Creating an Economy in Service of Life

Jose Leal (00:04):

Well, hello and welcome to the Radical World Podcast. I'm Jose Leal with my partner Matt Perez. And today we have what I like to consider a fellow Canadian. 'cause I was a Canadian for 25 years, myself Lorraine Smith and Lorraine is in Montreal Place. I know well 'cause I had the pleasure or, well, not always the pleasure of working in Montreal and traveling to Montreal regularly. So Lorraine, welcome from beautiful Montreal. It's nice to have you.

Lorraine Smith (00:39):

Thank you so much, Jose and Matt for having me on the show. It's great to be here.

Jose Leal (00:43):

Absolutely. Now you've been, what, what got you on our radar is the fact that you've been writing some really compelling stuff for a few years and a lot of our colleagues ourselves included, have discovered you and, and followed you for a few years. And the lately a colleague of yours that you've connected with then connected with us and said, have you guys spoken to Lorraine? You guys need to be talking to Lorraine. And so it's, it, it was a great idea because maybe you're here because someone else recommended rather than us knocking on your door. I don't know if you would've answered either way. I'm really glad that you're here. I'm really happy that we get an opportunity to talk. I've been looking forward to this for a few years, so I really appreciate that you're here. Can you tell us and, and the audience what got you writing and what your background that led you to the writing that, that you've been doing?

Lorraine Smith (01:48):

Sure. Thank you. And, and it's an honor to be connected. I believe. I'll, I'll maybe spill some beans. I think it's okay to do so. I think it was the delightful Gary Turner who put us in touch. And anybody who hasn't seen the episode of his conversation with you, they're in for a treat there. And I think in a nutshell, what got me writing, or more specifically, what got me sharing publicly, some of my writing about an economy and service of life debunking some of the sustainability, corporate sustainability and ESG activity that I'd been involved in, was saying out loud what I was hearing a lot of people saying quietly, sort of bringing a question to the surface that was a little bit taboo, but feels important that we ask it and do our best to answer it. So I'm sort of scratching an itch that a lot of us are feeling. We've got this sort of collective industrial rash, if I may be a bit gross and doing my darnedest to understand where it's coming from and what some of the remedies for it might be so that we can heal as a, as a society. But in particular as an industrial society. I think a lot about the concept of industrial healing, allowing industry economic an actions to be forces for healing, not just delivering on on needs and wants and being a little bit less bad. So that prompt was really just hearing some consistent murmurings backstage that were quite taboo and just starting to say them out loud.

Jose Leal (03:20):

That's awesome. I, I like, I like the fact that it emerged because that's the good stuff emerges, right? Mm-Hmm. And it's not something that's necessarily being talked about openly. Two things. One, you, you used an acronym. I'm not sure everybody's familiar with that acronym, so maybe you can dig into that a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. And second, creating an economy that's serv in service of life. Can you dig into that a little bit? But let me first say that absolutely. My passion to, to both position it that way and think of it from the standpoint of life rather than society or work or humans. So please.

Lorraine Smith (04:08):

Yeah. Well, actually, I love these two questions because in a way, the second is the answer to the first. So let me explain what I mean. So I use the acronym ESG Environment, social and Government Governance, or Environmental Social and Governance. And it's sometimes an adjective in front of disclosures, strategy, investing. So we have ESG consultants, which is what I used to be. And it's really referring to the gamut of generally speaking, corporate business industrial activity that we might call non-financial. I don't totally buy that label. Like people might say ESG, environmental, social and governance is all the non-financial disclosures, whether it be health and safety environmental impacts, climate a whole bunch human rights. I don't really buy the non-financial because that first of all sort of says what it isn't, not what it is. And at the end of the day, these things are all interconnected. Finance is interconnected with human rights, with climate, with the environment. But the acronym ESG stands for environmental, social and Governance. And why do I say that's the that's the question. And the second piece is the answer, because what brought me to the idea of an economy that works in service of life was working for 20 years. So I began in 20 2003. So a a little over two year golly, time is doing funny things. A little over two decades ago, and officially in the field of corporate responsibility, I left a quite, quite reasonably well paid, and actually quite fun, but not very satisfying on the sole level job in financial services to go do other things. I went and spun a blanket and traveled across the country on a bus with yarn and visiting Shepherds. That's a whole other story.I long to tell in, in a more fulsome way one day. But the point is, when I came back to Toronto, which is where I was living at the time, Toronto, Canada, I was ready to reenter the workforce and do something as one friend put it, you, you've spent all your money and you're ready for a job again, right? Yes. but I didn't really want to go back into financial services, but I wasn't too sure why I didn't understand what wasn't working, but something wasn't working. And so I kind of intuited my way into the field of corporate responsibility, which wasn't called that back then. It was CSR corporate social responsibility. ESG wasn't even really a term, but it was kind of hatching. And I found myself doing work in strategy. Climate change was becoming a part of the conversation. Business and human rights was really coming onto the radar. Canada has some very big banks, some very big mining and oil and gas companies, as well as some quite renowned retail brands. So we were in the spotlight for those industries. Even though Canada isn't exactly an industrial powerhouse. We have a few big players in some sectors. So I found myself getting involved in corporate responsibility, which became sustainability, which became ESG. And all the while I was believing, oh, this is, you know, this is the best way to have impact, right? Work with business to do more good business as a force for good. All these ideas along that trajectory. In 2009, I, for various reasons, I'll skip over in the spirit of brevity, move to New York City, continued to do the work now as an independent. So I felt like, oh, good, I can really flex into work that's really aligned, really impactful. And in that context, I was actually brought on board to another firm called Sustainability. And we were doing really neat work with Fortune 500 companies or some of the really iconic, sometimes private, sometimes public, but really advanced, ambitious companies pushing the needle on sustainability, ESG reporting, stakeholder engagement, investor communications, all the good stuff, right? It sounds like didn't come true. But actually what I was seeing over and over was it was either at best, less bad, so kind of harm reduction, if you will, or at worst. And, and frankly, most commonly, almost like an excuse for business as usual. Right? And I say that with respect. I worked with incredible people, amazing teams, and I believe everywhere I went, I believe the intentions were good. But what we were doing was sort of doubling down on the existing system and finding ways to make it, make it work a little over here while we kept fueling the problem over here. And so, simply put, what does that have to do with working in service of life? I came to realize that we were still working very much within a paradigm that says, we work for the economy, right? Our bodies, our time, our minds, our communities, our forests, our oceans, our air, you name it, it can be tweaked, priced, packaged, resourced, such that it fuels economic development, and that is life in service of the economy. Which the more I sat with it, the less it made sense, and I realized, no, it really needs to be the other way around. The economy needs to serve life. And if we aren't even aware of that idea, then we're definitely not measuring our progress towards that being true. And so, around 2022 well, actually officially October, 2021, I finished up a really long run that during which I realized I needed to live what I was noticing instead of kind of opining and grumbling within projects. And so I officially stepped away from that formal mainstream sustainability work and set out on a journey, which I'm still on, to be very candid, to see what it looks like for companies, for consultants, for writers, for actors, at any spot within what we call the economy to be in service of life. So that that economy in turn, serves our collective wellbeing.

Jose Leal (10:06):

That was a long but beautiful answer. Thank you.

Lorraine Smith (10:08):

Thank you.

Matt Perez (10:09):

If, if I may say we think that serving life will serve the economy better business.

Lorraine Smith (10:20):

Absolutely.

Matt Perez (10:20):

Right now our business hustle.

Lorraine Smith (10:25):

Yeah, yeah. You know, in our hearts, we know this. I'll give two sort of obvious reasons why I know this to be true, even though this gets mixed. I mean, one, sometimes it's fun to go back to word origin and see what we've been carrying all along without really noticing economy is kind of been a reorganized way of saying, looking after our home, home, that's what the word means, right? So what is meeting our needs and wants, if not looking after self, other, within our home? And you could call home, you know, the place we live, if it's not obvious, I'm in the process of moving home. But home is also the, the wider web of life that holds us and keeps us well, and enables us to live. So the economy is about looking after our home. That's one reason I'm sort of like, I'm not making this up. That's what the economy was for. But the other reason is, I, I was saying to your question earlier, Jose, about what prompted me to do some of this writing. I, I've been writing my whole life since forever. I've sort of, in one way or another, considered myself a writer. But it's only recently that I've been quite public and intentionally public with certain aspects of my writing. And this particular aspect, the reason I know it to be true in my heart of hearts, that we really are here in service of life, is that the number of people who've come to towards me saying, that's what I was trying to say. You know? Yeah. That's, that's the thing. It it's just this sort of expansive, oh, you put a little kind of ticker line under the thought that was in my head. And there's lots of other things that are true. And, and I'm not the only one saying this, of course. When there's that level of like, you know, toe tingling, goose bumping, resonance coming from different channels, I, I'm blessed to speak a few languages. I've worked in a few different regions. I've worked at many different, for lack of a more human term, I've worked at lots of different levels, if you will, hierarchies within organizations. Socioeconomic circumstances across many different sectors. And I can tell you this is consistent. And I'm going to, can I add a little bonus nugget that gives me a clue here?

Jose Leal (12:34):

Please, please.

Lorraine Smith (12:35):

Well, one of the things that has been really igniting for me, as in it's really sort of fueled me and sparked me forward, is when I stumbled into this notion like, oh, I, I kind of think the economy should serve life. You know? And it was a bit intuitive, meandering through two decades of thinking that's what I was doing. But realizing over and over, huh, that's not really what's going on. When I would articulate this to my more senior industrial colleagues, either my client or like my client's boss's boss, if you will. Essentially, whenever I was in an opportunity to speak with a senior executive, and I would say, well, I have this idea that the economy can really work in service of life. They would laugh. There would be this kind of like, well, you know, we got to be realistic, right? And then this cool thing would happen where I'd see this, like, they'd hear the words coming out of their mouths. Like, we got to be realistic.

Jose Leal (13:36):

Oh, wow. What did I just say?

Lorraine Smith (13:39):

And I would see the face, the change, the from like, come on, Lorraine, to like, oh, and a couple things strike me. Now. First of all, that doesn't happen as much. And I think it's because the word is out, not just because of me. I don't. Several people have said to me, you coined the phrase, I don't think I did. I think I drew it down. I'm seeing it more and more in other places. And I don't think those people are copying me. I'm not that known. I think we're collectively intuiting, by the way, we're only speaking English. There's a million other a million, but lots of other languages. But for the first few years, when I was saying this sort of 20 18, 19, 20, 21, because I'm just saying it all the time, I just repeat myself basically. I would see it consistently. I would see that laughing and then that like penny dropping. And in senior industrial decision makers minds, when that penny drops, there is tremendous power. Sometimes fear, because it's sort of like, oh, shoot, I just learned I was adopted by aliens. You know? Or like, oh, no, the world is not as, I have been proceeding as if it is. So there's sometimes quite a bit of fear and dysregulation that comes with that. But in more powerful times, there's this kind of like, oh, wow, you know, think of what we could do. Tell me to keep going.

Jose Leal (14:59):

Two things come to mind. First of all, I, I was having a conversation with someone else who has an initial and then a middle name that she uses, who is j Kim Wright. I don't know if you've come across Kim Wright. Kim is a lawyer and leads the integrative law movement. And has been and very influential in and changing how lawyers see law.

Lorraine Smith (15:26):

Oh, interesting.

Jose Leal (15:27):

And practice law including a number of, of tools such as the conscious contract and so forth Within that. And Kim and I were going back and forth about this very comment, and it was heard that tossed away that comment that those two words to me, serving life. And in our conversation back and forth, I said, there's something deeper. I'm not sure what it is. And I, I, I know that it's there. I don't know what the language is for it. And she goes and rattles off a sentence with serving life in it. And we kept talking, and I went back to it and I said, you just said it. She said, what, what did I just say? And it was serving life. And it and it, and since then, like you, I've kind of reine it many times and it keeps resonating. And it resonates for me, not from a economic perspective, meaning from a top down perspective, it resonates for me from a emergent perspective of why am I here, I'm here. The things that resonate for me emotionally are the things that serve life. Why do I become attached to the little birds that I feed every day? Why do I, you know, take care of the plants that I I honor their beauty and, and feed them and water them, and do all these wonderful things. And they feel good to do that. Right. And when I was in, in corporate, why did I, and, and that has the same experience. Why did I defend my employees? Why did I support them? Why did I hide them from all the BS that was happening up at corporate? Because I was trying to serve them. Yeah. I was trying to help them. And I think that our organizations have been built without that knowledge that it, it's been a structural process of an intellectual design structure that uses symbolic language and symbolic structures rather than this understanding that it's an emergent process of life, our behavior. And so when you asked the questions a, a week or two ago, you, you posed the questions like, who's in charge? What are their incentives? And what are we conditioned to believe is good? Because to those three questions, to me, describe the work that we've been doing in radical and what I think you're pointing to. I think you're pointing to that what I think is good is having a job, and therefore I need to have a job. And if I don't have a job, I feel pretty miserable. Because here I am jobless. Right. And that in our society is a pretty awful thing. Right. And, and so what do we believe in? What, what is it that we've been asked to believe? And that, that those beliefs, how do they carry onto or, or map onto serving life? Because having a job that forces me to do things that are harmful to life. Is the opposite of what's good. And most of our jobs today are doing things that are not wholly serving life.

Lorraine Smith (19:14):

Yeah. This is the puzzle. I mean, I may I share my approach to what do we do about that? Yeah. Because once you pull on it, or what some will say is, you know, once you see it, it's hard to unsee it. Yeah. And then it can become, well, this is everything everywhere all the time. What on earth can I do about that? You know? And it isn't just the, like, you know, individual acts add up. I mean, I think that's, that's also true. But it's, it's even bigger. It's like, oh crap. So I'm going to stay in the industrial context. I think there's lots of room for individual family, church, school, like there's lots of places to have fun here. But just because of the swim lane I'm in and where my decades of professional expertise are, I, I will stay generally speaking, within the corporate strategy, corporate disclosure, investor dialogue, and overall mainstream industry lane, if I, if I may. And so when such a person in such a role as say ESG advisor at a global consultancy, or a sustainability chief sustainability officer at a Fortune 500 company, let's say, and those are folks I know and love and have worked with when they see this and can't unsee it, it's quite painful because they are in a system that does not reward seeing this does not have room to see this and move forward in very many meaningful ways. So the obvious answers are, like, the most obvious ones I've seen applied are quit retire early. That's a good one. And I say this without judgment, by the way. I've just like, what are the options? You know, you're an individual making choices retiring early. That's a, that's a reasonable one. I don't blame people. Quit and do something else. You know, switch careers. Try try to, you're uncomfortable move so you get uncomfortable in a different way, you know? But to really face it head on and be like, oh, I'm responsible for the strategic direction of this company's supposed sustainability strategy. And I'm seeing that that's actually part of the problem. And I'm seeing that there's no, there's no ESG framework that addresses this. There's no investor portfolio. I mean, the ESG portfolio is, golly, I've followed that money. It's, it's, it's disturbing. And anybody who wants to go deeper into my blog, there's a lot there. And please challenge me, by the way, I'm, I'm, I always say this and I really mean it. Like, if you see errors, if you're like, no, no, no, no, you missed the really great stuff that, that money is energizing, please bring it. I I long for the day where I, I write the correction, or I write a piece about the correction. So they see it. Now what do they do? I guess my ideal answer today, and here we are at September, 2024. This is a moving space. But my ideal answer today is, the individual within the corporate setting does not give up. They don't step away just yet. Maybe that's their safest, best off option at a point. But first they try to use the existing knowledge and tools to bring this very profound awareness about the role of the company, the organization they're in, in relation to serving life. So I took some of my years as a sustainability and ESG consultant, and I kind of did a fun little, actually quite mischievous mashup of the tools and the tips and the tricks. And I created something that's free open source. Anyone can download it from my website. It's a methodology I call materiality. And anybody who's been in the ESG consulting trenches will recognize the word materiality, but it's usually spelled with an, I put reality into materiality. So there's reality in this kind of recognizable ESG tool. And I'll quickly sum up why this is perhaps useful for industry folks. Old school materiality. So ESG materiality folks will be looking for what are the company's issues, human rights, conflict, minerals, climate, et cetera. And depending on the sector, they're going to come up with a range of issues. They're going to talk to a range of stakeholders, and they're going to say, this company is working on these issues. That is essentially a materiality assessment. Now there's double, single, triple any, give a multiple. They essentially amount to the same thing. You can fight me on that, but I, I hate to say it, I'm going to win. They don't help a company truly center life and then serve it. They might help them better mitigate some of the worst issues outside their four walls, but it still doesn't get it. So it's ringing.

Matt Perez (24:00):

Sorry.

Lorraine Smith (24:01):

That's all right. When we put reality into materiality, which is what I did, twisting the existing ESG techniques and applying a life affirming lens, we, we turn the whole thing on its head, and we just ask three simple questions. What does this company say its purpose is? Because the purpose of a system ought to be directionally useful if they, what do they say their purpose is? What do they actually do to generate revenue? Which is what their real purpose is. So if they say one thing, but they generate money doing another, that's indicative already. And then the third question, what can this company do to serve life? And so, concrete example, I, I ran a few experiments on this. I publish as much as I can on it. I used Google as the first one. 'cause They're so, you know, they're a verb. We all do them every day. So let's take a look at our lives. In this context. And Google's stated purpose is to make all the world's data accessible to everyone everywhere. That's such a cool purpose. That is their stated purpose. Well, how do they generate revenue? The majority of their revenue, which I'm a little out of date, but it's hundreds of billions of dollars us. So it's a lot of revenue. The majority that they generate comes from selling advertising. So those are not the same thing. Make all the world's data accessible to everyone everywhere. Sell advertising. They're not mutually exclusive, obviously. That's why it happens at the same company. But if you walked out into the street and you grabbed the average 12-year-old gently and said hello, average 12-year-old if you wanted to make all the world's data accessible to everyone everywhere, what would you do? Like the first answer wouldn't be sell advertising. And if you said are point out the same things, you know, when you put 20 things in a mix and you put those two things in there, no, 12-year-old would say those are the same thing. They're not the same purpose. So let's not pretend that Google's purpose is to make data accessible to everyone everywhere.

Jose Leal (25:53):

And, and worst of all, to confuse the user of your service as to what is advertising and what is actual content. What is actual information?

Lorraine Smith (26:05):

Hundred percent.

Jose Leal (26:05):

Which is increasingly what they're doing.

Lorraine Smith (26:08):

And they're finding, and, you know, hats off to the ingenuity of Google. I mean, good gravy, they're incredible. Like, I, I respect the intelligence and I respect the, the ability to monetize. But I, I do not respect pretending one purpose while earning revenue through another, which by the way, is to pay absentee shareholders. Like the shareholders of Google are not doing the work. The shareholders of Google are like, they could be you and me, depending on our portfolios. Although anyone who's followed my work knows I completely divested from the market. And my not very big retirement savings is currently devaluing against inflation because it's in nothing, which is perhaps not financially wise. But I no longer felt comfortable investing in the things that the more I followed, even the most ethical portfolios, which mine was supposedly, and it was truly repulsive. So let's not pretend that is serving life. We can excuse it, we can justify it. We can say, well, that's because, or here's why. Okay. Those are worthy conversations. They're not serving life. So what does it look like? And I put this into the assessment that I did and, and made public. When you ask stakeholders, what do you believe Google could do in service of life, to what degree do you believe this company is serving life? And of course, different people in different parts of the world serving different roles in their own way, including those speaking on behalf of different biomes, et cetera, have very different views. Some quite favorable, but inviting better, some devastatingly horrible. So there isn't one answer, but I would say if we're not even asking the question, how can this company serve life, the likelihood of transforming it in that direction? And it is a transformation. It's not a tweak. The likelihood is less than zero. It's just not in the cards.

Jose Leal (28:02):

Can I ask a question?

Lorraine Smith (28:03):

Please.

Jose Leal (28:04):

Have you wondered if an organization in the form of a corporation by itself has the capability of serving life? Yeah. Meaning, meaning that that form of structure in all of its investors and hierarchy and boards and everything else, is it possible that that structure can actually allow for serving life?

Lorraine Smith (28:33):

Yeah. I live with that question all day, every day. I'm open to both a yes and a no. I'm open to, yes, it's possible. And every actor along that chain would need to be glad for that to be true. Right? So that would be investors who were like, woo hoo. We, we poured all of our money into that and it worked. We didn't get anything back. But that's okay. 'cause That wasn't our job. You know, that's not feeling too likely. I think it's possible. I think the more likely answer is no, it's not possible. I think we are looking at a massive restructure. We already have corporate structures that serve, that provide products and services and employ people and pay people and do cool things that live within different structures. So cooperative structures, employee owned trusts, different countries around the world have come at this in different ways. But I think we are looking at a major rethink around corporate structure. I think we're seeing the absentee shareholder, no offense to probably almost everyone we know, but no longer having that role. Like, let's be blunt, you didn't really make that money. You're not really that smart. You just either lucked out, you had capital to begin with, you, like, for some reason, circumstances let you put money where it financialize itself. Right? That's not really value.

Jose Leal (29:52):

And so you're chasing the return not to the value.

Lorraine Smith (29:54):

That's right. And so, you know, like I'll say, you don't get to do that anymore because that's hurting us. It's, it's hurting all of us, even the super wealthy who have a lot of that financial capital. So, and having,

Jose Leal (30:09):

You've done this work, sorry to interrupt, but.

Lorraine Smith (30:10):

That's okay, please.

Jose Leal (30:11):

You've done this work. And so I wonder how you'd answer this question, because my sense is the greater the return, the more likely the greater the harm to life, because you've got to cut corners in order to increase the return.

Lorraine Smith (30:29):

Well, maybe, yeah. I mean, it's definitely feels aligned with like, there's no free lunch or too good to be true. You know, there's awkward truths out there in, in the financial growth world. But I would almost step outside of the, the question of can something earn a financial return without being harmful? And step into another series of questions that would be along the lines of what would it look like to be generative, to be life affirming, to enable healing, restoration of a bio region, of a community. And then holding that series of answers, you know, oh, this would, oh, we'd need this. Oh, these things would have to be true. Okay, what, what have we got? And do, does financial capital have to come into play here? And if it does, does it need to grow? And if it does, how much does it need to grow? And who's holding it? And, and by what means does it grow? And then instead of it being like, uhoh, high returns equals high harm, and, but we're still in that paradigm of there's some money and it's going to grow either a lot or a little. We set that aside. And I want to be really clear here, because it's very easy to point out I'm living in a fantasy because that's not really how most of the economy works right now. So I want to just draw a really clear distinction between fantasy and magic. I find this really useful fantasy. In fantasy anything is possible, right? I could tell you, oh yeah, just down the hall, I have this really cool troop of unicorns. We have tons of fun. There's a dance room. My friends from all around the world and outer space come in their magic carpets. And we have a party every night. And I could be like, I'm telling you guys the truth. It's a fantasy, but I'm telling you anyway, right? Because I made it up and I feel like believing it's true. Okay. That's fantasy. It might be enjoyable. It might serve a purpose. There's nothing wrong with fantasy as long as we don't confuse it for like, strategic planning. Magic is actually based on the imaginal cells of reality. So magic is an acorn. That's a tiny little thing. I got, I got acorns all around here. Where are my acorns? Here's one. Acorns are the seed of the oak tree, right? It's tiny. I can like, whoop, I can drop a teeny, teeny little thing. I pick it up an oak tree, a big mature one that we haven't done anything dastardly with yet is so big. All three of us would have to wrap our arms around it. There's no way we could pick it up and throw it around. They're the same thing. This is magic. It contains the imaginal cells, the true potential of the oak, of the oak forest, of the oak Savannah, of the interconnected biological beauty that is life on earth. This is real. This is not like Lorraine has some crazy fantasy that this is a tree.

Jose Leal (33:17):

That is life in a nutshell.

Lorraine Smith (33:19):

Right? Nice. Well done. The challenge we have is that this magic is with us all the time. First, separating fantasy from magic and being like, my unicorn friends are not really coming by magic carpet from motor space. Oh, well, now that we've established that this is real magic, what is required to unlock the magic, and that is a series of conditions. If I leave it on my kitchen counter, it will never become an oak. It'll be this cute little acorn. 'cause I like acorns. What do I need to do to put it into the temperature, the moisture, the light, the all the things. No deer comes and eats it. No boot comes and crushes it. So likewise, the kind of transformation we're talking about with our capitalist model is very a corny right now. It's got a lot of magic. It's got, I mean, think of the people, you know, think of yourselves and the things you've done, the innovations, the ideas, the dreams, the changes, the connections. I mean, this stuff, I get all like super goosebump. Even just saying it out loud, it's real. This is not fantasy, but the conditions required to unleash that in the spirit of the kind of interconnectedness, the lifeness, you know, that's, it's big. It's very different from what the banks will sign off on right now from what kids go to school. So maybe, maybe the tail, my, the end of my little soliloquy here, those questions that you pointed out that I put on LinkedIn the other day. The last one is what are we conditioned to believe is good? Just as you said, we're, you know, we, we want a job and we want a good job. And it's not to say that's a bad thing, but it's to invite a stepping back and asking, wait, why do we want a job? What is a job and what is a good job? And why is it a good job? And why have I only been, why is my reality filtered so that I only see these ones not in a suspicious, everybody's out to get me. You know, stick it to the man. But like, wait, what else is possible out there? What happens when I take the acorn off the kitchen counter of my world? And it's that invitation for recognizing an entire universe of conditions with our jobs, right. That I think we are ready to give ourselves permission for.

Jose Leal (35:35):

I would say not with our jobs, but with our working energy.

Lorraine Smith (35:40):

Love it. Way better.

Jose Leal (35:42):

It's, it's, it's that energy that wants to invest and, and, and sweat and do all the things that need to be doing. Yeah. But, but when we all of a sudden narrow that to this one little fine new thing of a job, then we've lost the energy to do the things that serve life. And now we have to work for the job and to maintain the job and to, to do all the things that means maintaining that job. And Carlos just told us that we've got five minutes to go. I, okay. This is why we put the 40 minute limit, because I could talk to you for another hour.

Lorraine Smith (36:29):

Was a pleasure.

Jose Leal (36:31):

So I think what you're saying is that the potential for a new system already exists in the seeds of what many people have already been working on. And that the, that seed acorn, in your example, needs to have the conditions to do it. And I've come to the same realization. I always thought that the issue was that we needed the right seeds at the right time. But I think what we need is the right seeds in the right environment. And, and it's about the environment more so than the seeds themselves. The seeds are, the seeds are naturally occurring. It's just that we've identified them ourselves now as we've been doing the work, those who have been doing this work for years. Yeah. And identifying what the seeds are. But the conditions have never been promising, never allowed for those seeds to flourish. And whenever they've tried to flourish, the city has come around and cut them off of our median and right.

Lorraine Smith (37:53):

With glyphosate.

Jose Leal (37:55):

And remove them for us. Right? Yeah. And so how, how do you see us being able to build those environments?

Lorraine Smith (38:06):

Yeah, a hundred percent. Knowing we're close to time, I'll give you my kind of cheat sheet for this, because I believe we all, each of us has an incredible role to play within industry and and beyond. And each role is different. Just like the forest. I love to play with the acorn, but if you go into a mature forest, you see, I mean, you can't count the species, right? And they're all connected. So I like to ask myself three questions, and I, I literally ask them every week. And sometimes folks join me and we do some, some group work shopping on this. But anyway, I, I stay true to these. The first question is, what is it I seek to change? Because often in this work you get like, oh my God, we have to change everything. Oh my God. The whole system, the, the whole economy, the climate, the everything. It's like, maybe, but that's a lot. Like, I don't even know what you mean. You know, <laugh>, I don't even know what I mean when I say that. So I ground myself in very specific questions. What is it I seek to change? And I need to be able to answer from what to what. So with this question one, my default answer, although I'm always changing what I change and getting like more specific or wider, but my broader answer on this is I seek to change the number of people on earth who make senior level industrial decisions, who have never had the thought the economy can work in service of life to, of course the economy works in service of life. And I have a role to play in that. And it's a beautiful, wonderful thing. So my change that I seek is that the number of people who've had that thought shifts from not very many to a lot. And they, they're energized in service of that. But each of us is changing different things. And, and that's okay getting really crystal clear. What is it I seek to change? And then two more questions to help live into that change. The second, and I'll keep this one brief 'cause it could go on, is to try the change on to articulate with my own voice out loud to somebody who has my best interest at heart. What is it like when the change is true? It's positive, it's present. And I'm the first person protagonist. So really trying it on, it's just the most amazing thing when I talk to industrial leaders and they're like, God, I used to think this, but now I think that, and I have changed everything. And really drilling into that, not in a speculative, it could. I might, but it is now. So what does it feel like when that change is true? And then the third question, and this is where the real power is, is what is one thing I can do this week to make that true? And say it out loud. Tell someone who has your best interest in mind and go do it. And it could be as simple as call someone and tell them, this is what I'm trying to do, right? Or it could be get your website, ti it up so you don't look so scruffy and you know, get it, get it organized. It could be all kinds of things. Some of them may have multiple weeks, multiple months require investments. Some of them might be something you could do this afternoon. What do I seek to change from what to what? What does it feel like when it's true right now? And what's one thing I can do this week to make that come true?

Jose Leal (40:51):

I can tell you've looked at our website.

Lorraine Smith (40:54):

I have planned consistently in a, in a place where the universe knows how to get this done. And we're just here to do her bit of.

Jose Leal (41:03):

Lorraine, I've been looking forward to this conversation for a while. And it you said goosebumps. I've got them. Thank you.

Lorraine Smith (41:14):

Thank you. Likewise.

Jose Leal (41:15):

Thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure.

Matt Perez (41:17):

I like to say, I'd like to say one more thing. You are radical and that, that makes it warm. And read this book.

Jose Leal (41:31):

Oh, you're backwards. But it's radical companies.

Lorraine Smith (41:34):

Radical companies.

Matt Perez (41:35):

Radical companies.

Lorraine Smith (41:36):

Yeah. I look forward. Thank you.

Matt Perez (41:40):

I guess we do this, you know, but because we, we also thought about a lot of same things you, you talked about. And by the way, you never said you just said everything like a pre-practice sentence.

Lorraine Smith (42:02):

Well, universe came to visit me for this one, I guess.

Jose Leal (42:06):

Well, I, I think you've done this. You've been doing this for a while, and I think you've, you've really nailed a lot of the ways that you described this, which is really, really appreciated. At least for me speaking for myself being able to clearly articulate these ideas is difficult. And we benefit from people like yourself who have the ability and the master the art of, of making the difficult simple. And so it's obvious that that's what you've been doing. And so we appreciate that.

Lorraine Smith (42:42):

Well, thank you both very much for the invitation and the conversation. I appreciate it.

Jose Leal (42:46):

And I hope that we can continue the conversation.

Lorraine Smith (42:49):

I would love it. Thank you so much.

Jose Leal (42:51):

Absolutely. Okay. I'm just going to let our folks know that we're going to be having a conversation you mentioned co-ops. And we're going to be having a conversation with a Mendy Bakeries, which is a group of, I believe five or six now bakeries here in the Bay Area who are completely cooperative and looking forward to that conversation with them, as well as the Industrial Commons folks out of Northwestern, North Carolina. And they're a group of co-ops that are collaborating what I like to call a collaborative. And so we're looking to have a conversation with those folks over the next couple of weeks. And I'm looking forward to that. As you've mentioned, Lorraine co-ops are already a form of this type of new movement in the forward moving forward. We think that they need to grow up a little bit in a different way because they've been, they were formed in a place where they need it to be something a little different than what I think today calls for. But it certainly is a beautiful acorn to start with. And so we're looking forward to that conversation. Thank you again.

Matt Perez (44:16):

Revson Martis made a comment here. Thank you very much for hosting this webinar and Oh, thanking us very much. Thank you. Thank you Lorraine. And we will have her back. She kind of said it. We love it, you know, so we'll have her back.

Lorraine Smith (44:38):

Thanks folks. Thanks Revson for the kind remarks. It's nice to meet you in this part of the trail. And looking forward to walking alongside.

Jose Leal (44:46):

Thank you very much. Lorraine Bye everybody.