From Knowledge to Action: All In Making Sustainability Accessible to All

In today's episode of the Climate Confident podcast, I talked sustainability with Mary Wilson, the Founder and CEO of All In.

We unpacked the subscription model of All In – a model that champions the belief that sustainability transcends the boundaries between our professional and personal worlds. Mary detailed their tiered system, designed to democratise sustainability knowledge from the ground up, making it accessible to everyone at a minimal cost.

Education and community are the cornerstones of All In. Mary passionately spoke about their knowledge cubes and academy, which are central to fostering an informed and proactive community. It's about building a hub where ideas, best practices, and groundbreaking solutions are exchanged freely and where every voice can help accelerate change.

We also touched on the platform's innovative content aggregation – pulling RSS feeds, facilitating thought-provoking discussions, and allowing personalized content curation. Mary emphasized how critical this is for staying abreast of the torrent of news in the sustainability sector.

Looking ahead, All In's roadmap is set to spotlight groundbreaking solutions and technologies, with special mentions of gamification and generative AI enhancing the user experience. Their upcoming collaborations promise to invigorate the platform with fresh perspectives and robust engagement.

For more insights and to be a part of this thriving community, visit www.allin.inc, and check out the video version of this episode at https://youtu.be/EWGo-Pd9jDY. 

Until next time, stay climate confident.

Transcript

Mary Wilson: 0:03

There are 75,000 and something companies that have self-identified as sustainability offering. So how do you if you're interested in sustainability, your boss told you we need to go be more sustainable. Where do you start when there's 75,000 of them?

Tom Raftery: 0:22

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the Climate Confident podcast, the number one podcast showcasing best practices in climate emission reductions and removals, and I'm your host, Tom Raftery. Don't forget to click follow on this podcast in your podcast app of choice to be sure you don't miss any episodes. Hi everyone and welcome to episode 144 of the Climate Confident podcast. My name is Tom Raftery and before we kick off today's show I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to all of our amazing supporters. Your support has been instrumental in keeping this podcast going and I'm really grateful for each and every one of you. If you're not already a supporter, I'd like to encourage you to consider joining our community of like minded individuals who are passionate about climate. Supporting the podcast is easy and affordable with options starting as low as just three euros or dollars. That's less than the cost of your latte, and your support will make a huge difference in keeping this show going strong. To become a supporter, simply click on the support link in the show notes of this or any episode, or visit tinyurl. com slash climatepod. Now, without further ado, with me on the show today, I have my special guest Mary. Mary, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?? Mary Wilson: Thank you very much, Tom. I'm excited to be here today and I'm looking forward to talking about All In. Introduction is my, my background is I've worked 15, 16 years in the power and utility sector and primarily based out of Barcelona, Spain. So working across the utilities in, in Europe as well as the lucky year that I spent in Australia really focusing on how do we, how do we work with utilities? How do we work with regulators? And then how do we work with consumers on, on engagement around demand response programs, et cetera. And that led me to, to AWS. I worked for Amazon Web Services as their Global Partner Lead for Power and Utilities, and quickly realized in that role that the utility companies, but also all of AWS customers, regardless of where they were in the world, regardless of their industry sector, were looking at sustainability as an opportunity to create change, to look at where perhaps they could look at operating expenses or, or new messaging for their customers. And so I, at, at Amazon I created and led a new partner segment for sustainability. So I became the, the Global Partner Lead for Sustainability and Climate Tech. And that meant looking around the world at all of the brilliant companies who were using AWS to build sustainability solutions and offerings for AWS customers. And what I quickly realized is that there are a lot of amazing companies that are out there doing hard work on sustainability. Sustainability means different things to different people. Sure.

Mary Wilson: 3:29

And and therefore, how do these amazing companies and the great projects that they're delivering, how do they, how are they discovered? How are they found? How do they get in front of the right people? And so that was became my job at AWS really was looking at how to support them with their technology, how to support them with their go-to market and, and getting visibility. And what I realized is there's a lot more companies out there that aren't on AWS, or or that have stories beyond AWS, and and so it was a great opportunity for me to to, to start All In and, and to look across not just the technology advances that are happening and solutions that are out there, but also the communities that are being built that are supporting sustainability initiatives. And so I am as a final probably my, the next phase of life is I am CEO and founder of All In. Where our goal is to bring all of those sustainability, knowledge, expertise, the science, the an analysts and definitely the solutions in a curated way so that people can find what they need to be more sustainable. And when I say people, I mean, you know, concerned citizens and consumers, but I also mean business leaders and governments. So it's a, it's an opportunity to really give people the, the expertise, the products, the services that are already available, right? We hear solutions are out there, so what all in our objective is to bring visibility and discoverability through, through the technology to bring those and make them discoverable.

Tom Raftery: 5:06

Okay.. So not very ambitious then

Mary Wilson: 5:09

not very ambitious. It's a huge task. It's a huge task. There's no question. And people have asked, you know, and I, I've had a lot of heart to heart discussions and, and, and soul searching on, you know, what is the thing that I do that makes me you know, bring, bring my best self for sustainability. And I think a lot of us have probably had this sit back and, and ponder like, how can I create the most impact? And the United Nations has 17 Sustainable Development Goals and the 17th one is the one that resonates for me. Right, and that's the partnerships for the goal. I've worked in partnerships for 15, 20 years and this is my way of, of showcasing, you know, the radical collaboration that we talk about. This is how we make it really happen.

Tom Raftery: 5:59

Okay, so tell me a little bit about All In, what is it? How do I access it? You know, what is it? What do I get from it?

Mary Wilson: 6:10

Yeah, so it is a connective platform. So we are a connective. This means that we are looking at how do we bring in all of the knowledge and expertise and solutions that are already available. We wanna bring them in and give them a space so that they can start building out their own content. They can build out their value proposition, their thought leadership bring in their own audiences or find new audiences. So it is, it's, it's very much an immersive online experience where we are looking at onboarding users and building out their profiles that help us identify where they are in their sustainability journey, but also what are the now solutions and expertise and knowledge that are most relevant to them? So really important, I think that you we're, we are an online experience, so we're, we're, we're thinking global and acting local. But we're also rolling out our app, so we will be in the palm of everybody's hands. So as we look at some, again, really great tools that are out there that are inspirational and motivational for people to take action. We're gonna be able to do push notifications. We're gonna be able to bring them recommendations whenever they log into the platform so that they have not only a very specific target that they came to All In and, and thinking about, but we can provide them, you know, a broader set of sustainability initiatives that might pique their interest, might drive some more engagement. So that's, that's our goal. And, and that's why we need the solution providers in particular. We need them to come on and start showing the art of the possible giving both consumers and businesses the ability to, to see the breadth of what is already being accomplished out there and, and how do we scale that is, is is what we need today and kind of how everybody can start participating right now.

Tom Raftery: 8:11

Okay. And how do you define solution providers, for example, because you know . Sustainability is a very broad topic, so I don't know if I have an app and I'm winging it here wildly. If I have an app, which helps me find ev charging stations, for example, is, would that be something that would go on on All In.

Mary Wilson: 8:38

Yeah, it's a great example because the, the EV app, the charging app, yes, absolutely because this is one way of identifying and, and mapping to the people who are curious about EVs. Right? We start to show them quickly that here are the EV car manufacturers hybrid, different options that you have, but we also educate them. I think solution providers spend from, from my experience and discussions with a lot of the solution providers is that they spend a lot of time educating their customers on, on what it is that the bigger picture and what it is we're looking to accomplish by these, by these use cases. So, so once a user comes on and we see that they're interested in EVs, not only do we tell them here are the EVs that are available and can maybe a, a mapping of pros and cons and differentiators for each one. But we also give them an idea of what the charging infrastructure looks like, where they are. Therefore, your solution provider would fit nicely there. And then we look at how do we show them that by buying an EV they're actually creating a greater impact through things like adoptability and perhaps even looking at their local governments, or national governments on what are they doing to create that infrastructure and now they can get involved in some of those initiatives. So it's, it's kind of taking them on a journey as far as they want to go. But to your question, how do I define solution providers? Yeah, this for, for us, for me a solution provider is is, is an offering that is deployable and that supports sustainability action. So in some cases it is a consulting firm that helps firms, helps enterprise companies, companies as they look to develop their sustainability roadmaps. Right. This is a very important offering that helps to define the framework. There are other offerings that are much more community-based. So a solution might be, you know, again, we are, we are building out a, a plan for how regulations and, and funding is going to be implemented in our region, in our state, and our province. And in this country. So it's it's a broad set of of users of our platform or the solution providers. And that's why I think it's such a challenge today to find them right, is it's such a broad set. There There are 75,000 and something companies that have self-identified as sustainability offering. So how do you if you're interested in sustainability, your boss told you we need to go be more sustainable. Where do you start when there's 75,000 of them? So that's why, you know, we're looking at wherever, if you're developing sustainable razors or you're developing sustainable aviation fuel, right? It's a very different value proposition. A very different set of audience members that you wanna wanna be talking to. So we're helping with that curation.

Tom Raftery: 11:51

And what about, let, let's, let's go a little bit left field here. What about ones that might be a little bit more . controversial, let's say or borderline maybe as in if I think of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, you know, they were touted as being great for the environment, and now people are kind of going, hang on a second. So where, where would that, or let, let's, let's take it even broader greenwashing. How, how do you, you know, handle that and, and the possibilities of that bumping up on, on All In.

Mary Wilson: 12:31

Yeah, we know that it's a possibility and we're watching for it. We've, we're leveraging technology to not only look at you know, where is the source of what is being published on All In and ensuring that it comes from the source and that it includes some very specific language. That's part of what we're looking to bring in the science together with the solutions, right? The experts. So we do have category managers that are responsible for looking across their topic, their pillars. So in this case, decarbonization of energy and transport. Has somebody, and actually in this case, it's a set of somebodies. We have a, a team on that topic and it's, their role is to look across all of the different publishers, all of the different content and flag. We have a flagging system on the platform where it can be flagged if it is suspicious it needs to be reviewed. We have a review board that would do that. But a lot of it is going to be yeah, when you talk about what used to be su considered sustainable versus what is today, we're trying to put some guidelines around what does sustainable mean? What is the definition of sustainability? And you know, saving water while you are fracking, is that considered sustainable? Now, these are very big questions because the act of saving water in and of itself is a sustainable measure. But in the, in the, when you're using it for mining or for fracking or for other processes, You know, are those in of themselves sustainable in the longer term?

Tom Raftery: 14:06

Hmm.

Mary Wilson: 14:07

And, you know, our, our goal is not to, to police it necessarily. We, we wanna provide them, you know, information to those people who are searching for it. But I think part of the curation is having our, our topic managers creating the forum for so we're not just flagging the content, but creating the debates. We have a, an entire area that is around the library. There's the forum for debating what we've put there and what companies are saying or doing, and how do we, how, how do we move them forward in a way that is collaborative? Big challenges. Big challenges are there, and I'm not gonna say we've solved it. But that is definitely something we're aware of. And the technology is a big part of it, but it's humans. It's humans in the mix. And experts who you know, who can help at least bring up those conversations and make sure that they're being addressed by the post, by, you know, through the content provider.

Tom Raftery: 15:03

Sure, sure, sure. And what about the role then of organizations? And if I'm thinking of organizations, for example if I think back on some of the episodes of this podcast I've had on the Science-Based Targets Initiative, for example, and I've had on the Long Duration Energy Storage Council, for example. So they're not solution providers, but they, they're in the same space. They're in this sustainability space. Very, very much so. So would they figure as well,

Mary Wilson: 15:33

Yeah. Yeah. And in fact they're an important part of it because with the science and the, the, the pledges and the goals is where a lot of the communication I think is, is there, and it's crisp and it's clear, but it's not necessarily reaching the masses. And by the masses, I mean businesses as well as consumers. So we really, for, for us, it's really important to have those voices here, but it's also important to connect them. We we're going, this is completely new to me coming from a very enterprise driven roles in the past, but we are working with content providers and influencers. So for us it's really important that when somebody is a famous TikToker and they're talking about sustainability, that they're able to connect to the regulations and the science and the experts who are developing, what are policies that are able to then implement, explain why they are important so that we have in the middle these influencers who are helping to translate that and get it right, you know, make sure that whatever businesses are hearing what you know. And, and by TikTok I also mean LinkedIn famous, right? There are some celebrities in the sustainability world, and so we look at how do we ensure that the policy makers and the scientists who are, you know, showing us the graphs, how do we make sure that that's being translated in a way that that, that's measurable and impactful. Because I, I sense the, the scientists that I know are feeling frustrated that nobody's hearing them. So this is a way of connecting of connecting those two very influential voices in a way that maybe brings the best of both of them out to to the rest of us who are still learning as we go.

Tom Raftery: 17:25

Sure, sure. Interesting. And those, those influencers you're referencing, are they then publishing on the All In platform or linking out from the All-In platform to where they publish or a combination?

Mary Wilson: 17:39

It is a combination. So we're, we know that some of their audiences are going to remain on TikTok or LinkedIn and other places, but what we do on All In is we give an opportunity for it to sit in situ meaning that because it's a curated set of content, when you publish All In's podcast on All In, now you can connect it to all of the different solution areas that we map to you, all the different topic areas that we map to you. So if you're SAP supply chain, you can have your SAP channels, you're not gonna turn those off. You're gonna bring them to All In. And where you can have a public discourse and conversation around SAP around supply chain, you can host a supply chain what we call a guide, a journey is that includes, educational materials on why supply chain transparency is important in sustainability. That could be an entire guide and you could be a part of participating in that content, for example. You could also have a private micro community on All In where you're only working with your customers or you're only working with your teammates around the world so that now you're sharing the content that you know what's the latest deck of slides? What's the latest demo? What's the latest messaging on sustainability? Did I got these questions? Has anybody have the answers? Has anybody seen these practices already implemented? So now you've got different ways of collaborating. You know, super specific, invite only, or you can have your messaging and or you can have your messaging that is set to be curated as part of our recommendation engine. It gives you a lot more contextual impact than sitting alone where people have to go in and find you. This way we're pushing them back over to you.

Tom Raftery: 19:31

Okay. And if I do set up, for example, an account on All In, does that mean then I can start following other people who are on the platform and they can start following me. So it becomes almost like a, a Facebook or a LinkedIn for sustainability.

Mary Wilson: 19:49

Exactly. So we have what are known as cubes and, and circles, so, and, and academies. So the cubes are where the solution providers sit, and it's almost like having a, a small website that's super interactive. So it's like having your own LinkedIn feed. Just for your company, you can have your own homepage. You can have your own media center where you do put your presentations and your demos and any other guides that you've developed, white papers. But again, it's a way to also have a forum where there's conversation happening or questions can come up. We're very quick you know, thought leadership or articles or regulations can be discussed and and you know, amongst the people who are members of your, of your community, of your cube. And the goal there is again, that radical collaboration. So to your point, you can join others. They can join yours. You will have a landing page when you come to All In that is all of the different cubes and circles that you belong to. You can see what's happening, what the latest is, the latest news, the latest discussion. So you can quickly jump in. And you know, that's the goal is you know, there's, there's topics that are most interesting to you that may not map to you, to me, or to the next person. And so we wanna create that custom user experience. So the things and the topics that are most interesting for you, you join and that's what starts to feed your recommendation engine.

Tom Raftery: 21:16

Okay, so you get your own kind of personal newsfeed the same as you would in LinkedIn or Twitter. I don't want to call it X or you know, whatever other social media platform.

Mary Wilson: 21:28

Yeah, that's the idea. However, on LinkedIn you have a profile page that I don't know how often people update them. Maybe it's every three months, every year on All In, you have a profile page, but you also have a live feed, so you can I know in in the companies I've worked for in the past, I wasn't able to change the LinkedIn profile. I wasn't able to collaborate on the website design and development and messaging. And in many organizations, sustainability is a very specific topic. It may not be their primary topic. So what a great way to have a, an invite only or a public facing community where you are able to live stream and live discussions and really interact with the audience that is most interested. Again, this isn't a LinkedIn where it depends on who you follow and who you like, and you, you tend to get, you know, the same people all the time. This is a way to explore and, and find new people because it's so interactive.

Tom Raftery: 22:31

Nice. Nice. And what's the business model?

Mary Wilson: 22:35

Yeah. So we are we are not, yeah, we're not, we're not a marketplace. So we are looking at this as an opportunity for, for companies to, to be mapped to that curation and to build out their messaging. So we've you know, we've got a, a subscription model for people. So it we're very we're, we're very adamant that all of us as people are in our professional and in our personal lives should be thinking about sustainability. So it's not only, you know, in you compartmentalizing your business goals and your business life separate from your personal. So we are looking at, you know, the whole of Tom Raftery and what it is your goals look like. So that's a part of it is there is a subscription model. It's minimum our normal price is at 24 euros a year. Right now we're at half we're, we've got an early adopter fee of, of half discount of half price. And then the rest of the model is around w e're really looking at promoting the knowledge, the academy aspect of this. We feel that if people are educated on the vocabulary, they're educated on the, on the reasons why and what the impact will be, then they're more apt to engage. So, um, our knowledge, our knowledge cubes in our academy is at the lowest price tier. And then we have our communities, so these are you know, people like yourself, people that are content providers, people that are spreading, you know, what are the what are the solutions that are out there? What is the expertise? Where is, where are the you know, where are the best practices already being implemented? That's the kind of content that we want around the communities and the community engagement so people can come on and learn and continue their journey. And then the solution providers . Because there's a little bit more curation that happens ensuring that they get to the B2B, B2C, B2B2C all of these different factors, regional based or industry based or use case specific. Then you know, that's at a higher tier, but all of it is, you know, coming in around the, I think our highest tier is 24,000 euros a year. So it's, it's well within marketing budgets, and again, it's all about reinvesting in the education and knowledge and engagement and inspiration so that people then are taking action and we can scale those solutions.

Tom Raftery: 25:02

Nice, nice, nice. And maybe I missed it, but if so, for example, when I post on the likes of LinkedIn or Twitter or Mastodon or any of these, you know, interesting news stories that I've seen, like an interesting article from say, Clean Technica or one of these,

Mary Wilson: 25:20

Mm-hmm.

Tom Raftery: 25:21

is there a possibility to do that as well?

Mary Wilson: 25:25

Yeah. In fact, there's a couple of things that we're doing to address to exactly that because there's a lot of news out there and it's a full-time job to stay on top of all of the news in in sustainability. So we have, first off, we are pulling in RSS feeds from, from some of the most fam more famous sources so that you can get it all in one place. So you have all of those different news agencies and media content being fed into the platform every day. And, and a place you can go and search through 'em by topic. It's all categorized.. But the other piece is that yes, you can, you can post to the All In all audience different topics and articles that you've read and, and start a conversation around them or just create some awareness across All In. And then you also have the option of doing it just within your own cubes and your, and your communities that you belong to. So if you feel like this isn't something I wanna talk with the whole world about, that perhaps is really, you know, that's very specific regulations coming out of Germany about, you know, energy transition and, and, and different types of power sources. Then you would, you would might wanna just have that for a Germany energy specific community versus the entire, but that's the beauty of it, right? Is that there's, there's broad audiences, there's very specific audiences. The idea is to get everybody interacting and aware of the solutions and, and the fact that there's there's sources of information that maybe people aren't even aware of that are will help move us forward. And, and of course that's, that's the goal at the end of the day is how do we just get people engaged and inspired to move forward? And that kind of content is exactly the type that will do that.

Tom Raftery: 27:04

Cool. Cool. And where to next for all in? What are your plans for the next three months? Three years, whatever it is.

Mary Wilson: 27:12

Yeah. We have big plans. We've yeah, we've, we, we have a large set of users. We have many user groups and that creates a lot of excitement because you know, as All In, we are not looking to create the, you know, the next carbon elimination tools. But what we are doing is we're looking to bring those to light. So we're always on the lookout for the solutions that are, you know, making the change. And we're, we're creating a bit of, you know, democratizing, if you will, the solutions that are available. There's engagement scoring and, and, and gamification on the platform that will help even the smallest startup get visibility because they're engaging and they're bringing in content that's being, you know, that's pulling in interest that people are wanna hear more about. We'll give them a way to trade in some of those points to have more visibility on the platform. It's not just a pay to play. So that's a big part of our of our goals is bringing discoverability across all of those user groups. Very targeted, very curated set of experiences for each user as they sign on. So, And yeah. We've got some, we've got some incredible campaigns with, with some, with some companies, well-known companies in, in sustainability in particular, but also some global brands on, on how do we ensure that once again, you know, the, the call to action is broad and clear and crisp. So that's a big part of of our own messaging that we'll continue to iterate. And then the other piece is the technology, right? We've, we're working with some next generation tools. Of course, we've got generative AI that's very specifically focused on the content in All In. So how do we ensure, to your point, right, the that we've got the right kind of tags for for each of the use cases that if you call it an EV and I call it an electric vehicle versus a hybrid, right? There's, there there's different terminology and vocabulary that we need to curate as well to each one of the use cases. So we'll continue to learn and we'll continue to add languages to, to grow that you know, that data mapping. And then yeah, . The, you know, the, the constant iteration of ensuring that we're we're tagging the content correctly, but also that we're bringing in, you know, the best content and the sourcing of that content is validated. So that's, that's our number one priority for the next three months. And going into next year is just, developing a lot of great content and getting a lot of collaboration going, and inspiring more people to, to be engaged with with all of the brilliant solutions and, and expertise and the science and not feel that you know, what they see on TV is, is, is, is where we are today, right? There's solutions that are being being played out and we need everyone on board in order to to bring this forward and, and make them action and impactful.

Tom Raftery: 30:10

Cool. Cool. Great, great. We're coming towards the end of the podcast now, Mary, is there any question I haven't asked that you wish I had or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to be aware of?

Mary Wilson: 30:22

Yeah. Thanks Tom, you know, our goal, our objective is to bring forward and make discoverable all of the discourse, all of the conversation, all of the collaboration, and definitely all of the solutions and expertise. So, looking forward to inviting everybody who's listening, everybody who's watching, to come and take a look. Come and be a part of the discussion because that's how we move this forward. We move the goals forward by engaging more people and through all of the different solutions of 75,000 solutions that are out there, is how we start breaking them down and making them actionable. So I just wanna invite, you know, the collaboration and invite the, you know, the, the content, and the solutions, and the conversation, to come to All In where we'll help to curate it, we'll help to bring it to life.

Tom Raftery: 31:14

Nice. Nice. And last question, Mary, if people would like to know more about yourself, or any of the things we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

Mary Wilson: 31:24

Well, our website's a good place to start. We have a lot of information there and, and ways to connect with us. But we also are always looking at new blogs and new ideas. So I'll make sure to share our latest with you and, and share it with your you know, with your audience. And hopefully get an opportunity to collaborate across across your teams and your audiences with All In

Tom Raftery: 31:47

And all In is available at

Mary Wilson: 31:51

www dot all in dot inc.

Tom Raftery: 31:53

Fantastic. Great, Mary, that's been really interesting. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Mary Wilson: 31:59

It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Tom.

Tom Raftery: 32:01

Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about the Climate Confident podcast, feel free to drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com or message me on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you like the show, please don't forget to click follow on it in your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks. Catch you all next time.