0:03

Welcome to the show, where we expose new perspectives on our ever evolving world through the lenses of various industries, cultures and backgrounds.

Our guests are disruptors, united by a common goal to bring their purpose to life.

0:21

Whether they’re from the commercial world or third sector, from the Global North or the Global South, expect an inspirational journey that will transform your perspective on just what is possible.

My name is Philippa White and welcome to Thai Unearthed.

0:43

Today, we’re diving into a fascinating journey from a career in corporate finance to a mission that could transform the future of artisanal mining.

Now, it might seem like an unexpected leap, but you’ll quickly see how it all connects when you hear Rob Caparti’s story.

1:02

Hello and welcome to episode 95 of Thai Unearthed.

Rob is a finance and transformation leader with a strong belief that social value is the foundation of business value.

After an impressive career that spanned leadership roles in Canadian and global finance, his focus shifted towards creating social impact by championing responsible mining practices.

1:28

As a partner at the Blended Capital Group, Rob is leading the charge to reshape artisanal mining through innovative formalization strategies that enhance both the dignity and productivity of millions of workers, especially in underdeveloped regions.

1:48

In today’s conversation, we’ll explore the pivotal role artisanal mining plays in the global energy transition.

We’ll delve into collaboration between artisanal and large scale miners, unpacking the challenges but also the opportunities that arise.

2:05

Rob will also share insights on how formalizing the sector can drive positive environmental impact and why a collaborative, trust based approach with communities and stakeholders is absolutely key to building lasting change.

2:23

There is so much to uncover here, so whether you’re settling in with a favorite beverage or out on the go, join us as we explore how purpose driven business can champion human rights, sustainability, and cross sector collaboration.

2:44

Hello Rob, thank you so much for joining me on Tie on Earth.

It is really great to have you here.

How are you?

I’m great.

Thanks and thanks for having me on the podcast.

I’m really looking forward to an interesting conversation.

Me too.

We got in touch.

I think it was through our mutual friend Hayden, I think.

3:02

Well, that’s right.

He’s a really good guy.

And just like you and I, he tends to think broadly about different stakeholders and how do systems fit together and the human aspects of business.

Before we get in everything that we are going to be talking about, perhaps you can tell us where you are right now for our listeners to be able to picture where in the world you’re sitting.

3:25

I’m in Canada and Toronto at home actually, which is where I tend to work out of for the most part, and we’re in the middle of summer so it’s really warm outside well.

For our listeners, my family lives quite close to you, so my brother lives in Hamilton, Heisig because I know he listens to my podcast quite often.

3:44

So he’s listening to this and my mom lives in Oakville and I went to university at the University of Western Ontario in London, ON.

So I know the area.

I didn’t grow up in Toronto.

I grew up in Winnipeg.

But I know it.

So I can, I can picture the green leaves on the trees and I can picture just roughly where you are.

4:04

So lovely.

Now, Rob, perhaps you can tell us your story.

Before your work.

Now focusing on artisanal mining, but perhaps you can help us understand a little bit more about you before this area.

Sure.

So, so before I got into this, I had a 30 or so year career in the world of corporate finance.

4:25

I worked at the DuPont Company and a bunch of leadership roles in and beyond Canada.

And really what I did was all about integration.

How do you define puzzles?

How do you solve puzzles?

How do you think about the human side of business and connect the human side of business to the process side of business towards win wins?

4:43

I did that.

Really what I learned was, well, number one, business.

And just like everything else in life, it’s about people.

And the second thing I learned is different things can be solved in different ways.

It’s all about how do you think about a puzzle and how do you put a puzzle together given key SuccessFactors as well as constraints that you need to think about.

5:06

OK.

So you worked in corporate finance.

Something must have happened for there to be sort of a catalyst to to what you’re doing now, because obviously working in this area is quite different to what I can imagine your day-to-day job was like, even though there’s a lot of overlap and I get that.

5:24

But what was it?

What was sort of that moment that opened your eyes and got you seeing things in a different?

Way.

So after 30 years of that, it was time to align my purpose and the values.

Really what I want to do is find the right topics and really give back using the skills that developed over the years towards that.

5:43

So it was time for that as much as anything.

And then I started to learn about artistal mining and my Chandra because there was a massive sector.

It’s an invisible sector.

It’s a sector with 10s of millions of people who are often disadvantaged.

6:00

And the human rights implications, the dignity of work implications and the environmental implications are are incredible.

So perhaps you can help the listener understand what the definition of artisanal mining is.

So there’s really two kinds of mining.

6:16

There’s large scale and there’s small and artisanal.

So what’s small and artisanal is our individual prospectors, individual miners.

Think Miner 49ers as a phrase.

So there’s 45,000,000 of these folks.

They work in about 80 countries.

6:33

Some of them mine gold, diamonds, other precious metals, some of them mine critical minerals, copper, cobalt, lithium and so on.

They’re vulnerable.

There’s child labour, there’s forced labour, there’s lack of safety, there’s all sorts of problems, but it’s diverse.

6:50

It’s some of them are very fine, thank you, while others live in horrible conditions.

So the opportunity is really how do you reduce the vulnerability?

How do you think about enabling dignity?

Through governance, Through equipments for financing access, through other things that notionally changes the game, allows them to produce more, but allows them to live better, more dignified lives.

7:15

Can you help us understand where the majority of these mines, where are they and are they literally all over the world?

So there’s mining all over the world because, you know, minerals are where they are.

But artisanal mining is in underdeveloped countries for the most part.

7:32

It’s in across Africa, it’s across Asia and it’s across Latin America.

And it’s really folks who are looking to lift up their situations, looking to find their fortune or to or to make a dollar to support their family.

7:48

Even though it’s even though there’s vulnerability, even though it’s a lot of issues, a lot of the time it’s the best alternative for people who have very little.

So there’s really about 15 million or so people in Africa, more than that in Asia and a few million in Latin America spread out to do this.

8:07

And as you think about them in 80 countries, they’re economically significant.

It’s 20% of the world’s gold, it’s 80% of the world’s sapphires, 15% of copper or sorry, cobalt, I mean, 5% of copper and a whole bunch of other things.

8:25

So you think about critical minerals that we’re going to need for the energy transition and and by the way, we also need for those fancy chips and AI, we’re not going to have enough critical minerals and artisanal miners are an opportunity to do something about that to increase supply.

8:43

And even as it increases supply, the way of doing that is to stabilize their business relationships.

It’s called formalize and professionalize and and as that happens, it makes their lives better.

So there’s a pure win, win.

That’s good for economies, that’s good for people, and that’s good for the energy transition all across the swaths of Africa, Asia and Latin America.

9:06

So before we get into the deeper questions that I’m going to go in, I just actually want to take a bit of a step back just so that I can understand, because the way I’m understanding artisanal mining, it could be that the listener might be thinking, are these illegal mines?

9:22

So, you know, you know, we have the big, you know, valleys and we have the big mining companies.

Are you saying that without the artisanal mining, it would be impossible for these large established mining companies that we would, I mean, I don’t know if it’s the case, but we could say that perhaps the rigor and the the rules and, and the way that they treat their staff have to be more rigorous and more in line with human rights because of just how big they are.

9:49

Are we saying that we need the artisanal mines in order to be able to fill that gap between what is actually possible for mining all of these really important minerals and what is out there and.

Yeah.

So there’s a few thoughts in there and I’ll, I’ll try to unpack because first, artisanal and illegal mining are two different things.

10:09

Yes.

So think about illegal is people with guns, people who are corrupt, people who are organized crimes in different ways.

And it happens.

There’s whether it’s a Wagner group in parts of Africa or some bad actors in Bristol, there’s different flavors of illegal mine.

10:27

What artestal miners are are traditional, they’re extensions of communities.

They’re part of the local social fabric.

They mine because it’s their best shot in life.

Maybe they’re only shot in life.

They have families.

They need to feed their families and they can’t do that very well, but there’s gold in them, their hills, so they go to them.

10:48

Their hills dig by hand, unfortunately often use mercury with their hands, which is neurotoxin.

And you know, they get to survive, they maybe get there and improve their lots of life.

So in a lot of countries, in some places artisanal mining is deemed legal.

11:06

In other places it’s not, even though it’s traditional community work.

And that’s a choice.

And that’s that’s lack of regulatory focus on the difference between truly corrupt and traditional mining.

So in terms of the link with large scale mines, the very existence of artisanal mining is often a clue for exploration.

11:28

Valet or BHP or Rio Kinto or any other major goes somewhere and fires up an exploration program as they get a land concession because ASM is working the ground.

Tesla miners don’t get paid for that.

That’s the problem, even though they’re a leading indicator.

11:44

The second thing is that artisanal and Lord scale mines often end up sharing this limited concession because the artisanal miners were there first.

So the approach towards relationship between ASM and LSM is important for, well, you know, it’s the dignity of work for the artisanal minor, but it’s also the social license for the large scale minor because they’re extensions of communities.

12:09

So if you figure out how to collaborate with these folks, if you figure out how to get along with these folks and drive towards mutual success, that’s part of the puzzle of community relationships that’s going to help you earn social license situationally.

So the short answer is by definitely on the ground, by definition they’re essential towards delivering the tonnage we need for net zero and by definition they’re they’re essential for conflict free projects because they were there first well.

12:39

It’s super interesting.

And just when you’re touching on again, how you introduce yourself just from the the human element and from the societal element.

And when we’re talking about dignity, we’re talking about rights, we’re talking about opportunity for communities, we’re talking about future of families, families and the children of those families to be able to go to school and to be able to actually pay for food on the table.

13:01

When you think how collaborations and understanding about tapping into knowledge, local knowledge, and tapping into the power of these individuals who are the people on the ground in these communities, There’s a lot there.

And it would be really interesting to understand then in the context now of what we understand what artisanal mining is.

13:21

What is it that you’re doing?

And you know who else are you doing it with?

ASM has been pretty invisible over the years.

People don’t know what it is.

What is ASM actually?

If you could just.

It’s just the acronym for Just the Mind.

Okay.

13:37

Okay, so it’s been pretty invisible over the years.

It’s devoid of finance access, sometimes it’s not deemed legal, it’s spotty at best, and engagement has tended to be inconsistent at best.

So I’m the mining partner at something called the Blended Capital Group.

13:54

And the Blended Capital Group is a shop that Paul Clements hunt for, founded back in 2012.

He’s the person who back in 2004 coined the phrase ESG and he was one of the founders of the PRI.

The principles for responsible investment.

And what we’re about is less mile impact or impact, whatever you want to call it.

14:15

It’s really changing the game around vulnerable communities, vulnerable regions, vulnerable people.

So there’s multiple focus areas.

I’m the mining partner, So what I’m trying to do with that is we’ve built the consortium partners that’s all about boots on the ground.

14:35

Being able to work with minors in different places in different ways, starting with their points of view, their realities, realities of communities.

How can we formalize, how can we professionalize in ways that make sense to those folks?

14:51

So along with that, money makes the world go round.

We all know that.

So you got to raise money to do this.

So we’re working with strategic investors to define, design and deploy financing instruments that are all about funding the work.

15:07

It’s not charity, it’s about sustainable business.

So what does sustainable business mean?

Well, minors are going to be fired up into co-ops associations, companies.

So there’s governance, equipped, trained and transition to good practices, predatory actors removed from value chains.

15:27

So does all that give you #1 gives you productivity?

So productivity is money.

It’s returns for investors.

It’s escapes from poverty, traps from minors.

It’s sustainable development for communities.

Along with money.

It’s for productivity.

15:42

It’s the dignity of work, improved safety, lower vulnerability, control over their own lives, self governance at the end of the day.

And ecology wins too.

More critical minerals, bridges, gap for the energy transition, better outcomes on deforestation, better outcomes on soil erosion and water contamination.

16:01

And big companies win too.

If you’re a giant mine that happens to cohabit with artisinal miners, you’ve got risk.

Because if that relationship goes S, you’ve got a problem.

It’s a legal problem.

It’s a PR problem.

It’s a problem on a lot of levels, so you’re incentivized to do something about that if you’re the end customer.

16:21

So whether you’re a cell phone maker that uses gold that’s potentially artisanally mined, or a luxury jeweler that sells $30,000 watches where the gold was artisanally mined, it’s not going to be a great look for you if it turns out that was mined by children up and down the chain.

16:40

All stakeholders, everyone wins and that’s the approach that we’re trying to use as we try to deploy financing and as we try to deploy consortium that’s geared towards working with miners and really based on their input and their realities, changing the game and.

16:57

When you talk to the people on the ground, some thinking, you know, obviously I’m here in Brazil, you know, I can completely imagine the types of miners.

So, so much so that I was recently at a waterfall and the guide that was taking us around said actually it’s really interesting.

There’s gold that they’ve just found on the pathway and people have started sort of going onto this individual’s land to start trying to find more gold.

17:19

And he had to kind of stop people from the local community kind of going onto his land.

And, and you know, you can, you can see how something could spring up as far as starting to, to mine that area.

But I also can imagine people who are setting up something like that quite liking their autonomy or quite liking being sort of a businessman and not wanting the Big Brother, wanting to come and come in with regulations and telling them how to do things.

17:43

Or are these individuals, the artisanal miners, actually really open to this and liking it because it provides them with more access to, you know, support?

Do they see this as a positive thing or do they feel that this could potentially start to encroach on their their freedoms?

18:01

So a great question.

Brazil has both artisanal and illegal miners and a fair bit of both.

So there’s an important distinction there.

And you think about it in your poll, you think about police action, you think about state action relative to illegal.

That’s separate and distinct from professionalizing artisanal.

18:21

So who are artisanal miners?

So, so #1 like the rest of us, they want dignity, dignity of work, opportunity, escape from poverty, identical from you, me, every other person.

Second thing, they’re business persons.

18:36

They want autonomy.

They want to be able to run business, and they want to be able to do well as they’re in business.

So do they want rules and bureaucracy?

Of course, them who wants rules and bureaucracy?

On the other hand, do they want support, open doors to financing, access and collaboration?

18:55

Well, yeah.

So it’s all about how you engage them.

It’s not about laws that say we’re going to make you legal, but we’re going to text you up the wazoo and we’re going to give you reams of paperwork because no, that doesn’t fit their reality, but we’re going to make you illegal.

19:13

And by the way, we’re going to collaborate with you.

And by the way, we’re going to open doors towards financing access.

And by the way, we’re going to install engagement expertise where local engagement starts with your voice, obviously.

Why wouldn’t they like that?

19:29

Just like the rest of us, everyone appreciates engagement and collaboration at.

What stage are you at right now?

Because it’d be interested to know.

So are you speaking to the Artisanal Minds?

Are they showing interest?

Do you have a number that have?

So, yeah, there are a number who have voiced interests and it’s all about how you approach them.

19:48

But more to the point, our partners and our associate, some of them have done this for years.

One of our strategic partners is the Alliance for Responsible Mining.

Another one is Levin sources.

These folks have done precisely.

This worked for years.

And what they do is apply flexible frameworks.

20:06

They talk to people on their own terms, they engage on approaches that make sense for where you are and who you are.

And it’s going to be different if you’re talking to someone in the DRC or in Sri Lanka, by definition.

So it’s really having the acumen and the resource to hit it on the right note so that you can build the right trust.

20:30

And it’s so interesting because we, I talk about this a lot with the work that we do, just unlikely partnerships and citizenship and collaboration and more and more sectors and companies need to start looking at how we can bring voices in from different parts of society and from different sectors to be able to solve many of the problems that we’re facing.

20:53

But it always comes down to how do you not steamroll a situation?

How do you show up?

How do you create those partnerships?

How do you bring in these other voices when sometimes what you might want is very different to what somebody else might want?

But actually there is a common ground and it’s figuring out what that is.

21:11

And at what point in time do you have those conversations and how do you bring them in and how do you get them on, you know, on side?

And it, it all comes down to trust.

And it’s, it’s interesting because you can very, very quickly destroy those relationships if they ever feel that they’re not involved at the beginning or they’re not having those conversations and they’re not being brought along, they’re not being considered in all aspects.

21:33

And it’s, it’s, it’s complicated because obviously we’re talking about, you know, different cultures and different backgrounds and.

But you know what, 100% it’s about trust.

At the end of the day, business is about one thing and only one thing.

It’s about people and it’s about relationships and it’s about trust through relationships and collaboration based on that trust.

21:54

And we forget that because, you know, it’ll be easy for for me to say, well, you got to do a value chain analysis and you got to do a stakeholder analysis and this analysis and the other analysis.

And yeah, you got to do all of that.

But at the end of the day, you got to have mindset that that’s geared towards let’s talk, let’s let’s figure out what you care about, what I care about.

22:16

Where’s the overlap in that and how does that fit in the broader scheme of things?

And it’s that discipline that’s all about what gets us towards collaboration.

As you know, I’ve written a book called Return on Humanity, and it’s all about how can we be more human in relationships and in leadership, running our companies.

22:35

And you know, I know that you’re also a big believer in this.

And I’m just wondering from, you know, you’ve touched on it, but you know, why do you think business needs to be more human?

And what is the responsibility of business to shape the future of humanity?

So #1 I couldn’t agree more with your book and.

22:54

A lot coming from someone who comes from corporate finance.

Just listeners please, if you could just remember what he did as a living, that’s that’s a great testament.

Thank you.

We’ve seen a lot of companies that have been strong, powerful, profitable companies that have fallen down over the course of time.

23:10

Why?

Because they don’t think about people, they don’t think about stakeholders.

People are the foundation of business.

Stakeholders are the foundation of business.

And do we understand that in an intend way culturally?

Well, there’s probably a little bit of work to do, but the companies that get that, does it give them competitive advantage in terms of long term value?

23:32

Well, yeah.

Does it give us as a society a competitive and advantage in terms of value?

Yeah.

Because when a company wins, stakeholders, when a stakeholder was when a company wins.

So that’s really a mindset shift that some get at others.

23:48

We need to work with them so that they get it a little more over time.

Can you tell us a story that perhaps will resonate with our listeners?

So I guess my personal value system, dignity, human rights, top of the trade and everything that I think about is in the context of that.

24:07

I guess when I think about a story, I’ve talked to a lot of our miners as I started to learn about the sector, because, you know, it’s one thing reading about there’s 45,000,000 of these people and a lot of them are in poverty.

What does that mean?

So abstract, so huge.

24:23

So I started talking to some of them.

So one example, there’s a person in Sri Lanka who’s an artisanal sapphire miner.

Sapphire is in the water, but at the edge of the sea there, and this guy dives in, dives down 100 feet, finds his sapphires.

24:41

Why?

Because he wants his family to thrive.

Then you think about some others that talk to in Africa, core gold miners and miners of other minerals.

The notion of I need this so that my family survives.

24:57

I need it so that I can personally try to bring my dignity up and have dignified work where there’s equitable opportunities.

Say, look at me personally, my parents were actually Holocaust survivors back in the day.

25:13

The notion of human rights, the notion of dignity was drilled into me as a child.

And when I learned about those folks and those kinds of it’s, wow, this is where I want to try to apply myself and see what I can do.

25:30

Yeah, it’s, it’s amazing, isn’t it?

When you have a strong story like what you’ve, you know, grown up hearing and how that obviously becomes a part of who you are.

And then when you find, like you said, your purpose, when you find your calling, you sort of think, Oh my goodness, I can now be a part of that with the knowledge that I’ve gathered over 30 year career and I can now actually start to impact the lives of those people.

25:54

I think that’s amazing.

And it’s really interesting because there’s a lot of people, I think who are in jobs, sectors, roles, whatever it is, and they’ve started to build up a career for themselves and whatever it is that they might be doing.

And maybe it’s sort of an evolution from where they are now, or maybe it’s a complete shift change to something completely different.

26:13

But I just wonder because I think a lot of people, they’ve got a story as well and they’ve got something that is sort of a calling, I guess.

And I just wonder, how has your background or your skills been applicable to this area?

And, you know, if people are looking to make some kind of transition to another sector, how did you discover that and how did you find that overlap?

26:34

I just wonder if you have any hurls of wisdom you can share with people.

A couple of thoughts.

So DuPont had 13 different large strategic business units over the years and they all thought they were unique.

None of them were unique.

They all buy, they all sell, they all make, they do the same things in different ways.

26:54

So skills are fungible.

And the notion of how can you, how can you use your skill in a different place?

You got to think it through.

But skills are fundamentally fungible #2 we live in the world that we choose to accept.

So So what do we accept for good or bad is what we’ve got?

27:11

So it’s choosing to engage, choosing to make a difference, choosing to apply those skills and figure out how to fungibly reinvent them for a given topic is what it’s all about South given that combination.

So what did I do is it’s got integration and strategic planning.

27:29

So what does integration mean?

How does the puzzle fit together?

What are the pieces?

How can they look like?

What does strategic planning mean?

How do you move from the point said and how do you plan around that?

How do you, what skills are needed, what infrastructure, what capabilities, so on?

27:47

So you think about artisanal mining.

Well, what do people do?

Well, they need financing access, which they don’t have.

They buy stuff, food, clothing, shelter and equipment.

They sell stuff or that they mine, they organize or they don’t organize.

They’re part of a business ecosystem.

28:03

So it’s informal today.

We know that.

What does formalized mean?

What are the puzzle pieces?

Well, you need a structure to formalize it into company, a coop and association.

You need, um, all the governance that goes with that.

28:18

You need the right people to buy from, the right people to sell to the right way to buy, the right way to sell, the right mechanism to reduce vulnerability.

So it’s integration and planning in my context, given this for someone else, it’s something different, but the point is skills are fungible and you choose what you accept.

28:38

That’s.

Such good advice.

And I think that advice, it’s such a hopeful message because I think lots of people feel that they’ve been doing the same thing for a long time and, you know, they just know how to do that thing.

And then you suddenly start to realize, hold on.

If you just step away for a minute, you’ll be able to see that that is very valuable, what it is that you know.

28:58

And again, it’s coming back to what’s important to you and actually probably what’s more important, the skills that you’ve developed is understanding what your thing is.

That’s actually where the hard work is.

It’s understanding what is your purpose, what is it that you want, And I think once you really start to understand that, you will very quickly recognize that what you know is very transferable.

29:21

It’s just transferring it to the area that makes you tick at the end of the day.

Well. 100% And you know, how many times have I used the words dignity and human rights on in this conversation?

Yeah.

So that’s my purpose, you know, and the domain.

29:37

And I exert that purpose on artisanal mind.

So for someone else might be a different purpose.

Yeah, of course.

Fair enough.

It’s whatever turns someone on.

It’s whatever domain makes sense.

It’s whatever skills you you can bring to a table in whatever way that’s appropriate.

29:52

It’s a question of choosing to to engage and choosing to make that difference.

I think you have mentioned it, but I think it would just be interesting, again, what I love about these conversations with people, particularly the conversations that impact communities in other parts of the world that give us a bit of a perspective that we might not have had without listening to this conversation.

30:15

You know, you have talked about the challenges facing the people that you’re working with in the artisanal minds, but I just wonder if there’s anything over and above what we have spoken about that perhaps you’d like to share just about.

Yeah, the the challenges that people face, but obviously what you’re doing to help.

30:31

So look, the sector’s diverse, people are diverse, but people are all the same at the same time.

So what I mean by that, we all want the same things.

We all want dignity, we want a fair shake, we we want a good life, we want our human rights, we want all the same things.

30:48

So engaging them accordingly while appreciating and trying to understand the cultural differences, that’s really teeing up conversations for success, conversations that build trust and drive engagement.

And it’s true in this sector, it’s true in any sector really, because people are identical.

31:06

And the work that the blended Capital Group does where I do this, it’s that same premise.

You can do work in Brazil, you can do work in some part of Africa, you can do work in the other sector in infrastructure, agriculture or whatever.

And it’s engaging people based on who they are, recognizing the common we’re all the same at the end of the day.

31:27

Who inspires you?

People who choose to make a difference, people who jump in politically, you’ve got Nelson Mandela’s, the MLK’s, the people who just choose to say no.

You’ve got people who’ve jumped into this work, like some of my partners, they’re still Evans and Patrick Chains, let’s say.

31:46

People who’ve chosen to say no.

People who chose to hide and say choose during World War Two, who found a different way dealing with injustice, there’s so many that’s that’s pretty much impossible to name, but really boils down to people who have made a choice that they are going to make a difference is.

32:08

There an inspirational quote or a Ted Talk or, I don’t know, something that you’ve listened to or that you’ve seen that you think our listeners would find interesting.

So there are so many out there that I’m not going to share a single one.

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But I’m going to say again, it’s in the context of people who choose to engage, who choose to lead with values, who choose to lead with ethics and choose to make a difference.

Pretty much anything they say matters.

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And there’s so many different approaches around how you do that.

My approach is one in a million probably.

And, you know, that means there’s another million or so approaches out there that that we can all learn from and leverage in different ways.

The end of my book, I remember my daughter asked me, She said, what are the last few words of your book?

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And I said, that’s a very insightful question.

And she goes, no, I, I always love it because I, I think that at the end of the day, any book, she’s only 13, but she said, you know what any book has to, you know, whatever the message and however you end it, those last few words are really, really important because that’s what you’re leaving people with.

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And I thought, God, well, I actually do know because I did think about it, but I hadn’t realized just how important this is.

But the last few words are the time is now.

And right before I say that, it’s you know, you know more than you think you do.

You have more power than you think you do.

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People need like the world needs what you have and the time is now.

And I, I ended like that on purpose because it’s very much in line with what you’re saying.

Everybody has their thing and unfortunately I, you know, I believe that education and culture and family dynamics and pressures, unfortunately kind of.

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Take that out of people.

And they end up finding themselves down a path that they sort of feel that they should go down or for whatever reason it might be.

And sometimes people lose their way, but it is they everyone has it.

And I just think if this resonates in any way, you know, do some work, figure out what your thing is.

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And at the end of the day, you know more than you think you do.

The world needs what you have and the time is now.

So I couldn’t agree more.

Absolutely.

And it’s funny because the time is now.

You’ll see probably a big chunk of my LinkedIn posts and with that phrase, Oh.

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Really.

Oh that’s so funny, I didn’t even know.

Yeah, vice versa too, because the time is now.

It’s a choice.

And you think about the return on humanity, those words.

So return implies something financial, humanity implies something social, and the 2GO and then glove together like full stone.

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At the end of the day, value optimization means valuable holistically and in the long term.

So it means people dignity relationships, which which directly supports financial.

So a lot of this work, it’s not necessarily charity.

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It’s like what I’m what I’m doing.

I mean, we’re not an NGO at all, but it’s engagement to change, to change the lives of people while setting up sustainable business structures because sustainable business is all about sustainable relationships and that enable dignity for all.

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And a more sustainable world.

So correct.

I couldn’t agree more.

Is there anything that I haven’t asked you that you’d like to tell our listeners as we wrap up?

I can’t believe we’re coming to the end, but is there anything that you’d like to share with our listeners?

I think there’s been a great conversation.

I really appreciated it full up and opportunity to do this with yeah, but to me, people are the sin.

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Everyone wants the sin.

So.

So whether it’s dignity rights, a fair shake in life or so, business puzzles are all about sustainable ways of moving.

The are all about sustainable ways of creating social value, financial value, value around dignity, value around the environment and so on.

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And we can all choose to do that because it really is a choice to jump in and choose to say here’s the world that we’re going to accept.

So thank you very much.

Thank you so much for joining me.

It is such a pleasure.

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Thank you to Hayden for making this happen, even though I don’t even think he knew it was happening, what it did, but the joys of two degrees of separation and 1° of separation.

So thank you, Rob.

It’s just fantastic to have you with us.

Thank you.

Hey everyone, this is Philippa.

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Again, I hope you enjoyed listening.

Now this is your chance to get involved with Ty.

If you’re looking to create better leaders, better companies and a better world, that’s just what we do by helping leaders tap into their greatest asset, their humanity.

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We have a number of corporate programs that impact a range of people, from individuals at a company to 500 people around a business.

Or check out my book, Return on Humanity Leadership Lessons from All Corners of the World.

You’ll find the answers to how business can truly become a positive force while remaining at the forefront of competition.

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You can find all the information you need on all of this at thaileadership.com.

Get in touch and I can explain more.

A huge thanks to Beja Naviera for Co producing this with me and for creating the music.

I hope we’ll meet up again soon.