MOAH Episode 1 Transcript

MOAH Episode 1 Transcript

Jack Manning Bancroft:
I'm Jack Manning Bancroft, the founder of AIME. We have created the Making of a Hoodie podcast to celebrate the heroes of the world that we see, who have gone out and have done phenomenal things either in small ways or huge ways. And in that time, we will design a hoodie, the story of their life, the story of what our lives can be. And this hoodie will continue to help fire the work of AIME as we set our course on trying to eradicate educational inequality right across the earth's surface. Welcome to the Making of a Hoodie podcast.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
Welcome everybody to the Making of a Hoodie podcast, and this is episode zero. This is the beginning of a design lab experience where we're trying to mash together a few different things. So, we've been running for 18 years, the year is 2022, we've had a couple years of a COVID pandemic, AIME has expanded around the world in those 18 years. And we've been obsessed with trying to work out how to create unlikely connections to network the world differently so we can try and use our imagination to get unstuck, and then to develop ideas which don't exist yet and create a fairer world. And so, we thought with this podcast in, let's take the oldest form of networking at scale in the form of a radio platform, and then let's throw in a design of a hoodie.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
Let's gather with really interesting people, let's bounce around some unlikely connections and let's try and spin up an idea from that lab, use the hoodie as the kick starter for the project, and then have that go and change something in the world. So, for episode zero, to come along on this wild journey with us and be a partner in crime and help work out how we can use this as a bit of an investment lab to spin up ideas and create change, we've got Johny Mair kicking it with us. And before I throw to you, Johny, just to set a bit of context, Johny and I have been hanging out for a couple of years now and exploring how to change the way the world works and how to think differently about what investment can look like. And it's been one of the richer, deeper dives that I've been able to have in a working world with AIME without ever without structurally actually doing a practical project yet.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
And it's been so nice to take time. So often you go into the first meeting, you're like, okay, so what's the deal? But we've probably spoken for, I don't know, it feels like almost a hundred hours across a variety of different platforms. And today we get to bring some of that thinking together and that weaving together. So, really stoked to have you kicking it with us, Johny. And do you want to just tell the gang a bit about your story and how you've landed here on episode zero with this Making of a Hoodie podcast and what you're looking forward to?

Johny Mair:
No, thank you. Thank you, Jack. That was a great intro. And yes, we've spent a lot of time together, which has been nice just to, not necessarily have any outcome related to it, but just to follow the pass. I mean, a little bit of background I guess for me is, and I think one of the things I really connect through with the imagination is just my... I feel like with my whole life, it's just been, not necessarily planned, but just going to the next thing or just following the things that I was interested in. I think from an early age, I was always interested in building stuff, pulling things apart, putting it back together, how using a mixture of creativity and engineering and followed those paths. But it was always just like, where am I going next? And so, I never really had a plan, I never had this like, oh, I want to be this, I just followed the path of what made sense to me.

Johny Mair:
And I ended up in this crazy world, which connected through with you and AIME, and I never would've imagined where I would end up. But it's just been a path of just following what was interesting to me. I mean, where I am today, I started my career off and I wouldn't even say it was a career. I studied engineering, but following that path I realized that I really enjoyed the design aspect of it, but I actually didn't enjoy a lot of the where you end up within Australia, in terms of the mining and resources and maintenance engineering. And so, I just was like, well, I've got these skills of problem solving, where can I apply it to? And just went from there.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
What I'd love to spend a bit of time talking on is, how the heck do we get to a place where we can value a return on relations and how big is that prize for the world? And as you are sitting, looking at your vantage point out in New York, how do we get to a place where a happy, healthy life is not an offset? And is that possible?

Johny Mair:
Well, I mean, it's a very big question. I think that the part of being in relation and I think not being transactional, I think, is the thing that I really connect with. What my experience has been over the years is working with people and working with teams, and I'm sure that you've seen this, is when you start to connect with people, we start to think about them from an aspect of not what can be produced, but what can you create a relation with, the work and what you can actually achieve becomes so much more. And I think that's one of the big pieces that I've learned, is that everything's not outcome focused. It's more about enjoying this journey along with the team, enjoying the smaller wins of, maybe it's someone learning a new skill, or maybe it's someone having a challenge and you see them go through that.

Johny Mair:
And it's within those different pieces that you actually feel very much connected. The output, it's one component of it, but it's really enjoying that journey. And I think that's the same thing that we are starting to do, starting to look through with even with this Making of a Hoodie program. It's like, okay, you want to create something that's a representation of who you are as a company, that can either be a task, or it can actually be something that's really fun and a way for us to explore and meet each other and learn about different things about each other. And that's what I'm really excited, where it's like, if we start to treat things more about doing it together, it's not about the transaction, but it's more about enjoying this journey. Then life becomes so much better and happier.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
Yeah. And when you have these, there's all these secrets and hidden agendas and oppositional forces that, we're amazing at how quickly that just becomes the norm for us. That we go in and we're like, oh, well, I'm going to get my t-shirts made, so I'm going to send a brief to someone, and I know they're going to try and screw me on the price, so they're going to come back. And the whole thing is combative. So, creation is combative, which is just such a horrible way to create. And I find, as someone who really, really values imaginative thought, it is really, really, really hard to think imaginatively because of the pressures around you to not, because an imaginative idea isn't necessarily linked to something that already exists.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
And those of us wandered into imaginative spaces for humanity throughout human history have sometimes never come back from that wondering. It's tricky and you need the bungee rope to come back. And there's a big group of artists that pass away at 27, there's a big group of philosophers and thinkers and artists that are tortured throughout their lives, because it's really, really hard to be like, oh my gosh, I'm not important, and everything I believe in doesn't actually matter. And I'm not even anywhere near in control of my body or my mind or anything, I'm at best in part control of this thing. And the earth is spinning at a thousand miles an hour. And all of this, when you start to think about all of the complexity of what it takes to have life, you can either freeze there, I think, in the Netherlands and make beautiful art and help inspire those of us that are fixed to our locations or fixed to our desks or to our purpose or to our job or to our identity.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
Or you can be in motion and you can be in movement, and it doesn't have to be a bungee jump up-down, it can be these circles and you're just riding this big wheel of life. And you're out in an imaginative state, you're back in a fixed state, you're in flow and you're in that movement. And I don't know what your experience has been like with experimenting with control versus release and emergence, but I think you know that Tyson Yunkaporta and I hung out with Fritjof Capra last year, and we explored this processes of emergence. And it's crazy what happens when you're in leadership and you go, actually, I'm not going to try and control everything, I'm going to let it come. I'm still going to point in this direction. And Shackleton is one of the great examples of a great leadership story, where he went to try and get to the South Pole a number of times, and the last time his boat got frozen and he had to leave his group behind.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
He took two people, he missed the island that he thought he was going to and ended up on another island and then left those two people there then ended up going to where he thought the island was. Finally got there, landed on the wrong side, had to climb over this whole island. He finally got to the army support base or the Naval support base. They found him, he rescued everyone, no one died on the mission. And he was a hero because no one died. So, in terms of that, enjoy the journey, the being able to go, yes, we can go on big pursuits, but we've got life that we're living right now. And I think that tension of control versus letting it come is crazy. And one final thought, and then I'll throw it to you and I'll stop talking because this is semi meant to be an interview, but it's also a chance for me to just talk.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
But I got this email this morning before I jumped on this call, and two weeks ago, I was like, oh, we need an education league globally. It'd just be great to have that, the extra credibility. And then two days ago went, actually, no, got to leave space for our game to grow. And we don't need one person to be the hero and just pull the job that we were going to put out there. And then last night we had this person write to us who was like, are you guys looking for an education league globally? And it's the right fit. The person could be a really cool fit, but when you pull the handbrake on, he is going to go, I'm just going to let it go, and you wait. If you've got strength in your belief and that energy flow, it can come, which is wacky. It's so counterintuitive to the work, work, work, win, win, win, control, control, control, destroy yourself, destroy yourself, which is then what we model into our planet.

Johny Mair:
Yeah. I mean, there's so many interesting threads we can pull there. I mean, I think that the control piece is just, I think, a huge one, and I think we sometimes fool ourselves by thinking that we can somehow control the outcome. And I think it happens a lot with experience, but when you start to realize that these things aren't in control and you open yourself up, it allows you to look and see and find other avenues. And I think it's similar when you travel, it's interesting, when you travel, you go, oh, when you go to another country, it's like, oh, everyone's so friendly and open and talking to me, but actually it's probably got a lot to do with the state that you are in. You are more open, you are willing, you are putting that energy out there.

Johny Mair:
And I think the same with imagination and ideas, a lot of us are so fixated on that transaction or getting a task done that we're not allowing ourselves to go into that state to be even open or aware to that connection that can happen. So, when you are going, I have to work, work, work, and do this, and do you, those opportunities are right in front of you, but you just miss them because you're not open to doing it. And I think there's... I mean, I'm a big believer of, work is always cyclical. You go through cycles where you have to be really, really open, then sometimes you got to put your head down, and then other times you come out. You have to be in a mixed state. I think-

Jack Manning Bancroft:
It's a ride, Coney Island, rollercoaster.

Johny Mair:
Yeah. Well, yeah. And I think whenever you get into any habit and you keep doing it, that pattern, you end up digging up. It's like watching a dog run around a fence, if you keep running, you're going to get deeper and deeper. And so, it's like, how can you create states that allow you to change into different patterns to be open to change? And some of that is actually just environment. So, at Ethic we were talking with my two co-founders, actually a lot of the larger decisions we've made or bigger things have always done when we were not in New York, were done outside of New York, because we were all open. We're all in a different space to be able to think through the problem differently and go, actually, no, this is what we're going to do.

Johny Mair:
And so, changing environment. Also looking at, I think, constraints. I actually think constraints can be some of the things that actually allow you to create and be creative versus the opposite of having this openness. And so, I think a lot of it is just trying to be able to understand your own mood, understand what's going on and be able to at least be aware of that, to create these environments for you to have these moments of creativity or imagination.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
How do you grapple with acknowledging and seeing that emergent space and trying to release control and predictability? And then presenting to an investor saying, here is some predictable outcomes. You're still working through that tension and saying, this is what I think I can do with your money.

Johny Mair:
Yeah. Well, I mean, even with... So, if we think, I mean... A little bit of background about what Ethic does for those who don't know is, so we're considered an asset manager or an investment manager. So, we create investment portfolios primarily through public equities or companies that are traded on a stock exchange. But what we really do is, we're incorporating not only the financial factors that you have to look at normally, but also sustainability or externalities of what these companies are doing. So, we're looking at how companies, you've got what shareholders care about, which has traditionally been just the financials and the stakeholders of those companies, which are the environment, consumers of the product, the workforce, all of these other factors.

Johny Mair:
So, we work closely with people to help define the things that they care about. And then to incorporate that into creating a portfolio that represents not only their financial goals, but also the things they care about. And so, within that, it's really, really interesting that what we had to do is we had to create all of this technology, we had to create all of these ways for us to be able to simulate performance over time, to be able to say, table stakes, here we are doing financially. Really, the only conversation that people really want to have is around their values and what they care about. But you have to do a table stakes of making sure that the bases are covered to get to the thing that you actually want to talk about.

Johny Mair:
And I think the same as on the investors side, as you talk about doing these things that are outside of the norm, I think to get people comfortable you have to cover your bases of, hey, this is why we're doing it, this is the reason why it's important, and potentially the outcome could be this because we are thinking about things in a different way. And so, it's bringing someone along for the ride, providing context, and then going, this could be a huge opportunity in many different aspects of impact. Yeah.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
Yeah. When you describe outside of the norm, from looking in, it just seems to be... Well, I suppose let's try and establish what the norm is. Is the norm a financial investment system that doesn't factor in externalities and offsets? Is that the norm we've inherited?

Johny Mair:
Yeah. Well, it's where we are currently today, but it wasn't necessarily when, I think, the financial system started. I don't think it's even... If you go back to, why do you make an investment? Primarily now. And really, I think from the seventies, it was like economist Milton Friedman that said, if all that matters is shareholders and what the shareholders care. And so, I think with that, people said, oh, okay, so if it's all about return, so if I'm an investor, it's just, what do I get in terms of money return? Where I don't think that was always the case. I think that people were like, hey, actually I want to invest and whether that's in a friend's business, or I want to invest in something that I believe in.

Johny Mair:
It was like, it didn't have just a return. It was like, actually, I'm putting this because I want it to do what I want in the future where I think, hey, that's a great product, everyone should have that product, I'm going to invest in that. But it changed, and I think that's where it's coming back where people are saying, no, I care about where my money goes, I care about what you're doing with it. I don't want to feed the future, which is investing in something where it's actually hurting, even if that gives you that short term return. There's definitely people out there that are still doing that, but that's where I think we're going and that's where people are going. We have to be including these externalities, your share price has to include those. And hopefully that's... And we are seeing more and more people interested in that.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
And you have your Friedman in the seventies, there's another significant, I suppose at that time, of where a number of our social structures, a number of our democracies around the world, a number of our societies, which are running and nation states which are running on capitalism as the central economic framework. There's a pretty big, significant shift that's happening around 1970 globally, and then has happened in the last 50 years, which is, we've started to, again, do the most basic of connections with people outside the margin. So, that group that was able to access capital, that group that saw value, it wasn't until 1967 in Australia that Aboriginal people were included in census as citizens, just the basic level, and similar citizenship challenges, which evolved in the sixties, seventies, eighties, around the world.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
So, I think when you look to apartheid in 1994, and Mandela moving through into his leadership role. When you start to look at the wheel of fortune of, let's say there's 20 different things you can land on when you spin the wheel, the wheel of the 1970s only had four options, there's 20 now, and there's more people. And I think the brutality of that model is that it was missing so much human potential and so much natural potential. So, I'd love you to reflect for a moment on the broader marketplace of opportunity for investment, when we think about outside the margins that haven't been included in our economic frames so far, the intelligence that hasn't been activated at scale into the system. And then to think beyond humans, to think about nature and what's around.

Johny Mair:
Yeah. I mean, well, I think it's a really interesting parallel. Because if you think about investments, it's very reductive just to think about the financials, it's very reductive. And so, even for us, the way that we think about a portfolio, even by opening up is, we don't say, hey, you should be doing this because you'll feel good. It's more like, this is a better way to invest, you have more information, getting more of these data points into your investments is going to make you a better investor for the future, because you can basically make decisions on things that actually matter. And I think it's similar for companies and teams that are going, if the world we live in in the future is going to have to be people that have to have imagination and creativity to be able to fix a lot of these problems, we need a bigger pool.

Johny Mair:
We need more. And so, where it was like, oh, we're going to keep it smaller, it's like, no, you have to widen out because those connections and having more people think about these problems. And the people that have brought us into this with all of the troubles that we're having throughout the world, whether they're environmental or social issues, the people that brought us here are not going to be the people that fix it. And so, I think that the same way we're looking at investing is the same way people have to be thinking about talent, is where can you bring that diversity of thought? What is important for that next generation of companies to be able to solve these problems?

Johny Mair:
And then it's like, what do we actually value? And so, as we start to think about where we're investing, I think we look at where capital is distributed, if you look at a normal portfolio, it's really in companies. But actually everything that we do is built upon nature, but we don't invest in it. We're not investing our capital into that, into the protection of that, or even understanding the genius that is within nature. And so, I think as we go into the next few years, I think the investments that people make into different investing in terms of creativity, imagination, and a few of the items we've been talking about here, and then also with nature, I think it's going to be really different knowledge. And I think that's where the world has to go, so we have to put capital towards that.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
Yeah. And the protection of nature or the protection of marginalized people or the protection of people who are going to be suffering challenges from rising sea levels is, again, it's so reductive in the frame and the intelligence that sits there. And it's not woo, woo, wawa, mycelium is the longest continuous surviving multicellular organized network in the planet. So, you think we can learn some things from a case study about Facebook, about who's hot and who's not, or you reckon we can maybe learn some things from this crazy system which has intelligence at the end of its node, which connects trees to be able to talk to each other and helps trees move. Yeah, we can probably learn some stuff from that in terms of how we design our team meetings. And that is not a loopy jump.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
And I think being able to... If we are going to live happily and healthily on planet earth, we are a very, very, very small part, a very loud, a very influential part of planet earth. But it's not about saving the earth, climate change, we'll just bounce out, the earth will be sweet. It's smart, it'll regenerate, it'll keep moving, there'll be life on earth. And so, the question is, earth will just be like, sweet gang, see you later, we'll burn you, we'll flood you, you'll be out of here, we'll give you diseases. And then we'll replenish and we'll regenerate. So, I think not only this scary, badass power of the earth and the natural world, but I think the intelligence is a prize. That's the laziness of like, we must protect and conserve a natural park. Oh, sweet, okay, cool, so we put more gates around it. You idiots, just walk in there and literally look at the way the rings of these trees are moving and you can change your whole way your system of businesses work, including your retail outlets.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
And you can make more money because the answers aren't in what we already know, they're in different systems. And that's the same with... Which I love about how we've been working together with the indigenous systems knowledge labs on all the systems labs, with Tyson Yunkaporta and Dr. John Davis and Dr. Charles Marshall and the gang, they're gathering there. There is the prize and the opportunities to take the intelligence of systems, which have very, very, very old wisdom in them, and then to weave them into these systems that were designed in the Friedman era and before, which were quite reductive in their frames for a small group of people, and in some areas brilliant within that space, within the framework.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
But as you said, if we want to access the potential of human intelligence, it's outside the margins of their existing ecosystem of human beings. And it's at the edge of the network that we're going to find that intelligence. So, I think that's such a... I feel like that's inspiring. Yeah, we don't know the answers yet for climate change, but we've got 10 to 20 years to do a bunch of really good work. There's heaps of sources for intelligence.

Johny Mair:
Yeah. And I mean, I think people understand that diversity of thought, they go, wow, it's better. But actually when you experience, it's so beautiful to come in with your framing of something and go, oh, this is what I think. And then for someone to go, well, actually I had this experience and this experience was so different, that you just go, hang on, that just changed my view on this problem completely. And then if you start to experience that in a few different ways, you can then start to actually then apply it, even when you don't have that diversity of thought in when you're solving something, go, actually, maybe I don't know everything to do with this. And maybe I should go and find a different set of, whether it's a different group or a different community, to see what they actually have to say about that, to get a different viewpoint.

Johny Mair:
And then the problem solving becomes far more richer. And I've seen it, even on a smaller scale with our team, I think we're from about 16 plus countries around the world, and we have these sessions in our all team meeting where we'll talk about a sustainability topic. We'll go, plastic, what are the things that it's really bad at, but what are the things that it's good. Obviously, sterilization of medical devices and things like that, it's really, really great. Single use plastic, terrible. But then it's really interesting to see where someone goes, well, I grew up in China and this was my experience, or I grew up in South Africa, and you start to get these different perspectives that I think just give you such a much more well rounded view on things that you maybe thought you knew.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
And that's accessing a tiny library of thought, isn't it? Because you then looking... And that's where like, come on human things, in terms of advancement of our thinking capabilities, that's step zero to one. So, lots of people who come from different backgrounds that are around your decision making, and that's in a logical practical sense. Then there's putting yourself into places and spaces where if you want to design with intelligence, and human nature is one intelligence source, but the non-human nature and looking at the natural world, I'm looking out at the moment, outside my garage at all these trees around me and just thinking, well, you look at these regenerative smart design systems, you look at how death is one of the key elements and truths of life on earth, is that there is birth, there is death, there is entropy, movement, there is regeneration.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
Stardust creates planet earth, planet creates light on earth, life on earth. So, you see these moving arcs of circles, always moving, and that takes you into a powerful space of thinking, which is a space of abstraction and flow. And then you've got this really different set of insights where you'll get a signal, and that's as important as those practical curated moments of like, okay, so now I talk to the person who has this skin color and the person who has this accent and the person who doesn't speak English and the person who does this, and I move around the room and I gather that. That'll get you to level one or two, but if you want to really open it up, you've got to release yourself from your skin.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
You've got to literally like peel the skin off and get out of this fixed space that you're in around your knowledge and what you're at and become a satellite that can just go, I'm open, give me a signal, whoa, look at that signal. And if you're lucky, you'll be able to put a few different notes together and all of us might get to level two out of 10 billion collective intelligence potential. But that's why it's so important that we're networked in unlikely ways, that we're moving in ways that exchange has been passed on. And Ray Charles said, a mentor of mine, "None of us own the notes, we're just lucky enough to hold them for a little bit before we pass them on." And that's why the secrets being linked to capital success, secrets of the trade, holding onto your knowledge, that has been so harmful, I think, for us, because we're never going to get to that 10 billion level, but collectively we might. Individually, we never will.

Johny Mair:
Yeah. I mean, taking the life and death concept and then applying it to a company, so for example, Exxon, you've been doing this, what happens if there was an actual end to that? Versus this, what I'm going to do is I'm going to try and survive for as long as I have and I'll cause as much harm as I can in my survival, versus, I know that my time is coming to an end. The people that had learned all of this, I'm sure that there's amazing research that they've done, but rather trying to secretly hold it, what I'm going to do is, I know we are going to rebirth, let's use that research to actually fix these things.

Johny Mair:
There's a lot of unintended consequences with creation. And I don't think the people that were starting a lot of these companies were there going, oh, I'm trying to ruin the world. I think in many case, these unintended consequences were like, I'm trying to fix something, but not having these design parameters that we have within nature, or not trying to do it to keep a company going, because that's the thing that you do. I think you can start to see how creativity and things can be brought into systems we have now and have huge results. Imagine if every company had an end date.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
Yeah. We all as humans do, so it shouldn't be that crazy, illogical jump. It's something that we're reflecting on deeply at AIME at the moment. I've taken the idea to our board and we're working through it. And I really want to set a death date for AIME, and really helpfully be able to talk about it and say, this is our death date, call it what it is. Life, we were founded, we want to celebrate founders. Cool, go for it. Founders and the murderers of our organizations should be both equally, powerfully lifted up. If it's intentional, if it's working towards an intentional death to then pass on knowledge and regenerate, to intentionally design with death. And I think, because one of the things I've super struggled with in the model of our governance system with board of directors is that there's one lever that was brought in.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
I think it was in the 18th and 19th century in the UK, as they were setting up a bunch of the legislative functions around corporate governance. And they brought in bankruptcy as a responsibility that could sit with the directors, and it was to try and protect the shareholders because some people were going rogue and then the directors would not have any responsibility. So, there's a focus, if you are a director of a company, if your company goes bankrupt and you know about it, then the measurement, I actually found the lever in it, the measurement's actually around intentionality. So there's, did you go bankrupt? And then therefore the directors, I think you can be blacklisted for five years for not being able to sit on another company.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
Sometimes you're not allowed to get your own houses. There can be serious consequences for people who are directors. Now, that's for what I would describe as going bankrupt unintentionally, so the organization running poorly into the ground. The other one is to be life rich, which is to intentionally move towards death of your organization. And as we've started talking about that, it's a very different tone to risk, because for a vision you're like, oh actually there's, again, there's this hidden lever underneath, which is, I don't know if we can do that because it might cause a big problem for us. So, we might end up bankrupt and I might end up not being able to own a home in my life or none of my friends will talk to me, I can never sit on a board again. So, the appetites to risk for directors with that lever, I understand why it's there, but it ends up with quite a gnarly set of consequences on the way you run organizations.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
By going intentionally, you go, well, actually we're working towards this, then you release that and it's transparent and everyone's working towards a space. And so, for this podcast, for example, we just want to do it for 10 years. We don't want to make billions of billions of hoodies. We do 10 years, bunch of really focused projects, and we're setting ourselves a 10 year runway for all of the projects we're working towards, the nation we're going to build, we're setting a death point for it because then you get to move together, I reckon. And you get to move past that sense of a hidden agenda of like, well, what are you going to do in 10 years once you've got all this power amassed and all those things? And everyone around you is looking at you like a shadow, but I think death gives us a chance to move into a space of transparency and just go, yeah, that's what we're working towards. There ain't too many hidden agendas here, we're just going to try get that thing done.

Johny Mair:
Yeah. I mean, it's fascinating how with some of the systems we have set up, the incentives are so hard for you to make change. And a lot of that could be technical systems that you set up, which aren't adaptive, so they can't change. So, basically where the world is going, you can't actually move towards that because you've got this infrastructure that can't be moved. Setting up these governance structures that don't allow you to change easily, or for you to change there's some legal ramification. Social structures that we have where it's like, oh, that person's like this because it's outside of those. And we even see it, for example, on the sustainability side, things that were never designed or to have that thing, but tax is real, is a structure that actually stops people from being as sustainable as they want. Because it's like, well, if I'm going to make a decision to move to towards a more sustainable company as a means, right now I have to sell, which means that I have to pay that particular taxing, which might be a large amount.

Johny Mair:
And it's like, well, I can't do that right now because maybe I don't have the money, there's all of these things where there's these incentives that are now stopping people, they go, well, I can't actually do that right now, but I want to. But for my own reasons, I can't. And so, there's all of these systems that are stopping people from affecting change, which is unintended, for sure.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
Yeah. And the beauty is, you can see how that can be changed. So, government legislation will say, if you're going to move your investment towards a sustainable entity in these 10 organizations, investment groups that we've said are green as investment entity, we are going to support your transition and you will not have to pay tax for that. And that's your policy. And same with governance, I'm hopeful that if we can work towards this end point destination and working towards a healthy death of AIME, that that will give a case study for governance models and for other people to work both in the for profit and for purpose sector globally. So, you can do it, that's the exciting thing, you can find a lever and go, okay, that's a challenge, but they're not impossible things. An impossible thing in my mind is, I don't know how to fly to the moon. But talking to people for 10 years, it'll be a bit arduous. It won't be the most exciting thing, but it'll probably take a decade. But then you've moved that lever, and then it's opened up after that.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
Yeah. For this project, we've got a design lab where we're going to try and make a hoodie. And with you guys, I think to kickstart it for episode zero, we're looking at helping you make a uniform for your team and then maybe over time exploring what we can do to create some meaningful hoodies together. But what would you love to see on the Ethic hoodie that we could create or in the uniform that we help build for you guys?

Johny Mair:
Well, I mean, I think there's a lot of the concepts that we've spoken about that come up, but the way that I think about... When I think about Ethic is, we're very, and I think we've been this from day one is, the people at Ethic is really what makes it special. And it's the connection to through doing things the right way, the processes that we have in place for building, which is not about outcome driven, but more about enjoying the journey. When I think about who we are as a firm, from day one we were very intentional with the culture and creating an environment where people could do their best work.

Johny Mair:
And so, I think some of those is just some of the things we've spoken about, which is a group of people, that diversity of thought, different skills. We have lots of different... To do what we do actually takes a range, you have everything from people that are doing portfolio management, to trading, to data science, to creativity, to creative brand and design, user experience, all the way through to finance and financial modeling. And so, it's such a crazy group of different people with very different skill sets. On one, you might have someone who's a relationship manager who just loves people and loves sharing stories that way, but then you might have someone who's just like, I love looking for insights within data and just is crazy about statistics.

Johny Mair:
And I think that we have such a different range of skills, but the common thread is that, and what we've tried to do, is create an environment where people can just be themselves. And that's actually something that, it's been quite hard for people to go like, oh, well, I don't have to wear a mask to work, I can just be a little bit weird and crazy and things like that. And as I think about what the representation of that is, I think that color being such a good way of representing the differences. I think I mentioned, we had this tie-dye day at work and that somehow got taken and put out there. But that crazy feeling of just being so many different, so I think color is a really good piece of that. I also think patterns as well, of process, we have both sides of being creative, trying to remove constraints, trying to be open, we can build whatever we want. But then we do really have structures and patterns that allow us to have scale and have impact and be to go over. Kind of rambling at the moment.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
Awesome. That's awesome. I wonder whether there's a, I'm almost visualizing you could play a reversible hoodie. And so, you could have the two sides, which is, you could have the outside potentially a tie-dye world, and then inside maybe is more of that patterning and that interlink. And that one might be a black on black print, or it might be something that you guys know about, but it's really subtle. And when you get up close, you can see the patterns that are working underneath all of the color and the life. And so, you can wear your New York black hoodie for some meetings and the tie-dye one and flipping it out. And knowing you guys, it's probably the tie-dye one's worn for the most serious ones and the more joking ones.

Johny Mair:
Yeah. You could change halfway through the meeting, too.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
Yeah. Cool. This is going really bad, time to tie-dye it up.

Johny Mair:
Yeah.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
And the other thing which I thought was interesting was thinking about the individual story and a way that you might be able to play with that. And I was thinking about how business cards are gone as a currency, as much as there used to be name tags, or a chance to sketch something or a fabric pen that comes with it, or leaving a notice board or an arm or something where people could collage or build it, or a space to sew some stuff together. Or maybe it's a blank sleeve that's left, there's all the tie-dye stuff, and then there's just like, you sew on just a blank sleeve and that's up to everyone in the team to do what they want with it.

Johny Mair:
Yeah. That's cool. You could add in patches or things like that, that represent individual people's contributions.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
Yeah.

Johny Mair:
Yeah, I like that idea.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
Patching it together, I think finding that way to really, clearly wear your heart on the sleeve and it might be nice. We've been exploring a lot with sewing and exploring those ways to just get in touch with how things get created, which I think could be a really nice creative process for you guys as well, to go, actually, we're going to deliver it to you unfinished. Because that's the true cost of clothing and the time it takes to make something and someone somewhere is going to be sewing it. And for people that are really interested, as you guys are in how things get made and what's the cost of it and what's the process, that could be really nice. Sewing challenge for a month, to go, all right, we're all going to sew, let's find some patches and let's build that out.

Johny Mair:
Yeah.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
Let's work out how we could dye it. If you want to dye it, dye it naturally. We can set some design parameters and make it ethical to recycle some old material. And yeah, that could be a cool. A bit about me, just have it on your sleeve.

Johny Mair:
Yeah. Well, I love that as well, because even with our clients, everyone's portfolio is really individual. Everyone cares about different components of sustainability or what your... You have different ranges, some people are very focused on climate and the environment, and so having that individual component of it. And we do that representation on our website through color. So, we've got this switch in color, which is like, everyone's different, so I really like that idea of it being very individual. I also think the component of exploring some of what is sustainability from a system point of view. And Tyson's done some great work and understanding around those components, but I think pointing to this sustainability, it's more about a process and a system versus being a thing. I think there's something very interesting within that. But I love the individual nature of the hoodies as well.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
Yeah. And maybe we could give, because I think for that, if you do it for your team and then maybe there's like 50 that you can have on top of that for some of your investors and you can be like, all right, Jay, Doug, we're going to do some sewing and we're going to sew some stuff for some people as a gift. And hey, we sewed this together, we've thought about the stuff you've told us about your values, and we wanted to kick start as a gift, and off you go. But nice to have that human touch. And then in terms of fabric, have you got any thoughts on what you'd like it to be made out of?

Johny Mair:
I mean, I really do like that idea, because actually even within the company, one of the things is we have a lot of engineers that were trained in engineering but actually ended up doing finance or something different. Yeah. Obviously, we have a lot of software engineers and things like that, but we have a lot of builders. And I would say one thing that is really maybe unique, but we're all very still hands on, we all love the making, and that's one of the things that I think we've always really appreciated is craft, someone that takes a lot of pride in their craft and understanding how things work. We do a lot of sessions where the team, say our engineering team, will talk through like, oh, this is how you make it, this is how we do this testing. And someone on the relationship management team will do a big presentation of how they went about meeting the client and all of that. And so, there is something within that craft of learning how things are made. And we spoke about it.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
It'd be amazing to me. I remember going to the Google office in 2010 when it just opened in Australia. And then they were a big supporter of us early, and I think we were the first organization in Australia to get a grant from Google, and maybe in Asia. And then they flew me over to Silicon Valley in the early 2010s, 2011 or 12. So, I hang out with some of their staff and I just remember everything feeling like, whoa, the offices and the bicycles and the cafeteria, but one of the things was just the automated name tag that you'd get, your own personalized name tag in that touch. And I could see how, with these hoodies, you could potentially have... You bring someone in to their office and they go through some of their value experience at the front door.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
And it's like, what are some of the things that you really value? And they maybe pull out some icons, and you could have one of your team that's just sitting there in the meeting, sewing badges onto a hoodie. And that's what they leave with. The story of it gets boxed up, it gets made in front of them. And for an hour of creative time, someone gets to get off the computer and be like, gang, who wants to do the sewing today? And I'll pull this together for you based on your values, and we're really excited to work with you. It's more powerful than a name tag, as a potential next wave, evolving that-

Johny Mair:
Yeah.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
Touch.

Johny Mair:
I like also with the team, on our team page, the team will have this, what does sustainability mean to you? And so, you could also see, potentially if it was for an investor or client, the people that they interact with or they met, those sustainability meetings or the patches they do, or the thing could be done by them.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
Yeah.

Johny Mair:
That could be really cool. Yeah. Yeah. I also like just that stepping out and doing something therapeutic, like sewing, and getting that, I don't know, it feels like it's going to be very unique and be much different.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
Yeah. Well, you are all putting your own touch on it, so that's one playground. And then what are the... Have you got any thoughts on fabric or what you'd like it to be made out of?

Johny Mair:
Yeah. I mean, I think obviously the sustainable nature of the fabric is huge for us. And that's what's actually been very hard for us to do uniforms and things like that, is everything we do has to be put through this lens. So, finding suppliers that do, whether it's using upcycled materials, organic materials, and also even the production of them done in a sustainable way, where there's transparency into supply chains and things like that. So, I think that's very interesting. I think there are a lot of interesting materials that you've been talking about, with seaweed and mycelium and all of those are very, very interesting. And so, doing something there could be cool, but I think just more like the sustainable nature of the materials and the way that it's done is really important. And the story behind that, not only in the creation, but you who it's done, I think is really fascinating.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
Yeah. I wonder if there's anyone in the Ethic network we can go and bounce around offline. And I wonder if there's anyone that's made hoodies or made t-shirts that has some dead stock that we could go, would you like to get this back in cycle from sitting in a hidden office somewhere? And we'll go away and we'll re-look it, and that might be a nice way to activate the life cycle of something. And it'd be cool to think about where it goes at the end. There's some really good organizations that are taking clothing and then reworking it and either getting it back to the street, or we can explore the seaweed hoodie or the mycelium fabric. So awesome, Johny that's very, very fun and very cool.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
Let us go away, and we can walk out of the hoodie design lab for a moment and we'll go and cook something up for you guys and bring it back to you, and hopefully bring that to life. And as we get towards wrapping up and you think about us working together with this Making of a Hoodie podcast, what do you see? I feel like from my end, it's nice to have a bit of emergent space. Often in partnerships, again, you get in, we were talking about this with our team this morning, or last night, how often once you get out of the creative process of making something or inventing something, it then moves into production lines and project management, and the scope gets narrower and narrower and narrower. And it just eventually goes towards this horrible demise where it's nothing near what it started like, and by 20th time you've done it, it's lost all its life. And everyone's like, I hate this thing.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
And so, how we expand it and open it up. Yeah. What are some things that are exciting to you and how do you see them making a Making of a Hoodie podcast weaving through the Ethic landscape, or some things that you can vision in the future?

Johny Mair:
Well, I mean, I think that's what's so exciting about just starting, is not knowing where it's going to go or not knowing each episode, the outcome or what needs to happen, could be completely different. So, it could be everything from trying to fund a project or it could be connecting people, or it could be starting something new, a whole new company could emerge from it. And I think that's the piece of it, is not being too prescriptive with each thing, is just following the thread and seeing where the communities that we have can help either bring ideas to life or help get things along further. And so, I'm very excited just to see where everything will come out and not being too prescriptive about the outcome. I think also, there's some really exciting unlikely connections that will happen that will just generate these ideas and new ways of thinking as well.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
Yeah. It's going to be... It's fun. And it's also fun, we learn at the start of the pandemic, we had to flip out, we flipped a whole organization into a daily live TV show and everybody who was working, we are in that survival mode of, how the heck do you be relevant or find relevance? And in the process of the last couple of years was trying to really unpick and unlearn a number of dangerous temptations towards what success looks like. And when we started that, it was like, okay, we're going on YouTube, we got to find someone at YouTube and we got to work out a way to get a million people watching this show. That was the immediate logic step, without unpicking it. I just thought, okay, for all of our partners and everyone that works with us, and for the kids, you need big eyeball numbers, we're going to have to make sure we've got a really big audience because big audience equals quality.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
And I think I hosted some 70 straight daily episodes from my garage and was popping around as a puppeteer and bouncing between different, hanging out with kids in the continent of Africa and America and Australia and Germany and all around the world. And then hanging out with like all these different gnarly people from Dr. Jane Goodall through to amazing different systems thinkers and beautiful artists and storytellers and whatnot. And by about three months in, I just went, oh, I remember reading Paul Kelly's book, who's a musician from Australia, and in his book he just said very early on in his career, he learned to just play to the people that were listening at the pub, and it might be two people and everyone's talking over you. And I think just going, actually, the trap in creation is to immediately move it into audience.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
And so, with this one, even with the Making of a Hoodie podcast, we've been working on for six to nine months, this is our first episode that we will release, and we've got about five or six we've developed. And we were like, oh, do we go and meet with Spotify? And do we sell them the project? And we did have a meeting and I just went, oh, no, in my head, got it backed away again. But this time it was easier, the meeting wasn't so much about chasing the big audience, and when they asked, what can we do for you? I actually didn't know. And because I think you've, in part, we've got to let things take their course, which is what I like about what we're going to do with this. We'll make a podcast every couple of weeks, we'll share it with the two different worlds of people that we work with. And however we do that, it might be via an email to four people or to our mailing list or your mailing list or to whatever, but you'll just make it because it's meaningful and people will find it when it's right for them.

Johny Mair:
Yeah. I mean, I think it's such an important piece that it doesn't matter about the numbers or these vanity metrics that get done. It's more about the connection that maybe one person has with it, or multiple. I mean, even my career, the things that have meant the most have been, maybe I've met with someone just one on one, and then a few years later they've said, hey, you know that thing, that you actually very rarely remember, you said this one thing and actually I went and developed that and I've mentioned that to a bunch of people and you're like, holy shit, wow, I never even thought that. It's in those, I think, the smaller connections that sometimes that you can have such a bigger result. And yeah, I totally agree, it's not about chasing a particular outcome, it's just seeing what emerges. And the people that would want to connect with it, will connect.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
Yeah. And we'll do it healthily. It's really fun to not know.

Johny Mair:
Have fun. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's it, right? I mean, that's what it's all about. If we're not having fun, then what's the point?

Jack Manning Bancroft:
Absolutely. Well, Johny, thanks for bringing joy into the world of finance. Thanks for bringing relations and complexity to people that weren't aware that there were all these other opportunities, and thanks for everything you've done in your life to be where you are. And we're really excited to work with you and the whole Ethic team to just let this Making of a Hoodie podcast emerge in a really joyful way for people. And over the next decade, hopefully this becomes a really rich lab for creating a lot of positive, rich connections and impactful change that we saw coming and that we didn't see coming as well.

Johny Mair:
Well, thank you. And thank you for creating the space. And I'm really, really excited to see all the connections that we'll make and all the ideas that will come from it. And above all, just to really appreciate you and all the team there at AIME, it's such a great group of people and I feel very blessed to have you as a friend and to create with you.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
Awesome, bro. Well, I've got my brief now. I got to make sure, while we're on the clock, we're going spin up this hoodie for you and the team. Let's get this thing out there.

Johny Mair:
Very cool.

Jack Manning Bancroft:
Thanks, Johny.

Johny Mair:
Thank you. Thanks, brother.