Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick from the Webinarett welcoming you to another one of our vet chat podcast episodes. As you know, we're very interested about sustainability at the Webinar vet, and I'm really thrilled today to have Juliet Davenport on the podcast with me. Juliet is the founder of Good Energy.

She is also the author. I can't say of a bestselling book because this book hasn't even been released yet. But I think it may well go on to be a bestselling book because it really fills a need that those of you who are on video can see the book, it's called The Green Start Up Make Your Business Better for the Planet.

It's a book that's been needed for a long time. I've thoroughly enjoyed reading it and can highly recommend it. So we'll talk a little bit about the book, Juliet, and I suppose.

Start off to to set up a a a renewable energy company, you've got to have a bit of a badass. Attitude, haven't you, because I, I, you, you had to fight a few battles along the way. I, I, I love the comment in the book when you were in a government meeting.

And one of the big energy companies just said to the minister, well, solar isn't really appropriate in the UK. Yeah. He, he got a withering answer, didn't he?

Yeah, and it was really interesting because I mean, part of the reason for setting up the company was to be in the room. Because a lot of, a lot of these conversations with government, a lot of the assumptions that are made, that had to be made in the energy industry, went on behind closed doors. And so by being part of it, and I was, I was actually very lucky to get into that group, I could disrupt it.

I could start to make them have these conversations and stop them, sort of, persuading ministers that things like solar wouldn't work in the UK. And it's really interesting as a very, very, very small microgenerator, you know, I have some solar panels on my roof. I produce about 3000 kilowatt towers a year and I use 2500, so, if we were all doing that, of course, the country probably wouldn't be in the, Energy crisis that it's in at the moment, would it?

Well, I, every, every unit that we can produce ourselves and not have to import from places like Russia or the Middle East, it has an impact on the total, one, it has an impact on our. Payments, 2, it has an impact on the wealth of the country itself. And 3, it has an impact on our own personal costs.

And so all of those things, if, if we put solar panels in every roof in the UK you would transform the energy system in the UK. And, and it was such a shame. I think it was an opportunity lost.

I know the, the Cameron government started with a very sort of ambitious target to, to put solar panels on the roofs, and then saw how much it was costing them. Solar panel companies had been set up, they were starting to put the panels up and then suddenly it was fairly precipitously dropped, and I think we can see. What a huge mistake that was by government at that time now, can't we?

Yeah, I mean, it, it was a real shame because what what they actually managed to do is introduce a piece of legislation that that ended up being very expensive because the prices of solar panels came down very fast, and the subsidy didn't follow it quick enough. And there was also a tax break for investors. So you had this double whammy.

Of tax break plus the subsidy. And, and the real shame was that rather than thinking, OK, so, we, we, we, we've paid too much for the first, but but let's make sure we carry on and reduce, reduce the cost, but actually make sure we maintain this industry. And it was a real shame because if you want to go and put a solar panel.

Your house today, you will be waiting probably 3 or 4 months at least, depends on the area. But just because, not because we can't get hold of panels, but we can't get hold of trained people who can go and put them on people's roofs. And this is, this is a this is a real problem is that now we do have an energy crisis.

It's taking longer to fix it than it might have done. Everybody wants solar panels, but there's nobody to fit them. Yeah, so, I mean people are still getting them, don't get me wrong, and, and actually there's the lovely Gareth in the book who I talked to, who I interviewed from Cat Law, who, who is a company that focuses on supporting businesses in terms of helping them go green and and they're merrily working their way through a backlog, but yeah, it takes a while.

And I think you were talking about Gareth in the powering the future chapter. Very much all solar panels, but also heat pumps as well. Again, some of the myths that some of the bigger companies have put out in the past because I, I presume the big oil and gas companies, and we know who they all are, they probably don't like that energy is being decentralised.

No, not really. So, if you think about it, sort of, you, you've got 80% of UK households are supplied by the gas grid. And there are very few people who own gas pipelines, who own gas fields.

And, and, and essentially, they control it all. Now, if we start to reduce the amount of, energy we use by improving energy efficiency, and we start to transfer over to Electricity, which we potentially can partially generate ourselves, you start to take the power away from them. They can't control the marketplace in the same way.

And they're finding that quite hard, because they're used to be able to deploy a lot of capital, make a lot of money, and we're kind of disrupting that as individuals and businesses. As I said at the beginning, Juliet, I loved the book, and it's, it's lovely because it also tells the story about good energy which I've been using, I can't know how long, but it's 1015 years at least, so fairly early in the journey, and you, you start off with Tony Marmont who, who, Sent you brought you to his house as an innovator, tell us a little bit about about that story. Yeah, so, so we've probably been running good for a couple of years by this point, I think it was and Tony rang me up and said that PowerGen, one of the big, big suppliers at the time, was gonna cut him off and he wasn't going to be able to supply his power to the grid.

And so I said, oh, OK, well, let's see what we can do about that, because we obviously were buying power from small renewable generators, but Tony was particularly small, he was effectively a household generator, and, and it was the first time we'd really engaged with them. And so I went off to Loughborough to go and see him and go and see the site, because he, he had a whole combination of things. He had, he had tilting winter, solar panels, so that tracked the sun.

He had wind turbines that clapped. They were a bit noisy, to be honest. And I was slightly worried about walking underneath them.

I think I'd say that but. And he had a small hydro, plant as well, so he had pump storage in, in the land. So he had a big lake that he put water in and out of.

And yeah, and he'd been told, and, and not only that, he also had huge numbers of batteries in the house, so he was storing a lot of this energy as well. So he was a really early pioneer. But, but what he said is he couldn't export.

And after, after what, So we investigated that to see, OK, so what, what's getting in the way of being able to export from these small sites? And it was in the regulation that you just couldn't do this. And so what we did originally was we, we started buying power from him, but we did it virtually.

I know that sounds rather odd, but we did, we created a virtual power station, essentially. And Credited him with renewable power, even though we couldn't actually physically buy it. And then we worked on changing the regulation so that small generators like him, like anybody today, could export cheaply to the grid without having to put huge metering systems on.

And he was, and that was brilliant. And it's really interesting. I, I found my journey of going to talk to lots of different pioneers who were trying to push the boundaries, and then figure out how we could help them to take it to the next step.

Because they obviously, you know, are your customers as well and and I think it's so important. To talk to your customers because that's what when you create a company that fits for them rather than it's just your vision and you're not listening to anybody. Yeah, and, and a lot of the time I was lucky at the beginning because we had a pretty small call centre and I used to sit next to it, and I could overhear some of the conversations.

And quite often I think, surveys are fine. You can go out and survey people. But, but you're only getting the answer to the question you've asked them.

And also, they're kind of that that you're impacting the answer almost by answering the question. Whereas what I found was, if you listen to the questions that were being asked of us, that was actually much richer territory, because you could see what people are really worried about and what they were really interested in. And actually, that, that was how we funded ourselves as a result of that, because people would ring up and say they want to do invest in the company.

And that, that's where that came from. That 1st 5 years there must have been very difficult because you've got a slow moving government legislation obviously takes time, it's probably. At that time, not even really thinking about climate change or anything, so, so you were very much a, a fly in the ointment for them, for somebody who was there.

Bugging them that they probably realised they maybe needed to do something about, but it was an irritation that in some ways they wish would go away. Yeah, and also they kind of felt, oh, we got all these big energy companies, they're the ones we should listen to. But obviously, time and time again we've seen in, in the way things change is you need the small innovators to come in and be annoying and be, be kind of audacious to, to change things and move things on.

Mhm government and big business. On the whole, doesn't usually change things, do they? It is that small, the small innovators who come in and disrupt the space as, as you've done in, in your industry.

Yeah, and and I think you, you can try and do it at the government level and you can definitely make a difference at the government level, but you need that practical experience of trying to do it and finding out what gets in your way to really unpick the the true problems. Because what I found time and time again when we had, even when we had positive legislation supporting renewables, is that you then come across yet another barrier, whether it was financing, whether it was technical, or or whether it was, it was just a pure regulatory barrier. And and you couldn't, and you needed to unpick that before you could let something fly.

And, and it's really satisfying to see with the inflation Reduction Act in America, 369 billion, I know it's been slightly watered down, going into climate changing policies, you know, sort of green policies, that's been really positive and I know Greece, was at a point, I think a few days ago where it actually was 100% renewable, wasn't it, which has obviously been a government, . Driven or at least led or at least er cooperating, the government's been cooperating in that whereas we're we're at the moment with a government that and I, you know, I think it's always good to be a bit controversial, let's say they're not the greenest one that I've ever seen before. I think the green levy was taken out.

I don't know if it's back in, there has been a bit of flip flop er, stuff going on at the moment, so you're probably ahead of that more than me. Is, is the green levy in or out at the moment? Or are we just gonna shake it all about?

I think we're gonna shake it all about and sit back and wait. I mean, my view is that there, there is no time like the present and getting on with trying to make, make, make your business, your home more resilient and greener because actually independent of what government does right now. Getting on and reducing our reducing our need for energy is is incredibly important and actually can help us as individuals whether this storm, whether it's political or not coming forward.

In terms of, I mean, in terms of politicians, it's, it is hard because the, you look at that they, they're always trying to come in off the back of short term policy. So they to have secure energy, but then they don't want to upset people who live next to solar parks or onshore wind farms. And you kind of go, but, but for me, that's where they haven't had the difficult debate.

They haven't said, we're doing this because, and this is, this is, this is always a problem I find with politicians is they're not happy to have those hard conversations. Yeah. And actually individuals and businesses are much better at doing that.

They go, The reality, this is actually what we're faced with. Let's have this hard discussion that there's a balance of. If you don't like solar parks, that's fine, but then you're not going to get local generated energy.

You, you're gonna have to continue to import from all over the world. And, and what's been really interesting about Greece is that Greece would have been a mixture of domestic of people policy and and government policy. And, and they have a huge wind resource as we do, and they have a huge solar resource, probably a better solar resource than we do.

And the fact that suddenly, for 5 hours, they're generating 100% of their electricity from renewables means that they're not importing for those 5 hours. They're not reliant on other countries, and they're increasing the wealth of the country. And that they're also increasing.

Balance of payments. So suddenly, Greece, having been a country which has been quite, I mean, we've always looked at Greece as a country that can't balance its books for many years. But actually, this gives us an opportunity to be earning net cash.

Yeah, which is fantastic, isn't it? I, I was speaking to a solar panel provider in Canada and he was actually saying, you know, actually take away the grants, make it easier because government, as you've said before, can potentially slow things down in that area, can't they? So just, it, it's becoming more and more sensible.

I think I. It was sort of said that I would pay my solar panels back in about 6 or 7 years. Of course, now with the energy so expensive, that's gonna be much quicker, isn't it, as well?

Yeah. And, and you'll be having had your panels installed for quite a time, quite some time, you'll be making money at the moment, or you'll be reducing your overall costs, which is, it's a huge benefit in these times. It was really interesting you were talking before about your call centre and of course your call centre caused you a lot of problems early on, didn't it, because you decided you had to bring it in-house.

And, and part of the book I think talks about something which is really important, it's the why you had a very clear why you just wanted to democratise energy, which, you know, you've done a fantastic job on. Every company, you know, we should know what the values are, the vision, the purpose, and yet that's not clear and why I've said, you know, this isn't just a book for somebody who's thinking about starting a business, we all can learn from it. Tell us a little bit about maybe the the issues you had with that with that sudden growth that you had as you had to bring things together.

Yeah, so, so we, we had a relatively small team because we outsourced quite a lot of our day to day work, so all the back office stuff and a lot of the billing stuff was all outsourced and the call centre. And that company basically went into administration. They had a few problems, and we had to take them over and and we'd always had a slightly tricky relationship with them, just because obviously we want better customer service and they wanted to keep their costs down.

And so we, we ended up taking them over because we wanted to continue to serve our customers. It was the obvious choice. And we took on, we imported a bunch of stuff.

And the thing was that we were a team of about sort of 1015 people, I think at that point. So at that size, you know what it's like. And with 1015 people, you can have conversations with all those people.

Your values can become quite implicit. So it's like, everybody knows what You're trying to do. And, and those discussions continue.

And although they're not, if they're not written down, they're not as obvious. But, you, you can figure that out fairly fast. What became very obvious was, obviously, we imported this whole team had been hired by a completely different leadership team in a complete with a completely different vision than ours.

And we brought the two together. And it was, it took, I mean, it was, it was a real shock. And I just I was just very focused on doing the practicalities of bringing the teams together.

So making sure we had an office, making sure the IT was working, understanding all the contractual terms, taking over companies outs, picking up bits and toing across employees. So you, you focused on all of that, and then suddenly it wasn't for a while, you suddenly a bit of fighting. Well, it wasn't just It was just people just doing things.

I always remember there was one management. There's one manager I had who, he had two of his customer service team who weren't getting on and were literally almost at each other's throats. And he decided that the best way to manage that was to bring them into his room and let them have a massive argument in front of him.

And I was like, Oh my God. Well, as you said, another one wanted more money because he, he was having another baby and he didn't think that his wife should go to work, which sounded a bit bizarre. Yes, I mean, and, and again, again, just not thinking.

I mean, I, I completely got why he would want it. I mean from a personal point of view, but from the point. Of an organisation, did he have a bigger job?

Was he doing more in the organisation? Was there any, any, any reason within the organisation itself that that? Now, if he says, can you, can you give me a bonus of this because I've just got these extra costs coming in, I might have had a different conversation.

But building in long term cost into a business is very dangerous. And doing it on the basis that some, that, that has nothing to do with performance or the organisation, the direction you're going really is not very helpful. And it was, it was just a fascinating, it was just really surprising and fascinating conversation.

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It's really interesting because of course that was a business that presumably wasn't very purpose led or purpose centred that had gone into administration and I read the Harvard Business Review quite a lot and more and more people are talking about it, even, you know, those big companies in America, I think they came together as a big group 2 or 3 years ago and said, You know, our sole purpose is no longer just to make money for our shareholders. So there is that revolution. You obviously talk in the book about BO as well, which is in a similar sort of vein.

People actually want to work and they want to . Buy things from companies that they think has got a higher ideal than just we want to make a load of money so we can buy a big car or a big house, don't they? Yeah, yeah.

I, I read a book. It was, it's quite an old book now, and I can't remember when it was published, but it was a real epiphany for me. So it's called the corporation and it and and one of the, one of the images of the stories in it that stuck in my head was that the concept.

That you as an individual, have a bunch of ethics, a bunch of beliefs, and that when you go through that revolving door into the office, you leave them all there. And you go through and you become somebody else because you are now part of a corporate. And you lose all your ethics, you lose your beliefs, all those things that you wouldn't do to your friends or your family, you're quite happy to do to other people.

And, and that for me was a real sort of real striking point is that why should we treat our customers any different than people that we would treat our friends and family? Why, why would you do that to somebody else or your local community? And there was no reason really.

And, and profit potentially drives that. But actually, Even even if you want to drive profit, you can still be ethical and reasonable and and keep your own core beliefs and values while being part of an organisation that delivers value. And so I just, I, it was, it was really important.

To me when I when I read that book, and it was that that came through. And I think an an organisation that lays out its values allows people to align with it. They don't always align with all of them, but that just gives them a very clear view that they know what you stand for, don't they?

Yeah, but, but you have to be really clear and I think I say I talk about in the book using the word ethical, and. Different people interpreting that word in very different ways. Well, it, it's very interesting because I read it and I thought, hm, she's got a point there because we have, we have probably a few more than you have, we have 12 ethical words and we, we sort of did this by bringing the company together.

Well, we had 10, and we brought, you know, small teams sort of like yourself, 1015, 20 people. And we did it as an exercise and everybody pulled words together, and the first time we did it, obviously I had to employ people who are similar to me, so a lot of the words were very, if we can use the word fluffy, and the, the hard analytical words, and actually I'd gone through an exercise of looking at some of the stuff that Netflix and people had done. And as you've said in the book, you know, it's great to be purpose centred, but if you don't make any money after 5 years, most business, a lot of businesses have failed, haven't they startups, so after 10 years, I think there's 2 or 3% that are left.

So you have to also. Make money as well, so we added some harder words like analytical advisor, but we do have ethical in there, so I may need to go back, you, you use the word fairness instead of ethical, don't you? Yeah, I do.

And I think, I think you unethical, you just need to be clear how you define it, so. So we just left it up there with no definitions or or how you use it. And so people could decide to interpret it in whatever way.

And and and I think the point I made in the book is I had a debt collection team who at some point decided they weren't going to collect debts because it was unethical. And so it's like, no, no, no, that's absolutely core to our business. We won't survive and we won't deliver on our purpose.

We don't collect our money. Yes, yes. Yeah, no, it's really important to, I think we've been fortunate webinar vet because I am a vet, and actually, you know, all of these colleagues and friends and actually.

I want to be able to go to conferences and not have to hide in hide in cupboards, so it's really important that we do our best and we're respectful to people when we've got them on the line. And also, as you've said, it's, it's that basic golden rule, do unto others as you would like have done unto you, isn't it really? Yeah, really important.

And I think you see the most successful business. Businesses that are now coming forward, particularly digital businesses, is where is where you see people who are solving problems that they've had individually. And, and actually the the personality of the leaders come through in the way that they behave towards their customers.

Yeah, and their team and everything, isn't it? Yeah. Just wanted to go over some of the other chapters.

I mean it was really interesting that powering the future, we've talked a lot about that anyway, but you were talking a little bit about offsetting and insetting and natural capital, how do you see that sort of developing over the next, 5 years because obviously it's very difficult for us not to use any energy to run a business, and this is one of the quandaries I had where I was saying, but I want to go over to America to talk to people over there and perhaps get more of them to, you know, do sort of digital learning, and investors in the environment were saying, well, that's OK if you can see there's a reason for it, and actually you did a really lovely chapter as well on transport, which made me think about some of the stuff that we are doing, which is, I think we look at if we can use trains we do, but perhaps our policy just needs a bit of strengthening up there, so that was a really useful chapter as well, but yeah, tell us a little bit about offsetting and insetting and natural capital, how you see that all fitting in. So I think, I think we're going through a period now of how to define. Natural capital and how to actually get it moving because the question, the question is, why, why do people chop down the Amazon?

Why do people dig up peat bogs? Why do because to us, to a marketplace, they have no inherent value until you use them. And that's, that's the challenge is how do you, how do you basically say by leaving it in the ground, it has more value to us as a society than digging it up.

And I think this is, this is, this is the real balance in terms of, sort of not offsetting or offsetting. But actually, if we can see that we can start to create, I, I personally think you should reduce every, every impact you can have as much as possible, but you won't be able to reduce it completely. By living, we have an impact.

We just do. And I think that things like offsetting and return and creating natural capital markets is a way of thinking about how do I make sure that I leave the peat bog as it was. Now you could regulate on it, and that would be fine.

But that's, that always has a risk. From my point of view. I think that has a bigger political risk when you basically get so I mean the concept that the Amazon will be burnt down or not depending on who they who they put in place as a president in Brazil right now is terrifying.

And the point is we internationally have no impact, can have no impact on it. But what they do to the Amazon has a massive impact on us. And so there's this kind of real piece in there and I'm going, well, how do you pick that?

Because that, that's always been my trouble with government is that governments can reverse their positions. Yeah. They can also cha they can change their minds, they can, whereas marketplaces can be slightly better behaved in a longer term piece.

So I offsetting for offsetting sake, I, I, I'm not, I'm slightly nervous about, but when I can see that it starts to preserve something. That would have been destroyed. And we are doing as many other things.

So it shouldn't be an excuse not to invest in renewables, not to invest in energy efficiency, not to invest in electric vehicles and and reducing our transport fees. But where there are unavoidable pieces, yeah, that's involve invest in natural capital. I think it's really interesting because we obviously have a very small carbon footprint and we're carbon neutral, obviously trying to get towards net zero.

And we've actually invested in some of the Amazon to sort of preserve it and make sure that it's not chopped down because the frightening stat and I, I, I do get frightened by stuff I try not to worry too much, but I do get frightened by the fact that the Amazon is now emitting more carbon than it's absorbing because of the fires and so on and Bolusano's obviously a big, Part of that isn't it, you know, that when you've got a very right wing populist. Yes, completely. Completely.

And, and as I said, if we, if we have marketplaces, we can have more influence on him than we can because we can't vote in that country. None of us can. And, and yeah, maybe we can, we can ask our governments to go and have an impact on him.

But given the state of our government at the moment, I'm not sure they can negotiate anything with anybody. Yeah, and it, I think as you said within the powering the future chapter, you know, it's important that. We, we're not into greenwashing and there are obviously a lot of offsetting schemes that are, should we say, slightly dodgy.

There are these gold standard schemes that we should be looking for and and I think some really interesting stuff in the book, even with regard to renewable energy companies, because not everybody is perhaps as, as committed as you are to the whole concept of it, but they see it now as a way of, Building business without it being, you know, truly ethical, if we can use that word. Yes, really interesting, I think a lot of those businesses no longer exist. They they really all disappeared.

They've disappeared in the in the in the sort of Putin's wipeout last winter. So, so there are, there are quite a few, they were used as a sort of marketing tactic to grow. Business is very fast, but with low cost, and it's, and they've a lot of them have come aropper, but it is important to make sure that when we have green energy companies working, that they are, scrutinised and very clear about.

Because if somebody's not quite as green, it's not the end of the world, as long as they're doing something, but let's We kid ourselves what they are doing. And that's, that has always been my point is that I have no problem with people doing partial green or bits of green or whatever. But if they are if they're trying to compete with the people who are truly green, then that, that is where you get a lack of fairness and a lack of transparency.

I think it's it's really interesting, we've had seismic moments haven't we, in the last few years, we've had COVID which obviously affected the way that we work and so on. We've now had the energy crisis. Terrible things because of course the costs and everything have gone up, but actually they are also.

Great moments in time for us to look and say how do we act differently, and maybe in 5 years' time we'll have a much more democratic energy market with people producing a lot more of their own energy, insulating their houses better. That that's got to be the hope that maybe out of this terrible, Time of uncertainty, people actually do protect themselves against some of these changes by going for solar panels and so on. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think it's also what we take pleasure in and and what we enjoy and becoming more competent and capable, I think is a is a really interesting.

Doing things well. So, so one of the things I'm trying to do at the moment, I have quite an old house. I've done quite a lot of measures.

I still have a couple of doors that are, that are wonky, worse than. So you, so you can, you can put all your insulation around them. There's still a hole somewhere.

So I, I've, I've upped my, I went to Screwfix. I've upped my capability and hopefully gonna block that particular door as a gap off. But I think it's, it, it's just that.

Satisfaction, actually, of becoming slightly more self-sufficient. It's a bit like going to pick veg from your garden in the morning, to sort of eat in the evening. There, there's something about that, ability to be, and, and maybe I'm getting older, so maybe I enjoy it more than I might have done when I was much younger.

But that, that ability to be able to create things yourself, I think it's really interesting. And creates a world where what what coming back to your point about these big issues hitting us, does it make us happier? Are we happier as a result of being able to use less?

And, and I think we are. I think, I think being profligate doesn't necessarily make you happy. And it, and feeling that we're actually looking after the planet, as well as serving, saving ourselves energy, as well as becoming more competent.

I think it's an amazing set of skills to have. And I think what was really powerful maybe to finish off was you've obviously talked a lot about sustainability development goals, the UN's sustainability development goals throughout the book, but actually the real reason why we're doing all of this stuff at the end is because. We want to protect future generations and I love the fact that you have, you have a proper boarder of young people who can actually speak very passionately about what they want, you know, we've obviously got the Greta Thunbergs of the world, but I, I, I presume, Manor Camron might become a bit more famous after the book gets published as well.

She's pretty famous already, she's pretty formidable already. I mean, I think, I think the. The point is that there's a whole generation, and I don't know what it feels like to be them, who are growing up in a world where they're being told that things are disastrous.

And I mean, I read my first climate change article I read when I was about 18. But it was, it was only one article. I didn't read it every weekend in every newspaper.

So although I was keen to do something, I didn't get that kind of overload of concern and fear. And I think that this generation, there will be, there will be, anxiety related to this. There will be fear related to this and anger.

And we're seeing the anger spill over into some of the protests we're. Right now. And the only responsible thing we can do as part of our society is to try and figure out sort of how can we take them on a journey that they that that can help them?

What can we do to make it better, they teach us as well, don't they? Yes. And what can we do for them?

One, to help them go on their journey. So how do we, I mean, one of the great things about the Goody Youth board was that they became great spokespeople themselves. So they can, we gave them skills and negotiation skills and debating skills as part of the work that they were doing.

And they learned a huge amount from the internal of the business. So the more young people that we can give early stage skills to now, the better, because otherwise they're just going to be either anxious, fearful or angry, and that's not going to help us as a society. A virtual congress every year since 2013, we've kept kept ourselves very busy during the pandemic helping people out with that.

But the Royal College set up a Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons set up an initiative called the Mind Matters initiative because they were worried about stress within the profession. And actually this last January we had Doctor Katrina Miller, who's a psychiatrist speaking about about solastalgia. Which is this very concept, you know, of existential dread of the the future of the planet, and it's very much seen now as a recognised condition in young people who get to the point of saying, you know, what can we do, this is hopeless, whereas I think.

People like you very much are people of hope. I think we still have the potential. To change this, don't we?

We completely do. And I think particularly, I mean, I sort of, I, I, I go to a lot of veterinary says I have a few animals, and they are people who care passionately about animals and and the natural world. And so, therefore, what's happening is very pertinent to them.

And, but, but I think the more we can do, and, and that is part of the reason. I wrote the book is to try and be as practical as possible, because so often I read sustainability books that are that have brilliant theories and thoughts and analysis, but they don't actually help the individual or the business to, to get on and do something themselves because taking control and doing something can so help your mental state, I think, around these things. And I love the fact in the book, again, waving is for those on the video, .

At the end is very practical because you have the chapter which says, you know, if you want to do a bit or you want to do a lot, here are some of the things that you can do, and I think that is so important because you can read the book and it's a lovely read, but if it doesn't actually change what I do, obviously I, I'm trying to do some bits. But when you read something like this, you have to then do some more bits and that's how, that's the journey, isn't it? Because none of us start off as renewable energy champions as as you have become, you know, you, you had a, a sort of ordinary upbringing and you went on that journey to become that and yeah, it's, it's exciting and we go to the level that we want to go and that we're comfortable with, but even as you say, light green, small things.

Make a difference, don't they? Completely and, and they are a start. They're a start of a journey.

And the whole idea is, if you make it too hard and too complicated, people are gonna go, this is, I haven't got time, I haven't got the mind space to do it. But, but once you start on a journey on some of these areas, you begin to get more confident. You begin to see that You can do more or hopefully that that is the idea is to, to not be putting off.

And originally, I mean, it's called the green startup now, but we originally played around with calling it the imperfect environmentalist because trying to perfection is always, gets in the way quite often of of actually getting on and doing things. Julia, it's been great listening. I mean, as a CEO you're a real inspiration because obviously I know as you've said, a lot of companies talk about this a lot.

But they don't really take any action because they just think it's such a big thing and so having somebody like you to help them with that, even, you know, and I would recommend this to big companies, we, we run a green discussion forum, got some really big companies in the room, so this will be a book that I will be recommending to that group as well, so. Thank you so much. You are an inspiration for all that you have done, but I think this will this will bring you to even more people's notice and, and hopefully, help people to really er transform to a greener future.

Antony, thank you so much. I really enjoyed that. Thank you.

Thanks everyone for listening. Anthony Chadwick, Vet Chat. See you on another episode soon, bye bye.