Ep. 77 – Mark Shayler – Attunement

Interview with Mark Shayler

[00:04:54] Mich Bondesio:

So welcome to the Creating Cadence podcast, Mark. I’m super excited to have you here.

[00:04:59] Mark Shayler:

I’m so pleased to be here. Number one, because of the podcast, and it’s own trajectory is interesting. And number two, cause I haven’t seen your face for years and it’s brilliant to see it.

[00:05:10] Mich Bondesio:

Thank you so much. So some background for my listeners. I was first actually introduced to your work back in mid 2015, when someone in my network sent me a YouTube clip of you talking about something to do with sustainable working, and it really resonated because I was just starting on my journey back then. I can’t believe that’s almost 10 years ago now,

[00:05:29] Mark Shayler:

Stop it, I’m a, I’m a grandfather now, right. And, I had to message my ex-business partner yesterday about something that might be on his server still. And he said, what year will it have been from? And I said, 2007 and he said 17 years ago.

[00:05:45] Mich Bondesio: Crazy.

[00:05:46] Mark Shayler: Feels like yesterday.

[00:05:47] Mich Bondesio:

It is. So since then, I then got the chance to meet you in person. I was so fortunate when I attended the Do Lectures in 2016, and then I volunteered there in 2017, and we had a couple of kind of conversations about this stuff. And then during the pandemic, aside from starting your online Qigong sessions on Instagram, which are still going, for a time you also hosted a weekly online social group for stragglers like me, who needed a bit of support and conversation during this time of isolation. And that weekly meetup at the time was incredibly beneficial.

And then we’ve kind of kept in touch loosely since then. And it’s been really amazing to see the trajectory of your work, both through APE, your consulting business, and what you’re doing with all these other business projects that you have with your family that are involved.

And we’ll get to chat about all of those too. But first I just want to start with your current context.

Tell my listeners, where do you find yourself in your life and work at the moment?

[00:06:35] Mark Shayler:

Oh, I love this question. Right, I’m gonna do this in five ways. Geographically, I am in the very centre of England. Mercia. near a place called Ashby-de-la-Zouch. It’s a place that everyone goes through and no one really knows anything about, but they know it’s on the back of the McVitie’s Digestive Biscuits, right?

Um, and it’s an interesting little part of the countryside that was an accidental find. Like, we grew up, Nicola and I, both grew up in the same town, maybe 15 miles from here, never meant to come back to the Midlands, but we find ourselves here now for the last 20 years, and we found ourselves in this house.

That’s 24 years. Found ourselves in this house for the last 15 years, right in the middle of something called the National Forest. So old coal mining that’s now been regenerated, used to be a big hole in the ground. Now it’s a place where people come to, to enjoy leisure and quality of life. And we love it. And it’s a real challenge as to where we go next.

Where am I physically? So, physically, how do I find myself at the moment? I’m 56. Um, as I said, I’m a grandfather, and a father of four, and aging is an interesting journey. And whilst some elements of aging are really visible, so hair colour, lines, those things, they haven’t really hindered me at all.

I look younger than I am, if that makes sense, without being immodest. But the other part of physically aging is your limbs and your joints in particular. And, I teach Qigong and that has become a bit of a salvation in terms of, in terms of mental, but also physical stuff. But the knees aren’t as good as they used to be.

I did long jump, triple jump rugby, all of the sprinting, all of the explosive sports I did. So, so those things are interestingly wearing out. But I’ve since discovered CrossFit and that strength training element, which I’ve always avoided. I’ve always done other things, bikes, running stuff, but I’m really enjoying the physicality of that.

Intellectually, where do I find myself? I find myself still working in sustainability. In fact, having a second wind in sustainability, drifting into innovation and a little bit of brand articulation. And I’m now back firmly in sustainability, because it’s urgent and I’m needed.

And we’ve got a few side projects, which we’ll talk about I dare say as we go through. And that’s all around finding and raising voices that would otherwise be be hidden. And I think that’s a really important part of the work we do.

And, emotionally, where do I find myself? Well, that’s a really challenging one, because my kids are now… The youngest is 21 this weekend, and the eldest is 30. So, so they’re not kids anymore, and they need me less, or they need me, they need me differently, and I don’t know, having just been always been there emotionally, and to put things in the wall or to help them with their cars.

The demands upon me are less. And I remember my dad saying to me not long ago, maybe 10 years ago, I rang him. I said, I need, I need a bit of advice. And he kind of jokingly said, ” Oh, well, that’s a surprise. You don’t ask for advice ever.” I thought. Okay, that that’s really bothered him, but there’s something there that he he feels less needed. And I couldn’t see it at the time, but I can see how the other side of independence. Can feel like bruising for the person that you were dependent upon.

Upon. Yeah.

And in reality, like I left, I left home when I went to university, never went back, got married at university. I’ve been, I’ve been less needy than my brother, for example, he returned home and was given my dad’s business as a gift. And he’s had much more of that support. I’ve kind of not needed it, but I hadn’t realised that the other half of the “taking deal” is the power of giving. That’s an interesting one. And I find myself emotionally in this understanding of how to let go of them, not them, of what they need. And that in itself brings me to the big change that I see in my life emotionally now.

And this is, this is one of moving through the Jungian archetypes of masculinity, which you don’t tend to move through, you tend to hold them all together. In terms of women, it’s much more of a journey, many more archetypes. I’m very envious, but there are four main ones for the men in Jungian theory. And, and they are the warrior, the lover, the magician, and the sovereign.

And most men, when they’re young, they start off as lover warrior, fight everything. And the love is not about sex. The love is not about sex. It’s about addiction. And the warrior is about fighting, including fighting yourself. And then some people move into magician. I’ve always been a bit rubbish at that one.

But I’m beginning to value within me, my own sage, my own sovereign, my own authority, and that’s been really transformational acceptance.

I remember six years ago, a bit longer, maybe, when Daisy told me she was pregnant. I did all the right things. Big hug. “You’re going to be amazing. That’s great. Wonderful news.” And then she left the room, ironically to tell her boyfriend, she told me in Nicola first, just because she happened to be with us that day. And, I just remember putting my head in my hands and thinking, ” I do not need this in my life, right.” Um, how can I be the innovator, the fire starter, which is a role I had at that point.

And to be a granddad . Now, of course, two things happened. It took me about three weeks before I went, “Oh, this isn’t about me”.

Egocentric man.. And number two, of course, it’s easier to be the fire starter, to be rebellious when people don’t expect you to be. So it kind of made all those things more so so emotionally.

I’m in that position of beginning to let these things go and to learn to love what I’ve grown into. And I don’t know whether I came up with this or whether somebody else came up with it, but I’m going to claim it, because I can’t find who else said it.

I always feel like the first half or two thirds of your life is acquisition. It’s putting things in. Experiences, partners, money, houses, even acquiring kids, right? It’s a, it’s a It’s what we do. We suck everything in because, because they help, they help define who we are. Or we use them as the buttress roots of self worth.

You know, why bother explaining what you believe in when you can just show them your new car, right? It’s a kind of lazy shorthand way of branding ourselves.

And I think the last third, or the second half, depending on where you want to draw the line, is not about acquisition. It’s about deposition, a bit like a river. It’s about giving back. it’s about not needing things to shore up who you are. It’s about being so comfortable with who you are that you can just be it. It’s about becoming nobody.

And, I think that’s a really important transition and one that is not always easy for people. Uh, but I’ve done a lot of work on myself and a lot of work in the men’s world, men’s groups and stuff. And I’ve been thinking about this for a while, I feel really comfortable being that sage area of my life and lifting others. And that sounds really cliche, but I think it’s true.

And actually being seen for what I say, not for how much I push myself forward. I think it’s an important one.

And then the fifth element is spiritually. Where am I spiritually? And that’s always a really hard one to think about.

And I think I, I’ve spent a bit of time in monasteries, Buddhist monasteries, over the last 12 months, just a few little weekend courses, and I’ve really enjoyed the silence and the quiet. And I’m not religious in a formal Christian or Judaic or Islamic perspective at all, and I wouldn’t even use the word, I’m not very religious,

but I know what gives me awe, what brings awe, A W E. And, it’s nature, which we’ll come back to again and again. It’s being in spaces that feel limitless and ill defined, i. e. no edges to them. And so I’ve sought, and it’s being in water as well. So I’ve sought those things out and that’s where I get.

My more spiritual side from so that’s where I am. There’s five. That was that was interesting. I didn’t think I was going to do that, but there’s five elements there. Normally talk about four of them, but I had to add geography because it’s the most powerful subject on the planet. Right?

[00:15:29] Mich Bondesio: It is.

[00:15:30] Mark Shayler: It is the planet, right.

[00:15:31] Mich Bondesio:

It is. Thank you for being so generous and sharing. And fascinating, so much of what you had to say there. I mean, I think two things that really resonated for me was that idea of those first parts of our life where we are looking for external validation a lot as part of that acquisition.

But then we eventually learned to look inwards and not seek validation outwards. And become comfortable and accepting of ourselves as who we are, is really powerful. And that spiritual element, I agree it’s nature is so important and we will touch on this in a minute with one of my other questions, but it is around that interconnectedness, that interlinked element.

We are not separate from that in any way. And the only way that we really understand the value of it, is when we are able to reconnect with it and understand our place and role in it. We are not powerful over it. We are a part of it. So. Super important points. Thank you so much.

Um, talking about physical and mental wellbeing elements that you, you’ve touched on a bit.

And I want to go into that a little bit more, because strong physical and mental wellbeing foundations, both inside and outside of work are key pillars of what I do with my clients in terms of creating cadence, because they help us to build resilience. They help us to activate our potential and creativity, and improve our productivity, and also help us avoid burnout.

I’ve always found you a very optimistic person in terms of your mindset. You’ve shared openly about your health and fitness activities that you do, and you have some very interesting ones. Please share with us what specific regular or daily routines and rituals or hobbies and habits that you do to help support your wellbeing. And also what challenges do you experience when you’re maintaining those foundations?

[00:17:03] Mark Shayler:

Brilliant questions and beautifully timed, actually. Um, I’m a really early morning person. I always have been always up at sort of four 30, five o’clock. Even as a kid, mum would find me in the dining room, reading or colouring. I’m rubbish at drawing, so mainly reading, when I was six, seven, that’s, it’s always been the way.

So those early mornings are really important to me. And, physical, physical activity is how I’ve defined myself for a lot of my life. At school, I was, I had county rugby and athletics colours, so I performed for the county and I was good. I got all the way through to trials for the Leicester Tigers rugby team in about 1986, 87, and I really enjoyed the physicality and the sprint, the speed that I needed to do to do that.

And I long jumped and I, and I did 100 and 200metres. So I always felt those explosive things were really important part of me. Put me on a long run and I struggle, right? So no stamina, all force, right? Which is, which is just ill balanced and utterly wrong. And as I’ve aged, I’ve got onto the bike and I can cycle a long way and I can run, not very fast, I’m not a quick distance runner, but I can just keep going. And that’s amazing.

So going into 2020, that’s where I was. And then, you know, obviously, I don’t want to make it about, about lockdown, but everything changed and we weren’t able to do the things that we were doing before. Certainly not with the people that we did them before.

But I was able to get up early and go for a walk. Originally just for an hour, but we just got up and went in the dark. So we were only walking in the light for an hour. I think that’s probably cheating, but, but Nicola and I, we did these morning walks that were, you know, maybe two, three hours long, half in the dark, half in the light.

And, it’s a really beautiful, soulful thing to experience walking through the places that you know, but you don’t know, with the person that you know, but you don’t know, holding their hand. And of course I knew Nic, but we were able to have the time to have conversations that just went a little bit deeper.

So that’s a cornerstone, um, and it dropped off about a year ago or nine months ago, Nicola got, she grew tired, understandably, of getting up at six o’clock and getting out for a walk at quarter past six. It wasn’t really her ideal thing to do. Moving into perimenopause, I can understand that that’s not brilliant.

So I stopped. And I missed it, so I’ve started again. So that’s Cornerstone 1.

Cornerstone 2 is cold water. I go to the water to find myself, and I go to the water to lose myself. And I could always swim, but I could never really swim well. And a friend of mine suggested I go for a lesson. And I was kind of, I was a little bit offended if I’m honest with you, but I don’t need a lesson.

I can go and swim a mile now and it would have taken ages, but I would have swam a mile. And I said to him, why? And he said, because I know you want to swim better. So I turned up on day one, a really dear friend of mine, now a guy called Dave Pycroft is my coach. And he, they put us into the intermediate group.

So not the beginners and not the, um, I can’t remember what the top group, (the elite),

yeah, they call it elite. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is where I am now, interestingly, but, um, they didn’t put us in that and it didn’t put us , in the lower group. And you want? You can swim. I said, yeah, I can swim. He said, so why are you here? I said, I want to stop swimming like a boxer and I want to start swimming like a swimmer. So he said to jump in and swim four lengths and have a look. And I did that and I got out all splash and bluster and puff. And, uh, and he said, yeah, I can help you.

he said, do you want to stop swimming like a boxer? I said, I do. He said, then you need to stop fighting the water. And, and it changed my life. And his motto is slow down to speed up, genuinely, not just I’ve fallen in love with swimming. It’s really important to me.

And I swim with my friends at Hampstead ponds most Wednesdays I get down to London and, um, and that’s not just about the water. That’s about my friends. And I love that.

Um, and then the, third element of my movement cornerstone is a practice called Qigong. And Qigong is a 5, 000 year old system of movement, meditation and breath work.

It’s Chinese in origin. I’m not Chinese. So everything I talk about, I’ve read or learned, I’ve no lived experience of this. It aligns really tightly with, and I love it when religion and movement overline, or sorry, spirituality, philosophy, movement. And so it’s got this incredible layered thing where you’re talking about the obvious movement, like muscular strength and stretches. But there’s another layer a bit further down, which is much more spiritual about waking up the organs to different forms of inspiration or different forms of stimulation.

And then there’s another layer down that is almost metaphysical. And I love this kind of like Lyra’s alethiometer tiering of what comes with Qigong. And I, I absolutely adore it and I teach it. And I taught it every day, from March 2020, for two years, every day online for free. And then I went down to I think three days a week. And now I’m down to two days a week because irritatingly modern life has crept back in.

[00:22:24] Mich Bondesio: Yeah.

[00:22:25] Mark Shayler:

But I teach it, I love it. And the reason I teach it. It’s because I’m weak minded sometimes and if I had a choice between staying in bed with my wife and canoodling or scrolling or getting up and going and do some qigong outside, I would often choose the softer option.

And when I teach somebody, it’s like when I teach meditation, I could do it on my own, obviously. But when I’m teaching it, I’ve got to get up and do it and it makes me turn up.

[00:22:54] Mich Bondesio: Yeah, that accountability.

[00:22:55] Mark Shayler: Yeah, I think that’s super, super powerful.

And then the fourth thing is what every other 56 year old man does, squeeze myself into Lycra, clip myself into onto an expensive bike and go out and play on bikes with my friends.

You know, I’m 56 and it’s been my favourite thing to do for 50 years. I genuinely mean that.

[00:23:13] Mich Bondesio:

Fantastic. All right. Let’s talk a little bit more about your career journey so far. You’ve mentioned you’ve worked in the realm of sustainability for a very long time. I think that’s where you started your career, but you’re doing a lot of different things now, alongside the sustainability and innovation consulting work. You also have a Reasons To Be Cheerful project. And if I’m not mistaken, you’re also connected to a coffee business and possibly some other things as well.

What I love about what you do is that many of your family are involved in these projects, which feels like quite a sustainable thing for me to do. So tell us a bit more about the various projects.

Why are you doing them? And why have you chosen to make them family endeavours?

[00:23:48] Mark Shayler:

Yeah, a really good question. I don’t think it’s unusual to really like your family. I think it’s more common to like them than to not like your family, but I think as a young person growing up and through, there is a, an expectation or maybe, um, a need to move away. And that happened with us, the kids went to university and they went and did their separate things.

And then they all came back in December, 2019 by accident. And um, and then we, they were back for two years. And, I didn’t intend to ever run a family business. I grew up in a family business. My dad was a photographer and videographer. My brother runs that business now. First of all, my first like six or seven years were working for other people. I worked with small businesses, paid for by Bradford Council. I got a degree in environmental science, because I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do. I love the humanities. I love geography, but I did geography, physics and english literature, which is a diary nightmare.

[00:24:50] Mich Bondesio: Interesting mix.

[00:24:52] Mark Shayler:

Yeah and I loved it. But I, and the general studies, which is actually my favorite subject, which it tells you an awful lot, actually. And, and it’s not a soft subject. It’s really difficult and really brilliant. And I failed my, I failed two of my A levels and I for whatever reason, I chose to retake and reorientated what I wanted to do. And I picked up psychology as well, which I had to do at night school. No one did it at school at that point.

Anyway, I had enough to get to Bradford University and because I had this science humanity with a love of art, I chose environmental science, but with geography. So I was really interested In how geography shapes us and then how we shape geography. I’ve always loved cities, planning. I’ve always loved brutalist architecture.

And I love the way that by changing the shape of a space, we can change behaviour and vice versa.

So, this blended degree of geography and environmental science allowed me to have a pipette in my hand on a Tuesday, but to go out and be doing surveys of cultural use of cities on a Wednesday. And that just made me really happy. So I did that. And then the breakthrough for me was my placement year.

I went to work in Camden with an amazing man called Dr. John Roberts, who was a planner and an ecologist. He advised the Labour Party, John Prescott, at the time. So John was a regular visitor to the studios, to the office. And I just, I just fell in love with the way John works.

As a sole trader, he just opened his house. There were six or seven people working in his house, and we were working on cutting edge things, and yet we were six or seven hippies in a, in a five story house in Camden Town. And I saw a way of working that I’d not really seen before, even though my dad ran his own business, it was different . And I realised that you don’t need to be big to be massive. Yeah, that’s what I realised Um, and leaving there and I met Nicola and I went to school together. We didn’t know each other. She was a year older than me, school year older than me. Um, we kind of got it on that year. So I left that third year, my placement year, married with a really clear thing that I wanted to go back, finish my degree in Bradford and then get to London as fast as I could because I’d fallen in love with it.

And I didn’t make it back to London for lots of reasons. But he gave me this model of how to work. And although I spent the next six years working with Bradford Council, doing free environmental audits of small businesses, which was the best apprenticeship you could imagine. And then I did a little bit of work in the consultancy, which was a big mistake.

And then I went to ASDA as Head of Sustainability. And I was there for about 13 months, I was mercilessly bullied. I had a really horrible boss, she just took, it was, it was a really hard place to be. And I had kids young, because I got married young. And I remember realising, Mish, that I hadn’t seen my children awake for a week, during the week, apart from at weekends, for months.

[00:27:56] Mich Bondesio: Gosh.

[00:27:56] Mark Shayler:

And I just thought, Right, right. That’s not great. So I left. I was going to emigrate to Australia where I was born. It’s a long story. And we moved back down to the Midlands. My dad had a spare house. He let us stay in for free for six months whilst we got our shit in order. We ended up not going. We’re still here.

And it was the thing that made me. But it was nearly the thing that broke me, actually. You know, being bullied at work is miserable. She went on to bully many, many more people. It’s really interesting trail of broken people behind her. And of course, it’s never about the person who’s being bullied.

It’s just not about you. It’s about the bully. And there’s something about the person being bullied that is so majestic, so powerful that the bully is triggered to try and control. This is the magician element of the archetypes try to control that person and actually they can’t and and to rise through and say, thank you for testing me, but bugger off now. And I learned a lot about myself. Um, and I left that job in 2001. So I’ve been working for myself for 24 years. And Initially, that was just me and me and a business partner who I’m very fond of. Not easy to leave, but we didn’t leave on bad terms. We just didn’t want to work together anymore.

And, um, and Nicola has always worked with me, you know, initially to do accounts and stuff and admin and, and the stuff that she felt qualified. She’s not got a degree. She always felt she wasn’t qualified for anything else, but now increasingly Nicola helps me plan workshops, run projects. She’s 50 percent of my business.

And then of course the kids came home and my kids have got different backgrounds. Daisy has got a first class degree in fine art from Central Saint Martins. So she came into the business and helped us pull together speakers and publications and events. She’s just brilliant at it. Um, and then has had two kids and we’ve been able to employ her through all of that.

And my son, Max came home. He got a first class degree in environmental science from from Sheffield Hallam. And so he, he then picked up one of our carbon ‘footprinting’ work. And he just left actually. He’s just gone. He now looks after carbon scope three for a supermarket. He’s ironically come back into the same place that I went. Not the same business, but the same sector. And, um, and that’s been amazing to be able to lift and pay them well and reward and teach and then watch and then open the gates to the door, the door, to the cage and watch them fly high. And they’ll be my best boss one day. And I love it.

And we employ my youngest daughter as well for some smaller stuff. And we did employ the middle one, so it works. And I employed my son-in-law for a little while. He makes amazing video films. He’s super talented. And I really like it and it’s not always easy. You know, sometimes you come out of the house, you’ve spent all evening and then breakfast with the people you then have to go and spend all day with.

But I’ve always had London, you know, it has my heart on a string and it, it pulls me. And, I go down maybe once or twice a week and it’s that (sighs), I love nothing more than getting to the train station and getting on the train, on the way to London. But I love nothing more than getting on the train station at St Pancras or, or Euston and getting on a train and coming back.

[00:31:27] Mich Bondesio: Yeah.

[00:31:29] Mark Shayler:

I, I, I love it.

So it was an accident. And the answer is it was an accident that we were all, we’ve always run our own business. The fact that the kids are involved was one of circumstance and geography, as most things are, because geography is the most amazing subject.

[00:31:41] Mich Bondesio:

Yes. Fascinating. Tell us a bit more about Reasons to be Cheerful. What does it involve? And I know you’ve had an event relating to it recently.

[00:31:50] Mark Shayler:

Yeah. So Reasons To Be Cheerful arose. Um, I used to be involved in a talk series called The Do Lectures. I was one of the founding partners. That doesn’t mean I founded them, that’s David and Claire Hieatt, but there was about four or five people who came in and supported them over the next few years. I was one of those, those people put some money in and lots of time.

And my, my relationship with The Do Lectures was truncated. Not of my, not my decision at all, but you have to just say, okay, it’s had its time. Um, but I had this energy and this ability and desire to do more. So, so we, we wanted to do something that was not the same, cause that would be wrong, but we wanted to do something that was like a little, like an annual publishing house.

We wanted to, to run an event. And we wanted to be able to help find voices that, that if I’m honest, are ignored by most other, most other events, right? Post Black Lives Matter, there has been an increase in diversity in speaking events. We’ve always had that. We’ve always, I just, I’ve got young kids and they know lots of people who are incredibly diverse. It literally is just the fact that they’re young. And so we set that up and trialed it at an event called The Good Life Experience and then we ran events online literally weekly. And reasons to be cheerful fell out of a gap that was created by being removed from The Do Lectures. All good things must come to an end, and I have no malice at all, but that whole space that opened up, allowed us to do something that we felt was more appropriate for the world. And, and it’s grown and it shrunk a little bit and then it’s grown again. And we run an annual event. Um, Reasons To Be Cheerful Live. We couldn’t run one this year because Daisy was on maternity leave for much of the year.

But we wanted to do something So we did two things this year. We partnered with an amazing event called Blue Earth Summit, which is moved from Bristol into Woolwich, Woolwich Works. And they wanted a little bit of an edgy sub event. So we ran two days for them there, which was wonderful. Truly great, a really lovely match, but that was relatively expensive to go to in comparison to what we would charge for our annual event, which is like a hundred quid or something.

And so we thought, okay, well, let’s try and do something small and cheap and intimate. So we came up with Commune, which is, you know, where stories burst into life. And we’ve got, within this space that I’m in now, it holds the most we can get in here, if we’re, relatively uncomfortable is a 40 people.

[00:34:28] Mich Bondesio: Oh, that’s pretty big.

[00:34:29] Mark Shayler:

Yeah, it’s all right. Yeah. But we hold it at about 35. Plus the speaker said we’re about 40 people, two speakers, one performer fire pits, samosas, there’s music, um, there’s alc and non-alc, as well. And we, we just have this sort of three hour evening event. And of course it’s not a three hour evening event, Mish, is it?

Because people stay relatively close to you and they say, Oh, are you going for your swim in the morning? Cause they all know that I swim in the morning. And I say, yeah, we can go for a swim in the morning. So before you know it, you’ve got 20 people for breakfast. So we lost so much money on it. I cannot begin to tell you.

We didn’t charge enough, number one. And we pay everyone. Like, most events don’t pay the speakers. All the events I’ve ever been involved with don’t pay the speakers. We pay everyone. Um, and we pay the performer and all of those things. So, so we lost so much money and then everyone turns up for breakfast and I’m thinking, brilliant, I’m cooking for 25.

And, and I don’t mind that because when I look at the room, that’s, that’s commune, that’s parliament, that’s talking, that’s being together. And, um, and it was a really big success with phenomenal feedback. So we’re going to do another one in March. Um, two speakers, a singer, samosas and breakfast.

[00:35:47] Mich Bondesio: Breakfast included this time.

[00:35:49] Mark Shayler:

I might have to charge a tenner for breakfast because genuinely we’re haemorrhaging cash.

[00:35:54] Mich Bondesio:

I don’t think that’s unfair. Um, and I think it’s amazing that you’ve created the space for magic to grow.

[00:36:00] Mark Shayler: Thank you.

[00:36:01] Mich Bondesio:

You never know where it’s going to go. And yeah, I’ll share links to your newsletter for that in the show notes as well.

All right, let’s get back on to sustainable business, um, a key term linked to sustainable business that I often reference in my work is the idea of the triple bottom line, people, planet profits, how their interconnectedness is integral for our future survival.

And I think your recent book, You Can’t Make Money from a Dead Planet epitomises this idea very clearly. You obviously have extensive experience, but many of my listeners are just starting on this journey. So tell us why this idea of the triple bottom line and related concepts is so important for future proofing ourselves and our businesses, particularly in our current social and economic context.

[00:36:45] Mark Shayler:

Great questions. So when I started in this job, which was in 1990 in Camden, we didn’t talk about triple bottom line. We’d just begun to talk about sustainability. We talked about environmental safety. We talked about environmental equity. And I was acutely aware that sustainability was an incredibly middle class concern.

I had a friend who lived in Chelsea or Hammersmith, one of the less tasty parts of London, but the wealth parts of London, and his flatmate would buy organic flour but never use it. She would use normal flour, but they had glass cabinets in the kitchen and she’d always line up the words ‘organic’ so you could see them It was like kind of like a branding. So I was acutely aware that I didn’t want this to be that.

But the sustainability is everything. It’s how we make our money. It’s how we make our families. It’s where we make our families. It’s not just about environment. It is about economics, it is about social equity, and it is about environmental security.

So I’ve always baked the three things in. Then after the Brundtland report, we began to use words like triple bottom line. And it’s incredibly helpful because it pulls in those that are eco skeptic, because you’re placing the ability to make money in the future. This future ability to make money, you’re placing that at the heart of the argument. And the fact that that is hindered by environmental degradation doesn’t matter, right? It’s, it’s not the issue. It’s the fact that how are you going to be an entrepreneur when there’s nothing to entrepreneur with or for?

So it adds this dimension of futurity, which I think is a really important one.

So I’ve always had that built into what I do, but acutely aware that I need to abide by the metrics of the day, which today are carbon and money. You know that no one’s gonna do it if it’s gonna cost them lots of money. And if, if sustainability is costing you money, you’re doing it wrong, right?

And, um, I’ve saved my clients, I’ve recalculated it recently, I think it’s 200 million dollars a year over the last 25 years. It’s something like 5 billion dollars. I’m not on a percentage, I wish I really wished I was. And, and so the cost effectiveness of that is unparalleled. And the cost effectiveness of investing in renewable energy, it’s six times more cost effective, and yet we still subsidise, non-renewable energy. We still subsidise the oil industry, for example. And so I’ve never been able to separate the need to use resources more wisely from the need to treat people fairly. They’ve always been the same thing for me. And I love, I love business. My line is whilst business has created most of the world’s problems, it’s the only thing that can fix them.

Being innovative, using enterprise to do good, it’s magic. The problem that we have, the Companies Act, its only responsibility is to the shareholder for financial return. That’s because that’s the only way we could measure good when that was written. We can measure good in so many ways now. We desperately in the UK, there will be other other countries will have other pieces of legislation, in the UK, we desperately need to overhaul the Companies Act. It’s urgent. And so that’s something I’m really interested in in terms of the litigious side or the policy side of that.

So over the years, that’s what I’ve done. I’ve always done it. And then I got involved in innovation and change and a bit on brand. And then I wrote Do Disrupt, which is about how you have better ideas faster. And because I can speak events and I can speak well, I then wrote a presentation book called Do Present.

And I sat there about 2019 thinking, most people know me for the thing that I don’t do, or for the thing that I don’t do the most of. I thought, okay, I need to, I need to sort this out. I need to write the book I wanna read on sustainability. So I got approached by a publisher, Kogan Page, who utterly brilliant, as are Do Book Company, by the way, Miranda is incredible. And I wrote this outline and they loved it. And I wrote the book and it launched a year ago. And ironically it hit number five in the Amazon business ethics chart.

And, um,

[00:41:12] Mich Bondesio: Congratulations.

[00:41:13] Mark Shayler:

Well, it’s, do you know what, it’s an interesting one because there is a certain amount of ego that comes with that. And I think ego is such a misunderstood word. Generally, I’m not egotistical, but I’m really comfortable being seen. People confuse those two things. They confuse being good on stage with having an ego.

They confuse being a big personality with having an ego. And, um, and, and I generally don’t, but when it hit number five, I did. I did have an ego at that point. And I know I acknowledge that that’s exactly like, yeah,

[00:41:45] Mich Bondesio:

Well, I think that’s a valid reason to celebrate because it’s so hard to do that.

[00:41:49] Mark Shayler:

Yeah. I was urging it to beat number four, obviously. And so, so it’s a really, it’s a really interesting challenge that is. And so I, um, I wrote the book probably, if I’m honest, I wrote the book for three reasons.

One, to reestablish myself in that world, because I drifted a little bit away from it. Two, because it needed to be read like this is urgent. Now this is, there’s no messing about. This is super, super urgent now.

And three, because no one truly knew what a regenerative business was. And I wanted to write the guidebook to creating a regenerative business. And, that’s fundamentally what, what I did , or what I wanted to do. And I think it’s, it’s, you know, the work of Forum for the Future in this field is amazing, and I have nothing but love and respect for them. But I wanted to take that a little bit further and give it a bit more depth. So that, that’s why I wrote, You Can’t Make Money from a Dead Planet. And, yeah, it seems to have gone down well, so I’m, I’m really pleased about that.

[00:42:51] Mich Bondesio:

That’s fantastic, and you mentioned that you have another book coming out that’s connected to this. Can you share anything with us?

[00:42:57] Mark Shayler:

Yeah, I’m, I’m in the planning stage. You know, I was acutely aware that a lot of that book is good for everyone, right? Is that there’s a chunk in there about business. The last third is about business, how to write policy, how to do scope one, two, and three, how to recruit well, all those things. The majority of the book is as consumer friendly as any other book on sustainability.

People don’t think it is because the title is called, You Can’t Make Money From A Dead Planet. So I want to write a book that is consumer focused, inspired by my dear friend, John Elkington, actually, and some of his early work with Julia Hailes, The Green Consumer Guide, and the whole load of products that they launched that were really solid.

And, um, so that, so the new book well, I won’t tell you what’s going to be called cause that’ll change, but, but the premise is 10 problems, 10 myths, and 10 solutions that define and save the world. And it is much more consumer friendly, trying to, to kind of like burst open some of this rubbish that’s spoken around sustainability and to apply the lens of science.

And there’s a whole load of people listening to this going, yeah, but they lie. The world is so polarised that I can’t please everybody. I’m not for everybody. I’m as my friend James Victore says, I’m just for the sexy people. So I’m going to write a book about sustainability for the sexy people. That’s what I’m going to write.

[00:44:13] Mich Bondesio:

Sounds brilliant. And it sounds like you’re cutting through a lot of the noise to exactly what people need. Fantastic. So. Mark, as we’re coming to the end, I’ve got one last kind of deep question for you. Based on your experiences of life and work so far, what key lessons or words of wisdom would you like to share with my listeners?

[00:44:31] Mark Shayler:

At this point, Mish, I wished I’d read the questions you sent me. But I love going off the hoof. So I’m cool with this. Okay. Number one, move. Keep moving. If you stop moving, you start dying. Just keep moving. Whatever you can do, do it as much as you can.

Two. Be still when we get to meditative brainwave, when we get to theta brainwave, it’s where we have better ideas. It’s also where we find ourselves. It’s where we’re able to look at our fears. Maybe you’re in a map, maybe you’re on a mountainside, like it doesn’t matter. Meditation comes to us in many different places. It’s where you can look your fears in your eye, in your eyes and say, what are you trying to teach me?

And I think that’s really important. To move more, be still more. That sounds counterintuitive, but it’s true.

Number three, you don’t know what anyone else is going through. So greet them and treat them like you would treat yourself. Really important that we do that because we can be unintentionally cruel sometimes.

Number four, you wouldn’t let anyone talk to you the way that you talk to yourself. So a little bit of nice talk to yourself would be really good.

Number five. Don’t shy away from conflict. There’s nothing worse than being ghosted, than having someone not tell you the truth, but not have anything to do with you. It is just irritating and pointless. And it’s a form of bullying, right? It’s never about you. It’s always, it’s always about them. So if you have an issue, be honest, be upfront, deal with these things, nip them in the bud early.

Number six, if you look too hard for love, you’ll never find it. It’s like the rainbow’s end. The more you search for it, the more elusive it becomes. When you’re not looking for it, when you’re just being yourself, it’ll be just behind you, just over your shoulder. It’ll be there. And I think this starts with, and this is a cliche, but it’s so true.

No one else will love you and you won’t love anybody else until you love yourself. Until you spend time working out who you are and what matters to you and to be able to have deep conversations that are semi philosophical. You don’t need to be a philosopher or educated to degree level to have those conversations, but explore what it means.

I run a men’s group online and we had a really interesting conversation the other day about what to do when someone asks for money on the streets. And the person responding said, Oh, I’ve been stung here before. I’ve given them money and they’ve gone off and bought beer and fags. And I just said, do you not drink when you’re low? Do you not, why is their beer or fag money less important than your wine money? Than your Chateauneuf du Pape money?

If I was on the streets, I’d smoke and drink too. And we seem to apply this, this separate lens when it comes to looking down upon people. We are one decision away from being that person. And so look after your mental health, but assume that everybody else is going through a tough time as well, and make sure that you’re not unnecessarily cruel. I’m not saying don’t have conflict. Clearly that needs, that needs to happen.

And I don’t know really that’s six, isn’t it? Is there a seventh one? There probably is a seventh one. And this is, it stems off number six, being totally at ease with the person that you’ve grown into.

There’s a great, there’s a great poem by Heidi Priebe, or great phrase, and I use it a lot. And it says “to love someone long term is to witness a thousand funerals of the person they used to be”. And, and that’s true. I’ve been married for 34 years nearly now, and, and I’m not the same person that Nicola married, and she’s not the same person that I married, and luckily we still like each other, right?

We still feel together. But it’s more than that. To love yourself long term is to witness a thousand funerals of the person that you used to be. And to let go of the ghosts of the past, they’re just going to slow you down. Super, super important.

But the one that pokes me the most, and this is the one I have because I nearly made it as a rugby player, I nearly got into the England long jump team, I nearly, nearly, nearly, nearly. And they’re heavy bags.

To love yourself long term is to witness a thousand funerals of the person you wanted to be. And, and to put those ghosts to bed, that’s what, for me, has brought the most ease and the most calm. Don’t get me wrong, right? I, I sometimes watch the England centres fall apart again, as they always have for the last two years. Utterly dreadful. And I think, yeah, give me a ball. I’ve got my boots. And there’s still part of me that is that little boy in the stands.

So they are heavy. But to relive the coulda, shoulda, woulda, that’s just, it’s just lunacy and madness. So that’s my seventh bit of advice. Be comfortable with the person, with saying goodbye to the person you wanted to be and embrace exactly where you are.

[00:49:36] Mich Bondesio:

So powerful. No regrets. Be kind. Absolutely.

Thank you so much, Mark. Tell us where can people find your online and do you have anything interesting coming up?

[00:49:47] Mark Shayler:

Yeah. Okay. So always easy to find, right? At Mark Shayler on Instagram. I am on LinkedIn and my email address is markshayler at me. com. You’ll find me at Hampstead Ponds most Wednesday mornings at 7. 30 with my mates. Have I got anything interesting coming up? Yeah, always.

Always, always, always. Got some big plans next year for some work stuff, which I won’t bore you with. Got some plans for another event. So we’ve talked about March. I think it’s about the same time this one comes out. There will be another Reasons to be Cheerful Commune in the shed that I’m sat in now.

We’ve got Reasons to be Cheerful Live coming back in, I think September, but that might change. And then we’re back at Blue Earth Summit that went down so well that they’ve asked us to do every evening across the whole of Blue Earth Summit. So those things are going to be big and, a range of entry level prices from 35 quid or no breakfast, 45 quid.

Through to if you want to do the Blue Earth Summit, you get everything they do and us for their entry free, which is about 700 pounds. I think I can’t remember top of my head.

I’m planning that new book. I’ve got a kid’s book that I want to write as well, which I’ll probably wait a couple of years. If I’m honest with you, just cause it’s about time. That’s the the challenging thing.

Other side projects that we run, we run a little like a hot sauce business, which I need to do something with. It’s been dormant for a few years.

We’ve got Cherry Coffee, which has also been dormant for about six months. I run that with my son-in-law and he’s, he’s had a new job and a new baby. So that’s kind of been put to sleep for a little while. I would like to reinvigorate both of those over the next 12 months. I think they bring such joy to me to be in part of that. I’ve learned so much about branding, so much about consistency of posting so much. This is the interesting one. So much about pasteurisation when you’ve made a hot sauce, really important.

Um, and so they’re the things that are coming my way, coming from us. I suspect, I mean, the work stuff is super exciting, but I can’t talk about it. I suspect there will be another side project because I’ve got ADHD and, um, I didn’t know this until recently. I was the only one that was surprised. And I genuinely get bored. and I think, right, I’ve got an idea, let’s make shoes or it doesn’t matter what it is, right? So, that excites me too. And then at some point there will be a move, you know. We’ve got a big six bedroom house. Our daughter lives opposite with her husband and the granddaughters, but there will be a point where we say, okay, what does that bring?

And I suspect that will bring overseas and, and here. I suspect that’s what that will bring.

[00:52:27] Mich Bondesio:

Oh, lots of exciting plans and ideas then for you in 2025. Can’t wait to see what happens next. Mark, thank you so much. It’s been really fantastic to catch up with you and to have this conversation. I appreciate your time.

[00:52:39] Mark Shayler:

Thank you. And just a bit from me about you really, Mish, because I don’t know whether you know this, but I often see you as like a balm, like a healing kind of witch hazel that I, I thought if I ever feel low, which I do, right? People do. You think, Oh, what’s, what’s Mish doing? And to come back to what you’re doing and how you’re doing it is a really powerful way of reminding me of the good in people.

So thank you for everything that you do. And I hope you can see what I can see when you look in the mirror.

[00:53:13] Mich Bondesio:

Thank you so much. That’s really, really kind and very unexpected. I appreciate it, Mark. Thank you.

[00:53:18] Mark Shayler: Okay, it’s true.

[00:53:19] Mich Bondesio: Okay, all right. Thank you

Well, I think digesting and applying Mark’s seven wise pieces of advice is a great way to end this season.

And I’ve shared a host of links in the show notes on the transcription page for Mark and his work. So do check out his books and his QiGong sessions.

Mark did mention a Commune event happening in March as part of his Reasons To Be Cheerful brand. That event is already sold out, but there are similar Communes planned for the summer and later in the year, so check those out in the links.

Well, that’s it for season 12 and I’m now taking a little break after a very intense first quarter, but the podcast will be back in mid-April, and the theme is still focused around sustainability and regenerative business.

But we’re going to be going deeper on flexible working practices too. And I’ve got some fantastic people lined up to chat with. So I’m really looking forward to sharing those episodes with you.