on the ground up approach of educating young business owners on how to implement sustainability from the ground up instead of trying to trickle it in from the top down. But that's what I'm working on now.

Katherine Ann Byam 7:04
Yeah, I think it's great. It's an important thing, because I do get the sense that although young people are the future of this thing, and so passionate about it, there's still so many pockets of people who still don't have enough knowledge about this. And for me, this knowledge is as important as math and english, right? You know, in sort of the the English school curricula. And so I think it's really relevant what you're doing. So really, congratulations on that. I wanna move now and ask you all, probably starting with Serena, again, what made you get into this area? And what was the burning platform for you what, what makes you want to leverage change the most?

Serena Coccioli 7:45
I started with loving nature, as many, many of us do, and really wanting to do something towards animals, I thought of doing marine biology, maybe zoology, things like that. And then when I came across the ecology and environmental sciences courses at Edinburgh, I was really struck by how many different things I could try, I could try the ecology side, I could try the environmental side. And the reason why that was better was because it was more of a broader perspective and understanding the system as a whole, rather than looking into the deep cellular biology, for example. And when I did the degree, it was a four year degree. So it gave me the opportunity to try lots of different modules, and to start to align my degree into whether it was going to be environmental or ecological. And actually, at the end of that, I realised how I loved both so much. But I thought strategically, because of my point in time, I wasn't in the best health, I thought, I'm going to focus a little bit more on the environmental, something where I can do a job that's more aligned with what I need right now. And then it started with that and looking at the jobs out there. And actually looking back now to the things that were offered, then they weren't as exciting. And now even if it's only been three years, I'm looking now it's like, wow, like there's so many cool opportunities, things are springing up so much. So it's really been quite a big shift. And I think that's really important. Really interesting.

Katherine Ann Byam 9:15
Yeah, there's a super head hunt going on for ESG people, and it's a bit insane at the moment. So it's a good time to be in the space for sure. They probably were spoilt for choice. And then when we get there, maybe we're not so sure that the organisations are doing the best work. So that's always going to be an issue and a challenge as well. And Belinda?

Belinda Ng 9:35
Yeah, I resonate a lot with what Serena said about being a nature lover and growing up with that, but I also think, yeah, since we've already mentioned education, in the conversation so far, like my degree studying geography has been a key part in raising my awareness about the actual complexity of the issues that the world is facing in different parts of the globe and for different communities. So really understanding the nitty gritty of that. and the sheer volume like, not the volume, but like the sheer scale of the problem that we're facing has been very key to motivating me to be working in this space and understanding more about what I can do as an individual as well. So the kind of second strand of that is my own first hand experiences, working with less privileged communities that have been directly affected by things like climate change. And that's kind of really made me understand that, given that we all are global citizens, and we need to take, do our own part to also help support those that are less privileged, I think, that's why sustainability is a really interesting feel for me, because there's so many entry points in there.

Katherine Ann Byam 10:40
Love that. And, Kai?

Kailin Jo Spencer 10:42
My journey is actually very, very similar as well. I started out, I think my passion kind of arose when I was growing up with the outdoors is my backyard, and that was my playground. So I grew up on Alki Beach, which is on the west side of Seattle, Washington, and we would go on nature walks with my family, and in preschool, and throughout all of my education. And then I moved to Vashon Island, where the whole island is pretty much surrounded in forest. And so recess was just in the forest. And we would go to the retention ponds, and we would experiment with science observations. And so that was where my passion started. And then on the other side, I was also getting fed with reducing your carbon footprint. So that was my early education was reduce your carbon footprint, turn the lights off, when you go and leave the room, turn the water off when you're brushing your teeth. And I remember asking my mom kind of like, what's going on? And she's like, well, like nature that you love, so much like, is kind of in danger. And so that's where my passion was found. And then in school, I remember it was focused on reduce, reuse, recycle. So then that was the next phase of, and then so I have these three stages. And this last stage very similar to you Belinda is environmental justice. So I, in my higher education, I realised it's not just about recycling, it's not just about reusing, it's about the communities that are disproportionately affected by these environmental impacts. And that was where kind of advocacy has grown from. And I've had a really interesting time learning about the history of Seattle and Washington with indigenous peoples and the history of America. And just grappling with all of that, and realising that it's not so black and white, has been a super interesting journey. And it's been quite discouraging, sometimes, which I think we can all agree on. But I, I'm also excited because I think when you're met with so many questions, that you're closer to getting maybe an answer. It's kind of my thinking sometimes. But yeah.

Katherine Ann Byam 12:52
Yeah, I think it's such a highly complex area and for you to be studying in this field, you have to be sort of versed in all sorts of disciplines, in order to be able to do this work that you're doing so, so it really makes you I think, a really wide open people is my perspective. So I think it's a great time of your life to sort of be here. So what I wanted to kind of explore with you, you all have your entire careers ahead of you at the moment, you know, you're just getting started, some of you or you're just finishing. And what does growth actually mean to you in the context of everything that you're learning? All that you know about our planet? And about our economics? What does growth actually mean to you? What what does success look like? For someone who is an advocate and passionate person about sustainability? What, I'll start with Serena again.

Serena Coccioli 13:47
Sure. I mean, it's such a huge, I don't even know where to start, really. But I mean, for me grow, growth and sustainability, as some of the things that already kind Belinda mentioned is that being open minded to learning and being curious and understanding, and really connecting with other people who are experiencing things differently to you. And it's kind of looking at the bigger picture and trying to find out where your strengths are and where you can contribute in that picture. And from that, trying to learn personally, but then growing your impact. So I talk a lot about, with the business owners that I've talked to, growing the positive impact that they have and trying to create a business model that is inherently trying to do better, rather than taking things away and then compensating for them afterwards. So having that mindset, mindset is such a huge thing of my whole sustainability journey, and just generally what what I think is important to consider, is having that growth mindset isn't necessarily the one that we think economically like we need more, more, more, it's more about how can you make the things that are there better? How can you have better connections? And how can you integrate a better way of relating to nature, relating to communities, relating to yourself as well, all of these things tie in together and understanding them as a whole, which is why I love understanding it as a whole, and the whole ecosystem, things like that is because that is really how we can then move forward, because we need to have that holistic understanding. And we need to realise that we're all interconnected, it's not all about my experience, my experience of what I experienced when I go to Colombia is very different to when I go to Italy, and also here, and all the other countries in between. So it has to be coming from a place of always learning, but always bringing other people up and collaborating in this, in this journey.

Katherine Ann Byam 15:50
Love it. And Belinda for you?

Belinda Ng 15:53
Yeah, I agree so much with what everything Serena said, my first response to that was also being really open minded and try new things. I think I'm a big believer of pushing out of your own comfort zone, that's the best way to really learn. And so a key part of that is also being really experiment, experimental. And, you know, testing out what's effective, what works for me, which I think also applies in the wider context of sustainability. Because how we got here to where we are now in terms of the history of the world, and development has also been quite experimental in many ways. And so we have a shorter window of time to be more experimental, now to really fix some of these issues. But I think a key part of that is having this mindset to do that. And then the end goal really being how we can do more with less essentially.

Katherine Ann Byam 16:43
Kailin...

Kailin Jo Spencer 16:44
When I first saw the question, I thought very similarly to Serena and Belinda have said about learning and experimenting. So growth economically is usually you can visualise it with a linear line up or down. And I think in order to achieve a more sustainable future, we're going to need to focus on a circular feedback loop where instead of just taking from our community, and then giving back from our community, we're going to be continuously listening to our consumers and all of our stakeholders. And in that process, we'll be growing our business and our selves professionally. And I think that the goal should never be an end goal, it should always be development. And it should always be experimenting, and building on what you've learned. And eventually, we hopefully will be able to get somewhere where we can coexist happily with the environment.

Katherine Ann Byam 17:43
So I'm going to throw a spanner in the works for you, for you ladies today. So I recently read an article this week, I think it was about what the rich are doing to save themselves from the rest of us and climate change. And about those billionaires who are building these great bunkers or the ones who are trying to solve ageing, etc. What are your thoughts when you read stuff like this?

Kailin Jo Spencer 18:07
is Serena starting?

Katherine Ann Byam 18:10
Nobody wants to start this one.

Belinda Ng 18:13
I'm still processing the question.

Serena Coccioli 18:14
I don't like the sentiment that technology will save us. And I don't like the sentiment that we'll figure out a solution rather than figuring out that for 1000s of years people have lived with nature in a way that's mutually beneficial. And then all of a sudden, we're just wrapped up in what we are now and just constantly consuming, consuming and doing what Kai said about just a linear approach to just, what is the end goal? Are we just creating, creating, creating, and it, you know, we're not necessarily happier people because of it. So we need to re-evaluate our priorities and the values that we have.

Katherine Ann Byam 19:05
So what happens, what happens, when the billionaires who control a lot of the resource are basically just touting one, one passage, like what do we do?

Serena Coccioli 19:20
I mean, millions are made of pounds, right? Like, I think as well, we can't necessarily, I mean, sometimes we like to point the finger at billionaires at people who have a lot of money, but really, we all need to take a step back. And sometimes we can do something. I mean, not everyone has a choice, but we can take responsibility for certain things and we don't necessarily need to fund certain companies. We can vote with our money in some ways. And obviously the biggest thing that you always get when someone says something like this is like, oh, but they have have more money and we don't have like decision power. But it's, it's taking the focus away from the action and it's putting the blame on someone else. And I think that's the issue, it doesn't really matter who is to blame. It's more about taking action like we're in this together, we have to find a solution. But we're also in the solution together. And I think that's what we need. And the learning part is so huge like what Belinda and Kai were saying we need to learn, we also need to teach the others. And in that circle of growth, we can all come out better.

Katherine Ann Byam 20:32
Belinda, what are your thoughts? What should we do with the billionaires?

Belinda Ng 20:38
I don't know if I can answer the what do we do part. But I think I can offer a counter perspective to Serena's, which is that, I think it's a very unfortunate reality of essentially, capitalism and the world that we have today, which is that there are a very small amount of people that are a lot more privileged. And in many ways money is an enabler of their current lifestyles. And it's what's been a huge cause of the issues that we have right now in sustainability. And, yeah, I mean, it does, it does bother me that, for example, one celebrity can use their private jet, like three times and that'll be the carbon footprint, footprint equivalent of maybe one household in a less developed country for like, a month. But I think it's just kind of, like, I think if I, if I really had to worry about this all the time, it would keep me up forever. And it just really botheres me. So I think it's, it's a tricky situation where it's like, in a kind of more selfish world, yeah, these people have the capacity to, I guess, if they're trying to save themselves or whatever, like they can, and it sucks, really. I really am also trying to address that and, you know, I agree with Serena in that, like, we all can do our part. But unfortunately, it's not an equal playing field for everyone.

Katherine Ann Byam 21:59
Absolutely. And Kailin.

Kailin Jo Spencer 22:03
It's a very, like push pull situation where the ones that are building themselves, the bunkers, I say alright have fun. But the ones maybe there's some that are investing in some technologies that will assist in us being able to live with the damage that we've already caused, in which I'm like, thank you. Because I know collectively, like we could vote with our money and make change as a group. But I also know that that's really challenging to get a bunch of individuals to believe that they, that their voice has impact, especially when there's billionaires on their private jets, polluting more co2 in one singular day than this person will have in their entire life. So it's really hard to say like, we're all in this together when, we're not all in this together. So I guess the answer to your question is, there is no answer as to what to do with them. We just have to keep working together as non billionaires, to show the billionaires what we really care about. And hopefully one day, we'll be able to get to a spot where everyone will be in similar playing fields, I guess. But yeah, definitely a tricky question for ya.

Katherine Ann Byam 23:21
I wanted to throw this one in and not tell you about it. So, so thank you for your very candid answers, which countries or companies you can choose either one, do you think are doing an outstanding leadership job on some of these issues that we've been discussing today?

Serena Coccioli 23:37
I always fear this question because it's, um, it's almost like, I've never really seen that, you know, I never really see, every time I've noticed a country, do something that I admire. And for a long time, it was Scotland when I was in Edinburgh, then things change, and all of a sudden their points of view change. And this isn't necessarily with a change of government or whatever, but also in the same, with the same people. And it kind of gets to me that even though we have a clear way of moving forward, and the way forward is to avoid fossil fuels and start to go towards green energy and reducing our exploitative consumption and production ways. It still tends to go towards that and we still hear our gov, like the government talk about growing after the pandemic and making up for all the loss but it's, it's not the right kind of growth. It's the growth for the sake of growth and for the numbers. So I think it's a tricky one. I would say that Scotland is one that I really admired because of the renewable energy and trying to go forward and generally, like showing actionable steps a lot of the time countries promise things that they're not very actionable you can't see them. Scotland did with a lot of things like transport, electricity, all of those things and shutting down coal power stations and that, but they're I know, they're also very tied with England in potentially, like continuing with certain oil fields. And that's all a bit controversial now again, so yeah, it's like hopeful but also disappointed. I don't think there was one like, yeah, close to home. And I mean, I'm gonna see a wait and see I've got some hope for the other two Italy and Columbia.

Katherine Ann Byam 25:36
Fair enough. This one thing I wanted to mention about this with Scotland, and I'm not sure if this actually happened, but I know that they were talking about citizen advocacy groups around certain topics. And I don't know if they actually did this. But I think if I look at what's happening with politics today, I think that this is one of the things that I would like to see a lot more of everywhere, you know, like actually getting, getting people in their communities together to talk through solutions, because it feels very top down, it feels very, you know, you will let some kind of political establishment, and whatever their policies are supposed to be the same rollout everywhere in the country, even where it's not relevant. So I feel as if this, this kind of citizen advocacy, will, will help. It's just like employee advocacy in companies, right, the the needs will be different depending on where you are, and therefore the solution will be different. And I feel like that's missing a lot. But sorry, to jump in there. Belinda, your your your guess?

Belinda Ng 26:35
Yeah this was a really hard question, because I think it depends on what the metric is for outstanding, and also depends on what the sector is. So I'm gonna give a few examples, rather than one because I think it's very difficult to pick, I think, from a company standpoint, I think Patagonia springs to mind, because it's one of the earliest ones that started this triple bottom line focus on like people, planet and profit. But obviously, they're only in one sector. And so I think right now, there's a flurry of smaller startups that are really doing amazing things in their specific field. And I'm a big fan of innovation and really pushing the boundaries with you know, circularity and what we can do there. So one of the smaller B corps that I recently think I've been doing, discovered, actually and feel like they're doing great job is the eco egg in the UK with sustainable laundry, which is something that is very tangible and applies to everyone on a household level as well. So yeah, that's kind of my ideas for the company part. And then, for countries, Taiwan springs to mind for their recycling rate, which is like 55% for household collection, which is huge. And it comes a lot from the ingraining of recycling and why it's important in education from a very young age. So yeah, I think there's loads of promising things happening. So they're very, I think that's a great thing.

Katherine Ann Byam 28:03
No, that's great. That's a great message and Kai.

Kailin Jo Spencer 28:05
Kind of similar to Patagonia is a company that was founded in Seattle, REI Co-op. And that's been one of the companies that I've, my stepmom actually got to work with them, and, and one of my friends also has worked with that company. And it's one that's kind of been a mentor, in a sense, when I'm thinking about if I wanted to start my own business, what would it look like? I think the setup would be pretty similar. And I definitely don't think they're doing outstanding, but they're doing work that is quite different than the other organisational setups of other businesses. And just some examples is they're focusing on that circular economy. So they're working with their suppliers and their partners to reduce their waste and promote reusing instead of throwing away. And then they also have that people over profits, sort of mission, but then the one that's my favourite is how much they focus on their members of the co-op and the members opinions and how those opinions are formulating the business's decisions. And so that, in turn, you're, you're not just giving your consumers a survey, and then like, looking at the data of that and making decisions, you, your members and your consumers are physically making the decisions for the company. And it's led to, in my opinion, an amazing, amazing company that everyone that I've spoken to loves to work at too, so it's, it's not just caring about the environment or caring about your consumers. I think that the value that they put on their employees and allowing their employees to opt, they have this thing called opt outside, so I think it's every other Friday. They pay their employees to just go outside and hike, or go to the lake, or something like that. So it's it's creating that good workplace environment to formulate those ideas that are going to help us get to a more sustainable future.

Katherine Ann Byam 30:01
Love that love that example, really, thanks for sharing. And now we want to move to the second to last question. If you could change one thing about how your, I want to say your current country, but you pick the country you want to pick, is currently dealing with the climate crisis. What would you change?

Serena Coccioli 30:21
I suppose leading, continuing from the one that I said earlier about moving towards greener energy, it's not the be all and end all like we don't just have to go towards green energy, we need to also do like one of the Sustainable Development Goals, whereas like responsible production and consumption and trying to go into those circular loops, like Kai was saying, so I guess focusing more on that circularity and circular business models, regeneration, those things and moving away at the same time from things that are directly affecting the climate crisis, like fossil fuels and petrol based products. So that would be the thing that I think just needs to happen, like, very quickly, and that transition cannot be hindered because they think that then people might have jobs, because that's an excuse to say, well, actually, those people can contribute to this industry. It's not these people are skilled, and they're valuable people. And they deserve to be part of something that's contributing to something bigger that they're also going to align with. So part of bringing those things together.

Katherine Ann Byam 31:32
Perfect. And Belinda?

Belinda Ng 31:34
Yeah, so my home city of Hong Kong has quite a few ambitious climate plans. A lot has been focusing on renewables and also building retrofitting. But I think there could be more focused on reducing household level and industrial level waste, especially food waste, which is very difficult to process. And a lot of the kind of emissions come from landfills, which is also a big problem in Hong Kong with like landfills running out of space. So I think, more focus on really embedding recycling and setting up the infrastructure for that, which is also very challenging, but I think, more focus on that would be really needed.

Katherine Ann Byam 32:14
And Kailin, you've got a really interesting country to talk about.

Kailin Jo Spencer 32:17
It's challenging because I'm from Seattle, where we're known as the Emerald City. So we're known as a green city. And we have probably one of the biggest sustainability efforts in the United States. And so I'm definitely coming from a bubble where ever I turn, I see all of the programmes that I hope to see in America. And then it's when I get out of Seattle, where I'm like, oh, wow, like other cities don't even know what compost is, or don't even know why they need to be recycling. And so I think America has quite a far way to go in all senses of sustainability. Because not only do the citizens not really understand the importance of it, but also like our government isn't really putting money into the right programmes. We're continuously making wrong choices on an international scale. And if I had the answer, I think I would probably be president because no one seems to really have the answer. But um, yeah, I think that there's just so much work to be done that I think everyone should maybe follow after Seattle, and start looking at what Seattle has been doing and implementing some of our, our programmes and legislations into other cities and states, and hopefully, we can get there someday.

Katherine Ann Byam 33:41
Have you read about is it Dubai or the Emirates? The Emirates walled city? The new line? I think it is. Yeah. What are your thoughts on that?

Kailin Jo Spencer 33:49
I, I have no idea how that's possible. See, it's like so futuristic, that even it doesn't even seem like it would happen in this century. It's,

Serena Coccioli 33:59
Is that the one where they want to control like the weather. Like almost like the climate, it's an internal thing. Yeah.

Kailin Jo Spencer 34:06
Yeah. Yeah. It's not like...

Serena Coccioli 34:10
Like, I've not seen videos of it or anything. Like that, I'd be intrigued.

Kailin Jo Spencer 34:16
Katherine, what do you what are your thoughts on it? I'd be interested to know.

Katherine Ann Byam 34:19
I mean, look, if that solution does work, and really helps us to manage waste, then, then why the heck not right? Because I think one of one of the things that it does that we haven't yet started to talk about enough is the whole concept of biodiversity loss as well right. If we can wall all humans into this narrow space, that might actually be a good thing. So from that perspective, I quite like the idea like, like if we can just reduce our impact to just, to just this confined space, then then why, why not right, and then we can, we can go out into nature and enjoy it like, like a native to nature. But I think there's, I don't think that that's entirely the intent. Right? I mean, and that's where you know, the mix the mixed messages comes through with with stuff like this. Belinda, do you have thoughts that you want to share?

Belinda Ng 35:10
Yeah, I actually, this is quite new to me. I was initially thinking of something else when you mentioned it, but kind of based off the conversation so far, I guess one question that comes to mind is like, who really is controlling who? Like, can you really control nature or people? In that way? It'll be interesting to see I guess, only time will tell.

Katherine Ann Byam 35:30
Yeah, exactly. Ladies, so final question to wrap up one piece of advice that you want to give parents raising teenagers today about career choices, or even the teenagers themselves. Your choice.

Serena Coccioli 35:43
I'd like to echo a piece of advice that Katherine, you gave me a while back all those months ago, and it's to get in a room with people who you don't necessarily agree with, and experience that environment, experience that and feel the discomfort and learn from it, and have those discussions, those difficult conversations. Because that was a really powerful piece of advice that I remember you gave me. And it stuck with me since because I'm more curious about being in those environments, about listening to other people's point of view about what they think is the better thing to do regarding a certain problem to do with sustainability or the climate crisis. And so that would be my advice to young people today.

Katherine Ann Byam 36:34
I don't even remember I said that. It's always good when you have a mirror sometimes. Belinda, what are your thoughts?

Belinda Ng 36:41
Yeah. So mine would be 'you don't know what you don't know'. And also 'be patient'. So I think both are kind of applicable for, I guess, teens and parents. The first part being more open minded. I think that's applicable in the sense of for the teenagers, it's sometimes there's very fixed misconceptions on maybe what career paths should be like, or what would work for the current situation. But yeah, it's always good to experiment and be open minded, learn new things. And the patience part, I think, really comes from the fact that career journeys from what I've learned as well, the past few months is never linear, it's always evolving. And so sometimes it does take a bit of time before, there's a bit more clarity about which path to step on and which path to go. And I think in Hong Kong, especially a lot of parents want their kids to be doctors and lawyers, because it's very stable. And I definitely also got a few comments from people being one of the very few people that didn't pick some of these conventional paths about what I was doing and would I even have a viable career. And so I think having that patience, and being open minded to this, from a parent's standpoint is also very important.

Katherine Ann Byam 37:53
Yeah, great advice. And Kailin.

Kailin Jo Spencer 37:56
Yeah, both of that was, those were great pieces of advice that I'll probably take for myself as well. But I think my biggest thing is, 'don't be afraid to fail'. And 'don't be afraid to quit'. So I think there's a lot of stigma around quitters. And I know, at least in America, it's like, if your, if your child signs up for the soccer team, like they're not quitting, even if they hate it, and that was something that my mom did to me. And it's something that a lot of my friends and I have had discussions about, of our parents never really let us say, we didn't want to do something when we really didn't want to do it, because there was that commitment. And I think to an extent, when you commit to something, follow through on it, but also know when it's your time to leave and know when it's your time that you've outgrown whatever, whatever position you're at, knowing your position that you're at is not fulfilling you anymore. And I think that, that's a lot of, Katherine, what you've been working on with people is be ready to pivot and pivot is a better word than quit or fail. It just means that like, you kind of hit, you didn't hit a dead end, you hit a corner. And it's time to, it's time to change. And I think that, that's something that myself along with a lot of people struggle with is change and failure. And all of those things are some of people's biggest fears. And little do they know that they will lead you to places that you would have never expected one of which being on a podcast with Katherine. Just don't be afraid to try new things and put yourself out there and surround yourself with people who you disagree with. But then also people that like are going to boost you into the person that you want to be.

Katherine Ann Byam 39:39
Lovely, ladies,I have enjoyed this immensely. Thank you so much for your valuable contributions for sharing your experiences and for helping people coming behind you as well with, with your insights. So thanks a lot and I will let you know when this is already as well. See you soon.

Kailin Jo Spencer 39:56
Thank you so much. Thank you.

Katherine Ann Byam 40:03
This podcast is brought to you today by the brand new Women In Sustainable Business Awards that kicks off in 2023. If you're a business owner who's starting a business with principles of sustainability in mind, and you want to preserve some lost skills, some handcrafting, artisanal work, or you're a social media manager supporting purpose driven brands, or you're creating fashion, or something that is relevant to the sustainability and green transformation, you are more than welcome to join us, and to get involved in these awards. Check out our group, on Facebook; Woman In Sustainable Business, or follow the podcast; Where Ideas Launch, on Instagram to find out more.

About this Episode

Is writing and publishing a book a good strategy for business and professional growth?

Conclusion - do it, with clarity on your strategy. Tune in to this episode for some key insights for your book writing journey.

Katherine Ann Byam is an author, sustainability activist, coach and consultant for business resilience and sustainable change, partnering with leaders committed to a shared future.”  

A professional with 20+years change leadership experience in the FTSE Top 10, she started her consulting firm in 2019 to support sustainable development within SMEs. Katherine holds an MBA with distinction, specialising in Innovation Management as well as certificates in ESG, digital strategy, and sustainability management from established universities. She’s also a Fellow of the Association of Certified Chartered Accountants.  

She’s the host of the internationally acclaimed Where Ideas Launch - Sustainable Innovation Podcast, ranked among the top 5% globally, achieving the top spot in 5 countries, and the top 10 in 19 separate charts.  

As a sought-after leadership and career transition coach and keynote speaker, she facilitates workshops and learning sessions for communities within global brands such as Amazon, Women Tech Global, ACCA, Stryker, Speak Up, Mind Channel and more. 

Episode Transcript

Is writing and publishing a book a good strategy for business and professional growth?

Do What Matters - The Purpose Driven Career Transition Guide has now been live on Amazon for about 2 months and is moving into a new phase of global availability, and resources to go alongside it, workshops, corporate speaking events, book clubs inside organisations, and in November on Audio.

A book can create an entire industry, as many internationally acclaimed authors can attest. James Clear - Atomic Habits is an inspiration for me, not just for the brilliant content of his book, but through the absolute simplicity and elegance of his business model.

Michael Watkins - The First 90 days has also been a source of inspiration from the sheer longevity of his work, I first read it 2006, and he is still updating versions today.

Do What Matters is here to stay. I infused significant amounts of knowledge and insight from practice, and will continue to leverage its incredible value across my business, and any other ventures I may move on to.

In this article, I’ve put together a few ideas to encourage others who may want to explore book authorship as part of their business strategy. Here’s what I’ll be covering:

• Perhaps the biggest question on everyone’s mind is - is it worth it?
• What does it actually mean to be a number 1 best seller, and what am I going to do with that now?
• Why are you writing a book, and what does that even mean to your intended audience?
• Will a book that captures your knowledge in 200 plus pages cannibalise your main business?
• Commercial rights - how much can you integrate the work of others in your book?
• How do you go about promoting a book as a first time author with an average size audience?
• How do you sustain your product’s relevance over time?
• Conclusion - do it, with clarity on your strategy.

You can find the book in print or kindle versions on Amazon

Perhaps the biggest question on everyone’s mind is - is it worth it?

For 2 solid weeks at the end of July and early August 2022, I had the joy of being an Amazon Bestseller briefly, and a Hot New Release across various categories internationally for a sustained period. What an honour to have, after the six months of my life that it took to produce it, including 2 months where I hardly had the mental capacity to work on anything else.

Although the euphoria is somewhat wearing off, and I’m only just recovering from the post launch depression - (Yes, giving birth to this project, has many psychological similarities to child bearing - or at least so I’m told) it’s time to account for whether or not it was all worth it.

What does it actually mean to be a number 1 best seller, and what am I going to do with that now?

I know that most will never undertake the painstaking process of writing a book, and even if they do, they may never publish it. This was my story over the last 15 years with the first book I ever wrote, and I remember my dad doing the same for years after he took early retirement for health reasons. Book writing takes time, determination, and sacrifice, and book marketing takes all of those ingredients and more.

Having gone through it, I’ve narrowed it down to 5 fundamental questions that need clarity and strategy before you can produce and sell a winner on the book shelves, particularly as a first time writer; when I work on my second book, I will let you know the journey to repeat the success. When you are clear on these 5 things, and build strategy around it, your authoring process should yield some results for you.

The 5 questions you must answer are these:

1. Why are you writing a book, and what does that even mean to your intended audience?
2. Will a book that captures your knowledge in 200 plus pages cannibalise your main business?
3. Commercial rights - how much can you integrate the work of others in your book?
4. How do you go about promoting a book as a first time author with an average size audience?
5. How do you sustain your product’s relevance over time?

Tune in, this will be valuable for anyone considering this process.

Why are you writing a book, and what does that even mean to your intended audience?

In today’s age of video shorts, micro learning, and bytes and bytes of free content, writing a book is not a decision to be taken lightly, but the marketplace continues to have relevance for you, if you get some key ingredients right.

Here’s what you need to ask yourself.

Is there a ready market for my broad topic?

The Answer, do your research. How much does anyone care about what you have to say? 

Let’s use my book as an example, because there are 2 important points to be made about the numbers you’ll find.  

My book, Do What Matters, The Purpose Driven Career Transition Guide has definite broad topic appeal, possibly too much. You type in the word Job in google search, adn you get 12 billion results. You type in the word career, you get in excess of 11 billion results. This is something that has a lot of appeal, and a lot of answers. Of course it does. According to the ILO, the world has a 59.3 % labour participation rate; people of working age who are employed, ignoring the dark/ invisible economy of employment. At some point in a year, each one of those people is contemplating a career change, and consuming content about it, whether they take action or not.

There’s a great case here for content in the space, but a niche that says career and or job will see you and your book lost at sea. 

Once you’ve established broad appeal, it's time to find your niche. The key things you need to ask about niche are these:

What’s changed in this space that you want to write about recently? And how is it likely to evolve in the future? This is the futuristic perspective on your topic. Applying this to the topic above, when I search for the future of jobs, I get 1.8bn results. When I search for the future of careers I get 2.6 bn results. If I looked backward - history of jobs/ careers, I get 2.8bn and 4.9bn respectively. 

Once you’ve decided your orientation about the topic, what specifically in there do you want to explore? If I added sustainability and or purpose to my search, the results keep niching down. 

Once you understand that your area is still interesting to pursue, of course, validate that you are competent and credible to talk about it, and are willing to do any required research to allow your topic to add value. 

What does it mean to your audience? 

Why are you reading this article? My guess is that authoring a book has been on your mind, or you are curious to assess how this may fit with what you want to do in the future. Anyone can write a book that’s relevant to a given audience.The main questions for you to answer is who is in your audience today, and what are their needs?  Are they relevant to the book you want to write? If not, you have a problem that will require deep pockets if this is your first book.

Here are some general audience considerations, and then more specific ones.

I discussed in my previous article about all the different aspects of this process, which you can find here. There is one bit that you need to get clear on early, as it relates to your audience, which is how personally invested are they in your journey, versus their own? 

What I’m about to say is more opinion than fact, but for most of us, when it comes to writing true accounts, guides, and self help, we have a vanilla story. Sure we’ve overcome some challenges that felt monumental to us, but for the majority of us, there’s ultimately little to differentiate our journey from anyone else. Therefore, I’m recommending that the central character of your book, be the reader, and your role, is to be the supporting guide. It’s storytelling 101. 

There are exceptions. Some people have really exceptional stories of both success and hardships they had to overcome that readers want to know about, because they want to be you, or they love your drama :-) if your story has the type of drama and intrigue that draws people in and you feel ready to share it, then by all means do. Otherwise, step aside in your writing, and allow the reader to explore their own drama, which is actually really rewarding for them.

How specific should you get when focussing on your reader?

This depends on the parameters you set when niching, and how easy it is to build an audience around that niche. 

For Do What Matters, my niche is broad. The aim was to capture people from age 27 to 45, who have worked within a big corporate setting, either as an employee, freelancer or contractor, and are finding it challenging to bring about the changes they would like to see. I think this is a pretty big group of people. Of all the niche parameters though, age is probably less important; the book only requires that the reader has experienced some of the examples I’ve used. 

How do your readers articulate their own challenges and struggles?

Answer; research. There are many ways to conduct research - as a desktop exercise using popular search platforms like youtube, google, tiktok, quora, answer the public, reddit, and others. Or surveying people in your audience who fit the change context. I used all of these.

Let’s wrap this up.

Anyone with something original to say and or a unique perspective on a topic that’s trending and relevant should give book authoring a go, once they’ve done the required research to flesh out the potential. 

Key lessons learnt for me were:

• Set up the story. Use your assumptions and research about the reader to craft the context upfront, to help set up the book and keep the reader intrigued until the end.
• Blending facts with anecdotes. People aren’t robots. Books too fact based aren't relatable to humans. That statement isn’t based on fact. But it feels true doesn’t it? We want to read provocative and opinionated stuff. We also want the facts unless it is a work of fiction. Take the best of fiction (opinion and perspectives) and the best of true accounts (facts, shared experiences), and you have a relatable story.

Will a book that captures your knowledge in 200 plus pages cannibalise your main business?

The short answer is yes and no. The key is in how you set up your business, and where this book fits in the overall scheme of what you are trying to accomplish.

What do you want to achieve for your brand, business or message with this book?

If you want to amplify brand awareness, credibility, and reach, a book could be a fantastic vehicle. Your promotional cycles will have much more reach in terms of impressions, engagements, than the book will have purchasers. True. Not because you’ve put your wisdom into the format of a book, means that everyone will consume it that way. 

I want to tell you a story about an author I really love. Her name is Ash Ambirge. I listened to her audiobook, The middle finger project in Feb 2020, while I was still in the early stages of my business, and I related so much to her perspective on life, although I shared nothing in common in terms of the specifics of her journey. What I loved is the way she audited her life and experiences, a skill I knew I’d also developed.

Her insights from her experiences also struck chords with me, by the end of the book I had an entire symphony orchestra playing in my head, about all the ways I could embrace her gift and stringing words and ideas together, to produce something that moves people. 

I signed up for her email list, and I’ve bought and consumed almost everything she has ever produced. That’s the power of the written/ spoken word, when you consume it with intensity and voracity to the point of impact, and behavioural change. 

The book should fit neatly within an overall business model and/ or brand strategy for you. Central to that is reaching the audience that is crucial to your brand strategy.

Some examples. 

Your book could give methods, examples, steps. This can then lead to  a course that provides accountability and guidance to the participants, or a set of workbooks sold separately with useful content to support the reader’s journey. Or a set of speaking opportunities at companies, who can compensate you for speaking by purchasing copies of the book for staff. Or you can win the SEO on your niche, and sell thousands of copies. Or it can help you build an audience for subsequent books. Or it can become a podcast you can monetise, or a youtube channel. Or it can become a character on Tiktok that develops into an influencer you can monetise. Or you could be featured in PR campaigns globally. I could go on.

Your book must form a considered path of your business plan, and then you need to execute the strategy you set, and or adapt if compelling evidence suggests another path is better. 

Documenting that you are knowledgeable about a topic, doesn’t cannibalise future business, if facilitates it, if you are clear on strategy. That’s therefore where the work and the money is in authoring books. 

To have a view of the free resources I currently have accompanying my book, have a look here. Paid resources will be available in early September, alongside a workshop.

Commercial rights - how much can you integrate the work of others in your book?

Banana skin. Big and slippery one. And something self publishers can run foul of quickly.

If you are used to producing content for public consumption, please be aware that the rules change when it is used for commercial purposes. A book that is sold internationally, can be exposed to copyright issues across various jurisdictions, depending on the laws in different countries. 

If you want to use a substantial quote of another’s work in your book, my recommendation is to first check what rights they have passed on, as some works may be covered by a creative common clause. If there is no creative common attribution, then write to the person or organisation you would like to quote to seek permission. If you are ignored, or permission is declined, you could turn next to fair use clauses, which is vague at best, and can leave you exposed to legal action. The final option is to remove references to others' work within your work.

Spend some time understanding a bit about copyrights if you are self publishing, or seek guidance from your editors, as this can become an issue if you achieve a critical mass of sales. Book selling platforms ask you for a declaration as to your publishing rights before they allow you to publish, thereby absolving any responsibility for themselves, its up to you to cover your own a$$. 

How do you go about promoting a book as a first time author with an average size audience?

Your audience matters. So much. A first time author needs to harness and channel the actions of their audience and following on launch, because often they do not yet have the scale to sustain performance of the book for long periods. 

This is key to achieving best selling status, as Amazon recalculates its best sellers using an algorithm that considers purchases in the last 24 hours as more relevant than purchases last week for example. 

If you are doing a book for the first time, you need a launch strategy and launch plan, and your audiences need to know what to do when. 

The best selling status is important, because it helps you to leverage the initial bump of support from your audience, and scale it after launch.

There will be various opinions and advice about how long before the book goes on sale do you start talking about it, how much do you reveal about the book cover and the name, whether to create an email list or a community. How many times to post about on socials. I'm certain that I don’t have enough experience to give you an answer about what’s the right approach. I can only share what I’ve learned. 

During the period of promoting the book, my Instagram following on my @katherineannbyam account grew 7% in 3 months, much faster than any growth I’ve experienced since setting up my business. 

My tiktok account was dormant until a few weeks before launch, so that data there is meaningless, but we saw 800% growth by being regularly active at least on the platform. This is the valuable piece, the lessons I learned from being regularly active.

My Linkedin Following grew about 2%, but my impressions grew 24% and engagement grew 43%. I looked at those numbers today, but at the peak of the launch I’m sure these figures were even better. 

My direct messages increased exponentially also, but this is more based on sentiment than data. I didn’t previously track how many messages I was receiving randomly, but during the full week of targeted launch activity, this engagement definitely spiked - I was receiving double digit DMs on a daily basis.

What does this mean? Top of mind for your brand. 

One of the questions I’ve had from a few people is whether or not a pre-order is worth it. On Amazon a pre-order is only available for kindle, and it allows you to consolidate sales that convert on the launch day. There are some important things to note though.

Although the sale will be recorded on launch day in your KDP publishing account, the sales are already counting when they happen toward your best seller and new category metrics. I believe that I will always do a limited period pre-launch of between 1 week and 1 month for the following reasons.

About the Pre-orders

1. The algorithms on social media where I promote the book don’t show posts to everyone on the same day I post it, it can take weeks for a post to run it’s cycle, so it’s a good idea to have a window to capture new interest and trial for your book, at a lower price.
2. It gives your audience time to decide. In traditional marketing circles this isn’t a good idea, as they promote concepts like FOMO - Fear of missing out, and pressure selling tactics, but if you are ethically minded and want people to decide on their own not just to purchase but to read it, you will reap the rewards in early reviews. People also then anticipate the release, and this excitement is positive for early reading.
3.  At the time of writing I have 9 5 star reviews, 6 of them are from early readers, 3 of them are from people who read it post launch. This is good at this still early stage, as it shows people have excitedly read and want to talk about their experience of reading it.
4. You have a nice period to be legitimately promoting your work as much as you want to. For me that’s psychologically positive for me - I feel more like I’m talking about the journey I’m on, than I’m forced to hard-sell this work.
5. It creates a mental anchor for people on the price and subsequent changes - price will always be an incentive for a purchase so a pricing strategy is important, and it also creates time and space for others who want to support you to share the book with others, and offer some of their credibility with followers to you. I’ve picked up many new followers from this journey.

Organic Marketing

I generated organic traction by doing the following:

• Audience participation on the name.
• Audience participation on the book cover.
• Sharing of the table of content.
• Authenticity about feedback from beta reviewers.
• My personal journey of writing.
• My reason for writing.
• My credibility as a writer.
• My credibility on the topic.
• Linking it to my existing podcast.
• Publishing a new podcast linked to the book
• Creating a community of supporters to help engagement
• Prizes and incentives for creativity in sharing 
• Asking directly for support.
• Sharing my big hairy goals
• Sharing early reviewers post editing from the beta review stage.

Paid traction

I have used only one form of paid support, choosing book influencers. I will be integrating other forms of paid support soon, in the form of direct ads. Influencer marketing is an interesting space, and my verdict on it is still out, I need more time to assess whether or not I would recommend it.

My exploration into paid support is ongoing and I will update on this in a few months. Knowing what I know now however, I would probably change the sequence of which paid advertising I start with; but I haven't investigated it yet so stay tuned for more on this.

How do you sustain your product’s relevance over time?

Enter the PR Campaigns. I’ve been shy about PR for my business over the last 3 years, because I didn’t feel like I had accomplished anything PR- able. I just serve my clients. I opted instead to have newsletters, on LinkedIn, Medium, Thrive global, Host my podcasts, now 2 of them, and then follow up on leads as they come to me.

The book changed that for me, because authoring a book has changed my perceptions on my sense of accomplishment. It’s not just that I serve my clients. I serve my clients, learnt so much from doing that, now I’ve captured that knowledge into an affordable package of experience and wisdom. 

PR requires a few things, including being crystal clear on your strategy, and practice at delivering to that strategy with each interview. I’m still learning here. I worked with a PR Consultant called Melissa Hobson to get clear on the direction I want to go in. She wrote about it here. I also worked with 2 other consultants, one in Trinidad, and one in the UK. They have created, so far, 1 television interview, and 2 newspaper interviews, on a part fee part pay per performance basis. I’ve also been on one podcast other than my own, and plan to do more spread out now over time. 

PR isn’t about urgency, it’s about consistency, and building more for the wider business goals, using a lever, such as the book. Allow your book to make you PR gold.

Conclusion - do it, with clarity on your strategy.

Book writing and promotion can quickly become an industry you create for yourself. When you consider the number of moving parts that go into it, finding a good publisher who understands your goals and manages the process toward that is likely to be worth it, but it’s a long game. Choose your publisher or publishing support team carefully. Ask specifics about the numbers of sales, the expected return, and make sure they  are helping you to create your long term business goals with how they position you. 

I received some free but helpful coaching support on the overall marketing and business strategy from Saleema Vellani and the team at Ripple Impact. They offer one of the most comprehensive packages of support I’ve seen. Although I couldn’t afford it in my first book, I am considering them for my second or third offering.  

Other people I am grateful to and I cannot thank enough: Holly Hudson - my book coach, Louisa Herridge, my commercial editor, Fanny Rousseau my graphic designer, Harriet Pope my proofreader, and the many people who afforded me the permission to quote them in my book, and to read, review, and generally cheer on this immense work.

If you want to get your head around your approach why not send me a DM?

About this Episode

Kate Hall is the Founder of The Full Freezer™ and author of the e-book ‘The Full Freezer (Save Food, Save Time, Save Money)’.

Kate helps households to reduce their food waste and cook from scratch more easily by using their home freezers more effectively. Unlike batch cooking, The Full Freezer Method is completely flexible and allows families to easily enjoy a wide variety of meals without any waste. 

Kate has been featured by BBC Food, Steph's Packed Lunch, Prima Magazine, and The Telegraph and has collaborated with more than 50 creators within health & well-being, parenting, and sustainability. With over 40,000 followers across Instagram and Facebook, The Full Freezer™ is transforming attitudes towards food waste and empowering parents to cut down on convenience foods and embrace home cooking. 

Kate lives in Greater London with her husband and two young children.

Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam 0:00
But what about the nutritional impact? What if someone says I don't want my food to have a diminished impact? I don't know if my kids will be getting the same level of nutrition. What is your feedback to that?

Kate Hall 0:11
If you've decided to cut out what I do, and literally just go straight to the supermarket aisle and buy frozen, you're actually most likely going to be enjoying produce that's of a higher nutritional value because it is frozen so close to the source so soon after being picked. And my position when it comes to what I do is that you know, you can if you want to be in control of the nutrition if you're very conscious of the nutritional value, the most important thing is to buy as local as you possibly can and to freeze as soon as possible, because basically, the older that the food is, the more the nutritional value will deplete.

Katherine Ann Byam 0:45
I'm so pleased to bring Kate Hall's perspectives on how to freeze your food and save the planet, as well as save money, tune into this episode now. This is season five, the great debates of our times, Season Five will be centred around the great debates. And we will be comparing and contrasting different viewpoints on various topics that are consuming the public discourse at present. The reason I've decided to take this approach is because, we or at least many of us, are losing the skill of debate. And I think this is an essential skill for us all to practice once more. I don't see how we get to the point of saving the world and saving our planet. If we don't know how to discuss our differences. I also think that the solution to most of our challenges is somewhere in the spectrum of views but never a type of extreme. I will be working with guests to curate the content and discuss beforehand, I will understand their positions, their areas of genius, and navigate my questions around that so that the conversation is challenging and stimulating. Without being combative. I hope you enjoy season five of Where Ideas Launch; the Sustainable Innovation podcast. Kate Hall is the founder of The Full Freezer, and author of the ebook The Full Freezer; Save Food, Save Time and Save Money. Kate helps households to reduce their food waste and cook from scratch more easily by using their home freezers more effectively. Unlike batch cooking, the full freezer method is completely flexible and allows families to easily enjoy a wide variety of meals without any waste. Kate, welcome to Where Ideas Launch, it's a pleasure to host you on the programme.

Kate Hall 2:28
Thank you so much for having me, Katherine. I'm so, so excited to chat to you today.

Katherine Ann Byam 2:32
So I've seen that you've been on BBC, you've been on TV, tell us a little bit about the journey to create The Full Freezer. Why, what inspired you to not just freeze all your food but to make it an actual business.

Kate Hall 2:46
So it was really the lockdown and the pandemic that pushed me to take this from just doing it in my own home to making it a business and sharing it with the world. And it was essentially the fact that I was put on furlough from my day job. And that was when I wrote the ebook because my instinct was, this is going to be useful to people, this has been so helpful to me in my own home developing a combination of methods of essentially freezing individual ingredients to kind of press the pause button on them. And give me a bit longer, particularly as a busy mum and as someone who was working, to be able to use that food. And I felt like if I could get all of it written down and in one place, then I could help other people to benefit in the same way. So I did that. I did that in the first couple of weeks of being on furlough. And then, I basically was made redundant from my day job, and said, you know what, I don't want to go and do another day job, I want to do this, I want to teach more people because I'd given away that ebook, initially, sort of the first month, six weeks, I gave it away. And the feedback I got was essentially, this is really interesting. This is really useful. And I thought actually, if I can teach people this on a deeper level, because I found a lot of people will take a little bit of what I do and then go, oh, yes, I know how to do it now. And they run with it. But there's sort of me in the background going. But if you do it this way, it'll be quicker or it'll be more convenient or it'll be safer. And so yeah, I started to do a few one to ones and build up my course and create content, and then go on to help corporations as well to sort of educate their employees and working with brands now as well, which is great fun. So it's it's been a very gradual progression. But really the thing that made me want to change it from being in my own home to being a business was just that instinct that I just felt it was something that would be useful to people that it would, and it's simple, it's a simple thing to change.

Katherine Ann Byam 4:48
Yeah, it's incredibly magnetic. I've been on your Instagram page and all your videos are so well done and really professionally done. Easy to follow on like, it's it's a page that you want to go back to so that, that's probably a really, really well done.

Kate Hall 5:01
Thank you.

Katherine Ann Byam 5:02
So I want to move to two things, actually. Because right now we're going through this massive energy crisis. So people are thinking about their freezers, their heaters and everything. But at the same time, what we, what we know from the research done around sustainability, etc, is that food waste is the number one thing we can do as individuals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Because it literally it takes a landmass the size of China, to grow the food that we actually don't eat, which is massive. What are your thoughts on all of this and how people can navigate this?

Kate Hall 5:42
I completely agree with with that whole premise of this being the you know, the number one thing we can do, because in comparison to other things, which I'm not saying we shouldn't do the other things as well, of course, we should reduce our plastic or drive less or eat less meat. But this is something that we have so much control over. Because we don't need a government to change any laws, we don't need corporations to change how they package things, literally by just stopping throwing things in the bin, and eating them instead. So, you know, you think, well, that's a benefit in itself that I actually eat the food that I buy, you know, we can we can benefit the planet, and we can also benefit ourselves financially, you know, average families are wasting a huge amount of money. So that's something that I think when you add it together, it's like, well, if I can, in my instance, freeze the food to give me a bit more time, then it just makes sense to do and as you say, you know, the impact of this is enormous. People sort of think, well, it's just a bit of food, it just rots down, does it really matter? But actually, that, remembering that when we throw food away, we're not just throwing away the food, we're throwing away all the resources that went into producing it, all of a sudden, it becomes so much more substantial. I think that was one of the things that when I started The Full Freezer, I wasn't thinking about it that way, I was thinking about it from the financial perspective, and also from the guilt, because I kept buying food with good intentions, and then it would just end up in the bin and we'd end up getting takeaway or convenience foods. And when I learned of the impact of food waste, and how bad it was, and how substantial the problem was, it was like, well, I can't, I can't actually turn my back on this now, I can't throw away a banana without feeling horrendously guilty, because I know that's not just a banana, that is all of the water, the land, the energy, the transportation, it might even have packaging, you know, all of those things have gone in to creating that food just for me to watch it go off on the side and throw it in the bin and buy more. And I think we have just gotten into this habit of thinking well, because there's more food and because it has previously been very affordable, then does it really matter. And actually, the more that people are realising that this does have a huge environmental impact, and it does as well, when food rots, it releases greenhouse gases as well. I believe the overall impact, there was a study from the waste Resources Action Programme, that have found that the impact of food waste is six times bigger than global aviation, or six times the size of global aviation. So you know, people say, Well, I take my holidays in the UK, I don't get on a plane. It's like, Yeah, but if you're wasting food, you know, you're still having a really negative impact. And I think, you know, we can change so that we eat less meat or so that we eat wonky vegetables, but if we buy those things, and then we throw them in the bin, we're not achieving what we want to by doing that. So I think that's something that we've got so much control over, and particularly as the stats in the UK show that 70% of food waste actually comes from our homes. So we have got that control. We don't have to have, you know, yes, supermarkets and restaurants should be doing it too. But actually, we need to step up and take responsibility too. And I think when you start to do that, it's so satisfying. It's nice, because you see, you're not wasting the food, but you're also saving the money and you're getting to enjoy what you've bought. Just makes sense.

Katherine Ann Byam 9:19
No, you're absolutely right. But what about the nutritional impact? What if, what if someone says to you like, I don't want my food to have a diminished impact? I don't know if my kids will be getting the same level of nutrition. What is your feedback to that?

Kate Hall 9:33
That is a fantastic question. Because I mean, it's it's complicated from the perspective of what I do, because you don't know at what point you're going to freeze the food so the nutritional value will decrease over time. But if for example, you bought frozen produce if you decided to cut out what I do and literally just go straight to the supermarket aisle and buy frozen, you're actually most likely going to be enjoying produce that's of a higher nutritional value, because it is frozen so close to the source so soon after being picked, that actually that nutritional value is locked in. So you might not be able to use the product in the same way you might usually want to, you can't make a salad with it, for example, unless you roast the veggies and everything. But the quality of the food and the nutritional value is actually exceptionally good with frozen food. And my position when it comes to what I do is that you know you can, if you want to be in control of the nutrition, if you're very conscious of the nutritional value, the most important thing is to buy as local as you possibly can. And to freeze as soon as possible. Because basically, the older that the food is, the more the nutritional value will deplete. So if you freeze it, as soon as you get it, you are going to have a better nutritional value when you eat it. Assuming in both instances you were cooking it, if you eat it fresh straightaway, you're going to have the highest benefit. But you know, if you if you freeze it sooner, you're going to enjoy that nutritional benefit rather than letting it sit in your fridge for a week and then eating it. Or even worse, letting it sit in your fridge for a week and then throwing it in the bin because then you don't get any nutritional value from that food. So it really freezing is nature's pause button. We don't have it, you know, there's no need for any additives or preservatives. It is literally just nature, keeping our food safe until we're ready to eat it. So it's, it's a great compromise if you're somebody that wants to eat well, but sometimes finds that time and life stop you from doing that.

You've convinced me, at the time of this when, you've sort of surpassed I guess 10s of 1000s of followers on Instagram, where are you at now?

I think just over 34 and a half 1000 followers, I think that's on my main account. But I do have a second account as well. Can I freeze it? Which is I think at over 14 and a half 1000 for that.

Katherine Ann Byam 12:05
Wow. What do you think more people don't, don't already know? And what feedback do you get from your followers? And since they've been engaging with your work?

Kate Hall 12:15
You know what I find it really fascinating because, to be completely fair, I didn't know before I started doing it before I got to a point where it was a problem. And I think that's the thing that it's not necessarily, well, actually it is that people don't know, because the amount of shock like in answer to your question, you know, the number of times I get sent the mind blown emoji, people just going what I can freeze eggs, I can freeze nuts. Like, what?

Katherine Ann Byam 12:45
What I can freeze eggs?

Kate Hall 12:47
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. This is exactlyit, it's like, but a lot of the time, it's, it's simply something that none of us have thought about, or that we've had any need to do, because food's been plentiful. And it's been affordable. It's not something we've ever had to be taught. So most of us, I mean, to be fair, freezing is the only preservation method that I'm truly familiar with. But it could be you know, there are families who grow produce, and they are familiar with dehydrating and canning and pickling. Because it's something that was necessary. And that is necessary to reduce that food waste to make sure that food doesn't go to waste when so much effort has been put into producing it. So I think it's the fact that we've become so disconnected with how much work goes into producing our food. And therefore, we've become complacent. And you know, that's not me being judgmental of anybody I know, in my time I have wasted a horrendous amount of food. Prior to doing this, you know, I was incredibly wasteful because I didn't value the food because it was affordable. And you know that? Well, I'll just go to the shop. And I'll buy more what's the problem? But I think it is, I think awareness is, is slowly and surely increasing. So we've seen over the last couple of years. Two years ago, they introduced the waste Resources Action Programme introduced food waste Action Week. So that's starting to raise the profile and we're seeing more and more supermarkets committing and I think that's helping to sort of raise the profile as well for individuals we've seen this year. And over the last year, the sort of increase in supermarkets taking away best before dates off produce where it's really not necessary. So we with we're seeing more mainstream stuff when I first started, literally, nobody really knew or cared what I was talking about. It was not the priority. But definitely, I think between seeing climate change in very real terms in terms of weather changes and everything and even more so with the cost of living crisis, people are becoming so much more aware that we just really need to stop wasting food. It's just unnecessary.

Katherine Ann Byam 15:08
Yeah, I remember when I first met my partner, this was 10 years ago, he pulled out this, this bottle of meat from under his cupboard that had been there for three years. Like literally it was it was being preserved for three years in a mason jar. And I was like, what? Like, you can't give that to me to eat? What are you telling me? And then and then he told me that this was a tradition like his his father would would hunt, he would literally go into the forest and hunt. And then he would prepare the food and store it, and he would have it for years. So I was, I was really impressed and this, these are just things that I mean, okay, come I come from a very, very hot country in Trinidad and Tobago. So it's not the kind of thing that would be typical, necessarily, nor nor do we go out hunting. So I was really impressed. And what I realised is that, you know, there's a whole array of things that you could do to preserve your food. Mason jars are magnificent, right?

Kate Hall 16:04
I think it's something I mean, even you know, that sort of thing terrifies me if I'm totally honest, because it's like, oh, how do I know like, with freezing, I feel very confident because I, you know, I understand the science of it, that if it's minus 18 degrees, the bacteria cannot develop. And that's it. It can't, it can't breed. But when it's something like dehydrating or pickling, or storing mason jars, or canning, any of those things, I'm like, I understand the science in the sense of if you've removed the moisture, or if you've removed the oxygen, but I'm still really nervous. But that's something that I know I need to learn as well, like, that's another area that as, as The Full Freezer progresses, maybe there'll be a full pantry as well, I don't know? One day somebody can teach me other ways to help us avoid this food waste.

Katherine Ann Byam 16:51
So if I were to do this today, let's see, let's assume that I'm an average family, two kids, partner, how much could I save if I started to do this? You think?

Kate Hall 17:03
So there was a study by the waste Resources Action Programme that found the average family's wasting about 720 pounds a year, so about 60 pounds a month, buying food that literally just gets thrown away. And that's not scraps, that is bread and milk and cheese, and you know, all the good stuff. So yeah, an average of 60 pounds. And then I always like to highlight with that the fact that, that is just the food that's been thrown away as well. So if a family is listening, that know that they're quite guilty of throwing stuff, they've also got to take into account what are they buying to replace the stuff they're throwing away, and how much people are relying as well upon the convenience options that we tend to lean for, you know, when we can't be bothered to cook, and it's like, oh, well, I'll leave the food in the fridge for another day. Let's get a takeaway. Let us grab something from the supermarket, we can sling in the oven. And like, again, there's no judgement here. I've done it myself, every so often, I still do it in terms of, you know, getting the takeaway and whatever, but I don't throw away the food that's in the fridge. And that's the difference for me. And I think that's the thing that, you know, if people look at, how much are they throwing away, but actually, also how much more are they spending because of what they're throwing away. And that can be, you know, well into over 1000 pounds a year for some people. So it's potential, really substantial savings.

Katherine Ann Byam 18:32
Yeah, that's, that's important in this time of sort of economic crisis. So definitely good to look at this. So your work has garnered much interest from the press internationally. What's next for The Full Freezer?

Kate Hall 18:45
Oh, my gosh. So I've got some really exciting stuff going on. At the moment, you'll know this feeling of the pressures of book writing. So I started writing a book well over a year ago, and was planning to self publish, and then got approached by an agent, who asked if I would be interested to work with her and pitch to literary agents and literary sorry, traditional publishers rather. And we are, we are literally just in the last throes of getting my proposal together to pitch to publishers.

Katherine Ann Byam 19:20
That's amazing.

Kate Hall 19:20
So hopefully, anyone who's listening to this, you will, you know, hopefully I will be in a situation of panicking about actually writing the rest of the whole of the book. But if that doesn't happen, then I will still to be honest, be working on getting everything together for the book because, again, I just feel it's something that is really helpful to have broken down into a step by step process. So yeah, hopefully, hopefully a book will be on the cards on a wider scale. I've got my courses launching again. I'm now converting the Freezer Geek Academy, which is my six week programme, into a sort of self, kind of self led course so that people can do it at any time. Because it really frustrates me that I've previously launched twice a year and worked with groups of ladies so far, to take them through the process. And it's really frustrating not to be able to kind of help people to do that throughout the year. And when I need to say, I'm really excited to launch a course that allows people to do that. And then just continuing with creating my free content as well, working with corporations, and I've got some exciting brand collaborations coming up as well, which is, yeah, it's really good fun. So it's a busy time, a busy time, and especially with, you know, all Christmas festivities and everything, there's, there's a lot to be done around, you know, celebrations and getting the family together and having your freezer there as a tool to make that less stressful and less expensive as well.

Katherine Ann Byam 20:57
This is, this is amazing. This is really congratulations. And I want to I want to tip into this business aspect of it as well, because when did you start?

Kate Hall 21:07
During the pandemic. So it was 2020.

Katherine Ann Byam 21:11
Right? So that's, that's just around two years now. Yet, you're doing so fantastically well. So what, what do you, what would you say contributed to your success? And what were your challenges?

Kate Hall 21:24
I think, I mean, I think my biggest challenge in the early days was self confidence and self doubt. And, really, although I was, I felt confident that what I do would be helpful to people. But I really struggled to communicate that and to believe that anyone would actually want to pay me to teach them, or work with me, collaborate with me. So I think that that self doubt was by far, my biggest challenge. And I really overcame that by working with other entrepreneurs investing in myself with training and coaching. Working with, I had a support pod, through the course that I did, who were great at kind of cheering me on and encouraging me to just keep going. And I think the biggest thing that's actually converted into the success has been taking that and being consistent, and, you know, consistently, confident, quietly confident that, you know, what, even if this reel that I put out only helps one person that's worthwhile, even if this blog article that I write only helps one person that's worthwhile. So I think, you know, having that attitude, that because I knew it had helped me, that it would eventually help other people that other people would eventually start to pick up on what I was doing. And that's something that, you know, running the Freezer Geek Academy massively helped to kind of secure for me, because all of a sudden, I was actually getting feedback from students saying, h, my gosh, like, I got a I got a message, because we have a WhatsApp group on the most recent round. And I got a message from one of the ladies at 11 o'clock at night saying, I'm so sorry to message so late. But I had to message now, before I forget, and literally had sent me this long message, saying how much it had changed her life and you know that she's talking to everyone, she knows about it now. And they're looking at her like, She's crazy. In the same way, people were looking at me in the early days, like I was crazy. But she's still talking to them, because she knows it can help them because she knows it can make a difference. And that thing of the excitement that I now see from the people that I've worked with, and the people in my community who are getting it, who are getting addicted to that freezing, and using the frozen food and saving the money and saving the food is just like, that just lights me up. So I think you know, to anybody who is in a situation with your business, where you're thinking, oh, my gosh, when you know, is this ever gonna work? Is this ever gonna be successful? You just have to keep going. You just have to keep showing up, being consistent. And I think, you know, if it's something that helps people, then it's going to, it's going to catch on, it's going to get there, but it's yeah, you just got to keep going with it, really.

Katherine Ann Byam 24:22
Great advice. So three tips that you'd give to families listening to this and learning about your work for the first time, what would you say to them on how to, on how to get started?

Kate Hall 24:33
Sure, so I've got three tips that are sort of bundled up into one action. So the one action is to keep a food waste diary, which sounds really unsexy and really boring and a little bit like keeping, you know, a diet diary and things where you're like, I just don't want to actually write this down because I don't want to face up to the truth. But it makes such a difference to see things written down on paper, and I think being as honest as you can, about just how much you're throwing away is the first step to making a change into tackling it. And then the the three tips that come into that, and it could be that you start by just jotting down the first thing I'm going to say, and then the second and then the third, rather than trying to write down all the things you're wasting initially. Because if you do that, you might be just put off and horrified and go and curl up in a corner. So the first thing is to just throw, is to just write down things you are throwing away, that are unopened, you've not touched them, you've not got to them, you know, fruit, vegetables, things in the cupboard, whatever it is, just jot down those things as you throw them away. What that will allow you to do is see, could you have just not bought as much? Are you buying some things on autopilot just because they're on your shopping list? And actually, you don't get through them that often. So you could just buy less? Or are they things you want to always have in stock, and therefore maybe you could freeze them which I'll tell you where I've got tips on how you can do that which are totally free. But then you know, once you've got that sense of what you're throwing away, that's whole, you can move on to the next stage, which is looking at things you're throwing away that are part used. So do you always open a jar of pesto and put it in the fridge? After using just one tablespoon? And then discover it, you know, six weeks later with mould growing on it? Do you always use some of the tomato puree and then it goes in the fridge and gets forgotten about? Do you always put, even things like leftovers, you know, are you using some of your food but then letting the leftovers go bad in the fridge or ingredients like using part of an onion or maybe some ginger or Chili's or anything like that. Anything that you're using a bit of for a recipe. And then it goes in the cupboard or it goes in the fridge and it goes bad, write those things down. And then figure out could you freeze them instead, which is also what I can teach you and share with you and I I've got lots of videos on that that are totally free. And then the final thing is looking at what scraps you're throwing away. So when you've tackled the first two, and don't try and do this until you've tackled the first two, unless you are somebody who is like properly on a mission. So looking at the scraps, it might well be that there are things you're throwing in the bin that you can actually eat. So I've seen people throw away broccoli stalks, cauliflower leaves, things like the tops, I've seen tops of spring onions thrown away, which was very strange to me, because they just they're al,l it's all edible, it's all fine. So looking at things like that, and seeing actually, you know, and like literally a quick search online, can I eat this bit of the food, and you'll find that there are things I mean, if you really want to take your food waste seriously. And I'll admit, I am not at this level, because I have two small children and I'm running a business. But one day, I might get to this level that you can, you can cook banana skins and eat banana skins, you know. So there are things that we don't always think of as edible that actually, with the right preparation, I believe you can cook and I think you can candy melon rinds as well, something like that. So there might be things when you get to that level, if you want to push your food waste reduction even harder, that you could be eating that you're not eating. And if you're you know, if you've got things that just aren't avoidable, then the thing I, you know, I think is a given that should always be said is to compost as much as you can. If you've got the space to have a compost pile, that's great. Make sure that you look at how to do it properly. Because again, I'll confess our old house we have the space for a compost pile, we have no idea how to actually do it. So we just ended up with a, you know, a pile of dirt. Basically, there wasn't, it wasn't in any way useful. That didn't rot down properly. So definitely, you know, do the research to find out how to do it properly. There are hot composts that you can buy as well. I think it's a green Joanna or something like that, that's worth looking into. I think there's there's various different ways that you can process that food waste. And the simplest if you have a compost collection service in your area is to use it for your food. And especially if you are still at a stage where you're throwing away Whole Foods. At least if you're going to throw it away or at least take it out of the packaging, put the food in the food waste bin and put the packaging in the recycling if it can be recycled, at the very least as a first step. So I think you know, taking those three steps of breaking it down, don't feel guilty about it. Don't feel I can't face this. I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing. Like step back from it and start to see the money you're saving. Start to see the food you're saving the food you're getting to enjoy. Take it as the positives of the things you're saving rather than punishing yourself about what you have been wasting, because that is history. And you can change where you are, you can totally change it, and you can totally do it. So, yeah, that's what I would say.

Katherine Ann Byam 30:10
Thank you. Thank you for sharing these steps. This is a really great place to start. I think so, so wonderful. How can everyone get involved with the rest of your work?

Kate Hall 30:19
So the best places to find me are on Instagram at Full Freezer, or I mentioned before about having some videos, so at Can I freeze it? I have all my videos. And if you search on YouTube, for The Full Freezer, you'll find all my videos on there as well if you're not on Instagram, and then on Facebook, I have a free group which is called The Full Freezer Family. So I would love to see anyone come and say hello, let me know you've joined through Katherine. And yeah, you can get tips and advice, ask questions and share your wins. So yeah, please do come join us.

Katherine Ann Byam 30:50
Perfect. Thank you so much, Kate, for joining us. This has been wonderful and best wishes with your business for the rest of this year and for next year as well.

Kate Hall 30:58
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me, Katherine. It's been great.

Katherine Ann Byam 31:01
And good luck with the book. This podcast is brought to you today by the brand new Women In Sustainable Business Awards that kicks off in 2023. If you're a business owner who's starting a business with principles of sustainability in mind, and you want to preserve some lost skills, some handcrafting, artisinal work, or you're a social media manager supporting purpose driven brands, or you're creating fashion or something that is relevant to the sustainability and green transformation, you are more than welcome to join us and to get involved in these awards. Check out our group on Facebook: Women In Sustainable business or follow the podcast Where Ideas Launch on Instagram to find out more.

About this Episode

Gabriela Jauregui is the founder of The GuiltFree Agency. She is a brand strategist and Google Certified UX Designer. The Guilt Free Agency produces eco-inclusive strategies & equitable designs. They help sustainably conscious, inclusive, and social business showcase its values while building a community around their brand.

Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam 0:01
What do you think young, sustainable brands get wrong today on their setup?

Gabriela 0:06
So I think, coming up with like customer based solutions, so I'll give you an example, so like the beeswax wraps. I think they're great. They're a great product and stuff like that. But they all like hand roll them. Everyone I've seen, they all hand roll, they all hand do the melting on the wax, and then, and there's all like similar stuff like, hey, after a few washes, it's not sticky anymore after it's really high maintenance to keep track of them, like I have all this other stuff going on. So instead of like someone just kind of reiterating that, all that like restarting another business with like, all the same issues, like I think it would be great if someone took the time to really come up with solutions to some of these complaints.

Katherine Ann Byam 0:49
We absolutely love Gabriela's perspectives on UX design and branding. Listen to this episode.

This is season five, the great debates of our times, Season Five will be centred around the great debates. And we will be comparing and contrasting different viewpoints on various topics that are consuming the public discourse at present. The reason I decided to take this approach is because we, or at least many of us, are losing the skill of debate. And I think this is an essential skill for us all to practice once more. I don't see how we get to the point of saving the world and saving our planet, if we don't know how to discuss our differences. I also think that the solution to most of our challenges is somewhere in the spectrum of views, but never a type of extreme. I will be working with guests to curate the content and discuss beforehand. I will understand their positions, their areas of genius and navigate my questions around that so that conversation is challenging and stimulating, without being combative. I hope you enjoy season five of Where Ideas Launch; The Sustainable Innovation podcast. Gabriela Jauregui is the founder of the GuiltFree Agency. She is a brand strategist and Google certified UX designer. The GuiltFree agency produces equal inclusive strategies and equitable designs. They help sustainably conscious inclusive and social businesses showcase their values while building a community around their brand. Thank you so much for joining me, Gabriela. It's such a pleasure to have you on Where Ideas Launch.

Gabriela 2:28
Yeah, thank you so much for having me, I, I can't say thank you enough. Like, this is such an awesome experience to be able to be on the podcast with you.

Katherine Ann Byam 2:35
That's really great. I love having people who are fresh to podcasting, because, one, it's a perspective people haven't heard before. And yeah, it's it's great to welcome your listeners as well to the show and to the programme, where we have loads of great content for anyone getting into the sustainability space, and are building a business. So really wonderful to have you and really wonderful to represent the brand work that you do. So we met in my Facebook group, my community over a year ago, I think when you joined Women In Sustainable Business, and now we're really collaborating on a super meaningful project to me and to the entire team of volunteers. The WISBYs, and I cannot thank you enough for the role that you're playing on the team, you've been so valuable, both in the tech leadership part of it, as well as in the brand. So really, I wanted to say thank you for that.

Gabriela 3:26
Yeah, thank you, um, when you put the, you know, the advertisement out that you were looking for volunteers, I was just like, this sounds like an amazing thing to be a part of, and I'm always jumping up at the opportunity to help, you know, to help communities and all that kind of build each other up in the sustainability industry. So thank you.

Katherine Ann Byam 3:46
Yeah, I mean, the space, sustainability of itself needs so much collaboration, so much community. And it's, I think it's such an important thing that people are able to support each other. It's quite difficult, though, that we always seem to start from a place of volunteering, because we never seem to have the investment upfront. And I think that's, that's a two fold thing. And I know I'm going off on a tangent a little bit. But it's a two fold thing, because part of the story is that we want to be self made, we don't want to take money from brands that are not doing things the right way. But the the way that we're going to grow is if we can scale quickly. So it's always like a big juggling act, but I'm really appreciative of the people who give of their time and give of their love and give of their skills to help bring this stuff to life. You know, and just as another side topic, like I was doing some research on how communities support each other in places like New Zealand, where they're coming up with their own local currency in a particular area, or they're doing skills training, and I love to find this kind of, let's call it all solution to problems that we face today. So this is a really great opportunity. So I wanted to start and talk about why you got in to UX, and you've done this work with so many amazing brands that you've worked with in the past. So I just wanted to find out about why you started guilt free agency and why UX design, and what this whole sustainability consciousness means to you.

Gabriela 5:17
Yeah, so it was quite the journey. So in 2019, I actually quit my job like right before the pandemic, it was like this perfect storm of situations like our youngest, I was breastfeeding her at the time, and I wasn't able to produce enough milk for her. And she was allergic to formula. So I'm like, Oh, my God, what the heck am I going to do? And then we had a bunch of other like, family stuff going on, and all that. And then I was like, Okay, well, we need to make a decision, like, you know, and then I ended up quitting my job staying home. But I was a single mom for like, five years before I met my husband. So this idea of staying home and not bringing income was like, so what the heck am I doing with my life? So I started actually going down a bunch of different ideas, like, what can I do to make more, more money and all that, right? And then after like, playing with a bunch of different ideas, I was like, well, why don't I use I have a business degree, you know, I have all this experience in like business operations and marketing, customer experience, all that kind of stuff. I'm like, how can I use that to support people that are doing good, because now we're getting into like the pandemic and, and I started thinking a lot more like family and what that means, and I grew up in, in Arizona, and I got to see like, the changes in climate change, like we used to have these crazy monsoon seasons, where you can literally go swimming in the streets. And then all of a sudden, like that was just gone. And seeing the effects of like, climate change for my family, like, my family actually has really high rates of cancer. So just seeing like, all that all the, you know, everything going on at the time, and all that coming together, I was like, I want to do something that makes an impact, but I don't have these crazy revolutionary ideas. So how can I support the people that do, so you know, I'm a strong believer in thinking that everyone has their purpose. And I really think that my purpose is to use the skills and knowledge to help impact the world, which is why I went into learning about UX design as well, because it takes like this rules, like kind of like strategic problem solving approach to design, which I love, I'm very analytical, I love doing that kind of stuff. So, and it also made me kind of reflect on myself, like, how can I be a better person, because I know that growing up in Arizona, and then in the Latin community, there is a lot of like negatives around, you know, being sustainable, you know, it's this, like, this rich, white person thing to do. And I needed to, like, let go of a lot of those. And then, I mean, there's also like, a lot of racism in the community. I was like, okay, even though I don't see myself as this racist person, I still have some biases, because of my upbringing that I need to address. And, you know, make sure that I don't pass on to my children. So yeah, that's what I really liked about the UX field is just making sure that I hold myself as a person accountable so that I can make these great impacts.

Katherine Ann Byam 8:02
It's super interesting what you say about that's a white person thing, because it's, it's also something that I experienced as a black person in sustainability. There aren't many black people in sustainability. When when I talk to black women who are advocating for things, they tend to be advocating for DI. Yeah, because that one, that one hits us really hard, right, that one hits us double hard. But but when it comes to climate change, when it comes to, you know, what businesses are doing, companies are doing, it's really difficult to start that conversation at that level. Because actually, what I hear, and the kind of pushback that I get is that, look, we we're just trying to take care of our kids now. Like, we're just trying to take care of generational wealth, which is part of the problem. But it's quite, it's quite a complicated beast to change. And yeah, you're right, the change starts inside, right, it starts with your own journey, to figuring out what's meaningful to you. So well done for doing that. And, you know, combining this with with the needs of your life, right? You know, when when you have these very narrow choices that sometimes our kids give us, it makes the clarity somehow easier.

Gabriela 9:12
Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was definitely a big eye opener for me. Yeah.

Katherine Ann Byam 9:16
So tell us about some of the projects you're working on right now and why they matter?

Gabriela 9:21
Yeah. So obviously, I think my favourite one is the WISBYs for sure. Because that's, I just, you know, we've talked about the vision for all that, and I'm so excited for when this comes to fruition. Like, you know, I think my kids asked me about it pretty regularly. And, you know, I talked to my husband about it, my mom and I will talk about it and all this kind of stuff. And I'm like, Yeah, we need to get because she, she imports like purses and stuff like that from Mexico. And I'm like, Okay, well, we need to get you on this path. So maybe this is something you can do, you know, so she's excited to support me, but I'm using that as a way to kind of hopefully help her be more sustainable as well. Yeah, but some of the recent projects I've done, I think, were some of my favourite as well. So I worked with an organisation out of South, South San Francisco, called Ride sell city. And they're working with the Latin X community to take equitable climate action within their community and build up leaders. So first of all, the branding was just a lot of fun, because we wanted to create something that was going to attract investors. But at the same time, like stay true to the roots, because the founder, he's also he's from Guatemala. And so I wanted something to stay true to him and the community that he's serving. So he's focusing more on like the Latin X community, but something that doesn't quite alienate the other people of colour in the area as well. So that was just a lot of fun to work with, and creating these different ideas, something that really just kind of worked for everyone in the area. And, and yeah, the the programmes that they're doing, I'm just like, oh my god, I'm so like, I was so grateful that they allowed me to help them with that, because, you know, they're working on paid internships, doing programmes for parents, and offering like childcare when the parents are, are, you know, learning stuff, because I think that's, that's such an important part, especially in like, the Latin X community where there are a lot of parents, family is something that's really important. So then you need to find ways to support the children, while the parents also help better their future. So that was fun. And then I worked with another organisation called 60th Street Strong they're business coalition in West Philadelphia, and they are working on on rebuilding the 60th Street corridor. So the primary, you know, organisation working on this is achievability. And they've been in the area for like, 40 years. And they are just like, amazing. Like, all the stuff that they've done for the community, someone that you know, or a group that's really greatly impacted by the racial issues that we face here in the US, and what they're doing to kind of help and those issues is just so amazing. And again, I felt real grateful to be able to help them with that and create something that reflected their community so that they could build themselves up, you know, from the brand stamp.

Katherine Ann Byam 12:04
And what would you say have been your biggest challenges in getting started in your company? So I, you know, I know, I thought it wrong the same time as you 2019. And it's not been easy. We faced a pandemic we faced, you know, lots of lots of issues and challenges, politically, etc. What do you say has been the biggest challenge and how did you become it?

Gabriela 12:26
Biggest challenge for me? I think, I remember, well there's two that are definitely tied. I know, you asked for one, but there's two, they're tied. I think, my health after having our youngest daughter, I just have to re, rearrange, like how I do things. Like, I'm, we still don't really know what exactly happened, it's affected the way that I think, it's sffected the way that I speak. And as someone that was like a former gifted child, I'm like, Okay, now my mind is, is different than it used to be. So that's been a struggle for me. But then also, I think, the, the, the microaggressions, in the online space. And you and I were just kind of talking about that a little bit before the show, like, you know, when I, like, Oh, hey, I can help you with, you know, the branding and stuff like that. Here's my this, and then they kind of interrogate me, and they're like, are you really from the US? I'm like, Yes, I was born and raised here. You really speak English? Yes, I really do. This is, you know, it's just, I think those two are the biggest things which has kind of impacted like, my, my sense of self worth. But I've made a lot of progress with that over this last like few months. So I took a little break from my business, because I really needed to work on myself. And that sense and but now I'm back into it. And I'm honestly more excited than ever.

Katherine Ann Byam 13:41
This, this is really great to hear and look, you know, I share that journey with you. I know how hard it is. I mean, me starting a business. I remember my best friend in Trinidad. When I told her I was going to start this business in the UK. She's like, what, you're building a business in the UK? What, are you crazy. And the reason for that is that, you know, you don't, so much of building a business depends on having a strong network and people that are willing to support you people that are willing to put their neck out for you, and really lift you up. Right. And, and I didn't really have that community in the UK, you know, like, I've only been here in a job in a sort of corporate job. I didn't know any entrepreneurs I didn't, you know, I didn't have that community. And then the first community that I trusted, wasn't great. So, so, you know, when you go through these things, you know, and you know, you talk about online microaggressions, sometimes their macroaggressions, sometimes, it's really it's really big and it's really severe and, and to overcome that knowing that you have a good message first of all, that you that what you're doing is important. It kind of helps. I would say it helps you get over some of those hurdles, because you're pushing through to what a bigger, a bigger vision. It's not just about you. I mean, okay, yes, feeding your kids is important, but it's not just about that. It's also about the impact and how you want people to feel and that effect that your work has on on that business that you're helping, et cetera. So I think, if you agree that that really helps, right?

Gabriela 15:11
Oh, yeah, it does. I think that's the thing that really helped kind of bring me back to, okay, I just need to ignore all these things that just kind of let it go. In my own way. I know, like, a part of me is like, man, they shouldn't be like this. But then the other part of me is like, Okay, I don't need to waste my energy on these people right now. Because I'm not in a good space to do that. So. So yeah, I agree. I think helping like to that greater impact to create that greater impact, I think is is really what helped me it's like, okay, I shouldn't focus on this, I should focus on just what the change I want to help create.

Katherine Ann Byam 15:44
This is great. So I want to I want to pivot to a question I asked every budding growing entrepreneur, if you were to be given an investment pot right now, no strings attached? What would you do? What would you invest in for your business?

Gabriela 15:58
Oh, boy, I would definitely invest in someone to help me like repurpose my content. That's so it's so much work. So that would definitely be number one. And then a copywriter, I think would be great to help me just refine like my brand voice further. And stuff like social media, my website, all that kind of stuff. I think those two things would really help me get my business to that next level.

Katherine Ann Byam 16:21
Interesting. I always like to ask this question and see and see where people take it. Like, I wonder if sometimes if sales is more important. So having someone going out there doing your business development, or whether you know, you, you put more effort in socials or in search, because SEO is a whole other whole other bag, you know, and it's always interesting to see how people respond. So thank you. Thank you for sharing that. And what do you think young, sustainable brands get wrong today on their setup?

Gabriela 16:48
So I think, coming up with like, customer based solutions, so I like I recently joined TikTok. And I was like kind of looking through and I come across these like eco brands, but people like to complain on there. Sometimes. So like you see the complaints about these eco brands on there. But then I see like the same things coming up. So I'll give you an example so like the beeswax wraps. I think they're great. They're great, you know, product and stuff like that. Yeah, great solution. But they they all like hand roll them, everyone I've seen, they all hand roll, they all hand do the melting on the wax. And then, and there's all like similar stuff like, hey, after a few washes, it's not sticky anymore, after it's really high maintenance to keep track of them, like I have all this other stuff going on. So instead of like someone just kind of reiterating that all that like restarting another business with like, all the same issues, like I think it would be great if someone took the time to really come up with solutions to some of these complaints; like something that doesn't really lose its stickiness, that's not so hard to maintain, like, after just a few washes, you know, and something that like can be more quickly produced, like some kind of like assembly line kind of situation, I think would be great. I know, I know, there's like a push on that in the sustainability, because they don't want to produce waste. In the sustainability realm, you know, they don't want to be this mass production kind of thing. But I think in the world that we live in now, some of that is necessary in order to reduce costs, because not everyone has the luxury of time and money.

Katherine Ann Byam 18:25
Yeah, it's either a marketing problem, or sort of target audience problem, or a actual physical supply chain product problem. I don't know what the answer is. But often I say to people in my communities, why are you targeting the small business here, or the small customer here, when you should be looking for, you know, a corporate customer or something like this, and I think we just we just get the scales wrong. You know, sometimes when I look around, at some of the people in my communities, like the desire to help is there, but it's not just a desire to help you need to be kind of strategic as well. And that's definitely something that people are still on a journey to figure out. Right. Like, and I think part of it is not getting the support. Right? Not not asking for help, maybe.

Gabriela 19:11
Yeah, I think because we want to be able to like ask for help. I think part of that is but then we also want to be able to make sure we're paying people because then how are we any better than the rest of them? You know, kind of thing if we aren't paying for time, but that's why like, I recently started up with like a YouTube channel where I kind of talk about this stuff because I'm like, okay, there's still going to be like people not wanting to ask for help and that's okay, but here let me provide some resources. Let me kind of break things down, like to help get you started. So then you can you feel okay to ask for help. You know, you get some money coming in. And then you ask.

Katherine Ann Byam 19:45
Yeah, no, that makes so much sense. So what are some sustainable branding tips you could give to my listeners today who are business owners?

Gabriela 19:54
Yeah. So I think number one is definitely like addressing your own biases, because I think that's going to help create, like the biggest impact and solutions for the collective. And just thinking past those to help make, make those greater like change making decisions based off of like data and stuff like that not necessarily off of our emotions or our biases and stuff. I think that's number one. Number two, like for, for branding, I say, if you make any investment in your brand, let that be a brand guide. Because we've all seen like those major businesses with like, funky looking logos, but they still make it work, you know, that maybe their their website doesn't have all the fancy stuff, but they're still making it work too. And again, that's, I think, just because they're clear on the transformation that they help provide. So making sure that your brand guide reflects, like, why you started, where you're going, who your audience is, and so much more. And then of course, like asking for feedback from clients, customers, or your community just to make sure that you're making the appropriate improvements, and you're really providing that next level of customer experience, because that's what really can make or break a brand is customer experience.

Katherine Ann Byam 21:02
I'm gonna shift tacks again, because you and your family live in the US. You were born in the US, you know, how divided the US is on the topic of climate and oil and energy and all sorts of things that we can't stop debating, it seems, what excites you today about the passing of the largest climate bill ever in the US that proposes to cut emissions by roughly 40%, among other things, and what gives hope to small businesses from from that, that bill?

Gabriela 21:40
Yeah, so I'm, I'm really excited, I think about like, their, their focus on like agriculture, the decarbonisation and building resilient communities, you know, specifically like the disadvantage in the rural communities. Because, so I'm like a volunteer member of Denver sustainability advisory council. So I've been able to see like firsthand some of the innovative solutions that can come when you like, involve the community to create plans that are equitable. And I think like, if the US can execute this correctly, they get a definitely very like, based on state and city and county and all that kind of stuff. But we have this great chance to create, like, truly circular economies, like even if it is just these pockets of of cities or rural areas that are circular, I think that's gonna make a really big impact for the US and helping reduce our waste and just kind of like starting to create more of these, these more local, local communities, I think that's not something that I, there's still pockets of that, you know, in places in the US, but in Arizona, where I grew up, like you didn't really know your neighbour, like, that's not really something that you did, you know, you didn't go out there and like, help them out when it was hot, and stuff, you know, and that's just, I'd like to see more of that in in more communities. And I think this is a great opportunity for the US to start doing that.

Katherine Ann Byam 23:06
That's great. I was speaking to someone on the podcast recently from Seattle. And they were saying that, you know, they're so far ahead in Seattle on green initiatives. But when they look around the rest of the country, it's like a completely different space. And you know, the way, the way things are managed by State and stuff. Do you, do you think that that is a sustainable approach as well for how your country grows into sort of the demands of the sustainability transition? Or do you think that there needs to be something at more federal level?

Gabriela 23:06
I do think there needs to be some regulation across like, the federal level. I mean, as much as I wish that people, you know, from the smaller communities could just be trusted with with making the right choices. Unfortunately, we don't really have that here in the US too often, especially in like Arizona, where there were, you know, growing up there made me realise like, after moving out of that state, like many years, okay, not every place is like this, like what is going on? You know, they pushed a lot of the sustainability aspect on everyone else. And it's very, like kind of corporate centric. We had a lot of problems with like, our electric companies, but they would always just push it back on the consumer and stuff. So and that's something that that state allowed. So I think that if we have regulations on the federal level, it would help those states where the people are wanting change, but it's the government itself, that's not allowing for that to happen.

Katherine Ann Byam 24:33
It's definitely complex. Last, bits of advice would you give to someone getting started in their business today? And also, how can people get in touch and engage with the work that you do?

Gabriela 24:44
Yeah, so I think someone getting started today in like the sustainability realm is don't be too hard on yourself. We all have our own journey. And some part of that journey for everyone I think is making mistakes. And I think if we start giving ourselves more grace as a community, then it makes it easier for us to, to continue making change and not being so hard on ourselves for the for maybe feeling like we're not following this like perfect zero waste lifestyle, you know, but yeah, so that's, that's, I think my biggest part of change. And if you'd like to connect with me then that I would love that, you can connect with me on Instagram, or YouTube. That's where I'm mostly at hanging out right now. So both of those are just at the GuiltFree Agency. And I put out content every week to kind of, you know, just help you push along in your business.

Katherine Ann Byam 25:33
Thank you so much Gabriela for joining us today. It was such a pleasure to have you.

About this Episode

Sara Udin is a client, friend and absolute go getter and one for youth voices in celebrating on the podcast.

Sarah is the founder and CEO of Amala Periods, Cambodia’s first sustainable period underwear and education company.

She spoke to me about what it's like being a Brit starting a business based in Cambodia.

"These were all huge things for me to both emotionally, and obviously commercially to overcome when starting a period business in a country where periods are not spoken about periods are not considered clean they are to do with your beauty and intelligence.

It's shown me that the period of education is missing. And that's why we're going to provide it.

Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam 0:01
Sarah Udin is a client, friend, and absolute go getter, and one of four youth voices I'm celebrating on the podcast. She spoke to me about what it's like being a Brit starting a business based in Cambodia. Listen to this clip now.

Sarah Udin 0:16
These were all huge things for me to both emotionally, and obviously commercially, overcome when starting a period business in a country where periods are not spoken about, periods are not considered clean, they are to do with your beauty and intelligence and all of the other things. Really for me, this has been a real big learning curve. And it's shown me that the period education is missing. And that's why we're going to provide it. Another thing is that only one of the 15 girls that we interviewed could tell us why they got a period. So that again, was a huge factor for me when we said, actually, we're not just going to make this a sustainable business that solves a waste problem, we're going to make this a social impact change, change these women's lives.

Katherine Ann Byam 1:00
This is season five, the great debates of our times, Season Five will be centred around the great debates. And we will be comparing and contrasting different viewpoints on various topics that are consuming the public discourse at present. The reason I've decided to take this approach is because we, or at least many of us, are losing the skill of debate. And I think this is an essential skill for us all to practice once more. I don't see how we get to the point of saving the world and saving our planet. If we don't know how to discuss our differences. I also think that the solution to most of our challenges is somewhere in the spectrum of views, but never a type of extreme. I will be working with guests to curate the content and discuss beforehand, I will understand their positions, their areas of genius, and navigate my questions around that so that the conversation is challenging and stimulating without being combative. I hope you enjoy season five of where ideas launch the Sustainable Innovation Podcast.

Today, my guest is Sarah Udin. She's the founder and CEO of Amala periods, Cambodia's first sustainable period underwear and education company, Sarah, welcome to where ideas launch. It's such a pleasure to host you on this programme and to hear your story.

Sarah Udin 2:16
Thank you so much for having me, I feel absolutely honoured that you've invited me on as a guest.

Katherine Ann Byam 2:22
So how does a girl from Cambridge end up founding a startup in Cambodia? Tell us about your journey?

Sarah Udin 2:28
That's a great question. Thank you. It's a very, very random story and a very long story. So I'll try and keep it nice and short and to the point, but, I don't know from a very, very young age, I always knew that I was going to live abroad, or I always dreamed of living abroad, let's say, I didn't know it was going to happen. But I made it happen for myself. So I started learning foreign languages. When I was about three years old, I continued with that. And I always, I always knew that, that was going to be my way to leave England, was actually learning foreign languages. So I ended up studying a French and German degree, which really helped me build that confidence. But I actually started travelling alone when I was 16.

So I was travelling over to France, to Germany. And I'd been working since I was 13. So this was all money that I'd earnt and that this was all that I wanted to do with it. So I started coaching gymnastics when I was 13 years old. And it really opened a lot of doors to me. And it showed me that I can actually make decisions to visit places around the world that actually, I always just dreamed of. So I was, I feel very blessed that I had that opportunity. And I first came to Cambodia when I was 18.

So I did the classic gap year I had three jobs, I worked very hard to get enough money to travel the world and I did it. I came over to India, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and I absolutely fell in love with Cambodia. On that trip, I just, the language, the culture, it made me feel calm, it's a more calm version of Thailand, but it's a little bit more lively than Laos, say, and it just felt like somewhere that I knew I was going to come back to and I ended up coming back after studying abroad in Germany, I met some friends there, one of my friends had moved here. And so I said, of course, I'll come visit you on holiday. That would be great. Thank you so much. So we came out, a group of the girls, and we had the best trip ever. And also just being able to see the lifestyle out here and realising that this dream was actually a reality for somebody that I knew. And this was something that's no longer just a dream. It was something that was within my grasp.

So I came back home to England, and I carried on with my nine to five and I, to be honest with you, I was miserable. I actually got diagnosed with depression and anxiety at that time, and I realised that this was not the place for me. And it was a really, really tough decision. But having a friend out there really helped me. So I managed to book that flight and leave everything I knew and loved. And I didn't have a return ticket and that was in January 2020 just before the pandemic, woho! It was a scary decision and at that point I wasn't really sure if I should stay or not. So when I first arrived in Cambodia, I got a job as an English teacher. So I've actually done lots of different jobs. I've been a gymnatics coach, I've been a ski resort manager, I've been a wedding and events coordinator, I've been a data analyst for Amazon, I've been lots and lots of different things.

So I thought actually teaching is a good way for me to use these skills. Schools in Cambodia are run like businesses and it made me not very happy to be a part of it, because I didn't feel like the education was being accessed by the children in the way that I wanted it to. So I basically wanted to find a way out of that. And I was talking to the TAs and the teachers at school about period panties, because I had tried them once before, and I was wearing them that day. And I was telling everybody about that in that nice, oversharing way I have, and nobody had heard of them. So I was quite confused by this. And I thought, Oh, what do you mean, nobody has heard of them, so I kind of explained them, I showed everybody, everybody seemed really interested by this product. And I thought, actually, this could be a possible opportunity for me, because this is a sustainable item and I've always dreamed of running a sustainable business myself, like this has been something that I've always wanted as my own baby. And I just thought this is something that makes sense.

So then that was basically where it started, I so, I researched a lot, I got some support from people like, of course, Katherine, and from Lara and I basically, I just started asking around and selling to my friends and selling at local markets. And that's the point at which the business started to take off. So I couldn't run a business alongside a full time teaching job. So I then switched back over to my coaching. So I then started a dance school, at the same time, I've been coaching gymnastics at the dance school, while running the business, and also coaching other sports in other locations around the city. And that's kind of the short version of the random journey that brought me to being the CEO of Amala Periods.

Katherine Ann Byam 6:42
This is insane. Like, how old are you now, if you don't mind me asking?

Sarah Udin 6:46
No, that's fine. I turned 28.

Katherine Ann Byam 6:47
Right, and in that space of about 10 years, you've basically done like 10 jobs explored so many different aspects of yourself as well, finding out what you liked what you didn't like. And I think this is such a great empowering story, both from a career perspective, but also from, you know, the sustainable transition perspective, and I think being in Cambodia is a bit of an eye opener on many different aspects of life. Very, very different from the UK. I've been there myself, roughly around 10 years ago, maybe. And I think it's such a change and a shift from what we would expect. So I want to touch on something that you said, So you talked about the education system in Cambodia and being run like a business, etc? Would you say that it is tilting toward a more western standard of education? What are your thoughts on it?

Sarah Udin 7:37
So I would say the schools in Cambodia being run like businesses is kind of an independent issue, it just was the final trigger for me to realise that this was, I didn't want to just fit into something that was set up for to make profit for somebody else, that was not actually supporting children in a good educational way, it was more of a profit building situation. And that's not how I felt comfortable teaching. It also felt like we had to just tick a lot of boxes and take a lot of photos rather than actually teach the children. And so that's also part of what I've put into the period education workshops is that I don't want to do it so it's just to tick boxes and to take photos for people and all of these things, because that's how the education system worked.

So although I can't say exactly that this was the trigger, what, I've, what I'm doing is I'm making sure to take all of this information from working in the schooling system in Cambodia to make sure that when we do our period education programmes, which is we've started doing now, we aren't doing it in the standard Cambodian way. And we're actually doing it in a much more dynamic, entertaining, fun, sports coaching style way, which makes people just much more comfortable about learning about this very taboo topic.

Katherine Ann Byam 8:44
And just in terms of the whole relationship with women's health, in general, like I think if I were to speak for myself, and I'm a bit older than you, but I don't think we received the level of education that you receive today in terms of period health and how to manage those things. It's also because, you know, we're learning more about the whole topic as well. But what would you say is one of the reasons for the big gap in knowledge that you found there?

Sarah Udin 9:11
I totally know what you mean, actually, by that, I would say it does feel a little bit like we are living in the past, in, not in a bad way, but it does feel like you know, the way that we live certain ways in Cambodia that still like lots of things that would have been acceptable in the 70s and 80s, in the UK, and in the western world, that is how we live over here now. And I think that the education system reflects that where there's still things that are just not spoken about, there are just tick boxes that people have to fit into. And also women's health is not spoken about because it's not relevant because it's not important as part of society, and it's, it's deemed to be shameful.

So it's not something that is very important as part of the education system. I would definitely say that. Yeah, that's a really interesting point. I was actually talking to one of my friends about that the other day, she said I'd never thought of it like that, but it's literally like we're living in the 70s like we are doing what our people like in the 70s were doing, but we're doing it in the 2020s, this is strange, but I think that that is definitely reflected in the, in the gender equality and the way that women are viewed as well. So actually, I have a very short, little anecdote that I can tell you about from the other day.

So I went to the Miss Universe Cambodia event. And I, one of my friends was competing. So I went to support my friend. And I'm really pleased I went to support it. And I thought, it's a very strange idea, this whole beauty pageant thing I'm not, I'm not 100% sure if I actually support the idea of it. But I'm very happy to support my friend. And she did an amazing job. But at the end of it, there was a little altercation. And there was basically a guy following one of the contestants around with his phone, and he was harassing her. And he was following her and shouting at her and nobody was doing anything. So I stepped in. And I stopped him from filming her. And I didn't understand what was going on. And to me that, that was the most shocking thing in the world, because these, this is one of the women, I would have expected to actually have been able to say something and to have actually been able to stop this. But this was a really clear image for me about how this gender inequality is so still here and then when nobody else was willing to step in to stop this harassment, of a contestant that has just been celebrated on national television, and I was the only person that stepped in, it accidentally went viral on Tiktok as well. But at the same time, I still I stand by it, because I would much rather step in when I can see something like that happening.

Katherine Ann Byam 11:29
That's insane. And again, yeah, it's a great example of the challenges that you're facing actually dealing with this. So I want to, I want to go directly into that question. I mean, how have you sort of adjusted and accommodated all the cultural learnings that you've had to have in order to run this business? Tell me a little bit about how that went?

Sarah Udin 11:49
So again, great question. I yeah, I'm not gonna lie. It's been challenging. Of course, learning a new culture and learning a new language is always going to be challenging, especially when it's very, very far away from your own because I am very much not Cambodian. And I don't have any Cambodian cultural heritage or anything. My, my ancestors were Indian, but it's not something that we actually carry in our family particularly. So learning the language during the pandemic, of course, has been the biggest struggle just because meeting people has been difficult. We've then kind of tried to counteract that by working with combined marketing teams and translators, which has been expensive, but then obviously worth it to connect the audience more authentically. But honestly, the biggest thing is that the cultural taboos, has been huge.

So even when I started talking about this, like some of the TAs were, too, they were too embarrassed to talk to me, even though they have spent, you know, all day every day hanging out with me. They know all about everything we do. We know everything about each other, that was still not something that they felt super confident until everybody was interested and everybody came over, and to have a look and things like that. What I found really interesting is that me and my business partner, we interviewed 15, Khmer women about their periods. So these were my students when I, was an English conversation class teacher. So adult students in tech, so they were very intelligent, very, you know, well, well established women and listening to them talk about the cultural taboos around periods was absolutely fascinating. So they said things like when you're on your period, you're not allowed to eat bitter foods, sour foods, spicy food, or salty food, or pickled or preserved food, and Cambodians favourite food is sour mango, with chilli and so they were, all it's like, they were all crying about that they were like, I can't believe my mum doesn't let us eat this when we're on our period, kind of thing.

So I thought that was really crazy. It's like stopping us from eating chocolate in the western world, on our period, you'd be like, what! You can also not drink iced coffee or coconut, because this apparently might affect your period length, or heaviness, and it also can affect your beauty. So these are big cultural things that I had to, I really struggled with, and I was really shocked by when I was first talking about them. Apparently, as well, another one is that your period and your beauty are directly related. So you only can be beautiful if you have a healthy period, which I personally believe is a really, really toxic view, because actually your period is not necessarily reflective of anything like that, and your period can change in so many different ways for so many different reasons, that's a, that's a scary one, for sure. But for me, the most kind of powerful one was the one where they said when you get your period, you are now ready for marriage and children - like that's it. That's what happens once you've had your period, you are ready for marriage and children.

These were all huge things for me to, both emotionally and obviously commercially, overcome when starting a period business in a country where periods are not spoken about, periods are not considered clean, they are to do with your beauty and intelligence, and all of the other things that, there's a lot of falsities around it as well. But actually, for me, this has been a real big learning curve. And it's shown me that the period education is missing, and that's why we're going to provide it, another thing is that only one of the 15 girls that we interviewed could tell us why they got a period. So that again was a huge factor for me when we said actually we're not just going to make this a sustainable business, that solves a waste problem, we're going to make this a social impact thing and actually change, change these women's lives for the better, and actually help them learn about their bodies. Because once you know about your body, you have so much more increased confidence, you can actually go to the doctor, if you know there's a problem. If you've actually been told about it, all of these things that we don't even consider. But when there is this, these cultural taboos around this natural process that's happening, it really changes the way that people access information as well. So people just don't have the information to access is the biggest problem. So that's another thing that we're trying to solve.

Katherine Ann Byam 15:33
Yeah. No, that's great and the two things that you touched on that I think we haven't yet covered. So just for the for the benefit of my listeners, can you share why period panties are a thing today?

Sarah Udin 15:44
That's a very good point. Yeah, absolutely. So period, period pants. I actually don't love that term period panties. But the, UK, if I say period pants in this country, people think I'm talking about trousers. So I will call them period panties, or period underwear. But basically, they are this really amazing system where it looks like a normal pair of underwear. But each one of the underwear has got this special four layer system, the top layer is moisture wicking, so it keeps you nice and dry. So wicks away the moisture. The second layer is odour proof. So it' stops the smell. The third layer is super absorbent. And then the fourth layer is leak proof. So these four layers work together to keep you clean and dry for up to 12 hours.

This can be huge, especially for girls that, for example, can't afford to buy pads to wear, and they can actually go to school for the whole day. These can also be huge for people that don't want to create plastic waste, and also have any other problems with things inside their body or outside their body. So anybody that can't use a tampon or doesn't want to use a tampon for any reasons, the hugely beneficial solution as well. And in my opinion period underwear, period panties are better than reusable pads even because reusable pads move around. And as a person that does sports all day, every day, I need something that doesn't move around when I am moving around as well. So that's what period underwear is. I can also tell you kind of why I care about them so much as well, if you like I can tell you a little personal story. So for me period, underwear is such a passion because I've actually suffered from terrible periods for a very, very long time I started my period when I was 12.

And I was taking weeks off school from that time with really bad period pain, really heavy bleeding, really just a terrible experience. It gave me hormonal mood swings a lot of the time. And I've been on hormonal contraception since I was 12. Even despite this, I've had irregular erratic bleeding, sometimes up to two weeks at a time. And it's just been horrendous in terms of obviously, self esteem, it doesn't make you feel good when you can't understand what's happening to your body like this. But in terms of waste as well, this was huge, especially when I, in 2019 I read the Paris, the Paris treaty, and that was, that was a real turning point for me in terms of sustainability. It was before that, it had always been something that I was aware of, but for me, I was like in 2019 this is something I need to take charge of. So, I basically searched around and searched around and I found that you could have these period underwear and that saved me so much money and so much waste, it just, because when you suffer like that you can't help but use so many tampons and so many pads, so for me period underwear was just an absolute lifesaver. I know that not everybody has such a terrible experience with their period, but it's something that you don't even realise how life changing it can be until you try it.

So that is basically the, for me as well though period underwear is so important because actually plastic pads and tampons are not a good solution. At the moment in Cambodia, over 80% of women use plastic pads. Tampons are not used over here, because if you use a tampon, then it's considered to lose your virginity. So it's not part of the culture to use tampons, so pads, I will, I can talk about pads. And in Cambodia alone there's over 1 billion pads thrown away each year, one person can throw away up to 150 to 200 pads themselves per year. And 80% of a pad is made out of plastic. And these can take up to 800 years to decompose. So this is obviously a big issue. We need to be solving and period underwear as, is a solution to that. And it's a really good solution that's actually really good for your body as well. Because not only is plastic bad for the environment, surprise, plastic is bad for your body as well. So if you're putting plastic pads up against your vulva for extended periods of time, it can actually lead to an increase in cancer and other terribly terrifying diseases. So actually, this is a very good solution in terms of vaginal health as well, especially if girls are using pads for a really long time. Bacterial infections, especially in a hot humid country like this, are rife. So it kind of solves all of the problems there's, there's no discomfort, you feel clean, you feel dry, your, your, the smell is protected. You can do all of the things.

Katherine Ann Byam 16:59
What would you say have been your successes so far?

Sarah Udin 19:53
I would say probably, obviously the biggest success would be, we've actually sold over 500 pairs of underwear since we started last year, so that is huge. This was exactly on target, for me, that was exactly the goal. And that was, I was really pleased about that. So that's been huge. We also had a really, really successful first big donation event, where we have donated 60 pairs of underwear to a village in a place called Stone Minjae in, just outside of Phnom Penh, whereas basically, it's a, it's a village, run by the Cambodia Children's Fund, and the world housing organisation, and it's called the girls to Granny's village. And there's 200 females that live there, and they're kind of from any age, up to Granny's age. And they all live together in a community. And we thought that would be a really good first place for us to do our donations.

Just because that's the safe space for us to talk about periods. And it's a good place for us to make sure it's a female safe environment. So we had such success. We had such a good time, we had a really successful period education workshop, and at the end, the girls all had questions about, you know, is this normal? Oh, my gosh, are you sure? And you could see the, the smiles on their faces just by saying, yeah, no, that's normal, this is fine. And we realised then that that was a form that they just had never had, because a lot of these girls don't necessarily live with their own parents as well. So they wouldn't have had that conversation with their mum to say, Hey, Mum, is this normal? So that was, that felt really amazing to actually say, this is a way that we're able to give back to our community. By providing this sustainable solution to people, we're actually also able to put massive smiles on girls faces as well. So that's been absolutely huge.

Now, another massive success that I had was actually when I expanded the team. And I am just gonna very quickly talk about my business partner, Angelique, who joined last year in October. So she's a brand strategist and UX design consultant. And she's from South Africa, she's got experience running her own business. And she's also worked as a teacher before, and she basically is in charge of everything creative. So she has been my brain behind the change from Athena to Aluna to Amala. And she's basically now transformed us into a brand that really resonates with my audience. So that has been a huge success, as well as in the rebranding with Angelique has been huge. The only thing is, we still don't have a Khmer team member, so we really, we really, really would love to have somebody Cambodian on our team as well, because it doesn't feel right that we're trying to connect with a Cambodian audience without actually having people on the team. So we've been working with our Cambodian friends, our Khmer friends, we still haven't found that, you know, that trifecta effect, we haven't found our, the missing piece of our triangle.

Katherine Ann Byam 22:28
Congratulations. I think that's really great news, and very proud of your success, and happy to have seen it grow. Because I've been working with you for just under a year, I guess is for some time.

Sarah Udin 22:38
I think that's when I joined the community, was when I was like, Oh, I'm gonna be a woman in sustainable business. And my friend Decra was part of the group. And so she recommended, so yeah, so you've been on this journey with me the whole time. And you've watched it go from Athena to Aluna to Amala. And now we are definitely sticking with Amala. Because the Amala means clean, or lack of impure, in Sanskrit. So yeah, that one really resonates with me and the audience so much.

Katherine Ann Byam 23:05
That's really great. So the next question is going to take us to another angle of your experience in Cambodia and some, and around the whole sustainability topic. Now, just to, for the audience listening, I've also been to Cambodia just once, I went for a weekend to Siem Reap, because I heard I had to see Angkor Wat if I was in that area. So I flew from Malaysia to Cambodia. And I was shocked when I arrived because we stayed in this five star hotel, very plush place with loads of people waiting and serving you. And when you looked out the window across the street, there was this floating village where the rest of the people lived without proper sanitation, without a lot of things that you would consider very normal in the West, in the Western world. And I couldn't understand how this could coexist. How this place of abject poverty can coexist with this five star hotel, like it made no sense to me at all that this could be happening. And then we took a bus journey from Siem Reap route to Phnom Penh and I have never seen so much waste on the streets, as in Cambodia, at that time, I mean, I'm sure there are other places that that struggle as well with this, but I was really shocked and impressed, in a bad way perhaps, of the level of waste and rubbish and lack of cleanliness, as we talk about, about being clean. So I wanted to touch on this because I think you being there in Cambodia, in this time is relevant for so many reasons, I wanted you to reflect on what you've seen in terms of big corporations and how are they being socially relevant to the people of Cambodia today?

Sarah Udin 24:51
That is, yeah, absolutely, spot on. I would say I had a very similar experience. I first came to Cambodia nine years ago and I was absolutely shocked by the amount of trash. But then I, I don't remember it being any more than there was in Thailand or in Laos, I just remember being shocked in general, how much trash there was this side of the world. At that time now, obviously, it's now nine years later, and lots has changed. But I am going to be honest with you, the trash problem hasn't really changed. They have only recently started with waste management companies here in the city of Phnom Penh, which is, of course, the capital city of the country. And there was actually recently a strike. So within the last year, there was just a strike, and all the trash collectors stopped working. And you really saw the problem at that point, because they didn't collect trash for a week. And there were piles bigger than houses, it was extremely shocking, because Cambodia is a dumping ground for the rest of the world as well as its own citizens. So recycled waste, it doesn't get recycled, it gets shipped to Cambodia, and it gets dumped in Cambodia anywhere, it gets dumped on the side of the streets in Cambodia.

So there's already a problem. And so I think that, I don't know this, but my personal opinion is that maybe when you're overloaded with that amount of trash, it is very difficult to see how your own personal impact can or your, your own personal choices can make an impact. Because actually, if there's piles of trash bigger than your house, and you're thinking about whether or not you should try and recycle that one plastic bottle, it's a really, really confusing feeling. Because we all know, we should, we should be creating the least waste possible, we need to be absolutely reducing, reducing, reducing, but it's really difficult when there is no running water that's drinkable. And your only option is to go and buy a bottle that has been created by these big corporations that just don't care and could actually be creating different options, maybe reusable fountains and reusable, there are solutions possible that they could choose to channel their money into instead, like setting up vending machines that actually you just fill your bottle, and you could even have branded everything in that same way.

But they're, I don't know, that's, that's a little bit of a tangent anyway. But that's just a idea. But I would say yeah, absolutely. The waste management problem is still huge. And recycling, there is only one glass recycling plant in the whole city, in the whole country. And so we have to ship it from Phnom Penh. And we have to pay for that. So those are kind of big issues. But in terms of big corporations, I would say stop sending your waste to Cambodia, please stop creating things that are wasteful, because when they are the only option available, it's not fair, it's really not fair make make there be different options available for people that don't have access to running water and don't have access to drinking water. Don't give the, this as the only option. I would say that basically the infrastructure in Cambodia is amazing. It just needs a lot of investment. And Cambodia in general needs a lot of investment it needs a lot of development it is still very much a developing country in development. And there's loads of growth opportunities here. But people need to actually invest in things that are going to be sustainable, long term. Because at the moment, there is a throwaway culture here. And it's being perpetuated by these big corporations that are just saying by this, quick, try and become more like the West, quick, when actually this is an opportunity for big corporations to choose to do it a different way. So they could choose to actually say, hey, we've seen how much we've messed up over here in the UK and in France and in Germany and in the US and in Australia. How about this time, we do it differently. And we don't destroy the environment, every single aspect just by trying to, because you can still make profit, this is the thing, they can still make profit without destroying the environment. So maybe those are the, I got more emotional about that than I thought I would actually.

Katherine Ann Byam 28:39
I totally support your points, when I see big corporations trying to make change and come up with something innovative and pioneering etc. They start in places like Japan and South Korea more because they're trendsetting, then because they're relevant. And there's so many relevant situations that we can do tests in and we can change the protocols. And we can do something that really allows people to live a more fruitful life without going through the same loops that we went through in the west of learning, right. And it's disappointing that it's not pursued enough. So I totally support you. The other thing I want to sort of pivot to is if you could receive any funding now, what would you prioritise?

Sarah Udin 29:19
Haha, I mean, I have a list longer than my arm obviously, of all of the things that I would need to prioritise. But I don't know, I think probably the first in my opinion, the first thing that I would like to properly invest in if we got a big amount would be investing in designing and manufacturing our own period underwear here, because that obviously leads to job creation that's better controll of the quality, much more increased profit margins and way more sustainable in terms of packaging, shipping, all of the things that I would be in full control of, so that would be my main priority, and that's something that we are definitely talking about with other local sustainable businesses in Cambodia. So we have started that conversation. We are very excited, we are now just trying to find the funding for. And the other thing we are looking for is actually we're planning on developing an English and Khmer period app to make our information much more accessible. So that would be another thing that we, would put some investment money into. Because I think that those are really the key points, it's making sure that we're being the most ethical and sustainable we possibly can be and actually creating this education platform that actually does serve the community in a productive way. So those would be my main priorities. And also, being able to pay us some salaries at some point might be nice perhaps, purchasing some stock in bulk, hiring a Khmer person, I can go on. Those would be I think, the most exciting things to actually spend the money on, and they would definitely be some of our priorities as a team.

Katherine Ann Byam 30:46
Perfect. So what I want to ask now, how could my listeners support you given that the majority of my listeners are not, yet, Cambodian? Maybe I will get some after this interview.

Sarah Udin 30:56
Absolutely. I mean, the best way to probably support us from the UK is talking to people about sustainable periods. That's, that's our message is let's have sustainable periods. But for real for real, you can go to our website, www dot Amala periods.com. We have a donation button that's there and available. We are also planning on shipping worldwide shortly. So we, once we have that all set up on the website, you will be able to purchase our sustainable period products on our website. So we will have period underwear, reusable pads, cups, and also waterproof pouches for all of those things. And they will all be available and beautiful and sustainable. And available for sale online. You can also like us on Facebook and Instagram. And we will soon be releasing a Tik Tok. So you can also find us on there. And any kind of liking, sharing, supporting, commenting is always really helpful for small businesses. So anything like that would be amazing.

Katherine Ann Byam 31:53
Wonderful, Sarah, it's been such a pleasure to have you. I have loved your story and your transformation and your growth over the last year. And I just want to see it continue. So all the best wishes. We're going to chat again very soon this week. But, But best of luck for the future.

Sarah Udin 32:09
Thank you so much. And Katherine, I honestly, I must say I couldn't have done it without you. You have been an absolute rock in my journey on this. So thank you so much.

Katherine Ann Byam 32:17
This podcast is brought to you today by the brand new women in sustainable business awards that kicks off in 2023. If you're a business owner who's starting a business with principles of sustainability in mind, and you want to preserve some lost skills, some handcraftin, artisinal work, or you're a social media manager supporting purposel driven brands, or you're creating fashion or something that is relevant to the sustainability and green transformation. You are more than welcome to join us and to get involved in these awards. Check out our group on Facebook women in sustainable business, or follow the podcast where ideas launch on Instagram to find out more.

About this Episode

Do what matters… today and for your future. You are more than your ego, and this is your moment to own that, whatever it means to you, and do something purposeful with it. Career transitioning on purpose is more than a suite of skills you can gain mastery over, It’s a way of life. 

This career guide is for people in leadership, management, consulting, change programmes, projects, freelancers or contractors working within medium to large organisations. 

Your voice has never had a more powerful sound, than when it’s coming from a place deep within. Let’s learn how to use that to have a greater impact. Doing what matters also means getting things fantastically wrong, before things change at times. The key is in the long game.

 Explore a wide range of perspectives with me on this journey. 

You will:

• Take charge of your career and your why.
• Gain skills and momentum needed to sustain changes from where you are.
• Create meaningful integration between your values and work

Katherine Ann Byam is an author, sustainability activist, coach and consultant for business resilience and sustainable change, partnering with leaders committed to a shared future.” 

A professional with 20+years change leadership experience in the FTSE Top 10, she started her consulting firm in 2019 to support sustainable development within SMEs. Katherine holds an MBA with distinction, specialising in Innovation Management as well as certificates in ESG, digital strategy, and sustainability management from established universities. She’s also a Fellow of the Association of Certified Chartered Accountants. 

She’s the host of the internationally acclaimed Where Ideas Launch - Sustainable Innovation Podcast, ranked among the top 5% globally, achieving the top spot in 5 countries, and the top 10 in 19 separate charts. As a sought after leadership and career transition coach and keynote speaker, she facilitates workshops and learning sessions for communities within global brands such as Amazon, Women Tech Global, ACCA, Stryker, Speak Up, Mind Channel and more.

She loves spending her spare time in nature, walking the western and southern coasts of the UK, France and Tobago, or on the Northern and eastern coasts of Trinidad with her partner Christophe.

Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam 0:00
I think my favourite exercise when I started this book with my book coach was to write the publishers headline, and think about what I'd want people to say about the book. So this is what I wrote, you, tell me what you think, insightful, unconventional, structured, and providing the reader with a framework that flexes to their needs and individual contexts and encompasses storytelling, practical advice and coaching in one comprehensive stream of thought, and provides you with the tools to make those tough career decisions with greater ease. It is a remarkably easy, yet thought provoking read. I cannot tell you the feeling and excitement you get when you produce something that could potentially even have something close to that sort of review. And I feel really proud that this book today, is ready for a mass audience.

This is season five, the great debates of our times, Season Five will be centred around the great debates. And we will be comparing and contrasting different viewpoints on various topics that are consuming the public discourse at present. The reason I've decided to take this approach is because we, or at least many of us, are losing the skill of debate. And I think this is an essential skill for us all to practice once more. I don't see how we get to the point of saving the world and saving our planet. If we don't know how to discuss our differences. I also think that the solution to most of our challenges is somewhere in the spectrum of views, but never a type of extreme. I will be working with guests to curate the content and discuss beforehand, I will understand their positions, their areas of genius, and navigate my questions around that so that the conversation is challenging and stimulating. Without being combative. I hope you enjoy season five of where ideas launch; the Sustainable Innovation podcast. T

hree years ago, I started a journey to build an independent business built around my strengths, the needs of the planet, my passions, and my economic needs. Very much the ikigai of Japanese philosophy. That business had a clear roadmap, build a digital transformation consultancy using skills I already had in change management, and my partner in IT and data science, and then integrate sustainability into the practice, as I learned more about it myself. Life, though had other plans. After the pandemic hit, I naturally gravitated to fill in two voids that I found opening up making career transitions on purpose, was the first, and starting businesses with ethical and triple bottom line values, as the second. I started my first career transition programme in the summer of 2020, and became the leader of the women in sustainable business community on Facebook in October of that year. Since then, I've met and had business collaborations and relationships with hundreds of people, all of whom have shared rich experiences with me that I've integrated it into my courses and programmes as well as the series of books I will be releasing into the wild over the next three years. Book One is called 'Do what matters: the purpose driven career transition guide'. And it is a blueprint for supporting you with making a strategic shift to include more of your concerns about the planet we share, I want to take this opportunity to share with you the outline of the book, and to advise that it will be available on or after the 22nd of July, along with a podcast of the same name. I'm really excited about this work. And it's taken a lot to produce it. But it's been immensely rewarding. Here's the table of content, I start with what is purpose? And this is an interesting conversation to have at this point in time in our world. Because businesses are talking about it, people are talking about it. And we're not entirely sure where it's going to all land. We're starting to learn more and more about science, we still have philosophy on our side, we still have religion, and these ethical and moral debates that are influencing our perception of what purpose might be. So let's get into how to find your own. The book is then shaped into an introduction section and three parts. In the introduction, I present to you the context and the case study for change. Here I talk about the planetary dimension, the socio economic dimension, and governing the system as a whole. These are all fascinating and interrelated concepts and as we start getting into the complexity, I think it really starts to open doors as to how much opportunity there really is, if we were to take the deliberate step toward more purpose. Part one is about your environment and you and your pathway to self mastery amidst all of these rolling tides. So chapter one we talk about if it's important, build a model. So creating a conscious self improvement plan. Chapter Two is 'who are you really?' and how to begin your own journey of self discovery. Chapter three, we talk about career models. These are the types of career paths that you could attempt to deliver on your purpose. And I have to say that it isn't restricted to sustainably driven careers. This really is about any sort of path that you want to take. And what I would actually advise is to blend your paths. So make sure that you're doing enough of all the things that give you that feeling of completion. Chapter four is the constant leaner and developing a growth and net-positive mindset. A net-positive is something that I want to help people to embrace because I think we need to go further than net zero if we're actually going to hit any of the targets that we've set for ourselves. Chapter five is about your goals needing conscious action, and how to take action towards your purpose. Chapter six, is a nine step career transition framework. And this one is where I sum up all of the things that we're going to cover overall, for the whole book, even though it's coming in at chapter six. The reason it's coming here is that I think you need to appreciate everything that's come before it before you appreciate what these steps really mean. Part Two goes into social credible and responsible you, and how to show up, build an audience and become an advocate for change. In chapter seven, we talk about 'what's the point of your job really?', and why you do what you do not from your perspective, but from that of the business. In chapter eight, we talk about persuasion, influence and manipulation, and how we get others to follow or lead, and whether or not we feel right about doing so. In chapter nine, we talk about money and wealth, because I think any conversation about sustainability needs to deal with money and wealth. And then in chapter ten, we look at your digital twin, and how you show up credibly and responsibly in the spaces that you're interacting in online, chapter elevn, we bust some HR myths. We want to improve in general, the human resource management landscape, or at least your understanding of it. So I want to touch on some really important points here, that may implicate how you go about doing what you have to do. Part three, we get into 'jump but controlling the landing', and governing that first 90 days. And the first chapter in the section is about onboarding. So this is navigating your new job and the change agenda by understanding what's fundamentally important to what will come next for you. In chapter thirteen, we talk about habits and context and creating a compelling mission driven personnel playbook. And this is something where you blend the past playbook that you had that had made you successful, with what your understanding now about the world and the change that you need to make. So this is going to take some integration of the learning that we've done together. In chapter fourteen, we talk about how to create the perfect pitch, and how to earn in funding for your projects and your innovations, regardless of what type of role you're doing. In chapter fifteen, we want to talk about being better than average, but not perfect. And whether or not that's good enough. In chapter sixteen we're dealing with duds and explosives. So this is about the toxic boss, or the weak boss, and how that affects the culture of the company that you're in. And then we talk about the support needed for your journey and how to know if coaching or related services are right for you in any way. The final close will come in the epilogue, and this looks towards the aligned mission and the net-positive action toward the future. And then I finally close with an afterword to tell you about the other projects that are coming up soon. So I really look forward to this project. Being live at the end of July, there's still a lot of work to do. But thank you for your support and your ongoing encouragement. And I do hope that you enjoy it. Do get in touch with me on LinkedIn, on Facebook, follow me. Let me know if you've got the book, if you've read it. Give us our reviews on Amazon or wherever you found the book. And we'd love to hear from you, any thoughts or interesting insights that came up for you as you did these exercises. Thank you so much for your support.

This podcast is brought to you today by the brand new women in sustainable business awards that kicks off in 2023. If you're a business owner who's starting a business with principles of sustainability in mind, and you want to preserve some lost skills, some handcrafting, artisinal work, or you're a social media manager supporting purpose driven brands, or you're creating fashion or something that is relevant to the sustainability and green transformation. You are more than welcome to join us and to get involved in these awards. Check out our group on Facebook women in sustainable business, or follow the podcast where ideas launch on Instagram to find out more.

About this Episode

Belinda is a youth environmentalist from Hong Kong currently pursuing the MSc in Environmental Technology at Imperial College London. Passionate about driving sustainable food system transformation, she co-founded ConsciousEats, a mobile app connecting climate-conscious consumers to sustainable eateries in London. She is also one of 30 selected global youth leaders behind the global Act4Food Act4Change campaign, a global youth-led movement taking action to create a global food system which provides everyone with access to safe, affordable and nutritious diets, while simultaneously protecting nature, tackling climate change and promoting human rights. She is also a member of the World Ocean Day Youth Advisory Council and YOUNGO Agriculture working group. In her home city of Hong Kong, she co-founded youth-led Hong Kong-based podcast 'Sustain-a-pod', which empowers high school students to engage in direct dialogue with sustainability activists and professionals across different sectors.

Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam 0:01
Belinda Ng, is a client, friend and inspiration to me, she's one of at least four youth perspectives I will be bringing to you over the coming weeks on the topic of sustainable transformation. In this clip, she shares her thoughts on employment at major corporations listen to it now.

Belinda Ng 0:17
The question that comes up for me is how much of this is really embedded within what they're doing? And it's true to their core purpose? Or is it really just, you know, controversial greenwashing. And that they're just kind of saying this, because it's kind of part of a cool, trendy thing that all companies are doing now. And they can have a lot of money to market themselves in this way. But I think actually, I'm more hopeful than I am cautious. There's the cautious element is more that it's making sure I still have that critical mindset that my education has really shaped me to have to not just take things at face value, but really try and explore deeper; ask critical questions.

Katherine Ann Byam 1:00
This is season five, the great debates of our times, Season Five will be centred around the great debates. And we will be comparing and contrasting different viewpoints on various topics that are consuming the public discourse at present. The reason I've decided to take this approach is because we, or at least many of us, are losing the skill of debate. And I think this is an essential skill for us all to practice once more. I don't see how we get to the point of saving the world and saving our planet. If we don't know how to discuss our differences. I also think that the solution to most of our challenges is somewhere in the spectrum of views, but never a type of extreme. I will be working with guests to curate the content and discuss beforehand. I will understand their positions, their areas of genius, and navigate my questions around that so that the conversation is challenging and stimulating without being combative. I hope you enjoy season five of where ideas launch the Sustainable Innovation podcast.

Belinda is a youth environmentalist from Hong Kong, currently pursuing her MSc in Environmental Technology at Imperial College in London. She's passionate about driving sustainable food system transformation. And she co founded conscious eats a mobile app connecting climate conscious consumers to sustainable eateries in London. She's also one of forty selected global youth leaders behind the global act for food act for Change Campaign, a global youth led movement taking action to create a global food system which provides everyone with access to safe, affordable and nutritious diets while simultaneously protecting nature. In her home city of Hong Kong. She co founded youth led, Hong Kong based podcast Sustainer pod, which empowers high school students to engage in direct dialogue with sustainability activists and professionals across different sectors. Belinda, welcome to where ideas launch.

Belinda Ng 2:55
Thank you for having me, Kathy. I'm very excited to be here.

Katherine Ann Byam 2:57
I'm really excited to have you. Belinda, we met at a Kelp-a-thon, a hackathon organised by Carbon Kapture back in July 2021. You were one of the prize winners and a keen enthusiast on the changes we need to see, in sort of carbon sequestration, tell me why sustainability has become a passion for you. And when.

Belinda Ng 3:17
I think I became passionate about environmental issues first before I became passionate about sustainability, because honestly, I only really came to fully understand what sustainability encompased, as such a multifaceted term, in the past couple of years. But growing up when I was younger, in Hong Kong, where 40% of the land area is designated as country parks. I spent my weekends you know, in the nature, hiking, I did a lot of windsurfing, and a lot of the time that I spent, you know, on the ocean or in the forest hiking gave me a firsthand glimpse into very prominent environmental problems like plastic pollution on the beaches and in the water, or issues with air pollution, noise pollution, and other, yeah, environmental issues. So that kind of spurred up my interest in like understanding what we can actually do to address these issues. And then when I came to study geography and my undergrad degree at Cambridge, the course was a very critical look into sustainability issues facing our planet globally and also at various different skills in different contexts. And the more I understood it, the more I realised it was actually a very multifaceted problem. It wasn't just the environment, but it concerned human society, planetary health and various complicated interlinked issues. And so that's kind of what started kind of my interest in sustainability as a concept. And the thing that really made it a passion for me was the fundamentally human focus for sustainability. I think there's a lot that you need to deliver for the planet by first focusing on the people I'm having volunteered a lot with vulnerable populations and groups on, both in my home city of Hong Kong and then in different parts of China, especially with farming communities. I came to firsthand understand how, for example, climate change affects food security very directly. And that really, really generated that passion for me that we have to do something for the people on the planet together.

Katherine Ann Byam 5:12
Yeah, thank you for that. And I really love so many things that you've said. But in reading your bio as well, that you spoke about food and how central food is to what you do. And I was recently looking at the project draw down I don't know if you've seen this list, but the project draw down list of actions that we could take to to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And actually reducing food waste was the number one that we can do to keep within two degrees. It's so potent to see that it's so important yet, we just kind of take it for granted. Right? So tell me a little bit about that journey around food in particular. And I know this wasn't a question I prepared you for.

Belinda Ng 5:53
Yeah, for sure. It was also a very recent kind of journey that I've embarked on, because I always knew I was kind of generally interested. But it was only really in the past couple of years. I think the main kind of trigger, I guess, for what really made me think that, okay, food is something that should be considered in the bigger climate debate was, as I mentioned, that volunteering experience, because I had been visiting these communities for over 10 years. And in the past couple of years, when I had visited, the last time around was about three years ago, the communities there, particularly the younger children who would help out on the farms would tell me a lot about how recently there were like droughts, and there were kind of heat waves that have really affected their ability to produce. And so that's when I started looking into more of the production side with agriculture. And that being the most directly impacted by climatic changes. So that's when I really started caring about food. But then I started to, like, look, and really for myself and think about well, that's a really big, you know, systems - so I feel like agriculture is such a complicated process, what can I do as an individual. So that's when I turned to look at the more consumption side. And then yeah, as you mentioned, correctly with the whole food waste thing, it's a very, this is something that happens at the household level, it happens in restaurants it happens, at a city wide level. And so that, the fact that food is something that's so cultural, and so social, but also so connected to the environment was a very interesting thing for me to explore. And the more I explore it, the more I realise how it can be so important for this whole shift to sustainability that we really need.

Katherine Ann Byam 7:27
Yeah, it's interesting. You said that sustainability so multifaceted. And that's exactly how this conversation is going to go. Because you keep mentioning things that made me want to explore a bit more. And you talked about kids. And this is something that is close to my heart, in some ways, because I've also had the experience of travelling quite a lot and seeing kids on farms. And actually, I don't know, and this is where I'm going to potentially sound a bit controversial. I don't know that it's such a problem that kids work on farms, I actually thought they were getting such a much better education than I had in some ways. And they were so keen to participate, to contribute. And of course, you don't want to take them away from their education, and you want to make sure that there is balance in all of that, but this idea of kids working the farm and helping the family and having that sort of nucleus and that sort of, that sort of process where people understand that the food that they eat is coming from somewhere. To me that felt very important. I don't know how you felt about experiencing that.

Belinda Ng 8:37
Yeah, definitely. I think I fully agree with what you said, in the sense that they're receiving another kind of education, they understand so much about how plants grow, what the seasons are for different crops, in many ways compared to maybe let's say, a child that grew up in the city, they're so much more in tune with nature, and they know so much about the value of nature, because they they rely on this for their food security and for their for their family and everything. So I agree with you definitely. And I think also, well, I guess it depends as well on kind of, this would be very context specific as well, one major issue I definitely have with people growing up in the city is that you can be very disconnected with where your food comes from. And there is a huge debate now about you know, urban farming and really bringing people back to the roots to understand exactly what it is like, the Earth, the importance of the soil, all the stuff that comes with regenerative farming, because for so many people, this is so disconnected. And we also live in an era from a health standpoint where there's a lot of processed food, and so there's that strong health angle as well. So I definitely agree with what you're saying. And yeah, I guess the main difference is that food security definitely manifests very differently in these two kind of city - urban contexts versus rural context. Yeah, maybe that lines being blurred.

Katherine Ann Byam 9:56
Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. And, you know, it gives me pause. Because I, I want to join these global movements that, you know, advocate for, you know, no child labour, etc. But I think it's way more complicated as is the whole topic of sustainability. It's way more complicated than a ticking the box exercise and everything needs to be system and context specific. So really great conversation. Thank you for, thank you for contributing on that. So I want to move to another tack, which is that you've been studying at Imperial, and you were recently offered an internship at a consultancy firm. But I wanted to ask a more general question. What makes you cautious about working with big companies?

Belinda Ng 10:37
That's a really, yeah, that was a really interesting question. I think, for me, the main thing is, and I guess maybe this is something that also my peers in my age group, who are also increasingly quite aware of the various environmental and social issues that we have to tackle, is the main thing is the promises and commitments that they make to sustainability, I definitely think that the question that comes up for me is how much of this is really embedded within what they're doing? And it's true to their core purpose? Or is it really just, you know, controversial greenwashing. And that they're just kind of saying this, because it's kind of part of a cool, trendy thing that all companies are doing now. And they can have a lot of money to market themselves in this way. But I think actually, I'm more hopeful than I am cautious. There's the cautious element is more that it's making sure I still have that critical mindset that my education has really shaped me to have to not just take things at face value, but really try and explore deeper ask, critical questions. I think I'm more hopeful, because I know there's a lot being done internally now to transform organisations by very driven and passionate individuals within these big companies and other size companies as well.

Katherine Ann Byam 11:53
It's a good point that you make again, because when I talk to different groups of people, you know, I have a community of women in sustainable business, who are small businesses, trying to do things differently, social impact entrepreneurs, etc. And also, I have a career group. And when I talk to these different groups, the vibe around this topic of greenwashing is quite different. And what's interesting, so looking from the outside, so those of my communities who have perhaps not worked within the context of the big organisations, looking from the outside, they tend to quickly blacklist a large organisation for greenwashing. And when I talk to people who work in big organisations and perhaps work in the space, you kind of understand that there's a huge passion and commitment to the planet for those who are working in that specific space. So those working in CSR, those working in social impact, and, and, and working on innovations, perhaps. So you understand that actually, with big organisations, again, like with everything else we're discussing today, it's not black and white. It's, it's there's a lot of complexity involved. There are a lot of silos involved, especially with multinational corporations that span several different countries. And it's difficult to figure out, like, what exactly can I call out here as greenwashing versus what is, what is a genuine effort that's just being lost in a lack of I don't know, coordination. And so it's interesting to really see how that really plays out in the minds of people.

Belinda Ng 13:34
Yeah I agree. I think a lot of young people, especially those that are more considered activists, they late they like to call out these companies like you're not doing enough, like this is all fake. I think that's definitely one approach that you can use to really ensure that greenwashing can, doesn't happen, and there's, you know, increased transparency and credibility with what big companies are doing. But another hand, I've recently also heard a different view, which is that actually, greenwashing can be very helpful in the way that it's almost like a temporary transition phase. Like, the bottom line is that all big companies are now aware that this is an issue, there is pressure coming from different stakeholders that they need to do something. So whether or not you know, company A matches up to what company B is doing, there's still that internal recognition that something has to be done and whether or not that is something that is happening right at this very moment that matches up to what is expected. I think that time will tell but it is still quite promising. So I'm still quite hopeful, even though that there is this controversial element involved.

Katherine Ann Byam 14:37
Yeah, I agree with you. It's, it's definitely a challenge. And I think, yeah, we need to keep the pressure but we also need to keep the perspective I guess, and it's it's difficult. It's a difficult balance. And I can't say that there's one right approach which which is kind of what I like about the space if I'm being honest. You can really find your way. So I want to move again and this one is more around, I'd say, the sort of personal impact all of this is having on people in your age group. And I know you can't speak for everyone in your age group, but, but if you can make an assessment of how people are handling the climate crisis, and what is sort of the spectrum of reactions you've personally experienced from people in your age group that you might want to share with us today?

Belinda Ng 15:26
Yeah, sure, I think there's a full spectrum, there's honestly complete ignorance, like, I'm just gonna enjoy the present and enjoy my life. And then there's also like the complete opposite, which is essentially eco anxiety to different levels and just feeling a lot of anxiety, sometimes anger, frustration, sadness, worries about what's going to happen within our lifetimes. And that I understand a lot of the fact that that comes from increased access and exposure to news as well, social media, especially, those can get very concentrated if you're working or studying in the environmental space, where there are a lot of scary harrowing statistics that come out, you know, all the time with new scientific publications and international conferences and stuff. So there's definitely a full spectrum. I think, for me, in the sense, because I'm studying environmental sustainability degree, a lot of my friends definitely are more towards the eco anxiety side. And I definitely think it's almost like the more you know, the severity of the situation and the need to action, the more you have that greater tendency to be worried about it. So I think the main kind of thing that, that's been on my mind is that the systems change that's really required to tackle this climate crisis is really the scary part because we really need to see cooperation and, you know, intergenerational dialogue, or across different stakeholders across different countries. But it seems like given the other, the current political, social, economic contexts that are happening in the world right now, it seems very difficult. So the main challenge is remaining hopeful and optimistic. And I think that will really help to, I guess, alleviate some of the eco anxiety that's currently on that, that more scary, sad side of the spectrum, when it comes to how people are handling the climate crisis.

Katherine Ann Byam 17:15
Yeah. And what would you say are your strategies for dealing with eco anxiety? And ask this kind of tongue in cheek because, yeah, I think I also struggle. So what do you do to sort of help you along?

Belinda Ng 17:29
I definitely think being involved or engaged with organisations and individuals that are doing fantastic role work in the space, and really trying to immerse myself more in really positive news. So for example, there's recently I was reading a really optimistic uplifting article about the role of forests. And it this is also very, you know, we can't tell the future. But it was a very positive article about a success in a very specific context, I think, little things like that, and just not trying to carry the weight of the world on my own shoulders, but really being inspired by knowing that there are amazing people around the world who are working on really changing the way we live right now, and changing regulations and working in companies and boardrooms, to really incite change that really inspires me and motivates me.

Katherine Ann Byam 18:20
That's perfect. I love that response. Thank you so much. If I had a listener from a prominent organisation that you'd like to work with, who would it be?

Belinda Ng 18:28
This is a very timely question, and also quite a challenging one. Because am I allowed to be really, really greedy, and kind of give more general responses? Because I'm honestly not targeting one specific company. I'm definitely keeping a very open minded. I'm very interested in environmental consultancy. So I guess ERM. Other big four kind of consulting firms that are working on, in the sustainability space, I would be super interested in. But also, in terms of more a general topic focused thing if your company is working on any aspect of the food systems, for example, like in house with, like Unilever and Nestle, large f&b companies, I'd be really interested to explore in house work. And I guess a final bucket. So I'm being really greedy here. But like I've been really interested in like responsible investing space and kind of the food tech space. So definitely keen to learn more about opportunities in this sector as well.

Katherine Ann Byam 19:28
And how do you feel about entrepreneurship as an option for you? And I ask this question, because I've noticed a shift to definitely in terms of your general age group, sort of coming out of university and thinking, you know what, I want to start a green tech startup. I want to start this company right from the start. So what are your, what are your thoughts about that? And especially as I know that you're already involved in some in some ventures,

Belinda Ng 19:55
So personally, I love entrepreneurship. I think it's one of the key ways that we can come together and bring people together to tackle current and sustainability issues. I think for me, it's definitely something that I see, in my lifetime that is going to happen. But in terms of whether or not that happens right now, I'm honestly not as sure, I can definitely see it happening at some point, because I can envision that that is where I maybe want to end up. And I think the kind of hesitance that I get from not, you know, maybe not launching, jumping into it right now, is that entrepreneurship is kind of conventionally been seen as, like something that young people do. And this is the thing that you should kind of take the risks now before you have to like settle and, and all those kind of narratives. But I think I recently went to a startup Demo Day with investors. And I spoke to a lot of really cool entrepreneurs working in the climate space, and a lot of them actually were in like their 40s. And sometimes some of them even in their 50s. And the reason why they were able to really succeed and you know, persuade the investors for investment and to show that they are the right fit to lead that startup was exactly because they had worked in, maybe for big corporates or in house or, and had really extensive careers. That meant they had the network's they needed to basically launch their product and access the market. And I think that really changed my perspective on like, maybe it's something I don't have to do like, right this moment, to really succeed. And I mean, given the fact that it is such a challenging thing, you really need to have so much perseverance and, and resilience to succeed. Maybe it is better to not just jump into it unless you know, that I think separating your, your passion, your passion projects, and your something that can really be a viable, profitable company is very, very important. So I think, yeah, so my bottom line is I love entrepreneurship, and I can see it in my future, but I'm not sure if I see it right now.

Katherine Ann Byam 21:58
Fair response. So what topics are you currently exploring on sustainapod?

Belinda Ng 22:04
Oh, exciting question. We're recording season three right now. And there's, this season is quite different from the previous two, because it is less focused on purely environmental aspects of sustainability, but going into the social component, as well. So we had a social focus on mental health and eating disorders and body image and what that kind of means in relation to like personal well being in a time when, you know, as we discussed earlier, there's eco anxiety and all these other kind of mental issues going around. So that's something to look forward to, and also exploring more entrepreneurship as well. So particularly in the food space, and also with social entrepreneurship, in from a like a development context for sustainability, which in many cases actually align. So for example, so plenty of startups in, in the African region are now working on, you know, electrifying and bringing electricity to rural communities in a renewable, sustainable way. So I think that's a really great promising, like, Win Win way that we can work on both the social and environmental side of like, yeah, for the planet right now.

Katherine Ann Byam 23:13
How can my listeners reach out to you?

Belinda Ng 23:15
Please drop me a message on LinkedIn, you can find me just with my name, or you can email me at Belinda T. wng@gmail.com.

Katherine Ann Byam 23:23
Perfect. Thank you so much for joining me today. Belinda. I'm really excited about your journey and when you get unleashed into the world, with all the change that you are championing, and really great to have a chat today.

Belinda Ng 23:36
Thank you, Kathy.

Katherine Ann Byam 23:37
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