November 30, 2022
Eunice Lee and Josh Berry
- Connect with Josh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshberrygphr/
- Connect with Eunice on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eunicesynglee/
- Learn more about Econic: https://www.econic.co/
- Learn more about being a Certified B Corp through our conversation with SEAChange: https://kidglov.com/podcast/graham-pansing-brooks-and-kyle-cartwright/
Learn more about our show partner!
- Together Digital is a safe place for women in digital to speak about, seek out, and be the change they wish to see in themselves and our industry–in person and online. https://www.togetherindigital.com/
- Listen to the Together Digital Power Lounge podcast at https://www.togetherindigital.com/podcast/
Eunice Lee:
Always be ready to listen.
Announcer:
Welcome to Agency for Change, a podcast from KidGlov that brings you the stories of changemakers who are actively working to improve our communities. In every episode, we’ll meet with people who are making a lasting impact in the places we call home.
Lyn Wineman:
There’s a saying in the world of business about consultants and it’s this, consultants take your watch and they tell you the time. Now, that’s obviously not a very kind depiction, but it certainly represents some of the misconceptions people hold about consulting. But hopefully after hearing from today’s guests, you’ll come away with a new point of view because they are from a company which specializes in creating unique customized solutions to their clients’ problems. They take the time to listen to how their clients want to grow and then they coach them along the way to reach their full potential.
And here’s something cool, they’ve just become Nebraska’s seventh certified B Corp, a pretty big accomplishment. Stick around to the end as we dive into all things consulting, discuss one of our guest’s upcoming book, and find out how they are changing the world. Hey, everyone, this is Lyn Wineman, president and chief strategist at KidGlov. Welcome to another episode of the Agency for Change podcast. Today’s guests are Eunice Lee and Josh Berry from Econic, an innovation, transformation, and strategy consulting group. Eunice and Josh, welcome to the podcast.
Eunice Lee:
Thanks, Lyn. It’s great to be here.
Josh Berry:
Excited to be on the show with you, Lyn. Thanks.
Lyn Wineman:
I have been really eager to talk to the two of you because of the really interesting things you’re doing and some of the great accomplishments and new things you’ve got going on. But Eunice, let’s start with you. For those who may not have heard of Econic, can you tell us a bit more about what you do?
Eunice Lee:
Yeah, sure. Econic, we’re a small team of facilitators and coaches. In general, we are an innovation, transformation, and strategy consulting group. We’re based in Lincoln, Nebraska, but we have a good number of people kind of scattered across the country. We’ve got some people in Omaha, Denver, myself, I’m located in Virginia, but we’re a great team. I think a lot of us come from very different backgrounds, so we definitely bring an interdisciplinary approach to the innovation and transformation work that we do.
Lyn Wineman:
I love that. Josh, you and I are both located in Lincoln, Nebraska, with business around the country, but I remember when you started Econic. Can you tell us a bit more about how you got the start and what were those early days?
Josh Berry:
Yeah, Lyn, we will celebrate our seventh anniversary this December.
Lyn Wineman:
Congrats!
Josh Berry:
Thank you. Like you, when you’re starting out and you’re just small, you’re kind of figuring out what can I do to provide value to people.
Lyn Wineman:
For sure. And what can I do to provide value that people will pay for too, important part.
Josh Berry:
Absolutely. It’s really out of that that Econic continued to grow. There’s always been a core around innovation and helping organizations figure out how to deal with change and to bring new products and businesses into the world. But really how that’s evolved to your question is that more and more we’re finding that the abilities that we bring to organizations to help them evolve how work is done is what the companies most need. That still means that there’s a lot of work in innovation.
We’re getting back to our roots, but we’re doing more and more in the places of the future of work and how work is being done and where it’s being done and why it’s being done. A lot of that culture work is definitely still part of our heart that was always there, but has continued to be brought to the forefront.
Lyn Wineman:
Josh, being a marketer and brander, I’ve always really liked the name Econic. I’m curious, can you tell me what thought went into that name, or was it just something that just appeared in your brain one day?
Josh Berry:
Well, I cannot take ownership for the name. Actually it was a name that Brian Ardinger, my co-founder, had before it started Econic. It eventually became to mean to us kind of iconic and entrepreneurship. That’s where Econic came from. A little bit of it was, back to your marketing mind, the company that I had started on my own was called Smart Matter, which was smart work on things that matter, and his was Econic. Econic just marketed way better. We started with Econic and it’s kind of stuck.
Lyn Wineman:
I like it. I like it very much. In the intro, we talked about how sometimes consulting gets a bad rap. I’m wondering if you could set us straight. Maybe, Eunice, can we start with you? Tell us about the positive side of consulting.
Eunice Lee:
I think the reason why people ask consultants for support is often that they need an outside perspective on how to get something done or how to fix a situation or solve a problem. I think the positive is that you bring diverse minds and people together in a space where you can solve that problem together. What I really enjoy about the work that we do is that we get to meet people from very different backgrounds and come to the table to solve that together. You would never be in the same room had it not been for that opportunity. I love that experience.
I think what people get wrong is that we, as consultants, have the answers and that we have this playbook that we’re going to plop in front of you and we know what to do and we’re just going to tell you what to do. But I think in reality, I don’t think that’s the case at all. I’m sure there are plenty of companies that do that and perhaps they’re successful, but I think what makes us successful is that we really take time to sit down and talk to you. We might have some frameworks that work, some things that have worked in the past, whether it comes to innovation or culture transformation or leadership strategy.
But I think we always take our own spin, but then also listen to you, what do you need as a company that has your own identity? You as the company know your culture better than anybody else. Let us hear a bit about that and then let’s tailor the things that we know what works for all of you. There’s no right or wrong answer and there’s no ready-made solution. I think that’s what people get wrong all the time. We get over that little hump in the beginning of our relationships that we build with our clients, I think, and try to show that things can be a more organic or people-friendly relationship-based experience.
Lyn Wineman:
That’s a great explanation, Eunice. I think KidGlov is at our best when we’re working with consultants or coaches that are asking us the hard questions that we maybe wouldn’t ask ourselves and that are bringing in perspectives that we don’t have in our own little internal universe. Josh, I love your thinking on this topic.
Josh Berry:
One of the things when we started Econic is I did not want to be a leechy consultant. Well, I’ll tell you what we try to do on the opposite, which is how are we building capabilities the organization to be able to even do some of the things that we’re doing now? One of our healthcare clients that we work with, helping them with their innovation work, we’re constantly bugging him about is he adding staff, is he adding people that we’re training so that we can build those capabilities within them versus trying to do things that just keep us on their payroll.
That’s also probably a little bit of a flip in the past, at least compared to maybe some more traditional consulting, is if we are constantly putting what we think is best for the client, even over our own interests, that ends up working out better for everybody. And that means building capabilities within them even sometimes to do the things that we could do for them.
Lyn Wineman:
I imagine even if you do your job well, you might be working yourselves out of a contract, right?
Josh Berry:
Quite often. Quite often. Interestingly enough, that is how we have ended contracts, but also at a macro level, how we keep doing more work with the same client, right?
Lyn Wineman:
Because there’s always that next project. The growth never stops. The change never stops. There will be the next thing.
Josh Berry:
100%. I think that undercurrent of how we serve them and the way that we serve them and created value is more important than that particular project. There’s a specific mid-market engineering firm that we work with. The entire relationship at Econic, we’ve worked with them. One of the things that’s great is we have a strong enough relationship with the senior leadership there that they can say, “Is it time to do this project?” I’ve been able to say sometimes, “No, I don’t think that makes sense right now.”
And because we have that trust and because we’re not that consultant who needs that business in that moment, actually the undercurrent leads to a much broader, richer, valuable relationship for everybody.
Lyn Wineman:
I love that. Josh, you have mentioned now healthcare, you’ve mentioned manufacturing. Are there any specific industries that Econic focuses on, or are you kind of all across the board?
Josh Berry:
I would say we do best in more traditional industries, like you just said there. We have clients in financial services and insurance, manufacturing, healthcare, typically those who have some sort of consumer interface and are trying to understand how best to navigate constantly shifting consumer needs. But then also people who have a high contingency of professional workers where the work environment and jobs are shifting quite a bit. I would say organization-wise, we probably work best with organizations of several hundred people to several thousand people, so kind of in that mid-market space.
Lyn Wineman:
A larger organization then. That makes a lot of sense. I think too in the last three years since the onset of the pandemic, those two things that you mentioned, consumer facing business and professional workforce, so many changes and they just continue to change. As a business owner, we’re just continually trying to get our arms around the shift. We used to use the word I think the new normal or when we return to normal. I’ve stopped using those terms because I don’t think there will ever be a new normal. It’s just going to continually change and change and change.
Josh Berry:
I would agree. Back to your question about maybe approach that is unique to us, we see the work and the projects that we do as a means for people to practice exactly what you’re saying, which is that ability to be more change ready and to be set for it. If you just come in as maybe a traditional consultant and say, “Here’s the project you need to do and adopt this new thing,” the company and the individuals themselves never learn how to adapt. And that’s what we’re trying to do through the work. Eunice, you got to help with a large utility company and used the work to be able to help them practice the capabilities of how to adapt.
Eunice Lee:
This public utility that we worked with, they came to us wanting to get ready for a lot of operational changes. At a very high level, they were looking to transition from coal to renewable energy over the next few decades. With these changes in mind, how do they get their employees to be ready for all the drastic operationally, but then culturally that would occur? One of the things that we did was to get them to think about the future of work, reimagine what work at a very traditional company looks like. Dream big. Can you think of ways that we can better support you now that we’ve been through the pandemic where people can come to the work feeling safe, feeling psychologically safe?
That was a big part of it. Trusting their employees, knowing that they can come to work in the same condition that they left, things like that, and know that people care for them. I think through a lot of the work that we did, we tried to get people to open up. We were in a very remote environment. Even at that point, I think having a completely remote relationship with people that they’ve never interacted with, which is kind of crazy at a company, but I think that’s pretty normal. You don’t interact with everybody at your company, but to break down walls to think about how to connect with others that you might disagree with, but have healthy conversations.
Through the work, I think people were exposed to new thoughts that they wouldn’t have had we not brought these folks together, and then ultimately have people engage in very enriching conversations and probably very contentious and controversial conversations around how leadership should be perhaps or how benefits should be distributed, what those transparency in policies or whatever, what does that look like at work? We allowed this team, this close group of people that we worked with for about 18 months actually, to engage with other leaders and get them to think differently about the way that they were thinking about work.
It was just really interesting. At the time, we had thought about what does normal look like? Do we go back to normal? If that question can never get answered, then what do we do? I guess this is just an example of the enriching environment that we were able to create just by facilitating conversations for people to just let their guard down and then have conversations about things they probably never would’ve had about just what work should look like for them so that they can continue to thrive and enjoy the work.
Lyn Wineman:
Eunice, thank you for that example because that really illustrates to me the work that you do. As you were talking about the kinds of conversations you have with organizations, I could see where those are not easy conversations to kick off on your own and how you could come in and create some safety around the conversation and help facilitate some trust between all different levels. What a great example. I’ve been really eager to talk with the two of you for a number of reasons.
One, to learn more about the work and hear that example, but another is because you are a new certified B Corp, only the seventh in Nebraska. KidGlov is also a B Corp, something we’re very excited about and proud. I know, Eunice, I’ve heard that you led the project. Can you give us a bit of an idea of what that was like getting certified?
Eunice Lee:
As you said, we’re the seventh and it’s pretty great. It’s a great accomplishment. And I’m glad that we’re in some good company with you, KidGlov. I actually got involved in the B Corp project pretty early on when I first started. It’s been about two years since I’ve been with Econic, and I was not the original impetus or the catalyst to making it happen. There was another team member, Tiffany Dunagan, who had thought about B Corp. She was very familiar with the movement. From what I understood, the team was exposed to what that movement was, what the certification was.
Especially at the time, this was mid to late 2020 when not just Econic, but also the world and especially the United States, we’re having lots of conversations around race and racism and bias and things like that. Because this was before I had joined Econic, there are a lot of conversations around in the face of this and how the world is headed, what can we do to put some action behind our words? I think Econic has always been a very intentional people focused kind of organization. The way that we’ve thought about positive impact has always been about how are you growing, how are we positively helping the people that we serve growing?
A lot of the ways that we think about impact I think really aligned with the way that the B Corp movement is. I think it was a natural continuation and just validation in a lot of ways for the work that we’ve already done. Coming from a sustainability background, most of my background is in environmental sustainability. But in this space, we learn that it’s not just about the environment, but also the people side and the community side. It was a really awesome experience for me to bring all of that background, perspective, passion into this work with Econic. As you know, Lyn, the B Corp process is kind of rigorous.
Lyn Wineman:
Rigorous, yes.
Eunice Lee:
There’s a lot of documentation. It’s not very sexy, but it gets you really thinking about how you can change policies or add new programs or engage with different people to, I think it’s become kind of a cliche phrase, but use business as a force for good. I know B Corp uses that quite a bit too, but I mean genuinely, we have shifted. Econic has been a very fluid organization as I’ve understood.
Lyn Wineman:
That’s the way a lot of startups are, right? I think if you’re not fluid and adaptable in today’s environment, watch out because I think you need to be, right?
Eunice Lee:
Yeah. Lots of positives, but also we’re still a pretty small organization, but things were just understood. Some things that the B Corp process forced us in some ways, for better or worse, I don’t know, us to do is put some things down on paper so we have some accountability. What we do is create team agreements rather than policies where someone like Josh would put something out and have everyone somewhat agree to it or follow it. But what we do instead is propose ideas that align with some things that are in the B Corp assessment.
For example, in environmental stewardship agreement where we agree to follow certain guidelines and everyone has a chance to give their input, ask for edits, things like that. But we ultimately agree that we will follow this agreement as a team. I think so far, it’s been successful. There are some things around leadership and pay and time off and things like that that are part of our team agreements that have come out of having started this B Corp process. There’s a lot of good that’s happened and there’s still a lot, as you know, that can continue to evolve as we continue to re-certify.
It’s been a long process to get started, get certified, and it’s been a good journey, great learning experience for myself and I think for the team. It’s great to now finally be part of the Nebraska community of B Corps.
Lyn Wineman:
Eunice, if people could see me, I am nodding my head because it feels like our experience mirrors your experience to a certain extent. We went in wanting some validation that we were a company that was doing good. As we went through the process, which was rigorous, it was long, it was not sexy, all those things that you said, but it was so worth it because it made us better. As companies grow from startup and they evolve, there’s so many things that are intended by the founder or intended by the leaders that are just understood.
But as you get more and more employees and they’re located all across the country or all across the world, having those documented or even just stretching your mind to think about new things. Josh, as you and Eunice and the team went through this process, was there anything that really surprised you?
Josh Berry:
If we think about this whole process and what has surprised me is there’s still a lot of organizations out there that still need convinced in some way that it’s possible to do good in business while doing good. While that isn’t necessarily a surprise about our process going through B Corp Certification, this movement has been around for quite a while now. The fact that it has not picked up enough steam is kind of surprising to me. It actually led to some of the impetus for the book that I wrote actually.
Lyn Wineman:
Ah, all right. Well, we are going to talk about the book in a little bit because that is the third reason I cannot wait to talk to you. But Josh, I’m going to agree with you. I don’t understand why there aren’t 70 or 700 Nebraska businesses that have achieved certification because I feel like there are a lot of businesses that have the intent of doing good. I think there might be a misperception that through B Corp Certification you lose some autonomy or control over your business. I didn’t find that at all. I think that’s the magic of there’s a 200-point scale, you have to achieve 80 points of the 200. When we certified, that was the bar.
What that meant to me was that I could really lean into the areas that made the most sense for KidGlov, but then there was a lot of room for us to improve as well. As a matter of fact, Eunice, you mentioned sustainability. That was the area that KidGlov scored the lowest on. Not because we were doing anything wrong, but it just hadn’t… As an advertising agency, we’re not manufacturing, we don’t have chemicals, we don’t produce a lot of stuff. Mostly everything we do is digital. It just hadn’t been a focus, but now we’re all carpooling and buying carbon credits and you doing all kinds of things. It’s really opened our mind.
Josh Berry:
I think you hit it there then. It’s awareness, right? To your point, because there’s less than 10 B Corps in Nebraska, that doesn’t mean there’s only 10 companies doing good in Nebraska. Not at all.
Lyn Wineman:
Not at all.
Josh Berry:
We have so many great companies who are doing it, and I have talked to some who have said, “I’m not going to pursue B Corp because that’s just virtue signaling,” and just pushing that aside. I think for us it’s just continued awareness and, as Eunice said, validation, created a beacon for our organization to look at and created some other windows to be able to look at this space through. I saw it as only value added on the journey that we were on, not an ends of itself that we were doing. I definitely encourage people to take a look at the B Corp process and even the application just for the sheer point that you just said, it creates more awareness.
Lyn Wineman:
Hey Josh and Eunice, I want to take a quick break here because there is something I want to share with our listeners. I know many of them are in the field of marketing, and there’s no denying that digital is a demanding and competitive space. And unfortunately, even today, with all the progress that’s being made, women are still grossly underpaid and underrepresented. But there’s a powerful tool where women can share our knowledge and connections with each other, Together Digital Power Lounge. Let me say that again. It’s Together Digital Power Lounge, and just like Agency for Change, it’s a podcast where you’ll hear authentic conversations from women with diverse perspectives, valuable expertise, and the desire to change the world for the better. That’s my favorite part.
So I encourage you all to listen with host, owner, and chief empowerment officer, Amy Vaughan, as she builds a collaborative community where women can find education and empowerment and become their best selves, personally and professionally. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or at www.togetherindigital.com, and we’ll get that in the show notes.
All right, Josh and Eunice, let’s get back to our great conversation.
Lyn Wineman:
Josh, do you have any advice? Let’s say somebody’s listening and they want to go after B Corp Certification, do you have any advice for them?
Josh Berry:
I think there’s a lot of great resources online. Eunice, maybe you can talk to this a little bit more, but we actually partnered with a local organization, SEAChange, to help us with our work.
Lyn Wineman:
We partnered with SEAChange as well at KidGlov, and we’ve done some great podcasts with Graham and Kyle at SEAChange too that we’ll actually link up in the show notes. I think that’s great advice to get a partner to help you through the process.
Eunice Lee:
At least for us, we were not in the position of needing ideation support and how to be more socially minded or structure things differently in our governance or whatever. But even having someone who understood the process, the boring administrative side, having a partner to just hold your hand and get you through the end and cross the finish line, I think that was a big help. But I think before we even start that, I mean, certainly the advice would be take a look. I mean, the B Corp movement, it’s small but really mighty. I think there are some really big names that are part of this movement. I think people will be very surprised to know that some very recognizable names are part of this.
I think there’s a lot that we can be inspired by and even those who are already certified. The B Corp website has a great directory of all the companies who are certified, and you can easily learn more about what people are doing. There’s no single way I think to run your company as a B Corp. I think that’s the beauty of it. You can always take your own spin. The application process is only a guideline. The guideline, sure, it’s rigorous, but it is loose enough where you can do things in your own way and keep your own identity. I think definitely take the time to see what else is out there, see what types of industries are in the space.
Be I guess happy that it’s not just a one industry space. And then the last thing I guess I would say is I think it’s really important to know what your values are as a company. I think we at Econic have such strong values that help us show up every day, help us do the work and dictate probably a lot of our decisions. For example, whole person is a big part of our core values. That drives a lot of the ways that we create teaming agreements that support people’s ability to show up as a whole person. I think if you know your values and you reflect on them, perhaps you need to change them, it doesn’t matter.
But as long as you know what your values are, I think that helps you then figure out, what is going to help me focus on what matters for my company? Should I go through the process of the B Corp assessment?
Lyn Wineman:
I just think that core values and purpose statement are such a guiding light that help provide clarity in decision making and focus. I think that’s great advice. Eunice, I want to build on that idea of whole person, because I know you also describe Econic as being a people centered business. I’m just curious, what does that mean to the organization and how does it look in practice?
Eunice Lee:
That’s a great question and I will actually love to hear Josh’s perspective on this after. I think being people centered, first and foremost, is that you are I guess starting or going at a situation with the relationship in mind. For example, if you’re meeting someone new, maybe it’s a client or maybe a potential friend, you’re trying to get to know that person first rather than thinking about what can I get out of the situation. You’re trying to build a rapport, a friendship, and build some comfort and trust and then go from there. Maybe you can build a partnership that leads to something else. I think being people centered also means you are caring for others, being empathetic, or at least sympathizing.
I think personally there is a difference between empathy and sympathy. Perhaps you might never truly be able to step in the shoes of someone and empathize with their situation. But if you can only get to the point of sympathizing and just acknowledging someone’s experience, I think that’s still being people centered so that you are taking the time to hear another person’s perspective, their journey. In the workspace, that might look like if a new person joins a team, taking the time to hear about their past experience and learning what their goals are and then trying to help them carve out a space for themselves in this new work environment.
I think the way that people centeredness appears at Econic is that we take the time to get to know each other as individuals. I think in the last two years since I’ve been here, I think I’ve seen an immense push for even more people centeredness, which is even crazy to think about. How can you be even more people centered? We have some team members who have really pushed us to think about some things like the Enneagram, where it helps you think about each person’s type. I’m not going to get into detail about what the Enneagram is.
Lyn Wineman:
We love the Enneagram at KidGlov too. I love the parallels between the two businesses. Because once somebody’s Enneagram or their strengths, it helps you understand where they’re coming from, what drives them, what gives them energy. Josh, what does it mean to you? I’m curious.
Josh Berry:
Whole person was one of our original four core values when we formed Econic, and it still survived. It comes back to a couple of core principles though, and that is that I don’t believe people exist to serve organizations. I think organizations exist to serve people. What’s core about that is Econic to me has always been a platform for people to continue to understand, discover, and unleash their own potential. And that potential, you have to understand a person as a whole person then to be able to truly understand where they’re going. If you start to hold that as a core belief, that then influences a lot of different practices in the ways of where you’re going.
How you get new projects or new clients, a lot of that comes back to is it connected to a passion or area of growth for one of our team members? Thinking about how we manage our teams, we have a weekly kickoff meeting with the core team, and one of the two metrics that we capture each week is on a one to 10 scale, what’s your whole person score? And that’s whatever it means to you. For you, it could be physical, it could be mental, spiritual, whatever. You don’t even have to tell me what it is, but where are you one to 10 in terms of your whole self coming to work? Because that understanding of how we can be there for each other and how the work leads to that is…
Work outcomes are important, but this whole person stuff is even over those work outcomes because they end up taking care of themselves, at least what we’ve been able to see in practice.
Lyn Wineman:
Josh, what you just said there was pure gold that was so good. I think you ought to consider writing a book. Have you ever thought about that?
Josh Berry:
Well, thank you, Lyn.
Lyn Wineman:
Tell us about the book, Josh. Is any of that greatness, what you just said there about organizations serving people, I feel like I want that on my wall. Tell us a bit more about the book.
Josh Berry:
Yes. The book does have some of that content in there, and it goes back to what we were talking about a moment ago. It goes back to the point before of what is stopping leaders from embracing some more of these people centered ideas. I was doing a bunch of research for a book that I didn’t know specifically what the topic was going to be, but I was going to start writing a book. I was talking to all these people who led great, good people centered organizations who were also getting great returns on investment. Many of them used the phrase, “Okay, this sounds naive, but,” and then gave some really awesome idea of what they did.
When I went back and looked at the pattern, I said, “Why does everybody use this shield of this might be naive?” What I started to dig into and understand is they were using it as a qualifier because in the traditional business world, oftentimes things that don’t have a pure rational ROI are shunned or looked down upon. And yet so many leaders have this innate idea or maybe even a little voice of what the right thing is to do, but they don’t listen to it in those ways. That became then the birth of this book, which is literally called “Naive: Business Success and Joy through Chosen Naivete.”
What I explore in the book is this idea of chosen naivete. Because through the research, the word naive has actually been hijacked over the last couple of hundred years. It used to just mean something innate or authentic that was already within you from the start.
Lyn Wineman:
That is not what I think of when I hear the word, right? It’s kind of like the word consulting. Somehow it’s gotten co-opted again. What you’re going to do is you are going to make being naive fashionable again.
Josh Berry:
What I’m hoping to do is show that there is something beyond. There is a child-like naivete. Then as we go, and especially in business, we learn that rational ego, all the smarts is what makes things happen. There’s something beyond that which I’m calling chosen naivete, and it’s a return back to some of that curiosity and humility and openness to figuring out what things are. But it comes from this innate spot also that, at least for me, that I believe people are good, that people are trying their best, that people are inherently worthy of trust.
Lyn Wineman:
I’m with you there on all three of those. Yes.
Josh Berry:
Even if those things sound naive, what I’ve learned is there’s a lot of great business leaders who are saying, “Yeah, I’m going to make good business decisions and I can hold those types of ideas and then those start to influence the practices that I have in business.” That’s in essence what the book explores is not only some of those practices that some people might think are naive, but more importantly a really easy approach and some exercises to help people really think about, okay, is this really naive, and what beliefs do I hold around this, and what do I lose and what do I gain by holding certain beliefs in an attempt to hopefully help unlock other more helpful practices in the future.
Lyn Wineman:
I love it. Josh, I know you’re still working on the book. It’s not available yet, but how will I get a copy when it’s ready?
Josh Berry:
By the time this podcast is out, we will likely be in the pre-sale mode of the book, and then it’ll officially be on Amazon and all of those platforms in the springtime.
Lyn Wineman:
Sounds great.
Josh Berry:
Can always go to Econic’s website and I’m sure we’ll be promoting it there or follow me or Econic’s work on social media platforms.
Lyn Wineman:
Very good. I’m inspired by authors. That’s on my bucket list. I’m also inspired by motivational quotes. People who listen to the podcast know this next question is my favorite question. Because the two of you have said so many great things, I’m going to ask you each to give me your own original motivational quote. Eunice, let’s start with you. Give us a few words of wisdom to inspire our listeners.
Eunice Lee:
Sure, Lyn. I’m actually not a quote person, so I can’t put my twist on anything, but I think the way that I live my life is to always be ready to listen.
Lyn Wineman:
I love that. Always be ready to listen. Honestly, really great advice. Josh, how about you?
Josh Berry:
The one that just came to mind for me was the world needs more of you in it.
Lyn Wineman:
Do you tell that to your kids? I hope you do.
Josh Berry:
You try to act that way a lot, right? It was my way of also thinking about that Howard Thurman quote, “Don’t ask what the world needs, instead ask what makes you come fully alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is more people who have come fully alive.” The world needs more of you in it.
Lyn Wineman:
You guys, brilliant, both of you. Those are two fantastic quotes. Thank you. Tell us now, we had this great conversation, how can people find out more about Econic? If they want to connect with you for some consulting, they want to find out about the book, how do they connect with you?
Josh Berry:
I think the best way is to go to our website, which is Econic, that’s E-C-O-N-I-C, .co. Again, it’s not.com. That extra M was going to cost… It was going to be like $39,965 for that little M.
Lyn Wineman:
Not worth it.
Josh Berry:
Not worth it. Not worth it. Econic.co or you can find Eunice Lee or Josh Berry on LinkedIn.
Lyn Wineman:
Fantastic.
Josh Berry:
There are probably some great ways.
Lyn Wineman:
We’ll link to all of those in the show notes. Eunice and Josh, as we wrap up today, what is the most important thing you would like our listeners to remember about the work that you are doing? Josh, let’s start with you and then go to Eunice.
Josh Berry:
I just think in terms of the work that we’re doing, if you have an idea of how to activate on a bold new vision for your company, Econic can be your co-creator and collaborator to be able to help you bring those ideas to life, especially as you’re thinking about growth of people or the business. Regardless, if Econic has an opportunity to partner with you in those ways, it’s, again, to remember that you already have it within you to be able to do that work, and so to find the courage and the action and the community and partners to be able to help you bring those ideas to reality.
Lyn Wineman:
That’s very inspiring. Eunice, how about you? What would you like us to remember?
Eunice Lee:
I think the takeaway I would give others is that there are so many ways to make a positive impact. Whether it’s just you as an individual, maybe as a business or a consultant, there’s plenty of opportunities. If you need some inspiration, there are a lot of others who are doing great work. I would encourage you to look out and see, read more or look up people or businesses that are doing some really awesome things and get inspired to create more positive impact in this world.
Lyn Wineman:
Fantastic. Josh and Eunice, this has been such an inspiring conversation. I’m going to say I fully believe the world needs more people like the two of you, more organizations like Econic. Thank you for sharing with us today.
Josh Berry:
Thank you, Lyn. It’s been amazing to be on here with you.
Announcer:
We hope you enjoyed today’s Agency for Change podcast. To hear all our interviews with those who are making a positive change in our communities, or to nominate a changemaker you’d love to hear from, visit KidGlov.com at K-I-D-G-L-O-V.com to get in touch. As always, if you like what you’ve heard today, be sure to rate, review, subscribe, and share. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time.