BRANDON STOVER - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder of Seventh Generation
Ben Nelson is an education revolutionary who is going head to head with the ivy leagues to lead the transformation of global higher education for 21st century students. Enrolling it's first students in 2014, this innovative university has a 1.2 acceptance rate, tens of thousands of applicants from over 180 countries, and currently serves about 630 students across 7 major cities around the globe including San Francisco, London, and Taipei. While many have speculated how to reform higher ed, this entrepreneur has actually created a program using effective pedagogy, technology, and immersive experiences to equip a diverse group of students with the cognitive tools they need to succeed in the world after graduation for less than a ⅓ of the cost at an Ivy League university.
He is also a former Fortune 500 executive with companies such as John Deere, Medtronic, and Buffalo Wild Wings where he was responsible for launching some the most impactful talent & leadership programs these companies have ever had including a global training of 120,000 personnel in 60 countries across 4 strategic business units.
Chip Overstreet has an extraordinary executive career being the CEO of 3 startups, raised over $40 million in venture capital, and has a combined 25 years of experience in the high tech B2B software sector as a marketing and business development executive with an expertise in B2B eCommerce, marketing, business development and helping early-stage companies grow. This growth driven exec has no plans of slowing down as he has now become the President and CEO of the #1 fastest growing spice company in the world recognized by the Inc. 5000 List. Spokane-based, Spiceology, has gone from a Startup Weekend-winning idea in 2012 to a $5.5 million-a-year rocketship inside the spice industry.
Job Titles:
- Founder of Farm Girl Flowers
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder of Unbound Merino
Job Titles:
- Founder & CEO of Plastic Bank
David Katz is the founder & CEO of Plastic Bank. David is recognized as on The World's Top 100 Compassionate Business Leaders as number 4 between Dr. Muhammad Yunus and Elon Musk. Being a steward of the earth and a champion for the poor, he is the founder of Plastic bank, a social enterprise committed to stopping ocean plastic by turning plastic into gold with store chains in the poorest parts of the world that accepts plastic waste as a currency. Celebrating their 7th anniversary, the organization has collected 11,000,000 kg of plastic registered over 19,000 members, & opened over 300 branches in 5 of the poorest countries in the world and projected to reach annual revenue of 65 million.
Believing that the journey is the destination, this entrepreneur went from pursuing Armani suits to freeing others from poverty. What is truly extraordinary is not the millions of kilos of plastic collected, but the thousands of the world's most impoverished individuals who he's provided entrepreneurial experience & the opportunity to make a living through plastic collection.
A serial entrepreneur himself, he has founded multiple organizations including The Core Values Institute and a successful exit of Nero Global which provided GPS tracking to 1000's of vehicles nationally.
Internationally recognized as the best in sustainability, this powerhouse has received numerous awards including the United Nations Lighthouse award for Planetary Health. He's been featured in Forbes, TIME, Fast Company, National Geographic and over 300 other articles from over 25 countries. And has been showcased in the award-winning documentary A Plastic Ocean, the reality TV show Dragons Den, and numerous stages around the world including TED which has garnered 2 million views to his social plastic movement.
Inspiring entrepreneurs and proving that they are uniquely wired to change the world, he was also the Past President of the Vancouver Chapter of the Entrepreneurs' Organization and was named their Global Citizen of the year on behalf of their network of 10,000+ business owners in 131 chapters and 40 countries.
Job Titles:
- CEO of American Apparel Wikipedia
Want to hear a founder explain how doing good maybe doing bad? - Listen to my conversation with Leigh Mathews, Founder & Expert Consultant at ALTO Global, where she shares the untold secrets of nonprofits and the dark side of doing good.
Dr. Emily Musil Church is strategist, thought leader, writer, public speaker, Fulbright Scholar, and former professor who is now taking education and learning to a whole new level as Executive Director at the groundbreaking XPRIZE which harnesses technology to address global challenges for social good. Connecting over 700 teams to radically transform access to education and learning worldwide, she led the $15M Global Learning XPRIZE, funded by Elon Musk, to address the quarter-billion children that cannot read, write, or do basic math. The competition resulted in 5 teams developing open-source, scalable software that empowers children to teach themselves, returning $300 million worth of research, and positively affecting the lives of 3000 children in 170 villages across rural Tanzania.
Job Titles:
- Learning from Leadership Expert
Yeah. Brandon Stover: [00:07:43] afterwards you moved and spent 25 years, inside Franklin Covey and under probably arguably one of the most influential people in leadership. dr. covey, what was it like to work underneath them?
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder & President of Marinus Analytics
- Emily Kennedy Co - Founder
Emily Kennedy is Co-Founder & President of Marinus Analytics. Emily went form college researcher to tech founder helping thousands of victims in the $99 billion black market industry of sex trafficking, forced labor and slavery. What started off as a college research thesis on human trafficking turned into an internationally recognized AI and machine learning technology to identify and locate victims trafficking sold online and dismantle organized criminal networks.
Brandon Stover: [01:14:07] right. Well, Emily, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Brandon Stover: [01:14:13] that was Emily Kennedy. Co-founder at Marinus analytics, which develops and deploys technologies to the hands of law enforcement advancing their ability to fight crimes like human trafficking, using machine learning and big data technology.
My favorite part of this interview was how Emily broke down. Step-by-step how she took her research and turned it into a startup academics, and researchers have so much information in data, around everything from health to the environment. And if they were able to work with those who know how to turn this information into something of value to everyday consumers, the potential for capitalism to scale the impact of these solutions is immense.
So if you're somebody that's in a university or a research institution right now who is on the forefront of your field, think about the implications of how your research could be used in a business to reach more people. You may not see yourself as an entrepreneur, but neither did Emily. Now, if you wanted an easy to use resource full of all the lessons from this episode, they were available as a free downloadable worksheet@evolvethe.world and clicking on the worksheet button in the upper right-hand corner. You can also find it on the show notes and transcripts. From this episode uh, evolve the.world/episode/ Emily Kennedy.
Job Titles:
- S Childhood Was so Much Different from This Experience
How Emily went from a humanities degree to studying artificial intelligence and machine learning
James McKinney is the Founder & Host of the Startup Story, a weekly podcast for entrepreneurs with over 65,000 monthly listeners worldwide. However James has his own amazing startup story. Imagine you are launching a business in the middle of a recession, you score the biggest government contract of your career, leverage 300,000 dollars worth of your own assets, and then lose it all… Would you get back up again and start another business? James has not done this once, but numerous times. From Disney's corporate world to the launch of his SimpleDeal Mobile app, this serial entrepreneur has ventured, stumbled, ventured, succeeded, and then ventured again. Which is why he is so focused on bringing authenticity and transparency to the entrepreneurial journey.
After being director of a Startup grind chapter, he discovered the power of sharing stories about the daily grind, the grit, and business trials of others. So he embarked on launching the Startup Story, which has had over 500,000 downloads, been a Top 10 Entrepreneurial podcast in all of iTunes in the USA, UK, and Australia, and shared the stories of founders such as Ben Chesnut of Mailchimp, Jamie Schmidt of Schmidt's Naturals, Michael Littig, the co-founder of the Zuckerberg Institute.
I don't do research on my guests. And she's like, what? And this is, you know, a publicist, right? A public, you know, publicity for them. They do lots of research, you know, to try and craft stories and things. And, and, I said, I'll tell you why I don't do research. I said, because I want to hear their story from them.
I don't want the media to take me. I don't want my own research to have this idea of what their journey looks like and why they made decisions. They made. I want to hear it from them. And from that conversation is where the rest of my questions come. And, and here's why I think to answer your question, how, like the skillset she responds with again, the first time I've heard it, my wife has never said it to me.
She, she said, wow, you must be an amazing listener then. And I was like, Oh, that must be it. And I will it's from a skillset. I will say, I, I guess I am a good listener, you know, but I'll even peel that back. Additionally, from a tactical perspective, you know, if someone wants to know, like, where do you learn this?
Where do the skills come from? I'm a good listener, but I'm a good listener because I truly care about people. I care about the person I'm talking to. Like I do not glance on my phones when I'm with someone at, for coffee, you know, I, when I'm scheduling or recording a podcast, I may glance at the clock for times.
I want to keep things on a certain pace, but I am in that moment with that person. and I care about their story. I care about how that story is presented to the world. I care about them looking like the expert that, that they are, regardless of the stumbles they've had. And I care about the listener.
And delivering true value, connecting somehow with my guests, a story with the listener in their car, running, working out, whatever the case may be, whether they're listening to the startup story. I care about trying to figure out how do I connect this mazing moment I'm having with this founder to that person.
Who's listening. Like, those are the things that run through my mind. And yet I'm still actively listening in the moment. So from a skillset perspective, I guess it would be a great listener and I care so much about the person I'm talking with and the person who will hear it later.
Brandon Stover: [00:33:53] Absolutely. I think that's a really good skill set. And I think what comes out of it too, is, you know, not looking beforehand a sense of curiosity, really wanting to hear their story. I'm somebody that researches quite a bit beforehand. We'll look things over and you know, pre-write questions
James McKinney: [00:34:09] And there's nothing wrong with that. Like, I want it, you know, like, I love that you do that. And I love that many people do that. I mean, I've heard some amazing interviews because of that. Like, there's probably things I miss by not doing that. and I think I'm okay with that miss for right now.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder of Seventh Generation, the American Business Council
Jeffrey Hollender is Co-Founder of Seventh Generation, The American Business Council, & Hollender Sustainable Brands. Jeffrey went from dropping out of college and selling skill classes like the "art of flirting" or "how to marry money" to building one of the most successful sustainable product brands in the world, Seventh Generation, which sold to Unilever in 2016 for over $600 Million. Their line of over 100 products is distributed in most leading retailers including: Target, Whole Foods, Kroger, Safeway and Amazon. And for the last 30 years, from its humble beginnings as mail order catalog till now, the brand has been focused on nurturing the health of the next 7 generations.
But after being ousted by his own company in 2010, he took his idea of doing good to a whole another level becoming a leading authority on corporate responsibility, sustainability and social equity. He created a coalition of over 250,000 businesses called the American Sustainable Business Council which drives progressive public policy.
He serves on the Board of directors for GreenPeace, having his fair share of nights in jail for standing up for what he believes in. And with all this he still found time to teach others as an inspiring author of 7 books and Adjunct Professor for sustainability and social entrepreneurship at New York University.
In 2013, with his wife and daughter, he created Hollender Sustainable Brands, which started Sustain, Sustain Natural, a new brand of female-focused, all natural sexual wellness products that sold. The company has rapidly grown and was acquired by Grove Collective in 2019.
Jeffrey Hollender: [00:00:00] So most products, including most seventh generation products, are what I would consider less bad. And when you think about the challenges we're facing globally, whether it's climate change or running out of fresh water or soil erosion or species depletion, Less bad is not going to solve the problems we're facing. We actually need to repair the damage. We've done. We need products that are good.
Brandon Stover: [00:01:15] Hey, welcome to evolve. I'm Brandon Stover and today's guest went from dropping out of college and selling skill classes, like the art of flirting or how to marry money to building one of the most successful sustainable product brands in the world. Seventh generation, which sold to Unilever in 2016 for over $600 million.
Their line of over a hundred products is distributed in some of the most leading retailers, including target whole foods, Kroger, Safeway, and Amazon. And for the last 30 years from its humble beginnings as a mail order catalog till now the brand has been focused on nurturing the health of the next seven generations.
But after being ousted and by his own company in 2010, he took his idea of doing good to a whole nother level, becoming a leading authority on corporate responsibility, sustainability and social equity. He created a coalition of over 250,000 businesses called the American sustainable business council, which drives progressive public policy.
This weeks guest on Evolve with Brandon Stover is Founder of HireClub, Ketan Anjaria. Ketan is an immigrant, designer, developer, & serial founder who has paved the way to success through facing his own hardship and focusing on the power of community. What started out as job-posting group on Facebook with 25 friends is now a thriving community of over 29,000 people and a full-fledged business called HireClub which grew to $10K MRR in 150 days after launching its subscription service and now has 20% month-over-month growth and $30,000 in monthly revenue. In this episode how focusing on community first led to HireClub's success, the struggles he had with depression as a founder, and what the future of the job market looks like.
So, Kevin is our CTO. We asked them to set up, a page. We could try it out. And we agreed that if we hit 150 customers in the first month that I, it would be worth pursuing. And, we had, we had more than 1500 people sign up to be a subscriber in the very first month, which, you know, that was a pretty clear path.
Leigh Mathews is the Founder & Expert Consultant at ALTO Global. Leigh is also is an author, speaker, social purpose coach, & highly experienced consultant with over 15 years in Corporate Social Responsibility, philanthropy and international development sectors. Starting in her early 20's, she founded an NGO in Cambodia working on child rights issues after witnessing children living in extreme poverty. No good deed goes unpunished as she was awarded the Victorian Young Australian of the Year, Australian Leadership Award and the JCI Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World Award. Yet she would soon learn the world was not as it seems.
After the hit of the 2008 financial crisis, she closed her NGO and started questioning the effectiveness of the charity sector and if doing good was actually having a positive effect on social problems. And so began her work with organisations such as UN Women, World Challenge, Intrepid Group, and dozens more to achieve aligned, ethical and sustainable impact.
Still disturbed by the institutionalisation of children inside orphanages, she Co Founded the ReThink Orphanages Network which is shifting the way countries in the global north engage with overseas aid and development and has expanded operations from Australia to Europe and the US.
Internationally recognized as an ethics expert for the intersection between development, business and philanthropy, she has been featured in ABC, the Guardian, Project Syndicate, Swinburne University of Technology, Global Journalist and dozens more media outlets. Additionally she sits on the Victorian Government School for Student Leadership School Council, and is a member of the Advisory Board for Australian Volunteers International's ChildSafe Volunteering Hub. And if all that wasn't enough, she is also the co author of Modern Day Slavery and Orphanage Tourism and host of the The Good Problem Podcast.
Leigh Mathews: [00:00:02] a lot of the marketing around that was, you know, starving african children with distended, bellies flies crawling in their eyes and their mouth and sad music. And those children looking very sick and vulnerable. That is poverty porn. Poverty porn is when we, presented with visual imagery of children or vulnerable adults that look sick, malnourished, dirty, doc lighting behind bars, things like that.
Job Titles:
- Founder of Whitefox Defense Technologies
Job Titles:
- Cofounder & CEO of Leda Health
Madison Campbell is the Cofounder & CEO of Leda Health & Creator of the MeToo Kit. Her company within 1 month of starting received 16 ceases and desists, 5 subpoenas, and 2 statewide bills introduced to ban a product that has aimed at helping the millions of sexual assault survivors across the globe which includes an estimated the 2 million a year in the U.S. alone. This young sexual assault advocate and technological innovator's hope to revolutionize the care on a holistic scale created a frenzy of over a thousand mentions in press outlets such as CNN, Buzzfeed News, ABC, USA Today, NBC and over 1 billion impressions throughout the world and growing.
However this serial entrepreneur understands there is no such thing as bad publicity, especially when it is helping bring attention to the 77% of sexual assault cases that are never reported each year including her own. After overcoming the trauma of her own sexual assault in college, she sought out to give survivors time with processing their trauma by developing an at-home sexual assault examination kit and provide the care and resources needed for a full recovery.
Madison Campbell: [00:43:19] I was lucky enough that my father software engineer bought me the domain Madison campbell.com very early on in the.com boost is so, you can find me@madisoncampbell.com, LinkedIn Madison Campbell. If you see a girl with blonde hair, you've stumbled upon the right person. I think there's also a lot of Madison Campbell's out there.
One of them is a USC basketball player. That's not me, I wish, but I'm very short and unathletic. but, yeah, and follow Lita, Lita health company lead a.com you know, follow us for more updates. We'll be launching soon and we're super excited to talk about, you know, what we've become.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder of Sustain Naturals
Ryan Mckenzie is the Co founder of Tru Earth which bootstrapped from 0 to 2.5 million in monthly revenue in only 17 months while waging a war against plastic. After a career of growing several premium subscription boxes to multi-million dollar businesses, this serial entrepreneur decided to create a subscription, zero-waste, environmentally friendly laundry strip that completely eliminates the need for heavy plastic detergent jugs. With roughly 85 thousand active subscribers in 45 different countries, they have collectively kept over 2-million plastic jugs out of landfills, donated well over 2-million loads of laundry to vulnerable families in Canada, the United States and Ghana, and skyrocketed to the second fastest growing startup in Canada this year.
Job Titles:
- Executive Vice President of Thought Leadership at Franklin Co
Scott J. Miller is the Executive Vice President of Thought Leadership at Franklin Covey and has spent the last 25 years championing teams within the world's best leadership firm, serving under the tutorage of Dr. Stephen Covey. He now leads the strategy, development, and publication of Franklin Covey's world-renowned content & bestselling books including one of the most impactful nonfiction business books in history, 7 Habits of Highly Effective people, which has sold more than 40 million copies in 40 languages and empowered the transformation of millions of lives worldwide.
Although he has held many leadership roles from project coordinator at the Disney Development Company to the FranklinCovey Company Chief Marketing officer, he has seen plenty of failure and was even demoted from his first leadership position after only three weeks in the role at Franklin Covey. However, since then he has become an unfiltered leader thriving in a highly filtered corporate culture.
Being a renowned thought leader in the leadership and personal performance space, he has been featured in 100's of podcasts, webinars, and articles in Entrepreneur, Forbes, Donald Miller's StoryBrand Podcast, Rachel Hollis's RISE Podcast, The ONE Thing Podcast and more.
Additionally, he is a multi-week #1 bestselling author of Management Mess to Leadership Success: 30 Challenges to Become the Leader You Would Follow which has been proclaimed as a new classic on authentic leadership by Seth Godin. He is also the author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Everyone Deserves A Great Manager and wrote dozens of articles as a leadership columnist for Inc Magazine.
Distributed to more than 5 million business leaders worldwide, his On Leadership podcast features interviews with renowned business titans and thought leaders such as John Maxwell, Dr. Daniel Amen, Ed Mylet, Rachel & Dave Hollis, & Ryan Holiday. He was also the former host of the iHeart Radio program called Great Life, Great Career.
Scott Miller: [00:03:19] Well, apparently my boxers, according to you, let's see, it happened kind of serendipitously. I am privileged to host for Franklin Covey, the world's largest leadership podcast, weekly called on leadership with Scott Miller. And as I was preparing for interview with Viola Davis, the actress. in some preparation, I read from her about the power of knowing your own story.
I kind of thought, wow, I've never thought about that. Knowing, you know, owning your story. Like what's, I kind of dismissed it as like, you know, Reiki or yoga or things that are for other people. Right. And then that same week interviewing the famous social scientist, Eric Barker, he wrote a book called barking up the wrong tree.
It's a great book. And in that interview, he also talked about the power of knowing your own story. I thought, wow. Twice in one week. What's this idea about knowing your own story came home that night, 50 years old, I said to my wife, Stephanie, we're calling in bed. If you ever told yourself your story that keep in mind, we have three boys, right?
Six, eight, and 10. They all have my personality. So Stephanie, who was a full time mom and said, yeah, I don't care. I'm going to bed. Good luck with you and your story. So I get out of bed at like 10 at night, and then my boxer shorts. I go into the kitchen, they pull out a wire whisk as a microphone. And I walked around this very room.
I'm sitting in right now, my home here in salt Lake city and Brandon for the first time in my life, I told myself my own story out loud, kind of how I was raised. My parents, my parents' parents, my brother, my own journey, my struggles, my highs, my lows, the things that I had been told to believe about me that were true, that were not true.
The pads that I'd taken by choosing to play these other people or fulfill their vision for me. And it was that day at age 50 and a pair of boxer shorts and a wire whisk that I chose to walk around this room and the pitch, nobody awake, nobody listening, an outside, out loud just for about 10 minutes.
Repeat to myself my whole journey. It was really powerful, kind of just to hear all the things that I'd been through, the mistakes that I made, the good decisions that I'd made, the things that I was proud of things I was shamed of the things that I chose to leave behind that night, the, the, the issues that I've struggled with in life.
And it was that day that I decided to go out and get a radio program, an iHeart radio. I started writing for bestselling books and I'm hosting the world's largest podcast. And that day was really liberating for me. I highly highly recommend. And tonight, everybody listened to this podcast with Brandon Stover, going to kitchen, wear whatever you want.
I don't care. Pull out a wooden spoon wire with spatula, whatever you need to use as a microphone, Larry King style, and tell yourself your story out loud. Nobody else is listening to you because you don't want to, you know, edit it all. I found it quite empowering.
Brandon Stover: [00:06:13] Well, one of the pieces that I'd like to touch on your story is when you worked for Disney and you were asked, actually asked to leave. I'm wondering, knowing all that you know now about leadership, why maybe you weren't fit as a leader at that time. And what maybe you would say to your younger self.
Scott Miller: [00:06:30] Cause I was a jackass. That's why? Because I was a jerk. I was immature and I honestly, Brandon didn't really understand what culture meant in a company. Right? What everybody's contribution? The culture was that was a classic kind of 23 year old gossiper, busy body pointing fingers, politicking that wasn't a bad person.
I just was kind of irresponsible. It was managing my corporate credit card well and expensive, and just, you know, I was young and immature to quote one of our presidents when I was young and immature. I did things that were young and immature. Right. So. For me, Disney was an amazing opportunity. Hometown company from Orlando learned some great, great business principles around leadership, around quality, around focusing on, you know, kind of the guest experience.
A lot of that same quality training served me well as the chief marketing officer later on, I have nothing but positive things to say about the Disney company. My experience there, I was a bit of a wreck like ethically or on a wreck, you know? And like legal ways, just kind of a cultural reck that makes sense.
Scott Miller: [00:45:11] Well, my wife will tell you it's hard not to find me because I'd pretty much easy to be Googled, right? You can visit Franklin covey.com. Subscribe to my leadership podcast for the Franklin Covey company called on leadership with Scott Miller. I'd love to have any of your guests or listeners that matter feature guests.
Follow me on LinkedIn. Connect to me on LinkedIn. I write a column each week for inc magazine. And I host, like I said, the podcast for Franklin Covey, you can visit dot com. The books are for sale everywhere. I have four books, two that are out there that are coming out and there'll be many more books coming out in the mess to success series.
I'm launching marketing mess to brand success next year. And I'm writing now job mess to career success. Next will be communication message influence success. Parenting best to launch success, Libya, a whole series about 10 best of success books out over the next seven to eight years.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder & CEO of Start
Tom Dawkins is the Co-Founder & CEO of StartSomeGood. Tom has been the founder of 5 nonprofits and social enterprises and built the leading platform in cause-driven crowdfunding, innovative partnerships and social entrepreneur education. Since its conception in 2010, the platform has enabled more than 1000 projects to raise over $12.5 million to make a positive impact in the world. Their projects have an outstanding 53% success rate compared with 39% on Kickstarter and 9% on Indiegogo. In addition to their technology platform, they created a one stop shop for social entrepreneurs with accelerators, a social enterprise design course, live crowdfunding pitch events, a network community, and everything to help people design and launch social enterprises and impact projects.
But this social entrepreneur does not stop there. With a love for building community using technology and culture, he has organized everything from dance parties and film festivals, youth journalism projects and new media conferences, to co-working spaces and Burning Man theme camps.
As globally recognized leader in social entrepreneurship he has spoken at events such as South by Southwest, powered startup accelerators for organizations such as the United Nations Development Program, and created the world's biggest online event for social enterprise, the #StartingGood Virtual Summit, with 6,000 participants.
He was recognized with awards and fellowships from the World Summit Youth Awards, The International Youth Foundation, Nexus Australia, the Social Enterprise Awards and the Australia & New Zealand Internet Awards. And to top it all off, his business is among the top 10% of certified B Corps.
Brandon Stover: [00:01:01] Hey everyone welcome to evolve. I'm Brandon Stover and today's guest has been the founder of five nonprofits and social enterprises and built the leading platform in cause driven, crowdfunding, innovative partnerships and social entrepreneur education. Since its conception in 2010, the platform has enabled more than 1000 projects to raise over $12.5 million to make a positive impact in the world. Their projects have seven, an outstanding 53% success rate compared to the 39% on Kickstarter and the 9% on indie Gogo.
Job Titles:
- Leadership Development Expert
Tony Loyd: [00:48:27] well, first of all, we have to trust the voices that are already speaking and amplify those voices. Right? So if you, if you went to Tonyloyd.com you would see a list of more than 80 black indigenous people of color that we have had as guests, guests on the podcast. And honestly, I feel like that's not enough.
So it's first and foremost, it's not about my voice. First, my voice should be amplifying and pushing those folks out front. I also make sure that I have a, a good balance of, female founders versus male founders or, or as people who don't, identify with any gender.
I try to make sure that we have a few queer voices in there, you know, a lot of, a lot of different categories. So. So I think that first and foremost, we have to amplify the voices that are already speaking, because I mean, look at me, I'm a 61 year old white male. I've had all the sunshine in the room world. The entire spotlight of the universe has been pointed at me my entire life.
So my role is to take a mirror and to reflect that light. To where it hasn't been shining all this time and does shine it on people who need the spotlight. So that's my first and foremost role. The second thing is that I have to be honest and vulnerable, and there are people that I will reach that other people will never reach.
And so Brandon, you have an audience, right? You have people that follow you, and you have a particular voice that you will reach people that I will never reach. And so, you know, each of us has a responsibility to have that adult conversation and our own ignorance. Right.
you, you mentioned, you know, our role to educate well, it's my. First role is to educate myself. Right. And, you know, one of the things that I'm very clear of is I'm, I'm not asking black people to explain racism to me, right. That's that's not their job. Right. It's my job to understand systemic racism and what's happening. And so, so I have a duty and a responsibility to educate myself first, and then I can bring other people along on the path as I'm learning things.
Because there are a lot of other people who are struggling with the same things I am, you know, what does systemic racism look like? How do I use my voice for good? You know, what, what could I do with my vote, with my voice, with my choice, with other things that I'm doing, you know, with my dollars I spend, you know, with small, minority owned businesses, for example.
So, so. I I'd say that, you know, first and foremost, it's not about me. Right? It has to be about the people who are already in the community doing the work. And they've been doing that work for a long time. Second of all, I should then add my voice, but not be the center of it all. And then third of all, I just have to make sure that I'm educating myself being vulnerable.
You know, you asked me one point about values and stuff, and that's one of my key values is about authenticity and vulnerability. So I really have to be authentic and vulnerable and, and just go on that journey. And I think other people will relate to that. And then I can't be thin-skinned about it when I get it wrong and somebody slaps me back, I just have to go, you know what, you're right.
Tony Loyd is a leadership development expert, best-selling author, keynote speaker, and executive producer & podcast host for not one… but three podcasts including Social Entrepreneur which has shared the stories of over 250 impactful entrepreneurs and has been downloaded more than half a million times in over 180 countries. He also produces the Thrive Connect Contribute & Anti Racist Voter podcasts.
Fed up with a focus on shareholders & feeling that he was put on earth to accomplish something more he quit his 16 year corporate career. He set out to answer two questions "To meet the needs of shareholders, do we have to sacrifice other stakeholders such as employees, the communities in which we work, and the planet on which we depend? And is this truly a sustainable business model?" These questions led him on a journey to connect with hundreds of founders who collectively have impacted millions of people around the globe. Through coaching, mentoring, workshops, seminars, retreats, keynote speaking and robust media, he started helping purpose-driven business leaders to thrive in life so that they could connect deeply and contribute more.
If that was not enough of a herculean accomplishment, he's been personally trained in the science of climate change by former Vice President Al Gore, shared his inspiring talks for purposeful business and finding passion in your work for noteworthy stages including Tedx, been featured in Fast Company, NPR, & dozens of podcasts. He is also a multiple category, best selling author of Crazy Good Advice: 10 Lessons Learned from 150 Leading Social Entrepreneurs.
What 8 years of running a nonprofit taught Tom about fundraising for innovative ideas
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder and President of the Institute for Humane Education
Zoe Weil is the co-founder and president of the Institute for Humane Education (IHE), and is considered a pioneer in the comprehensive humane education movement that works to create a peaceful, healthy, and just world for all people, animals, and the environment through education. Zoe is a frequent keynote speaker at educational, animal protection, environmental and other conferences and has given six TEDx talks including her acclaimed talk, "The World Becomes What You Teach", which became one of the 50 top-rated TEDx talks within a year of its video release. She is the author of seven books including "The World Becomes What We Teach: Educating a Generation of Solutionaries;" Nautilus silver medal winner "Most Good, Least Harm," Moonbeam gold medal winner "Claude and Medea," and "Above All, Be Kind."