‍[00:02] Jennifer: Hi everyone, thanks for listening to The Founder Spirit podcast. I'm your host, Jennifer Wu. In this podcast series, I interview exceptional individuals from all over the world with the founder spirit, ranging from social entrepreneurs, tech founders, to philanthropists, elite athletes, and more. Together, we'll uncover not only how they managed to succeed in facing multiple challenges, but also who they are as people and their human story. 

The following episode was recorded during the 2024 Villars Summit held by the Villars Institute, where I recorded several short interviews over a period of 3 days. The Founder Spirit Podcast is proud to be a partner of the Villars Institute, a nonprofit foundation focused on accelerating the transition to a net-zero (and nature-positive) economy and restoring planetary health.

“Doing what you can with who you can with the influence that you do have, being measured within your relentlessness, but within that, having the courage to surrender it being okay if it fails.”

“Read books, do your best, fight hard, but also surrender to that it’s okay, that it all goes away.” 

“If we could redirect that $100 trillion towards servicing us as a whole instead of that 1%, we can redirect this ship very quickly with people who have those levers within their reach.”

Joining us today is Barney Swan, Founder of the Australian non-profit ClimateForce, leading off-grid research and development projects around biodiversity, innovations and agriculture solutions. 

Barney is also an explorer. In 2017, he skied 1,000 kilometers over 65 days to the South Pole, surviving using NASA designed solar ice melters, lithium batteries and biofuel made from waste. 

Currently, Barney is building a venture to restore over 500 acres of the world’s oldest rainforest, Daintree. A gifted keynote speaker, bridging outdoor stewardship and conscious business practices, he is on a mission to design a more sustainable future.

So Barney, welcome back to the Founder Spirit Podcast, lovely to have you here today. We're back in Villars at the Villars Summit 2024 and you're the first guest who is coming back for his follow-up podcast. So I'm really excited, thank you.

[02:27] Barney: Well, it's amazing to be back, Jennifer, and just a huge opportunity to build on last year and really have that compounding impact. I think there's a lot of great momentum and inertia, we just got to keep it up and keep that excitement fundamentally. 

And there's a lot of quite intense things happening around the world with wars and economic disparity and you name it's happening. And so just to be in a safe space to address those issues and really create action, just not more words. 

We need action more so than ever, and people with resolve. I really do feel it's a very special, diverse community here. So delighted to be back in the Alps. I wish there was a little bit more snow. Definitely telling where we're at with our shifting climate, but really delighted to be back and thank you for having me again.

[03:15] Jennifer: Great. So just so that, you know, 22 years ago when I first moved here, there was plenty of snow, knee deep snow at this time of the year. 

So as you had mentioned, there's a lot of things that are happening around the world and we are also talking a lot about climate science here, but I feel, to some extent, the human element is still missing. 

So I'm going to go back to one of the things that you talked about on the first podcast which we didn't get to unpack, which is planting trees with Dr. Jane Goodall. I recently had an encounter with her, very brief but very profound encounter with her. And I asked her after observing the chimpanzees over six decades, what has she learned about humanity?

And her response to me was that even though that (humans have) higher intellect, more intelligence, however, we're not wise because if we were, we would not be destroying our planet. So her conclusion was that only when we learn to live with both our heart and our mind in harmony can we reach our true human potential. 

So Barney, you are the wisest 29-year old that I know and you are living out your true potential. So can you tell us a little bit more of how you work with both your heart and your mind?

[04:36] Barney: I think the true potential is a funny one. People often ask what are you working towards? And I am a firm believer of trying to visualize what the best version of yourself is in 5 years or 10 years, and that's your goal. Not that you're not proud of who you are today, but to have a caliber and an understanding that there is a growth potential within ourselves and our impact. 

And for me, it's not letting opportunity slip through your fingers, whether that's following up on an email, being present in a conversation, saying yes to an opportunity, occasionally saying no to an opportunity. 

For me, it's that potential of what we can do is so exciting. And I think Jane Goodall, I enjoy how she talks. When I planted trees with her in Tanzania, she gets really quiet when there's a big group and everyone kind of has to bring their heads in. And I really enjoy how softly spoken she is.

And there's a wisdom and a big learning through people like Jane (Goodall) and Sylvia Earle and David Attenborough and a lot of these pioneers that they've seen it and felt it and behold it without necessarily needing to prove anything to anyone. And I like that.
And that's a big lesson for being a young adult is that it's tempting to go on about what you've done and how hard things have been and how gritty you are and selling yourself instead of beholding yourself and addressing people with your presence instead of your words. 

And that's a really big lesson through leaders like Jane (Goodall). And I think that art of beholding ourselves is a really, really under-talked about skillset because that brings in awareness, it brings in connectivity, it brings in being just humble. 

I think that there's a huge arrogance and attention seeking attitude globally with TikTok and Facebook and Instagram and blah, blah, blah. We are an attention economy.

But I think just that art of beholding is definitely a huge lesson from both modern wisdom keepers like Jane (Goodall) and Sylvia Earle and David Attenborough, but indeed, indigenous wisdom leaders. You sit with an elder, they're very quiet, and they look at you and they look through you. 

And I think there's a huge responsibility and we've done a good job archiving the likes of Jane Goodall and David Attenborough and Sylvie Earle. But we're on the cusp of potentially losing some of that indigenous ancient knowledge in the next 20 years because they're connected to people who were born in (the) last century. 

And so I'd like to see more examples of that kind of traditional wisdom keepers and modern wisdom keepers coming together and having a really good conversation.

[07:10] Jennifer: I agree. It's interesting because I went to an interfaith event that my friend holds every year, and she had the Chief Rabbi of England, she's got an Imam, she had the Catholic Priest from the region, and she had a Buddhist Monk from Japan. And everyone was talking about peace, love and harmony through words.

And the last person to speak was actually a person who's from Latin America and indigenous. He got up and he said, the land where I come from, we don't speak, we sang. And guess what? He sang for two and a half minutes.

And we all closed our eyes and tears were streaming down my face, could not stop. And he just sang, he didn't say anything.

[07:54] Barney: And everyone was quiet in the room?

[07:55] Jennifer: Everyone was quiet.

First I thought, why am I crying so much? This is very strange, I hope no one else in the room judges me. And I look at the person to my left, and I look at the person to my right, they were both crying. 

So I think there's the power of silence, and then there is the power of touching your heart. So it's very different than the language of science, which speaks to your rational mind, but the power of somebody's voice could really touch your heart. 

And I think with Jane Goodall, she really embodied both. Like for me, it's the balance you spoke (of) earlier. For me, it's also the balance between the masculine and the feminine energy.

And it doesn't mean that it's male versus female, but really within us, there's both the anima and the animus. Earlier in my life, in my business life, I had to tap in more to the masculine energy, but it's all about having a balance.

We talked about also how geopolitics and AI (have) dominated much of the media lately. And you talked about indigenous wisdom, so I wanted to know from your perspective, how do we honor sacredness?

[09:02] Barney: Well, it makes me think that duality of masculine and feminine and that kind of agnostic, unisex middle ground.

I think when it comes to industry right now, of how we're getting commodities. You know, there's a hundred or so trillion dollars of liquid GDP moving around the world - steel, concrete, microchips, aviation, shipping, pharmaceuticals, all of these super big industries. 

I think there's, again, a middle ground between analog and digital because a lot of those industry leaders are of an older generation. And then there's this renaissance per se, and this innovative spirit coming up through millennials and indeed younger people as well. And I think that it's important to try and figure out how we can honor what has gotten us this far. And I think that's a big part of not siloing the conversation of sustainability. 

It's almost like going to a big oil company and being like, thanks, really appreciate all of the energy and mobility you've done for the last 150 years, and then be like, so diversification o'clock - here are some pathways for evolving the energy transition, evolving materiality, evolving the next generation of planes that are powered on hydrogen or whatever it is. 

But I think smashing people with sticks, especially big industry. A, you're going to get crushed because some of them are trillion dollar companies. And we need to honor what has got us this far. 

I mean, think about the whaling industry - between 1850 and 1940, we killed hundreds of thousands of whales to feed the Victorian and Nantucket soap and oil industries, and lamps in London were fat-filled for the oil blubber. 

And then coal came along and combustion engines, which are a lot better than whales. And then now we're unleaded fuel and diesel and now we're getting lithium batteries, which aren't still the solution. Lithium batteries are incredibly exploitative in how you mine them. 

But fundamentally, we're off combustion engines. And at least we're in a transitional period of getting our act together now with storage, whether that's solid graphene state batteries or nanotech wetware mushroom batteries that we're growing from landfill material potentially in 20-30-40 years. 

Fundamentally, we're transitioning, we're heading in the right direction. And so I think it's honoring what’s gotten us this far, and within that, at the same time, honoring what we've lost and trying our best to preserve what's still there. 

Because obviously, global colonial-style industry has exploited and destroyed a lot of things, but don't lead with that in the transition. We've got to honor the fact that we have all enjoyed plastic, we’ve all enjoyed cheap travel, we've all enjoyed mobile phones that have dodgy materials in it. 

But how do we influence and accelerate what that next doorway looks like and encourage industrialists and the people who are benefiting with billions of dollars, like open these doors up and politely encourage them to go through it instead of smashing them with sticks? 

So it kind of comes full circle back to that duality between masculine and feminine, and analog and digital. I think honoring both sides is really important because we need both to move forward. We can't just use AI, we need to also realize that there's people hand shoveling coal in China right now into a furnace.

[12:23] Jennifer: So thank you for putting that in perspective for us. I think it's a long journey, and the journey requires patience and understanding and a collaborative approach. 

Like you said, we cannot silo industries and we cannot get into the narrative of fear, but we need to work with them together to build a better future. And I think that message is really important. 

Instead of sidelining heavy industries, we need them actually (as) part of the energy transition because there's no way we can build a better future. Now it's a different story if we were able to start from scratch, but we can't. 

So it's honoring what we have and working with what we have and then helping them move along to the next step.

[13:10] Barney: And people saying oh, we got to just get rid of the GDP system. Well, half the world starves if we do that, we've just got to transition what is the priority.

And I think we were chatting about how do you get that right-winged, cattle-loving, oil-guzzling, hardcore conservative to give a hoot about the provisions of our planet and cleaning up beaches and stopping pollution and making sure the air isn't choked with particulates.

If you can meet them about provisions rather than climate change or these triggering words which just makes a veil go over their face and think you're just one of the liberals that's woke. 

I think to try and fight back on that kind of perceived wokeism for sustainability, which is across the board I think a big part of the problem. Like we had a referendum last year in Australia where we were trying to get indigenous people into parliament effectively and it all got mixed and matched with the gender issue and sustainability. And it was a humanitarian vote and yet it got thrown in with the woke momentum per se. 

I'm not saying woke negatively but I think de-woking sustainability and trying to understand that we're navigating, making sure our future is livable for all of us. (It) doesn't matter who you are, where you are, your geological, ideological background, we are trying our best to create a safety net for humanity. 

Because if we don't get our act together and don't shift and move the dial quicker, and we know the solutions are just about moving the money in the right direction, and having better transparency and reducing corruption, which is globally a massive issue. Greed is fundamentally holding us back because a few people want to hold onto everything instead of distributing it. 

How do you get that inertia and get those people who think it's all just a bunch of baloney? How do we fight that misinformation? And I think talking about provisions and shared commonality that you don't want to have food that makes you sick, you want to breathe air that doesn't make you cough, you want to drink water that is safe. And if you can meet people in those basics.

But the counterfactual is if we continue to do business as we are right now, all four of those things, especially safety, we don't understand what a billion, two billion refugees looks like on the planet. We've got hundreds of millions of refugees currently, but if we get half a billion, 750 million, our entire system collapses.

And so we're dealing with safety for ourselves, for our families, for both the global south and the global north and those provisions. So I think safety for humanity and provisions are a really nice way to meet people who are very hard-nosed about transitioning and the concept of sustainability.

[15:39] Jennifer: I agree. 

So going back to an earlier point that you had raised about social media, can we talk a little bit more about mental health and wellbeing and the sense of place which I know you're quite passionate about and believe that is critical at the moment. 

What is your approach and what do you largely see in the world?

[16:22] Barney: Well, right now, definitely we're in an attention economy rather than a substance economy.

People will do really silly things online just to get more views instead of doing virtuous things that might get less views but have substance to them. And there’s how we broadcast on social media and then also how we receive. And I think it's the receival that needs a bit more of a recalibration. 

Because generally, people who are creating content have their niche - and even if it's just them eating food and talking about the clothes they're wearing and doing fit checks and whatever it is, the content will still be rolling. 

But I think that there's an agency that we need to address on how we're receiving content and whether that's the doom scroll, whatever we want to call it, when you're looking at negative news and seeing wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Being conscious (of) what we feed ourselves from a social media standpoint and news standpoint and a content standpoint, it really can change how we view the world and our presence. 

So using technology instead of being used by it, fundamentally it’s built to be addictive. So trying to break those loops, either having more boundaries with it or just being really conscious and trying to fill your digital bubble with things that inspire you instead of either distracting or mundane, so just being really smart with that. 

And I think when it comes to mental health, it's one of the biggest things that young adults respond to. When I'm doing school presentations in university and even corporate speaking, it's like put your phone on airplane mode 30 minutes before you go to bed and just be a human. You don't need to be scrolling or emailing or whatsapping or checking the news right before you go to sleep. 

Just be present with yourself and tune into your body, (it) doesn't need to be formal meditation. Being present with ourselves is so important - because if you are unhappy and you're grieving about either the planet or your personal situation or any one of the many things that the human experience throws at us, we have the tendency to want to fill ourselves with distraction, to move away from that suffering. 

And so being present with it is really uncomfortable, but it is a pathway to eventually learn to release that, whether that's crying or breath work or pushing yourself in the outdoors or being creative or whatever release lever you want to pull. We need to encourage, especially, young people to have those releases. 

Because I feel like everyone's just filling themselves up like a balloon right now with anxiety and not being clear on their sense of place and their worth. And like, what is my job, what am I doing, how do I contribute, how do I make money? Everyone seems to be having a great time online, here I am, I'm unhappy and blah blah blah. It's that self-perpetuating, internal negative voice. 

Breaking that, I think, is being present, getting outdoors, spending time with loved ones.  And being outside, and even if you're in New York, London, very densely, intensely populated places, going outside and looking up. And even if it's raining, hearing the rain; and even if it's cloudy, knowing that there's a whole mass of things behind those clouds. 

And my mum always reminded me to look up if I'm ever feeling down in the dumps. And the phones are the exact opposite. We are a generation of people with massive thumbs and huge bulging necks going down, and so just bring that attention up.

I think with mental health, breath, posture and intention… And it doesn't matter if you're Jewish or Hare Krishna or Christian or Buddhist or atheist or whatever. Breath, posture, intention is an agnostic thing that we can anchor in at any moment to be present.

And for anyone who is listening, who is struggling or feeling unhappy, tapping yourself is such a nice way to tune into your body. If you're feeling uncomfortable and anxious, tap yourself and be like, oh, I'm here, I've got myself. It's an important thing to not be too lost in the cerebral.

[20:14] Jennifer: Yeah. So it's interesting because both my husband and my son, they do aikido and as part of their warm-up, they tap their solar plexus to bring yourself back to your body. 

So actually in the last podcast, there were three things that I had taken away. You definitely talked about looking up, but you also talked about looking within, which is, you know, don't look outside for hope, but look inside yourself. And then you talked about looking forward. 

So for me as I'm reading the Bhagavad Gita, look up means to connect with the divine, look within, to connect with your soul and then look forward to imagine and build a better future for humanity. 

But I would also love to unpack this link between biodiversity and ourselves. That's something that we had talked about as well, because as we face this existential crisis, it's about the survival of humanity and our interaction with nature. So can you expand on that?

[21:23] Barney: Well, I think biodiversity right now, it's kind of in its own silo. It's like the species, the frogs, the mushrooms, the insects, the biosphere as we know it. 

And I think trying to understand that biodiversity when it comes to broader spirit of things, we are wholly interconnected. science is proving that more and more. 

And so we had an interesting discussion about financing natural capital yesterday. And I think that development funds are effectively our best bet globally for creating a safety net, for making sure that hundreds of millions of people don't starve. 

It's like, how do you build a road with biodiversity in mind? How do you build a hospital with biodiversity in mind? That net-zero is where we've been the last two decades, like decarbonize, decarbonize, decarbonize. 

But I think inherently, if we can bring in biodiversity as a supercritical undertone, that no matter what we're doing, it does have a nature consequence. And yes, carbon is one way to view that, but carbon is great for energy in my mind. And for forestry, if you've got a monoculture pine plantation, yes, there's a lot of carbon in there, but there might not be many species. 

So how we encourage that species diversity is critical for how we address utility for billions of people wanting to have smartphones and nice tables and air-conditioned houses and lights and cars. How does biodiversity become synonymous with industry and development? Really, really critical. 

And it comes back to mental health, a sense of place. And if we don't have that understanding that without phytoplankton and mushrooms and insects, our entire world collapses. The little guys, fundamentally, are holding together everything. 

Yes, the elephants and the tigers and the emus and the kangaroos and the chimpanzees are all amazing. But fundamentally, it's the little guys that we need to honor so much more than ever. 

And working in agriculture and planting tens of thousands of trees in Australia and managing a farm, I fully understand that one of the biggest things that we can do globally is shift from synthetic chemicals back to organic chemicals. And whether that's bleach or shampoo and cleaning materials, but fundamentally how we're eating and how we're managing agriculture. 

To use synthetic fertilizer is just destroying soil globally. We need to shift to organic fertilizer, organic herbicides, organic fungicides, organic insecticides, and put billions of dollars towards bioengineering organic substitutes.

Since the 50s with the rise of petrochemicals, plastic and indeed synthetic chemicals, that (has) powered and got us this far. Again, you don't want to go to the petrochemical and the pharmaceutical and the Monsanto’s of the world and be like, oh, you're awful. It's like, well, we've actually fed and powered the world. It's like, what's that next generation? 

And I think that's where we can poke at industry a bit, encouraging them to transition quicker. Because unfortunately, the greedy ones in big industry, they want to hold on to what they know because it does cost money to transition and to have the capital to retrofit infrastructure or to change agriculture processes. 

Yes, that costs money. And there's a transition where things feel like they're up in the air. But long-term, we need that or we're going to be in trouble. 

So I think biodiversity is an overlay, it can hit every single sustainability goal. Diversity is critical within how we power our energy and our materials, our transport, we can't keep that classic way of doing stuff. 

And one concern is that we just don't know what the unit base for biodiversity is right now. People are pumping billions of dollars into biodiversity, but what does that mean? Is it a percent difference, like the before and after of remediating a degraded landscape and you see a 50-100-200% increase in species diversity? Or is it a unit base of certain species? Or is it contract-based?

Because the world's oldest rainforest where we're operating, one hectare of land between the soil, insects, mammals, birds, there's more biodiversity than the whole of Europe. Mainly in the little stuff and the fungi and all the little stuff - that's over here. 

And then you have the Sahara desert. So do you do a thousand acres in the world's oldest rainforest or do you do a million acres in the Sahara desert? So figuring out How do you honor both and not just do the highly biodiverse areas and then forget that also looking after the million acres in the Sahara Desert is also critical. 

That unit base for biodiversity is hopefully a hurdle that we're going to overcome quickly because it's just not clear what that fundable market-ready asset is. For supporting carbon is a unit base of carbon, but we don't know what that is for biodiversity yet.

We know it's vital, but we don't know what that unit base is, which is a problem. I hope the various multidisciplinary gatherings can really get up, act together and that we don't fall into the same trap of carbon and of ESG. 

And I say that respectfully because there's a lot of amazing ESG and carbon standards or processes. But we can't do that same mistake, it needs to be like we're all on the same page. And this is the one thing that we're going to get our act together. Because climate collapse obviously is terrifying, but biodiversity collapse, if we don't manage it, it will be just as bad.

We can learn from the lessons of carbon and ESG. And we’ll never be one methodology because each country wants to have their own process. But at least we're all singing to the same tune of what that means.

[26:44] Jennifer: So they are, I think from the academic point of view they have developed certain indexes. It's called the BII, the Biodiversity Intactness Index. 

There's also now a task force that's looking at financial disclosures, Task Force on Financial Disclosures of Biodiversity. That’s all coming, but it's still in the works currently. 

But going back to your point about bioengineering and (transitioning) heavy industries, my cousin actually launched the venture fund focused on synthetic biology. 

[27:16] Barney: Amazing.

[27:17] Jennifer: But there's a lot more focus right now in the US because the US is leading it. Eric Schmidt had published a report two years ago, Eric Schmidt from Google about how to build a bioeconomy. 

And the US Department of Defense is actually spending billions of dollars making grants now to biomanufacturing, because (the) US has lost edge on heavy industrialized manufacturing to many of the emerging market countries. Now (the) US is leading the way to build a bio-manufacturing economy.

[27:47] Barney: And so was that inflation act?

[27:59] Jennifer: So that was part of the IRA. And then I think the Department of Defense also has their own budget. It's still small amounts, I'd have to check maybe $2 or 3 billion but that's where they're focused on. 

And (my cousin) moved actually from Silicon Valley to Houston to launch that because Houston has all the biochemical engineers.

[28:09] Barney: Amazing. 

[28:10] Jennifer: Yeah. So also tapping from heavy industry, right? and the knowledge…

[28:14] Barney: And Houston definitely got its fingers in oil and gas. And that's the thing. It's the big, huge, billion dollar, trillion dollar momentums, they’re going to be the ones who have to steer the ship in the right direction.

[28:26] Jennifer: Yes, and also you asked where the capital is coming from. 

So it's coming from (the) US government, but it's also coming from private industries - chemical companies, traditional petroleum-based chemical companies are now starting to work with her. 

[28:40] Barney: Amazing, definitely it's about showing these really exciting solutions because people feel like it's all doom and gloom and we need to put the money in the right place and figure out those materials obviously.

But two things we need billions and billions of dollars behind it, in my mind, like portable desalination system, something that can fit in a shipping container, powered 100% off renewable energy, and it produces 200,000 liters of water a day. 

And you deal with the brine and maybe the brine goes into some sort of concrete aggregate or something. But if we can deal with the brine, like the ocean's rising, and as long as that salt doesn't go back into nature and change the salinity of either soil or the surrounding waterways.

We need to drink the ocean, we need mega systems in California to re-irrigate those canals. And that's totally possible, it’s just we need to prioritize water. 

And we need to prioritize things like a thousand x times more efficient air conditioning. Reality is everyone's hot in the summer and air conditioning's primitive, how much energy they require. 

Why is that not getting hundreds of billions of dollars put behind it? And it seems silly, but hundreds of billions of dollars behind something that's so basic. If you could have something that literally is 500 watts instead of 3 kilowatts, that's what we need, like a coffee machine that's a really cold air conditioning, that sort of thing.

We need wholly portable anaerobic digesters where you can just pour in all your composts and agricultural material and it's pumping out fertilizer or fuel, or even I've seen if you get the balance between wet and dry compost, you can make agricultural pellets for poultry and fish. 

Things like that and pyrolysis machines where you can pour and mix plastics and you're pumping out again, maybe even 3D printing filament, then you’ve got a 3D printer. So you go to places around the world, you see these huge piles of plastic, they're just getting burned, that's a wasted asset. And put that into a pyrolysis machine and 3D print bricks or 3D print pots, or 3D print irrigation line or something that has utility for that community.

It's these modular solutions that provide and manage both circularity and the likes of water and energy. We need that scale because the big cities are going to hold vaguely together with exceptions like Jakarta that are casually sinking and having to move, but generally big cities are going to hold it. 

It's rural fringe frontier communities that's going to fail in the next 50 years if we don't have these modular solutions that can allow them to sustain themselves instead of relying on emergency deployment. 

So all of those things make me excited. And hopefully those billions of dollars, both America and many, many places around the world, can help bring access to these really critical, basic things.

[31:26] Jennifer: Barney, we talked a lot about the problems that we have, we also talked about building hope and building momentum to move forward. 

What do you think are the human elements that are required as we move forward to create a safety net for the future?

[31:43] Barney: I think commitment's important. 

I think people want everything done immediately now, like you can ChatGPT your business plan and that should have taken a week a few years ago. And now you can just get everything done immediately.

Doing things promptly is important, but I think committing to the long game is really important, especially as young adults, I see some tendency that like, I'm going to Google for a couple of years and I'm going to go over to this company for a couple of years and I'm going to get an amazing LinkedIn portfolio.

I'm not saying don't do that, but what's your value set that follows you through that amazing momentum of going from company to company? That commitment to a bigger momentum is really important. 

And people often say, oh, I'm in this industry, what can I do to be transitioned to a sustainable industry? I'm like, you don't need to change industries, just bring that attitude into what you're doing. 

Because it's sometimes the big companies, the big industry, they're the ones that need this commitment to the long-term and not just your next bonus.

Not that everyone's living bonus to bonus, but a lot of people do love money - it’s just the reality. What does it mean to get your bonus? Having a commitment to something bigger outside of your company or your family or yourself. 

I think commitment to servicing a future that we're proud of is really a big part and a big embodiment that every generation wants to have that commitment to leaving a legacy for what is next and that commitment to be of service.

And I think just being humble is really important as well. I think that nature is unconquerable. And to say, oh, I've done Kilimanjaro and I've done the Himalayas and I've done this and I've done that. It's like, you haven't done anything, you pass through a place, you don't do nature.

(We) had four mass extinctions, we're coming up to the fifth. You do not do nature, you pass through it, you respect it. Being humble to the fact that this planet will reject us if we're not careful and if we don't look after ourselves and it will be remorseless in how it does that. 

And so being humble to the fact that they are far greater forces to our little Homo Sapien ways. And so, being humble, respect nature, respect, especially as a man, respect that divine feminine, respect and honor the fact that we need to nurture more. 

And feminine embodiment is different to being a female. And obviously, that goes into the whole gender, very complex conversation which we'll steer rapidly away from.

But to embody feminine and to embody the fact that the masculine tendency to dominate and to control and to consume has clearly not done great for where we're at. 

And again, thank you for those who have created the abundance that we all enjoy. But now we have a major turning point of bringing in that nurturing quality and having more really fired up female leaders and men who embody that feminine, whilst also embodying that masculine of being protective and being assertive. We need both. But we need to really honor that feminine and what that means. 

And so I think those are some values, and let me think if there's anything else - maybe just humor, it's all very serious, and like to be able to have a good giggle and to just smile within the seats of madness, just laugh, it's important. And like being Australian and English, when things are really awful, just having a good giggle is important, and not taking yourself too seriously. 

I really got depressed and overwhelmed with knowing a little bit too much too quickly about the reality, how deep into the danger zone we're at. And just to have that pause and to be like, it's okay. And even if the whole thing goes down the drain and society collapses and the fifth mass extinction comes far quicker than we give credit for, and the entire of the Antarctic melts in the next 50 years and the Gulf Stream just stops and we go into an ice age or whatever happens, like a solar flare EMPs the entire Internet and we're back to Neanderthal times. Whatever happens, it's okay. 

Doing what you can with who you can with the influence that you do have, being measured within your relentlessness, but within that, having the courage to surrender it being okay if it fails. That's a really big learning for me, just to be okay if it all doesn't work out.

And my family and friends have seen that seriousness in me and being like, dude, you take way too much of this on your shoulders, chill out a bit. And it's like, no, I'm not chilling out. I'm going to work my teeth off. Then finally they convinced me over the last few years that's not on you to hold. Yes, hold it, but also just be okay if it doesn't work out. 

And I think we mentioned her on the last podcast, my grandma died a couple of years ago, you know, 106. And if I get to 106, God knows what the world will look like. But I just want to chill out on my rocking chair and be like, I gave it a good shot.

And so to know you've done your best, but not be dismayed that it hasn't worked out, you're just going to try your best. And so I think having that resolve, I think is a good word, having resolve that put your best foot forward but be okay (with) either personal failure or just systematic species collapse. 

That's not all on you, one person. Yes, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Larry Fink and silly old Trump - they all have huge influence, but they're still only one person. And so it's having that resolve that it's going to be okay either way. 

And if you see a pond that dries out and all the fish die, the fish aren't having an existential crisis. They just die because there's no more oxygen. 

We are just a big pond and there's billions of stars, a universe with no beginning or end, and 14.7 billion year old universe, 4 billion year old planet. And our species have been around for whatever 300,000 years. You look into the history, we are important. But don't be arrogant enough to think that either ourselves or our species are the center of the universe.

And just the fact that we're having this conversation and that we can breathe and we can be curious and be with the universe and to create and to share, that's so beautiful what we have. And to behold what we are capable of in a really good way.

And yes, violence and greed and suffering and bigotry and all the yucky parts of the human experience. The other side of that is just so amazing. And look at all these books, look at all of these ideas, look at all of this stuff behind us where we're having this conversation. 

I think the more you know, the more you realize that you don't know anything. And that's beautiful. Read books, do your best, fight hard, but also surrender to that it’s okay, that it all goes away. And that really is the spiritual path. No matter what religion it is, it's dissolving into that discomfort, you know.

[38:36] Jennifer: Yeah. So actually I would say that what's also needed is a spiritual element, to have that spiritual connection. 

And that if you understand that the soul is inside of us and even if we leave this physical body, that the soul lives on. And then maybe we'll come back as insects next time.

[38:56] Barney: And what's your legacy? I know karma is a thing, I just know that if you're nasty and selfish, it comes back to you for sure.

And if you're selfless and really cognizant of how you're living moment to moment, it feeds back at you. And that power of manifestation and that power of creation, through what we think becoming a reality, that's some real stuff right there. 

And I'm only starting that journey of really unlocking that power of we create our own realities. And if the global leaders could all be thinking on that, we could create the most beautiful future possible. 

If we could redirect that $100 trillion towards servicing us as a whole instead of that 1%, we can redirect this ship very quickly. We just need that critical inertia and more conversations like this with people who have those levers literally within their reach.

[39:47] Jennifer: I agree. One last question, last but not least, what does the Founder spirit mean to you? 

[39:52] Barney: Yeah, I mean, similar to what we were just saying, if you’re bringing something into the world that isn't there and that's courageous, it creates creativity, it's darn hard. People can tell you it's impossible, but be measured enough to hear people's considerations, but to also stick to your conviction is important. 

Having a founder's spirit for bringing in… and it's so cliche, but bringing in that new dawn, that green economy, that next generation, that future that is livable because right now it's just not sustainable. 

We're going to double our global meat consumption in the next 20 years. And the Paris agreement is not going to be met - we’re not going to reach 1.5C, that’s way gone. How do we stick under 3 degrees? How do we sustain soils (so) that millions of people don't starve? How do we stop pollution? 

There (are) so many hectic global problems, but to be courageous enough to know that even if you don't have a degree and that you're feeling like the whole world's going on without you, you still have that founder’s capacity to influence and ripple through your own community. 

And I enjoy meeting people who are okay with not having some sort of unicorn startup. We need 100,000 ripples instead of a few big ones, and that's a really big shift that we need to encourage. It's not all about the 100x unicorn efforts. It's about how do you get the 5x efforts over billions of people and being comfortable with that imperfection. 

And that founder spirit is within that decision of bringing it into your own bubble, and your own life, and into your own world and your own influence.

[41:32] Jennifer: So about the hummingbird effect. Even though that you're 1 out of 6-7 billion people on this planet, you can do what you can to make a better future. 

Thank you so much, Barney.

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The Founder Spirit podcast is a partner of the Villars Institute, a nonprofit foundation focused on accelerating the transition to a net-zero (and nature-positive) economy and restoring planetary health. 

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