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👉 Why listen?
What do vintage LEGO, a container full of Nikes and sex toys have in common? Tim Silverwood knows.
As a multi-award winning environmentalist, ocean futurist and Co-founder of Take 3 for the Sea he's picked up these things and more from our beaches and in rivers and, in doing, so started a movement that's making it fun and easy for people like you and me to clean up our waterways worldwide.
But wait, there’s more.
He's also Co-founder of Ocean Impact Organisation, a startup accelerator bringing to market innovations that restore and protect ocean health, and stop garbage getting there to begin with.
Why? Because, as he says, ‘if all we ever do is clean up, all we’ll ever do is clean up’.
Listen in to hear about:
Listen in to hear about:
🤠 Why dilution is no longer the answer to ocean pollution. It worked for us humans for a long time, but not anymore.
👏 The superpower of a simple call to action. Take 3 spread from one Central Coast beach to every continent because it's free, fun, takes 15 seconds, and makes you feel good. No course required.
💰Where the smart money is going in the blue economy. River plastic turned into building materials, robot creepy-crawlies scrubbing ship hulls to cut carbon and toxic anti-foul paint, and deep-sea pumps
🤨 Why microplastics are changing who fights this fight. It's no longer the greenies. It's the health-and-fitness crowd, and parents looking sideways at squeezy pouches.
We gave AI a listen and here's what it had to say:
11 million tonnes of plastic go into the ocean every year. That's like 2,000 garbage trucks tipping their load in, every single day. Tim Silverwood has spent 17 years trying to turn off the tap.
He's the co-founder of Take 3 for the Sea, the ridiculously simple idea that spread from one beach on the NSW Central Coast to every continent on the planet: take three pieces of rubbish with you when you leave. He's also co-founder of Ocean Impact Organisation, where he helped back 120+ blue economy startups and made 16 investments before stepping away in 2025 and returning as CEO of Take 3 to give his first baby a second crack.
💡 THE BIT THAT'LL STICK WITH YOU
"If all we ever do is clean up, all we'll ever do is clean up." Tim is refreshingly blunt about the limits of mass harvesting. Yes, get the plastic out, but the real prize is the person who bends down, picks up a chip packet, and starts asking why it existed in the first place. That's where systemic change actually begins. And if you run a nonprofit, his breakdown of quant vs qual impact, and why most orgs tell their story badly, is worth the listen on its own.
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Full Episode Transcript
The Ocean Plastic Wake Up Call
Ben0:00
Have you ever been swimming in the sea, enjoying the beautiful water when, hang on, what's that stuck to my hand? A chip packet? You're not alone. All over the planet, we humans dump 11 million tons of plastic in the ocean a year. It's like 2,000 garbage trucks lining up and dropping in their load every single day. And the result is that in the next 25 years, it's estimated there will be more plastic than fish in our oceans. Tim Silverwood is on a mission to do something about it. He's an award-winning environmentalist, an ocean futurist, co-founder of Take Three, co-founder of Ocean Impact Organization, and he still finds time to surf. Oh, yeah, he's also an all-around, a really good guy. G'day, Tim.
Tim Silverwood0:41
G'day, Ben. So nice to be here. So, first, I have to ask, what's an ocean futurist? Yeah, look, it's a bit of a creative term. I've probably taken a bit of license to use that one. But I think I come from a camp of people, a school of thought that realized that the ocean is often looked at as just a resource, something we can just take from, we just extract from it, and then we just let anything that we don't want anymore to pollute. And when you actually understand the role of the ocean in creating a stable, habitable planet, you realize that this has got to change. So when I talk about being an ocean futurist, it really is trying to purvey this idea that the ocean is the center of our planet. It is absolutely integral that we not only protect it, but we look at it as a source of the solutions for a better tomorrow. And coming from this wonderful world of startups and blue economy innovation, the opportunities that are out there, if we harness the ocean for economic opportunities, for food, for protein, but also for sustaining a planet and dealing with the climate crisis, the future is in the ocean. So I like to provocate a little bit with this idea of being an ocean futurist because I see it and many other people do as well.
Ben1:56
It is amazing how our ability to treat things as a garbage dump, isn't it? Especially rivers. You know, see old photos of rivers and they're now being concreted into drains. Yeah, really, is that what we saw that was? Just something to take away our rubbish when there's such beautiful, um, not just um essential part of the like natural cycle of the planet, but they give us so much back as well. Yet we as humans, I mean, we do it with land as well, right? Seem to the things we value most, we then don't value sometimes. I don't get it.
Tim Silverwood2:26
Yeah, and I think it probably goes back to the first stages of our urbanization and industrialization. You hear all the stories of putting sewage systems into cities that were growing for the first time. All you're looking at is a way to take the stuff that you don't want anymore away as quickly as possible. And the ocean and rivers are the quickest way to do that. And it was always considered that the oceans, because they are so big and so vast, that dilution is the solution to pollution. And to a degree, it worked until we started to have this incredibly toxic relationship with plastic and other contaminants that they never go away. So eventually the rivers show the first signs of being contaminated and overrun. And now we start to see it on our shorelines. Now we start to see it in the central gyres of the ocean. We start to see it on the ocean floor. We cannot consider the ocean as a source of distributing this pollution. We have to find ways of turning off the tap because, I mean, what does the future look like? Like you said, an ocean that's got more plastic in it than fish. I mean, that just to me is the statistic that came out probably about a decade ago now that was just like, hang on a minute. Like, I know we're taking a lot from the ocean in terms of mass production of seafood and really sort of just raping the ocean of all sorts of protein and at the same time allowing these ginormous volumes of plastic to leak into the ocean. That is just not going to happen on my watch. But we've got a lot of work to do because the problem seems to be getting worse, not really better. S
The Campfire Spark Behind Take Three
Ben3:56
So you're very much about looking after the right now. You're founder and CEO of Take Three, you're co-founder of Ocean Impact Organization. It's a really impressive journey that you've been on. You've been doing it for what, better part of 20 years, probably. But take me back to the start. It started with a chance meeting with kind of soul surfer Dave Rastovich.
Tim Silverwood4:14
Yeah, Dave Rastovich provided a wonderful spark, which sort of turned my little ember into a flame. So I'd been through university and studied sustainability, and then I'd gone and done a lot of traveling around the world, surfing and snowboarding in exotic places like the Himalayas. And the thing that was just so evident after what I call my Bachelor of Life. I'd done my Bachelor of Science and I went and did all the travel, got it out of my system, saw how the world really functions and lives. And then I was like ready. I was ready to sort of lean into something. I knew I didn't want to work for government. I didn't want to go and use my sustainability degree to help sort of greenwash a bad operator's practices. I wanted to do something that was really fundamentally going to change things. And I just happened to be up the coast surfing near Port Macquarie at a little place called Point Plumber. And sitting around the campfire at night, well, lo and behold, there's a bit of a commotion brewing. And it turns out that Dave Rastovich and five other activists were sailing in on these Hobi cats. They were coming south from Byron Bay on a mission to Bondi. This mission called Transparency. It was when the cove was coming out, and there was a lot of talk about the threats to cetaceans from whaling, but also in Japan, the killing of dolphins. And so Dave Rastovich was really fired up and doing a lot of work to bring awareness to that. And he came in and we ended up sitting around the campfire that night. And I just got to spend time with this human who was a real idol. You've got to remember, as a surfer, you've in the 90s and the noughties, it was fueled by just the commercial boom. Capitalism was just infusing through surfing. You only had a couple of figures that stood out as opposers of that. And Dave Rastovich was really the main one. Um and he's had his own unique journey in trying to be a professional surfer, but also a bit of a kind of uh activist and treading his own path. So yeah, he just sat around and said, Um, Tim, sounds like you sort of you know that you've got something that you want to do. Like, do something, just give it a go, just take that first step. And that first step ended up being getting up on a stage when they were showing the Cove movie at Avoka Beach, which is near where I grew up on the Central Coast. And someone in the audience said, Hey, Tim, you've got to meet Amanda and Roberta. They've got a brilliant idea. I think you guys can do magic together. And so within a week, I'd met Mandy and Roberta, who had the idea for Tate Three for the Sea, and the glue formed, and the rest is kind of history. That was 2009.
Ben6:40
Nice work. There's always an aha moment, isn't it? It's amazing how many people have the tour of life and the aha moment comes from it. Because look, we do live in a bubble, in a bubble, in a bubble somewhat, you know, it's not to see the rawness of well, both nature and humanity that you realize maybe a privileged position or to do something good for the world, right?
Tim Silverwood7:01
Yeah. And that is interesting, I think, about take three, because the idea was born on the beaches of the Central Coast where you know you can literally leave that beach very obviously cleaner than you found it by just spending 10, 15 minutes picking up plastic. Ironically, I'd been over there and seeing the contamination that we were talking about before, the pollution in rivers and urban environments. And it's just, how do you actually make this look and be better than what you found it? It's an enormous exercise. So, you know, that's, I suppose, a next part of the conversation we'll get to where how does the take three for the sea simple human-sized action, how does that actually create planet scale impact? And that's obviously a big focus of the work I'm doing now.
Ben7:42
Well, let's segue into that show since you did it so nicely. You know, one of the great challenges of environmentalism is the lack of individual responsibility people seem to have for the collective planet. You know, it's like it's everyone's kind of shared resource/slash problem, depending on which way you look at it. Therefore, it's sort of no one's. You know, we treat it this way. And, you know, when it's my rubbish, if I if I eat something and I create rubbish, I consider it my responsibility, and I think most people do, to do something like that. But suddenly when it's on the beach, people walk past and go, well, now it's in nature, it's not mine anymore. And one of the things I've always loved about take three is it's such a simple action anyone can take, right? Take three things off the beach, out of the river. Well, hey, the park, why stop there? You know, put it in the bin. How important is that simplicity in getting people to do something? Because I get it. The name is written on the tin, right? Take three. It was originally take three for the sea, I believe, wasn't it? And then you.
Tim Silverwood8:34
Yeah, we're actually leaning right into take three for the sea again because it's the thing that people seem to recall most of all. Um, they'll even say, hey, three for the sea. Hey, you're the guy from three for the sea. So yeah, it really has been the strongest resonance. But yeah, simplicity is obviously integral to the success of the movement, I'll call it, because how else do you describe something which has spread from a single beach on the central coast of New South Wales to literally every corner and continent on the planet? But I think the real thing that I think is the secret superpower of take three is it makes you feel good and it's something that's fun. I think a lot of the spread is just because people see someone else doing it or they hear someone talking about it, and they're like, my gosh, that's something I can do. It doesn't take a course or any sort of deep knowledge. It's not rocket science. Literally, most people can do it anywhere, anytime, and it makes you feel good. And so to me, that's something that we have always known. But as I come back and start looking at the next chapter of take three, it's like, what do we do with that superpower? And, you know, we'll get to this in the conversation today. But the key to me has always been wow, we make a tremendous impact across the planet, but we don't often have the data to hold up and celebrate about that true impact and about the ripple effect that someone who starts their journey just by seeing the object, bending down, picking it up, grabbing a handful here and a handful there. What does that actually lead into? And what does it mean? Because we've got eyes and ears of people all across the planet who are seeing the stuff that's leaking into the environment. They're doing something about it. How do we channel that into the powerful positioning to turn off the tap and stop it becoming a problem in the first place? And that's what I'm so fired up about and excited about in this next chapter for the organization.
Why Simple Actions Become Movements
Ben10:26
Well, you've gone a long way there. Because you go from, well, if I do it, it's easy for me to understand, but it's also a repeatable action. You know, we're all a bit monkey see monkey do. If I see you do it, let's say I'm walking on the beach with you, I see you do it, oh I better do it. Right. So now you've created that. Other people see two of us doing it, or two people are doing that's not just a low nut, that's a bit of a movement. And then you can grow that impact. So I love that. But you've moved on to a very interesting question there, too. Someone once said, if all we ever do is clean up, all we'll ever do is clean up, right? And that's interesting because it moves on to the next stage of your journey. You know, you obviously take three is about let's pick up what's going in, but then you moved on to ocean impact organization, which is more about can we find and fund and scale and grow solutions that stop this stuff getting there to start with? Do you want to tell me how you moved from take three to OIO? Let's call it OIO, because it's very long to say ocean impact organization.
Tim Silverwood11:20
Yeah, and well done for getting it right. OIO IOIO. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ocean Impact Organization. Yeah, look, I think um really interesting part of I suppose the founder story and being a change maker, it fuels you with so much energy and uh optimism and spirit for a long time, right? So I did the 2009, jumped on that train and I was just powering ahead, loved everything about it. By the time 2020 was coming around, or might have even been around 2018, you start to get the feeling like, am I gonna do this for the biggest and best part of my career? Is it just gonna be this? And so I started to think about well, what does take three for the sea look like without me? And how can it go and become a wonderful, powerful initiative ongoing without me at the helm? And that was probably the first sort of exploration of that. All right, well, what else is out there? And it turns out that what else was out there? I had a very open book to what would come next. I knew it would be in the ocean space, I knew it would be in activism, but I didn't have a clear journey. I just started to talk to my network and say, hey, just letting you know, I'm looking around at what my next little journey might look like. And it was an introduction from Sarah Rickards, a friend of mine. Sarah, she's unreal. Yeah. So she had met with Nick Sherelli, who had the concept for Ocean Impact Organization, or at least the idea behind it. And once she heard that I was keen to see what else was out there, she joined the dot. She's an incredible dot joiner. She's full of energy. She's amazing. And so we met, and um, Nick actually thought he was meeting with me because he thought I've got to increase my profile in the ocean space. Maybe there's an opportunity to be an advisor on Tim's board, or maybe even join the board. I want to get a little bit more of a network. And suddenly he went from a meeting where he thought I was kind of interviewing him to realizing it was the other way around. And I was actually really fascinated with his idea. Because what it was, I think, coming from 10, 11 years of being the activist, like really trying to push hard for change and feeling all this kind of inertia, because at the end of the day, it's the big business which is essentially fueling the consumption and the growth of this material that then trickles down to become the problem in the environment. You really got to try and find a way to then say, okay, what would it take for you to actually change the way you do business and where sustainability could be profitable for you? Because if we get that right, then there's not going to be any of this problem in the first place to deal with. And so the idea was to sort of build an accelerator, like a startup accelerator and impact investing entity that would essentially be that space to foster these brilliant ideas. So, you know, obviously so aligned with you. You would have been some of the first people we started to talk to when you were at Republic of Everyone. You were super supportive of those early steps that we took. And it's been an amazing ride. Over 120 startups and founders have been supported through our various programs and initiatives. And we made 16 investments in the years between 2020 and when I left in 2025. And the organization still continues, it flourishes. And um, I just decided after that five and a half years with Ocean Impact that uh there was an opportunity to step back into the world of take three and see how I could uh really double down on this sole issue of plastic pollution. Because the thing about Ocean Impact organization is it looks at the ocean as that world of opportunity, like we were talking about at the beginning. So you can look at solutions for every single problem that touches the ocean. And those solutions can happen a long way from salt water. So it just became this remarkable journey into oh my gosh, there is so much potential out there. But at the same time, gosh, the world of investing and trying to direct crap capital into positive impact, it's a tough space. And it's a tough space when you're also in that really a bit more of a niche space like the blue economy. But yeah, fascinating journey.
Building An Ocean Startup Accelerator
Ben15:18
Yeah, it is a very specific niche, but a very important niche that, as you say, it's um touches a lot of businesses. I mean, just to unpack that a bit, it's probably part of the challenge, right? You're going, we can invest in anything that helps the ocean. Therefore, we can almost invest in anything, right? Because it's everything from materials things are made from. Can you just design out plastic? That'll solve the problem, right? Or it's like, can we make plastic something that becomes better recycled? So there's just a collection recycling element, then there's the pull-through. Can we use that recycle element so it becomes a valuable resource? Like, you know, aluminium, it's valuable to recycle, therefore. And then there's a consumer piece. Can we offer consumers a better option so they don't choose it? Like this. And that's just the start of it because, of course, we all think of plastic as the bag of chips or the chocolate bar or whatever or the bottle. But obviously, so much of it's also used in business, in the distribution of goods, that you never see that plastic. I remember Patagonia saying that in all their value chain, one of the things they really struggled with was how to transport clothes around the world and keep them nice without using plastic. And that was actually one of the last things that they were struggling with, or one of the biggest things they were struggling with. So it's just built through the entire system. With that in mind, what are some of the more interesting innovations you've seen through that? You said 120 startups, that's a lot. Which ones spring to mind as wow? That's a really scalable, big solution.
Tim Silverwood16:41
Yeah, there is, as we were saying before, such incredible diversity. And you're right, some of the opportunities to go and try and solve all of the ocean's challenges came with a high degree of complexity. And in fact, I think you could say through that five-year journey of ocean impact that we went from saying, hey, we're open for business for anyone and anyone, to now in 2026, looking much more at how can we actually start to work with key industries, solving key problems and identifying key opportunities? Because ultimately, that's kind of what investors want. Investors at the beginning are attracted to the idea of, oh, wow, you guys can just be this whole brand new opportunity for blue economy innovation. The nuts and bolts of it is as you start to get work with um, you know, more sophisticated investors, they actually want to say, okay, you know what? I've got a history of investing in shipping. And I would love for you to come to me and work with me on solutions that can help decarbonize shipping or minimize the pollution impacts of shipping. Same with fisheries and same with aquaculture. So that is what we've seen a lot probably in the five, six year journey of being in the ocean impact innovation landscape is that the main growth, the organizations that are doing really well, are getting a little bit more bespoke and focused on key industries and key opportunities. But in the plastic space and shining a light on some of the wonderful startups that we've worked with, I'll actually mention the ones that we've invested in. One is a remarkable one called River Recycle. We've spoken a bit on the conversation already about the problem of pollution in mostly developing regions in big rivers. And there's the grassroots side of cleanup activities, projects like Sungai Watch, and you know, you could probably even argue Mike from Zero Co. with his untrashed the planet, getting in there teams of people and cleaning up. And it's remarkable, right? They can literally remove thousands and thousands of kilograms in days. But the question is always then well, what do you do with the material that you've extracted? So river recycle, they do that. They do river cleaning as a service, but they have a big focus on how to then repurpose and utilize the waste plastic. And they've tried various different solutions. The big one that's seemingly quite economically viable at the moment is turning it into building products. So we've probably seen over the last 10, 15 years quite an interest in turning, I think replast would have been one of the first ones here in Australia, turning soft plastics and waste plastics into park benches and boardwalks. And that's now becoming a big thing across the developing regions of the world because they do need building materials. They do need all sorts of alternatives. We've got deforestation and all the other associated impacts of using materials for construction. So that's what River Recycle are doing. They're doing a really good job. A really interesting one that we invested in here in Sydney is Hullbot. And yeah, really doesn't have much of a relationship with plastic pollution necessarily. They're a full-stack robotics underwater drone company that have identified that there's a huge problem in terms of the carbon footprint of shipping, particularly ferries and big cargo ships, when you get biofouling on ship hulls. So plant life grows, you have all sorts of associated issues with invasive species, but they essentially create drag. So the guys created like basically a pool cleaner. Creepy crawly. Yeah, creepy crawly style with bristles that rotate really quickly and it's all controlled by a drone pilot. And they can scrub a ferry clean in a matter of hours. And that only makes them much more efficient and therefore reduces the carbon footprint of that vessel, but it also saves the need for using really toxic anti-fouling paint because that's a huge, huge problem. I mean, the use of scrubbing paint and microplastics coming from ships and ferries and things is a huge problem. But the scrubbing of that is actually massive because, yeah, you can alleviate the need for the anti-fouling paint and you can obviously decrease the carbon footprint of the vessel at the same time. Another one from Brisbane, Blue Carbon, their solution was remarkable in the sense that it was looking at how they could use a renewable energy-powered pod in the ocean that would then focus a pumping system to bring up nutrient-dense water from deep down, which happens to also be very cool. The dense water down there is very cool and distribute it on the surface. And they were looking at how that could actually help to feed offshore aquaculture and seaweed farming, as well as actually bringing cool water out to possibly deal with coral bleaching events to decrease the surface air temperature. But they've actually found a lot of interesting pilots now in adopting that technology for desalination. In fact, they're a semifinalist in an X Prize at the moment for water scarcity. So just you just get to expose yourself to these incredible entrepreneurs, a lot of them coming from the scientific academic community, who then realize, you know what, my science is not about ending up in a draw. We've got to bring this stuff to the real world. And seeing people like huddle around and help to turn these incredible ideas into something real and tangible and hopefully very financially rewarding is an amazing sector to be in.
Ben21:49
My
Ocean Innovations That Actually Scale
Ben21:50
goodness, there is so much you could unpack in all that, isn't it? I mean, it really is. We started talking about plastic, but even just there, you've gone just looking at all the problems you can solve. An ocean. You whole bot climate change is obviously a massive issue with oceans, the warming. You've got nutrients and the ability to feed things, you've got the redistribution and stuff. You've got chemicals in there. It's almost like, wow, if you want a place to start your innovation journey, just look at the ocean. As another guest said, Michael, he said, you know, we know less about the oceans than we do about outer space. It's insane, isn't it? Which means the opportunity for anyone who wants to research and find a problem and solve it is enormous there. Even when you said all the different verticals, as they're called, you know, shipping versus whatever else it may be, farming oysters, whatever. You can almost pick any industry as well. So anybody out there looking to something to start, here's just here's your space.
Tim Silverwood22:44
Yeah, and just even if it's interesting you from whatever spectrum you're coming from, there really isn't a world of opportunity out there and a lot of interesting intelligence coming around the value of investing in the ocean. The high-level panel for a sustainable ocean economy a few years now was looking and saying, okay, well, we already know that the global ocean economy is valued at about $2.5 trillion. But if we'd invested another $2 trillion and we really lent into the opportunities here, the return could be outsized. Like for every dollar you invest, you'd be getting $5 of return because it goes back again to what we were saying earlier that we've been extracting and abusing the ocean for so long that it's getting to these tipping points. If you invest now, but invest with a view to actually gaining a return, those benefits can be hugely outsized. So we need to find a way of really diverting attention and capital towards this blue economy innovation space. Because if we don't, not only are we going to miss a tremendous financial opportunity, but we're going to get closer and closer to those tipping points that could be really, really hard to make our way back from. So Australia's government's got to do more. We've got to do much more as a global community. The investor landscape has to start looking at this seriously, setting aside that patient capital, supporting the wonderful organizations like Ocean Impact and others to try and really unlock this tremendous opportunity.
Ben24:08
Who have you found the biggest supporters? Is it government? Because I mean Australia, right? With Giant Island, you'd think the ocean's kind of built into our who we are, you know, the beaches, the beach holiday, the whole thing. You'd think that would be fairly interesting. But also companies, you know, as you say, a lot of companies do depend on the ocean. Have you had a lot of support from those sorts of spaces, or is it this classic problem of it's everyone's problem, so it's no one's?
Tim Silverwood24:32
I think uh if you look at the global landscape, you'd probably see some really interesting trends and some really positive examples. They do tend to come from economies where there's a little longer history of involvement in those big ocean industries. I do think as an organization, we have disadvantages ocean impact being down here in little old Australia on the edge of the world. But we're doing a lot of work in New Zealand at the moment because their aquaculture sector is more established, they're a little bit more collegiate and unified in the way that they work together. So you've got to then almost follow those winds of opportunity to where there's already that sort of track record. But the biggest success story in the ocean innovation landscape really is Norway at the moment. And that's because of the long history of their offshore industries. They've obviously got the sovereign wealth fund there as well. So you've got the capital, you've got the skills, you've got the community license, you've got all these things that stack up to mean that puts them at a great advantage to be great leaders. So Catapult Ocean are probably the benchmark, the poster children of the ocean impact innovation landscape and Europe more broadly. So it does then mean that some of the places in the world that would benefit most from investment in this, talking about the Pacific, you're talking about the equatorial belt, talking about Southeast Asia. We do need to see how those success stories can start to translate into other economies. And there is definitely momentum there. One of the greatest things about the ocean innovation landscape is that there's essentially like a peak body that was established probably about four or five years ago, caught a thousand ocean startups. And, you know, I've never really worked in an ecosystem quite like uh what I've experienced with Ocean Impact. But seeing all the key stakeholders aggregate together and say, hey, we are all swimming towards the same destination, how can we all share ideas, share deal flow, scratch each other's back? And it has been absolutely remarkable. So I think with a thousand ocean startups and the incredible collaboration that's taking place, it is going to have a really positive future. But it's also hard.
Who Backs The Blue Economy
Ben26:43
It's so interesting that it really does show that if you want to do something, it helps to go where the ecosystem's already started to build and the importance of these ecosystems. No one can do this stuff alone. It's enormous lifts and you know, collective action, collective impact being the great term for it. But so either start putting one together or go find where it's already happening because you'll be more successful. So a good tip. I want to move back to you. Let's talk about Tim again, because obviously you've, I mean, just the way you spoke about that, you're so knowledgeable in this impact space and this um startup space. But I know you're still part of OIO, but you've actually now you've had your sabbatical from your baby, your first baby, your um take three, you're back as CEO again. Tell me how that happened. And how did it go? When I'm gonna go and do my own thing, see how it goes without me, give it its own life. Did it leave home happily and find itself a career? Are you back to give it some guidance? Tell me about that.
Tim Silverwood27:36
Yeah, I think as we were saying, there was a desperate need to step away from take three, that realization that, oh my gosh, I've spent 10 years here. I've got to go for my own career and my personal development and sanity. I've got to go and try something else, I've got to challenge myself. And ocean impact was definitely that. Like I was, you know, I'm kind of an activist environmentalist. Going into that world, it's quite different. The ambition and the goal and the intent is very much on the positive environmental ocean benefit. But the way you get there is a very, very different kettle of fish. So I loved every minute of it. But what sort of tended up to happen is that Take 3 was thriving really well on my departure and had a wonderful CEO and a really, really good sense of itself and its direction. But we ended up, by the time I came back as CEO, there'd been three CEOs in that five-year break. And I think there's a real case study there in how you do build an enterprise to be sustainable and very clear of itself and its ambitions in your absence as a founder. So I always knew I would come back in some shape. I ended up joining the board first and foremost, just to sort of get a sense of how the organization was tracking. And then that evolved to a point where it's like, okay, well, the CEO is going to be departing. What do we do? Do you step back in, Tim? Do we look at all other options on the table? And so I did take an actual sabbatical last year to assess that, talk to Nick to really weigh up what a departure from day-to-day operations with Ocean Impact organization would look like, with a complete shift in my focus back to take three. And somewhere in the midst of a summer in Portugal, uh, the light bulb went off. And I thought, not only am I pumped about going back to tape three, I'm so motivated to try and solve a single problem. I think I did suffer a little bit of overwhelm with the breadth of opportunity with Ocean Impact Organization. Like it's a it's a double-edged sword. That's incredible because it's so buoyed by all the potential. But it's also like, wow, how do we actually just make a real and meaningful impact on this particular problem tomorrow? And so with coming back to take three, I feel like I've got this really unique opportunity to have a second crack, to build on this 16-year-old brand, to understand all the superpowers that we have, and then to harness them in a very new and clear and direct way for as maximum impact as we can possibly achieve. So I've loved, I've only been back for six months, but it's resulted in a brand new three-year strategy, building a new team and going out and finding the partners and supporters who can see what we can achieve in the next few years if we execute really well.
Ben30:27
Because obviously, Take Three is a nonprofit, whereas OAO is more of a commercial entity. You obviously mean startup world is about as commercial as things get. I think one of the things you've said is that when you first started Take Three, it was all about I'm kind of going to save the planet. And, you know, Tim Weiser version two is a bit more commercially minded and has realized that that ability to maintain that focus, as you say, you literally just said it's all about really being clear on that mission, but also bring that commercial mouse in there. Is that something you found your better place to do now and see the value of or understand the value of?
Tim Silverwood31:00
It was basically a non-negotiable in coming back and having the chance to hold both reins again, that we're gonna do this differently. I think so many nonprofits and charities like Take Three, and I've seen so many come and go in the 16, 17 years that we've been around. It starts with a brilliant idea. It starts with the incredible energy and enthusiasm of the founders and the community around them. But if you don't get the funding model right, they start hitting headwinds, they start hitting hurdles, they fall over, they bruise their knees, and eventually they can't do it anymore. And you're left going, oh wow, what if, what if this organization had have taken that piece of advice or had have challenged themselves a little bit more to get that kernel of the actual model right from the first place. So that's why I say this is such a remarkable privilege to have a second crack because I've got all this clean air around me. I've got the support of the board, of all the founders, of all the members to say, Tim, we think you've got what it takes to give Take 3 its next 15 years of success. And I've taken it very seriously, taken a big helicopter view, understood what our role is in light of the broader ecosystem, because there's a lot of people working on plastic pollution and waste and circularity now. What is our key opportunity and how do we build a really sustainable funding model around it? So the plan is in place. Now we're kind of in execution mode. There's many more tests to come, but so far, so good.
Ben32:33
So you've got so much knowledge. You've actually started two startups, most people up to one. What sort of tips would you give someone to that point of things you embed at the start of your journey rather than having to, you know, wait 15 years to learn it? How can we shortcut some people's journeys? Like if you had, let's say, one to three pieces of advice for someone when they are starting this up.
Tim Silverwood32:56
Yeah. Look, there's something beautiful about starting and just letting your passion unfur because you don't want to put too many mechanisms in place that are going to dampen that spirit and not get people to first base. So I think there's definitely the reason and rationale around trying and experimenting and having a bit of fun with it to begin with, with a focus on making sure that you are shining bright, that you're happy and you're the best version of yourself. But you really do need to make these decisions and get as much guidance and advice as possible to identify what is going to be that model that is going to enable you to maintain the thing sustainably for many, many years. So, you know, we both spent obviously a lot of time around startups and all the things around startup boot camp and all the different mechanisms that you can use to enable you to start mapping out that journey. You've got to know what success looks like and you've got to have a really good set of steps to help you get there. I just think also that you're doing this and it might feel like you're the only person that's doing it, but there's a lot of other people around you who have done it or in the midst of doing it too. So I really feel just like solving all the world's problems. It starts with community and surrounding yourself with other people who've got the same ideas, the same attitudes, and have probably lived and breathed some of your pain points and can offer you even just a few words that make you go, ah.
Returning To Lead Take Three Again
Tim Silverwood34:27
And that's again why I really enjoyed being in that incubator landscape and accelerator program model, because the surrounding of mentors and of uh just creating a cohort of humans all trying to muck in and solve some of the world's greatest challenges, you can achieve great things with it.
Ben34:43
What is the biggest pain point you've found? Is it the sustainable business model, which is another way of saying funding, or is it bringing people to the cause and getting the word out there? What do you find has been the harder things? And what are the easier things?
Tim Silverwood34:56
Yeah, I think we are maybe quite unique in that with take three for the C, it has not been difficult to get people to come on the ride with us. I think if you again do a bit of a case study of Tate Three and try and compare that to the struggles that commercial brands and initiatives that try and mobilize people to do something, like we've done some of the hardest things imaginable. Turning people into solid brand advocates who practice your action every day, tick, but they're not customers per se. They're customers in the sense that they are fulfilling your call to action, but they don't actually feed into the model that sustains the organization, or at least we don't historically.
Ben35:41
They don't buy anything.
Tim Silverwood35:42
And this is actually, I'll give you a little bit of a snapshot of what I see as the model that will enable Take Three to be really successful moving forward is that you've got a huge number of people on one side who want to see no more plastic in the ocean, plastic out of the environment, no plastic even making its way onto shelves. There's a lot of money in stopping the problem on that side. We've got this ginormous community of people who are actively making those decisions to either remove it from the environment or not purchase it in the first place, to sign the petitions, to do all the advocacy work. How do we join those two together? And the key has to be technology and gamification. So our vision for the future is to try and make it so that humans out there who love and appreciate the human-sized actions that Take 3 has become famous for, connecting their actions, their impact with dollars. And that conduit between technology and leaderboards and celebrating those successes with the donations or the corporate partnerships or the white-labeled opportunities to have that app and bring it into your staff workplace environment. There's a wonderful world of opportunity out there, partnering with councils, saying, Hey, how about you run an initiative in your local council area using our technology? These are going to be all the positive benefits. So that then comes with the question, you as our community out there who are willing to go and do these human-sized actions, how do you feel about those human-sized actions actually almost translating to dollars? But there's no exchange on your side, you just need to do the work and tell us about it.
Ben37:18
Because ultimately, nonprofits sell impact. Yeah. It's really what you sell. So if I break that down really simply, if you've got a million people collecting three things a day, let's say three million things a day, you know, at the same time, you're really kind of going to the profits, the companies, and going, it's your plastic, we're picking it up. Maybe you'd sort of like to, well, maybe you'd like to make it start with, but in lieu of that, maybe you'd like to actually start funding us to support these people to do this. And then that also, if it's done right, gives you the opportunity to throw a barbecue for people who bother to do this and give them some level of reward as well. It's sort of a weird model because it's almost like the people creating the problem are paying someone else to solve the problem, but it is a model. I mean, you'd rather not have it there to start with, but at least it's starting to form into a model. Are you finding companies are like, yeah, I see that? Or are they just like, no, unless I get some money back, I won't do it?
Tim Silverwood38:10
They want impact. That's been a huge piece of the pie for Take Three over many years, is that a business will happily contribute to us in exchange for the ability to celebrate the positive impact that we've helped to generate. So whether fundamentally exactly. So whether that's the plastic that we're removing from the environment, the young people that we're educating in schools, or the people that we're working with in our Surf Life Saving Clubs program, or the social media positive impacts that we have. So yeah, it's very much about that uh exchange between dollars in, positive impact out, and that little kind of transaction and that little ownership. But I also think the thing I'm really keen to explore with Take Three is the human side of it. We talk a lot about the ripple effect of Take Three. And the stronger we are as an organization, the more of these ripple effects that we can actually help to create, and the better we can actually start to capture those stories of those ripple effects. And I feel that there's also an opportunity there for that commercial exchange there to say, hey, by supporting Take 3, you've enabled this wonderful thing to happen and this wonderful thing to happen, and that has led to this, and this has led to that. And that exchange could also be really, really powerful from a storytelling perspective and saying, right, you get your quantitative impact, but you also get your qualitative impact on these interesting stories. Again, we've got to do a fair bit of work there in understanding how our community feels about that. Like if we're providing guidance and toolkits and support for that person who wants to make a bigger impact in their local community or in some island in the Pacific or some challenge destination in a developing region, if we help foster you to go and do more, are you willing for that story, those ripple effects to be celebrated by us in exchange for support that we get from all sorts of supportive partners?
Ben39:54
I just want to break that down as a business model because it is fundamentally the business model of most nonprofits. And I don't think it's always fully understood. You know, you are, as I said, you're selling impact. So it means that they fund you to go, look, we recognize that you do good things and we'd we'd like to fund you. There's a positive piece there. But to continue funding you, if you can give us back, as you say, stats and stories, you call it qual and quant, that gives them the chance to go out there and say, look what we're funding. They put it in their sustainability report, they put it in their social media. They encourage their own people to go and do it, which is beneficial to them because it's employee engagement, those sorts of things. So when you look at that, really your success as an organization kind of comes down to two things. Number one, be able to create this community of people to do the thing. So give them a simple thing to do. Pick up, take three for the C, right? The other thing is the ability to tell that story back to these corporates because that's what they're buying. And when you break it down like that, it actually fundamentally outlines the business model of a nonprofit. And it astounds me how badly a lot of them tell their story when really that's what they're selling.
Tim Silverwood41:01
Yeah. The one thing I'll sort of caveat around that though is I'm seeing in a ginormous trend at the moment to just go and give all your money to the groups that are extracting the largest volume of the pollution from the environment. And we've talked about it already. It's phenomenal work these people are doing, whether that's teams of people or giant ships, or in the case of the ocean, clean up their interceptor vessels that are in rivers and their incredible work. Mechanical methods, rather than people. And like that's brilliant. Like we all want to see the most millions of tons of plastic extracted from the environment before it gets into the ocean and we can't do anything with it. But if it's just becomes that exchange of like, oh, well, you know, I can give you guys $1,000 for a ton of plastic, or I can give you $1,000 for these interesting stories of how a community actually stood up in defense of the problem and made all these local improvements to stop the flow of plastic into the ocean in the first place through engagement with local businesses and working with local jurisdictions. We will be challenged, I think, as Tate 3 really leans into this and saying, well, where's my investment? Do I just want to go and celebrate the 10 tons of plastic my contribution just pulled out of the environment? Or do I actually want to work with organizations that are literally unpacking the complexity and figuring out how to turn off the tap? And I think for me, I want both. I want those organizations to go and extract as much as possible, but we are not going to solve this problem. This is getting to that kernel around if all we ever do is clean up, that's all we're ever going to do. We have to mobilize people to become those beacons of the real systemic changes that are required. And that's what I think take three can do, because we've got you at the earliest stage. If we just nurture and foster you to keep on going and keep on pushing up, we can generate massive ripple effects.
Ben42:52
And so powerful that, isn't it? Because it literally, if you see the problem, that's one thing. If you touch the problem, if you bother to pick up the problem, it makes you think, gee, I want to make sure that's never my chip packet or bottle. But it also makes you think, should I buy that thing to start with? Which creates a cohort of people who are now demanding, going, look, I'd quite like my Smarties is a good example to stop coming in plastic, come in paper again, which opens up that opportunity for companies. Because in my experience, the companies will do it if the people will buy it. Therefore, you create the pull-through effect that allows companies to step into that space. So allowing people to involve themselves in the problem creates the systemic change. Whereas, as you say, mass harvesting, great, because we kind of need that because there's mass plastic, but you don't actually change the system through that.
Tim Silverwood43:40
That's exactly right. It's
Turning Cleanup Into Systems Change
Tim Silverwood43:42
surprising we're this way through a podcast about plastics and where we haven't learned a lot into the rapidly emerging concerns around health and microplastics and nanoplastics.
Ben43:52
What do we eat a plastic, a credit card a week or a month or something?
Tim Silverwood43:55
It's extraordinary, right? And it's going to be a massive thing in the next. Few years because I'm seeing already that it's not your traditional green or blue people that are up in arms about it. It's your health and fitness freaks. It's your people now calling out your nest lays for their squeezy little pouches filled with organic puree that are probably full of, you know, a portion of a credit card of plastic going into the youngest humans that we're bringing into the world. And it's really frightening. And it's only going to get more and more of a hot potato. So again, back to the way we can harness community sentiment and channel that towards these companies and apply that pressure in not an angry way, but just with the level and breadth of interest from the community. That, to your point, is going to be what's going to really influence their decisions around how they're going to package and transport and harvest their food for decades to come.
Ben44:53
Look, they'll make what people will buy fundamentally. Isn't it sad though? I mean, it's great when you hear about that. But you go, a little bit of me goes, yay, it's gone beyond, as you say, the green people. The other little bit of me dies inside and says, Do we really only care when it affects us personally? You know what I mean? Oh now it's about my health, not my planet's health. I care. It's like, but we are the, you know, animals we are. You've got to work with that, right?
Tim Silverwood45:17
Yeah. And again, full circle back to startups and innovation and opportunities. I mean, we live in a plasticized society. Uh, we've welcomed it with open arms over the last 50 years. And it is going to take a tremendous amount of innovation to figure out another way of doing it. And so if the trend, and I would be deeply concerned if I was in the plastics and the petrochemical industries, if this trend keeps going this way around human health. And of course, long-term studies, the longer you wait, the more the evidence then compounds around just how bad this stuff is. That's always been the hardest thing about the health implications of plastic and chemical exposure, is it takes a long time with conviction really, isn't it?
Ben45:58
To get cancer clusters and things like which happen when people are 60 and 70 and so exactly right.
Tim Silverwood46:02
So then start charting the future. And at some point they're going to be making decisions going, right, we need to intervene now to make sure we've actually got a plan B when this furall reaches the crescendo, because I have no doubt it will.
Ben46:15
When the furall reaches a crescendo, best words thus far. Beautifully said. Where'd
Weird Finds Data And AI Cleanups
Ben46:20
that come from? Let's go to a funeral note. What's some of the most interesting things you've fished out of rivers and off beaches with take three? I mean, there must be some wild stuff. I imagine most of it's like little bits of foam or bottles in rivers, but I imagine there's some wild stuff out there.
Tim Silverwood46:34
Yeah, I love it. I mean, I think we probably get a little bit of kudos with take three for the sea. It's like, oh wow, yeah, great idea. Pick up stuff off the beaches. Look, hats off to all the beach combers who've been doing this since time immemorial, right? Like people love their beachcombing, and I'm one of them. So I just love the journey around the forensic nature of looking at that item and going, hmm, I wonder where that came from. And quite often you don't know that answer, but often you do. And so some of the things I find really interesting are there's groups around the planet who have initiatives to collect items where they know there was a discharge point. So a couple of the famous ones are there's an account you can look at on Instagram called Lego Lost at Sea. So they'll actually have a whole community of beachcomers and obviously people who take tree for the sea find it too, and they'll go, yep, I know, because there was that incident in 1990, whatever, where a shipping container full of Lego was lost off the coast of the Atlantic, and now it's still washing up on all these.
Ben47:36
No way. So, what do they map the ocean currents and predict where it'll land?
Tim Silverwood47:40
And it's kind of gone past that point now where it was, you know, 2030 years ago. But you often find people that are beachcombers across the southwest of the UK, and they there's really covetable items. So you've got like there's a there was a little snorkeling or a diver, Lego Man, and the flippers were detachable, like these little grey flippers. And it's like when people find those, ah, I've got it. You know, it's like the Pokemon that is the rarest Pokemon of all. But the funniest one, a really famous one from back in the day, was it was Reebok or Nike lost a container on the west coast of the US. Right at peak, Nike, like the most expensive footwear imaginable. Within days, they were washing up on shorelines. People were organizing swap meets because they were still in great condition, saying, Hey, I've got a size 11 left. Who's got a size 11 right? Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I love that. But um, gosh, I mean, sex toys, I found a few of those in Sydney Harbour. Um, I love finding objects that are really old. Quite often, occasionally, when you have big stormy swell events, you'll get that coastal erosion where it's almost like a giant step in the beach, and you can see the stratas, like the little lake. Archaeological dig archaeological dig sites. So quite often you'll actually find plastic um buried away there and heavily preserved. So you'll start find stuff that's 30, 40 years old and it looks like it just came from the supermarket shelf. So I love that kind of stuff too.
Ben49:04
Gee whiz. That's way wilder than I thought you're gonna tell me that. I love the Lego figures. Like you go collecting 70s Lego now. Exactly. Don't go to the op shop, go to the beach. Exactly. Jesus, and let's not meant anyone in Australia over the news over the last three years. There's seems somebody seemed to have dropped a large load of cocaine in big packets, which have been washing up on our shores for about three years as well. Yeah, unusual one.
Tim Silverwood49:28
Yeah, and definitely kudos to the data collectors. In Australia, we have Tangarella Blue, Tangarella, there, Australian Marine Debris Initiative. That started, so they're about five years older than Take Three for the Sea. Haiti was living in the southwest of Western Australia and finding tags from, I think, lobster fishing and going, huh, that's a tag. I can see that. Well, there's another one, there's another one. And so simply by the collection of data, then able to go to the authorities and say, hey, I'm finding a lot of these very similar tags that are washing up on the beaches. Can we start to understand why they're washing up? And the journey, the forensic trail, found out that yeah, it was common practice to just cut them off and chuck them overboard. All they needed to do was create a system to collect those tags on the vessel and report them back because they were all numbered. Problem solved. So data can just do wonders for actually identifying those upstream sources and cutting them off.
Ben50:22
That's a great example. And kudos, as you say, to orgs like that, because I've done beach cleanups myself, and then you watch and you think, job done, I've handed you my bag, uh, good human. And then there's some absolute legends who sit around with a massive tarpaulin, empty your bag out again and literally divide it into what it is. And it takes them as long to do that counting as it did for you to do the beach cleanup. But then you get your little email, your text next day saying, congratulations, you're part of a group that did this many, this, this many, this. It's such a valuable service, isn't it? Yeah, it is.
Tim Silverwood50:55
And we absolutely are completely advocates of that. The one thing that's part of our future blue sky ambition is to focus on our superpower again around the spontaneous, what we call a micro cleanup. So doing an organized cleanup, yep, bring out your data sheet or undownload the app, fill it all out. But what about if you're just doing it while you're walking the dog and we don't want that data to go to waste? So we're heavily exploring the potential of image recognition technology and AI to then make it so you just take a photograph. Just take a photograph of your micro cleanup, jumps on your leaderboard. Hopefully, the technology can be advanced enough that it identifies that's a Coca-Cola bottle top, that's a Smarties wrapper, that's a whatever. And then the data does the rest. And you can actually then start to run campaigns and say, right, everyone, you know, we want to be more like Europe, where they've got the tethered plastic bottle caps, because plastic bottle caps are just something we find so much on our beaches and in our parks and streets. We think that we need to get tethered caps in Australia. How about we all this weekend go out there and take photographs of the plastic bottle caps that we find? Imagine how you could mobilize people to send that rapid pressure, tied in with a do good repetition or whatever it's going to be to influence your local member. Boom, power change. Power to the people. Yeah.
Ben52:12
Yeah, I've seen that. I've seen um Sculpture by the Sea do big, uh someone do massive sculpture out of bottle crops, which is interesting because like Coca-Cola, I think, innovated that overseas. And they've actually got quite a big international thing about, you know, if you're not going to recycle it, don't buy it. But it's weird that they haven't brought that tech here. When it is such a big deal. Because as you say, I've done um cleanups as well. And everyone, you always think at the start of doing a cleanup, you're going to go collect bottles. But funny enough, you do want beat in rivers and you know, where rivers come out into harbors and things. But uh everywhere else it is very much the cap, not the bottle. Yeah. And they're they're quite easy to see too, because they come in every bright and colourful colour.
Tim Silverwood52:50
Yeah, no, it's um it's something that's in the pipeline. So we do a lot of work with the lobbying and political reform side of things. Not, it's not our core function, but we're part of the boomerang alliance of a collective of organizations.
Ben53:03
Collective impact.
Tim Silverwood53:04
Exactly.
Ben53:04
Don't try and do it yourself. Yeah. Yeah.
Tim Silverwood53:06
And so, you know, we're very fortunate that we've got a nationwide container deposit scheme now, or at least every state and territory has adopted the 10 cent refund. That's now looking to expand to become 20 cents, as well as starting to look at other innovations in the scheme, including tethered bottle caps. So that can actually be written into policy, which is what it would have happened in the in in Europe, which is why now, when you go to Europe, every plastic bottle cap has that unique little innovation, which funnily enough, there's a lot of TikToks out there of people going, Oh, I I can't figure this out. It's like you can figure it out, guys.
Ben53:39
Yeah. You changed my bottle. Exactly right.
Tim Silverwood53:43
I want a good planet, but don't change my bottle. Exactly. I just want something to make content about. This seems like a perfect example. Yeah, that's right.
Rapid Fire Questions And Farewell
Ben53:51
A bit of rage bait. Um, all right, let's do a few rapid fires to finish off. What's one thing people are surprised by when they learn it about you?
Tim Silverwood54:01
Um what's one thing that people are surprised by about me? I guess when I I often get up on stage or in front of the camera and might give off the impression like I'm a bit of an extrovert. Like I've got a bit of a thing when put me on a stage, put me in front of a camera, and I'll say it and I'll look really, really enthusiastic. But I'm just an introvert. Yeah, I'm a big old introvert. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just love my own time and company and a bit of alone. I don't say a lot of words when I'm uh just chilling out by myself. So big talker on stage, not much of a talker behind closed doors.
Ben54:33
Be a bit weird if you're sitting on your own doing a lot of talking, but that's true. That is a surprise. Um, if you had a magic wand, like this is a very strange magic wand because it's a single-use magic wand, but we don't see single use here. So it's a single charge magic wand, right? We we can only charge it once. So you get one wish and how you want to change the world, what are you wishing for?
Tim Silverwood54:52
I did think about this one, and it's it's around the rise of the billionaires and the extent to which capitalism is taking us down a really tricky road. So the one one might just be you can't be more than a billionaire. I did a bit of research. There's three hundred three thousand four hundred billionaires above billion and counting. Let's just, you don't need more than a billion bucks. Do you need that much? You don't need that, but let's be pragmatic, no more um billionaires, and figure out a way that that starts to even out the playing field.
Ben55:25
It is so shameful, isn't it? There's the the other stat around that is 12 people own as much as half the world.
Tim Silverwood55:31
Yeah.
Ben55:32
How's that okay?
Tim Silverwood55:33
How is this going to end well if that's something that we abide by?
Ben55:36
Yeah, it's like the it's like hour four of a game of monopoly, you know. Except you can't just go, oh, well, I lost and get up and do something else, right? You're stuck in the game. That is a really good analogy. So giving us a bit of this, but if someone wants to follow in your find's footsteps there, let's say there's Tim, he's sitting at a campfire, you're now Dave Ratsovich. Up comes some young person, some young female, male, whatever, a group, and they're like, Oh my god, it's Tim Silverwood. I saw you on stage. You're so extroverted. Hang out with us. Um, and they want advice for how they might take their first step or go forward. What would you say to him?
Tim Silverwood56:14
Yeah, I'll I'll full circle it back to that Dave Rustovich sentiment. Like, just start. Just I think even there's a kind of Hawaiian term, like, do something, brother. Like, just do it, just start, just do something. And that's a leap of faith in its own way. Just stepping off that ledge and and being known for that person that said they were going to do that thing. You then need to kind of hold yourself to account. But then also get advice and guidance, surround yourself with people who can help you because you can just really save a whole lot of you know, blood, sweat, and tears and graze knees if you if you get a bit of help.
Ben56:48
So step out in the unknown, but do it with some good people around you to help. Yeah. Great advice. Now, there are many places I can follow you, but let's send people some one place or maybe two. If they want to find out more or probably follow on socials, where should they go? What's some good analysis?
Tim Silverwood57:06
Yeah, it's probably Instagram is our main one. It's nice to be investing back into that platform. So take three for the C. But yeah, if you type in Take Three for the C or Tim Silverwood, you're you're probably going to find your way to me. Yeah, great. The introvert in the corner.
Ben57:19
The introvert in the corner with his own website about getting on stage and speaking. Classic. Well, it's been wonderful talking to you. Everything you do always amazes me. You know, I've followed this journey for a while, you know, been friends for a while. So it's awesome to see the next um stage and thanks for telling us all about it.
Tim Silverwood57:38
Oh, thanks, Ben. And um, yeah, Ditto. It's been great to have you as a mate for many, many years and very pleased to have made it on the pod.
Ben57:46
Yeah.
