S5E5 'Raising the Floor, and Smashing the Ceiling', with Tam Hussey 👊

We're halfway through Season 5 already, and we're delighted to be back with another Sustainability Veteran!

This guest has 20 years' experience in Digital Strategy, including roles guiding global mobile strategy at Unilever,  and as Head of Strategy at Infosys. 

She has then moved from the corporate world to Entrepreneurship, founding 'Halo by Design', a strategic consultancy enabling sustainability strategies through activating people. 

Welcome to the show, Tam Hussey! 👏

Tam is such an expert in the field of Digital Sustainability, we felt really privileged to have her join us and dive into her insights on:

🧪 The importance of targeting users' 'First Behaviour Change'.
👨‍👩‍👧 How Tam's "Eco-warrior" upbringing influenced her career-path.
🏢 Changes when moving from the corporate world to starting her own business.
🌱 Integrating Sustainability into organisations' core processes. 
📱 Building a future where Digital is part of the solution, not the problem.
... and much more! ✨

We loved Tam's summary quote; "It's not because people don't want to make Sustainable choices, it's that they don't know where to start". 

That quote really hits the nail on the head with where we're at as a culture, in relation to awareness of Digital Sustainability. But luckily we have such dedicated people as Tam, working hard to change that for the better. 💚

About Tam Hussey:
Tam has worked in digital strategy roles for over 20 years at start ups and large global organisations (WPP & Infosys) working with large global company’s such as Unilever, adidas and Mazda. She led the global mobile strategy at Unilever which is where she ‘cut’ her sustainability teeth working on behaviour change campaigns for Lifebuoy, Signal and Peril. Then went on to set up the digital experience sustainability practise at Infosys. She set up Halo by Design 8 months ago with the goal of leveraging digital to help clients meet their sustainability targets through activating people. 

Further Resources from the episode:
Halo by Design: https://www.halobydesign.com
Tam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tam-hussey-a970302/

Music credit: bensound.com

https://ecosend.io

Creators & Guests

Host

James Gill

CEO of GoSquared

Guest

Tam Hussey

Founder of Halo by Design, a strategic consultancy enabling sustainability strategies through activating people.

What is The EcoSend Podcast?

Our journey into the world of being a truly climate conscious business. Join us as we talk to fellow entrepreneurs, founders, marketing folks, and campaigners to help us build our new product, EcoSend: the climate conscious email marketing tool.

S5E5audio
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[00:00:00] Chris W: Welcome to the EcoSend podcast. Be inspired, educated, and entertained by the world's most ambitious leaders putting climate at the top of their agenda. Welcome

[00:00:27] James Gill: to another episode of the EcoSend podcast. I'm your host James, and for those of you new to the show, the EcoSend podcast is a weekly podcast. show where I talk to people in the world of sustainability and overall making the world a little bit better through business. It's usually half an hour and you can get the show on all popular podcast players and YouTube.

[00:00:48] So please do subscribe if you haven't already. I am thrilled this week to be joined by Tam. Tam has worked in digital strategy roles for over 20 years at startups and large global organizations including WPP and Infosys, so some pretty big names. She's led global mobile strategy at Unilever as well and is now running Halo by Design with the goal of leveraging digital to help clients meet their sustainability targets through activating people.

[00:01:20] I'm thrilled to have you on the show, Tam. How are you doing today?

[00:01:23] Tam Hussey: Really well. And thank you very much for having me, James. I'm very excited. I really enjoyed our previous chats and I'm looking forward to this one.

[00:01:31] James Gill: Awesome. Awesome. It's great to have you, Tam. I I would love to hear more about what you're up to at the moment.

[00:01:36] So Halo by Design, tell us all about this and then we'll, we'll, we'll jump into how you got to running Halo by Design because I'm, I'm very keen to hear more about your background and everything that's run up to this. So yeah, what is Halo by Design?

[00:01:50] Tam Hussey: So, Halo by Design is a strategic consultancy focused on the sustainability space.

[00:01:56] And the majority of the work that we do in that space is kind of related to carbon. And our focus is very much, once clients have worked out what they need to achieve, so they've set their targets, they know where their biggest areas of impact are, and they've done all of the great work in setting in place those targets.

[00:02:11] The policies, the processes, the partnerships, but then they actually get to the point where they need people to change the way that they behave. And those people could be their employees. They could be their partners, or they could be their customers and it's the focus of my consultancy is understanding how we can actually shift people's behavior and designing experiences to support that because my digital background, I obviously believe that digital has a massive role to play in supporting behavior change.

[00:02:40] But the reason we're called Halo by Design is very much because I get very excited about the ripple effect. I'm like, if a brand can help a customer change their behavior in one space of their life, it's like the tallest step in a playground. You know, it's really high and difficult to make that first change.

[00:02:56] And if you can be really supported in shifting your behavior in that way, then psychology dictates that you then look for other ways to behave in a similar way. So if you start biking to work, you'll start biking to the shop. If you start biking to drop your kids off to school. And before you know it, it has that ripple effect, and that will impact your carbon footprint.

[00:03:17] And even better, people around you start seeing what you're doing, and they start changing their behavior too because of social proof. So, Halo by Design is all about working with brands to create, make that first behavior change easier, and then watching the ripples spread and building the momentum that really we need to see in the space.

[00:03:38] James Gill: That is awesome. That's actually a brilliant summary. I really love that. I think we, you know, I think we talked about this a little bit when we spoke before, but it's certainly something we've sort of seen at Ecosend as well, where brands like shifting to thinking about Ecosend or even being aware of it, it then pushes them to think about all these other areas and starts these conversations.

[00:04:00] And, That ripple effect is, is absolutely real and it's so rewarding to see it, it starting and yeah, I, I love it. And great analogy too. I really should cycle more. I'm always terrified.

[00:04:13] Tam Hussey: It's, your point about awareness is spot on because I think a lot of it is not that people don't want to do things.

[00:04:18] It's just that they're simply not aware where they can have an impact. So that first step, like you talking to your clients at EcoSend to get to say, do you know your CRM? You know, all of those emails. does have a carbon footprint. And then they're like, Oh, yeah, that's it. It's not as if people are choosing not to do things.

[00:04:35] It's about sort of helping them. Yeah, eating and enabling them.

[00:04:40] James Gill: Yeah, 100%. No, all I, all I was gonna say was that I don't, I don't get a car instead, by the way. I don't drive everywhere. It's just that I tend to get public transport instead of cycling. I'm not that bad. But anyway, anyway I, so Tab, you are running Halo by Design now, which I'm sure we're going to be talking a lot more about on this episode.

[00:05:07] But. You didn't just wake up and decide to do this one day, or, well, you did wake up to decide this, to do this at some point, but what led you to be running Halo by Design? How has your journey into this space gone? I'm keen to hear, like, where it all started.

[00:05:24] Tam Hussey: Well, I think, I think the first thing to note is that my mother was the original, kind of, 60s eco warrior.

[00:05:30] So, and she was also sort of tail end of war baby. So she was always very, very focused on not wasting anything. So my childhood was all about like scraping out the last bit of the jar, you know, wearing my brother's kind of. hand down clothes, repairing. She was very focused on their finite resources. We need to be careful with them.

[00:05:53] So that was always baked into me. My father is a psychologist. So then I had the flip side of that, which was very much like, why do people do what they do and how can you help them shift if that behavior is not healthy to them? So I actually did a psychology degree at Bristol university. So that, that kind of was all in the mix.

[00:06:11] And then I was really lucky in that I had Unilever as a client when I was at WPP and I was working in their mobile strategy division. And WPP had an agency that focused very much on mobile when mobile was a separate channel, all those many years ago. And Unilever, obviously one of the front runners with the sustainable living plan in the sustainability space And there was the fact that a lot of the customers that they were trying to engage with and enable were in developing markets where they didn't have laptops, but they all had mobile phones.

[00:06:45] So in the five years that I spent leading the account there and working on the strategy there. As at the agency Jewel, I worked on a number of different campaigns that were very focused around shifting behavior to become more sustainable, with a special focus on kids working with their behavioral psychologists.

[00:07:02] And I absolutely loved it. And I love the power that digital had to make it really easy for people to shift behavior in areas that they tend to find it quite hard to do. So that was brilliant. And I went to Infosys, which was amazing, 220, 000 people. It's an enormous beast of an organization. And I was in my, at the end of my time, I was the head of strategy at one of their digital acquisitions.

[00:07:28] And I set up the sustainability proposition there. So the exam question was, how do we leverage our skills and tools to support clients meet their sustainability goals? And so, and I, I just absolutely loved it. And obviously I had a bigger, broader role there. So I couldn't dedicate all my time and effort and focus in that area, but it was an area that I felt deeply passionate about.

[00:07:50] So that was when I decided, you know, I've done 20 years work. I've probably got another 20 in me. I think it's time to, to take those two things, my skills that I've honed over those years and a real passion point and bring them together. And so I And I set up Halo by design. And that was, I mean, although it was kind of unofficially in the works for about six months, officially I set it up eight months ago.

[00:08:18] James Gill: Amazing. And I've already seen how prolific you're, you're being to drive awareness of Halo by design. And you've been writing some brilliant stuff, raising awareness of, of digital sustainability that, you know, we, we, I think that's probably how we end up chatting actually. And I mean, it's, it's also kind of, you don't hear it every day of someone leaving.

[00:08:41] Such a huge company to go do something on, on the, you know, starting something from scratch. It's it's a really bold move in, in and of itself. But what an exciting time. So so I, I guess with Halo by Design, there's something you've been talking about, which Or one of the topics you wanted to discuss, which I guess is quite fundamental to what you're doing with HaloWordSign, which is raising the floor.

[00:09:03] You talk about it. So what, what, what is raising the floor and what does that mean? How, how are you thinking about this?

[00:09:10] Tam Hussey: Thank you, James. No, I think raising the floor and smashing the ceiling are two things that they use quite a lot when I was at Unilever as as narrative. Right. We don't have

[00:09:19] James Gill: that so much in the startup world.

[00:09:20] In the startup world, the the, these raising the floors and smashing the ceilings. I like, I like the sound of them. They sound great. All right, maybe Yeah what, what do they, yeah, what do they, what do they mean? I think, James, that's mainly because you're

[00:09:31] Tam Hussey: smashing the ceiling. It's like every single time you're in a studio,

[00:09:35] James Gill: creating

[00:09:36] Tam Hussey: a new space.

[00:09:40] I mean, it was very much all about like, how do you just get the basics right? And keep raising the floor. So, you know, you never, Quite done. And so when I, when I first start talking to clients, obviously I've worked in digital for a really long time, developing digital products and services and campaigns and all of those things.

[00:09:57] And there is a real lack of awareness in the digital space and the marketing space more broadly that digital has a carbon footprint. So every digital experience Whether that's, to your point, James, and the amazing work that you're doing at EcoSend, whether that's an actual just a CRM email that you're sending, right through to your website, your application, you know, all of that has a digital carbon footprint.

[00:10:25] And there is, it all adds up. So if you think about the tech industry as a whole it's got a bigger carbon footprint than the aviation industry. And 40 percent of that is about how we all use. Digital devices. So how we use our phones and our laptops and our Alexas and all of those types of things. And that is just growing because those experiences are just getting richer.

[00:10:50] And the number of connected devices out there are also multiplying. So. When I talk about raising the floor, a big part of that is the education piece, James, you were just talking about, you know, the analysis that we've been doing in this space and trying to raise awareness of the fact that when you're creating a digital experience, you really need to be thinking about how heavy it is.

[00:11:09] And this is not a widespread thing. I know this from conversations, and we also assessed 161 UK B Corp sites and found that well over 50 percent of them had the worst grading of carbon footprint to the sites. And it's not It's not because they're doing anything wrong. It tends to just be because of that lack of awareness, of awareness.

[00:11:31] People just make richer and richer and richer experiences and they put more and more stuff and that might be the, you know, the beautiful videos that start playing or the very large images or it might be the coding in the back end. So you can very easily lighten your digital carbon footprint once you're aware of it without impacting the customer experience.

[00:11:51] In fact, there are definite benefits in terms of costs, as you know, again, from Ecosend, you know, that the costs around hosting the speed at which things load without any impact on the actual experience and the customer has, has. So when I think about, when I think about raising the floor, it's very much like, how can you just look at your digital estate and make sure that it's as light as it possibly can be?

[00:12:18] James Gill: That's yeah, there's so much to dig into that actually time. I, I'm so glad you're, you shared some of that. I, I think that for those, I will try and make sure we link to it, but the, the study on B Corp websites was actually really, I think that was what caught my eye originally. And you know, I, I think from some of our conversations, like the B Corp assessment underplays digital sustainability in quite a big way.

[00:12:39] And I think there's quite a few people sort of pushing to add more to that because I think overall in B Corp, like the climate piece is probably, you know, some might argue, it doesn't go far enough. And I know their standards are evolving. But I think it kind of goes to show that hand in hand with the education piece as well, with like, the more people are aware of, of the digital side and that having a carbon footprint of any sort, let alone starting to measure it, and let alone doing something about it.

[00:13:10] We're still such a long way from addressing that on a broader scale, but I, I thought the B Corp assessment was really interesting. I, I, I was gonna ask, like with regards to engagement with, with people, you mentioned there around how the experience making the page lighter can sometimes have benefits.

[00:13:29] Like, do, do you find that sometimes is a conversation you're having where it's less about trade offs, like, oh, make your site more climate conscious, but your conversion's gonna fail or your brand's gonna look rubbish or is it more, hey, here's. Here's how, like, how do you deal with the person who's objecting maybe to, that's really proud of that autoplaying 4K video that they've got on their homepage?

[00:13:55] What do you say to them when you're having these kinds of conversations?

[00:14:00] Tam Hussey: You're so right, James, because there are multiple people, especially in the space that we occupy, that one needs to persuade, because it's often, you know, the sustainability conversation with the CSO is the easiest one to have.

[00:14:13] Because they're like, yeah, this is amazing. It's a scope three win. That's quite easy, you know, so, and those are very rare. So brilliant, but then you also need to persuade the budget holder, because unfortunately, I think CSOs often have to go back to ask for more budget. So that's when you can talk about some of the financial benefits of having a like lighter budget.

[00:14:35] Carbon footprint in terms of the lower costs of hosting, et cetera. But then there is the conversation very much with the creative teams and the immediate feeling, and I have had this before, so I don't want my site to look like a YouGov site, you know, I need it to still be really engaging and all of those other wonderful things.

[00:14:56] And I think part of it is explaining that this is the progression of design. in the same way in the building space that it was the progression of design when you started designing for green buildings. They didn't look, they actually look more beautiful and it's a new challenge that you're layering in.

[00:15:14] And it's the same with the, with a lovely light website. This is the next iteration of design that you need to know about for your own career growth. So when you were thinking about your CV, et cetera, how are you weaving sustainability into your own skill set? Because sustainability is this. So I would argue anyone who is in a role who is not being trained how to apply sustainability to their skill set is missing out.

[00:15:38] So that training needs to happen. I think the other thing to do is the wonderful thing about digital is you can test. And we would always look not only at the carbon footprint measurement, but also the conversion rates. Like, what are you seeing? So how is the carbon footprint lowered? How is the cost lowered, but also what are the engagement levels doing and what are the conversion rates doing?

[00:15:58] We can test these things on key customer journeys or less or smaller customer journeys to make people feel more comfortable, but you're quite right, James, there are in my space and your space, it's never just one decision maker, it's always a few. So you need to retell and repivot in different ways to make things happen.

[00:16:18] James Gill: Yeah, no, it's, it's really, really good to hear that. I, I totally agree as well. I, I I think it's an interesting point you make around the training and education there and, and upskilling. And I think what I find particularly about the web side of things quite uplifting is that a sort of a more sustainable web is generally also a more accessible web.

[00:16:41] It's also, as you said, often a more affordable web when it comes to various costs of, of building a site. But also I, I think from everything we've seen, like the lighter you make a page, the faster you make it to load. It generally has a correlation with conversion. It also generally has a correlation with Google rankings and SEO.

[00:17:04] Like it has all of these other benefits. And, and I, I think yeah, sort of that, that conversation where it's like switching it from being, I've got to downgrade my website to be worse. It's actually often like everything can get better if you're willing to maybe, you know, not necessarily have the auto playing 4k video.

[00:17:25] But yeah, it's it's, it's, yeah, trying to win hearts and minds and bring everyone together is, is a huge challenge and that's, You know, that's where you come in, I guess, Tam.

[00:17:38] Tam Hussey: I love, I love what you're saying about it's basically being fit for purpose, isn't it? It's about whatever kind of, yeah, iterations that you're doing.

[00:17:46] And I think that's where I really want this to get to. I think it's, it shouldn't be something separate. The carbon footprint shouldn't be something separate. It should sit alongside what you're saying about accessibility, et cetera. It should just be one of the many metrics that you're observing. So with our clients, what we What we do is we start by looking at what they have and saying, this is where the biggest challenges are.

[00:18:09] This is where the, where the weight is now fix it. But the main thing is that we. We advise, we do the training and it's about how can you weave the measurement and KPIs into your overarching measurements and KPIs. So whenever you're doing QA for an existing page or a new page or whatever, you're as a matter of course, looking at those metrics and looking at the metrics for the whole site.

[00:18:31] So it should never get bigger than a certain size and always monitoring that rather than it being sort of separate, that's being run out of the CSOs. Should be. Integrated into the business along with those other KPIs.

[00:18:46] James Gill: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I I feel thoroughly inspired already about raising the floor.

[00:18:53] What about smashing the ceiling here, Tam? What are we, how are we going to smash this ceiling in a responsible way?

[00:18:59] Tam Hussey: I love it. I love the tagline. So I'm really excited about the power of digital. And I've seen How well it's been used to, you know, especially cause I was the early days of mobile before the iPhone, everyone was like, you're never going to browse the internet on the phone.

[00:19:17] What are you talking about, Tam? Now you look at like how mobile has just driven consumption and it's driven social and it's driven all these other areas. And I'm really excited about it being leveraged to actually drive the shift around, you know, the five key behaviors that we need to change. I'll always forget one, but it's, you know, transport, food.

[00:19:39] Energy consumption and food, energy consumption. I've missed one, but it'll come back to me. But it's like how can we start to use digital to to, to start to drive, to drive that behavior? And I think. There are a number of different ways that you can do it, but a lot of brands say to me, well, why would I do it?

[00:20:01] Like, why do I need to get involved in behavior change? Like, what's in it for me? And I think a big part of it is your, normally your scope three goals. So like the FMCGs like Unilever, et cetera, have goals about what happens to their products, how much water is used when you're using them, how much, you know, what happens to the product at end of life.

[00:20:20] A lot of their, actual emissions sit within that scope three area that they can't control. So in order to meet their sustainability targets, they really need to be engaging consumers. The second thing is it protects the green, green washing. You can't just say my product's great without actually kind of like walking and walking and helping people use it in the right way.

[00:20:38] If you're, if you're, you know, personal is great at being used at 30, 30 degrees, what are you doing to make sure it's actually used at 30 degrees? Or if your product is fully recyclable, what are you doing to help people do, you know, think, bring things, products back at the end of life? And I think the third area is there is an area of risk, like increasingly regulation is biting so that brands are responsible for what happens to their products.

[00:21:03] Pepsi was sued by New York for the amount of plastic, the amount of plastic and tin cans that were in the river.

[00:21:11] James Gill: And we're

[00:21:12] Tam Hussey: seeing regulation coming in in Europe about the microplastics and paying for microplastics that actually end up in the system. So there is, For your, you know, for the risk side of things and the FD, like how do you put that on your, on your, on your bottom line, that the risk of those fines.

[00:21:27] James Gill: And

[00:21:28] Tam Hussey: then the fourth area is that consumers are actually really asking for help. Like 88 percent of people really want brands to help them do the right things with their products. And a lot of them just don't know what to do. So, A lot of times when I start saying, use digital to support behavior change, people go, why?

[00:21:45] Back to what we were saying before James, the multiple people you have to persuade. And then, and then, you know, you start thinking about like, how can you actually use digital? And I love digital because you can, you can make very minor tweaks to existing journeys. Like adding a couple of lines to an email.

[00:22:03] And I'm going to talk more about that, James, because I know that's what we were chatting about last time, but it's like, you can just put nudges into existing customer journeys, just to nudge people to behave a little bit more sustainably around delivery options, for example, or Skyscanner has done it really well with their climate conscious flights.

[00:22:21] So just by putting the little leaf by the climate conscious flights, 159 million people have picked that option. So it's been just a tiny tweak and it made a huge impact. And the same thing goes, we worked with a When I was at Infosys with a carbon calculator, they were having real issues around shifting transport behavior.

[00:22:45] And we just made, understood the customer well, understood which behavioral levers to use, and just put copy changes through an existing journey and dropped the emissions relating to carbon footprint by 40%. So, Raising the ceiling is about how do we actually start to break sustainability out of a silo, tab on your website and weave it into everything.

[00:23:07] All these lovely little nudges, like the original one on the emails, which was I think it was, you do not need to print this email. Which I, I still think. Yeah, yeah.

[00:23:21] James Gill: The first digital nudge, yeah.

[00:23:24] Tam Hussey: First digital nudge.

[00:23:25] James Gill: Yeah, that, I, I, I haven't, I haven't seen that for a while. But every now and again I do still, still get an email that says, do you really need to print this email? And and again, I do not need to print that email. Definitely not. But, but that is, it's such a good point.

[00:23:39] I, I love that. I think coming from. A world where, you know, I guess, like, I've always been involved in the world of software and, and tech, and it's sort of easy sometimes, I guess, to take for granted that world, but I, I think when you marry it up with the real physical world, you realize this power that, that exists to change behavior at scale and, and yeah, your example there of Skyscanner and the impact of that.

[00:24:08] And I think I've been seeing it in a few more places with I guess in the UK, we have like train nine and estimating carbon footprint say versus I guess flying, I think is the comparison they make. And then also Shopify has their for consumers, their shop app where they Automatically try and calculate carbon footprint of your delivery and help you find more sustainable delivery options.

[00:24:33] And I think the knock on effect of that as well is really interesting where it's like you start seeing this more and more and those little nudges, they all add up. As you were saying earlier around people's individual behavior change and thinking, well, why am I not saying that, you know, it starts being like, why am I not saying those nudges on this other company I use, like maybe.

[00:24:53] That's a bit strange, or thinking about asking those same questions in other parts of their life where it's less visible, so, yeah, it's incredibly powerful, isn't it?

[00:25:03] Tam Hussey: It's so powerful, and I think, you know, as we were saying at the beginning, there are areas Where people aren't ready to make a change, but there are a number of different like low barrier to entry, easy things that people can do, which to your point starts them on that journey.

[00:25:19] So it's like, no, actually I will offer less deliveries in a longer period of time for carbon footprint. And those things are all priming you to your point to make some bigger changes. Like the next one might be what I do on Amazon, which is I have everything delivered to my co op. So that it doesn't have to do last mile to my house every day.

[00:25:36] So I started with the less deliveries and now I've got the co op option and now I just do it once a month. So it's like a sort of slow, gentle journey, but it's not, it's not hard. There's no like big kind of. Massive barrier that I have to get through, but sometimes there are, sometimes there's really ingrained behavior, and then you really need to start to create like specific, you know, products or services to really support with shifting that behavior.

[00:26:03] And again, digital can be really, really useful in those spaces to make it really easy for people to do.

[00:26:11] James Gill: Yeah, I, I guess that maybe tees us up very nicely towards the future then Tam and where you see things going. And I guess maybe we're just getting started on a lot of this, right?

[00:26:24] Tam Hussey: I think we are getting started on this.

[00:26:27] I think where I have. You know, real cause for hope is that there is an enormous amount of enthusiasm once I've talked to people about this. Exactly as you were saying, James, I'm sure it's the same with you with Ecosent. It's not because people don't want to do these things. It's just because they don't know about them and they don't know how to start.

[00:26:49] So I think for me, the future that I would like to see, and that's why you and I are banging the drums so hard, is like one in which digital is part of the solution and not part of the problem. Because I think at the moment, you know, like anything in life, you know, you can use the tools you have for good, or you can use them inadvertently for not so good.

[00:27:14] And I think digital has the power, as long as it's light, as long as these experiences are very nice and light, and people are aware of how to use them so that they stay light. Then I think digital has an enormous role to play in, in helping all of us adapt our lives to be more sustainable. So in my hopeful future, that is what I see.

[00:27:36] And I see like you and I meeting, I see more and more companies who are springing up in this space. To make it easier for brands to actually. be able to move in that direction, like shifting their CRM capabilities onto Ecosend is like, okay, so that's one piece of the puzzle that's fixed. Looking at their own digital estate and lightening it there, that's another piece that's fixed, etc, etc.

[00:28:01] So

[00:28:01] James Gill: yeah,

[00:28:02] Tam Hussey: I see momentum. I love momentum. That's my future. Digital is for good.

[00:28:10] James Gill: I agree. I know, I totally ditto that the momentum And and yeah, the growing awareness it the more momentum the more momentum is created, I think, and which is very reassuring. I think one area, not to drop this in right at the end, but like, I think an area that I certainly see is a challenging one in the future is the AI piece and the conflict there of of how huge the energy demands are for AI.

[00:28:38] And I think, you know, I don't know when this podcast will go out, but we're recording just like about a week after, I think Microsoft's saying they're worried they might hit their Net zero goals by 2030 because of the growth of AI and I think it's a really difficult topic because there are huge energy needs, but then potentially AI could help us come up with some very creative solutions to, to things too.

[00:29:02] So this is never an easy, easy discussion, is it? It's never an easy equation to figure out. There's no obvious answers sometimes.

[00:29:11] Tam Hussey: No, there aren't. There aren't. And I think it's exactly what we were saying before about force, force for good or force for not so good. But I think what's brilliant about the industry is that that problem is being worked on at all the different levels.

[00:29:24] So if you think about behavior change, it's a very important aspect, but there's also like, how is the AI being powered? How can we be more efficient and effective with the energy that we use and use more renewable energy? How are they actually creating the software that runs it? You know, what are the devices that are powering it?

[00:29:42] And then how are people using it? So. I, in this industry, as you know, James, I, I, I'm, I'm a very positive person and I hang on to that because it's quite easy to kind of feel a little, a little dismayed or quite a lot dismayed some days, but I take comfort from the fact that. You know, the awareness, the fact that Microsoft is saying that, you know, it's a known problem and it's being tackled at all different levels.

[00:30:11] And so it's, this isn't something that was created, you know, 40 years ago that everybody is highly dependent on already that is built in a particular way that's not changeable. So I'm, I hope that the two things can find a way, if you think about those four layers, as it's being built into every element of that AI journey.

[00:30:31] To try and keep it as light as it possibly can.

[00:30:36] James Gill: I, I think we all need a little bit more of your, your, your positive and optimistic outlook, Tam. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you. I, I, I think we're, basically, that is about half an hour that's gone by so quickly. Before we wrap up did you have any advice?

[00:30:55] For anyone listening and watching, Tam, I know you may, may have a few suggestions.

[00:30:59] Tam Hussey: I think the key thing is, as somebody who's entered this space, I mean, I did have experience of it in my first 20 years. But I think anyone who's watching this, who is thinking, I want to be part of this journey, because it is quite an extraordinary journey, the sustainability journey, James, that we're, we're starting on, you know, I, I lived the, the, the mobile transformation journey and I loved it.

[00:31:24] The sustainability journey is an incredible journey to take. The people that I meet are universally inclusive, helpful. Everyone's trying to connect everyone to everyone else because we've all got a common goal that we all need to achieve. So it's an amazing industry, if you can call it that, or sector, or whatever you want to call it, space to come into.

[00:31:46] The other thing is your skills are needed. I mean, I think there is a big barrier to entry to get into sustainability because everyone's a bit worried. They're like, I'm not sure what it stands for. I don't know what I could do. The reality is it needs to be baked into every part of a business, every single one.

[00:32:02] And for that to work, we need people who have worked in those areas who know them really, really well, and who can apply sustainability to what they do. So please don't be frightened to get involved and lean into this conversation. If, if it's something that you feel passionate about, because we really need all of those other skillsets.

[00:32:21] And I'm not saying necessarily quit your job and do what I did, but you know, there are relatively low barrier to entry ways that you can start to think about how you weave this into your day to day role. How do you learn about it? There's a lot of free resources and people are very happy to share because.

[00:32:39] I think everybody feels like the more people who are pushing in this direction, you know, the better it will be.

[00:32:49] James Gill: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, that is a fantastic place to wrap up the show, Tam. Thank you so much. I, I'm going way into my day feeling very energized, inspired, motivated now. I hope our listeners are too. I'm sure they are. So thank you, Tam. If you would like to learn more about what Tam's up to, please do, well, I would definitely recommend following Tam on LinkedIn.

[00:33:12] We will, we will put a link to your LinkedIn in the, in the show notes because you are sharing some fantastic pieces on LinkedIn. And go check out the website, halobydesign. com if you'd like to learn more. I think that's all your links, right Tam? Anything else you want to share? Or is that, is that, is that everything?

[00:33:29] Yeah? Yeah, that's

[00:33:30] Tam Hussey: everything. That's everything. James, thank you so much for for the time. And I'm looking forward to, you know, staying close to EcoSend and seeing what you're doing as we all push together in the same direction.

[00:33:43] James Gill: Amazing tab. Thank you so much. Yeah, we are all in it together. So thank you.

[00:33:48] Thank you so much Thank you for joining me and thank you to everyone for listening. If you've enjoyed today today's show Please do tell your friends about it and share it on on all the channels you can And thank you for joining us and we'll catch you next time. Cheers