Meet John Hope Bryant, an American entrepreneur, philanthropist and presidential advisor. In this first episode of Climate Action News One-on-one he shares his thoughts about what can we learn from the Corona-crisis in addressing the climate crisis. He talks about his views on the importance of diversity and about keeping social sustainability in focus in a crisis.
Meet John Hope Bryant, an American entrepreneur, philanthropist and presidential advisor. In this first episode of Climate Action News One-on-one he shares his thoughts about what can we learn from the Corona-crisis in addressing the climate crisis. He talks about his views on the importance of diversity and about keeping social sustainability in focus in a crisis.
Welcome to Climate Action News one on one brought to you by we don't have time. This is the world's largest social media network for climate action. It's also brought to you by a sustainable tomorrow's Sweden's leading network for connecting people working with sustainable business and also raging conferences. My name is Catherine enough salty also that I am the host of this show. JOHN O'Brien is an American entrepreneur, author, philanthropist, and prominent thought leader, he has founded Operation Hope, and has served as an advisor to the last three sitting US presidents. It's a great honor to have. have you with us today here, john, hope Bryant, to be with you. Thanks for all that you do. Thank you. Likewise, of course, we are in the midst of a pandemic. And what from your perspective? can we learn from how we are able as individuals, companies and organizations to set the best or own good aside for common good? What can we learn from this, and taking all the big climate crisis that we've course still have to address? First of all, I want to say hello to all my friends there in Sweden, I know you're broadcasting around the world, but Sweden has a very special place in my heart. And the Nordic Region is really, in many ways a role model on so many in so many areas for the entire world, including sustainability, including happiness and joy, including finding ways to prioritize peace. And we share mutual friends. So please give all my colleagues or mutual colleagues, my love. The the current environment makes your mission in some ways, much easier, more difficult in the short term, because people are trying to figure out how to survive, how to sustain themselves, by their own environmental ecosystem in their own homes and their own lives and their businesses. Beyond that, I see this as a bit of a reset. I think that if you're a spiritual person, as am I, you could easily fashion in your mind that a higher power, you know, has been trying to send signals to us for a while that income inequality wasn't sustainable, please address that we didn't. wealth inequality wasn't sustainable, please address that. We didn't. racial divisions were getting worse. Since you know, probably more intense anytime since World War Two, the era of World War Two, where my Jewish friends and others were persecuted and prosecuted and unjustly and killed. Please address those racial issues. We did. political divisions, building bridges, building bridges had been overtaken by building walls, both psychological and physical and spiritual walls inside political walls, but also physical walls. You know, that's not a house divided cannot stand please address that. We didn't just make it worse. Oh, by the way, this is globally, this is not a US phenomenon. These are global themes. And I think probably the worst is, Hey, you, you all are share the same small planet. And, you know, it needs to be taken care of. Please do that. And, you know, you look, people look at this situation of climate change in environmental sustainability and global warming, and they look out, you know, 100 203 years ago, I will fix that down the road. And what you were hearing in the last three or four years, sort of, you know, and I think got more intense the last three or four months before COVID-19 hit your hearing that we had to do something like you'd start seeing transformational changes of the melting of the Arctic caps and things like that, in, you know, in five years time, 10 years time, 20 years time in our lifetime. You start seeing almost permanent transformations of our landscape that will Raise water levels, etc. So well, you know, it starts to seem a little Doomsday ish in the sense that you couldn't get your leaders to focus not yours, all of our leaders to focus on this issue COVID-19 happens and it is only for speeches, there is focus now is global. And, and I think on the other side of this, all of our values will realign around things that are really, really important first. So, about leadership, you have written several books about leadership, one is called I love the title, love leadership, the new way to lead in a fear based world. And this what we're seeing now is the need of fear based world. What is your best advice to leaders when it comes to, you know, staying committed? there? Now we're talking about climate, climate action, because that's the theme of that's what we work with, primarily in this this venue. How do you stay committed to this craziness, and also, but all this fear going around? Yeah. Well, fear never worked. Anyway, as a, as a business strategy, or as a leadership approach. I'm writing another book, because I've written another book called up from nothing which comes out in October, it'll be like this. I'm primarily an entrepreneur and a business leader. But I feel I need to lead in lean into thought leadership and try to make the world a better place by getting us to think differently, while getting us to think fear is a short term stimulus. And what people need, what leaders need to understand is, if you don't have hope, hope and love, the world will accept hope and fear. In other words, can you scare people into believing that they'll get what they want, which gives them a false sense of hope by demonizing someone else? By giving them a short term answer by winning the battle and losing the war. And as you'll see over the long arc of history, and I want you to go back, literally 1000s of years, you'll, you'll find that these folks never win long term. Let's look at, you know, recent examples of that. Adolf Hitler reigned, you want to call it that, and for you know, eight years, everybody thought, Oh, my God, this guy's gonna run the world, no one can stop him. Well, he died a miserable life as a miserable person in a bunker alone. You can go to Psalm in London, and you can go to there's so many of these examples of these authoritarian, heart nose leaders, so called leaders who had a fear based approach. And they, they, in a short period of time concentrated that fear into what appeared to be dominance. But if you go far enough, the North Pole, you end up south. So But how's our leader? Do you? Do you bring out that more love than fear and the situation because people are in? I see a lot of people are sort of deviating from their commitment when it comes to climate action, because they're so fearful of the short term financing of their their work. How do you? Well, again, Well, the first thing I wanted to bring out in my example is that those who are supposedly successful in fear, actually were not successful. That was my real my first point is that it didn't work they had they had a small arc. And literally every one of them whatever one you want, everywhere a fear based leader you want to it's a site. it all ended in ruin. Literally every one of them Stalin, I mean, whichever ones you want to raise. Now let's let's flip the script. And let's talk about sustainable brands. Sustainable leaders, you mentioned President Barack Obama, I'd argue even with with challenges reputation, President Bill Clinton had a sustainable approach to to success. And in the end, I think it was very successful as a result of that. Let's look at a moral leaders like President Nelson Mandela. these are these are easy examples. Let's look at business brands. I think the brand the brands that will survive and thrive on the other end of this are not the ones who will profit taking. You're trying to figure out what they can get, how much they can take off the table. They were the brands that we learn to trust that we built up to have it head head and have integrity who believe in what they're doing who, who actually won our family. To, to not die sort of eating their product or using their product. Like Coca Cola is basically bottle sugar water, there's nothing special about Coca Cola, the one brand of 200 within Coca Cola is supply chain. But Coca Cola has made in a commitment to for, to renew, or to reclaim reclamation of all the water they use to make the product. This is they have a foundation that gives back 10s of millions of dollars every year. And they're very committed to this, I think that that has helped their reputation around the world. I think it sustains them as a business. And they're one of the most successful brands in the world. There are tons of examples of companies like this, that have done well and done good done well by doing good. And I think that they'll be able to sustain themselves through this current crisis. And they will see when the when the dust settles, and they actually rose. I guess what I'm saying to you is I can't guarantee you that being positive is gonna make you a success. But I can absolutely guarantee you that being negative will make you a failure. That that the alternate approach is not really an approach, the alternate strategy is not really a strategy at all, you will win the battle, but you will lose the war. That was really my point of giving the early examples of, of these authoritarian, negative short term leaders, it just doesn't work long term, it doesn't work long term, it has never worked long term is never if you want success in your life, that's not the way to get a lot of a lot of climate activists around the world are now looking at the hope of this being sort of a reset of the economy, that the subsidies that have gone into fossil fuels will now be opted out for that we will be able to to single out the companies to get rid of the companies that are really, really not good for the future of our children. What do you say about this possibility? And how do we how do we as business leaders and leaders in our in our companies all over the world sort of facilitate this transition? How do we make sure that we get the economy back on its feet, again, is not going to be business as usual? Because this is as before COVID was not sustainable? So so I'm gonna surprise you, I think by my answer, I actually don't think that that's the right approach. I don't think that guilt, shame, blame pointing fingers is going to work at all, it's never worked. That hasn't worked as a strategy either. I think that the way we save the planet, I do agree, this is a recent, I said earlier, I do think it's good. We're gonna reset all our values, or virtues and the other side of this, what do you do about it? What is reset, and I think that what we have to do about it, and it's gonna maybe shock your viewers is to make saving the environment and climate change a business case. The minute you insert greed, but Warren Buffett, one of our most prominent investors in the world, that said, when people are afraid, be greedy, when people are greedy, be afraid. And what I mean by that is, if you can make a business case out of saving the environment, if you can make a business case out of solar highways, as an example, they'll having all this asphalt on the road around the world is not sustainable. But that was what happened in the industrial revolution. Having all these cables coming out of the ground, literally with you know, from light pole to light pole is not sustainable. But that's what we did in the 20th century. What happens if we take all that and put it on the ground, that's just one example. Created solar highways, use the heat to, to to power the the grid and then plug houses and businesses into that grid? That would put if you did that, globally, that would put a generation to work? A generation of people, first of all who have a high school education, who need a job, because a lot of the bad decision making is because people want let's be honest, money. They want a job. And President Bill Clinton once told me it's hard to get somebody to agree to the truth from the lies paying their paycheck. I'm gonna repeat that. It's hard to get somebody to agree to the truth and the lie is paying their paycheck. Do you need the truth to pay their paycheck? We've got to stop giving people more out morals and in in speeches. And in saying that love is enough love, not enough love not even enough in a marriage. You need love and cooperation and communication, and in compromise. Love that nothing of friendships, I'd love enough in business. We've got to get even more than moral speeches and platitudes. We got to create a business plan that is sustainable for our world. And by making saving the environment a business case, it ppl need to be anybody Hidden, the more you need to convince anybody all of a sudden it's in their enlightened self interest to to save the planet. I think that's the way to do it. And it is, I think, been proven actually by the history of our world, how we solve problems. And it's possible. Well, that's for sure hope that we are also struggling with the subsidies that for instance, in Sweden, scotch Swedish government is pumping into to fossil fossil industries. But we'll see what happens with those in due course of this, this pandemic and the aftermath. You have worked a lot with diversity. And you've been just meeting you were the first keynote speaker at the sustainable Congress say much of our conference five years ago, in Boston. And you know, we are struggling and Sweden and many countries with diversity. In light of what we need to move further on with sustainable sustainable business climate action. What words can you give to encourage us to facilitate diversity better in organizations? First of all, thank you for the question. I think it's the same answer I just gave you. The environment is not about guilt or blame or or or morals. Diversity is a business trip. I was in Saudi Arabia A few years ago, we pulled out because of what happened there recently, we had offices in Saudi, but I was there in Jeddah, and speaking to the Chamber of Commerce in Jeddah to all the business elite, he had ministers from the government they're listening to me in the issue of women is something I wanted to address. And I knew if I addressed it from a moral perspective, or whatever human rights, they would roll their eyes shut down on me. So I said, Look, you guys are really interested in your brand, the Saudi Arabia brand, you're really interested in being a world leader. You've paid you spent a billion dollars for licensing names like the move, and Ferrari's, I know, you're interested in your reputation. But let me ask you a question you want to win, okay, you have a fairly small economy, you want to be you want to be a big player in the world economy make this very short, you want to win, we have a football team. And I've got 20 people on my team is women, men and black and white and orange. And they're just the best place is the best place. But you only allow men on your team. So you got the best players, but you've only got 10 people in your team, I got 20, you're still with big challenges. Excuse me, you are excluding talent. You're saluting your sweet, you're denying your ability to win, you literally, it's math, you literally cannot win. But I've got 20 people who are talented on my team, and you got 10 new talent on yours. You're eliminated based on a false narrative. And when I said that the light came on, they actually got that. And I think once again, you know, how do you? How do you do business with people in the world, if you don't reflect, respect and understand their values? One of the benefits of us is a lot of challenges here. One of the benefits to us, is this the only nation in the world with every race of people within its borders. So we trade with the world. And why is the West Coast of the US so vibrant, because the West Coast trades with Asia. Because there's a huge Korean population. They're huge Chinese population there, they trade with the people that they for whom they have relationships, why? Why would you trade with Nigeria, there's a lot of Nigerians here. And it goes on and goes on and goes on. And so I think that you, you have to understand that flights about relationships I get with you, not out of the internet, I got to you through a mutual friend, a relationship, that's the way it works. And if you don't have relations, people who don't look like you, then you're only you're only doing business with people who look like you. And I'll flip that and say this. And this is not related to Sweden at all, of course, because Sweden is a extremely decent place. But I in the southern states of America, I'll give this example. For somebody who wasn't racist last year. I mean, in the last century, he that you cannot, you cannot segregate your mind and integrate your pocket. You cannot segregate your heart integrates your pocket. It doesn't work that way. You can't say I don't like you, black person or Latino or woman or whatever I don't do business with you know, don't don't tell my neighborhood, but then expect me to do business with you and come and buy something from your store. It doesn't work that way. The color of currency in the US is green. It's not black or white. It's green, and it spins the same. So if you don't respect your customer, they're not going to do business with your company. You're limiting yourself. So I think that women have a unique contribution. That is that is special. And if we had women, more women decision makers, I think you'd have less friction in the world as an example, I think. Yeah, I absolutely agree. Thank you for those remarks. The we don't have time platform, the largest social media network in the world for climate action. I work with with the way we don't have time, obviously. And we have a firm belief in the power of the money. And from your perspective globally, I mean, your travel Not right now, obviously. But you travel a lot and see meet a lot of people. What would you say were lies the power of the many? And how can we sort of use that momentum and looking at tipping points and a change makers to facilitate more climate action? what hope do you see in the power of the many of movements right now, globally? I am, I'm incredibly encouraged. I think that what you're seeing right now, with COVID-19, coming back to where we started, this is the power of any 40% of the of the work in the US done by hourly workers, nobody really realized that before. No one even paid attention to it. And these were, these are working class people living from paycheck to paycheck. But with all my friends with a college degree there at home, people were out on the front line, the the the first responders to our sustainability, are diverse, ethnic, low wealth, hourly workers in the masses, they're delivering our packages, they're living our groceries, they're keeping the factories open, they're processing all the things that we need to live and exist and operate. There. They're first responders in the hospital, they're the police officers, they're their fire department. I mean, we now realize how much we actually need them. And they have so much control over the sustainability of our of the world in which we, there are teachers for our children. We didn't realize that that these schools were babysitting our children. To the kids came home, I think that this is the quiet, loving, beautiful revolution of the masses. This is the value of the many this and you don't need, you don't need to bang on tables, you don't need to pick it, you know, you don't need again, for anger, there's no need for guilt. This is enlightened self interest, we are beginning to realize through this pandemic, that we're all in this thing together. That whatever goes around, comes around, and in and we're all interconnected. And that's a beautiful thing. I my next book is is about just that up from nothing, that America is in most countries in the world, Sweden to it wasn't defined by kings and queens and royalty. It was defined by the least of these God's children who came up from nothing who built important companies there in Sweden, and important companies throughout the Nordic Region that that employ 10s of 1000s of people created wealth. And then they were able to pay taxes that then allow people to be subsidized here in the US it whatever big company you mentioned, starting with some entrepreneurs some dream, some poor person came through Ellis Island as an immigrant in the 20th century with net worth 20 bucks in their pocket, but a dream in their head and passion in their heart and really ability to work hard. I was talking to CEO Walmart the other day. Well, that was Sam Walton with a pickup truck, a storefront and a high school education now the largest employer in the world, I think that we are beginning to see how how much we actually need each other. And, and I think the same will apply to climate change. I think the same applies to sustainability. I think that we are I mean, my wealthy friends now really now absolutely realize in order for them to stay rich and wealthy, my poor friends need to do better, because they can't go buy your groceries, they can't go buy your cars, they can't go can't go to your restaurants when we open restaurants again, they can't travel and your airlines I mean, you know, literally 70% of this economy us in most of the case of Sweden today is consumer spending. I mean, I know every developed country in the world study 60 70% of the GDP is consumer spending. That's the average person that's not the wealthy. So would you say that this as painful as it is and loss of life and loss of finances and everything? Would you say this is a wake up call for the planet for the for the humanity? Absolutely and is is is my stock portfolio is taking a hit like everybody else's. And I chose by the way not to sail when I took a hit one why why sell and lock in your losses. But to if you really believe if you really believe then you have to understand that what goes up will come down and what comes down. If we get our business plan right will go up so let's the world just is coming to an end. What will happen is what always happens is that life is cyclical. We go through these, these these, these peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys and then your job Our job is Find a way to be part solution and ride the way back up. And is that is that happens, your equities will increase your stock values will increase your job opportunities will increase, opportunities for social change will increase, or opportunities to do good will increase. And you're gonna have the rise of new entrepreneurs and new billionaires and new capitalists who have been hurt stayed by quote COVID-19 relative to the Great Depression. And that's going to put a value embedded in there. So you won't have to give them a speech anymore about why this these values and why health care is important. Why government by now Well, yeah, well, thank you so much. I believe that themselves and that's the best advocate in their hearts right in their hearts. Well, thank you so much, john Bryant for for joining us and sharing your thoughts with us. And for those of you in the audience. There'll be another interview next week that we're going to broadcast And meanwhile, they log into we don't have time the app and make your voices heard more climate action and you can also go into a sustainable tomorrow.com if you're a Scandinavia and become a partner, partner or or become a part of our network, and great to be hosting this show. My name is Catalina host Dr. Johnson and see you soon again. Bye bye