On this episode of the Lead With Purpose podcast host, Tze Ching Yeung talks to David Chenery to talk about sustainable interior design and architecture and the differences and similarities between the two.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• We work with existing buildings. In the hospitality world, which we serve, the average space gets fitted out every 5-7 years. We need to look at that in terms of our duty as designers to avoid as much waste as possible and limit the environmental impact of that change.
• Sustainability and circularity weren’t discussed in this industry for many years because the job is hard enough with pleasing the client, meeting budgets, deadlines and building control regulations, sometimes you’re just trying to get through it. We focused and dug into sustainability about 5-6 years ago because we wanted to hold ourselves to account as well as attract clients that are interested in that agenda too. The industry has got better and there are people doing good things, but I’m also aware that we’re not really representative of the whole industry.
• The first thing we look at with a fit-out project is what will be demolished or removed and how can you keep as much as possible and make best use of the space there. Then we look at low-impact design to make the least number of design moves you can, bringing in the least amount of materials, optimising the layout for efficiency, using ethically sourced materials. We also have to design for end of life so that we minimised the waste and impact of the disassembly process.
• Does sustainable design cost more money? It depends how far back you go in the design process. 80% of environmental impact is baked in at the design stage. Rather than build a cupboard from more expensive FSC-certified plywood, could you build a set of shelves? Yes, you should, because you’ll be using 20% less material which will cost you less than a cupboard made from cheaper, uncertified plywood.

BEST MOMENTS

‘Restaurants can open and fail within 2 years, all the material, energy and effort involved in getting that open is then wasted.’

‘A lot of people think about carbon and NetZero when they think about sustainability, but in the fit-out world carbon is measurable and can be important, but it’s not holistic enough.’

‘When you throw something away there is no ‘away’, it has to go somewhere, can you donate materials to charities or break it down and process the materials in a genuine recycling way to avoid landfill?’

‘The deeper we get into it the more interested I am in the principles: What is the least we can do to be excellent?’

ABOUT THE GUEST

David Chenery is the founder of Object Space Place, a sustainable hospitality design studio, working across architecture, interior design and branding. He also co-hosts the “Hospitality and the Infinite Game” series with Michael Tingsager.

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Podcast

ABOUT THE HOST

Tze Ching started her entrepreneurial journey back in 2007 with the launch of a sustainable clothing & home furnishing ecommerce business. Next, she created a sustainable fashion brand.

In 2019, she launched a social enterprise to help raise awareness about the negative impact of fashion at schools & colleges.

Through the 15-year journey, she learned so much, but easily the most meaningful lesson learned was about the importance of marketing. She now focuses on channelling those insights to help others succeed through We Disrupt Agency, a business coaching, mentoring & digital marketing company.

Tze Ching’s mission is to create a community of global change makers and to contribute to positive change in both people & planet.

CONTACT DETAILS

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On this episode of the Lead With Purpose podcast host, Tze Ching Yeung talks to Joshua Prieto, co-founder of Seeds of Tao, about regenerative enterprises.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The regenerative movement and regenerative enterprises are working towards is that we’d like to see a circular economy in the future, one that’s just and fair and actually has a right alignment with the natural systems that are at play. There’s not one circular/regenerative business out there today, we’re all very dependant on an extractive system, but we’re trying to seed the notion that business doesn’t have to be, that’s the vision we’re trying to bring to life.
• I discovered permaculture (the philosophy of moving beyond sustainability towards a more regenerative realm) around the same time I began my career in marketing, branding, sales and messaging. I found myself split; I really loved marketing and messaging and the creative outlet that provided me, but at the same time I found myself not wanting to be involved in capitalistic/consumer-driver, growth at any cost campaigns.
• Circular and regenerative are similar, though circular is more focussed on the product side. In a lot of ways, it’s harder to change a product/consumer-driver world into a more regenerative one. Its already ingrained in an extractive system. Regenerative businesses are coming up with new or different ways that detach themselves from the extractive systems that are at play.

BEST MOMENTS

‘Truly regenerative businesses are in alignment with nature, they don’t take or extract from natural systems, cultures, etc.’

‘We can do business in a different way.’

‘We should never blame the tools (marketing), we should always take responsibilities for our own actions.’

ABOUT THE GUEST

Joshua Prieto is the Co-Founder and Director of the Seeds of Tao learning platform for regenerative entrepreneurs. He has over 10 years of experience creating, building, and operating startup solutions alongside entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes. That experience has shown him that entrepreneurs have the biggest role to play in the Anthropocene as we either create the solutions for, or become the root problem of, our people, planet, and future. Josh now co-creates educational programs that disrupt the current way our entrepreneurs learn. His holistically designed educational programs empower entrepreneurs to stop chasing “silver-bullet” solutions and start designing solutions that use regenerative systems.

Website

ABOUT THE HOST

Tze Ching started her entrepreneurial journey back in 2007 with the launch of a sustainable clothing & home furnishing ecommerce business. Next, she created a sustainable fashion brand.

In 2019, she launched a social enterprise to help raise awareness about the negative impact of fashion at schools & colleges.

Through the 15-year journey, she learned so much, but easily the most meaningful lesson learned was about the importance of marketing. She now focuses on channelling those insights to help others succeed through We Disrupt Agency, a business coaching, mentoring & digital marketing company.

Tze Ching’s mission is to create a community of global change makers and to contribute to positive change in both people & planet.

CONTACT DETAILS

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On this episode of the Lead With Purpose podcast host, Tze Ching Yeung talks to Chris Desai, an award winning CEO, philanthropist and entrepreneur who is highly experienced in sustainability in the fashion industry and runs an environmental charity.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Through working in music and fashion I ended up in fast fashion, which we all know is a massive polluter. 10 years into my career I started to see the amount of pollution we were causing and what we were doing to our planet and I though; enough’ s enough. I can’t say I love the planet and want to protect it whilst my industry is breaking the planet.
• I would click a button and order 400,000 T-shirts for the week. You don’t realise how much water, dye, polyester, plastic that uses. Then you think of the ethics of the working conditions in certain countries. The buying behaviours of people in the UK are causing a lot of these issues abroad. It’s so easy to press a button and alleviate the responsibility.
• I got to a point where I realised that my values of protecting the planet, looking after nature and my job were completely misaligned. I had an honest conversation with myself where I discovered I was a hypocrite; I’m not living what I believe. 90% of the world are also hypocrites, not living what they believe, their actions do not equate to what they believe.
• When I left that job I took six months out and spent it sailing, it wasn’t glamourous, it was damp and horrible, but it was at a time that I really needed to connect back to the planet and understand that I had a higher purpose and a better calling that just making money designing clothes. On that six-month journey at sea with no laptop or phone, meditating every day that I truly connected with myself and whether it made money or not I was going to live my purpose and have faith.

BEST MOMENTS

‘Not many people know that the textile industry is the second biggest polluter in the world.’

‘I walked out of the big London fashion firm that I worked for because I seemed to be the only one that could see that we were killing the planet.’

‘When you ask people: “If I gave you £1million what would you do?” It’s never what they’re doing right now.’

‘We are all human and all living on one planet. Conservation is a uniting factor that transcends all beliefs, gender, race, we’re all on this planet and we can all look after it.’

ABOUT THE GUEST

Chris Desai is an entrepreneur and philanthropist who set up The Vayyu Foundation in 2017, a registered charity that has made considerable contributions to the benefit and protection of the planet with its global projects UOCEAN 2050 and UEARTH 2050.

Website

ABOUT THE HOST

Tze Ching started her entrepreneurial journey back in 2007 with the launch of a sustainable clothing & home furnishing ecommerce business. Next, she created a sustainable fashion brand.

In 2019, she launched a social enterprise to help raise awareness about the negative impact of fashion at schools & colleges.

Through the 15-year journey, she learned so much, but easily the most meaningful lesson learned was about the importance of marketing. She now focuses on channelling those insights to help others succeed through We Disrupt Agency, a business coaching, mentoring & digital marketing company.

Tze Ching’s mission is to create a community of global change makers and to contribute to positive change in both people & planet.

CONTACT DETAILS

Website

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

LinkedIn

On this episode of the Lead With Purpose podcast host, Tze Ching Yeung talks to Lydia Brearley, a sustainable fashion advocate, about fashion, legislation, and how we can make changes together as an industry.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• While I was living and working in Shanghai in 2016 the Chinese government was focussing on pollution levels and a lot of the factories had restrictions imposed on them in terms of their output. At the same time mills were closing down which meant that orders were going late, prices were going up and this started affecting my business.
• Occasionally a siren would go off in the city, which was panicking for me having never had it explained. It was a pollution siren indicating that the pollution level was so high that school kids couldn’t play outside. In that moment my business didn’t fell aligned with my own personal values and I started to pivot my career toward sustainability.
• When was first consulting and speaking to directors it felt like they had intentions, but trying to move the dial and impact change was quite difficult. A lot of us in the industry need to almost unlearn all that we’ve learned in our careers because it’s not fit for the future.
• Whether your business is impacted or not you need to have an understanding of what these legislations are about and why they’re being introduced, what the challenges and risks are in the textile industry and why they’re being implemented in the first place. Even if you don’t need to officially comply, it’s important that you understand the principles behind it and start to adopt that in your business.

BEST MOMENTS

‘Enkel means ‘simple’ in Swedish, it’s all about simplifying sustainability.’

‘There’s so much happening in legislation, it’s really overwhelming. Everyone’s talking about it but there’s very few resources where you can identify what things mean, the differences between different acts and what acronyms mean.’

‘It can take seasons to implement change, when you look at the reports about where we’re going, we don’t have that much time.’

‘I appreciate how challenging it is for bigger brands to do a lot of this stuff, but I’m very much in the mindset of: You can’t just tick a box, it is a journey, start with the biggest impact and go from there and make sure that everybody in the business is aligned with that vision.’

ABOUT THE GUEST

Lydia Brearley is a Fashion Buyer and sustainable fashion advocate, with over 20 years global experience, having lived and worked in London, Brussels, Shanghai and Sweden. She now specialises in Sustainability and Circularity @thisisenkel, and supports brands and businesses to drive meaningful change within the Fashion Industry.

LinkedIn

Website

ABOUT THE HOST

Tze Ching started her entrepreneurial journey back in 2007 with the launch of a sustainable clothing & home furnishing ecommerce business. Next, she created a sustainable fashion brand.

In 2019, she launched a social enterprise to help raise awareness about the negative impact of fashion at schools & colleges.

Through the 15-year journey, she learned so much, but easily the most meaningful lesson learned was about the importance of marketing. She now focuses on channelling those insights to help others succeed through We Disrupt Agency, a business coaching, mentoring & digital marketing company.

Tze Ching’s mission is to create a community of global change makers and to contribute to positive change in both people & planet.

CONTACT DETAILS

Website

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

LinkedIn

On this episode of the Lead With Purpose podcast host, Tze Ching Yeung talks to Dr Teri Baydar, a leadership development coach & author, about her book, ‘Flip The Switch’.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The book is about the 2 forms of consciousness that most humans experience (only 3-4% of us don’t). We live in a state of almost perpetual conflict, inner and outer, which I call ‘war consciousness’ and it stems from the structure of the left brain where we spend way too much time trying to fix things, tactically/practically figure things out, where we feel like we have to capture, contain and control something out there. Systemically we’ve pushed ourselves as a species more and more into that kind of consciousness which is really bad for us.
• The other form of consciousness inhabits the right brain and that is where we take a step back, relax and know that pretty much everything is OK. From that state of mind we seek to comprehend, we want to connect with people, with life, we build relationships and solve problems. We’re open to not needing to be right or wrong and to solving the problem from a higher sense of consciousness.
• We have created a system – economically, socially – that has certain outcomes that are undesirable, such as trashing the planet, but we keep doing it. Why? Because we can’t get out of our own way to think differently. Any leader that wants to disrupt or change anything has to first understand that you have to do it in your own mind.
• We mistakenly think strategy is going to solve a problem. I can strategically destroy someone, but strategy is only applying very good tactical, practical techniques from a higher level, but what’s missing there is connectivity to life. Understanding that if I want to destroy something or someone that’s destructive, not creative, healthy or beneficial.

BEST MOMENTS

‘In order to change things, to solve problems, to think critically, we have to get out of our left brain and into our right mind.’

‘The book is the MC2 of absolutely the thing you have to do as an entrepreneur, a leader, a person in order to solve problems from a higher level.’

‘Instead of disrupting in order to create better we end up disrupting and destroying and doing the same things over again, just in a slightly better, less toxic wat.’

‘A lot of high achievers think even of themselves as units of productivity, you’re not.’

ABOUT THE GUEST

Dr Teri Baydar is the CEO of White Lily Individual Development, LLC. Dr. Teri is a leadership development consultant, executive coach, and personal development expert who educates and supports C-suites and high achievers towards their personal path of self-actualizing growth for the greater good. During the decades she has spent coaching high-potential individuals, she has filled the role of mentor, friend, confidante, counsellor, healer, educator, the “CEO Whisperer,” and even “my own personal Yoda.”

Website

ABOUT THE HOST

Tze Ching started her entrepreneurial journey back in 2007 with the launch of a sustainable clothing & home furnishing ecommerce business. Next, she created a sustainable fashion brand.

In 2019, she launched a social enterprise to help raise awareness about the negative impact of fashion at schools & colleges.

Through the 15-year journey, she learned so much, but easily the most meaningful lesson learned was about the importance of marketing. She now focuses on channelling those insights to help others succeed through We Disrupt Agency, a business coaching, mentoring & digital marketing company.

Tze Ching’s mission is to create a community of global change makers and to contribute to positive change in both people & planet.

CONTACT DETAILS

Website

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

LinkedIn

On this episode of the Lead With Purpose podcast host, Tze Ching Yeung talks to Dr Teri Baydar, a leadership development coach & author, among many other things, to talk about her journey and consciousness.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• My book, ‘Flip Your Switch’ is about the 2 forms of consciousness that almost all of us experience – only 3-4% of us don’t experience this. We live in a state of almost perpetual conflict, both inner & outer, which is what I call ‘war consciousness’ which stem from the structure of the left brain where we spend way too much time trying to fix things & tactically/practically trying to figure things out, where we feel like we have to capture, contain & control something that we’re fixated on. Systemically, as a species, we’ve pushed ourselves more & more into war consciousness & it’s becoming really bad for us.
• The other type of consciousness stems from the right brain/mind, which is where we take a step back, relax & know that everything is pretty much OK. From that state of mind, we seek to comprehend, we want to connect with people/life, build relationships & solve problems. This is ‘love consciousness’ which connects with life in a deep way personally & a larger way for solving problems & understanding things.
• We’ve created a system, economically, socially, that has certain outcomes that are undesirable, like trashing the planet. But we keep doing it. Why? Because we can’t get out of our own way to think differently. Any leader that wants to disrupt or change anything has to first understand that you have to do it in your own mind.
• If you’re living in a valley, you don’t know what’s going on in the next valley. The only way to see & understand is to rise to the mountaintop & look around at the different valleys & have a viewpoint where you can comprehend, on a wider scale, what’s happening. This leads to critical thinking, but we have to go a little father than that, we have to simultaneously contrast & compare with the left brain which is this logistical, statistical functionality, but it needs to be in service of the higher values that are coming from the right mind.

BEST MOMENTS

‘To change things, solve problems, think critically, we have to get out of our left brains into our right mind.’

‘No problem was ever solved at the level of consciousness that it was created.’

‘We have a destructive mindset. Instead of disrupting in order to create better, we end up disrupting & destroying & doing the same things all over again, just at a slightly better, slightly less toxic way.’

‘We can only see other solutions once we elevate our consciousness.’

ABOUT THE GUEST

Dr Teri Baydar is the CEO of White Lily Individual Development, LLC. Dr. Teri is a leadership development consultant, executive coach, and personal development expert who educates and supports C-suites and high achievers towards their personal path of self-actualizing growth for the greater good. During the decades she has spent coaching high-potential individuals, she has filled the role of mentor, friend, confidante, counselor, healer, educator, the “CEO Whisperer,” and even “my own personal Yoda.”

Website

ABOUT THE HOST

Tze Ching started her entrepreneurial journey back in 2007 with the launch of a sustainable clothing & home furnishing ecommerce business. Next, she created a sustainable fashion brand.

In 2019, she launched a social enterprise to help raise awareness about the negative impact of fashion at schools & colleges.

Through the 15-year journey, she learned so much, but easily the most meaningful lesson learned was about the importance of marketing. She now focuses on channelling those insights to help others succeed through We Disrupt Agency, a business coaching, mentoring & digital marketing company.

Tze Ching’s mission is to create a community of global change makers and to contribute to positive change in both people & planet.

CONTACT DETAILS

Website

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

LinkedIn

On this episode of the Lead With Purpose podcast host, Tze Ching Yeung talks to Vincent Avanzi, the world’s only ‘chief poetic officer’ about how being poetic can change the world.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• I’ve had a real passion for poetry since I was a teenager, firstly from hip hop & then to a broader sense of playing with words & being able to speak to everyone. I studied at business school, worked 5 years in Microsoft, created 2 startups online, but I also did self-development work & spiritual exploration by travelling around the world for 2 years which changed the trajectory of my life.
• My life’s mission is to re-enchant the world with poetry to create a world of harmony. I work with corporations on climate change, how to elevate your leadership, I also work with schools & prisons. The idea is to elevate yourself, find a more poetic path & live a more poetic life.
• Poetry allows us to contemplate an ideal or a common future for tomorrow & also allows us to speak from our heart to another heart, which means you can speak to anybody. I want to deliver a message of harmony.
• There’s nothing more beautiful than somebody is aligned with what he or she does. Through this you see the blossoming of a human being, it’s the basis of what I do: You can write a speech with universal reach. People say you can’t please everybody, but I think there’s a thin line where you can express yourself in an inclusive way where you can touch people’s hearts because you’re speaking from the heart to the heart. You can do this for you team or your audience.

BEST MOMENTS

‘Poetry will save the world, & we’re all poets.’

‘A poet is not just a dreamer, it’s also a changemaker, a creator of new worlds.’

‘Poetry allows you to take another look at life & allows you to be dazzled by things, you can see the subtle, the good, the kind, the beautiful in people & things.’

‘Poetry is a language of peace & freedom where we can find the right word in our communication to have a peaceful conversation & relationship.’

ABOUT THE GUEST

Vincent Avanzi is a Chief Poetic Officer, TEDx Inspirational Speaker, speech writer, globe trotter and founder of A Human Odyssey - The Ink Of The Future. Former ESCP graduate, Microsoft manager and author of 10 books including "Harmony and The Genius Spot of Mankind" and "Trouver son Point Génial" (Hachette), he is also a journalist for the business newspaper Les Echos, a co-founder of the University of Happiness at Work and a Residential Artist at the Institute for Desirable Future.

Website

ABOUT THE HOST

Tze Ching started her entrepreneurial journey back in 2007 with the launch of a sustainable clothing & home furnishing ecommerce business. Next, she created a sustainable fashion brand.

In 2019, she launched a social enterprise to help raise awareness about the negative impact of fashion at schools & colleges.

Through the 15-year journey, she learned so much, but easily the most meaningful lesson learned was about the importance of marketing. She now focuses on channelling those insights to help others succeed through We Disrupt Agency, a business coaching, mentoring & digital marketing company.

Tze Ching’s mission is to create a community of global change makers and to contribute to positive change in both people & planet.

CONTACT DETAILS

Website

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

LinkedIn