Up Close and Personal: Katie Patrick on Gamification, Climate Action, and Creative Learning (Episode 36)

In this dynamic episode of Resilience Gone Wild, host Jessica Morgenthal sits down with environmental engineer, designer, and author Katie Patrick to discuss a groundbreaking approach to environmental education—one that goes beyond awareness and centers on action design. Katie shares her journey from Australia to Silicon Valley and reveals how her experiences shaped the development of tools like the Earth Doctors curriculum and the School of Climate Action Design. These programs aim to inspire sustainable behavior change through gamification, creative expression, and hands-on learning, especially for children.

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
Hey. I always start my podcast with, yay.
But I actually am so excited to be
here with Katie Patrick.
Thank you for coming. Yay. We've been working
on this for a while and trying to
schedule it, which which I take responsibility for
delaying. Anyway, I am so thrilled to even
know Katie. We met
online on my favorite, our favorite LinkedIn, to

(00:24):
make amazing connections with brilliant people many months
ago and then had this
beautiful,
joyful few hours of, like, sharing the work
we were doing. And I got to see
some of the beginnings of what you can
see behind Katie now, if you look on
the video, and so much other work that
she's doing. So I cannot wait for you
to meet Katie and to hear about all

(00:44):
the stuff she's working on and all of
the ways that she's changing the world. And
I would say saving the world because that
is the name of Katie's book and Katie's
podcast, and we'll hear about a lot more.
So Katie Patrick,
environmental engineer,
green building designer, environmental
behaviorist, so much, so much connection on the
whole behavior thing with me and tech startup

(01:06):
founder,
and so much more. So
tell us about yourself. Oh, my god. Where
do I start?
Where do I jump in? Thank you for
the wonderful introduction. What's your favorite stuff you're
working on these days? Let's let's go there.
And and how'd you get there?
Favorite stuff I am working on. I'm gonna
dive into the Earth Doctors. And when we
were just talking before, I told you that
I'd done it. I had to do a
lot of, like, structural procedural project management stuff,

(01:28):
and I was just, like, dying to burst
out. Gave myself two or three days to
design activities for children
that don't do environmental behave don't do environmental
education, which is what most people do. They're
like, well, let's just, like, learn about sustainability
and the planet. I don't do education. I
focus on action design, which is something that
people mix up sometimes. They think I'm like

(01:49):
an educator, and I'm like, no. No. I
don't do any education. Just to pitch your
podcast, I just today listened to one of
the episodes that was about action versus education
because we don't realize how different they are.
Like and how you measure education versus action
are completely different. And to recognize the whole
metric side gives you a sense of what
your product is and what your purpose is.

(02:11):
Right? So go for it.
Yeah. Yeah. Like, if you get a whole
bunch of if you get 30 people and
you give them an in-depth,
put them in a forty eight hour boot
camp to learn everything about, like, climate and
ecology and stuff. They'll come out knowing stuff.
You can test them and they'll know stuff.
But will they do stuff? That's where it
falls down. It's called the value action gap.
And if you wanna get people to do
stuff, you need to use more, like, habit

(02:33):
design and behavioral psychology and gamification,
and that's like a whole world. And you
don't really need to do much education to
get people to do stuff.
The dog has returned. She wants to get
up on her favorite spot, and now she
can't because the little miniature eco city is
behind me. So I just I love applying
my design framework, my action design framework. I

(02:53):
found, like, a few
or a series of key things that you
need to do with a group of people
to get them to do action and not
just get lost in, like, learning and learning
and talking and learning, which is something that
we are sort of prone to in the
environmental movement. And when I apply these to
kids' activities with a particular like data feed,
my imagination just explodes. And I love to

(03:13):
do it. It's so fun for me. I
look at different games and look at different
environmental sustainability issues and think like, how can
we get kids to engage in this, get
the data, get them to trigger action, bring
it home, bring it with the parents? And
I just designed a couple I did spin
the wheel, spin the wheel of action, which
was really fun. Another one, which was a
guessing game, Guess the Green Tech. Combining it

(03:33):
with Chat GPT now, you can actually mock
up games and with
tools online where you can get instant games
made. I made both of these games
in under a day,
really just in a few hours, and just
for under $50.
Like, real physical things that you can you
can hold. So yeah. Like, you can make,
like, really cool interactive tools, and you can

(03:54):
just sort of, like, bypass the whole, like,
doobie, gloomy,
educational,
you know, like, it's gonna die stuff, which
kids don't really like anyway. Do adults even
really like it? And just go straight to
the fun sort of gamifying the action, which
is really engaging. People love it. You can
get people to communicate. And, that was probably
the most exciting part of my last last
few weeks. I was designing up those those

(04:14):
games.
Let's go back and let's explain what you're
working on. So I one small part of
what Katie does, and she has an eight
year old, nine year old. How old is
your daughter now? Now nine. Nine. Okay. Who's,
like, kind of the leader in this. So
she's she's definitely,
chip off the old block, which is so
cool. Anyway, there's there's this huge curriculum
that Katie's been building as a side project

(04:36):
to all of her other side projects. Oh,
there's Voci. Side projects. Put it in the
microphone. You can hear her pug grunts. Sorry
about that. I didn't realize. I I didn't
hear it. That's really funny. So there's a
40 lesson
so far because I don't believe that you're
actually gonna stop at 40 lessons, but a
40 lesson curriculum
around

(04:56):
moving moving us and our education system towards
environmental responsibility. I I'm defining it that way,
but I'm sure you have better language around
it. Tell us why you know, and I'm
so lit up about this because I just
dropped today
the episode my episode with Ruth Wilson, who
is
a nature and children network and researcher and

(05:17):
writer and all that. So, like, I am
all in on this being about the children.
We need to they are the future. I
mean, that's the reality. So go with that.
Tell us tell us about this curriculum, and
then we can move on to some other
things.
Well, I've designed this twelve week program. It's
called Earth Doctors. And it's called Earth Doctors
because when my daughter was really young, when
their kids don't really understand words like scientist

(05:40):
or engineer, but they do understand the word
doctor very early on in in life. So
as I was explaining, you know, two or
three years old, I'd be like, because we're
an Earth doctor, so we're not gonna use
the plastic thing. And it just became this
vernacular of how I would describe it as
being environmentally friendly.
And then the vision came to me to,
host an earth doctors club, like, at the

(06:00):
local school. And And I kind of remember,
like, the moment when I decided to do
it. It just sort of happened very naturally.
I am a huge fan of, like, futuristic
eco cities, like this idea of imagining the
future world as this really positive
space. I used to be a green building
engineer, so it's sort of part of green
building design is that you need to be
able to imagine how cities and architecture will

(06:21):
work in the future. Yeah. And it's always
saddened me that in the environment sustainability movement,
we don't have more of that future imagining
of positive spaces when there is a lot
of talking about bad things that are going
on in the world. It seems to often
dominate the conversation.
So I thought, well, why don't I teach
a class at the kids' school, and I'll
show them, like, pictures of positive eco futures

(06:43):
and get them to draw their own version
of the eco future. And I was worried
about it. I thought, oh, like, the kids
aren't gonna like me. They're gonna think I'm
dumb. Like, this is, like, dumb environmental engineer
coming in and talk about, like, boring
cities covered in plants.
So I was actually quite nervous.
And then it was the complete opposite of
that. The kids were just so excited. They

(07:03):
were, like, screaming. My daughter was, like, so
proud to have her mother there. That's nice.
At the school, she was, like, looking at
me with these big eyes, like, so happy.
And the kids were just, like, yelling, like,
they were making so much noise when I
would show them these futuristic green cities.
And I started to, like, story tell it
in this really, like, razzed up kind of
animated way.
And they they got so, like, animated and

(07:24):
loud that the teacher had to do, like,
a time out to get them to calm
down. They kind of always went, like, totally
crazy by, like, oh, my god.
And then they all got a piece of
paper, and they drew their own eco cities.
And I don't think I've ever had such
a feeling of, like,
like, I have just touched on, like, the
god center of, like, what I'm meant to
do with my life. Or, like, I I
I've just, like, tapped into some well of

(07:45):
something amazing.
And all these kids are basically drawing the
positive future. And then I got them to
write it down on a leaf, and then
we put a leaf on this big sort
of fake tree. It says, like, my vision
for the ecotopia future is that all the
streets are made of solar panels. And, like,
and they're just beautiful. The kids come up
with their own stuff. They don't just copy
the stuff I've shown them. They really, like,
take parts and synthesize their own ideas, and

(08:08):
they really actually got to understand the engineering
principles. It's not just a creative imagination thing.
It's like teaching basic thermodynamics,
runoff, the water cycle, all this stuff. And
then I just have this And this was
like little kid. Wait. This was kids in
preschool? For, like, not all preschool, year two
and year three. So I did all the
classes in the year three. They're so good.
Like, their art is better than anything I

(08:28):
have ever seen done by adults, except for,
like, the big names, like Vincent Pallabore. Like,
I've never seen grown ups in sustainability do
work like this. I was so blown away.
It seems like it's because they're allowed their
imagination can run wild. Like, there's no boundaries.
There's no judgment.
There's, like, just be free to be imaginative.
And what can come out of that

(08:49):
is so colorful and so smart.
Right? There's no fear of
being quite being judged.
Like, everybody was in it for the fun
of it and the growth of it and
the brilliance of it.
Yeah. And I also found this real lightning
bolt experience
I had as a person who's I've spent
my life designing environmental engagement experiences. That's like

(09:12):
all I've ever done. And usually, I'm always
well, I am. I have always only ever
done this for adults.
But then, when I started applying my own
design framework
that I might design energy efficient software for
up to kids, like, suddenly, I was so
much more creative. Like, I was like, wow.
Like, I would have never have designed this
up for adults. So in a way, when

(09:32):
I'm, like, in the kid's mind, like, I'm
out of the box as well. Like, I
would have never have made a miniature eco
city like this for, like, say if Google
employed me to do a community engagement project,
like, I would not think of this. But
as soon as I think of kids, I'm
like, EcoMidi City. Like, obviously, like, what else
is there to do? You know? So behind
Katie is it's so interesting because it's this

(09:53):
beautiful
physical representation
that's beautiful,
made with a lot of three d printing
and and some some
cutting, some scissors and some glue and some,
some other creativity. And it's bringing to life
a lot of, if you follow Katie online,
a lot of the imaginative
digital creations of a futuristic city that has

(10:16):
that's sustainable and that's regenerative and that's social
and that's about community and about sharing
food and sharing resources and sharing life.
And it's all green. And it was of
the project brought
to life instead of it just being done
on a computer. Right? So it's like a
physical experience that the kids and the adults

(10:36):
had. So tune in onto YouTube and and
whatever, and you'll see picture of what the
city actually looks like. And if you wanna
show part of that, like, there's a building,
there are a few in the world like
this where it's layered with, you know, the
circular building that has the the greenery
that that and the solar panels and stuff
that that, you know, make it a regenerator

(10:56):
building, a net positive building. Right? Yeah. Probably.
I mean, there's lots of interesting buildings around,
but but not in miniature. Like, I look
everywhere for a miniature one, and so I
had to Yeah. But there's, like, I the
whole world, but that one is that one
has all this magic to it. So all
of them do. Yeah.
Yeah. And there's some really interesting psychology research.
I interviewed one of the academics about his

(11:18):
research on my podcast, which found that when
people
draw a picture of their version of, like,
how they imagine, like, a sort of an
eco friendly future to be, versus just passively
read something that someone else has written, there's
a huge jump in the flow on of
pro environmental behaviour and even political
advocacy. And I've hosted a number of these

(11:39):
workshops now, and it is profound. Like, we
usually think that we need, like, knowledge and
caring and money or gamification.
What nobody is talking about, no one I've
ever seen talking about, is get people to
do a piece of art or make something
like this, three d, even more. And just
by the act of using your hands, using
your that creative
sort of maker ability that humans have, that

(12:02):
flows into people's behavior and their advocacy way
more than anything else. Like, it's wild. It's
the ultimate behavioral hack is this. No. It's
it's amazing because you would have you do
behavior
and how you can
get behavior to actually change, which lights me
up. So it just reminds me of that
when my kids were in school, maybe ten

(12:22):
years ago in high school, they built these
maker rooms, makerspaces.
And, no, the parents didn't know they didn't
do a good job of communicating why. It
always seemed kinda like play spaces or whatever
explanation, but it sounds like that's the magic,
one of the pieces of magic
to getting change to happen, to behavior change
to happen. So talk more about these maker
spaces and and actually getting your hands on

(12:44):
the on the change.
Well, that that's what this there's this thing
called the IKEA effect
in psychology, which is, you know, if you
make something, you objectively view it as better
than if, like, you just just bought it.
And so this part of agency, you're kinda
practicing in a mini version. Oh, I can
influence the world. Like, I can make stuff.
I can imagine something in my mind, and

(13:05):
then I can,
and then I can make it. And it
just I don't even know why, but it
just triggers something deep in people that the
other mechanisms of getting people to act just
don't trigger that, just sort of don't trigger
it as much. And I think it's something
that, like, everyone in the environmental movement should
be doing more of. And I'll tell you
a little example where this came up. Like,

(13:26):
the project I didn't end up working on
the project, but I had a meeting with
the energy utility people in Los Angeles, and
they had some funding for a project that
they wanted to activate teens. And their hypothesis
was that if we can activate teens to
get really into climate stuff, the teens will
influence
the rest of the family. And they wanted
to develop a game. So they thought, well,
let's make a game for teens, and then

(13:47):
the teens will play the game and influence
their parents to save energy. I don't know
if that's like a good idea or not.
I sounds good to me. Yeah. But then,
like, making games, like, digital games, especially, is
like
creatively talented and more resourced and experienced. It
probably even cost millions of dollars. But I
said to them, like, why are you trying
to make a game? Like, you're a energy
utility. Like, you know what a game designer.

(14:10):
Why are you trying to make a game
for these teens that maybe don't even want
a game about climate? Like, why don't you
get them to make the game? If you
engage them, you invite them to a game
making workshop.
There are plenty of people that teach game
design. Like, that's easy to get. It's not
that expensive.
And then you wanna ask them
to make the game. And then when you
ask them, they will you will activate that

(14:30):
sense of agency in them. And so that
was kind of my advice. Like, I didn't
know where it went from there. But I
think it's like a really good sentiment to
keep in mind. Like, you don't have to
make the stuff for people. You can create
a creative environment and ask them to make
it themselves, and then you'll really tap into
that sort of deeper level of agency.
Yeah. I mean, the simple simple,

(14:51):
parallel that comes to mind for me is
if and if you can get your kids
in the kitchen to cook with you, they're
more likely to eat
what they cook than what you cook for
them. And it's very likely to get them
to put healthy stuff in there as opposed
to just junk or thing things taste better
when you make them yourself.
Right? Grow. Grow them. My daughter will most

(15:13):
experience that. Like, kids,
if they grow the tomato, they will eat
the tomato. But maybe if you cut them
the tomato and put it on their plate,
then they won't eat it. Yeah. Completely different.
You're right. Okay. So I wanna stake one
step back and really honor
the work you've done and where you've come
from, and I'll throw in a couple things
I know about you, and then you can
keep adding more so we don't start from
too big a white space a whiteboard. Okay.

(15:34):
You can hear the accent. Katie is not
from The United States, but she does live
here now. So we've got Australia
educated, I think you said college was Melbourne,
and then ended up in Silicon Valley with
this tech startup
with a family and a daughter, and along
the way has created
a tremendous amount of behavior change

(15:55):
and life changing products, and services. So and
focused on
on the psychology
behind how you get people to change their
behavior so that we can save the world,
as opposed to the products that save the
world. Right? So have I got that right?
Yeah. Coming from. So Yeah. Go go from
there. And what were some of your what

(16:17):
what brought you here? Like, I read a
little bit about when you were eight. You
said, I started having this need to to
save the world when I was eight. I
don't know what happened when you were exactly
eight. But in your book, you talk about
some of the influences that were flying at
you that were so difficult to handle
with a combination between, you know, some of
the stuff that that you mentioned where, you

(16:38):
know, Nike labor practices and the way people
treat people, and McDonald's was treating people, and
the slaughtered whales, the nuclear testing in these
magnificent
atolls, the Amazon rainforest logging and the lost
dolphins. These are some of the influences that
you seem to be aware of that I
think a lot of children
just weren't paying attention to. So

(16:59):
take us through, like, a little bit of
the story of how you became the amazing
human that you are,
that
this is your purpose in life.
Oh, thank you for the kind words. And
you you already summed it up. I hope
none of you like it. You summed up
the years of my childhood. It's thank you
for remembering.
Not not many people know that if they've
read the book or,

(17:20):
even remembered, like, that that section.
Is this a thank you for helping me
feel seen? Thank you for helping me. I
feel I feel seen. And,
yeah, just to sort of go back to
how you started the question
with this nuance that I don't know if
people would have sort of gotten, that is
quite a different approach I take to sustainability
now to what a lot of people do,

(17:40):
is that I'm really interested in supporting,
people who are trying to get out to
a lot of people
in the how, not the what. So you've
got people that say, like, oh, like, I'm,
trying
to sell, like, a composting bin. Mhmm. Or
we're doing solar panels, or, like, I'm a
green designer or a green architect. And they've
got a very particular product or a service

(18:01):
or a solution that they wanna that that
they wanna get out.
Where I saw the Vanguard or the big
missing space is then in the how. Okay.
I'm like, awesome. You've got there's every product,
there's every technology.
How do we influence thousands of people to
adopt this? And that's really been my focus
and my kind of, like, obsession to crack
that. So I do come up with products
and tools, but they're not the actual, like,

(18:22):
green product. They're more like a card game,
or like a behavior chart thing or a
system or like a whatever it is. Also
or or like an app or an outdoor
screen or,
a system of managing groups. They're like ways
that you can get not just one person,
but hundreds or thousands of people to start
adopting this stuff. Hence why it's called behavior
design and action design. Anyway, just so I

(18:44):
could kind of make that clear, where do
we go back? Where did this all start?
Well, I was actually
is unique. Right? Like, it's that's the sweet
spot of actually changing and saving the world.
It's that
products are
great products are a dime a dozen.
There there really are a million fantastic products
out there that if you put them all
together

(19:05):
could in a rather quick
turnaround,
save our world and save our planet.
But none of them are gonna happen without
without you, without the the work you're doing
to actually get them out there and get
them accepted and get them tested and get
them to be part of an accepted
new behavior.
Right? Yeah. Yeah. And hopefully not just without

(19:28):
me. That's a big deal on my shoulders.
Yeah. Like, if you think about something like
those silicone, like, menstrual cups, like, I remember
when they came out, like, fifteen years ago,
and we were just, like, my god. Even,
like, as an environmental people, we're, like, it's
so weird. Like, oh my god. We weren't
even gonna have them, like, in the magazine
as a paying advertiser because it was, like,
that's too weird. Like And now, like, it's
not weird anymore. Like, it took, like, ten

(19:49):
or fifteen years to sort of break the
cultural ice
to get people to do it. And it's
not a thing about money, you know, at
all. Like, it saves money if you use
them. It just
took the cultural adoption of a new product
or a new practice. So the the problem
is not like the product or the technology.
The problem is often in people's, their habits,
their psychology, how they're thinking about things, like

(20:09):
their social networks. And so that's really what
we have to kind of learn how to
hack into. But did you want me to
start knowing more about my childhood?
No. Well, fear isn't risk taking. Well, I
mean, you know, I love the story. When
I started this up close and personal thing,
it was all based on it wasn't that
long ago. It was a few months ago.
But it was all based on the idea
that these people that I was connecting with
who are I just feel so honored and

(20:30):
privileged to be in my life, to have
in my life and be connected to. They
typically had a story or a couple of
stories, but a story that just launched them,
that they remembered
that this was such
a point in time when I found my
purpose,
and I really was, like, wowed and in
a place where I cared about our world

(20:50):
and I cared about doing something
good for the world and changing behavior in
the world and that kind of thing. So,
yeah, what's the story? Like, was there a
moment or that you can share? There might
have been many stories, but give us one
because they're always really inspiring.
Well, I think there was probably one pretty
pivotal moment
about twelve years ago that took me into

(21:11):
the work that I'm doing now. But that
was not what got me into environmental That's
fine. No. But it shifted a chapter in
your life. So but yeah. Like, I was,
you know, I I grew up on a
a beautiful,
tree, natural property in sort of the outskirts
of Melbourne,
Australia. And so there was a lot of
trees, a lot of nature, and we have
beautiful bird life. And, yeah, like all the

(21:32):
examples you mentioned about
this would have been in the eighties. There
was a lot of stuff on the news
that was really distressing. Whales being harpooned. Like,
06:00 at night, we're having dinner, and there's
literally, like, a whale with blood on it
on the nightly news. There were these big
protests about the Murrow Atoll. Greenpeace was really
big in Australia promoting that. And Greenpeace even
had, like, a little, like, a little centre

(21:53):
in Downtown Melbourne that was connected to The
Body Shop, which was this sort of slightly
ethical skin care kind of,
I don't know if you have them in
The US. Yeah. Yeah. They're really popular in
Australia. And they were kind of, like, connected
to this little, like, Greenpeace alcove that we'd
go and get information on. Yeah. These these
messages of being, you know, concern for for
nature. Like, it was very disturbing to me
to see this happen. And so there was

(22:14):
really just like no other question. It was
like,
this is wrong and we have to fix
it. Like, there wasn't any sense of that
there was anything else. There was no other
thing to do but to do this.
But I was always, I grew up in
a very creative home. My grandparents,
my grandmother was a fashion designer, and my
grandfather was a graphic artist from Germany. They

(22:35):
were very technically trained.
So I grew up around technical art, like
how to do proper fashion drawing, how to
actually draw like a portrait of a face,
like how to draw fonts, how to do
proper clay. My, my mother and stepfather
were clay professionals.
My father was a, like a community college
professor in ceramics. My mother was, she was

(22:55):
a stay at home mother, but she was
always doing different creative projects. But it was
all very technically precise. It wasn't like a
rambling,
abstract, sort of pot smoking art thing. It
was the opposite of that. Whatever the German
precise, sort of perfect craftsmanship is, it was
it was like that. Right. So I just
grew up with being able to design stuff
as very normal and natural and having good

(23:16):
artistic skill.
That was So nature and nurture, like, your
brain that's how your brain works. Right? Like,
it goes to creativity,
but in a very organized, precise, structured,
process oriented way where you you're creating something
that moves forward and works.
Yeah. And that it looks beautiful, like, in
the in the proper sense. Like, I'm not

(23:37):
really into art that looks ugly but says
something. Like, that's not my definition of good.
Like, I'm sort of old school like that.
Like, I think, yeah, if you can draw,
like, just draw properly. Like, just if if
you wanna draw a face, just put in
the effort and make it look good. You
don't just draw some weird stick figure and
be like, oh, it's up. You know, like,
not everyone agrees with me, but I'm kind
of old fashioned in that way. Like, it's
not that hard to do a YouTube tutorial,

(23:58):
like, figure it out, you know? But so
I had this, like, big, sort of, like,
artistic kind of upbringing, and then that kind
of, like, clashed, you know, with all the
environmental stuff that was going on, like, in
the world. And then I just sort of,
like, happened to get really fascinated by, like,
science and math and physics, and And I
sort of, like, lost interest in the art
stuff. I was just like, oh, yeah. I've
just been there, done that, and had this
sort of the STEM STEM science, technology, engineering,

(24:20):
math was, like,
really my world then. But then And just
finally get years later, they added the a.
Right? So it was it's STEAM with the
art in there,
but it wasn't in there. Yeah. But and
you don't have to do
STEAM. You can do STEAM or STEM. You
know, I think that's slightly different. Like, which
one? But then sort of, you know, you
can't, like, escape who you are. Right?

(24:41):
So then in my
twenties and trying to work professionally as an
engineer, like, I was, like, so not an
engineer. Like, I in my personality, like, I'm,
like, I'm just somebody who just really loves
to learn a lot of stuff and understand
the universe.
Like, that sort of thing, I mean, I
could
academically kind of jump through the hoops, you
know, and learn the stuff. But in terms
of, like, working professionally, like, it's so different

(25:03):
to school. I didn't fit in. I actually
got fired from my first engineering job because
I kept crying. Not because I was bad
at it, but I actually was literally, like,
crying at work. Like, oh, this is so
boring. Like, I just cannot stand this. And
so
and I just had to do something that
was more creative, more entrepreneurial. And so I
started a media company, environmental media company, and
I made magazines, directories, events,

(25:23):
videos, all promoting sustainability stuff. And what year
is what year is this? Because there was,
like, a big shift, and you talk about
it in some of your work, like, around
February.
Right? So Yeah. Oh, no. Around February, I
was still I was at university
then. So,
I spent or they aged from about

(25:43):
23 years old to about 30 years old
just making environmental media. Mhmm. So I'd had
my couple of years working as a green
building engineer,
which was not a fit for me. And
then I'd started my own company, and I
was lucky enough to get venture funded by
the Murdoch family. So I literally had, like,
$1,000,000.
Like, this was after

(26:04):
doing a very hard,
fully bootstrapped sleeping on the floor, no money
startup phase. So I just want people to
know that it wasn't all just
lovely jumping from cash to cash. But, anyway,
I was 25 years old. I literally had,
like, a a million dollars worth of funding
in a green media company, and that was
a very exciting time.

(26:24):
It was really fun time. And, creating magazines,
you know, content, trying to ride this kind
of digital
media
wave.
But I learned a really hard lesson during
that.
I mean, that kind of business model has
sort of gone extinct now. So this was
about
roundabout the recession, sort of 02/2010,

(26:45):
and when the social media and the Internet
really started to, blossom.
Yeah. Was that when you wanna create really
cool creative products in media,
you at first, you just see, like, the
creative thing. Like, oh, we could have, like,
you know, like, magazines and websites and, like,
all this cool stuff. Like, honestly, all I
ever did was sell ads. I literally just

(27:06):
pitched for ads because we had investment money,
we had employees, the company had to make
a hundred thousand dollars a month, otherwise, it
would die.
And that's all I did. All I did,
you know. So I'm, like, trying to get
out of, like, the engineering world to be
more creative, start my own company. And then
I'm, like, suffocated, locked in to this world
with these intense financial pressures, having to come

(27:27):
up with,
this hundred thousand dollars a month where I
wasn't creatively stimulated, I wasn't intellectually stimulated.
It was really You were hiring?
Stressful. Really stressful, really hard work. Yeah. Managing
a team who were largely advertising salespeople. And
I was just like, how did my life
come to this? Like, I didn't get into
this so I could just sell ads
all the time. And then, you know, as
my enthusiasm

(27:47):
waned for a life like that,
and then there was, like, the financial
crisis and the everything going digital, you know,
the, like, the company just it basically stopped
making its it fell short of its hundred
thousand dollar a month goal a few times,
and you just can't do that. Like, you
unless you can make the money up somewhere
else, like, it's gone.
So it, it needed to die and go

(28:09):
shift completely online. And then I moved to
Silicon Valley because everything was, like, moving online.
Like, it was all, like, the app and
social media and Facebook was brand new and
It's an amazing time. Like, thinking about it,
you know, in the late in 02/2008
time period,
how much was going on? The shift to
the Internet, the iPhone had just come out,
so people were living a very different life.
The Internet was just and social media had

(28:31):
not yet kicked in. But I think it
was probably early stages of, like, Myspace and
stuff like that. It was coming soon. Right?
Yeah. I think Myspace had been around for
a while. Like, yeah, I really think, like
I mean,
we weren't really using Twitter in any reasonable
way until, like, 02/2010.
I think we only had, like, 40 characters
or whatever the famous number was that, you

(28:52):
know, it was a different diff Yeah. Like,
it was just kind of starting 02/2009, '2
thousand '10. It was sort of, like, really
starting to to take off. Yeah. And the
app was a thing. You know, suddenly, the
app was was everything. Yeah. And if you
wanted to get money, like, a bunch of
money, everything had to be digital. And then
everything had to be in San Francisco or
Silicon Valley. And so you had this big
wave of people moving here, because it was
just like there was no other path. Like,

(29:14):
you either get a job as a a
teacher or
a engineer or something like
sort of normal life. But if you wanna
do anything like creative or wild or entrepreneurial,
you must.
Right. That's the kind of way. It must
be a digital product,
and it must be in San Francisco. It
was basically just the way things were. By

(29:34):
the way?
So, I mean, I'm also an American citizen.
I was born here, so it's quite easy
for me to go to The US. And
I kind of always planned on ending up,
in The States anyway.
Yeah. So I came here,
sort of following that path. And then
I found pretty quickly that my Australian level
skills, like, were just, like, so, like, based,

(29:55):
like, for for here. Like, I was I'd
gone from being the top of Australia, like,
this sort of, like, golden
girl. Like, I was in magazines and on
TV, and I had this million dollar funded
company, and everybody knew me.
And to, like, just say, I had a
total nobody doing a total nobody, you know?
Wait. I have to stop you for a
sec because Mochi is looking really hard for

(30:15):
some place to sit. Oh, no. She's got
space. Don't worry. She's turning around. She's on
the strawberry. She's on the strawberry. I'll turn
my camera. There you go. There we go.
She's fine. But, yeah, then I had to
shift here where everybody's, you know, from Harvard
or MIT, and they've got PhDs in computer
science, and everybody knows how

(30:36):
to code. I didn't know how to code.
They've built networks here with their Ivy League
universities and,
and it's the bro yeah. The bro programmer
thing. There's little guys that are beating their
chest, you know, with Australia's very modest culture.
And I just had no street cred. I
had no useful skills. My web apps weren't
very good. My platform kind of sucked. Like,
I was doing working with, like, WordPress
and
trying to do these, like, advanced extensions on

(30:56):
WordPress. The only language I knew how to
code in was PHP, which is super uncool.
Like, I just and all of a sudden,
I was a female from Australia and I
was over 30. I was like 30 years
old. I wasn't like 19 Harvard drop 19
years old Harvard dropout male. It was like
the cool thing. You have to basically be
like a Mark Zuckerberg copy
to be have any street cred at that

(31:16):
time.
So I just had nothing. Like, I was
just at the bottom, the complete bottom. And
I also had no money because my company
had just,
died.
Yeah. A million dollars a million dollars disappears
really quickly in Silicon Valley. Right? Yeah. Well,
that was in Australia. But, I mean, you're
meant to spend investment money on building the
company. But, yeah, you know, usually as a
start up, you you pay yourself as little

(31:37):
as possible and you kinda build something. And
so that's what I'd done through my twenties.
And the whole idea is that it grows
and it eventually turn around. But if it
dies somewhere, you kinda end up sort of
not where you where you thought you would
be. Yeah. So I kind of got here,
and that was a really, like, hard time
because I was like, oh my god. Like,
I just have
I've gone from being at the top to
being, like, right at the bottom.
And so I had to, like, build skills

(31:58):
and learn, and I wasn't gonna go backwards.
Like, to Australia. That felt, like, super weird.
I just had to go forward. So I'm
gonna get to this point in the story,
which is the lightning bolt moment that you
asked for. So I was just, like, I
started trying to write, like, a book, put
a presentation together, figure out, you know, what
my big next thing was gonna be.
I sort of felt like the platform I'd
been building to do with my Australian work

(32:18):
was really just sort of backwards. Like, it
wasn't as edgy as it needed to be
to sort of make it here. It was
more sort of simple. So I had to
kind of, like, just redo
everything. Everything. My personality, my psychology, my skills,
it all just had to be, like, sort
of, like, put in the washing machine and,
like, reformatted.
And I watched this video about this company

(32:40):
called o Power,
which gives you it gives you a electricity
bill where it compares, like, your electricity against
other people. About the same time, when the
Facebook dot you know when you got, like,
red dots, like, in red dot notifications in
Facebook and Instagram?
I actually don't. So go ahead. I should.
So go ahead. But, you know, like, if
you check Instagram, you get a little red

(33:01):
dot that gives you, like, a love heart.
Right? There was a time when it didn't
exist. Those things have only been around for
about ten years. There was a time before
that happened.
So I remember living in a hacker house
in Silicon Valley when that existed. Like, I
logged on to Facebook, and there was a
red dot. And I was like, red dot.
And then suddenly, we're all addicted to the
red dots now. Right. And that's your point
about behavior. But then I was like,

(33:21):
interesting.
Red dot. And then there were these little
farm game, you know, Farmville? Do you remember
Farmville in Facebook? And Farmville and Zynga were
like this really big thing.
And, and I was because I've been learning
computer programming at the time, computer programming, I
was trying to get, like, data feeds of
the
environmental stuff I was trying to do. I'm
like, well, if I wanna do something cool,
like, here,

(33:43):
and I wanna actually make impact and not
just be making content and selling ads, which
I was it's what I was never ever
gonna do again.
I need data feeds for all this stuff.
Like, I was like, how do I get
a data feed from the shower? How do
I get a data feed of, like, how
much electricity I'm using? How do I get
a data feed of, like, how what the
tree cover is in my city?
And it blew me away that this stuff
just did not exist. Like, cities do not

(34:05):
have APIs.
Even now, more than ten years later,
it hasn't gone that far. We don't often
have smart meters that we could access our
data from. Like, our ability to get this
data
is super,
primitive.
And also, Jane McGonagall,
she has a book called Reality is Broken,
and she's sort of an advocate for game
design. And anyway, all these messages came to

(34:26):
me all at once. And I'm like, oh
my God. This is it. This is it.
This is it. Imagine if we could get
data feeds from all over the planet for
all this stuff. Ding ding ding ding. Up
for me. And develop the most ultimate, like,
API
that you could get the water from your
shower, and the cars, and everything nested for
yourself and your block and your group and
company.
And then we could develop,

(34:47):
like interfaces or tools that could be totally
gamified with this real data. So instead of
getting, like, a red dot notification when your
friend messages you, you get a red dot
notification when you, like,
had used up too much, I don't know,
hot water or something like that. Yeah. Or
did it for waste.
And then it could be gamified because the
Opower guy said, when you compare people against
other people, then, like, that's what changes their

(35:08):
behavior. So if we had the data, then
we could, like, compare people and then make,
like, Farmville stuff. And I was like, oh
my god. Oh my god. Woah. Woah. Woah.
Woah. This is it. This is it. This
is my thing. This is my thing. This
is this huge, like, I was like,
woah. This is like
this is it. And that's where the name
Hello World Labs came from. Yeah. Because I
was like, what if you could, like, you
know, Hello World is what you write when

(35:29):
you start learning a new computer program. It's
the first thing you write, like echo whatever
apostrophe hello world. But my kind of
thought for it was like, what if I
could develop the ultimate environment like Earth Sciences
API,
where you had all of the data by
electricity, my trash, my water, tree cover,
transport, air pollution, and you had it all

(35:51):
in this, like, master data back end that
anybody who's doing environmental work could interface with,
and then be able to build their ultimate
sort of gamified app, like on top of
this sort of
data cutter back end. And that was my
kind of dream. I was like, that's Silicon
Valley worthy. That's cool.
But But then I realized very quickly trying
to, like, venture into these things. I started

(36:13):
looking at waste and then electricity
that it it's not
it's not that easy to do. Like, it's
maybe not even possible to do my initial
dream. So what I have done since then
is just because you needed so many different
inputs from so many different places. Right? They
don't often even exist. Like, they're not being
measured. Like, you can't really do it. Because

(36:33):
there's no competition in many of the fields
that you're talking about. Right? There's no electric
competition. There's no
waste competition. Like, why should they bother to
share data? Capitalism doesn't
naturally really support that model. It has to
be funded by government or utilities or something
like that. But when I had the framework,
even though my idea of, like, the ultimate,
like, environmental data API

(36:55):
was not really viable, I started to hack
away at different industries. So I started working
on waste, and I was started to really
understand, like, how is waste measured? Like, what
are the load sensors on the trucks? Like,
is there an API? What's the back end?
Is it on the cloud? Like, who are
the players in the space? And then I
got a contract with the University of Santa
Cruz to actually build something like that for
them.
And I put it all together and developed

(37:16):
this great,
a dashboard. And then I started to realize
the real, like, limits as well to the
industry. And you're like, oh, okay. I can
see why nobody's done this before. There's a
lot of reasons. But it gave you a
beta. It gave you something to start to
a draft, something to start.
Yeah. Yeah. And so then I worked in
electricity as well and started developing, like, electricity
apps and tools for that. And then sort

(37:37):
of looking at, you know, urban greening and
trees and looked at the data. And so
I started to understand a lot of the
computer science of how to measure things and
put them together in terms of, like, GIS,
maps, and how the different electricity utilities work
with, like, their APIs, and just keep on
developing, like, concepts of how to
influence people.
Data driven, gamified concepts of how to influence

(37:59):
behavior. And that's what I've done for the
last ten years. I just keep
looking at the data, trying to figure out
how to gamify it,
and then and it just leads me into
just so many different,
directions
until I was But I think you're under
I think you're under teach kids.
Right. Right. I think you're undervaluing or under,
sharing on the behavior part that you studied

(38:22):
and that you were focused on learning, and
that is is the part that is so
critical now. Like, how do we actually change
behavior? And you've done all this work. A
lot of it involves
measurement
and having the metrics, and a lot of
it involves sharing and some sense of competing
because then it gets to the question of
individual versus collective

(38:43):
behavior change. So those are all, like, the
part that I think that you do it
that's even more interesting than all that you
just shared
is how much you've learned about behavior
change and what it takes to change people's
behavior. So go down that path a little
bit. Like, what have you learned about people
so that
listeners can can actually process what

(39:05):
would what it would take for them to
change or for them to help change others
because it's so frustrating. Like right? Like, we
think that we're trying to do something good,
and then the people around us
are just coming up with every excuse in
the book to not be responsible, not being
accountable, or some greenwashing and greenwashing and all
the rest of it, what can you offer

(39:25):
us so that we can take that step
of action forward that you've learned about behavior
that'll help?
Well, yeah, it kind of flows on in
a sort of an interesting path from
this recent talking about measurement driven stuff. Because
I started with this very, like, measurement feedback
loop centric way of thinking, and then had
to be app and a UI UX thing.

(39:46):
But the more I got into it, and
the more I actually started to test this
on real people, like in the real world,
and interviewing academic authors in the Journal of
Environmental Psychology, which I also did because I
really wanted to crack this nut. I really
wanted to understand. Like, if I show somebody,
like, a traffic light
that
is there carbon emissions, like, what's going on?

(40:08):
Like,
I really, really wanted to crack the nut
and master it in in every dimension. I
found that I have moved way more qualitative.
Like, I hardly even look at the data
or even do, like, that data driven approach
very much anymore. Like, it's kind of in
the background. But the reality of doing stuff
in real life is that
change happens between conversations
between human beings. People copy each other, people

(40:30):
talk to each other, people create trust with
each other, they create groups,
they create accountability and bonds. Oh, look, the
dog is on my lap here. I just
wanna show you, like,
she's here on the podcast.
Hi, Mook. Oh, the here we go. The
podcast. And you've gotta get groups of people
together. So
you can for start, you can give people

(40:50):
a goal and just basically tracking progress towards
a goal. You can get a,
instead of my my initial vision of the
profound,
like, a multi dimensional, like, data API gamified,
cybernetic Earth. Okay. Instead of that,
you can get a piece of paper
with, like, seven days on it, like you
do for a sticker chart for kids. One,
two, three, four, five, six, seven, and then

(41:11):
give a sticker and you take on a
seven day challenge. Like, you have a beginning
and you have an end, and you take
it on, and you do it as a
group.
People tend to think they need really big
groups. You need small groups. Right? Groups Teams
have to be small. Four to seven people.
Five people is the optimal. This is found
in the behavioral science, and it's also what
the military used. I spent, like, a whole
day looking up military structures once to try

(41:32):
to get figure this out,
and they have five. Everything is a units
of five. So you have one leader, and
then you have four. I think they call
them, like, riflemen or something to one or
rifle leader.
And then those five
combined together,
and then there's another leader on top of
that. So you'll have 11. So you have
one at the top, and then he's got,
like, two guys under him, and then those

(41:53):
two guys have another four. And then you
get that guy. So they're in our team
of 11. And then you have eleven, and
eleven, and 11. Right? And then those 11
then have one above that. Right? So, if
you've got a movement, and maybe you've got
a hundred people, start structuring it like that.
Get people into these little groups with leaders,
upon leaders, upon leaders, all kind of lay
it up. So, what you actually have is
one third of your people

(42:14):
are actually in some sort of, like, group
leadership position, which is like a totally different
way to go about it. People think, oh,
I need to have hundred people show up
to my event.
Yeah. Cool. And then you have maybe, what,
one lecturer, like, one guest lecturer to, to,
like, a hundred people? That's not the way
to do it at all. That's education versus
Yeah. Yeah. Everyone goes and listens to a
guest lecture and then they leave again. What
if you get those hundred people on and

(42:35):
everybody gets assigned into a group of five?
Okay. Who's gonna be the leader? One person
puts their hand up. Okay. By that stage,
you will have one third. You'll have about
almost 30 people being one of those leaders
who's organized everybody. Give them a goal. Okay.
What are you guys gonna work on? What's
your goal? And then you get together, you
exchange WhatsApp, you exchange text messages, and then
you meet back fourteen days later, and you
also had a goal. Like, that's basically, like,

(42:57):
the behavior design and action design.
Real humans talking to each other, going and
talking to your neighbors, having each other's text
message groups, making sure that your project has,
like, an end date, like, if it's a
six month thing, that you're doing it for
six months. You know, if it's three months,
if it's it's three days. And then people
are doing accountability between their groups, so they're
doing this thing called, like, a commitment device
or a pledge. Like, I write, you know,
like, Jessica, I promise to get my Eco

(43:19):
City built
by the end of the year, and the
little broken wind turbine, I promise to fix
it. And then I've got this promise to
you, and I'll feel like a loser if
I don't come through on my promise. You
know? And that's our sense of being a
responsible, trustworthy person is incredibly strong.
The idea of being, like a responsible person
rather than, like, a sort of environmental activist
is a much stronger way to to get

(43:41):
to people.
And it's very hard to assign people responsibility
in this day and age. So there's your
formula that seems to be proven
that
on a small scale, if you can put
people
in a place of responsibility,
they will act
because there are pressures, rewards, and punishments
and expectations

(44:02):
that are important
to individuals and the collective group
to actually perform and complete goals and deliverables
versus an individual who's just like, okay. Go
do this. Here, this, I'll teach you about
about it.
And then you decide if it's if it's
meaningful enough to you. In most cases, it's
not because there's no expectations

(44:22):
set by anyone else. Right? Like, we need
external expectations
to change behavior.
This individual approach, it's like is not good.
Like, you've got NGOs
and environmental NGOs and local cities and governments
reaching out to people as if they are
individuals, and also influencers and content creators as
well. Mhmm.
Like, you're this sort of big umbrella, and

(44:43):
then you're, like, getting the message out. People
have to get people into small groups. If
you aren't getting people into small groups, like,
nothing is happening. And a lot of the
times, nothing is happening. There's budgets and NGOs,
and it's really hard for them to get
stuff to change. And people don't necessarily wanna
do it because it's really,
you know, it's more like emotional labor. It's
like the human side.

(45:04):
Yeah. Of course, you wanna make a YouTube
video or host a Zoom call. It's impersonal.
Do you wanna actually walk around your street
and get to know your neighbors and
contact the parents one by one and have
those awkward, like, interpersonal dynamics where they have,
like, a different personality to you or, like,
they're wearing clothes that you would totally never
wear and they think you're weird and, you

(45:25):
know, you've gotta, like, go through that, like,
real stuff.
And and it's getting harder and harder. Right?
Like, people are getting worse and worse
at those skills
because we're doing everything sitting in front of
screens on our own rather than having that
communication going and having those harder conversations.
It's hard to hear it. It's hard to
change behavior. It's hard to not hold on

(45:47):
to
the facts and the beliefs that are more
comfortable to hold on to and to actually
be open to change. You know, it gets
to the broaden and build, like, just the
open nonjudgmental
mindset of just being willing to have a
conversation
and open minded enough to hear what the
other person's saying, we're not good at it
anymore.

(46:07):
Yeah. I mean, I don't know if we
were ever good at it.
But, yeah, it should not be, you know,
all about your own tribe. Just listen to
other people. And if someone I was on
a podcast just a few days ago, and
woman said, but what if you go and
offer to design a permaculture garden for someone,
and then they open the door and they're
wearing, like, a MAGA hat? And I'm just,
like, awesome. I would love that. Great?

(46:28):
Like, you can't see people in these, like,
binary categories. Mhmm. Like, if you wanna build
a permaculture garden, does it matter if they,
like, wear the stupid hat or not? Like,
you you need to be able to have
the social diffusion happen to the other side.
This is like something some vegans
believe in that I think is really, really
bad. But when you take your veganism to

(46:49):
extra lengths of being the most serious vegan
in the world,
you now do not even talk to people
who eat meat. Right. I know. Right. It's
not It's like a whole other that's like
what you should absolutely not do. Right. If
you wanna be a vegan activist, you need
to talk to 100% meat eaters all the
time, because that's how society changes the flow
from one to the other. So, you need
to be creating more flow with people that

(47:10):
have opposing belief systems, and not stressing them
out. Just focus on bonding and listening and
finding stuff in common. Don't tell people that
you think they're bad. Well, there's also two
there's there's another layer to that, which I
think, you know, which we're losing these days,
which is we make assumptions about others
that we have nothing in common. Right? Like
that that we're an absolute

(47:31):
a or b binary.
Whereas there's people in all
walks of life and all political spectrums that
are really interested in the environment
and interested in healthy food and interested in
clean water and interested in future of the
Earth. Right? Like, so
the judgments that we have about what hat
they're wearing and not being not being the

(47:53):
right person to talk to is the problem.
So
just
don't assume we're in two different binary buckets.
But there's also this other, like think of
it as a bit of a, like, a
meta concept. Right?
Like, everybody is gonna fit on a bell
curve of their opinions about something, and people
are gonna

(48:13):
create tribes between one and the other. And
you're always gonna think that your tribe is
right. Otherwise, you won't be in it. Obviously,
my tribe is right. My tribe is morally
superior, and they're
more stupid than me over in that tribe.
So every time you hate on them, you
lift yourself
up. Right. That's human nature. Right? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And so you might think in
today's day and age that this is sort

(48:33):
of left wing versus, like, Trump, Musk. And
it's all because of, like, Trump and Musk
and all those people that support them are
awful. And all of us who are, like,
more left are, like, the good guys. Right?
Yep.
But that's just one particular
binary or bell curve that is around now.
So if you were to take all those
people and you were to, like, they just
say they disappeared or they went somewhere else,

(48:55):
then and you would have all of us,
we would develop our own bell curve over
something else. Yeah. We start to split somewhere
else. Yeah. Right. And you're like, oh, there's
the people who, like, we're the people who
work really hard, and they're the people who
just wanna meditate on the beach all day.
Or they're those stupid meditate on the beach
all day people. They don't contribute. We do
all the hard work. We do all the
childcare. Or, like, there would be something else.
And when you get into, like It's it's

(49:15):
actually reality. If you look at the if
if we're just gonna talk politics for a
moment, if you look at the right and
the left, or if you call it the
Republicans or the Democrats, both factions are in
terrible
conflict between their sides.
Like, it's reality. It's not if we just
take away
the other side. It's that within the Democratic
Party,

(49:36):
we've got unbelievable conflict between the farther left
woke and the centrist. Right? Like, we hate
each other somehow. We've been told we should
hate each other just within a party. But
this just keeps going down and down to
a little bit more granular. So you can
just get any group of people no matter
who it is. Yeah. And depending on what
the issue is, like, if it's a bit

(49:56):
controversial, eventually,
some bell curve will emerge where half of
you are really into this thing. Yeah. Yeah.
Or, like,
these are the people that think it's okay
to have plastic at the party, and these
are the people who are, like, against plastic
at the party, like, or that we have
to only have fruit
for the kids. Right. You know, like, you'll
start fighting with each other and the same
dynamic will emerge

(50:16):
no matter, like, who you are. Like, the
like the vegans, there are probably massive factions
between vegans that believe you should only ever
talk to other vegans, and vegans that think
that you should talk to anyone. And maybe
they really, really hate each other. So, like,
it doesn't matter how if you take the
other side away, like, new sides will emerge.
So what's the, like, point of it? Just
stop getting into the side. Just I just

(50:37):
acknowledge the concept of sides, officially. Like, I'm
like, I don't do sides.
Mhmm. We're all here on the Earth together,
and we have a problem that needs to
be solved as a group, and everybody thinks
differently. And people's thoughts change, like, they're constantly
evolving, like what people people think.
You know, twenty years, gay marriage was, like,
not a thing, and now it's totally okay.

(50:58):
So whatever it is, it's gonna be in
a constant state of flow. So, like, don't
get sucked into it, and don't
get upset because people have a differing opinion
to you because people always will, no matter
what is going on.
And, you know, you just gotta kinda be
more zen and embrace everybody and look at
the interconnectedness.
And through the connectedness,
you can just try to solve the problem

(51:19):
instead of us versus them. I just think
us versus them is never gonna get anywhere,
and it just has to it has to
go. We need to, like, a massive evolution
of consciousness to move away from us versus
them.
Yeah. So, I mean, what it comes down
to, I think, you know, what the question
is coming to mind for me is,
how do you make caring about our Earth
and the environment

(51:41):
the platform that
doesn't have any
politics involved, like, doesn't have any us and
them involved, that it's
that everybody's on the same page? Like, what's
the what can you offer us, you know,
words of wisdom that how do you just
make this something that everyone needs to care
about and not judge each other? Oh, I
don't know. I don't know if I can
say much more about it than what I
just what I just did. But just, you

(52:02):
know, sort of like focus on the theme,
focus on the values. Like, if you're trying
to build permaculture gardens, you know, you don't
necessarily, like, have to get into
climate change and gay marriage and abortion. Like,
they may often come sort of connected, but,
like,
if somebody thinks differently to you about those
things, or you're trying to build vegetable gardens,
just, you know, focus on the vegetable gardens.

(52:23):
Yeah. Like, it doesn't need to be like
a whole sort of sort of thing. And,
you know, connect with people on the stuff
that you do have
values on. Yeah. And, you know, people will
evolve over time. Like, like, if somebody doesn't
realize something, perhaps a bit more progressive,
you know, they're 25 years old,
and they think, you know, like, climate change

(52:43):
is dumb.
It's possible that in ten years, they might
not think that anymore, that it's more of
an evolution. It's not like they're on the
other side and we're not. It's just that
they just okay. The penny hasn't dropped. We
don't need to, like, hate on them for
the penny not dropped. Like, it just might
take them a while, and maybe, like, they'll
never it'll never drop, and it will be
their kids where it will drop. You know?
Like Importantly importantly, to your point, I was

(53:04):
talking to somebody the other day on one
of my episodes that we're no longer climate
change deniers.
We've literally shifted you know, the whole whole
mental set moves. And as long as we
can stay, as you said, you know, the
whole whole mental set moves. And as long

(53:25):
as we can stay, as you said, as
long as we can stay focused on what
we're working on
and see that as a small positive piece
and take action, like
vegetable gardens, permaculture,
then
keep the rest of it out of the
conversation, and we can all communicate.
So hugely important. Okay. Katie, you've been super
generous. What are you working on now that

(53:46):
we need to hear about because you've got
all these amazing things going on? My main
motivator is launching the School of Climate Action
Design. So I've put all of my knowledge,
my courses, I got multiple
courses on behavior design, behavioral psychology,
data driven
design theory, and and just marketing in general
that environmental groups need to know. As well

(54:08):
as all of my projects, like,
I've created so many tools over the years,
like, environmental groups and local cities and governments,
etcetera, can use in their communities.
And I put it all into this six
week coaching program called the School of Climate
Action Design, which I'm hosting on Mighty Networks.
Mhmm. And that's what I'm doing. I am
enrolling people in that, signing up getting people

(54:30):
to sign up for the wait list,
putting academic experts, people who have PhDs in
environmental psychology, giving guest workshops and specialists in
marketing so I can create a community where
I can sort of teach what I've learned
and help teach what I've learned more at
scale, and help mentor all of these awesome
environmental and sustainability folks, my world, my community,

(54:50):
and really help people, like, get to the
next level. Because there's just so many mistakes
people make. Like, every single environmental campaign I
see, I'm like, mistake, mistake, mistake, mistake. That's
why it's not working. After you've done this
for a while, it starts to be clear.
And I'm hoping to take people through that
process, teach them about all of the, you
know, behavior mapping, hero's journey storytelling, how to
build marketing funnels, UI, UX, cognitive load, gamification,

(55:12):
all of that.
And then I'll let you know, I have
this community and this platform in which I
can keep developing and sharing more
behavior tools
over over the years. I was gonna say
my big thing
The podcast, I would say, you know, if
you're targeting
that coaching program towards
environment people in the environmental space, that that's
a beautiful place for everybody to be together

(55:33):
in conversation. But if you look at your
podcast,
you're offering so many marketing and business development
tools
that are
stand stand strongly on their own,
unrelated to the environment, like for anybody
who's interested in business or in relationships or
changing behavior about anything

(55:54):
around, you know, involving the people around them
or themselves,
individual or collective. So I would say, you
know, go to Katie's
podcast of how to save the world. It's
not only about the environment. It's really about
moving forward in anything you're doing. So
you've got both sides.
Yeah. I mean, I didn't really set it
out to be something that was about startups
or entrepreneurship.

(56:15):
But inevitably,
as a sort of a change maker, you
are an entrepreneur. Like, you're an entrepreneur and
an environmental activist at the same time. So
you're going through all of the lessons to
do with, like, how do you capture attention?
How do you sign people up? How do
you manage your own emotions?
How do you manage teams? How do you
manage funding? Yeah.
Like, you have to learn all that stuff
too. You don't get out of the

(56:36):
you don't you'll sort of get some, like,
free pass on all of that stuff.
But then you also have this other kind
of simultaneous equation that you can't just make
money like a regular business.
And usually, businesses have a kind of an
environmental impact, so we're kind of like got
the extra challenge of being a bit
working against the grain of capitalism
Mhmm. And having to actually really make, make

(56:57):
an impact. So there's more to learn.
But, yeah, I mean, I've been
either self employed or a start up CEO
for more than twenty years now. I've been
funded, not funded, bootstrapped,
consultants,
courses, content creator, public speaker. You know, like,
I've been around the,
you know, the block of having to

(57:17):
capture attention from a lot of people, and
then having to scale up revenue, and then
also actually, like, make change happen. So, yeah,
inevitably, a lot of the stuff I teach
is probably
half
startup marketing and design and half actual, like,
environmental
psychology because they kind of they're sort of
a Venn diagram. We kind of end up

(57:38):
doing both at the same time. Yeah. And
it's about getting going from education to action.
So if you wanna just
do something
instead of sit around by yourself or participate
in something, there's so much there in the
work that you do. So and I so
appreciate that. Like you just, there's this energy
of
community and action and
doing and imagination

(57:59):
and creativity and curiosity and
fun.
Like, there's just so much color and fun
in everything that you put out there. So
thank you. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Thank you for appreciating it. It's
always so much fun chatting with you. So,
Katie, I look forward to more, and thank
you so much for being here and for
sharing some of the amazing stuff that you're

(58:20):
working on and giving us some tools to
just just get stuff done
without being afraid to get stuff done. Right?
Like, to just sit on it, sit in
the quiet space, but to, like, move forward
and do. Thank you, Katie. Thank you for
for having me. And Mochi says thank you
as well. Yeah. She says thank you.
Thank you, Mochi. She is one quiet dog.

(58:41):
Yeah. She didn't do any snoring in this
No. Today, so she did a good job.
Thank you.
This has been a production of BLI Studios
produced by me, Kai.
Follow along with our other BLI produced shows
at balancinglife'sissues.com/podcast-BLI.

(59:04):
Got an idea for the show? Email me,
Kai, at balancing life's issues dot com. And
don't forget to stay in touch with your
host, Jessica, at [e-mail].
Anything else to add, Miles?