The FutureSeeds Podcast

This episode is part of a series on purpose. 
In episode 28 we will be exploring a specific angle, the question of purpose through the business lens.
 My guest for this episode is Phil Preston. Phil used to work in the finance world, more specifically he was in the investment realm, overseeing 50 Billion dollars of global investments. But in 2007, he starting asking himself “Why am I doing this?”. This question lead him to build his current business two years later, in 2009, where he now a speaker a facilitator and a consultant, whose mission is to bring more purpose to the business world. We exchange on how businesses can embed purpose into their values, whether it is through their mission statement, their KPIs, or their culture, and generally what it takes to have a whole company following a purpose that is not simply “making money” but also having a cause, how to get the business to commit to that decision, and what are the challenges and rewards that such a business faces along the way.

The Great Unravelling has started and will be part of our story for the rest of our life. It is an ineluctable dismantling of the fabric of life as we know it, leading to rapid and at times violent, changes to human societies. It is the result of humans pushing the boundaries of our planet beyond sustainable levels, leading among others to climate change, but also rapid loss of biodiversity, pressure on freshwater, and more. We are currently going through an acceleration of the Great Unravelling due to the confluence of the environmental crises with other crises. While the 2020-2030 decade will be affected by disasters of unprecedented scale, it will also be the decade of unprecedented societal transformation as a way to adapt to these. In Australia, there has been an enormous wave of community activities that have sprung since the Black Summer bushfire season and Covid-19. The confluence of crises have led to a realisation that we can’t continue living the way we do. Mindfulness, resilience and regeneration are emerging as key ways to navigate the Great Unravelling. There is a thirst for social and environmental connection and as a result an innumerable amount of grassroots community initiatives are springing.

About Dr Jean S. Renouf

Jean is an academic at Southern Cross University, a firefighter and a dad. Prior to this, Jean spent years implementing emergency relief projects in disaster zones and countries at war, including Afghanistan, Congo, Haiti, Iraq, North Korea, etc. All of this informs his passion for climate change, community regeneration & resilience and non-traditional security, and led him to found Resilient Byron.

Episode 25 was recorded live on stage during the first FutureSeeds event, on May 26th 2021.

Mara Bun is a true legend. She has been a non-executive director of Australian Ethical for the past five years. She was the founding CEO of Green Cross Australia, an organisation set up in 1993 by Mikhail Gorbachev to create a new approach to solving the world’s most pressing environmental challenges. In early 2018 it was also announced that she will become the first female President of the Australian Conservation Foundation.


Previously, Mara has worked for The Wilderness Society, Greenpeace Australia, CHOICE, the CSIRO and a number of financial organisations, including Macquarie Bank, Morgan Stanley, and as a director of Allen Consulting Group. Mara has also worked for The World Bank on an earthquake reconstruction project in Nepal. She was a Director on the Board of Bush Heritage Australia for ten years and a member of the NSW Sustainable Energy Development Authority Advisory Council for six years. Mara studied economics and political studies at Williams College, Massachusetts.

Video version available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGK7m3RBQeE&t=4s

Episode 24 is the second part of my interview with Donnie Maclurcan. In episode 23, we explored the roots of capitalism, its pros and cons, how money is created, what’s missing in economic models, and the problem that arises with too much privatization of wealth. Episode 24 focuses on the shift from a world ran by private individual for-profit businesses, to a world lead by non-for-profits organizations, and how this movement is already taking place worldwide. We also describe the believes and fear that make people hold on to misleading capitalist values, and how to discuss the benefits of shifting our economic system with a defender of modern liberal capitalism.

Donnie is an Affiliate Professor of Economics at Southern Oregon University and an Executive Director of the Post Growth Institute - an international organization exploring how people, companies and nature can thrive together, within ecological limits. He's taught at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, in Sydney, and at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, in Bristish Columbia

In this episode, I interview Shadé Zahrai. Shadé is a coach, entrepreneur, keynote speaker and mindset expert. She has the most impressive portfolio: Telstra Women’s Business Award, New York Times, Yahoo Finance, Forbes, Adriana Huffington’s Thrive Global, Westpac, and TED and TEDx presenter. In the previous episode, we explored the PERMA Model, a model for happiness designed by Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology, and we also spoke about the five inner critics that hold us back and keep us from thriving. In this episode, Shadé gives her antidote to the inner critics, how to consciously break vicious mental cycles and change our thoughts. We also discuss many other topics such as compassion, fear, purpose and meaning, money and work-life balance.

About the speaker

Shadé Zahrai is recognised for her superhuman ability to translate neuroscience and psychology research into practical, actionable strategies to accelerate success. As Principal and Director of her positive-leadership company, Influenceo Global Inc., she consults, trains and coaches leaders and teams from startups to Fortune-500s, breathing life into organisational culture to enhance change-readiness for transformation, increase engagement, support the development of people-centric strategies and boost commercial performance.

In this episode I interview Shadé Zahrai. Shade is a former lawyer but she also holds a Bachelor in Psychology, a Diploma in positive psychology and has also trained to be a leadership coach. The list of her mentions and achievements is really impressive, just to name of few: she was twice a finalist for the Telstra Women in Business awards, she is a TED and TEDx presenter and she was featured in The New York Times, Yahoo Finance, Forbes, Adriana Huffington's Thrive Global, Vice, the Daily Mail, and many more. What the Internet says of her is that she has supernatural abilities to translate neuroscience and psychology research into practical, actionable strategies to accelerate success.
As such, in this episode, Shade and I explore the positive psychology model for Happiness, namely the PERMA Model, and then go through the different voices, the different inner critics that haunt us and often keep us from thriving.

In this episode, I interview Dorset Campbell-Ross. Dorset is a counsellor, certified in non-violent communication. He is also an NLP Master Practitioner and Hypnotherapist, codependency lecturer, seminar leader, and mediator. He has conducted business and personal relationship trainings all around the world, and has mediated between groups of people in conflict in Ireland, Indonesia and Australia.
In episode 19 we explored the four steps of NVC, namely observation, feelings, needs and requests. Episode 20 is more of a role-play in which Dorset shows us with examples the way he would approach difficult conversations in different contexts: in a workplace, in a relationship and with a friend. He also gives valuable tips on written communication (emails and text messages), and sends a beautiful message to the world at the end of this interview, embedded with a deep desire for peace.

In this episode, I interview Dorset Campbell-Ross. Dorset is a counsellor certified in non-violent communication. He is also an NLP Master Practitioner and Hypnotherapist, codependency lecturer, seminar leader, and mediator. He has conducted business and personal relationship trainings all around the world, and has mediated between groups of people in conflict in Ireland, Indonesia and Australia.
In this conversation we explore the deep meaning of non-violence and the four steps of NVC, namely observation, feelings, needs and requests. We also explain how one expresses himself honestly, the importance of our choice of words, and the purpose of healthy communication.

My speaker for this episode is Susan Barnes. Susan has an amazing story. In the first part of her life, she was the controller of a hedge fund, before becoming a meditation teacher, personal growth facilitator and artist. In episode 17, we discussed meditation in relation to work and purpose. And in this episode, we discuss the impact meditation can have on our mental health, communication, relationships, and even its potential in healing our civilization. We discuss deep listening versus needing to be right, the imbalance of feminine and masculine in decision-making roles, and the link between love and meditation. I invite you to listen to this conversation until the end as I always find my speakers’ message to the world to be the most beautiful part of my interviews.

In this episode, I interview Maximo Bottaro. Maximo is the co-founder of ReForest Now, an NGO whose purpose is to grow and plant trees, and educate people about biodiversity and forests. Maximo’s knowledge of ecology is impressive. After studying science degrees and genetic research in rainforests, working for Greenpeace, Rainforest Rescue and Rainforest Trust, he’s decided to start his own enterprise, uninhibited. You will learn in this episode how the decrease in rainfall, the loss of biodiversity, the bushfires and climate change are all related, how planting trees can greatly help with all of these problems, and how rainforests play an important role in making it rain and distributing the water all around the planet.

About Reforest Now:
Reforest Now has a partnership with the search engine Ecosia, employs 16 staff members, and has donors in 40 countries.
https://www.reforestnow.org.au

In this episode, I interview Maximo Bottaro. Maximo is the co-founder of ReForest Now, an NGO whose purpose is to grow and plant trees, and educate people about biodiversity and forests. Maximo’s knowledge of ecology is impressive. After studying science degrees and genetic research in rainforests, working for Greenpeace, Rainforest Rescue and Rainforest Trust, he’s decided to start his own enterprise, uninhibited. You will learn in this episode how the decrease in rainfall, the loss of biodiversity, the bushfires and climate change are all related, how planting trees can greatly help with all of these problems, and how rainforests play an important role in making it rain and distributing the water all around the planet.

About Reforest Now:
Reforest Now has a partnership with the search engine Ecosia, employs 16 staff members, and has donors in 40 countries.
https://www.reforestnow.org.au

In this episode, I interview Kamea Chayne, the host of the GreenDreamer podcast. Kamea is an eco-activist, author and podcaster who’s released no less than 260 episodes since May 2018. Greendreamer is the closest thing I have found to FutureSeeds. The topics she explores range from climate balance, circular economy, and social justice, all the way to conscious lifestyle, holistic wellness and self-growth. Through her interviews, Kamea has accumulated tons of knowledge. In this conversation, her and I discuss the roots of our systemic issues and the waves of change taking place in the world at the moment.

Tessa MacKenzie is the person whom communities call when they are broken. Tessa has facilitated social development, and worked as a researcher, networker and inspirational collaborator for agencies, communities and individuals for over twenty years, and across NGO, social and corporate sectors in New Zealand, Australia, USA, Mexico and England.

In this episode, I interview Michael H Shuman, an American economist, attorney, author, and entrepreneur, and a leading visionary on community economics. He is a Senior Researcher for Council Fire and Local Analytics, where he performs economic-development analyses for states, local governments, and businesses around North America. Michael has authored ten books and his book The Small Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competition, received a bronze prize for best business book of 2006.

In this episode, Michael and I explore what "local economy" means, why it is important, how the system is skewed to profit big corporations and how we can make better choices for ourselves for the world.

In this episode, I interview Santiago Siri. Santiago is an impressive man. He is primarily a programmer and has great skills in the blockchain technology. However, he is also an activist. In his country, Argentina, he founded a political party and got local leaders to promise to follow the people's will if he created an internet-based platform for people to vote, which he did. As exciting as it was, he was presented with terrible surprises, including a request for him to bribe a judge $100.000 in order to be able to present himself as a candidate. His experience in Buenos Aires led him to the conclusion that nation-states are too corrupt to be fixed.

When institutions are too corrupt, what can we do?

Santiago didn't give up. He co-founded Democracy Earth, an NGO whose purpose is the research of creating censorship-resistant digital democracies. I’ll let you listen to the incredible political and technological genius he and his team are showing. If you are not skilled in IT yourself, don’t panic, I tried to keep this conversation as comprehensible as possible for the non-technical ear.

I believe it is important for people to listen to this, as there is a technological revolution taking place that many are unaware of.

In this interview, I try to discuss in layman terms the amazing and cutting-edge research that is being led at Democracy Earth, right at the crossroads of technology, politics, and finance.

How is it that some feel a compulsion to do something grand - to “have an impact” as the modern vocabulary puts it - while some others do not? I get to ask Caroline Myss this question, and her answer is at least thought-provoking if not brilliant. It got me captivated and brought together many pieces of the puzzle that I originally found incompatible. I invite you to listen to this short interaction I had with Caroline and her very particular way of perceiving personal growth.

Caroline is an American mystic and 5-times best-selling author in the esoteric literature. Her book Anatomy of the Spirit, a New-Work Times bestseller, has been published in 28 languages and has sold over 1.5 million copies. Her third book, "Why people don't heal and how they can", became another New York Times bestseller. Her book "Sacred Contracts" – a book on symbols, myths and archetypes - became her third New York Times bestseller. It is published in 18 languages and has sold over 1.6 million copies. Oprah Winfrey gave Caroline her own television program with the OXYGEN network in New York City, which ran successfully for one year. Finally, in 2004 and again in 2007, Caroline followed with two more New York Times bestsellers, "Invisible Acts of Power" and "Entering the Castle".