“That was probably the most formative 18 months, the best education I could’ve got was those 18 months in terms of what it took to launch a business.  But crucially understanding that it is okay to fail if you fail for the right reasons.  If your morals and values are in the right place, it is absolutely fine to test something out and fail.”

 

This episode of the humans at work podcast features Jules’ conversation with Dan Sherrard-Smith, Founder of MotherTree, a ground-breaking social impact organisation giving its customers the information they need about how their money is used within the banking and pension industries, and giving them the control to use their money for good. 

Dan has been focused on social impact and climate change since he was a child, through trying and not succeeding with this first charitable organisation targeting loneliness, to his success with Look After My Bills.  He talks candidly about his responses to initial failure, lessons learned, and his inspiration for founding mymothertree.com, which is using the old adage ‘money talks’ to send big messages to global systems about humans and our focus on a positive life worth living.

Dan and I talk about:

• being a first-time parent and balancing parenting with work
• the similarities between parenting and running businesses
• Good Company and what he learned from it and the value of failure
• not letting others or yourself put you in a limiting box of potential
• the inspiration of the Mother Tree, and purpose and values of mymothertree.com
• how The Climate Challenges work
• learning from nature
• concepts of control and choice
• building better systems to transition to, and taking a longer-term perspective
• the importance of purpose, and its link to optimism and resilience
• what’s next for www.mymothertree.com

Resources and Links:

To learn more about Dan:

Visit My MotherTree

Follow Dan on LinkedIn

To learn more about Mother Trees or hub trees, visit the MotherTree project website at or Suzanne Simard’s website 

connect with Jules:

Follow Jules on LinkedIn

Need an engaging, thought-provoking, inspirational speaker or facilitator? Talk to Jules about her availability via Calendly

To get Jules’ help with your organisational or leadership challenge, visit www.jerica.org or go ahead and book a time with Jules via Calendly

keep connected with humans at work:

To listen to more podcasts and read Jules’ blogs visit humansatwork.org

To improve your ethical leadership, sign up to our free self-paced digital Matching Values to Action course