It is easy to feel overwhelmed by all that this week’s guest has achieved in a very short amount of time, so I want to start this post by talking about the key takeaway from my time with Al Jeffery. It comes right at the end of our conversation when I ask him for a suggestion on becoming a subtle disruptor, and his answer is to simply take time out for yourself.

This is something we are probably accustomed to hearing from many sources, but it seems like a common foundation upon which people – who are doing aligned work – are building. In a world that is hyper-stimulated, and is always looking for a way to create a bigger blockbuster, a louder concert, and a more colourful firework, taking time to still yourself and remove all stimulation is good for your physical health, mental health, nervous system, your ability to make conscious decisions, your ability to learn about what has happened to you, and your ability to be honest with yourself and how you feel about something. The simple act of meditating or journaling on a regular basis can incrementally move you in a life changing direction.

For Al, it was a World Vision ad that first triggered him to start asking the big questions about the nature of existence. What is the crux of all that is happening on our planet today? What are the underlying patterns and systems? And if he was able to understand that, how could he best influence it? Is it with money, fame, celebrity, business?

Settling on business as the most aligned fit for him, Al started his first at the age of 12, a clothing business that soon meant he was having to excuse himself from school classes in order to take business calls. In running this clothing business Al became aware of just how many children are involved in child labor in the world – over 250 million. In pondering this thought, and realising that this was more than ten times Australia’s population, Al decided to start a campaign to improve in the lives of child labourers. One World Summit was the result of this pondering, and in its first incarnation was a way of recruiting volunteers for this cause. This quickly pivoted into two-day experiences held in Melbourne and five other cities around the world, with the new purpose of ‘connecting visionaries, creatives, entrepreneurs and action takers, to catalyse community and collaborative personal and social change’.

In 2016, thanks to the support of Startup Grind, One World Summit will be held in 15 cities around the world to connect and inspire these world changes.

It was around the time of starting One World Summit that Al started getting into the festival scene (like Rainbow Serpent and Burning Man), which he loved but which also got him questioning the sustained effectiveness of summit experiences like festivals and conferences. Al observed that the natural high and altered state that people experienced at these events was jarred when they returned to their homes, work places, and local neighbourhoods. He asked himself, is there a way that the kind of community and transformation people experienced at these short-term events could be replicated in a space that facilities this in an ongoing way?

Around about that time Al got to experience a six-month live-in transformation experience at Watson University aimed at incubating people (as opposed to incubating startups). Living in  close proximity with ten people, in such an intentional way, and with such profound results, got Al thinking about how this experience could be brought to cities around the world.

The outflowing of this thinking is Al’s latest venture, Base. A consciously curated place for residents to share a living space and living experience designed to connect them, enable them to authentically express and create, and to help them find their avenue of service. Base is a Melbourne coliving experiment commencing this year. The community is already being curated, and one of Al’s hopes for the space is that it will help people peel away the layers they have built up around their true selves, with a the mirror of a safe community of people to assist them.

Springing up in paces like San Francisco and Denmark and with influences from the Hacker House movement, coliving is an emerging trend around the world that has many benefits: social, through countering disconnection; environmental, through sharing resources; and economic, through lowering the cost of housing. Al hopes that one of the outcomes of the first Base experiment is an open sharing of what they have learnt, including a best practice coliving blueprint for property developers around the world.

There are two potential complimentary business models for Base: the first is to create a chain of coliving spaces in cities around the world, serving an emerging nomadic generation that wants to know they can travel anywhere and stay in a place where they connect with a tribe of value-aligned people, in a design-aligned space. The second business model is that of an investment fund growing the business ideas that will inevitably occur between the residents of the space. Leveraging a similar approach to the Global Enterprise Summit where people from diverse fields gather to interact to see what unimaginable business ideas they can imagine together, and where people like the founders of Airbnb met, Base will create a fertile field where amazing ideas can germinate and grow.

One of the things that struck me most about Al during this chat is his sense of himself, and his ability to live a life aligned with his awareness of himself, and his awareness of the nature of the universe around him.

Fittingly the location Al chose for our conversation was one of Melbourne’s social enterprise success stories, and hopefully the topic of a future episode. Founded by Simon Griffiths (who also started Who Gives a Crap toilet paper social enterprise), Shebeen cafe is a bar and venue which gives all of its profits back to development projects in the country of origin of the products it sells.

In the future Al dreams about disrupting money as our main means of exchanging value, using the ideas of quantum accounting and the seven types of capital outlined in the book Small Money by Woody Tasch.

One final takeaway from Al, who only lasted three weeks and uni, but was also the only person under 20 on Anthill’s 2013 30Under30 list, is about our brain’s automatic success mechanisms (as outlined in Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz):

If we give our brain a very clear and succinct goal that comes from inquiry over desire, and then get out-of-the-way and allow our subconscious’ internal success mechanisms to play their role, then we are bound to achieve that goal.

I hope listening to Al inspires you to internally inquire for succinct goals that will lead you to subtly disrupt.

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What is your safety parachute, and how is it stopping you from doing and living the way you want to live?

For me it was my salaried consulting job, which I used as a parachute even when I was on a leave of absence and not even earning a salary. It wasn’t until I summoned the courage to resign that I had room to consider the other options available to me.

For Jo Le her parachute was something much harder to part with, and much more confronting to her friends and family. So much so that she barely told a soul about it, including myself until this podcast even though we had know each other well for over 15 years.

Jo started her career at the not-for-profit World Vision, ran a serviced office/coworking space along the way, and worked for the boutique stationery design company kiki.K. For many these do not sound like the type of jobs where you are sell-our or not following your passion. But for Jo there was something not quite right with them for her. Each was good in its own way, and she learnt much through each, but each was also very safe in their own way as well.

It was at the Journeyman Cafe in Prahran, Melbourne (also the location for our conversation) that Jo decided to be brave, to listen and trust the voice inside her that was calling her towards something more. Back then it was called Dukes Coffee Roasters, and while Jo spent many a morning sipping a latte and intending to contemplate business strategy for her current job, she found herself drifting in her thoughts to what she would love to be doing if she was doing her own thing. Through journaling and doodling and pondering, Jo had many a tough conversation with herself about what it truely was she wanted to do with her life, and what was stopping her from doing it.

After discarding her parachute, she finally too the plunge, resigning from her job without any immediate source of income, and starting her own design and customer experience business: The Visualary.

As Jo reflects on where this decision has led her today, and where it could lead to from here, she looks at how seamlessly to dots seem to be joined in retrospect, linked by the commonality of following her curiosity and a joy of pondering and solving puzzles.

Jo now enjoys applying her design and customer experience skills to a variety of projects, including photoshoots, events, interior design, personal branding, and is now excited about how they may be applied to her growing interest in tech startups.

Jo talks about her dream to disrupt motivation, finances and spirituality. She leaves those who are wanting to embark upon a similar path of disrupting their own life to live out their courage with some easy and practical tops on how to take small steps in this direction. Along the way we discuss gap years, Stefan Sagmeister, wellbeing, deprogramming and uneducating ourselves.

Jo is a beautiful person with an amazing positive perspective and open heart. I hope you are as encouraged and inspired by her journey as I am.

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This podcast is one of conversations with Subtle Disruptors, for those who are, or aspire to be, Subtle Disruptors. Before I begin these conversation I wanted to explain my thoughts on what a Subtle Disruptor is, and how one can move themselves in the direction of becoming one.

A Subtle Disruptor is somebody who is doing something purposeful and meaningful in the world, in a way that is under the radar. They are having an influence, but their influence is probably not a loud influence. Rather it is clever and quiet and self-assured. It is these people whom I want to meet; whom I want to promote through this podcast; and whom I want to encourage through making available these stories.

I am on my own journey of becoming a Subtle Disruptor, and in this episode I share my own thoughts on how to move in the direction of subtle disruption.

Step 1: Learn to listen to yourself.

The first step in becoming a Subtle Disruptor is to remove the things we use to distract ourselves from what we are feeling in our bodies, and from the hunches that we have about ourselves. It is about stopping and listening to that voice deep inside us. I think we can all uncover who we are and what we need and what we want, if we are willing to stop for long enough to allow the noise to drop away.

For me, learning to listen to myself meant to still myself by starting a meditate practise, and to give myself the headspace to think of new possibilities by resigning from my job.

Step 2: Find others who will accept you as you are.

The second part of giving that voice inside you some space to grow is to find a group of people who will allow you to talk and speak and experiment as you start to play with what you want and need.

I found this in a group called The Good Life project, people who allowed me to thrash and deprogram without judging me and without rushing me. They saw me, they allowed themselves to be seen, and in turn this allowed me to finally start to see myself.

Step 3: Build your own courage to follow your internal voice.

Stopping to listen and finding a supportive group is important; the next step is where we begin to act upon what we have started to hear within ourselves. The action that we take does not need to be massive or difficult. In can be a small step to begin with, something like writing a blog for yourself; talking with a person we respect; meditating each morning for 10 mins; expressing an idea we have been nurturing with somebody we trust.

My first small steps were to ask for a leave of absence from my job, to start listening to guided meditations each night as I fell asleep, and to talk more openly with my closest friends about what I wanted and what I felt.

Step 4: Start where you are right now.

Where does your curiosity lie? What is something you enjoy thinking about, that feels like an indulgent pleasure to ponder?

I began to realise that I enjoyed thinking about breath mints and new ways of selling them; about creating an awesome place to work; and about have conversations with people who were doing work that fascinated and inspired me. I started to play with these ideas, at first in my head, and then with a small group of trusted friends. I Googled; I visited places that I though were associated with these ideas, and I allowed the ideas to lead me where they needed to go.

Pick one of the things you are curious about and start to experiment with it. Talk to people about it. Go for long walks and ponder it. Scribble on butcher’s paper. In whatever way that feels right, start to explore and nurture the idea. It is most likely that what you start playing with is not going to be what you end up doing. What is important is the process of starting, of being curious, and then following the trail of curiosities that leads from that starting place.

Step 5: Take care of yourself.

Sleep. Eat. Meditate. Create authentic connections with a tribe of like-valued people.

It took me quite a while to find my tribe, so while I was looking for them I focused on taking very good care of myself: learning about my own sleep patterns and being comfortable with needing at least 8 hours of sleep per night; becoming aware of the food that gave me sustained energy; and developing a practise of meditation. But there were a lot of lonely nights where I wondered if there was a group of people I could connect with in my own city.

I eventually found them by attending a couple of events I somehow heard about, which cascaded into a stream of events happening within my city.

Step 6: But what if it takes too long?

If it took 10 years instead of 1 year to reach a place where you were working on something that was aligned with who you are, that was having a positive impact on those around you, would you be disappointed?

Partway through my own journey, it does seem to be taking longer than I would have liked to be at the place I feel I am moving towards. When I eventually reach there, I don’t think I will be disappointed with how long it took to get there. I think I will be grateful that I got there at all.

These are my thoughts on how to start positively disrupting your own life, of those around you, and of the culture within which you live. All in a way that is aligned with your own internal nature, and the nature of the world around us.

I hope you enjoy listening to my conversations with those who are also on this journey, and hearing their thoughts on their own subtle disruption.

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I attended a workshop last year where I learnt about the elements that go into creating a space where people can access their best thinking. It is a framework called The Thinking Environment, created by Nancy Kline based on 40 years of research. I was moved by how quickly I connected with each of the participants of the workshop, simply by allowing them to access their best thinking and in the process gaining an insight into them I would never have had.

I wondered if this was one of those workshop moments where it works so well in the curated setting of a facilitated gathering, or if it could be translated back to my everyday interactions. To my surprise and delight it translated directly, and over the subsequent months, I have applied many of the ideas of The Thinking Environment to my workplace interactions with startling outcomes. The buzz during these meetings and the feedback I have received afterwards are like nothing I have regularly experienced before.

The facilitator of that workshop was Candice Smith, somebody who embodies what it means to connect deeply with others and allow them to do their best thinking. I was humbled and impressed by the presence and wisdom she brought to the process. I wanted to know more about her story and how we can all improve the quality of our thinking. We had an excellent conversation about these, and other, things during this episode.

If you do enjoy listening to Candice, you may also enjoy listening to Lina Patel on listening to herself, Marsha Gorodilova on calming an over-excited mind, or Matt Wicking on cultivating an awareness of ourselves and our context.

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