Circular Podcast – Season 3 Episode 8

Welcome to season three of Circular with Katie Treggiden, in which we’re exploring what it takes to cultivate a creative practice that enables you, your business and the planet to thrive. We’ll be diving deep into the nuances, complexities and paradigm shifts that we need to embrace in order to bring about a just transition to a more circular economy. 

In this episode, Katie talks to Ray Dodd a Money Coach who helps those who have traditionally been excluded from making money, to make life-changing amounts of money. All without compromising who they are.

If you’re hearing the term ‘money coach’ and wincing a little – imagining fluffy talk of manifesting millions in your sleep, – prepare to have your fears soothed – because you’re in for a treat.  Ray is a money coach with a difference. You won’t hear ‘think good thoughts and watch the money come rolling in’ from her. Ray believes that money, business and intersectional feminism are inextricably linked and that there’s a lot more to making money than simply manifesting it.

During this episode Katie speaks to Ray about the ways in which your social conditioning is stopping you from having the impact you want to have, whether that’s in your creative practice, in your business and money making or in your environmental work.

Below is a transcript of our conversation. Find the full episode available to listen on Spotify here.

 

INTRO

Welcome to season three of Circular with Katie Treggiden, in which I’m exploring what it takes to cultivate a creative practice that enables you, your business and the planet to thrive. I’ll be diving deep into the nuances, complexities and paradigm shifts that we need to embrace in order to bring about a just transition to a more circular economy.

 

GUEST SNIPPET

As empathetic, often left leaning, liberal thinking, often artistic as well, people who care about justice, who want you know what, want to put humans above profit, people above profit, it is fundamentally important that we stop conflating money with harm and money with not doing those things. Because while we are infighting about, oh, there can’t be a real liberal person or left wing person because they’re rich. The right wing people have all the power and the money aren’t fighting each other and are just getting on with what they see as the priorities. And the things that we no need doing, don’t have the power or money behind them. And that’s one of the greatest things that that sort of side of the politics, the sort of anti all that we’re talking about here. One of their greatest achievements is making us believe that power and money can only be used in a harmful way.

 

GUEST INTRO

Welcome to another episode of Circular with Katie Treggiden. In this episode, I’m talking to Ray Dodd who is my coach, so I know her very well. This is a wonderful conversation about all the ways in which your social conditioning is stopping you from having the impact you want to have, whether that’s in your creative practice, in your business and money making or in your environmental work. Listen up, enjoy it, and let me know what you think.

 

GUEST INTERVIEW – PART 1

Katie Treggiden 

Ray Dood I’m so excited to have you on my podcast.

 

Ray Dodd 

I’m excited to be here. Although it feels like, it feels weird that we’re not doing like a coaching session, we’re talking on a podcast and I need you to remember that.

 

Katie Treggiden 

So Ray Dodd is my coach, for those of you who don’t know. And I have been working with her for a few years, in a fairly game changing way so I’m very excited to share some Ray Dodd wisdom with you. Ray, do you want to start by introducing yourself and telling folks how you ended up doing what you do? By the way, I’ve totally stolen this first question from your podcast. So

 

Ray Dodd 

I think I stole it from someone else’s podcast. I think whenever you’re in a podcast, you need to know you need to know their story, you need to know how they’re here. Well, maybe I just need to know that. One of the ways I could say that I got to where I am is because I am nosy. So that is definitely a thread that has drawn me towards coaching because I love finding out all the things about people and what makes them tick. But the real way I got here, so there’s like longer and shorter versions. But essentially, I, for a long time, really didn’t know I would never have described myself until incredibly recently as ambitious. So I straight out of uni I did an English degree because I liked reading, I didn’t really know what else I wanted to do. And then I didn’t have a situation where I could go move back home or anything. So I had to get a job straight away. And it was the olden days. So I got a job out of the paper and which always makes me feel ancient. And I’d like worked in a dentists as a dental receptionist, which was like the weirdest, not the weirdest job I’ve ever had, actually, but one of them. And so I sort of like meandered around various jobs. And when I decided to have children, I really thought that that’s where I’d find my meaning. I thought because my mom had been a really amazing like, she wasn’t a complete yet stay at home mom, but she gave off that vibe. Like she wasn’t the best cook or anything like that but she was very much there for us. Worked jobs that worked around us rather than things that were for her. And I think having seen that modeled and really thriving as a kid under her kind of parenting. I just thought well that’s the sort of mum I’ll be, I will find my meaning in my children and I did not and I always say.

 

Katie Treggiden 

I love that you’re so honest about this.

 

Ray Dodd 

And I can’t tell you how much, I’ve got two boys and I adore them but I really see us, I mean they obviously this must be, so I don’t know if this is weird, but I see us more as like a community and I’m a member of that community. I don’t, I don’t sacrifice my, like they’re a part, I mean don’t get me wrong, having kids means there are parts of yourself you sacrifice for your kids, my pelvic floor being one of them. You know I don’t like I see us all as like interacting beings in this situation. And I’m part of that. And so I always say, I feel like Pinterest lied to me about motherhood because I thought it would be all these amazing crafts, I had this big board of like saved craft projects that we were going to do together, they can’t do those craft projects till they’re like nine. And then they’re at school, and they don’t want to do it because they don’t think they’re cool and they’re into other stuff. It was just very, very different to what I thought, but in amongst all of that, my feminism, which I would say has always been there, but was more dormant was very much activated via my experience of birth and stuff like that and breastfeeding. And the thing that really stands out for me is all our lives as, particularly as people conditioned as women, we’re told that our bodies aren’t good enough, right? That they need, like fixing, improving, and all of that. And then as soon as I was pregnant, everyone’s like, Oh, my God, miracle of life, you just really need to trust your body. And I was like, hang on, you’ve told me my body is terrible, for the whole of my life, and now you’re like glorifying it, suddenly, because there’s this and I have to say all power to  people that enjoy pregnancy, it is the most disgusting sensation I’ve ever experienced, I hated it. And now this is going on and it was just a really eye opening experience in terms of how I’d been conditioned to be and I’m sure we’re going to talk a lot about conditioning today, versus what the actual experience in the world I was now having, it was a really strange feeling.

 

So through all of that I ended up becoming a hypnobirthing teacher and a breastfeeding counsellor. And I always say breastfeeding counsellors should really be called breastfeeding coaches. That’s a very similar skill set but with breastfeeding knowledge involved, and it’s very much certainly the way I did it was not, you know, the idea is not, Oh, you must breastfeed. It’s like, what do you want to do, how can we support you in the journey you want to have. Because a lot of why women feel so disempowered around, well in so many ways, but specifically within motherhood is that’s what I’m talking about, is because they are being pushed into versions that they feel like they have to be rather than actually things be like honouring the experience that they want. So that so long winded way, so weirdly, that led me to business coaching, because I started to run these businesses with those skills in mind, and my businesses grew. And I was using a lot of those skills, which I now know are like a lot of coaching skills to run my business with two small children around. And when my husband and I and if you join my mailing list after this, you’ll get an email that explains this whole long story, which I won’t go into now. I get emails from people that say, I joined your mailing list, because somebody told me I needed to read that particular email. I was like, okay, but it’s very, yeah, it’s a good one. But we went through a very difficult time with our money. And when I say difficult, I mean, like, literally couldn’t afford to feed our children time where I was opening up cupboards and going, I have no food. And for the first time in my life, I actually don’t know, I don’t have money to pay for it. I don’t know what I’m going to do. So I had to call up family and ask them to drop round bags of shopping because of the situation that occurred. And so my business really grew from there, whether for me, I could have made more money Hypnobirthing and stuff like that I definitely could have done. I don’t, I don’t want to say anyone can’t make a certain amount of money, it was certainly far easier to make more money as a coach. And also that was really where I was wanting to go. So that meant that I took a lead into initially coaching mums on how to run their businesses alongside having kids and that developed along the way into what it turns out was my true calling. And if you told me that, when I first started out, I’d have been like, nope, which was being a money coach.

 

Katie Treggiden 

And so for the uninitiated, yes. What is a money coach?

 

Ray Dodd 

Well, that is a big question. So from me, a money coach is just simply somebody that is coaching you around your feelings, experiences, thoughts, beliefs, around money, it looks very different though, depending on which money coach you are working alongside. So there are two kinds of money coach that you see more prominently. The first is by far the most prominent and that is the kind of girl boss very much Law of Attraction manifestation. Often LA based money coach who is very much like, all about positive thinking veers into not gonna say it’s exclusive this but veers into some emotional bypassing and can also be very much like not conscious or considering intersectionality and all of that sort of privilege and all of those things. And then on the other side, and this you’ll see less but because I’m obviously in the world, I see it, you get more like anti capitalist, very, very left leaning feminists money coaches, who for me, for me, some of them are amazing. Many of them are amazing many on both sides, by the way, are amazing. But they often, so where’s the Girlboss style, like, law of attraction style, people lean very much into the positivity, positivity, positivity, what I find is sometimes on the, like more left leaning side, it can actually be incredibly negative, and feel a bit like you can’t win. Like, you shouldn’t be making money, like everybody’s suffering, blah, all of that stuff, which can really play into actually a lot of our conditioning, which is to care for people and make sure everybody’s okay. And so I try my best to sort of sit in the middle, because I think we absolutely need to acknowledge the reality, we are like the whole pull yourself up by your bootstraps, all of that is nonsense, and we need to acknowledge people’s realities. And I 100% believe that we have been tricked into believing many things are not possible for us that absolutely are. And so and we’ve been tricked by a culture and a society that conditions us to believe that there’s only certain spaces that certain people are allowed to occupy. And so I also think that it’s super important that we have both, that we do have that like positive, like you’ve got this almost pep talky side of things, and that we do learn to access and to use our brains in ways that they have been conditioned. So we have a negativity bias, naturally, that’s part of our safety mechanisms. But we’ve also been conditioned to not use or not conditioned, I think maybe as well, human beings are evolving, like quite rapidly now to be able to access other parts of their brain and understand further the kind of positive sides of things. And so we have to make conscious decisions, to think outside of our conditioning to think outside the box and to really believe more is possible for us. And I think that’s incredibly important for the balance of the world, as well.

 

Katie Treggiden 

Yeah, definitely. Now, listeners might be wondering why I’ve got you on my podcast, because the podcast is all about environmentalism. And so far, we’ve talked about parenting, money and business, but there is a link. So your work is around money making, but having worked with you for a few years, I know that its impact is so much bigger than that. And what I would love to explore with you, and the reason I’ve got you on the podcast, is how social conditioning and this idea of not being able to show up as your full self or not feeling you can show up as your full self, impacts our environmentalism work, and as designers and makers and creative people the impact we believe we’re capable of having. But let’s start at the beginning. What exactly do you mean when you say social conditioning, because that’s a phrase that people won’t necessarily be familiar with.

 

Ray Dodd 

So it’s all the different ways that we are taught we have to be and they are incredibly subtle, some of them, they can be more like so for like, a very more obvious way, is the way we look. So there is a clear way that society expects a woman and a man to look right? Like women are meant to have long hair, they’re meant to have, exactly, Katie how could you?

 

Katie Treggiden 

I’m pointing at my short hair.

 

Ray Dodd 

They’re meant to wear certain clothes, were meant to be like, and it’s often this very narrow line, there’s something that I often say is like, one of the greatest achievements of the patriarchy is giving us nowhere to land. So like, our clothing should be, like, not revealing, but not so modest, that we look like we’re like, you know, whatever it is, we should be, we should be mothers, as well. But and we shouldn’t be, but we should also be mothers that work, and not relying on men. So this has changed a bit, but we don’t want to be so, so not reliant on men that we emasculate men, we’ve got to find these, like, very perfect, I’m using examples for for people conditioned as women, but this lands all over the place, you know, like, men should be like, they don’t, they shouldn’t be emotional, but we don’t want them to be so angry that they’re, you know, x y z. Like, it’s all this, like this specific space we’re supposed to be all the time and the conditioning is all those really subtle nudges that try to keep us in what is actually an incredibly tiny space, that for some of us, we’re all right in, like there are aspects of that, that you know, I land in comfortably. And there are other aspects and part of that is the fullness of the person. So like for example, you know, like when I say women are meant to be mothers, by the way, obviously I don’t think that Jesus, I am saying like, that’s what society says so I’m alright with being a mum. But I’m not a mum who, like, for example, my husband does most of the childcare. So when people say to me, oh Ray are you free it’s half term, presume you don’t have any time I’m like, Oh, I didn’t know it was half term. I didn’t know that because it’s not, don’t get me wrong that’s because I’m also ridiculous at keeping track of time. But it’s not my job in our family to manage that part. It’s my job to do other stuff. Part of which is earned the majority of the money. But we can land in one space, but often that space doesn’t have space for all of our parts, all of who we are. And social conditioning is that bits that say, well, you need to do it this way. It should be done this way. This is how you’ll be successful. This is how money is. And yet when we prod at it a little bit, we often find that that very narrow idea falls apart, like so easily.

 

Katie Treggiden 

Yeah, I can remember a really silly example from working with you as I am someone who likes to get my nails done, hot orange nails right now. I’m also someone who enjoys pottery, and I spent so long believing that I was a terrible person who gets my nails done because I mess them up at pottery, or I was a terrible potter because what sort of potter’s get their nails done. And I can always remember on my way to pottery with my beautiful bright orange nails one day being like, no, there’s a Venn diagram between people who do pottery and people who get their nails done. And it’s got a tiny amount of overlap, but I’m in that overlap and it was that sort of, it’s a really stupid example, but it was that moment of I can be someone who both does pottery and gets their nails done and that’s okay.

 

Ray Dodd 

And that’s the thing, like it shows up in those sorts of ways, so imagine how it shows up in the weightier ways as well, like, the ways that we are always containing ourselves, oh, but I can’t do that because that and I can’t do that because that wouldn’t be right. And like we, we then find it like, actually, you get to be all the things you’re going to be and that and this is super important when it comes to making money doesn’t stop you from being successful. It doesn’t stop you from making money.

 

Katie Treggiden 

And doesn’t stop you from making an impact in the environmental movement. So one of the things I have started being more honest about since I work with you is the fact that I drink Diet Coke. And it’s, you know, I’ve written a whole paper about the evils of Coca Cola as part of my master’s, I understand the problematic nature of globalised, soft drinks companies. And yet, you know, and that doesn’t mean that I can’t have an impact. And I think the environmental movement is horrible for their stuff. Mark Shayler talks about the fact that biggest risk to environmentalism is friendly fire. And there’s a sense that if you’re not, you know, if you’re not a vegan, and you know, you’re not wearing head to toe linen, you’re not, you know, doing X, Y and Z you can’t have an impact, and environmentalism. And I think one of the things I want to share and let people know is that there are 100 different ways you can have an impact in environmentalism. And there are 100 different ways you can look and be and behave and show up as an environmentalist, which I think is so important. Absolutely.

 

So we’ve touched on this a little bit, but what impact of the ways in which people socialised women, people of colour, members of the LGBTQIA community and other historically marginalised groups, what are the ways in which social conditioning makes these people less able to show up as themselves and as you say, bring that sort of full identity into their work?

 

Ray Dodd 

Oh, so many ways, so many ways. Like one of the things that I automatically think of with that is, when I first started coaching, I and I still talk about this a lot, but I ran a course on visibility, and as a white woman, who has whose weight has never fitted into although fitted in more than I realised, but I was taken to Weight Watchers when I was 12. Like the story to me and I was talking about this on my podcast, when I record it on Monday just like I grew up in the 90s with the heat, was it no, circle of shame that they would like just pick out normal body bits and like really make a big issue of it. So for me visibility when I first started my business was very easy again, like I’m a white woman, but I am a woman so I’m in that situation of you know, this space not being as available to me as if I was if identified differently, but I’m not in a straight body, I’m not in a like thin body like the sort of body that you’re meant to have.

 

Katie Treggiden 

I think particularly in the coaching world, as you say that kind of LA, Law of Attraction style of coach has a, has a stereotypical look, let’s say.

 

Ray Dodd 

A blowout, a Kaftan. I always say they want a beach kicking a wave, like there’s a whole thing. So I It wasn’t easy for me, I hadn’t grown up with and there wasn’t the discussion. Oh my god that was not the discussion about body positivity or body neutrality or like loving your bodies. I remember the Dove adverts being absolutely revolutionary. Like I remember that billboard and being like what. And, and so for me, there had been a journey to that visibility, what I hadn’t considered as a white woman was that the difference the additional layer for a woman of colour or an LGBTQIA person, like I hadn’t really thought or come to be very clear, somebody who’d been in a violent relationship or situation with domestic violence and was now not wanting people to see their face in case, an ex partner found them or something like that. And so I hadn’t considered in that, and this is like, seven, eight years ago, until a client who wasn’t white spoke to me about it. And I was like, Yeah, and this has always been my thing with this sort of stuff is like, just listen, like, and this is my thing, like, not just for my clients who aren’t white, or like, this is my clients, all my clients, like trust that they are the expert on themselves and their situation. So when this client said to me, like, you know, there’s an extra layer for me because of this, I was like, Yeah, I totally see that. But it’s like an example of where for visibility for that person there was just this added, like, what are people going to say about me, like when I show up, and I am unapologetic, and I am angry about things. And I am opinionated. And I am, you know, I make mistakes. And I do that visibly, which is stuff I do encourage my clients and I still do, just with added nuance to do, there are the feelings of risk are heightened for somebody who does not fit into the like white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist way to be. And so what that often means is there are, the obstacle course for various people is more cluttered. Ed Calla does this really lovely, and I like, saw it on his work. I’m one of those people who’s Wikipediaing everybody all the time, like IMDB and when I’m watching stuff, and so I love Ed Calla and he was talking on CNN I saw is like, on his Wikipedia page, because it’s like just an automatic situation I do. And it says on there, he talks about how, like understanding racism, it part of it, and like, you know, colonialism, and all of that stuff, part of it is so that people can see the obstacles that are in their way, so that they’re not doing an obstacle course with a blindfold on essentially, it’s not that the obstacles go away but they know where to step around, they know what to do, they can, you know, find the tools for that. And so it’s a similar thing, like I think all of our obstacle courses look different. And some of those obstacle courses are more cluttered than others. And there are very, I mean, honestly, the difference in money stories from the south of England, to the north of England, to Ireland, to Scotland, then into Europe and Australia, like and I’ve coached and in the states, like, there are nuanced differences, just in the cultural stories about money, as well. And so yeah, for people that I often talk about people traditionally make left out of money making. For those people ,there’s, it’s a very different route, depending who you are, and how people are going to react to you. I think too much coaching acts like it’s all in our heads. And if you just create a belief, well, no, like, a woman who’s a certain size is gonna have people yell at her in the street, if she dresses certain ways and so of course, it makes sense she wants to blend in. So it’s actually equipping people for that reality, rather than acting like they’re making it all up. And they should just be confident.

 

Katie Treggiden 

Yeah, it’s really interesting. I’m doing something called the bio leadership fellowship at the moment and we had a talk last week on the inequity in access to nature, and how, you know, I talk a lot about getting to nature, restore your connection with nature, you know, that’s a proven way to A help your well being and B, you know, help to encourage environmental actions. But it’s not that easy for everybody, like, you know, the kit that you might want to wear is not as accessible for people in bigger bodies. There are just far less black and brown people in rural areas of the UK. So, you know, I had a friend of mine who’s Indian went to Wales and she said she literally got stared at, people were staring at her with open mouths, and she was just like, Oh, my God, like, the countryside is beautiful, but I’m not sure about it. Not sure about the people. I’m just not sure I’m comfortable here. And so I think, yeah, I think that is really important to remember, isn’t it? It’s those kinds of additional boundaries that not boundaries, barriers that people are facing. And something I can always remember you blew my mind talking about was this idea of professional because I had been brought up to believe that one should be professional that’s like an absolute kind of aim of mine. And we’ll talk a little bit about what the word professional actually means in this kind of context.

 

Ray Dodd 

So in lots of ways being professional is like and I want to be clear because I sometimes get like flack for this, I’m quite happy to get flack for it really because I disagree with the people that disagree with me. But in a lot of ways professionalism is racist sort of homophobia, ableism, fatphobia, all of the isms and phobias, because what we’re often saying, so the most clear example to me is the idea that, that some traditionally, black hairstyles are less professional than others, like the fact that for and you can see this with Michelle Obama, since that she’s not in the White House, she’s now got braids. And she always had more of her, like, you know, to her hair was straightened like chemically or she was wearing weaves or wigs, but she’s now wearing her hair in a more traditional way.

 

Katie Treggiden 

Like, I remember working with an Italian girl who got told in an appraisal that her hair was, quote, unquote unprofessional, because it was curly.

 

Ray Dodd 

Yes, exactly. And exactly, and you can see the inherent, like, underlying racism in that comment.

 

Katie Treggiden 

And this is because when we think of professional, we think of a tall, white, straight, cisgendered able bodied man in a suit, right. And so the further we deviate away from that, yeah, the less quote unquote professional were seen as.

 

Ray Dodd 

And you can look at like the, like, certain bodies in suits, for example, like, you are not going to look as smart as somebody else in a suit, because you cannot get ones to fit you in the same way. And on certain bodies, they just don’t look that clean, kind of, because that person’s body is not all straight lines, it’s lumps and bumps and curves, and whether they are identify as a man or a woman. And so, yeah, it’s all of those things of like, you know, people who like, present in a camp way, for example, oh, that’s not professional. People with an Essex accent, less professional. Whereas actually, so like, when I talked about this, I had, I mean, I just blocked him. But I had, last time I did it I got this man mansplaining it all to me. And I was like, you know, like, so like, we talked about motherhood. For a single mom, for example, she is probably going to be not definitely but there are more circumstances where she might find herself late for work, because childcares let her down, she’s doing it all by herself, sometimes kids don’t want to go out the door. And if you’re by yourself, it’s harder to do that stuff, all those different things and so when we say like, oh, well, if you’re late, it’s unprofessional. Well, hang on. What was that person having to deal with? I had a boss, who couldn’t, this is in London, this is the dentist who could not understand like, I didn’t have a car in London, I relied on the buses. Sometimes they were incredibly late. And he was like, it doesn’t matter. Like it was like, in London, there is a general kind of consensus that public transport messes up sometimes. And sometimes people are late for that reason. And most workplaces are very relaxed about for that reason with that. He was just like, no, like, that doesn’t matter. You walk I was like I live an hour and a half away, like this is he couldn’t understand because he had a car. He was a wealthy dentist. He was like his privilege meant that he could not understand that that could be a valid reason to be late. He was just like, No, you’re just never late. That doesn’t happen. And so yeah, it’s nonsense.

 

Katie Treggiden 

Yeah, lateness is another one that I was always brought up, you are on time come what may. And it was really interesting, because I was at an event recently, and the person running it was getting really frustrated that people were walking in 5, 10 and 15 minutes late. And she was like, it just shows a respect for every, lack of respect for everybody else’s time. And I was like, oh, maybe they’re just having a really shit day. And we should show them a bit of compassion. You know, it’s really interesting how that has kind of really, really shifted, for me as someone who is not awesome at showing up.

 

Ray Dodd 

I was gonna say I want you to tell everybody how you felt when I was late.

 

Katie Treggiden 

Yeah. This is a really interesting story. The first time I ever came across Ray ever, I think you were doing a free facebook live on a subject I was vaguely interested in. And I tuned in for it and you weren’t there yet. And I was like well this is outrageous, she said she’d be here at 10 o’clock. And I think after like 10 minutes, I gave up and I was just like, well, that’s just rude and unprofessional and I clearly don’t want to work with this coach. Luckily, you drew me back in. And I am now a lot more compassionate towards other people and myself around lateness.

 

Ray Dodd 

I think you also said that when I think when you said when I did come on, I was like, I’m so sorry, I’m late. This happened and then I just carried on or maybe I didn’t even say I’m sorry. Something had happened and I was like so and just carried on and did the thing. And I don’t know, I my husband and me have an argument about lateness a lot because he is an on time person and I am not I am somebody with like undiagnosed, but very, very probable ADHD. And I have the time optimism situation that a lot of people have. And he will say, but it just shows a lack of respect and I’m like it doesn’t it hasn’t nothing to do with you at all, it’s not that I don’t you know, here we go, it means you don’t respect my time it doesn’t, it’s got nothing to do with that. It’s I didn’t realise how long it would take me to do something. And so I’m late, it’s got nothing to do with anything other than that, in so many ways. Obviously we internalise, I’m not good enough, I’m not I don’t like I respect people, all of those things and that is a similar thing with professionalism. And so there are parts of professionalism that are glorious, we should respect people, we should honour our word with things, we should try and do a good job for them, we should be polite to people. Well, you know, that can look different ways. But you know, we should, there’s loads of parts of professionalism that do matter. But you can’t tell me somebody with a certain hairstyle. can’t do those things just as well, but their hair has, or their body, or their accent, or whatever has anything to do with how well they do their job.

 

Katie Treggiden  

Yeah, it’s interesting, because I can remember back in my advertising days, criticising someone who reported into me for the way she dressed at work, because I didn’t think it was professional. And she said, Look, we work with creative people, I think it’s important that I express my creativity through the way I dress in order to earn the respect of the creative teams. And I was just like, Hmm, interesting perspective and also like way to stand up for yourself when you’re being critisied in an appraiser.

 

Ray Dodd 

Yeah, yeah, that’s awesome. I think I’d have gone, oh no.

 

Katie Treggiden 

And I was like, I can’t really argue with that.

 

AD BREAK WITH INHABIT

We’re going to take a short break now to do four things. Firstly, I would love you to hear from Inhabit who are the brand partner for season three. So Inhabit are the hotels that I actually stay in when I’m in London because they’re absolutely gorgeous and super sustainable. So, I reached out to them to ask if they would be interested in helping me bring this season of the podcast to life. And to my delight, they said yes, so you’ll hear from them shortly.

But first, I want to talk to you about a few things.

One is that I am a member of something called 1% for the planet, which means I donate 1% of my turnover, not profit to an environmental charity every year. And the charity I’ve chosen to partner with is Surfers Against Sewage, who are headquartered in my home county of Cornwall. So surfers against sewage is a grassroots environmental charity that campaigns to protect the ocean and all that it makes possible. It was created in 1990 by a group of Cornish surfers fighting to clean up the sea that was making them sick. Now surfers against sewage campaigns on everything that threatens the ocean. So plastic pollution, the climate emergency, industrial exploitation and water quality, by taking action on the ground that triggers change from the top. And if like me, you would like to support surfers against sewage you can do that https://www.sas.org.uk/

I’d also like to talk to you about a couple of other things while I’ve got you.

I have got a new book coming out at the end of April called Broken: Mending and repair in a throwaway world. I’m really excited about this book. It looks at the cultural and social roles that mending and repair play in a world where we don’t really need to fix things anymore. It also profiles 28 amazing remakers, menders, fixes, hackers curators and artists who are using mending and repair techniques in their work. So if that sounds up your street, you can pre order a copy via link in my show notes or by talking to your local bookshop, wherever you usually get your books you should be able to pre order that. And pre orders are what makes the world go around in publishing, particularly for smaller books like mine, so I would be incredibly grateful if you’re interested in that book that you pre order a copy before it comes out at the end of April. That would be amazing.

The last thing I want to tell you about before I hand you over to hear from inhabit. So I know from personal experience how easy it is to feel hopeless and depressed and kind of all in the doom and gloom of the climate crisis. Right? It is a lot. And so I’ve created something called Cultivating Hope in the face of the climate crisis. It is a three part mini course all delivered via email into your inbox. It’s free. It’s gorgeous. I’m really excited about it. And I would love for you to sign up for that also via a link in the show notes.

Alright, I will hand you over to here from in habit and then we will dive back into the second part of this episode.

Inhabit hotels, located in the Bayswater area of London, offers restorative environmentally and socially conscious places to stay in the city. Wellness and wellbeing also play a major part in the brand’s ethos Mindfully designed for the modern traveller everything at this new hotel has been considered with a genuine commitment to environmental initiatives and meaningful community partnerships. To find out more please check out our Instagram at inhabit_hotels.

 

GUEST INTERVIEW – PART 2

Katie Treggiden 

So one of the things that I am really interested in is the connection between the way we treat ourselves, the people immediately around us, our communities and the planet. So how damaging is it to a person’s well being when they can’t show up as their full self?

 

Ray Dodd 

Oh, it’s, it’s massive. And I think actually having mentioned ADHD earlier, that there’s obviously this huge movement at the moment where lots of people are discovering, and I know some people like, Oh, it’s a trend and everyone’s jumping on. It’s like, I guess it’s a trend in that it’s a thing that’s happening, like it’s so that can be, you know, the definition of a trend. But it’s more that as like, this is something it’s like that and I’m going to remember exactly, but the amount of left handed people rose dramatically, when they stopped making it like a terrible thing like when it just became society acceptable to be left handed, suddenly, there were more left handed people. And obviously, they’d been there all along, but they’d been masking their ability to like, hold their hand, their pen and their left hand. And this is all a similar thing, where people are starting to be like, Oh, this is a way people are, I thought I was on my own but a lot of those people have been masking, and this is what we’re really talking about, parts of themselves for a very long time, and many of them are on anti anxiety drugs,  anti depression drugs, they’re, you know, in therapy, all these different things, because it’s traumatic to have to hide who you are all the time, totally exhausting. The amount of energy being used up by trying to fit into societal norms would solve the climate crisis, right? Like, it’s like that fuel, that we’re all going oh, God, but this is, and like you said, with that quote from that person, whereas like, you know, it’s friendly fire that to, to create our own norms in these like new movements and stuff and expect people to show up in certain ways. It’s all and that is a not your fault but it is your responsibility situation, because we’ve been

 

Katie Treggiden 

okay, wait, hang on, hang on, say this again, because this is one of the phrases that I have got from you that just has, I can remember the very first time you said it, I just had this twin sense of, oh, it’s not my fault. But I have got to do something about it. So just dig into that phrase a little bit for me.

 

Ray Dodd 

So it’s not your fault is normally because and this is like, you know, if I was on mastermind, and it was like, what’s your special skill? Mine would be like connecting things to conditioning. Like I can’t I don’t know, that’s not quite how my Mastermind works, but like, I can, like, nearly always be like, well, that makes sense. Because this is my neurodiverse brain. I’m like, Well, that makes sense because that’s what’s expected of you here. And so of course, you would do that and that’s a lot of what good coaching by the way should do that it should make sense of things, the amount of times people come to me and they’re like, it’s so silly that I feel this, its stupid really and then we connect it to something that shows how sensible it is that they are behaving in that way, because generally it’s protective conditioning, it’s us wanting to be safe and of course, we want to be safe. So the it’s not your fault, it’s that it’s like often you have learned this, either through your own experiences. It’s a protective way of being that’s risen up in response to the environment you’ve grown up in, or you’ve seen it played out in society over and over again. And so of course, you feel that way. So like, we can really blame ourselves. So why am I so like I was saying about time? Why am I so lazy? Why don’t I just go up and do it? But the fact is that I think I’m doing it right till I’m in the moment, and then I go, Oh, Ray, why do you think it takes five minutes to have a shower and get ready and leave the house? Like, obviously it doesn’t, and you should know that but there’s a part of my brain that just misfires in that way. So it’s not my fault but annoyingly, and I actually hate saying the it’s your responsibility because I want to opt out. Again, that’s conditioning. Like, I don’t want to take responsibility for it but no one else is going too. And so with the time thing, it’s like okay, what can I put in place? What can I remind myself? So basically, my whole house runs on timers, Google timers, were just constantly Hey, Google set a timer for this to set an alarm set them up to just keep me and my children in that time. So it’s that it is that it is your responsibility, no one’s going to do it for you.

 

Katie Treggiden 

Yeah. And I think this is never more real than in the environmental crisis. It’s not our fault. Anybody who is alive now it’s not our fault. This all happened before we were born. Plenty of people have the chance to fix it before we were born. But we’re the last generation probably who have the opportunity to fix it. So we kind of have to think, I think so many designers and makers and craftspeople will walk around with this tremendous sense of guilt and I, what I just want everybody to understand is it’s absolutely not your fault in any way, shape or form. And if you choose to do nothing about it, that’s cool. But if you want in we have this amazing creative opportunity to do something brilliant.

 

So, all of this this stuff, the social conditioning, this kind of idea that we’re, we have to kind of fit a certain mould rather than showing up as our full, glorious selves, how does that affect somebody’s ability to have the impact they want to have in the environmental movement as a creative person, as a designer, as a maker, kind of how is that keeping people small?

 

Ray Dodd 

I think in lots of ways, so what you were saying really about how we, like I believe, and I’m pretty sure you do as well that we all have our parts to play. So I talk about being in your space. So I really think that we all have these spaces that are perfectly us sized in the world. And so for a lot of the designer makers listening, designing and making will be part of like, it’s, it’s not just something they like, oh, that seems like a good idea. That’s what I’ll do. There’s something intrinsic in them that like almost needs to create or does, not even almost, needs to create needs to put that stuff needs to like, be in that cycle of putting work out and having people respond to it. And that’s like more than just like, oh, I fancy making something like it’s there’s something innate in them. And so what can happen, when we have these very narrow spaces to operate in, is we don’t believe that, that the space that is intrinsically ours is even available to us. So if we use me as an example with been a money coach, and you alluded to the fact that one of the things when I realised, I remember I stood I was in my kitchen when I realised I wanted to, I didn’t realise I wanted to be a money coach, I realised that that’s what I was. And I just went, Oh, shit, I’m a money coach. Oh, no. Oh, god, that’s awful. Because money coaches, like I said, to me seem to be very emotionally bypassing and it didn’t look like me, like I was using, I’m always spilling food down me, I’m always like messing things up. Like, I’m late for things. I’m not this, like, clean version of something. And so with all the conditioning involved, it felt like that space, I was gonna have to really work hard for that space, I was gonna have to, like, I didn’t really want that that, like how was I going to fit into that. And I think that happens a lot with this stuff, too, is like when we aren’t able to see how multifaceted we’re allowed to be as ourselves. It means we say things like, well, I drink Diet Coke so what kind of a hypocrite am I to stand up and talk about this stuff? And we discount ourselves because we drink Diet Coke. Like, it can be those, and it can be very subtle, because it’s all subconscious, often little chats of, well, I’m somebody who really likes to buy clothes and dress well, in a certain way. Well I can’t possibly, how can I stand up and be somebody who, you know, goes and does whatever it is that would have an impact in the in that environmental sense. Like we don’t allow ourselves to be our full selves, which are these complicated, contradictory, you know that I’m obsessed with the Walt Whitman poem, or part of the poem that says,

Do I contradict myself? Indeed, I do. For I am large, I contain multitudes.

And I love, like that is to me, as somebody who grew up believing that I wasn’t, I wasn’t like other girls, because I was funny. Like, my husband was content with how funny I am. Like, I was like, but I’m funny that that makes me so unusual s a girl as a woman, like I don’t like what on earth was that about, because the space was so narrow, like I really swallowed the lie I’d been taught that women and men were funny, because they were the comedians, you had French and Saunders and Victoria Wood. But other than that, I didn’t, you didn’t see it in the way you do now. And so I’d really swallowed that. And so that’s an example of ways that we just go, Well, I can’t be that because I’m also this, when actually you can be all of those things. And we all are, even the people that you think are showing up and doing that, like, environmental stuff perfectly. They’re not. They’re just not telling you that stuff and that’s they’re allowed to not tell you, but I do wish more of them would.

 

Katie Treggiden 

Yeah, and it’s amazing that since I’ve had the confidence to be more open about my imperfections, the amount of people who’ve gone Oh my God, thank God me too. Right. Let’s get started with this environmentalism work.

 

Ray Dodd 

Exactly, because we think we don’t qualify, and it’s very similar to my stuff about money. People will be like, Oh, but I’m this this this and I’m like, Cool, bring it in. Bring it into your money making. It doesn’t disqualify you. Nothing does.

 

Katie Treggiden 

And I think even the, this sense of being a creative person who wants to save the planet and someone who wants to make money is like, you even this conversation with you and I is a bit like, what’s going on here? Yeah, so and I think kind of coaching and self development work as well has a whole bunch of stigma around it. And you know, for a long time, you’ve been like, Katie, can I use this quote of yours? Like, yeah, but don’t put my name on it because I don’t want people to know I’ve got a money coach.

 

Ray Dodd 

I only thought this I bought this, but I was looking at the questions. I was like, Oh, your say you’re gonna say I’m your coach.

 

 

 

Katie Treggiden 

Oh. Yeah, don’t coach me live on my podcast Ray. But one of the things I want to do and I want to talk to you about is how do we unpick some of the stigma around like, it’s okay to have a thriving business and save the planet? Yeah, it’s okay to be doing good in the world to be a creative person and want to make more than the bare minimum. And it’s okay to seek support and have a coach to help you do that, like how do we unpick that stigma and that like, I’m, I’m blushing a little bit just saying all of this out loud. So how do we unpick some of that stigma around this stuff?

 

Ray Dodd 

I think we have to, I think I feel that in the same way, you have that feeling of like, urgency around the climate stuff. I have that feeling in what you’ve just talked about, that it is urgently important, that as empathetic, often left leaning, liberal thinking, often artistic as well, people who care about justice, who want to see humans treated. You know, we want to put humans above profit people above profit, it is fundamentally important that we stop conflating money with harm and money with not doing those things. Because while we are infighting about, oh, they can’t be a real liberal person or left wing person because they’re rich, the right wing people got all the power and the money aren’t fighting each other and it just getting on with what they see as the priorities. And the things that we no need doing don’t have the power or money behind them. And that’s one of the greatest things that that sort of side of the politics, the sort of anti all of that we’re talking about here, one of their greatest achievements is making us believe that power money can only be used in a harmful way.

 

Katie Treggiden 

Yeah, I mean, the phrase champagne socialist, in a nutshell, kind of screwed us.

 

Ray Dodd 

Absolutely. And, and really, for me, it’s not about not making money. It’s not about holding power. It’s about what we do with it when we’ve got it. So I am very, very pro redistribution of money and power. But until we have the resources in our hands, you can’t redistribute what you don’t have. That’s completely impossible.

 

Katie Treggiden 

And there is evidence to show that when women have money, when people of colour have money, they spend it in their local communities they give to good causes, like, you know, that redistribution, I think happens almost immediately. As your business grows, as you hire people, you’re creating jobs, you know, you’re investing in things, it’s kind of there’s that I think there’s the sense of money being something you hoard and accumulate, but it’s really something that flows through you and goes towards the places that you want to support, right,

 

Ray Dodd 

Which is why this stuff is really layered, because what it means is a divesting of an unravelling, and kind of figuring out all that conditioning, which could if we don’t look at it lead us to do the stuff we’re fearful of doing. Because we can easily just follow like in the same way that so many self employed people accidentally recreate corporate environments in their business, unless they think it through. Similarly, we can recreate harmful practices of capitalism, if we don’t look at what’s going on here. Having said that, you can do that in the process of making money. You don’t need to unravel it all, okay, I’ve got this perfect now.

 

Katie Treggiden 

In fact, good luck trying to get it perfect if you’re not doing the work at the same time.

 

Ray Dodd 

Exactly. So it’s that kind of like, let’s like do it alongside like the work, let’s be unravelling this stuff. Let’s reimagine it. Let’s get really creative. And this is the thing like these are, these are communities full of creatively thinking people, but they’ve been told creativity is separate to money, because of the starving artists narrative and all of that stuff. Like they’re two separate things that are money’s not really for me, because I’m creative, and I’m an artist, but we need those very brains, to be in that space to be making money to be charging certain amounts, so that there are more money in those people’s hands. And I use this example all the time, but I used to work in youth work, but part of my meandering journey to where I am now. Used to work in youth work in London and the example I was used as it was when Boris was mayor and he cancelled this anti racism concert because he said, and I’m trying to think this is probably like two I can’t remember when he was mayor, but like maybe like 2006 2007 2008 kind of time. And he cancelled this big concert, I think used to be called The Rise Concerts. And this is anti racism concert, because he said there is London doesn’t have a problem with racism. It’s not a problem. Instead, I’m going to introduce Latin lessons for all inner city children in London. Now, obviously, that’s ridiculous. I don’t think it ever happened. But what’s interesting to me with that is with his Eaton head, that’s what he thought was the solution. Now, obviously, all of us going, what now Boris, because we have the experience in various different ways, there are people that are perfectly placed, because they’ve lived it to actually know what effective solutions would be to those situations. It’s not Latin, but they wouldn’t even consider that, but they’re not in positions of power. And so when we only have these, like, you know, certain often white privileged men in these positions, they are going to come up with nonsense like that. And we need people with more power, more money, and I want to say as well, it’s not everybody’s role to be earning tonnes and tonnes of money. That’s not going to be what everybody space is, but it is going to be some people’s. And a lot of people who space it is are opting out of it, because they also have values that they believe are in direct opposition to that. And I just want us to blow that open, and hold it all together and reimagine what it looks like.

 

Katie Treggiden 

And I think it’s also that thing, there’s a phrase, which I’m sure I’ve also picked up from you, which is the difference between power with and power over. Like, we tend to imagine that if you’re in a position of power, you are in a position of dominance. Yes. And that’s not necessarily the case, right? You can be in a position of power and still be alongside people rather than over them, which I think is, again, you know, a piece of social conditioning that needs untangling. Yeah, you know, we’re sort of very much in systems of hierarchy but we can be in the bio leadership fellowship talks about mycelium networks, rather than kind of hierarchical structures, which I think is really interesting.

 

So how about the kind of this idea of, we shouldn’t need support? Like you shouldn’t need coaching? If you’re a proper if you’re a proper business person, men don’t need all this support? How come, how come you need it? Like there’s a real, and I’ve had pushback from several friends, I’ve spoken to about this stuff, I don’t understand why you need all this support, Katie. So what, how about that kind of stigma around coaching?

 

Ray Dodd 

Someone said that to me on my podcast, once I was interviewing, they said, I don’t see why women need all this coaching. I was like, well. So I would argue people just left out of moneymaking will need more support, because like I said, their obstacle course is greater. So it’s like, you know, you’re Yeah, you are going to need that, you are because and I don’t love it as a fact, like, I don’t want that to be true. But when you have been brought up to believe that, you know, one of the things I was going to say when you mentioned about power, like what we have to remember is the people that are avoiding power are often the people who’ve been most harmed by power. So they don’t want to wield it. They don’t want to be part of causing the sort of harm that’s been caused to them by people in power. So it makes sense that they don’t trust themselves with it, because they’ve not seen it used in ways that didn’t cause harm. Obviously, that’s why they are exactly the people that should be holding and redistributing, not talking about hording im talking about redistributing power in those ways, because they do know, they do know that they can trust themselves in that and they know what needs looking at. So yeah, so I think when it comes to having that support. It’s interesting actually, I don’t think I’ve thought about it this way before. But when you think about the the general narrative around power, it’s somebody at the top getting it all right, telling us all what to do. And actually having support is its own version of redistributing power. It is a version of saying, You know what, I don’t have all the answers I do need help it. I do need, I am, and you don’t have to be lost to have coaching. But this, this conditioning that we’ve talked about runs so deep, and if we’re not careful, like I said, we recreate things like we recreate systems that we actually are very, very much against, because we’re just not conscious of how it plays out in our lives. And I talk a lot in my work about delusion because in money making particularly people often come to me and they’re like, Oh, I just it just seems delusional that I could make that amount of money.

 

Katie Treggiden 

It seems delusional that we could sort out the climate crisis in the next eight years.

 

Ray Dodd 

Exactly, exactly. And I’m always like, you know, what, you have been deluded into thinking that you’ve been deluded into believing that things that are very, very possible for you are not possible because that benefits other people. Yeah, it keeps them in their spaces and in their roles. And, and the idea that you and the example I always use, and I know, you’ve heard me say this a million times, it’s like, and it doesn’t work as well now, because they actually did it. But at the time, when I started talking about this, I used to be like, you’re worried that earning like, 5k a month is delusional. In the meantime, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are building rocket ships to fly into space. And then they did it. One of them was, am I allowed to say that one of them was penis shaped? And it’s bizzar, but that they don’t look at that and think that’s delusional, like think if they had put the effort and the money into the environment they did with that, can you imagine, can you imagine? So it’s so interesting to me, and heartbreaking, what we say it’s not possible for us.

 

Katie Treggiden 

And I think you have all these all these people around you with their own sets of social conditioning and fears for you and worries you. Yeah. So you sort of say, you know, Mum, I’m going to launch this new business or mom, and they sort of go God don’t do that. It might go wrong, you might get hurt. Yeah, yeah. And I think sometimes you are the only voice of reason in my entire ecosystem, because everybody else has their own kind of vested interests, for want of a better term and what I’m doing right, and it scares them a little bit that I’m going to, you know, go to Canada and do a keynote about waste, or whatever it is. And I think sometimes just having one person in your corner who’s like, Yeah, I think you’ve nailed that.

 

Ray Dodd 

yeah, exactly.

 

Katie Treggiden 

It’s like, so powerful.

 

Ray Dodd 

Totally. And I think this is the thing, like a lot of this is about really dismantling those power structures that say, you should be able to do this without help. Yeah, like, you should just know you should be like, we don’t expect that of top sports people, right?

 

Katie Treggiden 

That’s always been my analogy. Athletes have coaches, why don’t the rest of us get coaches?

 

Ray Dodd 

It’s completely like, because it’s helpful to bounce stuff off, they have someone watching their game, who’s gonna tell them like, Okay, you could do this or that, like, we’re not meant to operate in isolation. And again, that is some capitalist, white, patriarchal, like horrible conditioning. And the idea that like when people say, like, oh, you know, self development, blah, blah, blah. And of course, there’s weird aspects of self development. There’s weird corners of nearly every single industry. But the idea that we should be able to do it all by ourselves, and that it’s somehow a problem to get support. I think it’s so interesting to me that the coaching industry is one of the fastest growing industries in like the world at the moment. And there is a high percentage of women coaches in that and loads of those coaches are doing this work. They are doing that they are being coached, they’re not necessarily doing the style I do, but they are doing a version of self development work and a lot of them are making, there’s lots of coaches not making money of course, there are there are a lot of coaches making a lot of money. And it’s interesting to watch how that is playing out in an in a industry that is very much built on getting support, because that’s what we sell. So the majority of those people will be in like, group coaching programmes, and there’ll be talking to each other and all of that stuff. And I think that’s interesting that other people are like, Oh, but we can’t, you know,

 

Katie Treggiden 

Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting, isn’t it, that that sense of like, individualism versus kind of connected interdependence. And we are, we are an inherently community driven, connected species. And yet, as you say, this kind of capitalist patriarchal system, which has led us to believe that it’s about competition, rather than collaboration, that it’s about individuals, rather than communities is actually what’s causing a lot of the problems in the planet. And I think there’s some really interesting work around kind of the being rather than just doing so you kind of have to, we have to find a different way to be in order to then get to the work of solving some of these problems.

 

Ray Dodd 

And it is inherently unfair, but the obstacles are different for people traditionally left out of those spaces like that is more for them to figure out that is more for them to unravel.

 

Katie Treggiden 

I think they’re getting more of those kind of messages constantly. If you’re, if you’re someone who has traditionally seen in these spaces, then you’re getting more reinforcing positive messages than someone who is pioneering.

 

Right one last question before we get to the quickfire round and this is about nuance, which I know is your favourite subject. And you talk a lot about nuance, and it’s one of the things I love about your work because it’s never kind of black and white or simple. And I think a lot of the problem in environmentalism space at the moment is kind of polarising black and white, right or wrong, if you’re not vegan, you’re getting it wrong kind of vibes. So how do we champion more plurality in the conversation? How do we kind of encourage more complex narratives, particularly in a world that’s dominated by instagram and twitter and kind of spaces with so little space to explore the complexities?

 

Ray Dodd 

So I think one of the ways is we listen to people and their experiences, and we platform other experiences. So one of the things that I think about things from lots of different perspectives is because I, again, this is the nosy thing I was talking about, I’m super nosy about how different people experience the world, and why they feel certain things and what their, you know, in a kind of inner experience looks like, and I don’t know where this came from. But it’s always really mattered to me that you believe them when you hear things. And so as I do that, the more I listened to people, and some of that is like talking to friends, and you know, interviewing people on my podcast, but some of it is just observing other people’s posts, and making sure that I have a very diverse Instagram feed and all of that stuff, and then listening to what they have to say, and then folding that into my own thinking. So like, not that I can understand from their perspective, but I can ask myself, from what I know how could that look different for somebody else? Like what could come up here? Like what experience? And that doesn’t mean that I cover all the basis, f course not I, I also am very conscious of the fact that I can’t cover all the bases, because I think this can lead into a version of hyper vigilance where you’re just like, what, well, I haven’t got everybody’s perspective, we can’t have everybody’s but we can look out of eyes other than just our own.

 

Katie Treggiden 

Curiosity over judgement isn’t it.

 

Ray Dodd 

And so. And also just asking, like, one of the questions that we would ask in business a lot is like, what’s keeping people like, away from this? Like, what are people’s objections? What are people stuck on? What are they struggling with? And I think, at the moment, environmentalism has an issue of people not opting in. Like, it’s like a course that’s not selling as well as you’d like it to. Right. Like, and you would ask yourself, like, Well, why not? What are people, what do people need to know before they buy into this, like, what are they struggling with? And so I think really asking yourself, like, what are what, where are people out here, and can I, how do I listen, and believe what they’re telling me rather than it just being a kind of, again, a power struggle of who’s right and who’s wrong? Because it’s not rightness, it’s not the correct solution that fixes the environment. It’s gonna be a mixture of all sorts of different solutions actually being, actually happening, rather than fighting over who does the right thing.

 

Katie Treggiden 

Yeah. And I think a lot of the barriers are things we’ve talked about, like perfectionism, and the sense that it’s not for me, because I drink Diet Coke. I mean, can you imagine if I hadn’t embarked on this whole environmentalism career because I drink Diet Coke. When you were saying that sounds so ridiculous to me. And yet there was actually a part of me, that was like, I can’t do this because I’m not a proper environmentalist.

 

Ray Dodd 

Yeah, so exactly. It will look different for people. I bet there were people listening who go Oh, my God, I’ve dismissed myself because of this.

 

Katie Treggiden 

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And I think so many designer makers think, well, I’m putting more stuff out into the world. Yes, therefore, I can’t be an environmentalist. Whereas, as you said, if you are inherently somebody who makes then use making to help find the solution, right, let’s not discount the thing, the space that we are supposed to show up in.

 

Ray Dodd 

Absolutely, because the people making loads of plastic aren’t going to stop, right? Like they’re not going to, so it, and they’re potentially people are discovering new ways of doing stuff, but also, we also need beauty. We really need beauty and inspiration all of that stuff around us like that is again another fuel for us in terms of just existing on the planet that we have.

 

Katie Treggiden 

Object that we connect with emotionally and keep and repair. And I think I think a lot of makers are inherently circular, I think craft is inherently a circular activity.

 

Right, quick fire round. Which is kind of adapted from yours, let’s say best book you’ve read or listened to lately.

 

Ray Dodd 

So I don’t read a lot of non fiction anymore. We can go fiction. I’m just reading lots of fiction, and my fiction, I feel like well, let’s be ourselves. I read a lot of fantasy, nerdy stuff. What is the best one I’ve read recently? You know what it’s not what you would think of and it’s not fantasy actually, but that I absolutely adored was tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, which has been a very like, well, like it’s a literary fiction one by Gabrielle something. I can’t remember her surname. That was awesome. It was about people who make video games. Okay, it was just like, and I do like video games, but you wouldn’t need to to like it. It was just brilliant. And I know lots of people have really loved it as well. So that would be my book recommendation. I can’t think of one that I’ve read. I will, no I will recommend and I always do recommend it terms of a book. I haven’t read this for ages. The soul of money. Oh, yes, The Soul of Money is the most glorious book and particularly within the discussion we’re having is the most glorious book about how to really think, like move out of scarcity thinking but in a way that considers the world not just your own, having loads of money. Yeah, it’s beautiful. So that would be my nonfiction and my fiction would be tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

 

Katie Treggiden 

Awesome. We will link to both of those in the show notes. Favourite podcast apart from mine or yours and we’ll link to yours in the show notes as well.

 

Ray Dodd 

I listened to a lot of Serena Hicks’s podcast and her podcast, she’s changed the name of it. I think it’s called Serena Hicks is talking about money again. I really like her podcasts. And I listen, I mean, this is such as a coach cliche, but I really loved Dare to Lead by Brene Brown. Oh, yes. So good. I mean, particularly that one, I just, I love her. I came across a tick tock that was slagging her off, and I’ve never been more upset by it.

 

Katie Treggiden 

I know, there’s like a there’s a Brene Brown backlash now, which I’m so upset about.

 

Ray Dodd 

And I think it’s really, anyway we don’t need to go into that. I think is quite unfounded and actually quite misogynistic some of it, but anyway.

 

Katie Treggiden 

I think she’s just got too popular and people don’t like things that are that popular.

 

Ray Dodd 

Well people keep suggesting she’s not qualified. Oh, wow I mean, she’s very qualified. Yeah. Which is why I’m saying it seems quite misogynistic to me people. She’s just some self help woman. She’s got a PhD. Yeah and she’s done ample research as a whole like, anyway.

 

Katie Treggiden 

Female with opinions, that’s the problem. Yeah. Finish this sentence circularity is

 

Ray Dodd 

I think, so circularity for me is that everything’s connected, that’s what I would say. So, you know, talking about the way that the conditioning impacts your emotions and how you show up, and you know, there is no separating that stuff, so that would be what I would say.

 

Katie Treggiden 

Yeah, one of the things we talk about is how we are connected to nature and we are part of the ecosystems and the mycelium network. And yeah, moving away from individualism, as we’ve been talking about. One thing you wish sustainable designer makers and craft people knew.

 

Ray Dodd 

That making money does not, is a good thing in your desire to make those changes, not a bad thing. Like it’s helpful. It’s a resource. It’s what, it’s an you know, like money is a renewable, everlasting, in lots of ways resource. Because there’s always more money.

 

Katie Treggiden 

Yeah, yeah. And yeah, it’s what you do with it. Right? It’s, it’s neutral until you do something with it.

 

Ray Dodd 

Sorry, just quickly, that circularity as well, that you’re talking about with money, if we aren’t hording it, if we’re continuing to put it back in, it keeps coming back, and we keep giving it out. And that’s so important, my God.

 

Katie Treggiden 

Yeah, best or worst life or business advice you’ve ever been given?

 

Ray Dodd 

I think worst was, don’t think a negative thought for more than seven seconds, or it will happen in your life. I’m pulling a face just for, like, yeah, I mean, that I knew that was nonsense when someone said it. And I still was like, because I was in a space of desperation at the time, money wise, there was still that feeling of like, but what if it’s true, maybe I shouldn’t, like it’s such a like, absolute nonsense, like, Oh, I hate that. Best, actually and this is always my answer to this is, the amount of money you have in your account is only an indicator of what you have done, not an indicator of what you can do. And I love that, because I think we can really big ourselves up about when we look at the numbers, but it’s it’s all this, like ever evolving moving thing rather than something we land at. And that potential is so important to hang out with and hold on to.

 

Katie Treggiden 

Yes, yes. And yeah, same with environmental impact. I love, I love all these connections and yeah, parallels, right, what you’ve done so far is only an indication of that not an indication of your potential. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much, Ray.

 

Ray Dodd 

Your welcome, thanks for having me.

 

Katie Treggiden 

Gorgeous, gorgeous conversation as I knew it would be. I will put links to where people can find you in the show notes so that they can go check out your stuff. Yeah, I’ll see you tomorrow for our next coaching session. All right, thanks. Bye.

 

OUTRO

Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed what you’ve heard, follow me on Instagram @KatieTreggiden.1 And if you’re a designer maker who’s interested in sustainability, DM me a little recycling symbol and I’ll add you to my close friends group, which is especially for sustainable designer makers.

You might want to sign up to my E-newsletter via the link in the show notes. And it would be amazing if you could follow or review the podcast in whichever platform you’re listening on, that really helps other people to find it, so that’s super helpful.

I want to say one last thank you to Inhabit my gorgeous brand partner for this season who have helped bring it to life and I also want to give a shout out to the Ko-Fi supporters from the initiative that we did in series two. So Kathryn Kernow, Bob Shankley, Eleanor Burke, Vicky Pulter, Leslie Curtis, Val Muddyman, David Clarke and Nolan Giles all bought me a virtual coffee to help with the production of season three.

And last but not least, I want to say a huge thank you to Kirsty Spain whose production skills you are listening to as I speak.

Thank you so much for listening.