‘People have everything they need to come up with their own projects. All we need to do is provide that platform for them to step on to build those projects.’

There are two things with which I share a strong affinity with this week’s guest. They are his ability to quickly put together a minimal viable product (known as an MVP) to test a business idea or other hypothesis, and to create businesses that serve as platforms for others to come together and collaborative create.

Alvaro Maz (@alvaromaz) has two significant projects on the go: Code for Australia, creating a mechanism for talented technologists to insert themselves into government departments to find ways of creating cultural change and innovative civic technologies; and Creative Suburbs, enabling citizens to submit their ideas for specific urban improvement projects that can then be tested through prototyping and potentially brought into being.

Code for Australia started with a conversation between Alvaro and one of his co-founders, Dan Groch (@dan_groch). Dan had learnt about Code for America and wondered if a similar concept could fly in Australia. He and Alvaro create a page in Facebook and did some other small things on social media, and not much else for about six months. They were a bit surprised when a government department contacted them looking for some people to come in a create some positive disruption. Alvaro and Dan quickly thought tried to remember what is was they did again, brought some people together, placed them in the department, and Code for Australia was born.

A typical team of Fellows, people who come through Code for Australia to work at a government department, includes a designer, developer and a community/project manager. They are talented individuals how are often being underused at the current place of employment, and want to use what they have to work on something aligned with their values and brings about positive change. They are paid a stipend, typically work for a period of about 12 months, and are given some latitude to work on an assigned problem or to uncover deeper problems to solve. A recent example of their work include the development of an on-line services for the Victorian Department of Justice to enable those who are pleading guilty to a minor offence to do so digitally without needing to go to court. Another is a tool for the NSW Department of Education which gives parents who are seeking to make a decision about a school for their kids all the information they need in one place.

Although it is great when something shiny like a new technology comes out of the end of the project, the key indicator on the success of any placement for Alvaro is the number of people within the department who were touched and impacted by the Fellows, that cultural legacy that was left, and the platform that was created.

Alvaro has another startup in the pipeline, and micro-brewing competition called Hops Aboard giving one micro-brewer the opportunity to produce commercial quantities of their particular home brewed beer. He daydreams about regularly disrupting his own life, embarking on adventures like sailing around the world to challenge his assumptions about how he lives and what he values. And he reminds us all about the benefits of being comfortable with the inevitable uncertainty of life, whether it be relationships, business or the weather.

Creative Suburbs started with Alvaro’s own musings about ways to improve the suburb where he lived. He thought that if he had ideas about improving things, others must also, and after discovering the frustrating process of community consultation decided to create a platform for citizens to submit their own ideas around specific urban projects. The idea is that some of these ideas can then be tested with a prototype, gathering key learnings in the process, and enabling those organisations with the power to implement these projects compelling information on what people want and what could work.

An example of their work is a mural painted on a expansive concrete wall on Melbourne’s Richmond Station. Citizens were invited to submit their ideas for what to paint on the wall that was historically a place for taggers to show their wares. Funding was then sourced from Metro Rail, the City of Yarra, and crowdsourced from the public, with each group providing one third of the funding. Artists were then sourced to interpret the public’s suggestions, with the result being an amazing, expansive piece of urban art that has enlivened the area.

In the pipeline is also a 27 km expanse of land winding through Melbourne’s west that is on the cards for becoming one of the world’s longest continuous urban parks.

Alvaro and I chatted at the Queen Victoria Market, Melbourne’s number one tourist destination and a place the provides a platform for makers, sellers, shoppers and tourists to come together and enjoy all that Melbourne is. Alvaro is relaxed and inspiring in his mission and ability to try new things. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

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There are two big fashion moments I remember as a kid. The first was when I was nine. I had just started at a new school, and so had another boy called Robin. During our first week we had PE class, and Robin showed up wearing the first edition of Reebok pumps. He proudly explained how they worked, and that they cost $400. I humbly existed the discussion, loving the shoes and loathing the price and my family’s economic position.

The second was when I was a bit older, perhaps 15 or 16. By this stage my family’s economic position was such that I was able to wearing some Nike clothing, fitting in with the fashion taste of most of my friends. It was also around this time that I started to become interested in social issues, with the most memorable for me at the time being that of sweatshops. It was the perfect intersection of my own clothing preferences, the protestors that bemused me, the big name athletes I adored, and the thought that there were kids my age in another part of the world that were making my clothes, in conditions I couldn’t comprehend and for less than I used to get for pocket-money.

I didn’t join the protest or change my shopping habits, and it was with relief that I started to hear that sweatshops were a resolved social issue. And that is how I stayed until my conversation a few week’s ago with this week’s guest Sigrid McCarthy.

Siggi is all about fashion to a level I never was, with a nuanced understanding I have never had. Her curiosity into fashion started at high school, wondering why it was that all the girls wanted to dress like each other. She started recording these musings in a blog, exploring why it was she was so drawn to fashion and the way we all engage with it.

Clothing is all but ubiquitous: we all use it to say something about ourselves, whether it be what we do, how much money we have, how we feel, who we identify with. We can use it to reveal truth about ourselves or to lie. We can use the process of purchasing to be an exercise in numbing our feelings or expressing them. Fashion has become a process of consumption over design or function, and even further behind are issues of ethicality about how our clothes were made.

Siggi has continue to follow her thought process to the point where she now works figuring out the answers to these questions across her two jobs. For four days a week she works at Ethical Clothing Australia, an accreditation body that maps an organisation’s entire local supply chain and marks them as an ethical provider, enabling them to use the ECA logo on their garments, shoes or fabrics.

With the remainder of her working time Siggi produces the online magazine she has founded called Intent Journal. Intent Journal continues Siggi’s quest of exploring people’s relationship with fashion, including both editorial and profiles of people involved in fashion and the slow fashion movement. This history and body of work place Siggi in a great position to talk about whether there are in fact still pressing social issues in the world of fashion, or if my convenient teenaged presumptions of them all being resolved hold true.

To put it simply, I will not be shopping in the same manner after our conversation. Here are the key issues as Siggi describes them:

• Lack of traceability: outsourcers who then outsource makes it very difficult for brands and companies to keep tabs on who ends up making their garments, and the conditions under which they do so. China, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka still have many people working in unrealistic and inhumane conditions.
• Environmental impact: the fashion industry is the second largest polluter behind oil. Enough said.
• Fast, throw-away fashion: some of the biggest clothing retailers today produce vast volumes of poorly made clothing, produced by people who are mistreated. This cheap clothing is typically worn only a handful times before being discarded, so people can purchase again and repeat the cycle.

The issues are large, and for the purchaser issues of this magnitude can too overwhelming to engage with. It becomes difficult to know where to start, or how to shop. How can one know where a particular item came from if the company making it has no idea itself?

One of the things we can do, something that the minimalist movement and people like Marie Kondo and Courtney Carver are proponents of, is to only bring items of clothing into our life that bring joy and that have a purpose. Siggi talks about brining mindfulness to our purchases: Of understanding our values and how they can be applied to our purchases; of thinking about and curating our wardrobe and purchasing for quality over cost and brand; of thinking about clothing as a long-term purchase.

Obviously we can also look to purchase clothing that has an ethical endorsement, but we can also start to ask questions of brands about their supply chain – where and how things are made. This in turn would help more brands who have good stories to tell speak out about their own positive practises, bringing the making process to the fore rather than trying to pretend it does not even exist.

It is in celebration of the relationship between purchaser and maker that brings Siggi to daydreaming about a community where makers, crafters and artisans are celebrated and appreciated, where skills are traded instead of money, where there is an appreciation for the time and effort it takes to make something.

And in regard to making a subtle change in her own life, Siggi notes how subconsciously she has become selective about who she hangs out with, people who believe in what they do, are passionate genuine people…and often people who run their own small business.

I learnt much from my conversation with Siggi, and left feeling inspired rather than guilty to be mindful in my future fashion choices. However, reflecting on the number of items of clothes I currently have, it may be some time before I need to mindfully make another purchase.

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‘There will be no shelter, no weapon, no barrier, no heaven, no lover, no religion, no treasure, or television to protect us when we’re overcome.’ (from Cam’s song during this week’s podcast)

Asking somebody what they do for a living is of course a typical question at a BBQ. Receiving an answer from that person that they don’t really enjoy what they are doing is not too out of the ordinary either. But hearing that person say that what they really want to be, what they are called to be, is a church pastor, even though they are not a Christian, certainly is quite unusual. And then to be a position where you can tell that person you are also dissatisfied with your job, and would also like to be a church pastor, is bordering on unheard of.

This is the situation Cameron Elliott, my guest for this week, and his co-founder Henry Churchill, found themselves in 18 months ago, which led them to pondering the question, ‘What is the secular equivalent of a church pastor?’

For them the answer seemed to be something like a secular counsellor: exploring what it means to be human; pulling up wisdom from within people; creating a community that met regularly; and helping and guiding that community in their exploration.

Cam had previously spent eight years researching a whole range of different religions and wisdom traditions. He was fascinated by Christianity, Judaism, Taoism, Hinduism, Shamanism, even poetry: he wanted to know more about any way of explaining and understanding the mystery. This got him thinking about what an alternative to religion would look like. He was already taking the best of each of the traditions he was studying and applying them to his own life (while discarding the bits that got in the way). What then would this look like if applied in a group setting?

Cam and Henry continue their conversation over a number of month and started shaping an idea of a weekly, secular gathering, drawing upon their conversations and learnings as well as some of the ideas outlined by Alain de Botton in his book Religion for Atheists. They came up with some principles to help guide them in this process, things like:

• non-judgement
• compassion
• interacting directly
• being open and transparent in communication, with love
• helping people feel safe
• having faith: trusting that the right people will come, and the right thing will happen, at the right time

Then in September of 2015, after 6 months of planning, the first edition of The Weekly Service was held in Cam’s living room, gathering together a few of their close friends to test out their ideas. Learning as they go and now 22 editions in, a community of regulars is forming; a community that is helping them co-design a space to explore the mystery of existence.

As it currently looks The Weekly Service starts with an acknowledgment of country, and then the topic for the week is introduced. Before delving into the topic, participants are then led through a mindfulness exercise to help them reconnect with their body. The story-teller for the week then shares on the topic they have chosen. Listeners are then given a chance to talk about what the story has meant for them, which for Cam has led to some of the most fascinating and challenging times within the service. The service then concludes with some group singing, of which Cam gives us a wonderful taste of towards the end of the podcast.

Topics covered are diverse and left up to the story-teller, and have included everything from poetry to social media, cacao to sexuality. This has often led to moments of testing the group’s ability to listen without judgement, and to respond with transparency and love. As Cam points out, everything needs to be given the opportunity to be aired, and while this can create difficult moments, they also provide the opportunity for the most awakening moments. It is difficult to judge people when the full context of a situation is known.

As somebody that grew up in a pentecostal church and in my 20’s decided there were too many things I disagreed with to remain part of it, for me there are a number of potential triggers in gatherings of this sort. Things I am particularly sensitive to are the strict bounding of discussion, the ‘us v them’ mentality, and mismanagement and misappropriation of money. Cam talks about each of these in our conversation, and they are obviously things he has thought about and is very conscious about countering. In general things that could trigger people are called out during the service (for example group singing). Specifically, discussions are unbounded at The Weekly Service; inclusivity is at the core of what they are doing; and they are actively aware and grappling with how to create a revenue model that is aligned with their values and also allows them to do more good work.

And while there were things I rejected from my own church experience, there were also many things that were good about it, like the diversity of ages and backgrounds in the community, the group singing, and the process of elders passing on their wisdom. Things that I have struggled to find anywhere else, even 15 years later. Things that seem to be part of the DNA of The Weekly Service.

Cam daydreams about one day helping everyone come to the point of accepting, being completely comfortable with, and loving themselves. He also hopes that eventually there will be gatherings of The Weekly Service in every major city around the world, providing a platform for creating content on wisdom and mystery that can be shared with a global audience.

The subtle change Cam made in his own life was to move towards the things that made him anxious and fearful instead of moving away from them. For him he found that this was the only way through his anxieties.

The song Cam sings towards the end of the podcast (some of the lyrics of which I quote at the top of this post) is about allowing ourselves to be overcome – of going with nature instead of fighting against it, and allowing the wonder that is all around us to envelope us. He talks about designing organisations that are in-line with nature’s lack of hierarchy, mimicking natures ability to give each thing multiple functions, of being efficient, of being curved and bendy instead of straight and rigid. I love these ideas, both for myself and the organisations we build to help us along our way. I think The Weekly Service is in line with this philosophy, and I hope you enjoy our conversation.

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Eric Agyeman has some excuses at his disposal. As a six year-old his family moved to New Zealand from Ghana, where he had to go to school that was teaching in a language he did not speak or even understand. His self-esteem suffered.

As an eleven year-old his family moved again, this time to the Melbourne suburb of Ringwood. This was 1997, and at the time Eric was the only kid with dark skin at his school, and frequently suffered racial abuse. His sense of personal identity took a battering.

As a fifteen year-old Eric’s dad sent him on a three-week holiday back to his homeland of Ghana. With only a one-way ticket in hand, his three-week holiday turned into a seven-year ordeal where he was once again thrust into an unfamiliar environment and language, and forced to find his own way through. His sense of belonging and family was deeply challenged.

As we recorded our conversation, sitting at the cafe at Farm Vigano in Melbourne’s outer northern suburb of South Morang, this now 29 year-old man whom I talked with had not a hint of bitterness or shoulder chip. Joy and warmth exude from within him, even as he talks about how much he suffered each time he moved country, how his identity and self-esteem were rocked, and how in 2002 he attempted suicide twice.

Coming back to Melbourne in 2010 Eric could view those seven years in Ghana as the most illuminating of his life. It was a time where he experienced and understood what poverty was; where he witness kids spending all day every day on the street as they had no schools to go to; where he wrestled with his internal demons about his own identity and worth; and where he came through the other side stronger and more aware of himself and the world around him.

And in coming back he knew he wanted to do something to help. He wanted to share with others what he had learned about identity and overcoming fears. He also wanted to find a way to support kids like those he saw in Ghana, so they could have opportunities to learn and receive an education.

It is around the central idea of helping young people overcome their daily obstacles – both in the developed and developing world – that everything Eric does hangs upon. It has given birth to three books he has written and countless speaking engagements, through which Eric conveys his story in order to help others in their quest to live out their true identity with courage, to understand and work towards their dreams, and to overcome their fears.

And it also gave birth to a social enterprise called PVBS, supporting three partner organisations in their work overseas: YGAP; Classroom of Hope; and Akaa Project. PVBS is a clothing business that originally started as an on-line retailer and has now expanded to make school leaver jackets and clothing for start-ups. Three years in and already 37 schools are using PVBS’s leaver jackets, and $25,000 has been donated back through their partner organisations, helping more than 2,000 kids receive an education in Cambodia and Ghana.

As he contemplates other disruptions he would like to one day be part of, Eric thinks about issues of housing affordability and quality in the developing world, and how he could help to improve this situation. And In regard to his own life Eric attributes his focus on books and reading as having had a profound positive impact on his life, with books like Jim C Maxwell’s Failing Forward helping him confront his own fears and starting new ventures like PVBS and book writing.

The manner in which Eric has turned his adversity into joy, and is now positively impacting kids local and abroad, is nothing less than inspiring. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Post Script

In our conversation we talk about suicide, Eric’s attempts, and his suggestions for those who are struggling in this area. Eric recommends getting in contact with the following organisations if you or somebody you know is struggling with something similar: Beyond Blue and Life Line.

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When Jarrod Briffa and his cofounders started Kinfolk Cafe in 2010, it was with the explicit purpose of enabling positive impact through business. Without any funding from external backers, Jarrod also knew that this purpose would be totally dependant upon the quality of the cafe he was creating. If people did not rate the coffee, they were not going to show-up and spend their cash at a place just because it was doing some good.

From the beginning the odds seemed to be heavily against this idea from ever seeing more than the back of a napkin. For starters, Melbourne has a high bar when it comes to cafes, and cafe patrons feel more loyal to their own taste integrity than any particular place.

Add to that Jarrod’s lack of experience in running a cafe, and no more than $10,000 to spend, how would it possible to get a viable business going, let alone one with the explicit purpose of having a positive social impact?

Six years later and Kinfolk is now in the position of having walked many of the hard yards, refining a business model that should never have worked, and growing into taking over an events business and ready to expand to another cafe. In considering this journey Jarrod reflects on the relative importance of a water-tight business model compared to a strong will and sense of belief. He realises now how unready he was when he first embarked on creating Kinfolk, but also notes that he would never have been ready, and that the fact this came from a place of authenticity and purpose meant that he was able to hang tough when the stumbling blocks came.

The cafe makes great coffee and serves a healthy range of seasonally inspired food, and for many that may be all they see and care about in their cafe of choice. But once you spend a bit of time at Kinfolk it is hard not to notice that something more is happening than just coffee and food. Customers are given a coffee bean after ordering and can choose to put it into a jar to vote for distributing the cafe’s profits to one of the projects Kinfolk support. And while distributing their profits for purpose is amazing, there are actually two further layers to the impact this social enterprise is having.

The first is what Jarrod calls conscious consumption, and this is where the 95% of revenue that doesn’t make it through to the profit margin is assessed to determine how it can best be spent. There are obviously things the business needs to buy in order to operate, but the way these things are purchased are at the discretion of Kinfolk. In this way much of what the cafe purchases also has a positive social impact (see Mark Daniels on Social Procurement).

The second layer is that of the 60 volunteers each week working in the cafe, people whom have identified their need for help, and come to the cafe looking for hospitality skills, skills in gaining employment, or simply want to make friends and become part of a community. Volunteers work in the cafe for anywhere up to 9-12 months, and through a personalised program are trained, mentored, and accepted for who they are. The backgrounds are diverse and often challenging, but at Kinfolk they find a place where they can connect and learn. While the impact of helping transform the lives of the volunteers may be harder to quantify than spending and giving away money, it is this part of Kinfolk’s impact that Jarrod finds most meaningful.

Jarrod dreams about disrupting urban composting one day. He sees the difficulty businesses (and residents) of high density areas in cities have with their organic waste. Recently working in collaboration with neighbouring Savoy Tavern to make use of their Closed-Loop composter, Jarrod wonders whether more businesses and residents could work together to put their organic waste to good use in helping create nutritious soil.

And the subtle thing Jarrod found to have a big impact on his own life was to understand his own relationship with attachment. A pivotal moment for Jarrod was being challenged about whether he would be prepared to give away all he had worked for at Kinfolk. He realised that being attached to anything could not be a positive things, and notices how he can see things for what they are, and love others for who they are, when he releases his attachment to them.

Kinfolk is located at the base of Donkey Wheel House on Bourke St in Melbourne, an amazing building filled with businesses dedicated to having a positive impact through what they do. Jarrod has a calm and assured manner – I hope you enjoy our conversation, and one day get to taste a coffee at Kinfolk.

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Suburban football clubs, the Australian variety, are an amazing microcosm of their local culture, a place that brings people together but where many of their unconscious prejudices and misgivings are given a place to camp and grow.

As my guest for this week points out, sporting clubs where historically created by their communities because they realised the important role sport could play in the character development of young people. What seems to have happened, perhaps through its commercialisation and professionalisation, is that sport is no longer about character development, but about dollars, about winning at the cost of values, and about selfish ambition. And many of the behaviours exhibited at sporting clubs, for example sexism, homophobia, racism and drug taking, actually pull in the opposite direction of character development.

Jamin Heppell grew up in country Victoria in a town called Leongatha, and played a lot of football for the local club. The football and netball clubs in country Victorian towns are the hubs of the community; the glue that brings people across the town together and unites them behind a common cause. Leongatha was no exception. Jamin was into sport his whole life, and aspired to be an elite athlete playing AFL at the highest level. And while he played sport, he also found himself drawn to leadership positions…football, school, debating. He wanted to know what it was to influence others and how to use this influence in a positive way.

A moment witnessed as a 16-year-old saw these two trajectories of sport and leadership combine in a sense of disillusion and questioning: Jamin was hanging out with his friends at a club social function when he saw a charismatic, young member of the senior team hand out ecstasy pills to four of his friends. Shocked, it made Jamin question what it was that grassroots football was really all about. He knew sport could serve a greater purpose, but he was not seeing it materialise in the club he was part of.

This played on his mind for a couple of years, and while his dream to become and AFL footballer did not come to pass, an experience as an 18-year-old lead Jamin down a different path. The YMCA Victoria put on a leadership program for 60 young leaders from around Victoria, and as School Captain Jamin was invited. For a country kid this six-day experience was a life-changing eye-opener. For the first time Jamin met people he had never before come across: a Muslim; a gay person who was open about their sexuality; a person with depression who was willing to talk about their experience. Suddenly a world of opportunity opened up, and Jamin wanted to tell everybody about it.

The response he received when trying to convey his experience to his friends back in Leongatha was not what he was hoping for. While people listened, they politely let Jamin know that it sounded like something that was great for him, but not for them. Jamin knew that more people needed what he had experience, and spent the next four years wondering and talking about how he could share this impact with more people.

Jamin identified that those who often held sway and influence at high schools where often the sporty types. He thought that if he could find a way to at least open the eyes of the Jocks to the world around them, they would in turn be able to impact those who looked up to them. He took the step of telling his mentors (Alicia Crawford, Michael Delaney, Ben Rogers) about his idea, and together they cofounded Game Changers Australia: an organisation that works with sporting clubs to build leadership and character development skills.

Game Changers currently has three offerings:

1. Captains Camp: 15-17 young leaders of sporting clubs, taking them through a 4-month leadership development program
2. Rising Stars: Taking the leaders of the senior teams of a club, teaching them facilitation skills, and then co-facilitating with them a two-day rite of passage program (as developed by Arne Rubenstein) for the junior members of the club
3. Senior Player Development: combining strength and conditioning training with personal development

While Game Changers is doing amazing work at transforming young people and creating a culture that once again makes sporting clubs a place for character development, Jamin is also involved in two other social enterprises that are having a great impact:

1. Headquarters: Running a program call The Man Cave, creating a space for school aged boys to be in a space that holds them in their vulnerabilities and insecurities. Jamin works with Benson Saulo, Hunter Johnson as cofounders in this business.
2. Healthy Communities Australia: Group fitness for parents of primary school kids, hosted by the primary school they attend. Jamin cofounder this social enterprise with Rhianwen Seiter.

Jamin has emerging leader written all over him, and of course is a leader already. I admire his strength of character, willingness to speak-up, and ability to reveal all aspect of himself in a disarming way. His social enterprises are fascinating in how they are using existing institutions already embedded in our way of life, and through them are drawing out new and life-affirming behaviours. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

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‘When I tell people I am a blogger, I still get asked if that is a real job.’

Back in 2008, when the web was 2.0, there was quite a bit of controversy about earning a living from blogging. Trailblazers like Darren Rowse had been doing so for some time by then, but there was still a sense of unease about it.

It was around this time that Nicole Avery started thinking about writing her own blog. She had been out of the paid workforce for about 8 years while she focused on bringing up the first four of her five children, and she started to think about how she might get back into working and what that might look like. There was a financial necessity in this, and also a need for expression and contribution. During these 8 years Nicole had started reading different people’s blogs and a thought grew inside about giving it a go herself.

Six months into it Nicole had found something that she loved writing about, allowing her to combine her corporate life project management skills along with what she had learnt about optimising her family life and bringing up her children. Another 12 months went by and her passion had not waned, and she decided that  if she was going to be spending as much time as she was doing this, it made sense that she learnt how to earn a living from it as well. Planning with Kids was born, and Nicole had re-entered the paid workforce in a way that both tapped into her skills, and gave her the flexibility she needed to raise her family the way she wanted.

Nicole’s blog is about exactly what it claims to be about: the benefits you can reap from spending time planning your family life, no matter what your particular circumstances are. She covers topics like how to ritualise the mundane, menu planning, morning routines, and finding time for yourself as a parent. She has found in her own life, and has received feedback from her readers, that in planning and putting in some structure it actually creates time and space for being, for creativity, and for non-busy time together as a family.

Her approach in doing this is not one of preaching and telling, but rather to suggest options and talk about what she has tried on herself and the results she found. In a world of sunny, smiley Instagram posts, Nicole tries to normalise family life through talking about her good and bad days, taking readers with her on her own journey, and offering suggestions for small changes that can make a big difference.

It may come as no surprise that the thing Nicole would one day like to disrupt is the manner in which women return to the workforce after having kids. Having found a great way to combine family life, personal expression, and earning a living for herself, she see the huge potential in this area for other parents. There is so much untapped creativity and talent that exists simply because many parents, mothers in particular, cannot find a way to return to work that releases all they have to offer and provides the flexibility that allows them to simplify the juggling act they are trying to manage.

And for those who are starting out blogging, or starting any new venture, Nicole’s suggestions are to:

• give yourself a simple but important goal
• create habits that will see you through when motivation is inevitably depleted
• put yourself out there, even in a small way, even if it is to impact one person.

In reflecting upon her own journey Nicole recalls the influence that many individuals had on her own. She reminds us that impacting the life of even just one person is so important, and can have far-reaching, often unknown, ripple effects.

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Discussing how we can make workplaces good for our whole person is one of my favourite topics. From the environment we work in, the design and how we move through the space, to the meaning we attach to the work we are doing, I think the workplace will be one of the biggest scenes of positive disruption over the next 10 years.

My guest today is one of Australia’s experts in creating a vibrant community and culture within workplaces. Melina Chan is on the leadership team of Inspire9, the original coworking space of Melbourne located within the inner-city suburb of Richmond. There is a wave of coworking spaces hitting cities around the world, and the things that make coworking so successful and attractive are now being sort after by groups as diverse as local councils and consulting firms.

Inspire9 grew organically and incrementally from a group of people who initially enjoyed hanging out together to discuss work, which led them to them seeing that there could be a great deal of value realised in starting a collaborative workplace and being intentional in the way they worked together. Organically growing from these simple origins, the original residents bonded over sanding floors and clearing rubbish away from the space they call home today. Now with more than 170 residents, Inspire9 supports a broad range of businesses from established startups to those who are making their first tentative steps.

Inspire9 is located on two of the floors of the beautiful and historical Australian Knitting Mills building. On level 3, Foundry9 is a space for larger startups that have received their first round of seed funding and are rapidly accelerating. Current residents include Etsy, Eventbrite, Tablo, Culture Amp, and WeTeachMe. On level 1, the original location of Inspire9, is the space for smaller teams, bootstrapping startups, solopreneurs, freelancers, and casual drop-in residents. Despite the diversity and success it has achieved, this is a coworking space that has managed to retain its community-led values and strong collaborative vibe. Testament to this is that despite the difficult and complex nature of coworking business models, Inspire9 has never had to spend a cent on online advertising or marketing.

Melina talks about how the culture of Inspire9 is nurtured, through this like:
– ensuring that wins by resident businesses are noted and celebrated
– thinking of individuals as whole people rather than just clients
– implementing rituals such as birthday cakes, potluck dinners and Friday night drinks
– and even having a wall to ‘celebrate’ those times when people have given something a go and it hasn’t quite come off.

Melina has been integral to the formation and growth of Inspire9. She gained many of her skills in social enterprise, culture and learning-through-doing from her time in Cambodia. It was here that she saw firsthand the trouble donor-led models had in sustainably bringing about change in developing countries, and started to seek out alternative business models. Through a series of business experiments she landed upon and founded three businesses that have had an amazing local impact as social enterprises:
– Soksabike: providing sustainable, educational bicycle tours of the Cambodian countryside;
– Kinyei Cafe: a coffee shop, coworking space, and peer-to-peer education space; and
– Sammaki: a community art gallery and studio.

It is these key learnings of building slowly in the beginning to ensure community buy-in and a strong foundation, and of learning through doing that have been a big part of making Inspire9 the unique place it is today.

Some of the big trends in workplaces at the moment are about people looking for more flexibility, people with passion projects and side hustles, people looking for meaning in their work, and people looking for a place that cares for them as a whole person. Inspire9’s key success indicators reflect this growing trend:
– Resident, personal, and professional transformation;
– Business sustainability; and
– Community connection, to both residents within Inspire9 and the broader ecosystem of startups and innovators.

The areas of collaborative consumption and high-density urban living are areas that Melina would love to be part of disrupting one day. And at the end of our conversation Melina sets a task for those of us wanting to become subtle disruptors. She suggests taking 30 minutes to reflect on the activities of our life, noting those we are doing because of inertia, and those we are doing because we choose to.

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“Who would I be without the thought, ‘I’m not good enough’?”

How many things do we every day because of this feeling: that we are not good enough? The type and frequency of the food we eat; the clothes we buy; the decisions we make about work; the decisions we make at work; and the comments we leave with those we love most.

In most cases I would say we are not even aware of the effect this feeling has on our actions, and it certainly is not changed simply by a factor of how much we have achieved, or what people think of us.

This week’s guest, Emeli Paulo, is a case in point. After making a complete about-face in her life’s direction – including being personally mentored by AFL legend Jim Stynes and significantly impacting the lives of more than 300,000 young Australians through her leadership of The Reach Foundation – she was still left with a deep sense that she was not enough.

Enter the thrash, a period we are all faced with at some point in our lives. We can choose whether to enter into this period or not. Entering, as Emeli puts it, means walking into that big dark cave we have known about for a long time, but been afraid to look into; to do the work that nobody else can do for us. But when we do enter and do the work, the riches we find there are abundant. It is ‘The Ordeal’ of the Hero’s Journey. That moment we confront our greatest fear.

For Emeli this meant an extended period wrestling within herself in Byron Bay, and of trying on a whole lot of ideas for size to discover those that fit her best. What spun out of this time in the dark cave was an Emeli that did believe she was good enough, and the person who now shows up as the same authentic person regardless of whether it is a staff meeting with colleagues, a workshop with clients, a dinner with friends, or a podcast with a stranger. Saying it just how it really is with her in that moment, both the pleasant and unpleasant.

And now, spinning out of this authentic and aligned person is an organisation called Collective Potential, created with the purpose of awakening the potential of people in Australia, equipping them with the community, support and skills to be similarly authentic and aligned in their living.

Collective Potential aims to significantly impact the lives of 2 million Australians over the next year, through mixture of retreats, workshops, coaching and meet-ups. Using a pay-it-forward business model, this social enterprise empowers those they directly influence to then go on and influence others. They equip people them with the skills and awareness they need to work out for themselves where to influence, and how to go about implementing that influence.

Emeli’s openness and wholeheartedness is contagious and inspiring. She lives her values to the core, and Melbourne is already starting to feel the effects and reap the benefits of her decision to back herself and lean into her uncertainty.

When I ask Emeli what she imagined disrupting one day, she said it was the ease and unconsciousness with which GPs handout anti-depressants . What if GPs went through a different checklist before prescribing medication? Something like prompting people to try meditating and alternative medicines, to find a tribe of people where they can listen and be listened to, and to educate themselves about personal development. Emeli points out that there are people who need medication, but there are many who could find a different path to wellbeing, without the side effects of anti-depressants.

And not surprisingly, Emeli’s suggestion for those wanting to progress upon a similar path to her is to practise self-love.

I hope you enjoy this conversation with the inspirational and real, Emeli Paulo.

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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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