The Company Road Podcast
In this podcast we’ll be exploring what it takes to change a company. Taking the big steps, or the smaller steps in between.
This one’s for the intrapreneurs. You’ll be getting to know some big, brave and darn right outrageous personalities, luminaries, pioneers of business and hearing what they’ve done to fix the thorniest of problems within organisations.
The Company Road Podcast
E86 Jet Swain on Why the Next Great Economy is Built on Affection
In this episode of The Company Road Podcast, Chris Hudson welcomes Jet Swain, design guru and founder of The Affection Economy, a transformative framework for how we lead, work, and measure success.
Jet argues that the next great economy isn't built on logic alone, but on affection, defined as people, purpose, and values. Drawing on an incredible 35-year career spanning advertising, architecture, systems design, and policy, Jet has seen systems that have lost their soul and their care.
She helps organisations move beyond quarterly targets to build cultures of courage, connection, and care. This conversation is a vital listen for intrapreneurs, examining why empathy is not enough and how to move to compassion (which she defines as action). We discuss everything from the need to dismantle 1950s childcare policies to the role of "meliorism", the idea that the world can be made better by human effort, to drive micro-movements of change within your business.
In this episode, you’ll hear about:
Why the Affection Economy is "care as strategy" and not a soft skill.
The difference between empathy (knowing how someone feels) and compassion (taking action).
Why leaders must first "come home to your values" before trying to implement corporate values.
A powerful example of systemic change: redesigning maternity leave (designed by men, for men ) into flexible parenting or carers leave.
The concept of "meliorism" and why intrapreneurs are best positioned to enact those tiny, courageous acts that shape culture.
How to achieve both profit and purpose instead of being forced to choose one.
Key Links
Jet Swain's Website: jetswain.com
About our guest
Jet Swain is the Founder of The Affection Economy, a movement and methodology born from her 35-year career in advertising, architecture, systems design, and policy. As an executive leader, speaker, and author of the upcoming book The Affection Economy, Jet helps organisations build effective, ethical performance by centering their work around people, purpose, and values. She is driven by the conviction that human-hearted design, which leads with the heart, creates safety and healthier cultures.
About our host
Our host, Chris Hudson, is an Intrapreneurship Coach, Teacher, Experience Designer and Founder of business transformation coaching and consultancy Company Road.
Company Road was founded by Chris Hudson, who saw over-niching and specialisation within corporates as a significant barrier to change.
Chris considers himself incredibly fortunate to have worked with some of the world’s most ambitious and successful companies, including Google, Mercedes-Benz, Accenture (Fjord) and Dulux, to name a small few. He continues to teach with University of Melbourne in Innovation, and Academy Xi in CX, Product Management, Design Thinking and Service Design and mentors many business leaders internationally.
For weekly updates and to hear about the latest episodes, please subscribe to The Company Road Podcast at https://companyroad.co/podcast/
Hey, welcome back to the Company Road Podcast, which is dedicated to exploring how internal innovators and intrapreneurs can really drive fundamental change that creates value within organizations of all sizes. And today we've got a guest who really offers a truly transformative framework for how we might lead, how we might work, and how we might measure success in some sort of way. And she believes that the next great economy isn't built on logic alone, but on affection, which is defined as people purpose and values. So Jet Swain, welcome to the show. Huge. Welcome to you.
Jet Swain:Thank you for having me. It's wonderful. It's. Nearly the end of the year. So that's worth celebrating.
Chris Hudson:It is indeed. I'll just tell people a bit more about what you've been doing. So you're the founder of the Affection Economy, a movement, a methodology that's grown out of your incredible 35 year career, and that spanned advertising, architecture, systems design and policy. And yeah, you've seen and you've personally helped to fix a lot of systems that have been broken, where they've lost their soul and lost a lot of care and attention really. So, as an executive leader, a keynote speaker, and a mentor, and as an author of the upcoming book, the Affection Economy, you're helping organizations move beyond quarterly targets and building cultures of courage, connection, and care and looking to drive real long-term effective and ethical performance. So I think it's a really interesting topic. I'm, I really can't wait to get into it with you, jet and, uh, welcome to the show again. And yeah, maybe we just start with an opening one. So your work centers around the affection economy, obviously, but for our audience of intrapreneurs, like people driving change inside existing businesses, what's the simplest definition of this economy and, and why is it so important to you?
Jet Swain:Gosh. Look, I think the simplest level is, it's about, so affection isn't soft, you know, I like to think of it as, as a strategy, you know, care as strategy. So it's basically a way for leaders to approach cultural change in their organizations that's gonna move them beyond empathy to compassion. So there's a lot of talk about empathy and empathy is not enough for me. That's knowing. You can never know how someone feels, but it's the idea of, of accepting how someone feels. Compassion is action. It's doing something about the way a person feels. But I do think it starts at home. So a lot of the stuff that I'm doing in the affection economy is about your values. You can't live someone else's values. I.e. a corporate's values that we see on desktops and screensavers everywhere. You can't live those values. Until you come home to your own and know what your own are. And I think, I mean, we can dig into my experience, but I know that my values were compromised a lot. Yeah. Because my paycheck was, you know, the important thing when I was raising children on my own. And so it's really about coming home to your values, showing up and making decisions with care that is respectful of all the humans that are involved in that decision.
Chris Hudson:Yeah, that's a really good starting point, I think. And yeah, we can explore that further And, you know, you, we, we feel it's probably industry agnostic, right? It's applicable to everybody. Yeah. And you've worked across a lot of different sectors, so you've had the advertising, architecture, policy and so on. Do you see that, do you see that being like a single common failing point where, you know, these different systems are just not working that as an intrapreneur, with affection economy it, you know, affection economy could be really well positioned to solve for something in that space.
Jet Swain:I think I think we came about at it, I don't know, probably about 30 years ago when we really embraced the idea of design thinking. We came about problem solving or wicked problems with a methodology. Mm. And that's great. But what we didn't align on was the purpose. Why are we doing it? And so the affection economy brings the why. And I know I sound like Simon Sinek now, forgive me, but very, the important thing, why are we doing it before how we do it? Design thinking is how. I've solved it for the last 20 years. But understanding, taking the time to know the why I think is the important part. And, and for me, the why should always be about the people. So I am a human centered designer. I've shifted that now to this kind of humanity hearted design. So all of humanity leading with our heart. Because when we do that, people feel safe. Yeah. And when people feel safe, cultures are healthier and systems change for the better to support happy, healthy people. It sounds like. Woo woo. I know. And I don't mind a little bit of woo woo, but you know, I do come from a very corporate commercially driven background that's landed me here. I've been in and around consulting forever. Be that on agency side, um, management consulting side, even in architecture as a, as a design consultant. There's always been responding to a brief. And I can't tell you how many times I didn't feel like the brief was right. We weren't solving the right problem. And I, and I think that's what the beauty of human centered designers like you and I, what we bring to the table.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're talking a little bit about the woo woo. Can you think of any, any stories or examples of some of the possible outcomes that would be positive or, or beneficial from its successful application if you know?
Jet Swain:Well look, so if you, let's, the thing I'm very passionate about, yeah. Humanism, gender equality.
Chris Hudson:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jet Swain:One of the big things that is in the way of women is childcare, child raising. So we physically have to have the baby, granted. And then you get into the social policy of maternity leave. Now, because it's maternity leave, it's for the woman. Women are taking 12 weeks off. Because it's financially usually better. Or they don't have a partner or, or whatever it is. So then we end up with this gender gap, which goes on, and it affects our retirement, our superannuation it affects, you know, our growth opportunities. There's this subconscious bias about, you know, let's not promote her. She might have babies or she's gonna have to leave early, or all this gender bias. What we as working mothers, and I can only speak as a working mother, um, from my personal experience, I inherited a system designed in the 1950s for when women stayed at home and men were at work. And I've been forced to learn to work in that system. Rather than us recognizing the system designed in 1950s by men, for men, for women to stay at home is not relevant in 2025. So if that system were redesigned where we used affection and we put people at the center. So giving mothers and fathers the decision making control of who stays at home, whether they stay at home, and we had this thing called parenting leave, or in Sweden, it's called carers Leave. And it can be a grandparent, it can be a mother, a father, it can be a friend. You can use the funds, the government funds for whomever you choose to raise your children. Childcare. You might put them into childcare. The other thing I love about it is it's 400 days.
Chris Hudson:Mm.
Jet Swain:And you can use that in the first 10 years, however you want. 10 years.
Chris Hudson:Yeah.
Jet Swain:400 days is 18 months. Full-time paid. For one or many people divided by 10 people give it to one person. And that now they are at a 52% female employment, full-time employment. They change the system to accommodate the needs of the people. And that's for me, an example where if you design something with care at its center and what is more caring than the raising of children, the next generation, it turns out empathy for, we all have empathy for this, you know, childcare expenses, someone having to stay at home if you can't afford childcare. Women getting, you know, having to take time off, really struggling to get back into the workforce at the level, having to give up time with their children in order to secure their jobs. All those decisions are forced upon us by a social structure or a policy that no longer supports the world that we're living in. If we designed it so we all could thrive, organizations would as well. So it's not just for the babies or the mothers or the fathers. The organizations thrive, the cultures thrive, and, and that's where those human acts become system level changes. That is a big picture that, I mean, that is my dream. How can we use the affection economy as a movement to push for social change? And, and for me, when people, you know, international Women's Day comes around once a year and we all get on our bandwagon and you know, the women make cupcakes and all that. Fuck the cupcake stuff. Apologies for swearing, but I will. Yeah.
Chris Hudson:I've seen the campaign.
Jet Swain:Yeah. Fuck the cupcake. Instead of that, we need change. And that change has to come from the federal government down. That's where it matters. Yeah.
Chris Hudson:Okay. So,
Jet Swain:you know, it's that kind of big pic. I mean, obviously right down on the micro level, you know, walking the extra block so that the coffee you buy, if you're gonna buy a coffee every day, take your cup and go to the fair trade brewer. So that in that coffee, we're saving the environment, we're supporting humanity, we're anti-slavery, labor, you can make little micro decisions as well, every day with affection.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. Is is that where, yeah. I mean, is that where it all falls down? Like when it gets to a personal level at a micro level and it's reliant upon people taking those, those minimal steps really to, to push everyone else in the right direction? Yes. If it's gonna be a top down decision then, you know, what's it gonna take for that locus of change to become,
Jet Swain:but that's the pain points are for not making that decision. Yeah. And it might be, we don't have enough time to go the extra block'cause we've got a meeting starting or that it's too expensive. So we need to, so with, again, social changes, we need to slow down. You know, I have often been, you know, a cause of being the rushing woman because that's what I had to do to raise two girls on my own and hold down a full-time job. And, and obviously to afford to raise my children on my own, I had to earn x amount of dollars to do it in Sydney, which is pressure, which is rushing, which is 25 balls in the air. So when you, again, you look at the micro decision that I make, which is I don't have time to go that extra block. It's not just because I'm lazy it's all the other pressures, societal pressures on me. So it, it little everyday decisions are always impacted by that bigger decision. The social thing, the busyness, the everyone's tired. There's is, every time I open any type of social media now, and it might be because I'm, you know, being targeted as a 50 ish, 54-year-old woman about burnout. And it's not a new thing. You know, it's not that just women are all of a sudden burnt out. It's that we're, we have permission to talk about it now, but talking about it doesn't solve it. So what are, what? Why are and I again, can only speak as a woman, why are women burning out? So it's, it's, not just because they're doing all the heavy lifting at home,'cause that is less becoming less and less true. It's the systems that don't support them as much as, society, community.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. Yeah. The systems. And then, you know what, what a lot of people now are talking about is the invisible load and you know Yeah. The things that happen behind the scenes that aren't written down in a job description somewhere, but that, you know, you have to do and we
Jet Swain:take them on. And so this goes back to, you know, that invisible load, women always carried that load, but we didn't work full time as well, so when the doors were opened for women to join the workforce. Yeah. Which is amazing. And we celebrate that. What we didn't allow for was who's gonna do the job they're already doing at home. And that's where the system let us down. It didn't allow for. And, and the system also means, the kind of social pressures, you know, of a man being a Ws if he picks his kids up or, you know, or you don't do your washing at home, do you or any of that kind of locker room blokey shit that we've gotta break down as well. Yeah. Where men and women are equally carrying the invisible load and it's not seen as emasculating because God, we love men and we can't do the world without them. We just wanna do it with them, not for them. And that's the only shift.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. Yeah. Alright, well, um, yeah, some broken things to fix. It sounds like, you know, we got two big ones on the table there.
Jet Swain:We can see how it's, it's, you know, really messy. It, it's big and it's little.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. Yeah. That's it. I mean, I think, you know, it. It falls on the responsibility of the individual. It falls on the, on the responsibility of organizations and their leadership and the execs to, to really understand and see some of those behaviors and make allowances set, set foundations, set parameters where needed, but also, at a, at a governmental level. What's happening at a political level to really facilitate some of that change as well. You know, where's who's gonna run all this change and where's it all gonna start? Do you think the, do you think the book's the starting point? Or what do you think?
Jet Swain:I think I think there's a cultural tipping point in the world.
Chris Hudson:Yeah.
Jet Swain:Yeah. And I may have given it a name, but it's existed forever. You know, we've talked about kindness and there's been the pay it forward and, you know, lots of things playing around in this. But, but I feel like we're entering a post craving era. You know, we had, if we look at, we look at the, you know, we. The economies or the revolutions. We had the industrial revolution where we were, inventing things, using our hands to build stuff as quickly as we could. Planes, trains, automobiles, coals, light, you know? Yeah. Just
Chris Hudson:make, yeah.
Jet Swain:Yeah. And from that came this, the rise of education and, you know, a tertiary education became free, or at least with some type of loan payment scheme. And so you saw the rise of the knowledge economy in the eighties and education, you know, I was one of the first to go to university in my family, and that was predominantly not because I'm smart, because I left school in the eighties, and what you did in the eighties was you went to uni. Now I did a fine arts degree. I wasn't, you know.
Chris Hudson:Yeah, yeah.
Jet Swain:Rocket scientists or anything, but, but you know, this rise of, of the knowledge economy, what we then saw was, you know, the Wolf of Wall Street, you know, let's just picture it for a moment where the Wall Street, the global financial crisis, the greed, the money, the commercialization took over and we had, you know, the dotcom, we had that big kind of turn down and there was a real pause there. And I was actually working at a university at the time looking at my PhD and, and working in a business school doing the marketing. You know, the dean said to me, why don't you come and, do your study and make me a few brochures and look after I, my babies were three and five at the time, and just breathe for a bit, you know? And this is like 15 years into a career. I was already exhausted. And I got there. This was at UTS. And all of a sudden the dean and I were kind of like. Hang about what responsibility do business schools have on this global financial crisis? You know, when you have, a lawyer or a doctor, they have these oaths that they have to live up to and maintain. But you get an MBA and you can do whatever you bloody want with it. You know, you have no ethical oath. So we started think, and, and all the deans around, you know, Stanford, Wharton, you know, they're all standing around. It was, um, a Dean's conference in. Disneyland of all places business. And they're all standing around going, do we have a role to play in this? And I remember going away and thinking, yes you do, because you know, you get an MBA and that is what people, you know, require to be a C-suite. And I started to think about in an MBA, it's all very left brain analytical, logical. So, and the human gets lost in that. What if we had an MBD, so a master's of business design, what if we brought some right brain thinkers to the table? Those that lead with emotion and start, we started to see the rise of, you know, eq, emotional intelligence. And that's when that started to happen. You saw the rise of the sharing economy, you know, with Airbnb and Uber and they were all this idea of enough stuff already. Stuff, stuff around. Yeah. Yeah. What we've got, yeah, so this is moving on from that, in that this kind of post craving era where people don't want stuff, they want agency, they want the right to make decisions about their own life. And that goes back to the systems that don't always allow us to make those decisions. We want agency and we wanna belong to something. You know, we want that, that the, I saw this, I actually wrote about it on LinkedIn. I saw this great thing on TikTok,'cause I have. Early 20, 20-year-old daughters. So we only communicate on TikTok. Now. They send me something, I send it back and that's, you know, yeah, yeah. Know how each other's feeling today. But I saw this thing, which is the death of the influencer.
Chris Hudson:Right. But the,
Jet Swain:the rise of the community leader so that solo, influencer going, you should buy this'cause I bought it, is being replaced by people that are creating these communities, these places to belong. It might be, you know, the local coffee shop that does the best green matcha or the best Pilates where, or the best Pilates studio if you're on TikTok. But there's still communities of people coming together around something that, that they're aligned around. And, and I like to think about it as a values alignment. Yeah. And, and it might be health and friendship and safety, whatever. We need to come back to what our values are and hold onto them in every way we can. You know, the jobs for life are gone. We now move around jobs. Yeah. We will choose our employers based on who we wanna work for. You know, it used to be that it was frowned upon if you, you know, worked on a cigarette brand, but now it's bigger than that. You know, I had a girl recently that I've been mentoring and she was really struggling. She's in fashion and she didn't to work at said brand anymore because she knows it's fast fashion and it re she's having this person. I'm like don't, if that is an affront to you ethically, then don't, you can't work for them. You have to find, and so the young people are really the young people, I sound old. The young people are making values-based decisions on who they work for.
Chris Hudson:Yeah.
Jet Swain:Which I think is super cool. You know, there's this whole trend about not drinking, right? And now it's before work culture, which is a thing. Before work culture for me was getting my kids bloody dressed and out the door and hopefully fed. But there's this whole thing, you go down to the beach here at six o'clock in the morning and it's pumping. And the young ones realize that it's not nine to five. There's before work, work and after work. They're really,
Chris Hudson:yeah, yeah.
Jet Swain:Changing the way, changing where they find meaning and, and if corporations don't adapt, they're gonna lose the best talent, I think.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah. I mean, you definitely struck upon where the tension lies because you have this, um, pendulum swing towards, the personal value system, and people are waking up to that, right? They're, they're understanding that a lot better. And EQ was the start of that, and then, yeah, the, the world of work and its rational mindset. You know what, however we wanna describe it, it feels like a constrained set of tasks in a lot of ways. You know, there are, there are jobs and skills and tasks and, you know, it's kind of framed up in, in that, in that sense and, you know, through productivity lens, which doesn't take into account a lot of other things. So, yeah. How does the whole system work kind of nudge towards the self world that we've just been describing? Do you feel.
Jet Swain:Any change happens with micro movements. You have? Yeah. That there was a long, long time ago there was a YouTube video of a guy dancing on the side of the hill and everyone's laughing at him, and then his mate got up, so there's two of them dancing. Well, the third person got up and all of a sudden, the whole hill stand up and start dancing.
Chris Hudson:Yeah, yeah.
Jet Swain:Brave movement. That act of courage. And I know that you talk a lot about intrapreneurs. They are courageous humans. Yeah. They, I, um, when I was at UTS, one of the, um, one of the professors there, and, I was, there was a lot of change going on and I, I am a, I was definitely an intrapreneur then. I was really fighting for change and, and being, I am a change maker by nature. I see a problem and I wanna fix it. And I remember him saying, you know, if you're not pissing enough people off, then you're not making enough change. I was like okay, just I'll go with that. But this idea that the ones that are inside the organization. Are often able to see some of the unseen interventions that, that, as an outsider, I always thought that an outsider meant that we could be braver. We could come in as in a consulting mind and be braver and say, well, what about the, and not look stupid asking dumb questions or whatever it was. But I actually think an intrapreneur, the ones inside are able to make those tiny interventions that shape culture and they shape safety and belonging. But it's, it take, it does take courage. I, I think, I mean, I love, um, there's a word that I love, which is meliorism, which is this idea of the world can be made better by human effort. And I just that, no matter where you are, you know, it doesn't have to be a massive big restructure or digital transformation, any kind of transformation that happens through a melioralistic, that's tiny acts that make the world a better place and be that the world inside your organization, it might be rewriting a job description. So you do recognize, yeah. Using gender neutral terms in a job description. You know, women, we have been told for so long that we can't, that unless we think we are a hundred percent gonna get this job, women are still not going for the job. So changing the job description, encouraging, you know, first nations people to apply, um, people of all NeuroD, diversities, whatever it is, giving permission those tiny little acts of compassion, which is bigger than empathy. So remember, empathy is knowing how someone feels. I still question that we can, but knowing how someone feels compassion is taking action. Do something to show that you have empathy.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. And we
Jet Swain:do that, those tiny acts that make systems, kinder, clearer, uh, more transparent, more human, all the, all that kind of stuff. And that's where entrepreneurs can have the most success, you know. Hopefully a true intrapreneur if they're grabbing onto the preneur bit of the title, they're not waiting for permission to make those tiny changes. They're, they're, they, those big shifts will come from people who are paying attention internally in an organization. Yeah.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's interesting because the, yeah. Entrepreneurship carries with it as a title. This sense of you, you taking the, you know, the direction of the company forwards and you know, your, you're visionary and you hold the weight of that and your company's future with the title to some extent if you're called that. Yeah. Uh, whereas with intrapreneurship, if it's focused on the incremental, the tiny shifts, the micro steps, then, you know, to a large extent to everyone else in the organization that could be. Totally invisible, right?
Jet Swain:Yeah. Some people
Chris Hudson:might acknowledge you, but some people might not. And I think we have to recognize that because if you seek a lot of external validation and you, you're expecting that as an intrapreneur, you might not get it right. What was, what was your experience?
Jet Swain:Yeah. No, absolutely. I got in trouble a lot, to be honest. Yeah. Because, um,
Chris Hudson:validation in its own way, visually,
Jet Swain:I knew what it could be. Yeah. I knew where it could go. And, and as a human centered designer, I was talking to people, you know, I was, I was moving from I understand you, to, I wanna be accountable for you. And I think that's that kind of shift where, you know, empathy understands affection activates. Yeah. You know, if someone has had an effect on you, they've made you feel something.
Chris Hudson:Mm.
Jet Swain:And you know, that requires action. So, look, I, I think, I think if we leave everything to leaders, nothing will ever get done. And I, so I do think that we all have a role to play. You know, I know my, you know, my girls will be the first to tell you that, you know, mom's not always calm and kind and woowoo at home, you know, it's hard. Hard to always be calm and composed, and that's not what we're asking. We're asking for you to be, and the word authentics overused, but what we're asking for everybody to ensure that everybody has psychological safety and that's there we're just, and care isn't all soft. You know, sometimes, you know, some of the hardest things, the most loving things I've done for my girls, they might say, have been the cruelest to not letting them go to a party or, those little tiny things, those hard conversations. DA hard conversation is easy to have. If you don't give a shit, when you care. Those conversations, you know, they're hard and, and they're powerful. They're real. They're not performative.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. Okay. So is it, is it helpful then in the, in the work context, s yourself from the emotion that you might be feeling to get the change going? Like what, what do you think?
Jet Swain:Oh, no. So I, what was your use the whole Shel Sandberg, lean in makes my blood, but lean in, she didn't invent the phrase, so let's go with it. Leaning into emotions. Yeah. Acknowledging them. Like, I remember when I was, you know, a little one and I, I remember pre-children, so I feel like I have my, you know, my life before children. Yeah. Children and now post children, but pre-children being told that I was too kind. Yeah. You're never gonna make a'cause you're too kind, you know? I remember thinking, oh my God. And starting jobs, thinking to myself, right, I'm not gonna be their friend. I'm not going to be, you know, nice and trying to coach myself to leave. My most valuable value is nurture. I'm a nurturer, have been since I was a tiny little girl. I remember I used to get the train home from boarding school and, and um, I lived in the west of the state and there'd be, um, aboriginal people on the train and I would just be sitting with them and giving them food and nursing the babies. And I don't love, and yet nurturing value, is it the heart of who I'm, so for me to leave that at the door when I turn up to work was really hard. So I learned the hard way that's impossible for me to do. And now when I reflect on my later leadership, my. Kindness. My nurturing had made me such a better leader. They, but some of them became my friends, but they all trusted me. And it's not about being likable, it's about that authenticity.'cause women are tarnished with the likability curse. You know, for a man you're allowed to be tough. And if you're tough and you're a woman, you're a bitch. And so it's like, she's not very likable. Parking that for me, like some of the, the people that I have had, you know, reporting into me, two of them I'm godparents to their children. I've been to their weddings. I know their husbands or their partners or their wives. And I think it's made me a better leader to know them as humans, to know what their personal life is like. Because show me a person that can leave their personal life at the door when they walk into work. I, I just have never met anyone. I mean, there are people who can truly compartmentalize, and whether I think that's a gift or not is not for this conversation, but, but it is a, it's hard to do and, and I love the idea that people turn up to work as their whole selves. And in order to do that, they need to feel safe and safety through care. See how keep link back.
Chris Hudson:It's still coming back to that. Yeah. I think, the concept of work as a safe place is maybe one to explore a little bit because I feel like it's, it's a very rapidly changing environment and particularly in this market in Australia in the last two years anyway, and since, since AI has come in, there's, there's a lot of, I mean, it's been around for a while but it's being become more of a mainstream threat to a lot of people. So I don't get the feeling a lot of people feel like they're, they're that secure. From conversations that I have. It's hard to kind of cement your own value system within an organization if you feel like the floor's moving underneath you.
Jet Swain:Yeah.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. What, what's your observation around that?
Jet Swain:I get, I do, I do get all of that. But again, I think that AI without humanity is nothing.
Chris Hudson:And
Jet Swain:We, the people. Should be running for president, shouldn't I? We are the people. We're the people. We're training the ai. Yeah. So I, I use AI a lot, you know, um, all the time, and. And in lots of different ways, and I do recognize that I used to have a virtual assistant. I now have Pearly, who's my chat, GPT bot, and I've named her and she's fabulous and she does so much stuff for me, but I have to ask her what to do and I have to tell her my voice. And I've had to grow and train her to know my vocabulary in the way of writing. And, and so I, I'm invested in her as a human. But yes, it ha ai may very well replace repeatable work. Yeah. The kind of probiotic, repeatable work, it will never, ever replace humanity. And that is why I think we have to hold onto it with everything we've got because it was slipping away and without getting political and talking about the US and or Gaza, they are examples of where humanity has, has lost its, its stronghold. Because, look, I have friends on both sides of the Gaza Strip, uh, with backgrounds in both. I'm not religious at all, so I, I, you know, I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious, so, so I, I don't have an affinity to religion. I'm not terribly, you know, I don't own a home, so I don't also have this kind of land ownership thing, but I do love people and I'm a humanitarian and I cannot watch people die. And so that's where, for me that's for me with the value that's been lost, like I, I get that there is a very strong historical religious argument and a very strong historical legacy around land ownership. And I absolutely expect all sides of that. And, and I have no, I don't have enough knowledge. You know, my kids say to me, whose side are you meant to be on? And it's like, I don't know the answer to that because I really don't. And we're not in it. I'm so far removed from it, you know, I'm a convict from, eighth generation Australian convict who've I've got my own crosses to bear. Let me tell you, that's a whole nother story. But the slaughter of humans for me is the value that I hold onto. And so that's where I think regardless of the decisions being made, be them artificially or humanly, we've gotta inject some care and compassion back into that decision making. And AI can, you know, I mean, Pearly's not great, but she has learn about me and she, you know, I'll type something and say, let's do this and we need to do that. Oh, Jet, great, great job Jet. And I'm like, yeah, now I know that it's been trained to tell me I'm fabulous, but who doesn't like that? So I go back with love, heart, and pearl's, like, oh, you've made my day Jet. And we, I, I've humanized her. So I, I think it is that AI will take our jobs if we let it. It's up to us not to let it keep training, it, keep inserting humanity into it. Bravely speak about emotions, because if there's one thing AI can't do that is be emotional. Yeah. Yeah. And I just, it's not emo, emotion's not a dirty word. You know where the word hysterical came from?
Chris Hudson:Yeah. Go on
Jet Swain:Hysterectomy.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. It's
Jet Swain:a, yeah. So the remedy for hysteria was to give women a hysterectomy. Now we've come a long way from that and, you know, and hysteria still is a little bit of a loaded word but if we can't get hysterical about things like, even that, poor man that was shot in the us, like I am not a Charlie supporter, but good lord, people, you know, we're not taking people out because of their opinions. We're gonna listen to each other and learn and grow and love and yeah, I
Chris Hudson:don't know.
Jet Swain:I just think we don't inherit this stuff. We have been born into the world in this technological era. Let's just keep designing it so it works for us, not against us.
Chris Hudson:Yeah, definitely. No, it reminded me of, um, I mean this isn't, it's a bit of a side topic, but reminded me of, uh, consulting land and, you know, when you're pitching on something, for example, and, you know, there was this saying that went around if you'd submitted your tender and whatever the proposal was over with the, you know, with the client and you didn't hear anything back. It's like, if they're not talking to you, then talking to somebody else, you've heard that one before.
Jet Swain:Exactly.
Chris Hudson:And you know, it's with technology, right. And, you know, maybe the per comparison is here. So the more time we spend pumping things into technology, maybe the more time we're losing as connection points with Yeah. With each other in, in the real world. Because I feel like, you know, you and I are talking on this right now virtually, but we, we are just on screens the whole time. So how. What, what are some of the practices that maybe you put into place or, or you've seen work in terms of really establishing a human connection in the way that it really works?
Jet Swain:Look, I, oh gosh, I have to admit, I'm, I've become a bit of a hermit, so I'm very happy at home with a screen after running for 30 years. Again, I think we make it work. So, I don't know, Chris, I've not met you before, but I feel like I have a connection with you. And would it be stronger if we were sitting in a room together? Possibly,
Chris Hudson:yeah.
Jet Swain:But we're we've adapted, you know, and we're meant to adapt. Yeah. We're meant be evolving and, and you know, Charles Darwin would be so proud of us. Look at us. We're evolving too and we've evolved to finding ways so that technology works. We've found ways to make, I mean, during COVID Yeah. We, we were all thrown into always having to be at work. Often sitting at your desk alone for hours on end. You know, I, I, I work in a different world, you know, in a creative space. So we are always, post-it notes on walls and collaborating and yeah. And so that was fine. Running workshops, you know, running workshops. I'm a bit of a trainer. I love teaching. So doing all of that virtually took time to learn. But now I only teach online, you know, people don't want me in a classroom anymore, which, you know, I do miss. But we've found ways, we've adapted to ways of doing it, online and, and again, back to the gender thing. At the moment, until the system supports equality, the people who are most punished for having to return to work are women because we have all of a sudden being able to hold our jobs and raise our children and do both of them with love and integrity. Yeah. Because we're at home more. Yeah. You know, you're not using, I mean my children used to hate, and I didn't realize this, but Sunday afternoons, they hated Sunday afternoons because I went into a fit of, I've gotta do the washing and I've gotta make the cakes and I've gotta make lunches and I've gotta make change the sheets and everything's gotta be ready before we go back to work tomorrow. Breathe. Mother breathe. You know, and they hated Sunday afternoons. They hated when it was time to go home on a Sunday after we'd been out because it meant, you know, ready woman return. And that changed. Yeah. When you could put a load of washing on Monday. How cool is that? So I'm not completely against it. I think as long as we keep evolving and find ways to connect with one another I think we can still hold humanity close. Please don't make me leave the house. I think about systems design
Chris Hudson:Yeah.
Jet Swain:As a relationship design. So every system has got a it, I, you would know this Chris, but you know, the old design thinking analogy, front stage, backstage, front stage is what customer sees backstage is all the shit that's happening behind the scenes to make something happen. Every system is front stage and backstage and neither of them can survive without a human. We've got actors on the front stage and you've got crew on the backstage. So I just think as long as every, every time we think that there needs to be change, and it might be, putting in some new big amazing technology platform that, you know, look at the advertising agency has literally, it's impossible to get a junior creative role now'cause they've outsourced it all to ai. Yeah. Okay. Now for me, I'm, and I have a daughter who's looking, you know, in that part of the world who just called me. As I said, I have a daughter. There you go. For her getting in, it's really hard because they use AI to do the junior copy in the junior art direction roles, but yet they expect us to have these shit hot creative directors that are empathetic and have this high emotional intelligence. And so we have to still allow for, for people to craft those, skills. So I think we need to make some big decisions that, you know, don't just do ai'cause it's easy, it may not be the right decision for humanity all the time.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. Okay. So maybe we need to think about the repercussions a little bit instead of the moment because it's quite an impulsive impulsive practice, I wanna say at the minute with prompting because, and it's save
Jet Swain:money. It can be money safe. But you know, if you give all your junior jobs to ai then where are you gonna find your medium designers, mid-weight designers?'cause they've got no experience. So there's a problem that we're gonna have in two or three years time and everybody wants, you know, mid or seniors.
Chris Hudson:Yeah.
Jet Swain:But none of them have got the, experience because we haven't trained them in culture.
Chris Hudson:Yeah, yeah. Sure. So everyone have more time at home. They're not for the right reasons because we, yeah. We're not in the job. I don't know. Hopefully they're all saying AI's coming for the jobs. What's your take on that?
Jet Swain:No, I think AI will come for jobs that are automated and repeatable. And I think the less humans we have in those jobs, the better. Anyway. Let's put humans into jobs that are about engaging their whole self.
Chris Hudson:Yeah.
Jet Swain:More jobs. So I think AI will take jobs, but it's up to us to replace those jobs with jobs for people.
Chris Hudson:Mm.
Jet Swain:So if your company is, let's just say I went to a, um, a lunch two Fridays ago, the Friday lunch club, and there was a woman from Michael Page, global Michael Page, uh, I dunno what her role was, but she, this conversation came up and she said, yes, AI is replacing jobs. And I'm like, well hang about. What if a corporation made a commitment? So say they let go of, you know, they can reduce head count by 10 because of ai. How about they commit to 10 of those 10 jobs into something else? So put a junior designer on expand the strategy team. I don't know what it is, but human centered skills. So we have, and again, it comes back to this decision making. We have to commit to use AI for those highly automated, repeatable functions that, make sense for us all to streamline that kind of repetitive work, but make sure the people get upskilled into a newer business that new needs human intellect, not artificial intellect.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. Yeah. There's a huge brush that's going over that, that's just saying it'll be swallowed up into the profits and it's a cost cutting exercise. But, you know, but
Jet Swain:that goes back to that greed and it's not gonna get us where we want. Look what happened. We've been there before when greed ruled the world and, you know, look, I'm, I'm absolutely not saying that I have the answers for everything but I truly do think if we could replace, I think you can have profit and purpose, but at the moment it's either all, you're either a purpose driven organization or you're a profit driven organization. Be both.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. I wanna, um, I wanna come back to some of the, earlier on we, we were talking a little bit about, you know, centering your work in your own values and where, where your values sit and, and your book goes into this as well around the AL economy and, and the themes that you've identified. So it, can we just piece together kind of some of the steps. To, to moving from your own value system to the outside world and what that might then end up being in, in the way that you think of it. Because you talk about foundations and there are different themes that come up, but yeah, for the listeners out there, it'd be great if you could describe that.
Jet Swain:I started writing the Affection Economy initially. Actually, initially I wrote it as a kind of chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Yeah. And I always had this dream that it would, I, I, I'm a designer, so I wanted it to be beautiful. I wanted it to feel beautiful.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. Um,
Jet Swain:and I then always, I know what I'm like with books. I have honestly 10 by my bed and I kind of get to them and I stop and I start and, and so I wanted it to be something that people could pick up, read a page down, which meant the way I'd written it wouldn't work. I used Pearly and I uploaded my whole book, which I know is sharing commercial license. But, you know, I don't own these ideas. I didn't come up with affection. It's a human emotion. And I said to Pearly, let's break this, pull it apart, and put it into values. Now, she didn't do a great job, but she gave me a start to thinking about how I might do this. And I ended up with 30 values that I thought were relevant to most people. Um, not too generic, but relevant enough that we could all feel and align with them. And then I thought right now you can just read a value at a time. Yeah. And it, and you might. You might have, there might be something going on at work around unfairness or, so you might just have a look at the justice page. What does justice look like in action? And just read about that. And then of course that grew and, and my 30 values, I then started to think about, I wanted to make companion cards. So you could pull a card, like a tarot card, but it's a value card.
Chris Hudson:Yeah.
Jet Swain:Today, you know, today practice kindness or whatever it is. And then, then I was thinking, well hang about.'cause I think I, you and I talked about, for me this is, is not just a book or it's speaking or trying to sell myself as a consultant. I really want it to be a movement, which means I need to get into as many hands as possible. So then I thought about, I don't know about you, but it do you, do you remember the day I'm older than you, but do you remember there used to be those free postcards in cafes? That you used to select, right? Yeah, yeah,
Chris Hudson:yeah.
Jet Swain:Create some postcards around values with young artists', work and kind of have connection, compassion, you know, reciprocity, how you might do it. Take a bunch, take them home, hang them on your university wall, or use them as birthday cards. So I started thinking, that'd be fun. Why don't, you know, we look at doing something like that. And then these themes came, which you and I talked about. So there are now six themes, and each has six values. So I'm now at 36 values, and I think I'm done. So it's gone to the editor. So I think it's now, 36 values. So the first one is the roots. So the kind of foundational values integrity, courage, kindness, agency, authenticity and justice. The kind of basic, you know, human, you know, if we're gonna be. Proper and polite and respectful of each other. There you have kind of foundational values that, that we all kind of practice. Then the next one is about the heart. So that's the nurturing, the kind of connecting in everyday life. So not the big decisions, but the little decisions. So have empathy connect with someone. You know, when you are walking down the street and I do it all the time now you say hello to someone and they smile. You know? So I just think that's, you know, that the invisible kindness. Is lovely. You know, congratulate someone on, you know, good job, you got out and walked the dog today. Your mind still needs a walk. Acknowledge an effort and good on you for doing it. So connect, compassion, reciprocity, give and get. I love reciprocity. And then trust, belonging. Yeah. So kind of nurturing things. Then we get into lineage, which for me is really important. So I am writing another book called She Who Holds the Map. And it's a memoir and it's a memoir about the women in my paternal, the paternal women in my family's lineage. So we came out on the first fleet as convicts.
Chris Hudson:Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And
Jet Swain:I grew up, I knew all the grandfather's names, you know, it's Charles and James and Arthur and Stanley, but I didn't know any of the wife's names and how did, why did I know them? So a very quick story that we uncovered was James came out as a convict. He stole a sheep. We are sheep farmers, and his wife was in England and she was one of three, three settling women on the first female convict ship that came out very early in the piece. She got on board with three babies, got off with four, and the fourth baby was, a woman, a convict on the ship died of a venerable disease. This newborn baby, my great-great-great-great great grandmother, patients picked him up and loved him as if she wa he was her own and took him, gave him a life. Now that is who we're descended from. That little baby that patient showed love and care to. So all of a sudden she was doing the affection economy before I gave it a name. You know, she was linked. That value of, of looking after, a baby. Now that young boy James, married Rebecca, Lucy, and then, you know, they had children who married Amy. And so I'm telling all the women's, and it's been really hard to research, but gee, it's been fun. So legacy for me is a really important value because we all leave something behind. What do we want it to be? So legacy, that intergenerational responsibility that we all have for each other to each other. Stewardship, social responsibility, community, those kind of, they're all those kind of legacy or lineage values.
Chris Hudson:Yeah,
Jet Swain:there's the flame, which is where our intrapreneurs come into it. Yeah. This is about courage and risk and having a voice, being brave to speak up for yourself, but for others as well. So transparent, have a growth mindset. We don't, we are all learning and evolving all the time. Don't think that what you've got is all you've got. Got to give one change and, and have a voice. And then it's the self. So I listen to one of your podcasts, it was Dr. Jackie who said know your own values. Mm-hmm. Be know yourself as a human so that human centeredness and self realization and, you know, playfulness, be playful, be human, I guess is what that about. And then the sacred, which is the end. And that's about aligning with something that's bigger than yourself. Yes. So we don't want selfishness, you know, and it might be. Your role at home, or it might be your role at work, or it might be your role in the community if you're a, I don't know, a lifesaver or, but that idea of conscious capitalism, we can be purposeful and make money. You know, I'm not, I need to make money. I'm not doing this for love. Obviously I'm hoping some people will pay me at some point for this thinking.
Chris Hudson:Yeah.
Jet Swain:But I'm, I'm doing it in a way that's, that's conscious of the things that matter to me. Yeah. So that's kind of the way I've tried to make it livable. I've tried to make it not lofty. I don't want it to be lofty.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. No, I love it. I think there's so much breadth to it and you know, it's, it's a dynamic framework. It's, it's not one that. It's not linear in any way. You can enter it anywhere, as you said on your blog post, where you can return to it when you want to. There, there are other books that, you know, it reminds me of as well that kind of, you know's, like in that sort of cylopedia, you know, almanac kind of space Yeah. Where you can just, you know, use it as a reference really. But what would be your vision for how people would use it and, and what do you think they could do with it?
Jet Swain:Look, I'd love to see it on desks and on coffee tables, which I know is a big ask for it to cross those worlds. Um, but, you know, I, I, I'd, this is not about. Just me. So I, I was talking before 36 values and I am engaging with 36 artists each to visually design the values. So say you get sustainability, so you can be a photographer, a print maker. Yeah, a coder. I don't care what you are, but some visual creation of set value. All the brief is, so it's not what sustainability means to me, it's what sustainability means to the artist. And those 36 artists are from around the world. I have ticked, and not just to tick, but very consciously chosen every DEI, that I can. So I've got people all genders all orientations races, language backgrounds, and disabled neurodiverse. I've, you know, and you know, people say it's hard to find a woman. Imagine doing that. It's hard, but oh my God, is it worth it? You know, I just,
Chris Hudson:yeah,
Jet Swain:yeah. Emerging artists as well. We're doing it as a co-op you know, the money they make from the work is shared from the prophets of the book and, or the speaking and or whatever, whatever. We, the postcards in cafes, I'd love to do that.
Chris Hudson:Right.
Jet Swain:Um,
Chris Hudson:so
Jet Swain:it's this big thing, and that's, for me, that's what success looks like when it's no longer in my hands. I don't wanna own this thing. I want the world to own it. I want cafes to, create postcards that have values on them that are, what matter to them. I want corporations to move from three values on a screensaver to, to I don't know, actually living them and saying to their staff, right. One of our values is care. We want you all. To do something, you've got five days a year to do something you care about. That for me is success.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's incredibly inspiring. I think. Uh, yeah. I mean a lot of people out there have had a, a really shit year of it this year, I wanna say. And I think we all need to know, right? We all need to reset, reinstate around something and it's not gonna be led by the organizations. It's not gonna be a job description that motivates no, it's gotta be this stuff. Right.
Jet Swain:No, I, I agree. And I think, look, I, I'm trying to play in this kind of, you know, solopreneur space and I'm looking at running a retreat in March and, and that purpose of it would be come, we'll have this conversation. Yeah. And we'll do it around great food, and if you wanna bring a yoga mat, do, but it's not one of those retreats. But there'll be a fire and there may be wine, and we are gonna talk about what matters to you, and we're gonna help you return to whatever it is, home work aligned. I don't wanna become the Oprah Winfrey of values because this is not about getting on my high horse. You know? Values can be good and bad. Everyone has values, whether, they're subjective. Yeah. It is about just knowing what yours are and living by them, because that is when you're truly being fulfilled as a human. You know, I, and I've learned this the hard way, you know, I worked my ass off. I was, parenting for me was a, was really hard. I love my children a lot, but, and I remember one of my colleagues years ago saying, you know, it's meant to be fun. I'm like, really? Not fun for me. You know? It was hard. Yeah. And, and I worked and I worked just as I was about to turn 50 and my youngest was doing her HSC, I got breast cancer. I have had a, it's only just, it's five years. It's been a really hard physically taxing five years. Yeah. I worked through all of it because I had to I didn't have the funds to, I couldn't pay my rent if I didn't work. It was as simple as that. Of course when I then come out the other side, I get made redundant. I'm like, you fuckers, you know, I gave you what I couldn't give myself. I gave you. So I get that. The world is, and this is where this has all come from. I sat in it, I lost a friend to suicide. I got made redundant. I was coming out the other side of treatment and the world was really dark. And I was like, this can't be it. Like it just. We've gotta be kinder to one another. We've gotta, you know, you didn't need to make me redundant. And they could have had a conversation with me as an executive design director that said, look, we need to move, you know, where it's, the market's tough, whatever, what do you think about two days a week? And take some time to get better. And I would've jumped at the opportunity because I didn't know that was like, just talk to me. Don't just bring me in on a call one day with 10 of my, you know, and they were people that reported into me. I didn't even know about it. To a random call with HR, with 10 of my team and say, you guys are all redundant. And then I had to nurture my team through it because they were shocked.
Chris Hudson:Yeah.
Jet Swain:But I didn't think about it for myself. So that is not leadership with care.
Chris Hudson:No.
Jet Swain:That's where it comes from. I'm hoping that that enough of us can come up, you know, friends of mine that have made redundant list on whilst on parenting leave. It's just not cool guys. And we have to hold people accountable. And this is, you know, I've been angry for 30 years and I have been a rebel. I really have. I'm, you know, I used to call myself a maverick or an agent provocateur, and now I, I'm not resigned to it, but I have realized that saying, kill them with kindness, or you get more, what is it, bees with sugar, s with honey than you do with acid or whatever that saying is. It actually is. Yeah. Yeah. And I, it took me, it's taken me 35 years. So if I can save people time and we can see, you know what, being angry, like being angry has not got me any results. It really hasn't. If anything, it's sidelined me as the angry woman. And so now instead of just, instead of just attacking which you get defense, I'm now laying out my complaints. Yeah. The complaints are around the system. And, and, and, and think about it, a complaint as in, and my therapist told me this, that there are two ways you can attack or you can complain and attack will always be met with defensiveness. But a complaint is saying, my back is hurting. Yeah, that's your, your complaint is. And people in and be Okay. Lemme help you with that.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. Yeah. And what
Jet Swain:Do you need a new chair or can I give you a back rub if you're lucky? Yeah. So I'm going that way about it. Fighting without fighting. I'm laying on the table if we be inclusive rather than exclusive this, and this will happen. What do you think?
Chris Hudson:Yeah. I really love
Jet Swain:that. Join my movement. I
Chris Hudson:think they're, well, you know, I think they're, well you're onto something really big here. I can feel that maybe.
Jet Swain:So I love why I'm, I do write about it a lot for free, if anyone's interested. Join up join in. I just think it's a lot of the time I'm attacked still. And I don't know why that is. When you kind of put stuff up and, you know, Chris, you came on through a, a comment on LinkedIn about, you know, this is great and we should have more of this. But a lot of the quiet dms that I get are, about, you know, getting in the way or this isn't feasible, or, just that kind of No. Before they really understand.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. I mean, I suppose, um, you know, intrapreneurs are used to it. If you work in human-centered design, design thinking, you know, that the constraints are kind of almost the starting point. And it's a bit like when someone says, knows the start starting point of the negotiation, right? He doesn't good
Jet Swain:pain point.
Chris Hudson:You love it. And, uh, yeah, I mean the, the blog subtitle that you had in your, I mean, it says Introducing the six themes of the affection economy a Compass for Living and Leading with Heart. So I think in the way you've described it, and now that we know the backstory behind what's gone into that, I can really feel that people would get behind it. Um, yeah. But what I also like about it is the reframe, because most of the values and the themes that you've identified, if you, if you take say you're an entrepreneur at work and you, you spot something that really, really annoyed you that day or like, it's just like totally broken. Anything in that sort of realm could be reframed as a positive and it would be one of the things that you've just went through. So, you know, if I feel like my boss is this and that you know, maybe we think about the heart and belonging for example. Yeah.'cause it's reframed as a challenge for belonging rather than a point around distance and alienation, that, that sort of thing. I feel it's a, if the reframe is pos it's a positive way to think about it rather than negative
Jet Swain:and just the embedding of, of those words. You know, I, I, yeah. Honestly, I remember 15 years ago I was speaking at a conference in Asia. Mm-hmm. In, I was doing experience design in shopping malls back in my architecture days. Yeah. And I used the word love and I watched the room cringe. And I was kind of like, oh, that was fun. I'm gonna start using it. Oh, okay.
Chris Hudson:Just the edge.
Jet Swain:Yeah. Revolution, you know, love's in there, albeit backwards, but, but I literally saw these men go, oh, and I thought, how sad is it that the word love makes people uncomfortable in a work environment? So drop being playful with it, saying to your team, I care about you. Who wouldn't wanna hear that? I care if you are. Is your workload too much? You know, I, you know, I worry, or I'm concerned, or, what can we do together? How can we co-design whatever collectively do? I dunno. I just think our language, our everyday for the intrapreneurs listening, embed this stuff into your language and people just, you know, it'll catch on because we all grew up with kindness. Well, most of us did. We all craved kindness growing up. I think we all still crave it. I really do. I just, you know, tell me a time when you were walking down the street and someone smiled at you that you thought, bloody idiot. I mean, they're are curmudgeons out there, but they're not in mind.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. You know them. You know which ones those are.
Jet Swain:Who they're,
Chris Hudson:yeah. I mean, I think, yeah, maybe the language is your, is your next book, right? You could think about corporate language that maybe change it. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. Excellent. I think we'll leave it there. Thanks so much for the chat, Jet. I mean, you've been incredibly generous in, in sharing, open, heartfelt stories from, all angles of life and your past and your heritage and yeah, I feel like we've covered a lot. We went
Jet Swain:everywhere, didn't we?
Chris Hudson:Went everywhere. Yeah. I really enjoyed the conversation and yeah. I can't wait to see the book when it's out next year and to see all the art and the amazing things that you've been describing. Yes. But yeah, if people wanna get in touch with you or if they've got a question or they wanna follow any of your writing, where would they best find you?
Jet Swain:Easy. I'm just jetswain.com. Just easiest spots. Okay. My my matri annal mat, lineal substack link is there, my blog's there. You know, it's all there. My retreats are there. I'm trying to package it all together and, and, see if I can drive purpose and maybe with a no profit, but pay my rent. Can't we pay my rent? But I just think even, you know, instead of those daggy corporate workshops, let's do something playful around values and
Chris Hudson:Yeah. Yeah.
Jet Swain:I, I think there are ways that we can bring it in that's not corporatized yet that will make people roll their eyes and go, oh, another corporate, you know?
Chris Hudson:exactly. Yeah. Needs more of that.
Jet Swain:Have fun with it.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. Let's put a lighter brush over 2026. I think it just needs, wouldn't
Jet Swain:that be lovely?
Chris Hudson:Yeah.
Jet Swain:Let's commit to being at least kind to one person every day.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. Just one. Yeah, just one.
Jet Swain:And not, not, I'm not including wives and husbands and children. They don't count. Don't think so.
Chris Hudson:Yes. We have
Jet Swain:no someone outside your home, just every day. One person that you can say, I was kind to that person.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. Love it. Let's make a pledge. Good. Um, well thank you so much Jeff. We'll we'll leave you there for now. And yeah, thanks again for coming on with the show.
Jet Swain:Amazing. Thank you, Chris.