Season 4, Episode 127 : Livvy Drake

Sustainable Sidekicks | Environmental Services | March 15, 2021 | 39:19

Story

Livvy Drake, from Sustainable Sidekicks, works with businesses, events and green champions to achieve their sustainability goals. Whilst demonstrating how campaigners, communicators and businesses can achieve greater behaviour change outside of the green echo chamber. Her practical experience comes from live events and festivals, businesses and environmental campaigning organisations.

Highlights from Livvy Drake’s podcast

  • She has been on a personal journey to reduce her own carbon footprint and has tried everything from giving up flying and owning a car to Flexigan (listen to find out what one of those is).
  • She looks at sustainability through the lens of behaviour change principles.
  • Her approach to sustainability is to empower people to be changemakers rather than making the changes for them.
  • In terms of behaviour change, Livvy recommends that changemakers need to understand what is driving people’s habits (social, structural, cognitive) and propose an alternative that addresses or satisfies that need.

Useful links

There are too many people (in the environmental sector) talking from their own value-set, and what inspires them to make changes, which isn’t what inspires a lot of other people. So by using behaviour change theory, you can really understand what makes other people tick, and use that as a way to drive change and to communicate with them better.

 

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Transcript

Will Richardson 00:02
Thank you for joining the Green Element Podcast. And today, we have Livvy Drake on and Livvy is a massively keen environmentalist, it's fair to say. You went overland to Spain. And you did document that. So if you want to go back and have a look at your travels, I think you can actually read about them, can you? And can you enter? Did you...

Livvy Drake 00:30
Not sure

Will Richardson 00:31
I don't know about them? I can't. I can't remember now.

Livvy Drake 00:37
Yeah, good question. I'm not sure whether I ever wrote about it. I probably, it's probably on my to-do list, my blog list I've never written. I probably told you about it.

Will Richardson 00:46
Now I feel like I've been stalking you. That's horrendous, isn't it? Anyway, I'm really excited to have you on today. Could you tell us a bit about who you are? And yeah!

Livvy Drake 01:03
So yeah, hi, my name is Livvy Drake, of the Sustainable Sidekicks. I am a massive environmental, mental it. And I've done lots of things to see how I could reduce my carbon environmental footprint. And to really understand if the world and individuals and organisations have made, have to make massive changes, what it will be like? So, I went vegan, gave up a car, gave up flying. And with us, I too, gave up a lot of things all at once, and really looked at kind of what that felt like. And that's where I got really interested in behaviour change. So alongside doing sustainability advice for organisations, I also very much focused on behaviour change and interweaving that into how we can actually have systemic change for the environment.

Will Richardson 02:01
Brilliant, brilliant. And it'd be great to talk to you more about behaviour change, because I know you do a series of webinars and courses on the subject. So it'd be great to get your insight on that. What would you say your business superpower is?

Livvy Drake 02:19
So I think so sort of our strapline is, or my sort of the way I look at is I'm a sustainable sidekick to businesses, campaigners in green champions, helping them to deliver environmental behaviour change. And I would say what I want to do is support people for them to make the changes. I don't want to be the person who does all the changing when I work with an organisation, I want to empower people. So it's about empowering people. And I feel like the secret sauce for us is, for me is behaviour change, because it's the thing that really will create bigger changes. Because one of the issues I have with the environmental movement is there's too many people talking from their own pace of values, and what inspires them to make changes, which isn't what inspires a lot of other people. And using behaviour change theory, you can really understand what makes other people tick, and use that as a way to drive change and to communicate with them better.

Will Richardson 03:29
That makes a lot of sense. And I guess, by people doing things themselves, are more likely to continue that change, aren't they?.

Livvy Drake 03:41
Yeah. And I think it's really important that people feel empowered to make changes, and feel that environmental issues are something they can take action on, especially within their organisation. I read the I think it's called it's called the Edelman's Trust was called the Edelman trust barometer from 2020. And it said that 73% of employees expect to be making changes within society. And they expect to be making changes within there. Be part of the planning for change. So within an organisation, people don't just want to be doing their job and going home again, they actually want to be a change maker. And this was worldwide research in the UK was included in that.

Will Richardson 04:38
73% an awful lot, isn't it?

Livvy Drake 04:40
Yeah,

Will Richardson 04:40
That's amazing.

Livvy Drake 04:41
Yeah. So that's where organisations really have to step up now and empower people to make those changes, set up green teams, and also be sort of inspired to allow people to sort of take that lead because, you know, it's frustrating if you people, you know, are frustrated that they see all the issues around going on in the world climate change, plastics, and then they go to work and feel that their organisation is part of the problem.

Will Richardson 05:12
Yeah, that makes sense. That's brilliant. And can you tell us a bit about how you engage people on your mission and purpose?

Livvy Drake 05:20
So, and what I, how I engage people is certainly the same kind of using a lot of behaviour change principles, and really taking people back a step to understand what makes people tick, to our to understand people, because it's very easy to think all we have to do is educate people that's like the classic of environmentalists, and people who are passionate, we just need education. But actually, there's lots of reasons that people do these behaviours that we think are unsustainable. And so we need to understand those. So it's understanding what are people's habits and how prominent habits are in our day to day lives in the fact that our brains actually try to avoid thinking as much as possible because thinking uses energy. And our brain wants to minimise the amount of energy that it's using. So we do lots of things just as a habit without thinking about it. So lots of things like jumping in the car, or eating particular meals are because of habit, not because of conscious choices. So if we want to inspire change, we need to understand what were those habits coming from, where's the opportunity to engage with them. And in the workplace, that's, I mean, the workplace doesn't exist at the moment. But within organisations, there's lots of people things that people do because of habits. They also do lots of things because of the social norms. And many people will feel like, this is what we do in our company. So they go along with that, even if maybe they don't agree with it. So how do you change what's the current social norm, what the majority of people are doing? So people feel that they can actually make change. And so one of the ways to do this is actually using people at the top. So CEOs, there's something called authority bias. So people look for people in power to actually take action. And again, from that report, I think they said 74% of respondents expected CEOs to be speaking out about climate change. So there's that top-down, you know, we always talk about this in sustainability, that top-down, bottom-up approach, but it really does make sense. So you change the social norms, which is what everyone's doing. And you get the people at the top making that change because people expect or look for authority to inform their behaviour. So those key behaviour change principles I would always look at when I start talking to people about how they're going to make changes and how they understand what people are actually doing and why they're doing it.

Will Richardson 08:03
It's really interesting, though, isn't it? That not thinking and just habit? You don't really think about it like that. Because you see a lot of businesses say printing, for example, printing a document to read it. I've always wondered why people do it. And it's weird that would fall into what you're talking about, wouldn't it?

Livvy Drake 08:25
Massively. It's just a habit. And so I've been working with an organisation who were trying to their printing was off the scale. And what they realised was people just automatically pressing print, and they they tell this huge stack of paper that no one was actually reading. And it was just a habit. So what they did was people had to, there was a block put in the place. So you actually had to go to the printer and press OK to get the printed materials. And we don't have any evidence of what the impact was because of COVID no one goes to the office anymore. But that was a massive game that was a massive habit breaker. But that thing where then suddenly you have to be conscious again of like, what am I doing? Do I want to do it? And that has Coronavirus if you remember at the beginning of lockdown, when suddenly you went shopping and you had to think where do I walk? How close do I stand the button pull. What am I wearing? Suddenly, habits went out the window and everything's very conscious. And so I think in the supermarkets is like 60% of shopping is done because of habit. And a lot of and most and then it's very little it's actually like conscious thought. But suddenly people were conscious again. So Coronavirus, and going back into the workplace and changing behaviours, you know, is that has a great opportunity for changing behaviours because suddenly people are conscious again of what they're doing and why they're doing it. And another huge aspect is infrastructure. So, with that example of the printing is infrastructure very often drives particular behaviours, especially in the workplace. And so it's looking at what is that infrastructure and how it's leading people to a particular habit, and how you can create friction and a barrier to stop that maybe by putting in more things in place, or how maybe your particular infrastructure is actually a barrier. So, the example of you know, getting people to cycle to work is obviously, normally quite a big thing. But actually, if there isn't a, if there's an expectation, in your workplace, people should come really clean, and well presented and you don't have a shower, then your, the lack of shower is a barrier to that behaviour. So it's thinking about that as how infrastructure really affects behaviours.

Will Richardson 10:53
It's not rocket science, is it?

Livvy Drake 10:55
No, but it's people, what people think, is that people are making rational decisions all the time about their behaviours. And so they think people are thinking, Oh, am I doing this because of this? And the reality is we're not, we're very much living on autopilot, we're thinking about worrying about things, because we're like, we're like, um, you know, sort of, like, tribal selves back in the day, we're thinking, are we going to be attacked at the moment? Who's coming to get us? What does that other person think? Am I going to get kicked out of the tribe? And this is what our brains actually worrying about? What happened in that meeting? Am I gonna lose my job? And just, you know, going around, not thinking about those day-to-day actions? Or if we are thinking about them, we're thinking about, what does somebody else think about me doing that action. So recycling is another one, it's a social norm that people put those bins out because they have an expectation that their neighbours will notice if they haven't put the recycling bins out. So the infrastructure which has been made the social norm possible. This is massive, massive.

Will Richardson 12:11
I think I've thought yeah, as you can imagine, I've always put the recycling out was one of those idiots, food, people's other people's recycling back in the day, to make sure that it was all sorted correctly, someone told me that with it wasn't sorted, it would go into landfills or, or not having that. So I go down the street sorting people's things. And my girlfriend at the time is oh man, you are that crazy person. I felt like I couldn't walk past it without.

Livvy Drake 12:38
So I would say this. And in terms of people types, you're a pioneer. So pioneers do things because of their values. And they're very socially and environmentally driven. And they do things because it's the right thing to do. And maybe because you might care a lot less about what people think about you. But prospectors do things because they care about what other people think. And so they would be more keeping up with the Joneses. And then settlers do things because of their community and their family and safety. So they'd be motivated, and for doing things for very different reasons. And so yeah, so not everyone does things because they're because of social norms. But if you want to change social norms, it's quite good to get some pioneers leading on it. But in the workplace, you don't want them to be too green and too hippyish. Because people will think, do I want to identify with that? Do I identify with that person? Do I want to move into their crew? Do I like their tribe? I like the other tribe, which is a bit more, you know, there's more of the people in this tribe. So you also need to get kind of the people that, you know, people identify with. So it's, you know, you need a variety of people on your green team.

Will Richardson 13:50
That makes sense. That makes sense. And probably from across section of your organisation as well.

Livvy Drake 13:54
Yeah, exactly. So you need those people who are decision-makers, but you also need those people that people can relate to because messengers aren't just people at the top. Actually, this was the result. The Trust Report said that, following on from its ex, people most trusted to take trusted experts, and then it's local people in the community, and then peers. And then right down at the bottom, there was a government-speak, government, religious leaders and wealthy people. So don't have a wealthy person telling someone what to do. Particularly not a wealthy person who's a politician. We have some... and also this report, which is really interesting as well, linking back to the political sphere is 2020 the trust values where competence and ethics, so ethics in the current UK government on any trust.

Will Richardson 15:06
We should send them that trust report.

Livvy Drake 15:08
Yeah, exactly.

Will Richardson 15:10
They may not be interested in that, though. When it comes to running an ethical and sustainable business, what has been your biggest struggle so far? Can you tell us a bit about how you've overcome it?

15:22
So I was gonna say, one of the biggest challenges I have, at the moment, and I'm actually looking to overcome it, is kind of looking at my carbon footprint, as a small organisation, now I don't travel anywhere. So before it was my I only do only travel overland. And, and last year, I went to Spain for a work conference. And it all got paid for by the client. And I was the only person who got went by train 12 hours later. And so those things have been overcome now because actually, people care about it. But the biggest challenge I have now been the carbon footprint of the online sphere. So website, hosting things on in this in the cloud, and actually trying to quantify that is something I'm really finding a challenge, because how do you equate a byte of data into a carbon footprint and, you know, emails and all those kinds of things. So I'm in the process of changing my website over to be low carbon and getting all those darn things done. I've got my, I'll be on a green hosting platform. And I'm also looking and looking for ways to monitor and record the footprint as well as doing things like I'm actually I'm going to swear they're very bad at managing emails and you know, post deleting them and organising them. So I'm actually paying somebody to sort out my emails because we found out that I've got 46,000, unread, unread email newsletters, right? promotional emails, newsletters in my personal email account. And I dread to think what that is in terms of a carbon footprint.

Will Richardson 17:16
I use clean.email, it's a software. And I've been looking for something for my personal email account. My business one was always really good. It's always had like 100 at the most, but my personal one, you kind of finished work and you go, I really can't bother. Yeah. It just got worse and worse and worse. And yeah, clean dot email. Brilliant. within two hours. I had deleted, sorted, got rid of so many emails that I didn't need. And it basically then just sets it all up. And does it all for you. Ongoing and now I have a really clean email box. Because of that. It costs 60 quid a year five computers or 30 quid for one.

Livvy Drake 18:05
Okay, I'll try that. Because I tried a couple of free ones to see whether they worked and what like, they were rubbish. Yeah, I wasted Yes. And I was like, I want to do the right thing. But I time this my weekend.

Will Richardson 18:18
And that's the reason why I ended up paying. Yeah, because I was sick and tired of using yeah, just the free ones were rubbish. And my went to Gmail in the first place was because I figured that there would be an easy way of getting rid of spam. Yeah. And it seems that's not the case.

Livvy Drake 18:39
Well, thanks for your...

Will Richardson 18:39
There you go. If Google is listening. There's an ad in there for them. that's, it'll probably pay for. So if you could offer one piece of advice to our listeners, which could help them with their purpose, what would that be?

Livvy Drake 19:00
So this would be so I think if I was if there was one piece of advice, and you're trying to encourage other people to be more environmentally friendly, or socially aware, whatever it is that you're trying to encourage other people to do, is, I would say, to take a massive step back before you start telling them what to do. And it's an environmentalist, sort of a very bad habit of environmentalist and but just really think about what the need is of that person behind their behaviour. So is it that they're trying to complete something as quickly as possible? Is it that they are trying to get their work? Yes, get their work done as quickly as possible. Is it that they are looking to make a difference or is it that say with things like, are they looking for comfort? Is it that I was talking to someone about, they were doing a campaign around clothes and fashion, and they want people to throw less things away. And, and we took a step back and said, okay, well, what are they doing? They're buying fast fashion, why are they buying fast fashion, because they want to stand out what's their need, they want to look individual, they want to fit in with their peer group. So whatever advice you're going to give them, make sure the solution meets their needs. Because if you're not meeting their needs, you won't get that behaviour change. And the advice for changing habits is that, if you want to change a habit, then you need to replace it with something that does the same thing. If you try and change a habit, with something that doesn't meet your needs, the brain will not, will not make that change, because it won't be satisfied. And as human beings, we're very, you know, we still have mammal brains, and we very much need satisfaction and pleasure and feeling good. So if you're trying to switch a habit and the habit, you know, like, classic of telling people that they should walk to work or cycle and you realise that what's the needs? What does the car do? It's convenient, they stay warm, they can pick up their children at the same time. If that thing doesn't meet their needs, you're not going to change their behaviour. So it's about understanding what people's needs are. And like that, for me is the key to any kind of behaviour change in any communication, any campaign that people are working on.

Will Richardson 21:35
Okay, yeah, that's interesting. That's really interesting. Have you carbon footprinted in your organisation? And if you have, you said, it's been a benefit.

Livvy Drake 21:46
So I haven't can't I'm in the process of doing it with website things. But I have done carbon footprinting for lots of other organisations. And yes, I definitely would say it's a benefit, I used to do it for festivals and events, I've done it for around lots of events. And I'm working with a couple of charities at the moment to do it. And the benefit for me, and for them is about really getting a benchmark that then you, they can then look at things like travel and other impacts, and find a way of reducing them. But something that's kind of concrete, I mean, it's fluffy co2 in the air, but a benchmark to actually work from. And the challenge and the issue I always find with it is that you can use different tools. And you can come up with different co2 figures. So that can always kind of you know, makes the concreteness of carbon footprinting is what I find challenging, but I think going through that process gives people something to hang, hang their changes on, which, you know, just talking about something like, Oh, you know, if you do this, you'll reduce the kilowatts of energy that you're consuming. At the moment that you know, what does that mean, whereas at least carbon now has been a bit more is a bit more tangible and talking about reducing carbon footprint is something that people want to do more and more now.

Will Richardson 23:19
Surely, if the tools that you're talking about if did the GHG protocol, then they should all come out with the same one because you're using the same carbon factors.

Livvy Drake 23:28
Except for carbon factors change each year, don't they? So it depends on where they...

Will Richardson 23:33
Yeah. And they should, because the carbon factors come from the, from the UK, from the government comes from the amount of emissions. Carbon that's been emitted the year before.

Livvy Drake 23:45
It just depends on whether they cut their carbon calculators updated at the same time or whether they've got them in but you know, and also, I mean, I've tried like working with different organisations, I've tried ones where they use they do some kind of like generalisation so they make some best guesstimates about certain things. And you know, like for them, especially for events, you can find really, really we've got varying kind of figures for things so in the end, I've just ended up going back to the death figures and just like okay, what's the actual figures here that we've got to work on that actually concrete?

Will Richardson 24:27
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. When it comes to reducing the environmental impact and carbon footprint of your or other businesses, what would you say has been your biggest single challenge or frustration?

Livvy Drake 24:44
Um, so I think I might have already answered this, but it's probably this whole bit about the carbon footprint of the online world and just really getting a handle on what that is. I Went I reached out to because of using lots of third party software like say, email newsletters, or on a hosted on say MailChimp or other programmes are available, and, or buffer and all these things and knowing that I'm storing, and I've got an online and I've got an online course platform, there's a big plug there. So I'm storing all this.

Will Richardson 25:25
I'm gonna ask you about it after, don't worry!

Livvy Drake 25:28
So I'm hosting all this stuff on their platforms and trying to find out what servers they're using, and whether their servers are hosted on a green, with green energy. Very, very challenging. And then I got on, I was like a Twitter warrior, and just like tweeting people, buffer, what are you doing? And MailChimp still haven't actually replied? And then a lot of them will say, Oh, well, we're using Google. And so we think that Google is on green energy, but we're not sure. Or we're on Microsoft. So then it's, you know, it's, it's like these third parties, and it goes back and back. And then I've done research into all what's Google's thing? And what are they doing, and Amazon, and it turns out, they're all buying credits for their energy for their, their thing. So you know, and I'm looking at you turning my, I'm putting all my online training onto a local learning management system that I would host on a green server, you know, as a way to manage this better, just so I know, what the carbon footprint is, or what energy supplier it's actually on, but for a lot of organisations, and, you know, all this stuff is quite time consuming, and quite confusing.

Will Richardson 26:45
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it is. It is. It's an absolute nightmare. And I mean, I know for one, Compare your Footprint is hosted on Amazon service. And we at Compare Your Footprint aren't particularly happy about that. But we have to for security. There are not many, there are literally a, there's one other platform that we could have done it through. And that and so we, we have our hands tied behind our backs, and we'd love to be big enough that we could, we could host it. But we need that flexibility. And we need that bandwidth. And we need, we need the security, because that's actually almost more important than the environment, is it? No, no, I, you know, if it isn't, then we would have to explain to clients why we have a less secure site that are and I'm not sure if they would buy that they probably go well, you need to be more secure.

Livvy Drake 27:48
Yeah. Well, this is an this is the thing is it's like where do these things stop? And actually, there's an interesting, but anyway, have you heard of the sustainable web manifesto? That whole green? Did you? Yeah,

Will Richardson 28:01
I was actually gonna ask if you've spoken to Tom and Benito because they're friends.

Livvy Drake 28:07
I'm waiting for their, with Business Declares they're bringing out a tool kit for online and online things. So I'm waiting for that to appear. But they have got the sustainable web Manifesto. And I did ask them, have they asked? Or is that being pushed out to people like Amazon and bigger organisations? Because that's the thing that, you know, what can we do? All we can do is lobby those big servers to say, okay, when are you going to actually provide your own? You know, when are you going to if your things are in the desert? When are they going to have solar panels on them? Or, you know, wherever they are? How are you going to actually have green energy rather than just buying credits?

Will Richardson 28:56
Yeah, I think it needs to happen. I mean, there's, did you see that documentary on? Was it Channel Four on servers in America?

Livvy Drake 29:05
No. It's one of those things I like to watch when I'm not feeling when I want my evenings to be depressed, which, you know, given the current climate, I try to find fun things to do with my evenings. That involves staying at home, not watching depressing TV programmes.

Will Richardson 29:20
To be honest with you Livvy, it's actually not that bad. It's actually got agreed with what you're talking about and what you're trying to achieve it. It possibly may not be a bad thing to watch. It's not you're not gonna come away. And yeah, it's good.

Livvy Drake 29:36
Stop hosting online training programmes.

Will Richardson 29:39
Yeah. No, it's more than that change needs to happen. And it is happening and I think it's just highlighting how much and it's, I mean, it goes back to your behaviour change, I think probably, you know, one company set up a server in Virginia. Another one did another one did another one did. And then they are not with, like, I don't know how much percentage of the US servers are all in Virginia, but it was amazing. But you can see, it's such a natural thing. No one's, no one's done anything wrong, like, no one's been kind of Haha, we're gonna get a coal power station to, to do all the servers in 20 years time, they literally just business developed and then they ended up the way they are.

Livvy Drake 30:26
And that's and that's for me when you know this whole thing about having that understanding about how things have got to where they are or why particular you know, people have gone down a particular avenue. Often it's the butterfly effect. But you know, it's very easy to be sort of accusatory, and saying, you know, yeah, the web's doing this and say, well, it, it's, you know, it's a, it's a consequence of this thing, it didn't deliberately set out to it. And it's when, you know, people get angry with people who fly. And it's like, well, they wanted to go on holiday, or they wanted to go somewhere, the means of doing that is a plane that's run by fossil fuels, no one inherently sets off to, you know, to create a massive carbon footprint, they just wanted to go on holiday and have some sunshine.

Will Richardson 31:15
Yeah, yeah. I don't know why it suddenly reminds me of this, but I always remember in Bristol, which I know that's where you're from, there's a big test goes that was going to be built. And there was a huge amount of protest around it being built. And there was quite a lot of delay, I think in building this test, goes. And then I remember finding it quite funny, but I shouldn't. But that test goes brought out that one of the most profitable stores was the one in Bristol. And it just, I kind of just made me laugh that there, you know, and I bet you half of the people that were protesting against Tesco biggest were then going to Tescos. And if you remember, Tesco is at that time, and like 10 years ago, 12 years ago, worthy weren't evil, like they were not a good company. They treated everyone badly. They, but didn't realise that actually, everyone knew someone in their supply chain. So you either had a friend who worked there, or you had a friend who was a farmer who dealt with them, or you had a, you know, and suddenly people will go, I'm not buying from Tesco anymore. I don't like them. And their stock dropped there. They just started to because people started not wanting to go there anymore. And that was when they got their new CEO and changed things around. And they, I think, from all accounts and from looking at them, I think they're probably quite good as a company now or the way better than they were then. And I don't know why I just rambled about that. But I just, is that behaviour chase that whole thing of you when you're talking about flights and being accused to me and annoyed, and then that people do say one thing and then do another anyway?

Livvy Drake 33:04
Well, the massive thing that Tescos has, and they understand is our need for convenience. And so our brains are wired for shortcuts. And that's it. So ultimately, we want things to be easy because using energy, thinking about things, we just want the shortcuts and we're always looking for them. So supermarkets know this. And this is why big supermarkets work because they provide a one-stop shop where you can get everything in one place. And there's so many things now where convenience is becoming King. And a lot of that convenience isn't so environmentally friendly, like ready meals, and all these things, but those ready meals tap into this behavioural need for the easy option. And again, out of the environmentalists in it sort of a very broad term. But again, quite a lot of environmental solutions are presented. And they're hard work and they're complicated. And they involve lots of different steps and it's like that's not what the brain wants. Don't ask people to switch from this, you know, really easy option something difficult and actually, as we're in veganuary I think it's very personal because I've been a lifelong vegetarian and I went vegan for environmental reasons I now flexigan, and but looking at...

Will Richardson 34:27
Can you tell us about what flexigan? Just quickly, sorry.

Livvy Drake 34:33
You like a flexitarian is a flexible vegetarian. So or fleetmon whichever I mean flexicon feagan. It sounds like a fleas if I say I'm a flegan. But when people want, go vegan, historically meant you had to cook everything from scratch, and buy lentils and buy lots of pulses and if you're used to eating a plate which has meat and two veg suddenly, you take away the meat and there's a big hole, we're now going vegan means you can still have a lump of something on your plate and some veggies because of all the meats, alternatives. And what that means is for the brain, it's not as difficult to become a vegan, because there's less, there's less learning of cooking, there's less actions, and it's a very simple switch. So going back to that habits thing, it's still convenient of watching, they're in lots of plastic. But that is happening. And, and they also serve the same purpose, or they look the same. They kind of, I think I've never eaten meat tastes the same. So, this making this switch is being done in a way that's convenient. And this again, is like a really key thing for behaviours in the workplace, in the home, you need to make them convenient.

Will Richardson 35:55
Yeah, no, yeah, I agree. I agree totally. Is there any advice or learning that you'd like to share with anyone listening to the podcast about this?

Livvy Drake 36:56
So I think my biggest learning is about doing things and not trying to do everything at once. Because it will make your brain explode. And our brains also can't cope with sudden change. And it needs to do things incrementally. So making changes to a business making changes with your work in your workplace. And they need to be done incrementally, and they need to be allowed the chance to embed in and take, take time, the brain and does if it's tired, and it's got too much on it resorts to the habits and the kind of things that are just on autopilot. So if you want to really make changes in your business, don't do it when you've got lots going on. Because it won't happen. You need to give it the time and the space that it deserves.

Will Richardson 37:55
And where can we learn more about you, you've, you in you inferred that you've got online training course, where can we find information about that, please, we'll obviously put a link on our website as well to it.

38:10
So and sustainablesidekicks.com/events is where all the upcoming workshops and the on-demand ones which are currently hosted on a website that may or may not have a carbon footprint. And then you can find me on LinkedIn as Livvy Drake, and I'm always sharing kind of latest bits of research that I've heard of examples of how I'm applying this with my clients or with myself and how I'm overcoming my own brain and changing my habits.

Will Richardson 38:46
Love it. Overcoming your own brain.

Livvy Drake 38:48
Yeah.

Will Richardson 38:50
That was scary. That's awesome. Thank you so much for being on today Livvy. It's been really, really interesting. And I'd really useful for me, I'm really, and hopefully useful to our listeners. Thank you very much.

Livvy Drake 39:08
No worries. Thank you.

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