Have you ever wondered whether the problems in the world today would exist? If we had deeper connection to ourselves, others and the environment and exited from that place. Welcome to the conscious action
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from sustainability to wellbeing and everything related to conscious living our mission is to empower you to be the change that you want to see in the world. Welcome everyone to a new episode of the conscious section podcast. I'm Brian Berman, your. And I have the pleasure for this episode to be joined by Christine London. Um, I'm going to ask just like I do with our guests, Christine, if you can please introduce yourself to all of our audience.
And first of all, thank you so much for taking the time to be here.
Kilda. Thank you for having me on the show. And I'm really looking forward to a really good conversation with you today, uh, to introduce myself, I, I, I always try not to introduce myself by a job title. Um, I'm a human. He is about, um, personal development and growth and, uh, living consciously in live unkindly. And one of the ways that I do that is, uh, through my work. And, uh, one of the ways I do that through my work as I co-found.
And I run day to day a social enterprise, which is a giving platform where we have set out to take all of the wastefulness out of gift giving and replace it with kindness and Steed. Uh, it's called the good registry. And the way that it works is people use our gift cards or our registries to give donations to charities that they care about instead of giving. Uh, stuff that might not be wanted or needed, and that might clutter our homes, uh, and that might end up in landfill.
So it's about doing something that's kind for people and planet instead of, um, something that takes a toll for the planet.
Let's have one of what I I've seen. And am I correct? Like it's been now a few years, right? That it has been running. I've seen it it from 2018 or.
We had the idea for it just after my birthday and August, 2017. Uh, and we decided that the best time to launch a platform that was encouraging people to rate you gift giving was around Christmas when everybody has, um, some consciousness around. Gift-giving and, and how it feels.
And, uh, we launched it in November of 2017, so it was quite a rush and three months to go from having an idea to launching a website and, um, and a community around that website with 50 charity partners and, uh, getting people on board to start giving through us. So, um, uh, really, uh, Tight time to go from idea to launch. And then we continued to grow over the last few years and at all, um, new ways to go.
Yeah, that's a wonderful, before we get a little bit more in depth about this, that should do, let me go back in time a little bit and ask you, like growing up for you, especially around this topic of giving, what does your relationship with it? Because I know when I grew up. My relationship with giving was I wanted the gift. I wanted that. And then my relationship and I, and I do think that this is where your work is so important.
There's this giving that doesn't need to be in the form of something physical. Um,
I also wanted the things as a child and I think I wanted, uh, the things more as a validation of myself and how cared about I was, uh, then for the things themselves, um, Christmas in times like that they were also an opportunity to. Yeah, it's stuff that I needed, but often I wasn't getting stuff that I really wanted. I was given things that I didn't particularly like, but I'd kind of look at my pile of gifts after Christmas and kind of think, did I get enough?
And did I get as much as my brother? And did I get as much as my cousins and did I get as much as my friends? So it was more a source of comparison. And validation then for the actual Juliet, the gifts themselves, apart from when I got a bike. Um, and I do have a sense that.
Um, we create that for children that, um, because we have a culture where gift giving is so deeply ingrained that it's expected in children are looking around at what others are getting and what others have and comparing what they've got with what other children have got. And one of the. Things that were, are really working towards doing what the good registry is not replacing all of the gifts that children or that anybody receives.
I'm not saying that gift giving is a bad thing in simply saying that we shouldn't be giving things that are wanted, needed, and enjoy. Um, and we're, we're, we're giving those things that, uh, not perfectly or sustainably made and aren't actually going to get used and are going to end up in landfill and broken let's rethink those sorts of guests. And there's an opportunity there. If you're talking about children to give children the opportunity to see that.
Celebrating the birthday doesn't have to be about things for themselves. It can be about things. Um, been doing something that's good in the world that they get to feel good about. And for the children that have used the good registry and they have been a really good number, they've really enjoy that sense of feeling like good little humans. And seeing that they went out on a limb and did something different and they got some acknowledgement from their friends and family for that.
And. Fear bedroom didn't end up more cluttered with stuff. Um, and then another child, um, potentially a lot of them have gone for children's charities to support, but another child who doesn't have as much as they've got, got to be in. Um, and they can feel good and kind to me to feel good in kind. And that's a good experience to give children when they're young and we're not suggesting that children do it for every single bit.
They either, and not for every single guest, uh, that, that bike that they want, that they need from mum and dad, they can still get that. And it's all of the little gifts that the 20 children that come to their party turn up with that. Uh, we're probably bought by the parents and probably bought in, uh, you know, maybe even being really gifted, um, that stuff that they could probably do without, and could have that opportunity to use the experience to become young philanthropists.
Uh, that's a wonderful answer. I remember in 2018, uh, near Christmas time, I run a new band that was, uh, about giving. Um, and we have the, um, the founder of Tribeca. Um, the one of the guest speakers and we were basically exploring all the different ways of giving and how for the majority of people giving you so tied to a gift. Um, and we were exploring, you know, like also what you just mentioned. What we receive when we are giving as well as kids, when we learn this.
And then of course, there's this, that for a lot of people, it's quite a taboo to actually ask the gift that they want or ask for the money. Like I remember at one point when in my family, we decided, you know, like instead of giving gifts, we were going to give money. Um, asking the other people, it was a little bit uncomfortable.
Yeah. And, um, what we have set up at the good registry, we know it does make people uncomfortable. Um, and we really acknowledge the people who have been willing to go first. And for them, they've seen the rewards of doing it and they'll do it again. Uh, but they're, you know, we're not used to. Asking for specific gifts. Uh, what we tend to do is say, please don't give me anything. Knowing that people are going to buy us something anyway, and that by saying, please don't give me anything.
We haven't helped at all. And we're more likely to get something that isn't very useful. Um, it's reasonably common with things like weddings, for people to, um, have a wedding registry. And we find that people are quite comfortable to use the good registry and our registry function. In particular for weddings, um, and children generally expect gifts. And, uh, and it seems to be fine for children to use it for their birthdays, but the average adult who's having.
23rd or 37th birthday where, you know, you're actually only going to get one or two gifts from family or friends. Uh, people are definitely much more reluctant to, to say, Hey, I know you're going to get me a gift. So can you do this for me? Um, one of the, one of the things that we did to recognize that as we started just with our gift registries and people were uncomfortable using them, if they didn't really want to say, Hey, I know you're going to give me a gift. So I'd sit up a registry.
So you can do that. We introduced our gift cards and that makes it much easier for if somebody's saying to you, what do you want for your birthday? To say, look, you don't have to give me anything, but if you really want to give me something, you could give me a good gift card from the good registry. And then I get the joy of giving the money to some charities I'd like to support.
Yeah. That's good. And I'm curious, can you tell me a little bit about before you actually co-founded the gun registry? What were you doing and what led you to actually say like, ah, this could actually be an idea.
Um, I have always been really conscious about doing work that I enjoy, and that started with being a journalist and I loved being a journalist for a long time, and then, uh, decided to move out of journalism because I started to move into management and I didn't really enjoy management and went into corporate communications and continued to gravitate towards work with. I could feel like I was having some kind of, um, social contribution through the work.
So I worked for child, youth, and family, and then I worked for the red cross. And then I worked for a communications consultancy where a lot of our work was social good focused around, um, mental illness and alcohol use and that kind of thing. Um, from here, I, I worked for myself for a while choosing jobs where, um, I w that made me happy and then was in a role doing, um, zero energy as their community manager.
And. Also, I was teaching yoga for cohort and the money that was donated was being donated on to charities. And I was teaching yoga in prison as well. And what I learned from that was, even though I was doing work for a corporate, that was about social, good, the work that I was doing outside of the corporate weird.
I could see a really direct line for me giving my time to improving the wellbeing of others was the work that really, um, my fire made me excited and I wanted more that, uh, so I quit my corporate role without a plan, just knowing that I wanted to create something that was a way to do good in the world. Um, and.
Hopefully might support me financially, uh, and a few weeks after doing that, uh, after spending quite a bit of time thinking about what it was that was important to me in life and seeing that. The four components, really, for me of what gives me joy, uh, around creativity, creating things, contribution, connection, being part of a community and connected with good people and presence, mindfulness consciousness. Uh, I. So what, okay.
I want to create a way to give myself more of those things and in other people that as well, and it was giving myself some space to noodle on what that could look like, but the idea for the good registry came, um, and it does cover all of those bases. You know, the consciousness around what we consume, the creativity of creating a thing that didn't exist in the world before with the whole community and the platform. The connection with the community. And of course the contribution.
Yeah. Wow. And I wanted to touch on something that you just mentioned, because I do think that it's important. And I noticed for myself how important it is for people that want to do good in the world, or are thinking of doing their own thing. What was the timeline from when you actually quit your job and you have some security. To like, then you can go on your own and I'm trying to figure it out. What that is that time? How was it for you? Was it challenging? Was it easy?
Uh, I decided when I was on a holiday at Eastern, in 2017 that I was going to go home and quit my job. And I did that and I finished up at the end of June and. By August. I had the idea for the good registry and by November, the good registry was in the world.
Wow. And not enough time to actually freak out or anything. There was,
there was more excitement than freaking out. Um, definitely. As we were building the good registry. There were moments where I felt a little bit sick with what I'd taken on, um, and had to trust that I'd started. And I got there for the right reasons and that, uh, the challenges that we were facing were challenges that were, that were teaching me something.
And what's it from the beginning, the choice of being a social enterprise.
That was always my intention when I quit my job to do my own thing. I, when I quit, my thinking was I'm going to create more space for myself to live mindfully without worrying about income and that kind of thing for awhile. I'm going to. Three more mindfulness practices, which I feel like I haven't had time for, I'm going to do some blogging to help, to hold myself to account for that and just see what and see what comes. But what I want to come from this is a social enterprise ultimately.
And I thought that probably that social enterprise was going to be something related to meditation and mindfulness to help people build more meditation practice into their life, because it was something that. I was so conscious of the benefits of, and despite that would always not, you know, would often not find the time in my day to do practices, which I knew were really nourishing for me. And I thought that I might find something that could help others with that.
Um, so I wanted to create something. I wanted it. The something that was a business, but a social impact business and ended up being completely different to what I thought it was, what I thought it might be.
Yeah. And I think I taught sometimes and I was stoked with some people from I can net foundation and some, some other entrepreneurs that studied social enterprises and. And lot of times talking with them, I feel like, why isn't this the norm? Like, why can't we just switch in the next couple of years for businesses to be all social enterprises?
So if you have a business you're in social enterprise and just switching the model for that and stuff, the model dial the maturity, how different the world could be.
We should just do that. Shouldn't
we,
someone, when we were, um, uh, in the early stages of setting up the good registry, and I said to this person, that's going to be a social enterprise. And they pointed out to me, uh, the. Back in the day, every business was a social enterprise. Every business that we started back at the beginning of time was started to meet a community need. And somehow over time it's become about how much can you grow the business to create more jobs, which is a good thing.
Um, More income, sell more stuff, um, rather than what does our community need and how do we best do
that? Yeah, definitely. And I think a lot of stamps with businesses. It ends up being for the big businesses, like aside, like social responsible practice, or then most of their work for the charities. And talking about that with the charities, what was the focus or was there a focus to find who was registered to.
The main thing I wanted to do was give people the joy of giving. Um, and the, the charities that we supported were more about. Who will people give to if we, uh, saying to people, okay, here's this opportunity for you to not have gifts that you don't want to need that are going to make you feel bad, and they're going to clutter your house. Uh, and what we're offering you instead is the chance for that money to go to a charity. We needed to have charities that people would go, yeah, I want that.
Uh, so we could've sat down and chosen charities based on the charity performance, uh, in the charity impact, uh, data. And we deliberately didn't do that because we really just need a charities that people connected with emotionally. Um, so that people would have that opportunity who might not, you know, people who wouldn't normally potentially give to charity would have that opportunity to have the experience of giving and go, oh, that felt good. I might, I might need more of that. Um, in.
We, we, we looked for a broad, uh, next year of charities. So we sat at a white board and we thought, okay, we need some health charity, some charities that do good things for children, some charities that do good things to animals and charities that do good things for the planet. And we put down charities that we. We thought we had to do it on gut. Again, we only had a few months to do this and, um, go and contact based charities and get them all signed up.
We put down the charities that we thought that people were most likely to know and to give, to and approached those charities. Part of it was also a pragmatic. Um, approach that in order for people to use the good registry they needed to know about us and people weren't going to know about us. If we didn't have charities that people know, and if we could get charities on board that had a good reputation already been, that would bring some people with them.
However, we did also, we wanted to have some of the smaller charities on there as well. Hundreds of thousands of charities in New Zealand, there was no way that we could choose those. So one of the things that we did as part of the setup was we ran a crowdfunding campaign through pledge me. And one of the things that we offered, people who gave through the plea campaign was the opportunity to nominate a charity that they would like us to have as one of the.
Initial charity partners that might not have got onto the platform otherwise. So that gave us a mixture of those charities that you would expect to be there. And some charities that you wouldn't.
Um, what has been in the last few years, uh, including the pitchman company, what has Ms. Beans from your business perspective, what's been going on with the gold register, more than the impact.
Do you mean the financial side of
financial, but like in terms of work-like has been a lot of work on different areas where you actually had to be like, oh, I actually figured out that side. And when you just mentioned the hassle of the.
Um, it's a lot of work. Um, it's initially for, for me was about 70 hours a week. And in that 70 hours, that was solid. That was really knuckling down and working as hard. Anyone could for 70 hours a week and I have two co-founders and they were also putting in a really solid amount of time in that set up phase.
And it was those first three months were a crazy three months of finding a web developer briefing, a web developer, stepping a. You know, every step of the way with the web developer, seeing, you know, giving them the information they needed, answering all the questions that they hear, watching the pages come together, getting the content drafted, uh, Finding just making the decisions about how everything would be structured and how many charities we wanted to launch with who those charities
would be contacting those charities, getting them all on board planning, how we were going to do the launch. Uh, how, how were we going to get with. At about us, um, creating communications, creating social media. I had no experience in most of that stuff. Uh, my experience was a good knowledge of the charitable sector and my co-founder assumed the Cape also had a really good knowledge of the charitable sector. Uh, and the three of us come from a communications background.
So we were pretty good on being able to plan how to do some meetings. Materials, um, and kind of direct communications to people that we knew to get behind us, but I didn't know, I never been terribly active on social media and hadn't really used that as a, as much of a tool in my previous work. And didn't know much about building a website. I'd helped to write content for websites before, but didn't know anything about the whole. Pricey.
Um, we also needed to get a charity registered and a company registered our social enterprises at model for our social enterprise, includes a charity and a business that work alongside each other. Um, And then all of the financial side. Um, fortunately Tracy bridges, one of my co-founders has a really strong background in having, um, founded as a communications consultancy before. And. Got really good help around us. And that's made the world of difference. Deloitte have been incredible.
They came on pro bono and do all of our financials for us now in a illegal form called Duncan Coro. Got us all sorted without. Document, um, we've had all kinds of other awesome pro bono support. We've now got it. Um, being looked after by a company called match binary who are doing that for us pro bono. And at the same time, I need to. Get my head across what it is I'm briefing people to do and what it is that they're delivering. So I'm constantly learning new things.
And this week, one of the things that I'm proud of is that I took my video editing skills to a next level. Cause I just had to, for a presentation that I had to deliver. So constantly there are things that I have to learn about and upskill myself about. And generally it's neat. Um, doing the day to day running of the business. And, uh, it's, it's not paying anyone. Uh, everybody who works on it is doing it pro bono for love. So for me, that's meaning that I'm doing some paid work as well.
So there's also the juggle of. But I was making sure that I've got enough time for the paid work and making sure that I've got enough time to keep the good registry growing at the rate that I want to keep it growing. Yeah.
I think that what a lot of people I've taught in the past few years with some younger people that have asked me, you know, oh, they want to start their own business or their own social enterprise. And what did they do? And I have for the first few years, And running conscious action. There wasn't any money. I wasn't making my money doing the other work. And I was running out of these events and the work that I was doing with conscious actions, just for the love of doing it.
It has some thing back then and it's doing good. So yeah, I think that it's really important for people to understand like the amount of work that it requires sometimes. Like sometimes we can make it work so well that we don't need it, but for a lot of classes,
Yeah, and the reward is not in the money. And I think the rewards of life are not in the money. Um, I, one of the ways that I've related to all of the time and money that I've put into this is that I could have spent it all on going on an overseas holiday, but this has been much more incredible ride than I could have had if I'd done that. Or I could have spent it all on. Going to university and doing an MBA. And again, um, I've had, I've learned everything I could have learned from an MBA and.
We've had this amazing impact, giving thousands of people with the opportunity to experience the joy of giving and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars. So go to good causes that they've chosen to give to and help the planet out heaps as well. We're getting people to. Um, being more conscious and the guest buying and probably hopefully, and the other ways that they use their spending power to.
Yeah. That's the main thing I wanted to ask you a few last questions. I know that we are delivered tight with time, so I'm going to get by them today. So what is one resource that you would recommend people besides of course, the good registry.
Um, one of the resources that I have really been loving over the last few months, and this goes to my. Willing to keep learning and growing and feeling like my time is my most precious asset. I try to use the time when I'm walking or running to keep learning. And, uh, often that is listening to podcasts. And at the moment I'm using the. At which a lot of people haven't heard of and, uh, gives you free library books to listen to.
So it gives you so I can listen to professional development books, spiritual books, um, occasionally very, really a novel, but books that I wouldn't normally. Um, the time to sit down and read, uh, and usually I only just managed to get through my one book group book each month and don't have time to read anything else. So I love that Libby is another way that I can consume, uh, interesting stuff that helps me to think differently, uh, while I'm on the. Yeah,
that's cool. What is the other one go to tip when you have to share with people, especially around perhaps giving or doing good.
I think that a lot of people wait to feel like they are financially sorted before they can give to others. And I think that most of us. Probably most of the people who are living this and listening to their side to some degree financially, sorted and NAF, to be able to go a little bit. And, and even if what you're giving us your time, or even if what you're giving is a good word about somewhere and it doesn't actually always have to come back to money.
If you can, whatever you can do that contribute, it feels. Good and keep looking for those ways that you can contribute. And it was, for me, it was through contributing that I realized, actually, this is the thing I look forward to most every week. You know, I want more of that.
And the token about contribution. What has been your latest small act of kindness?
Um, similar to what I just said before that sometimes the best thing you can do is give people your time, um, or talk about people. Um, one of the things that I did yesterday was, uh, just do it. She's a, um, a coach in a warfare or some human being is working on a book at the moment called I love Monday. Uh, and she asked if I would be interviewed for that book. So I gave her my time, uh, because she's a cool person and it's a cool topic.
Um, and, and then I didn't just stop at giving him my time. I got onto LinkedIn and told people about the book, um, and. And I think that matters if, if we, if we can all just give people our time and tell other people about good things that we see going on, we can make a really big difference in the world. And, um, it's a really simple kindness, but anyone can do.
Yes, definitely. Um, perhaps it's already this, but what is the one thing that you wish that everyone in the world.
I wish that we all knew that we could live on lists. Firstly, um, people, um, seem to have. Uh, since that we don't have enough and we don't have enough, uh, in the planet has enough. We're not gonna run out of anything if a free, all, just have what we need and building on that, remembering that every dollar that. When you are making a conscious decision to buy something else, that decision is a vote for the kind of future of the kind of planet that you want.
And if you can stop and think what's the vote that I'm making before you spend that dollar, you'll make a much bigger choice.
Yeah. Yeah. I often talk about . It's such a, an important topic to, to have for that. We need to develop more awareness and more, um, more to make more conscious decisions, to be able to live the way that we do one with everyone around us. So lastly, how can people find you? Where can people go on social media and what's the website?
Oh, wonderful. Christian, always inward. Um, I love it when people, um, follow us on social media, our handle across all of the channels is at good registry. Follow us tell other people to follow us, comment on our staff, share our stuff. Because as I said, we, um, we're, we're a small social enterprise with really limited time and resource and reach. And one of the best things that you can do is tell other people about us. Um, and then the other best thing that you can do is to.
Uh, and you can come and see us@thegoodregistry.com. And there are two things you can do when you get there either. If you've got a birthday coming up and you are comfortable with saying to friends and family that you'd like people to donate to your. Because instead of giving you gifts, you can create a registry. You can choose your favorite cores and then you get to go out and tell your friends and family that you're using this cool thing.
And what we see is when people do give to registries, they often leave comments going, wow, this is really cool. What a great thing to do. So you won't upset people by giving them the opportunity to donations, to you, of having to go out and buy something without knowing anything that you want. Um, or if you've got a gift to buy for someone and. I don't know what to get for that person. Then give them kindness and get them one of our good gift cards.
And then they can use that to go and choose which of our 65 charity partners they'd like to give it to. And they can be like the kids in the lolly shop. And, you know, if I got a $20 gift card, I could split it between four, they've got a hundred dollars gift cards. I can split it between twingy if they want to, or they can give it all to learn and they can have fun with it and they can feel.
Wonderful. Thank you so much for your kindness for your time, uh, for being here and for sharing what you are doing that I do believe that it's making such good in the world. And if everybody would be following just like you did your own journey of choosing, how are you going to have an empire? The world couldn't be a little bit.
Thank you for having me and thank you for all that you're doing to help encourage people to have conscious actions as well. It's really important work. Thank you.
Thank you. And thank you for everyone listening. And if you're listening, um, we are going to have on the show notes, follow the good registry and go. And especially for the upcoming holidays, yes. That we gave to people in Navy gave to these charities. Use the. Um, hopefully you learn something interesting on this episode and we're looking forward to the next one, but
what did you like the most about this episode? Take a moment to think about what change you can make in your life.
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