The Possibility Club always possible

The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery - VOLATILE INNOVATION!
 
What does it mean to be a global entrepreneur today? How do new technologies help entrepreneurs tackle big challenges? And what kind of bravery does it take to lead in such dynamic times? Join us as we explore these questions with a leader who’s redefining the boundaries of business and innovation.
 
In this episode we're diving deep into how entrepreneurship not only shapes economies and sociey worldwide but also drives the bold leadership and bravery required to address some of our biggest global challenges. From economic inequality to technological disruptions, what do we need to answer in order to pave the the way forward in a digitised future?
 
Our guest this week is serial entrepreneur and CEO of MoreThanDigital, Benjamin Talin.
 
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Benjamin Talin website
https://talin.digital/
 
“My first enterprise was at 13 years old, I stumbled into doing I.T. marketing stuff, building server networks. I was making good money for a small boy who got 20 Euros allowance per month, suddenly having 300 Euros per day was kind of good!”
 
“I got bored. Later I was burning a lot of my own capital for my startup and I literally rode it into the ground. I didn’t really get the game because no product no funding, no funding no product. So I built a digital agency. I’m good at marketing so I just built that.”
 
“It was just a journey of constantly: I see an opportunity and I do it, and I create an opportunity and I leverage it.”
 
“I traded most of the companies just out of frustration!”
 
MoreThanDigital
https://morethandigital.info
 
Ben’s page at MoreThanDigital
https://morethandigital.info/en/author/ben/
 
"Eastern Europe is very entrepreneurial, because they have more pain, I would say.”
 
“When you talk with Americans they talk about billions, but in Switzerland, Germany or Austria it’s like ‘yeah we dream about one million, or two million’ — so the type of ‘dreaming big’ is different.”
 
Benjamin Talin on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/talin/recent-activity/all/
 
“We are doing economic development programmes. That is what I was doing for governments but they didn’t want innovation, they didn’t care about innovation. Most of the time I had people say to me, ‘ah, that’s so different from what we are doing,’ and I’m like, ‘that’s what you paid me for!’”
 
Most people think that innovation is like building a rocket or something. But more than eighty percent of innovation is incremental innovation. You have something, it’s an existing market, it’s an existing product, and you implement something that makes it better.
 
“Radical innovation, which is what people think about innovation, is actually creating a new market with a new product. And that is almost impossible.”  
 
Benjamin Talin on Twitter/X
https://twitter.com/BTalin
 
Benjamin Talin on Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/t_b3n/
 
"First of all, we are all humans. We need to understand that besides that we wish that society would be better, and we wish that humans would be nicer, we are first and foremost always optimising our own good. That’s our own priority. If we understand that we can extrapolate it onto organisation.”
 
"People are starting to lose a lot of money. If you are VC-backed they always tell you, ‘invest everything! Be fast! Be fast!’ But if no money is coming up, it’s like ‘ah, you invested everything, how bad’!”
 
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs
 
“Technology will change the way people perceive money, people perceive freedom, people perceive the social structure.”
 
“You have an idea, you pump it up, it goes bust. Before you even launched the second t-shirt, people are already bored and there’s somebody else doing it.”










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The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery - FUTURE-PROOFING WORKPLACES!
 
In this episode, we return to the nuanced interplay between machine learning and human ingenuity. Can machines complement our creativity, or will they eclipse the essence of human touch in professions once thought impermeable to automation?
 
As we navigate the digital era's complexities, questions of equity, diversity, and the human experience within the technological landscape become increasingly pressing. How do we harness AI to foster inclusivity and bridge divides, rather than widen them? Amidst the relentless pace of innovation, where does the individual find their footing, and how do we cultivate resilience and adaptability in a workforce facing unprecedented shifts?
 
Our guest this week is work futures and technology expert, Dr Naeema Pasha.
 
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Dr Naeema Pasha via LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-naeema-pasha-9b23b66/?originalSubdomain=uk
 
Dr Naeema Pasha on Twitter/X
https://twitter.com/naeema_pasha?lang=en
 
Futureproof Your Career — Dr Naeema’s ebook
co-written with Shaheena Janjuha-Jivraj via Amazon
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Futureproof-Your-Career-Succeed-Changing-ebook/dp/B091Y37WZC/
 
“There was just a report done recently at Henley about bosses wanting people back in the workplace, having what’s called a ‘proximity bias’, I will trust you more if I can see you visibly.”
 
Henley Business School
https://www.henley.ac.uk/
 
“Research shows there are people wanting this identity of us just not being workers, that we are also doing other things, we have families, or commitments, or hobbies, or anything. People expect flexibility.”
 
“People are expecting to have time to take children to school, or wellbeing. All these things seem to be much more in the psyche of workers.”
 
“Looking at the research I did on race equity, and other people in Henley have done further study on this, is that people are biased. And what we found with the A.I. is that it could be less biased in coaching.”
 
“When we talk about skilling, the research I did — and this was my doctorate — is that, rather than the skills of coding and STEM and this kind of thing, what is more important is for us to start understanding ambiguity, work through uncertainty, and therefore what skills are important are how to be focused, how to go through these complexities that we have, and work out where we are and how we progress.” 
 
Work of Work Institute
https://www.henley.ac.uk/world-of-work
 
Henley Business Schools’ Leading Edge podcast with Naeema
https://www.henley.ac.uk/leading-edge/future-of-work-how-to-channel-the-spirit-of-gen-z
 
On job hunting —
 
“The job hunting experience has been interesting. Having worked in graduate recruitment, where thousands of people go through processes, now myself being part of a pool.”
 
“The most important thing is to humanise the process.”
 
“The ‘ghosting’ experience is strange. A handful of big organisations are processing everyone. Your data is kept and it’s pushed through this funnel, but then you get ghosted at the end. Automated systems should allow for a rejection stage as well.”
 
“There’s enough intellect in organisations to be able to think, how do we manage this process? Because it’s a decent thing to do and actually it’s good for the recruitment brand as well.”
 
"It still feels like ‘you should be grateful’ and we’ll put you through these ridiculous amount of tests and interviews.”
 
“This year has been a real experience of hearing the term ‘we’re about the hustle’, ‘we’re about the hustle culture’, hearing that quite a lot with employers.” 
 
‘Equality alone won’t help you win the war on talent’
article by Dr Naeema Pasha in The HR World
https://www.thehrworld.co.uk/culture-clash/equality-alone-wont-help-win-war-talent/
 

The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery - CREATIVE PARTICIPATION!
 
In this episode of The Possibility Club podcast, we're exploring the spaces where creativity becomes a conduit for connection, and where theatres and arts venues become the heartbeats of the communities they serve.
Our guest is the Head of Participation at Southwark Playhouse, orchestrating a symphony of projects that resonate with thousands yearly, from all ages and backgrounds. His work is about creating a mosaic of experiences that reflect south London's diversity, challenges, and aspirations. Through strategic development, he weaves the threads of local needs with the theatre's aims, securing funding to turn vision into reality and offering tangible opportunities for emerging talents.
Let's explore the conversation where art and community come together to rewrite stories, with  David Workman. 
 
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David Workman via LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-workman-3ba02132/?originalSubdomain=uk
 
“I constantly pinch myself at how lucky I am to be doing the job I’m doing.”
 
“I realised all my career has been spent in the Borough of Southwark, which is totally unintentional.”
 
Southwark via GoogleMaps
https://www.google.com/maps/place/London+Borough+of+Southwark/@51.4652303,-0.1528077,12z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x48760398794427df:0x41185c626be6770!8m2!3d51.4880572!4d-0.0762838!16zL20vMG45Y3c?entry=ttu
 
“Some of the wards are some of the poorest in London, if not the UK. But that’s slap bang up against brand new developments.”
 
“No-one has to engage with us, I’ve got to reach out to them.”
 
 “The minute we went out and ran a workshop in a community space, we had a lot more people come along. We went into their territory and said we want to be part of this community.”
 
Southwark Playhouse
https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/
 
Southwark Playhouse — participation pages
https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/participate/
 
“I still suffer quite regularly from imposter syndrome, thinking I got here, how did I get here? But I guess I’ve been doing it for fifteen years now, so maybe I should get over that.”
 
“All I’ve learnt, I’ve learnt by doing. Not necessarily through studying it per se, but doing it, getting it right, getting it wrong, learning on the job.”
 
“Last year we opened a second venue, so we now have two venues in Elephant & Castle, and within our new venue we have a dedicated participation space, which is all of my work. Realistically I’m not going to be able to fill that space twenty-four seven with all the work I do, but I want to make that space usable. So we’re partnering with charities working with refugees, adults with dementia, young people at risk of exclusion. They’re already doing great work — which there’s no point us trying to replicate, I’d rather support and amplify that in the community, rather than trying to muscle in.”
 
Bristol Old Vic
https://bristololdvic.org.uk/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwwMqvBhCtARIsAIXsZpaWRrn75HVlHHPChA8o1USd1QqX5NVN0Ryfo7v3eAbjNnZk4HbAxkwaAhg8EALw_wcB
 
Theatre In Education via Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_in_education
 
Shakespeare’s Globe schools team
https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/learn/
 
“I don’t that there’s one approach for everything you do. You have to be adaptive, you have to adapt to different communities, different demographics, one size will not fit all. But also I work with a lot of artists and if I employ someone because of what they’re going to bring to that project, their own approach, their own artistic practice. I’m not keen on imposing on a practical side how that might be.”
 
Elephant & Castle via Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_and_Castle
 
"The community is changing. There’s very little point me not changing how I approach my work.”
 
 “It’s a way of softly building tho

The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery - EMPOWERED ENTERPRISE!
 
In this episode, we navigate the journey of a visionary whose leadership has not just built businesses but has transformed lives.
An architect of opportunity, whose blueprint for change is reshaping the landscape of social mobility.
From the foundations of financial literacy to the pillars of small business support, her mission is to elevate the underprivileged, to turn the tide of poverty through the power of enterprise. By advocating for a model that combines training, seed capital, and ongoing mentoring, she's not just changing the game; she's setting a new standard for how we approach development aid. Her vision is clear - a world where business serves as a vehicle for social mobility, where every entrepreneur, no matter their starting point, has a chance to thrive.
Joining The Possibility Club is a leader in lifting lives through enterprise, and perhaps, a guiding light for future generations of social entrepreneurs - CEO of Village Enterprise, Dianne Calvi. 
 
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Dianne Calvi via LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/diannecalvi/
 
Dianne Calvi via Twitter / X
https://twitter.com/DianneCalvi
  
“When I was child my dad told me stories about his own childhood. His mum was a single mother who struggled to just put food on the table, they were migrant workers during the summer, they would pick fruit, live in a tent, often go hungry. His life was so foreign to me. I realised that I wanted to make a difference in the lives of people like my dad.”
 
Village Enterprise
https://villageenterprise.org/
 
"When I got the opportunity to take on this role, it brought together so many things I was looking for. To take what I’d learned in organisations like Microsoft and apply it to the non-profit sector. To try to build an organisation that had significant impact.”
 “If you want to solve a big problem, you have to change policies in the way governments operate. One of the ways you can do that is building a solid base of evidence for an approach.”
 “We see real transformative change, not only in the women we work with but in the lives of everyone in their families. It really is an incredible change that happens in a relatively short period of time.”
 "We see a whole new local economy grow out of this work.”
 
Dianne Calvi’s page on Village Enterprise
https://villageenterprise.org/about-us/team/dianne-calvi/
 
“We’re working in the very rural areas, so still today most of the businesses that we start are agriculture businesses. In many cases people transition from subsistance farming to planting crops that generate income, and generating much more income off the land because of this re-orientation.”
 
“We’re not providing them with a loan, we’re providing them with a cash grant.”
 
Dreamstart Labs — DreamSave fintech for informal community banking
https://www.dreamstartlabs.com/dreamsave.html
 
“When we go into a new community we target those in extreme poverty and we work with every single household that qualifies. So we’re not just cherrypicking entrepreneurs, we’re really working with the entire village. In many cases 85% of the households in an area.”
 
 Mercy Corps
https://www.mercycorps.org/
 
“We create businesses for the first time but they need customers, so Mercy Corps is providing the incentives and in some cases training for the private sector actors to work together with our entrepreneurs.”
 
Dianne Calvi’s page on Next Billion
https://nextbillion.net/authors/dianne-calvi/
 
Dianne Calvi wins award at Stanford
https://news.stanford.edu/report/2023/06/05/stanford-alumni-honored-work-advancing-common-good/
 
“We’ve done two randomised control trials. It’s the only way you can prove attribution to a program. And we’ve found we can quantify them. We now have evidence that people’s wellbeing is increasing, their men

The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery - MUSICAL POLITICS!
 
Can artists change the world?
Should they?
And should it be through their art, or through their activism?
 
In this episode we're charting the course of a journeyman whose guitar has graced stages worldwide, and whose convictions have spotlighted the corridors of change.  From the euphoric highs of indie rock stardom with his band Gomez, capturing hearts and the Mercury Prize in 1998, to the critical acclaim and UK Top 40 albums, his artistry has been undeniable. But it's his transition from artist to advocate and activist that makes him stand out.
 
Elected as the Chair of the Ivors Academy and sitting on the council of the Performing Rights Society, he's not just playing tunes; he's setting the tempo for change. And in 2024 (after we recorded this interview), he's seeking a place in the mother of all parliaments.



 
Our guest is rockstar, campaigner and - who knows - maybe a future prime minister, Tom Gray.











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“I always saw myself as a side man, I was the guy stood next to the guy, I loved writing songs. I never saw myself as being a leader.”
 
Tom Gray via Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Gray_(activist)
 
Tom Gray via LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-gray-8a084328/?originalSubdomain=uk
 
“Actually music wasn’t my goal at all, hilariously, music was just my way of slowing down my racing brain.”
 
"I actually had a choice: do I get on a plane and work for a senator, which is what I wanted to do — I wanted to be a speechwriter — or do I get Madonna’s private jet? A ridiculous thing to choose between.”
 
Gomez the band
https://www.gomeztheband.com/
 
Gomez the band via Wikpedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomez_(band)
 
"By the time I was twenty-four or twenty-five I felt like I was on my third thing.”
 
“I realised there were all kinds of problems facing my friends in music and a lot of the organisations representing them, although heartily trying, weren’t necessarily getting there.”
 
“I had this curious superpower which was that I understood politics, I’d grown up in politics, I knew loads of people in politics. If didn’t do something, who was?"
 
Featured Artists Coalition
https://thefac.org/
 
The Ivors Academy (formerly British Association of Songwriters and Composers)
https://ivorsacademy.com/
 
“I realised they didn’t have a policy unit, helped them build a policy unit, helped them develop a public affairs strategy, actually employ people to do policy, which they didn’t have. They were kind of shaking their fists in the air but not doing this stuff.” 
 
Musicians Union
https://musiciansunion.org.uk/
 
“So, end of February 2020 I became a one man campaign, called Broken Record. And three months later the MU and Ivors Academy ran my more traditionally designed campaign called Fix Streaming.”
 
“I was the guerrilla ground offensive, and then the air attack came later.” 
 
Broken Record campaign via Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_Record_campaign
 
Mixmag article on the Broken Record campaign to fix streaming
https://mixmag.net/feature/brokenrecord-music-industry-streaming-labels-artists-exploitation-equitable-renumeration
 
Tom Gray’s evidence via the UK Parliament
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/10156/pdf/
 
Twitter/X — @MrTomGray
 
Instagram — https://instagram.com/automatoms
 
“There’s a series of levers, there’s a series of relationships, there’s a way to change the world, there’s a path and, boringly, that’s how you do it."
 
"We got all major labels agreeing to forgive debt of artists who’d been in debt for more than twenty years, which was huge.”
 
“We’ve got an industry-wide transparency agreement that is about to be signed.”
 
“My entire thing is, hold the i

The Possibility Club podcast: Practical Bravery - CLEAR-SIGHTED SOCIAL ENTERPRISE!
 
How is it possible to mastermind commercially earned revenue alongside philanthropy in a growing business? Nurturing a purpose-driven enterprise that is centred around social impact at scale in turbulent times...?
 
Our guest this week has been at the forefront of transforming lives through visionary healthcare strategies, with over two decades of experience in international development. Now leading an organization that has transformed the vision of over 10 million people, she has unlocked billions in household income potential as people start to see clearly again.
 
Where do we begin to unravel the complexities of creating global health equity and sustainable change? Enjoy our conversation with the CEO of VisionSpring, Ella Gudwin.










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Ella Gudwin via LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ella-r-gudwin-20-20/
 
Ella Gudwin via Twitter / X
@ellarain
 
Ella’s ‘My Working Day’ for Business Leader magazine
https://www.businessleader.co.uk/my-working-day-ella-gudwin/
 
“Eyeglasses are a 700 year old technology that have failed to diffuse to the low income segment. They have been remarkably stuck as a luxury item, as a product for the learned and the elite.”
 
“VisionSpring was established in 2001 as a social enterprise, recognising that a problem this big is too big for charity to solve alone.”
 
Vision Spring
https://visionspring.org/
 
“While the word ‘customer’ could be a capitalist word, I think there’s a really important element to the power dynamic when we stop using the word ‘beneficiary’.”
 
“We have to show up in a community with a product or service that is worth people’s time and it has to be worth their limited discretionary income. We have to earn trust. We need to provide products that are stylish. We have to offer the dignity of choice. The power is in the hands of the customer. First. It’s a real psychological shift.”
 
“There is an organisational culture of determination. We will throw ourselves at the wall again and again, until we get over it. The other one is revealing hard truths — being clear when things aren’t working. Letting the data and the evidence drive our decision-making.”
 
Jordan Kassalow via LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-kassalow-26726bb/
 
Ella Gudwin’s page on VisionSpring
https://visionspring.org/about-us/the-team/ella-gudwin
 
In some communities 30% of people think glasses make your eyesight weaker. Others don’t want their girls to be in glasses, because it will make them less marriable and might increase their dowry. And there’s just a lot of people who feel like, it makes me old!”
 
"We can all have a little bit of vanity about, am I going to have to wear my glasses?”
 
“The issues and the connections between foreign policy and international aid are ancient. The extraction mindset is real. There’s a huge push in the international development space around decolonising international aid and making sure more funding is going into community based organisations, organisations with local leaders and local founders.”
 
”It’s important that we use our knowhow and our evidence to catalyse collaborative action.”
 
UN Friends of Vision
https://www.iapb.org/advocate/eye-health-and-sdgs/un-friends-of-vision/
 
WHO’s World report on vision
https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789241516570
 
International Labour Organization
https://www.ilo.org/global/lang--en/index.htm
 
Myopia via Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myopia
 
“The world needs 500,000 points of distribution for prescription glasses, and 400,000 more points of distribution for reading glasses, in order to have durable, lasting supply. So we have to awaken the demand, get the supply in place and then we will be able to solve the problem globally.