Zero Ambitions Podcast

This episode is a window into the consumer side of domestic retrofit that’s full of lessons for everyone involved in the retrofit sector. 

We speak with retrofit influencer Judith Leary Joyce about the experience of undergoing a deep retrofit and learning how to communicate about the subject with normal people. She talks us through her journey from building an extension during the pandemic to getting deep into retrofit and eventually becoming an unlikely retrofit influencer.

Whether you work in a domestic, commercial, or industrial setting the nature and needs of normal people will remain the same, so this is an episode full of lessons and insights for anyone  for anyone involved in domestic retrofit about:

- how to speak with normal people
- how to learn how to do better (TLDR: listen to yourself, or get someone to listen to you to check whether you're baffling your customers)
- how to think about their needs and understand their perspectives
- how to inspire them and inform them better prior to a project


She’s also got some fascinating insights about when people are likely to be able or willing to listen to someone talking about building performance and taking on new ideas

Notes from the show


**SOME SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**
We don't actually earn anything from this, and it's quite a lot of work, so we have to promote the day jobs.
  • Follow us on the Zero Ambitions LinkedIn page (we still don't have a proper website)
  • Jeff and Dan about Zero Ambitions Partners (the consultancy) for help with positioning and communications strategy, customer/user research and engagement strategy, carbon calculations and EPDs – we're up to all sorts
  • Subscribe and advertise with Passive House Plus (UK edition here too)
  • Check Lloyd Alter's Substack: Carbon Upfront
  • Join ACAN
  • Join the AECB 
  • Join the IGBC
  • Check out Her Own Space, the renovation and retrofit platform for women


**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**

What is Zero Ambitions Podcast?

Zero Ambitions is a consultancy and weekly podcast about sustainability and the built environment.

We find interesting and experienced guests who know what they're talking about, usually to discuss how we navigate the complexity of decarbonisation and sustainability in the built environment and its many related sectors.

Hosted by Jeff Colley and Dan Hyde, publishers of Passive House Plus magazine (UK and Ireland), the podcast has now grow into a consultancy, Zero Ambitions Partners.

The consultancy specialises in defensible sustainability communications. We create the strategy that makes built environment leaders stand out, enabling them to occupy positions that are distinct and defensible.

As with the podcast itself, we help organisations to communicate about what they do and the value that they offer. Usually, this means strategies to change a conversation from price to value and how to futureproof an offer with evidence that makes its claims watertight.

If you're a leader, or want to become one, we help you to make sense of where you stand in your sector, how to improve your positioning, how to communicate this to the market you operate in, and how to highlight the difference between you and your peer group.

If you can engage your value chain by speaking about what matters to them, you can educate your key stakeholders and turn them into evangelists for your cause.

Book a ‘ZAP Defensibility Audit’, but brace yourself
- Uncover value and opportunities that you may 
not have recognised
- Find out if your sustainability claims are defensible
- Find out if your claims are too meek
- Change the conversation from price to value