1 00:00:07,180 --> 00:00:14,160 All right. I wanted to show you some examples of some of these companies that have integrated the some you will recognise right away, 2 00:00:14,170 --> 00:00:21,090 some you will have never heard of. Okay. And there are of all types, and I think it's worth sort of looking at some of these. 3 00:00:21,100 --> 00:00:32,110 And so I'll start. And they're from everywhere. By the way, the biggest contingent of big corporations is called Sistema B in Latin America. 4 00:00:32,470 --> 00:00:38,470 They are the today the largest growing regional group of big corporations in Latin America. 5 00:00:38,470 --> 00:00:43,540 It seems that you know, that others you know, I am in December, 6 00:00:43,540 --> 00:00:50,649 I'm due to go to Singapore because Singapore is [INAUDIBLE] bent on setting up big corporations in Singapore. 7 00:00:50,650 --> 00:01:00,970 So that will be really interesting. But again, you know, I don't want to give you the impression that this is it's a movement, but it's just starting. 8 00:01:01,300 --> 00:01:07,780 And if you're going to be future proofing your business, you've got to be thinking about what's coming down the pike. 9 00:01:08,230 --> 00:01:15,460 What is it that's going to really make me strong in terms of not just financial bottom line, but other aspects of what it is I am doing. 10 00:01:15,760 --> 00:01:22,390 It doesn't mean that you, you know, have to go out and hug trees and do stuff that, you know, you naturally wouldn't do. 11 00:01:23,290 --> 00:01:30,639 But but it does mean that whatever business, whether you're in technology, whether you're in agriculture, where any business, 12 00:01:30,640 --> 00:01:35,710 you've got to be thinking about some of the aspects to do with workers and some of the aspects to do with, 13 00:01:36,040 --> 00:01:40,540 you know, community, some of the aspects to do with environment that are so much this. 14 00:01:40,750 --> 00:01:50,380 This is a Canadian company. Hi, my name is Andy Sinclair and I'm the CEO of SIM Inc. 15 00:01:50,740 --> 00:01:55,810 A Task B, which is looking in children's ears or adults ears with an OTA scope, 16 00:01:56,260 --> 00:02:02,290 is one of the worst acquired medical skills, a typical medical student and hence a general practitioner. 17 00:02:02,290 --> 00:02:06,760 A paediatrician will have about 50% accuracy in diagnosing ear problems. 18 00:02:06,970 --> 00:02:10,930 What autism does is that it acts as a bridge. First, you need to understand the problem. 19 00:02:11,170 --> 00:02:14,620 Normally, a doctor will learn by hands on experience. 20 00:02:14,800 --> 00:02:21,400 In the case of an infected ear, you're not going to be able to call a bunch of residents over to poke in a small child's ear and have a look. 21 00:02:21,790 --> 00:02:25,420 So what happens is they learn from a book and then they're thrown into the clinic. 22 00:02:25,780 --> 00:02:32,320 Autism acts as a learning bridge between that book, Learning or PowerPoint Learning and the actual hands on clinic. 23 00:02:32,740 --> 00:02:39,850 Well, I think business always has the same role, and that role is to meet a societal need and turn a profit. 24 00:02:40,000 --> 00:02:43,270 Making money is important, but it's not our objective. 25 00:02:43,690 --> 00:02:50,410 At the same time, I started to hear about big corporations and I looked at one of my co-workers and I said, I guess we're a B Corp. 26 00:02:50,650 --> 00:02:55,870 What being a B corp means to me is that a primary objective is to do good. 27 00:02:56,230 --> 00:03:00,880 Making money is something we have to do to allow that primary objective to be that. 28 00:03:02,640 --> 00:03:05,940 So that's the first one. This one you will all recognise. 29 00:03:05,940 --> 00:03:16,860 But this is really interesting to see what they've done and how they do it so that if you buy an ice cream. 30 00:03:17,490 --> 00:03:27,270 All right, make ways that injuries, as you know, has a three part mission statement product, social and economic, and especially the social mission. 31 00:03:27,270 --> 00:03:32,850 Part of it is probably why I stayed with the company as long as I had like that. 32 00:03:35,900 --> 00:03:40,940 Our approach to social mission is to actually work our way from inside the paint out. 33 00:03:41,450 --> 00:03:44,390 So where we want to start is with the dairy. 34 00:03:45,110 --> 00:03:53,690 And so we made a stand on making sure that we support all the family farmers from which we saw dairy so that they can have more sustainable, 35 00:03:54,260 --> 00:04:05,450 profitable family farms. And we work our way through the point to the ingredients like sugar, cocoa, banana, coffee, vanilla. 36 00:04:05,900 --> 00:04:16,850 Those five core ingredients are all Fairtrade certified as we get all the way to the packaging, how can this packaging be environmentally sustainable? 37 00:04:16,850 --> 00:04:20,900 So we get Forest Stewardship Council certified paperboard. 38 00:04:22,690 --> 00:04:31,090 As we prosper, they prosper. We want to use our business and our business model of linked prosperity. 39 00:04:31,750 --> 00:04:36,100 To show that the communities where we're sourcing our ingredients from, 40 00:04:36,100 --> 00:04:43,930 where we're selling our products and where we manufacture our products are a part of the prosperity of our growing business. 41 00:04:44,770 --> 00:04:49,270 And Ben and Jerry's, in the spirit of transparency and really trying to be a better company, 42 00:04:49,450 --> 00:04:53,419 decided to issue a social report and an environmental report like that. 43 00:04:53,420 --> 00:05:03,310 The role of my team in Link Prosperity is helping bring that visual identity to life, to use this company to create positive change in the world. 44 00:05:04,150 --> 00:05:08,709 That's what I'm hired to do. So. I don't even know why. 45 00:05:08,710 --> 00:05:12,760 Like, I don't. I don't know why. It just feels like the right thing to do. 46 00:05:12,970 --> 00:05:20,650 There are a lot of places you could work and spend your day wondering if you've made a difference. 47 00:05:22,270 --> 00:05:26,470 Sometimes we succeed at the end. Sometimes we don't. 48 00:05:27,100 --> 00:05:37,419 But we're not faking it. Everyone in the world gets a positive feeling and gets a happiness when they contribute, 49 00:05:37,420 --> 00:05:41,230 when they have a purpose, when they make a difference in their community. 50 00:05:44,720 --> 00:05:50,810 You know, we speak to the aspiring activist inside all of us. 51 00:05:52,800 --> 00:05:59,510 There are little kind of flowers blooming around prosperity within within the company right now. 52 00:05:59,510 --> 00:06:12,720 And it feels really, really good. It's an important part of our mission that gives us, at least in my mind, the credibility to be challenging others. 53 00:06:14,280 --> 00:06:18,720 And again, it's not something that we're trying to hold for ourselves or something that we're trying to invite the whole world to join us. 54 00:06:20,230 --> 00:06:33,390 That three free pints a day that either. This next one is probably one of the most visionary banks. 55 00:06:33,930 --> 00:06:35,970 It's existed over 25 years. 56 00:06:36,540 --> 00:06:45,209 It's Dutch based, but it has branches throughout Europe and it's not promoting itself in this video and you'll see it at the very end. 57 00:06:45,210 --> 00:06:51,450 But it has such an interesting way of looking at how it does its business. 58 00:06:51,780 --> 00:06:57,329 It is also a retail bank, so if you invest in it, your returns are actually market based, 59 00:06:57,330 --> 00:07:02,580 but they're actually going to help fund some of the things that they're going to talk about. 60 00:07:02,940 --> 00:07:09,660 So it's not this do gooder bank. It's actually a full fledged bank and it's called Triodos Bank. 61 00:07:13,020 --> 00:07:17,220 It's the talk of the town. Growth only growing enough. 62 00:07:17,950 --> 00:07:22,470 And do we actually need to grow? At the moment, we're fixated on numbers. 63 00:07:22,980 --> 00:07:31,020 But what does the numbers say about us? Are we suddenly 0.1% happier and the next minute point 1% unhappier? 64 00:07:31,980 --> 00:07:36,510 Or is growth really only about buying more stuff and selling more? 65 00:07:41,650 --> 00:07:46,120 You can also look at growth another way, and then you'll see that we're actually doing pretty well. 66 00:07:46,630 --> 00:07:53,680 Yes, we're building fewer new offices and shopping centres, but we're also improving the schools, hospitals and nursing homes we already have. 67 00:07:54,190 --> 00:08:00,370 By making them more energy efficient. We save money which can pay for more teachers and carers. 68 00:08:01,930 --> 00:08:09,310 Now that's growth. And yes, fewer cars are being sold, yet we are more mobile than ever. 69 00:08:09,700 --> 00:08:15,370 Cars are becoming much easier to share, just like music and houses and all kinds of other stuff. 70 00:08:15,850 --> 00:08:19,360 So what's bad for the economy is actually good for society. 71 00:08:19,930 --> 00:08:24,730 We grow by sharing and sometimes by doing nothing. 72 00:08:25,840 --> 00:08:30,400 More and more gardeners are fighting garden pests with ladybirds, not pesticides. 73 00:08:31,030 --> 00:08:35,200 So sometimes doing something small is the best way to achieve something big. 74 00:08:37,530 --> 00:08:43,230 There are families who are starting their own energy companies, butchers who make meat from plants. 75 00:08:43,620 --> 00:08:48,450 Entrepreneurs who are busy inventing things today that will make the world a little better tomorrow. 76 00:08:48,930 --> 00:08:54,900 More and more people and businesses are taking things into their own hands and are helping us grow like never before. 77 00:08:55,440 --> 00:09:00,060 A type of growth is about more than just numbers. It's really quite simple. 78 00:09:00,570 --> 00:09:05,450 Everything you give attention to grows. What do you want to grow? 79 00:09:06,860 --> 00:09:10,250 Follow your heart. Use your head. Triodos bank. 80 00:09:11,860 --> 00:09:18,040 If anybody wants to work for a really fantastic financial institution, that's the one to go to. 81 00:09:18,370 --> 00:09:22,839 And, you know, I have to say that one of the things that's interesting throughout, 82 00:09:22,840 --> 00:09:31,629 you know, my 66 years of life now has been that earlier years when I was about your age, 83 00:09:31,630 --> 00:09:37,840 I guess, and working at the World Bank started out as a young professional there, 84 00:09:38,350 --> 00:09:41,620 and I was convinced that the World Bank was going to change the world. 85 00:09:41,770 --> 00:09:49,870 Obviously, the World Bank. And and so I joined with, you know, just these huge expectations. 86 00:09:49,870 --> 00:10:02,290 And what I found was I would be assigned to go and look at the feasibility of a project, multi-million dollar project and some growth market. 87 00:10:02,470 --> 00:10:06,100 They didn't even call them. They call them, you know, developing countries. 88 00:10:06,700 --> 00:10:11,469 And my entire week that I was there, 89 00:10:11,470 --> 00:10:20,020 I would spend between the fancy hotel that they put me up in and the and the Ministry of Finance, and it would go back and forth. 90 00:10:20,020 --> 00:10:24,040 Now, mind you, this was 20 that this was 30 years ago. 91 00:10:24,250 --> 00:10:28,870 So the bank has hopefully changed somewhat. 92 00:10:28,870 --> 00:10:35,290 I think it certainly has changed its rhetoric. But they would come back and they would say, well, what do you think? 93 00:10:35,410 --> 00:10:39,820 Is this a worthwhile investment? And I would say, I have no idea. 94 00:10:40,630 --> 00:10:45,070 I have no idea. I never went to see where this is going to be developed. 95 00:10:45,310 --> 00:10:50,620 And all I saw were numbers. I never talked to people who were actually in these communities where they were. 96 00:10:50,620 --> 00:10:59,080 And, you know, we know the results of these kinds of, you know, situations where they ignored what we're trying to now incorporate into. 97 00:10:59,350 --> 00:11:01,089 So it's not just about building a business. 98 00:11:01,090 --> 00:11:11,320 It's about building a mindset of what it is and how you engage the people that you are going to actually sell to your clients. 99 00:11:12,190 --> 00:11:16,120 The bank didn't have a client mentality. It was like, Oh, these poor people, they don't know what they want. 100 00:11:16,120 --> 00:11:19,360 We do, and oftentimes entrepreneurs do the same thing. 101 00:11:19,720 --> 00:11:24,700 Oftentimes entrepreneurs will go, I've got such a great idea who isn't going to buy this one? 102 00:11:25,270 --> 00:11:33,759 And then they go down into their cave and they pull out this incredible business plan, which has nothing to do with reality. 103 00:11:33,760 --> 00:11:37,060 And then they go, Gee, I wonder why this isn't working. 104 00:11:37,900 --> 00:11:46,540 And it is amazing to see how many times that actually happens where nobody has consulted the people that they're supposed to be actually selling to. 105 00:11:46,900 --> 00:11:50,560 So that is a big, big thing that you keep when you build your business. 106 00:11:51,160 --> 00:11:54,250 Don't go about it. Remember that there's a great book that you must read. 107 00:11:54,250 --> 00:11:58,059 It's called Getting to Plan B by Randy Commissar and John Mullins. 108 00:11:58,060 --> 00:12:04,870 It basically is very focussed on how do you build a business from scratch and that your plan A may well 109 00:12:04,870 --> 00:12:11,380 turn out to be well will turn out hopefully to be not where you go and you may well get to plan J, 110 00:12:11,830 --> 00:12:16,390 you know, all the way down to Plan Z before you actually have something that's worth doing. 111 00:12:16,690 --> 00:12:23,019 And I think that that is a really interesting sort of take away fight in terms of where you're going. 112 00:12:23,020 --> 00:12:26,500 So don't expect your first idea or whatever to be it. 113 00:12:26,890 --> 00:12:35,200 It really is going to take many permutations. And now I'm going to show you one final clip, which I find fascinating, and this one is inspiring. 114 00:12:35,770 --> 00:12:43,180 This man, Dave Steiner, was working at a major publicly listed company in the United States called Waste Management Inc, 115 00:12:43,600 --> 00:12:48,190 which probably had one of the worst reputations in terms of waste management in the United States. 116 00:12:48,940 --> 00:12:56,440 And he came in and talk about pivot, pivot, an entire multibillion dollar company around. 117 00:12:56,740 --> 00:12:59,950 And he's going to tell you just this is an hour long. 118 00:12:59,950 --> 00:13:08,230 I have cut it down to like 8 minutes so that you can hear the major highlights of how now he doesn't get into how, because in 8 minutes he can't. 119 00:13:08,740 --> 00:13:13,959 But what has happened in terms of this major waste company and how they have done this? 120 00:13:13,960 --> 00:13:17,140 And as I said, this is a publicly listed company. 121 00:13:17,380 --> 00:13:22,690 So it goes all the way from the guy with the, you know, medical thing in the ear and everything else all the way up to the top. 122 00:13:23,110 --> 00:13:26,829 And let's see how that that works. I love this guy. 123 00:13:26,830 --> 00:13:31,650 He's just talk about an inspiration. I want to get him here. 124 00:13:32,190 --> 00:13:37,020 We're the largest recycler in the United States, probably the largest recycler in the world. 125 00:13:37,470 --> 00:13:41,790 Five years ago, we did about 6 million tons of recyclables. 126 00:13:41,820 --> 00:13:47,820 That's enough to fill the Transamerica building, I think, 50 times over. 127 00:13:48,510 --> 00:13:55,290 So as the largest recycler, we said, you know, we have a goal to try to become even bigger, try to become even better. 128 00:13:55,680 --> 00:14:00,540 And so our goal was to recycle 20 million tons of recyclables by 2020. 129 00:14:00,780 --> 00:14:08,160 How have we done so far? In the last four years, we've doubled the amount of recyclables from about 6 million tonnes to about 12 million tonnes now. 130 00:14:08,460 --> 00:14:14,830 And we'll talk a little bit later about what we can do to drive that goal from 12 million tons to 20 million tons by 2020. 131 00:14:15,120 --> 00:14:19,170 And actually keep try to drive it over the long term even further than that. 132 00:14:20,280 --> 00:14:24,960 The second is to double the amount of waste based energy that we produce. 133 00:14:25,320 --> 00:14:31,050 You know, folks don't realise this about waste management, but we at the core are a waste company. 134 00:14:31,410 --> 00:14:34,050 But one of the things that we actually are is an energy company now. 135 00:14:34,350 --> 00:14:38,729 You know, when you think about renewable energy, you don't generally think about garbage. 136 00:14:38,730 --> 00:14:42,780 You think about things like solar or wind power. An interesting fact for you. 137 00:14:42,960 --> 00:14:45,900 Waste management. Just one company. Waste management. 138 00:14:46,140 --> 00:14:51,960 We actually create more electricity from waste than the entire solar industry in the United States. 139 00:14:52,350 --> 00:14:55,560 The entire solar industry. And it's not even close. 140 00:14:55,590 --> 00:15:01,290 We produce about 2 to 3 times more power than the entire solar industry in the United States, just out of waste. 141 00:15:02,250 --> 00:15:07,620 Our third goal is to reduce the emissions out of our fleet by 15% by 2020. 142 00:15:08,160 --> 00:15:13,150 Now, the good news here is that we've actually achieve this goal way ahead of Target this year. 143 00:15:13,170 --> 00:15:19,080 We've reduced emissions out of our fleet by 20%. So as a CEO, what do you do when you meet your goal? 144 00:15:19,110 --> 00:15:24,240 Do you have a party and say, we're done? Yeah, you you have a party, but you never say you're done. 145 00:15:24,690 --> 00:15:27,750 And so we said we're going to said we're going to make a new goal. Right. 146 00:15:27,960 --> 00:15:31,800 And I think by 2020, we can reduce the emissions in our fleet by over 50%. 147 00:15:31,980 --> 00:15:35,760 I'd love to see us reduce the emissions in our fleet by over 75%. 148 00:15:35,970 --> 00:15:42,330 And that's what we're going to be shooting for by 2020 to at least get 50% less emissions out of our fleet every year. 149 00:15:43,050 --> 00:15:50,160 And then the final goal that we have is a goal of turning all of the sites that we have throughout the United States. 150 00:15:50,160 --> 00:15:57,360 You know, for for years and years and years, we've been picking up waste and disposing of them in sanitary, safe landfills. 151 00:15:57,390 --> 00:16:01,710 Now, you know, those landfills can't be used for development, but what can they be used for? 152 00:16:01,740 --> 00:16:05,940 They can be used for a lot of different things. We chose to make them into wildlife refuge. 153 00:16:06,330 --> 00:16:15,900 And so we've got our goal was to have 100 of our sites, about 1 to 25000 acres turned into wildlife refuges. 154 00:16:16,590 --> 00:16:25,320 I'm glad to say that we've also exceeded that goal early 134 of our sites, about 28,000 acres have been certified as wildlife refuges. 155 00:16:25,800 --> 00:16:28,920 But, you know, we don't want to stop there. 156 00:16:29,220 --> 00:16:34,500 We certainly don't want to take those goals and say we've now achieved and we're not going to do any more. 157 00:16:34,590 --> 00:16:38,280 We're going to continue to do more and we're going to continue to add to those goals. 158 00:16:38,520 --> 00:16:46,049 And, you know, obviously those goals are laudable, but I recognise that when we look at the goals that we set at Waste Management, 159 00:16:46,050 --> 00:16:49,290 we look at them through the waste management lens. Right. 160 00:16:50,010 --> 00:16:55,020 When you think about sustainability and you think about the networks developed around sustainability, 161 00:16:55,260 --> 00:17:01,680 we all look at the world through a particular lens and there's really nothing we can do about that. 162 00:17:01,680 --> 00:17:08,930 But what we can do is to say, okay, I recognise that Waste Management looks at the world through our lens and what is in our land. 163 00:17:08,940 --> 00:17:14,159 You know, we're a for profit company, obviously. We're a company that's built to serve our communities. 164 00:17:14,160 --> 00:17:17,790 We have the different lenses that we look through that the waste management lenses. 165 00:17:17,790 --> 00:17:23,310 But I realise that the other networks that we interact with don't look at the world through the same lens. 166 00:17:24,010 --> 00:17:28,139 And so you can do one of two things. You can say, Well, okay, they look at the world through a different lens. 167 00:17:28,140 --> 00:17:30,570 Let's forget about that and look at the world through our land. 168 00:17:31,140 --> 00:17:36,060 Or you can say, How do we work with those networks to try to see the world through their lens? 169 00:17:36,420 --> 00:17:43,469 Because if you don't, that's where you get into the dangerous things that happen, whether it's at a company, at a government or within a network. 170 00:17:43,470 --> 00:17:49,530 When you stop looking outside of your network to understand how people outside of your network view you and what you do, 171 00:17:49,770 --> 00:17:55,259 that's when you start to stagnate. So what we've committed to doing is not only interacting with networks, 172 00:17:55,260 --> 00:18:02,249 but helping to build networks so that we can learn more about what the lens that other folks look at our business is. 173 00:18:02,250 --> 00:18:08,010 And we can then take that and shape it into what we look at for the strategy for waste management going forward. 174 00:18:08,760 --> 00:18:15,090 And so, you know, that's all very well and good, but what do we ultimately do with this? 175 00:18:15,900 --> 00:18:22,170 I want to talk a little bit about some of the things that we've done, looking at the world through the lens of other networks. 176 00:18:22,380 --> 00:18:28,920 And talk a little bit about what waste management done has done to to change itself to meet the needs of those networks. 177 00:18:28,980 --> 00:18:32,950 Let's start out with. General Motors. You know, we all know General Motors. 178 00:18:32,970 --> 00:18:38,250 Very big manufacturer. And General Motors has a number of manufacturing plants throughout the United States. 179 00:18:38,280 --> 00:18:48,600 Well, General Motors came to us and they said, look, we would love for you to take our plants and turn them into zero waste manufacturing facilities. 180 00:18:48,630 --> 00:18:56,100 Now, when the name of your company is Waste Management and someone comes to you and says, we want to turn something into zero waste. 181 00:18:57,030 --> 00:19:00,000 That sounds like a pretty big threat to your business model. 182 00:19:00,450 --> 00:19:05,420 And we looked at that and we said, you know, that is a that is a threat to our business model. 183 00:19:05,430 --> 00:19:07,440 But there's also an opportunity in there. Right. 184 00:19:07,770 --> 00:19:11,429 So in other words, we could have looked at it and said, we're going to look at this through the waste management lens. 185 00:19:11,430 --> 00:19:16,259 And I will tell you, there are plenty of people in our industry that look at it at that lens and say what we're going to do when someone 186 00:19:16,260 --> 00:19:22,920 talks about zero waste is we are going to fight that tooth and nail and we're going to say that that can never happen. 187 00:19:22,950 --> 00:19:30,090 Let's fight it. Let's just make sure that doesn't happen. And waste management, we said, you know what, let's find the opportunity in zero waste. 188 00:19:30,420 --> 00:19:35,460 And General Motors is a perfect example of how we did that. We took General Motors and we did just that. 189 00:19:35,730 --> 00:19:41,010 We brought them down to zero waste. Now, you might say zero waste for waste management means zero profitability. 190 00:19:41,010 --> 00:19:45,300 Right. So how are you meeting the needs of waste management, even though you're meeting the needs of General Motors? 191 00:19:45,330 --> 00:19:51,840 Well, it's pretty simple. The way we got them to zero waste is not by doing different things with their waste. 192 00:19:52,350 --> 00:19:56,460 The way we got them to zero waste was not looking at their waste as waste. 193 00:19:57,030 --> 00:20:03,720 Right. We looked at their waste as materials. Materials that you could do different things with to extract value out of them. 194 00:20:03,960 --> 00:20:07,260 So whether it's reusing them, recycling them, or creating energy out of them, 195 00:20:07,410 --> 00:20:12,809 we found things that we could do with those materials that actually created a revenue stream that 196 00:20:12,810 --> 00:20:19,290 allowed waste management to make more profit and allow General Motors to lower their overall cost. 197 00:20:19,590 --> 00:20:24,959 I'll stop here. I think you get the point. And this is this is something that's really important. 198 00:20:24,960 --> 00:20:35,430 And there are some great books out there. One is called The Medici Effect, and it's by Franz Johansson, published by Harvard Business Press. 199 00:20:35,850 --> 00:20:42,570 And what he basically says is that true disruptive innovation happens at the intersection. 200 00:20:43,320 --> 00:20:51,600 There is basically, you know, what we would call iterative innovation or innovation that builds and builds and builds on itself. 201 00:20:51,930 --> 00:20:54,690 And then there is completely disruptive innovation. 202 00:20:55,200 --> 00:21:05,880 And that if you really today the the the the big challenges of the world are partly being met by this progressive innovation. 203 00:21:06,330 --> 00:21:12,300 But to really meet the challenges, we have to begin to look at intersections and one intersections. 204 00:21:12,630 --> 00:21:14,700 What he's talking about is different disciplines. 205 00:21:15,030 --> 00:21:24,780 That's why as much as I love MBAs, MBAs are not going to change the world unless you're working with engineers, political scientists, philosophers. 206 00:21:25,200 --> 00:21:27,389 Diversity, diversity. Diversity. 207 00:21:27,390 --> 00:21:36,660 In terms of your networks and as you build your business is incredibly important for you not to get stuck in what Dave is talking about, 208 00:21:36,660 --> 00:21:42,740 which is only validating through your own lenses and through your own networks, because that will simply not do. 209 00:21:42,750 --> 00:21:46,920 I mean, I don't know if many of you have been down to the Eden Project in Cornwall, 210 00:21:46,920 --> 00:21:54,090 but it was started by a fantastic entrepreneur named Tim Smith and he fortunately is a very good friend and often comes to Oxford. 211 00:21:54,090 --> 00:21:59,960 And when he does, I thoroughly. You will. You will. Totally fall in love with this man. 212 00:21:59,970 --> 00:22:07,860 He's one of the funniest people on the planet. And one of the things he says is, I only accept every third invitation. 213 00:22:09,070 --> 00:22:13,090 Now he gets asked to speak everywhere. He's a very popular speaker. 214 00:22:13,510 --> 00:22:17,240 Why would he say, I only accept every third invitation? 215 00:22:17,260 --> 00:22:21,700 He says his PR threatened to resign when she heard this. 216 00:22:22,700 --> 00:22:27,890 What would be the reason for that? Imagine if you only accepted every third invitation. 217 00:22:29,490 --> 00:22:33,570 The reason being, he says, if you only go to the folks you usually hang out with. 218 00:22:34,570 --> 00:22:41,990 You don't meet people that you would never meet. In other words, he said, I've met, you know, wild orchid growers and. 219 00:22:42,630 --> 00:22:47,140 And he says and they always turn out to be absolutely fascinating people that end up 220 00:22:47,140 --> 00:22:53,050 being somehow enhancing my perspective and somehow enhancing the work that we do at Eden. 221 00:22:53,970 --> 00:22:58,270 And and and why that has been so important. 222 00:22:58,630 --> 00:23:03,130 And the other thing that he says, which I will leave you with a parting thought, 223 00:23:03,130 --> 00:23:09,130 which I find I've just so often thought about this and it's kind of cruel, but it's true. 224 00:23:09,700 --> 00:23:19,960 Kill all the negative people. The times when you were building your business and you will be told it cannot be done. 225 00:23:20,260 --> 00:23:25,500 You're insane. Your own family, your own friends, your mom, your dad, everything else. 226 00:23:25,510 --> 00:23:29,500 Oh, my God. Get a normal job, for God's sakes, you know? 227 00:23:29,860 --> 00:23:34,660 I mean, you know, the weird thing is, I found myself doing the same thing, so, you know, don't. 228 00:23:35,230 --> 00:23:41,200 But I can tell you that this is one of the most difficult things for entrepreneurs. 229 00:23:41,530 --> 00:23:43,179 And when you're building your business, 230 00:23:43,180 --> 00:23:50,620 especially if you have a disruptive idea or even one that's not so disruptive, I want to go and build this business. 231 00:23:50,620 --> 00:23:58,329 They're like, Why? Why don't you go and work in an investment bank where you have a steady salary and monthly, you know, 232 00:23:58,330 --> 00:24:07,420 and vacations and you can sort of, you know, marry the woman of our dreams or hopefully yours and you know why. 233 00:24:07,780 --> 00:24:14,350 So you're going to really if you're serious about building a business, you're going to find a lot of opposition. 234 00:24:14,710 --> 00:24:17,770 So this is a paradox. Listen. 235 00:24:19,000 --> 00:24:25,240 But don't listen. Okay. And you will find a lot of people wanting to kill your idea. 236 00:24:25,630 --> 00:24:28,930 But a lot of people will start wanting to help you get a different perspective. 237 00:24:28,930 --> 00:24:32,860 So knowing when to take what is what's going to be the biggest challenge. 238 00:24:32,920 --> 00:24:33,370 Thank you.