'I wish we could see the gift we've been given and stop the wars, hate and greed.' World Green Building Council co-founder David Gottfried on how to build a better world.

15 July

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👉 Why listen?

How do you make a movement that moves the world? David Gottfried knows. His 7 steps are built on co-founding the US and World Green Building Councils and they go like this:

1. Know your passion, purpose and mission 🚀 It all starts with you. What’s something you truly love and care about?

2. Set your vision 👁️ Think big. What’s the change you’re going to make that matches your passion and purpose?

3. Build your blueprint 🗺️ You know where you’re going. Now how will you get there? This is your strategy.

4. Assemble your tribe 💪 Who do you need to join you to make your vision happen?

5. Create your scorecard 💯 How are you measuring success? How will you know you’re winning?

6. Find the funding 💰 How will you fund your movement? How will you fund yourself while you create it?

7. Look after yourself ☺️ Building something takes time and is hard work. How will you replenish your energy?

With over 85 green building councils worldwide and over 30 billion square feet (10 billion square metres) of buildings built, the method must work. It's a movement that has changed buildings worldwide to be lighter, healthier, bring in nature and create less carbon in both build and operation.

He's now on a mission to help others create a kinder, more regenerative world. You can learn more and pre-order his new book, Regen360 on his website: https://regen360.net/

We gave AI a listen. Here's what it had to say:

The buildings we design today decide the air we breathe tomorrow, the energy we lock in for decades, and whether “sustainability” stays a slogan or becomes a standard. We sit down with David Gottfried, co-founder of the US Green Building Council and a key force behind the global Green Building Council network, to unpack how rating tools like LEED, Green Star and BREEAM made better buildings measurable, comparable and commercially attractive. We talk through what actually gets measured, why third-party verification matters, and how healthier light-filled workplaces, low-carbon materials and smarter transport choices moved from “nice idea” to mainstream expectation.

Then we shift from construction to culture. David shares his seven-step framework for building a movement: passion, purpose and mission; a huge vision; a blueprint that delivers results; a tribe to climb with; benchmarks with transparent measurement; economics that keep the work alive; and the sustainability to endure without burning out. If you’re trying to create change inside property, government, design, business or community, this is a practical map for turning belief into systems that scale.

Finally, we go bigger than green. David explains why “green” and even “sustainable” aren’t enough, arguing for regeneration and a “full equation” that includes the externalities we’ve trained ourselves to ignore. We explore fear-based survival wiring, the pull of endless “more”, and the idea of “soul worth” as an antidote: service, gratitude, enoughness and care for people and planet. If this conversation sparks something in you, subscribe, share it with a mate, and leave a review so more people can find it.

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Full Episode Transcript

Why Buildings Can Change The World

Singers0:00

I'm gonna change this world today. Make those bad things go away.

Ben Peacock0:05

If we want a better world, rethinking the places we live, work and play is a great place to start. Building the little microcosms in our relationship with our home planet, bringing together energy, water, air quality, waste management, choice of materials, how we treat ourselves, and how we interact with each other, all in one place. Secrets say if we change what we build and how we build it, we can change the world. All over the planet, Green Building Councils are leading this charge, and it started back in 1993 with the US Green Building Council. Co-founder David Gottfried is widely regarded as the father of this movement, and he's here with us today to talk about this and more. Welcome, David.

David Gottfried0:42

Thanks, Ben. Great to be here across the planet from you.

How Green Building Ratings Work

Ben Peacock0:46

So there are now over 85 Green Building Councils around the world. I've had the pleasure of working with uh one in Australia. And the way I understand it is that the council sets the standard as to what a green building is. So it assigns points to different features, if you like, like solar, air quality, incorporation of nature, low-carbon materials in the builds, stuff like that. And then if you're building a building, you get points for each of those things. And if you get enough points, you get to be, let's say, a four-star building or a five-star building, or even a six-star building if you do something pretty amazing. And you can then kind of proudly promote that to whoever wants to buy the building or move in. So it simplifies a lot of complicated things into an easy-to-understand rating system. Is that how it works all over the world? Sure.

David Gottfried1:31

It the rating systems of the world are similar and they learn from each other. They all do have points and different levels, whether they're stars or we have certified silver, gold, and platinum and net zero. In China, it's called Three Star, Green Mark in Singapore and Casbian, Japan, but they all play in a different way. They learn. Green Star, where you're from, learned from LEED and also BREAM in the UK. And then Three Star and China learned from those. They leapfrog, different nuances, but they all stand for what is a green building in the country. They most of them require third-party certification and verification first. The categories of green building, the buckets, are similar. Some of the things you mentioned, Ben, the energy efficient, renewable powered water, waste. They need to be healthy. They need to deal with cars and transportation, hopefully be at metro or light rail or walkable and glue them all together and you get a rating system.

Why The System Took Off

Ben Peacock2:48

So fundamentally, yeah, different rating system, but basically the same fundamentals wherever you go, basically make a better building. What has amazed me though is you know you've seen sort of rating systems all over all sorts of industries. You've got them with food, you've got them with cars, you've got them with various things. But the way that this rating system has driven the industry is fundamentally second to none. You know, as someone who's been in sustainability for 20 years, the construction industry was the first, certainly in Australia, to really adopt sustainability and really run with it and go, no, we're going to actually do this now. You could argue that not every building is built with green star. I think someone once said to me that maybe 5 to 10% are green star, but a lot more is influenced by it. You know, they might not go for the rating, but they'll use pieces. So it's really cascaded that industry. And you've seen it in the buildings when you go into them in the city. They're lighter, they've got better air quality, you know, they've got the on-demand lifts. You know, they've the it's there's a lot that you can notice as to how this rating system has truly been adopted and been picked up by the industry in a way that I don't think I've seen across any other rating system in any other industry. Why has it been so popular? Why has it been so successful?

David Gottfried3:56

Yeah, it's huge with the 85 countries, the Green Building Councils and LEED, BREAM, Green Star, they're all over the world. It's more than a trillion dollars. It's huge. It's 30 billion square feet. So that's what's that, 10 billion square meters. It's big. Why? When we were the first really in the world to assemble, orchestrate, create systems. The systems work for a lot of reasons. One, they help the designer, the builder, the owner, even the tenant, the cleaning company, the manufacturer, the utility. They help them navigate, define. But you could take green star five-star level or six. You could be a public body and say, all our buildings will be green star at this level. And if you don't do it, we'll give you a stick, we'll hit you with it. If you do it, maybe we give you a tax credit, a carrot. And so it became really simple to attach to building codes, to carrots and sticks of regulators, to designers who say, we only do Green Star or LEED at this level. I used to be summoned to Art Gensler's office when he was living, Gensler's probably the top architect in the world, depending on who's counting. And he would make all his offices in some 35 countries do lead or BREAM, whatever it was. They'd set their own levels and then move their own standard of practice as an architect up. Say, okay, here's the credits that are just part of leadership design. You don't ask for them. They're just, as a leader, of course, we want good air quality. Of course we want daylight. Of course we want super insulation. So the heating stays in and the cooling when you want it. And get the orientation right, the acoustics, the more walkability, the better. So some of it is just smart design, and leaders got it right away. If you're worn a leader, you probably fought us in the early days. But even in Australia, your property council was there day one. I remember meeting with them in 2000 in Kieran Cove, and they had we had a they hired me from the US to fly all the way out there and told them what we were doing out here with the U.S. Green Building Council. And they were one of the early supporters, but it was a property council because they wanted high performance buildings. They wanted to lower the risk. In turn, this is about value. Don't you want to make something that's valuable by respecting life and life sustaining and life preservation?

Ben Peacock6:44

Yeah, I do. I don't find that companies always do, though. I think, I mean, I find that to be the ultimate value. But I mean, I think what's been unique about Green Star is it's also provided commercial value in that, to your point, construction companies have gone, okay, this is a better longer-term investment for what you'd call a pension fund, what we'd call a superannuation fund, because it's de-risked from you know high energy use and those sorts of things in the future. So there seems to be a really strong, um, I guess, financial pull-through that people want this stuff, which maybe it doesn't exist in every market.

David Gottfried7:19

It's just about leadership and value. If you have a home and you have a baby in it, don't you want fresh air? If don't you want daylight, not all basement and dark and mold? You want the best. When we get in a car and get in a crash, you want a car that's safe. Some of us want a car that when you go around the corner, it feels pretty damn good. And you push on the gas, it accelerates. But even better when the CO2 is less, you don't have to pay for it. The externalized price of pushing down on the gas, push on the electric, and then make it renewable and circular and resilient. These are values of life, and it's coming into the global built environment, and it woke up to it all around the world. And we're not anti-capitalism. This is about money. This is about making more money. But when you make that money, that money represents good, not threatening life. And that's the shift we're taking here on Earth through the building industry.

Ben Peacock8:23

I love it. I mean, what you speak of is fundamentally how I think business should be done. You know, let's look at what's truly valuable in this world. Uh as I say, I wish I saw that across more companies and more industries, but it's it's enheartening to see that one of quite frankly, the biggest and most important industries in the world has adopted this.

David Gottfried8:42

And it's worked, and dozens of other industries have jumped in and they've created their own rating systems. It's quite beautiful to see.

Seven Steps To Build A Movement

Ben Peacock8:53

So you, in fact, took the system and you turned it into a lovely seven streps to build a movement framework, which I would like to hear about. Because, as you say, if you can take one system, show how it's worked, prove it's both commercially and existentially better for us as humans, then you can apply the cross-and-y industry. And it's really what we need right now. Could you tell me about your seven steps to success for building a movement, please?

David Gottfried9:20

Out of my second book, it was called Explosion Green. And that was a 20-year memoir of some of the items you're hearing of the green building movement, how we started it. In the very back, it said why us in bold letters. And then it went through certain categories of how did we assemble, how did we build the US Green Building Council, and then the world one, and become the biggest green building movement in the world. And I synthesized those experiences into seven steps, because our brain can't handle eight, and uh made it as simple as I could. I'm playing. I like complicated things, so sometimes making it simple is smart. But uh I called it build move. How do you build a movement and create legacy? And then I got to teach it here at a place called 1440.org. I have my notebook that they all got. And here's the seven steps. Step one, what's your PPM, passion, purpose, mission? It's like fine, great. What's step two? Your grand huge vision that comes out of your PPM? Fine. Well, I'm an engineer. What's step three? Your blueprint, your strategy. What good are words if they don't have results? How are you gonna get those results? Step four is fine. You're one person, you're tired, you burn out. Where's your tribe? Who's going with you up the mountain? Do you have an expedition or are you solo with no gear? Do you have a base camp? That would help. And then how are you gonna benchmark you went up the mountain? Is it how many feet, how many times, how many feet per minute? What's altitude? What's the temperature? What are your benchmarks? What's your definition of success? Measured and then verified and then transparent and certified. And that's all fine, but you gotta fund that thing. What are the economic steps six? The money, the money to fund your movement, the money to fund you. When I started USGBC, I was funding it myself. And the same for the World Green Building Council. And they were always broke, and I was always writing checks. In the beginning, I was the first CEO. I had the pleasure of funding it, being the CEO, giving it away as a nonprofit. It wasn't that fun. But we had to get and shift the economics. So there were members and conferences and expo halls and rating systems and reference guides and grants and on and on to build the machine. But if you're a nonprofit or for-profit and you're broke, you're bankrupt and you're out of business and you don't achieve your PPM and your vision. And then that's all fine. How do you sustain climbing the next mountain? And how do you sustain it as an organization? How do you sustain it as a rating system? How do you sustain it as a movement? And how do you sustain yourself as a founder? And founders' lights, they they burn out, they don't self-care very well. They burn the, I should say the oil, but they burn the solar at both ends. And honestly, behind me, I'm a painter. This is called radiance, and it's about the light, and that that's the light inside of us, and keeping it renewable. And how do you do it? You hand the baton to someone else in the tribe, and you sit down on the park bench and breathe, chill, meditate. The same with that organization. How does that survive? Supposedly, the seventh day is the Sabbath on earth, and we're supposed to rest. Do you rest? And so embedded in that is the concept of liminal and slowing down so you can sustain the long haul with endurance.

Ben Peacock13:33

That is one of the greatest theorems or steps I've ever heard. So that's in Explosion Green, correct? That um theorem?

David Gottfried13:40

It's mentioned in Explosion Green, the charts there. Some of it shows up in this new book that'll come out in October called Regen 360. But in theory, it needs its own book in more detail.

Ben Peacock13:54

Just the single graphic I think would be extremely useful for people. If you want to send it to me, I'll post it with the um happy to do that. Thank you. It reminds me slightly of Collective Impact. It's different, but those that's seven steps as well. Let's talk books more. So you've written a number of books, Explosion Green, Greed to Green, and Greening My Life. Is it true? I know it's true because you've already told me now. You have a new book coming out later this year. And I have to ask, does it have green in the title? Is this uh next in the green series?

Beyond Sustainable To Regenerative

David Gottfried14:25

I've moved beyond to the word regeneration because green and sustainable isn't enough. And so it's called regen 360. So it moves way beyond buildings. I'm going to all of Civilization 360. So it has health, it has relationships, has love. It's all in there. It's called Regen 360. And the subtitle is an operating system for a regenerative earth. So I'm going at a system for civilization so we can regenerate and be here in the future, way beyond buildings, because we have to look at everything, including relationships and care and our brains.

Ben Peacock15:09

And it's going into all of those areas. So yeah, we've done buildings now that's look at ourselves as individuals. It's interesting. You pick up on, you've said this theme a few times about the founder and burning out those sorts of things. I always have like three consecutive rings as to how I try to live my life. I go, if you don't look after yourself mentally and physically, you're kind of eating into your capital, which is really what we're doing as a species to this planet, right? Building up a debt. From there, it's relationships and they kind of have rings. It's your closest people, your family, and that moves out probably to different levels of friends. And then I go, once I've got those under control, now let's move to achievements and impact on the world. And I find one of the great mistakes people make, of course, is they want to start on the outside because often that's kind of status and ego and what people think is valuable. Have I got a nice car? La de da-de-da, have I got a good job title? But really, if you don't build it outwards, it's not sustainable. And suddenly it all falls apart, right? You've seen it. You know, suddenly people have one form of success, but they lose their family and kids, you know, or they lose their lives, they lose their health. So talk to me more about that because it seems to be where you've gone. You've gone, okay, I did buildings, but I really want this to be about us and how we think of ourselves and our relationship with ourselves primarily.

David Gottfried16:22

Yeah, no, it's perfect what you've described, Ben. I call that your spheres of influence. And you start with the bullseye of that is self, and your temple, your home is your body, your mind. Get to green that, you got to regenerate that, what you think, how you fuel, how you move. And then that next ring is maybe your family who's in the house with you, and then out the front door, your community. But don't forget your work, the products and services, and then your country, and then planet Earth, our home, our shared home. But I have some other frameworks that go with that sphere of influence, and it's also like a bullseye metric. What's at the center of value in this planet? Life. That's the bullseye. And what's V1, value ring one is life sustaining things we go to war for? Fresh air, water, soil, safety, health. And so you need those things to sustain the bullseye. Once you have that, what do you do next on earth? Well, we get together, we create a government, a tribe. Well, we need energy, agriculture, food. We build systems that are communal systems. And you can keep going to that outer ring, which I call V5, which is where my snowboard or road bike sits, but you don't want that road bike or snowboard to kill life. So you have to look at the labor and the conditions and the products and the are they on the red list, the toxicity elements. I have another equation in the book called the full equation, because I think we don't have the right variables in the equation. We pushed them out and said, that's not my problem. I can make that snowboard and pollute and use coal, and that CO2 in the air is somebody else's problem, not mine. Or I'll use precious materials and just consume them and not replace them. They're not circular or renewable, or I'll use massive binders that are toxic but will hold it together. It might kill a few workers. So what? Those are externalities, not in the full equation.

Ben Peacock18:50

That's interesting, isn't it? Because it's the recognition of value. Because in truth, you know, it is easier just to pollute. It is cheaper to go and send it off to a factory where you don't really know what the labor conditions are. You know, these things I can see why companies have made these decisions, because they make it easier in the short term to get where they want. But to your point, like a snowboard's a great example. You make snowboards, then you pollute, which like warms the climate, which means there's nowhere to snowboard. It's like it does not make sense when you build it into the actual full fundamentals of what you're trying to achieve as an organization. It just astounds me how much humans are prepared to compromise what they truly value for short-term, I don't know, benefit, not even benefit. I guess short-term ease is probably the best way to put it.

David Gottfried19:38

Ease, uh profitability, quarterly returns that put it in someone else's bucket, like the public commons.

Ben Peacock19:47

Yeah, this is the government's problem. When they legislate me, I'll do Yeah.

David Gottfried19:51

And then I'll lobby against.

Ben Peacock19:53

And then I'll lobby to stop it. That's that seems to be how it works, right? Um I love it. Well, take me to that as an existential question. Because, you know, this is so interesting. Because what you're doing is really asking people to think holistically. If this is what you really want, well, why don't you consider everything so that over the long term, as you say, one side equals the other, not like we're just ignoring this little bit of the equation, hoping it goes away, kind of thing. Because it there's no way, as we've kind of discovered. It always does my head in. Well, someone said to me, everyone, if you ask them what they'd do if they had all the money in the world, a lot of them go, oh, I'd go sit in a beautiful tropical island, la la. And you go, well, why are you prepared to destroy the island to get there? It makes no sense. You know, and if you put it that in a bigger sense, you go, we all like are amazed by planet Earth. We all grow up reading books about tigers and elephants, and that's what amazes us. We all love going to crazy places, and you know, even your tech bro billionaires all want to climb Mount Everest, right? It's probably more about the climb, but it's still nature, you know. And you go, given Earth is our home planet, you'd think that we'd get this and just naturally treat it with respect and not need equations and frameworks and green building councils and all these things that people like you and me are trying to build to move us that way. What's up with us as a human race? Why don't we treat our home planet as home? You know, how does this happen?

Why We Treat Earth Like A Market

David Gottfried21:12

Now you got the that's why I wrote this next fourth book. Exactly that question, Ben. What is wrong with us that we can't treat Earth as home? And what is wrong with us outside the front door? That person is other. And I just went hard at it. And I used AI tools to have that conversation, a thousand walks, just hypothesizing. I came to a few conclusions. One, it's our survival wiring in our brains, and it's antiquated. It was great when the tiger was chasing us, it was great when the caveman was cold. The cavemen didn't have shopping malls with beautiful markets and food. And we don't all have that. I understand I'm tired. Talking as a privileged guy. But it's fear-based, it's Darwinian. And a lot of it creates greed. Like if I don't hoard all that stuff, I'm going to starve. Or when they come for me, I have something to trade. Or if I'm the biggest, strongest, boldest with the most stuff, I win. And I have freedom of choice. And if there was selective choice. And so it's all fear-based, everything. But some of us, there's a billion of us here on earth that are, we should be helping a lot more, at least a billion, who are hungry, they don't have electricity, they don't have clean water, they don't have safety, they can't study and use education, which is the best vehicle to get out of that cycle. But for others of us, you know, why do we still need it? What do these billionaires do? They they buy a lot of crap. They they buy that island, they they want to own it, and then the next one, and then get the biggest world sailboat to go there, and then eight Ferraris and two Lamborghinis because the garage is there, and then they buy companies, and then some of them create foundations. That's great, after they've created a monster ecological footprint, and I get that, but still it's the old system. I call it the false game, and all of that is the second world I call the first world was pre-industrial revolution, but the second world of post-1750 is go, go, go, bigger's better, marketing, use industry to create. It's all growth and sales, growth in profit, growth in products, growth in consumers, growth in ego, growth in ecological footprint, growth in waste. And there's never enough. Just never enough. You can't get enough kindling ever. Not growth in care, contentment, uh, mega footprint, I call it, reducing your footprint, connection, playing off of community. Yeah, love, yes, connection, listening, being heard, empathy, gratitude, hello, appreciation. But a lot of it's our brain and fear. And in the brain, when that survival wiring is triggered, it's the amygdala that's hot. It's the primitive, native, tribal part of the brain. And it when it's triggered, especially in guys, you know, the car cuts you off, you're honking on the horn, you're cursing at them, you're ready to get your machine gun and shoot the guy down. I'm part of it. I'm I'm a guy. I don't like that in myself. And I sometimes am driving with my daughter, and I have to apologize because it's terrible. But there's also the prefrontal cortex in the brain, and that's more logical and thoughtful, and it can make calculated, careful decisions. But when we're triggered and hot, we go to the amygdala, and that goes to this lower survival wiring of kill or be killed. There's a lot to figure out, but the brain is very important, and part of that is also therapy and learning about yourself, unpeeling these layers to get to a core of contentment that doesn't treat this earth as a shopping market and doesn't treat your neighbor across the country of a different race and culture as other. We share the air, we share the water, we share DNA. Why do we have to hate?

Ben Peacock25:49

So I'm looking at all that on the 360. I love everything you're saying. I mean, it's interesting. I think as I've gotten older, I've recognized those two parts of the brain. And it you're right, it's hard not to trigger sometimes the angry, the angry caveman. Let's call him. Um, but I've found that just being cognizant of it helps. But the other thing that I've found that's interesting is almost like this want for more. I think as humans, we're almost built to want more. You almost just look at how life survives. It just grows, right? The problem is we've reached the point where we can't keep doing that. And we should be enlightened enough to recognize this and almost like to your point recognize the primal bit of ourselves and the sort of more intelligent, hopefully enlightened bit. But I find that's almost when I don't feel the connection or the satisfaction of life that you start going, I'll just go buy a thing to create me some happiness. Or it's people who don't feel content as humans that want the really awesome car to kind of make themselves feel validated. And you see it in people, you know, when you meet people on a different level and you meet a you know, real tough guy kind of thing, and and then, but you meet them in an actually kind of an awkward situation, like someone's dying or something like that. And they're totally open with a different part of themselves that you would not get if you'd have engaged with them in some other part of life. And you just see it constantly that if people are nourished in those parts of themselves, it gives them the feeling of personal value, of connection and contentment with those around, then a lot of that need for more seems to drop away. How you do that is a question, but at least recognizing the situation is a good start.

Soul Worth And A Giving Culture

David Gottfried27:26

No, you're right. And I invented this third term called soul worth. That's what you're describing. There's net worth, just money, assets minus liabilities, self-worth sometimes is ego influence. Maybe that guy who bought the red Porsche felt more self-worth, spent net worth to feel self-worth. But how is a dude's soul worth? And that's the soul of giving gratitude, being of service, planting seeds that you water, nurture to pull the CO2 out of the atmosphere and kick out fresh oxygen. That's the person we want to be. And you feel so much better when you give, you're of service. It's not about all about me and my and trademark it and own it and capitalize on it and bankroll the damn thing. Just give. That's where freedom is. Stop the you know, more, more, more and learn about enough and giving, a giving culture. One of care, one of gratitude, one of appreciation, one of service, one of love, love of self, love of planet, love of creation. This creation is just incredible. It's magnificent, it's brilliant, it's circular. I take these slow walks with my dog, and there's a creek, and I do my three deep breaths there. So I go from sympathetic to parasympathetic nervous system and take in the sound and the water flowing, and just recognize I'm part of the creation. I'm not here to conquer it.

Ben Peacock29:09

Isn't it interesting? The irony too is everybody thinks, not what can I take, but what can I give? We suddenly have more individually. It's it's like this oxymoron, right? If we all enter a situation, what can I get, we get less. If we all enter with what can I give, we all get more. There's two things, yeah. Yeah. There's lots of overtones of everything from spirituality to like yoga through to meditation, through to religion in all that. It's interesting that when it doesn't matter which point people enter throughout history to ask the question, how can I be a better human? Because all those things start there. They all kind of come to this same conclusion, right?

David Gottfried29:47

Yeah, they all merge, different front doors, different names, but the values are the same. I call it, if you take the word human and you look it up in the dictionary, it'll say to be frail, to be weak, to cultivate nature. And then if you take the letter E and put it back at the end of that word, you get humane. And I call it the E revolution. How do we shift?

Ben Peacock30:17

From human to humane. So I'm gonna move on to you a little

Founder Stories And Starting Young

Ben Peacock30:22

bit. What's one thing people are surprised by when they find it out about you? That's a tough one.

David Gottfried30:30

It might depend on the context. You know, in my parts of my earlier career, I might have been too tough, too type A male, which was probably fear-based and more-based. And, you know, but when you got to know me, maybe you would see the spirituality, the inner divinity, the creative artist who paints and writes and did photography and loves gardening, the guy who loves hiking and is a naturalist.

Ben Peacock31:03

So there are different parts there. Well, you've gone from engineer to painter. That to me would be surprising um trajectory, I must say.

David Gottfried31:12

I didn't want to be an engineer, I wanted to paint and write. And my dad said if I quit engineering to paint and write, that's fine, but uh he wouldn't pay my tuition at Stanford.

Ben Peacock31:28

All came down to who's funding it, hey? Do you think that was fear-based from your dad? Might have worked out well in the end, though.

David Gottfried31:35

I think it was ROI. He when I started the USGBC, I was a real estate developer before and I came home. I quit. He said, What are you gonna do now, son? I'm gonna start a nonprofit to define green building for the U.S. They did it in England. We could do it here. He said, son, that's a good gimmick. Don't come home when you're starving. But you made it happen. I waited 20 years, maybe 15, invited mom and dad to Phoenix. We had rented the entire stadium. There were 25,000 people there. We had Al Vice President Al Gore's the keynote, and later conferences we had Train play for us and Maroon 5 and Hillary Clinton. You know, my favorite was Desmond Tutu as a speaker. But Dad turned to me and said, Son, you always said you're gonna change the world. You did, and I'm proud of you. That was the corollary to don't starve.

Ben Peacock32:38

That's it. You proved it. I mean, that's an interesting point, though, isn't it? I mean, I started what I think was the world's third adapted advertising agency. I basically was an advertising and I went, I kind of want to do something I feel has value in the world, not just sell more stuff. And when I'm only gonna advertise good things, which slowly became a sustainability agency and strategic consultancy, it sort of grew based on what the market wanted. But it was about the third in the world. I remember when I started, everyone went, How are you gonna make money out of that? And I said, I don't really care. I just want to do it and I'll figure it out as I go along the way. And it worked out. Do you think that's advice for people who want to do something? Because I find if you sit down and do the numbers on that and work it out, you probably would never do it because it's apart from anything else, it's quite new. So there's not a great deal of things to copy from. But also, you know, there's a great deal of unknown that you can work out along the way. And it almost starts to fall into the bucket of feel the fear and do it anyway. Thank you, Anthony Roberts. You know, do you think that just that I'm gonna have a go because I believe it and work really hard is a pathway to success? Or do you think that's slightly crazy and you can only do that when you're young and and and and don't quite know what you're in for?

David Gottfried33:50

No, it your setup for our framework. It's number one, PPM, passion, purpose, and mission. So if you were passionate about that, you didn't care, you didn't do it for money. You were passionate, you saw it as your purpose, you created a mission, your vision, you probably then did your number three blueprint. If you don't have PPM, forget it. Then it's just you're soulless and you lose your creativity, you love your, you lose your ingenuity, you lose your drive. You don't climb the mountain without the expedition when it's hailing, you quit. And so to endure and persevere, you need passion. But I'm hoping to market your listeners that that passion treats Earth as home and people outside the front door as part of our tribe. And I call it hope, capital H O P E, and that stands for health on planet Earth, H O P E caps. And put your passion at that. Put your creativity. The money will come as you've seen it. I saw it for me to make money, I had to invent an industry. It was hard. I should have just been the doctor of the lawyer, it was a lot easier. The people knew what that was. Green building, I started in '91. It's like, what the hell is that? So, but it's passion. I wanted to do good. I wanted my life to mean something. I wanted to create a legacy more than just money in the bank. I wanted to plant those seeds and watch the forest grow and sit on the park bench someday quietly and smile as kids are in the park under the shade. The darts are running, the frisbees are flying, and you're just there quiet and you're just taking it in. But you know what you did. And it's beautiful.

Ben Peacock35:50

I love it. So follow your passion, but have a blueprint. And the other steps. Um, okay, a couple of uh questions to finish this off. If you had a magic wand, so this is a single-use magic wand, you don't get to have more than one wish, but don't worry, it's not throw away. We recharge it each time, that it only has one charge in it, okay? Solar powered. What would you change in the world?

David Gottfried36:15

Wow. I wish that we could wake up in time, that we could become whole as people, see this beauty, stop the hatred, and go forward with that soul worth, which is love-based, and grow up, just grow up, see the gift we've been given, that every breath is sacred and an opportunity, and just stop creating the wars and the hate and the greed. And I'm a dreamer, but that's my wish.

Ben Peacock36:56

You gave it to me. I wish I had that wand. I would hand it to you for all time for that wish to come true. Because I'm gonna go with that as the best wish we could wish for. Um, okay, somebody who's sitting here listening going, I want this too. I want to sit on that park bench. I'm prepared to get my PPM and go for it. Um, they want to be you in, you know, they're young, they're coming out of uni, maybe they want to be you in 20 years. Where do they begin?

David Gottfried37:22

You gotta, it's it's what we've said here, you know, just put aside for a second what the parents said, the the boss, the school, the professor. Go into your bathroom, look in the damn mirror, look in your own eyes, which penetrate into your own soul. What does it tell you? What does it really tell you? No bullshit here. Don't lie to yourself, no hiding. What do you hear? Or what would you hear if you didn't stuff it away and lock the door? What's it telling you? Who are you really? What are you a genius at? What's your divine greatness? What's your greatest hope? How are you handcuffing yourself and holding yourself back? What's your unique gift and contribution here to this mess we created? We're playing a symphony, and you've got your own instrument that could add notes. No one has ever heard. Come join us. We need you, but we need you to show up. We need the real you. And I want to know who that is. Is that the clothing you're wearing? Is that the suit you're trying to squeeze into? Where's your colors? And that's the light that built the screen movement. That's the light that resuscitates it when it steers wrong. That's the light that edits a book the eighth time and he's tired. That's the light that doesn't retire when my friends are chasing white balls. I'm on round seven. I'm still dreaming of putting the E back in the word and recruiting you to help because I'm tired and I want to hand you the baton.

Ben Peacock39:16

Fantastic. Um, you are a master of the quotable quote, I'd like to say, not just the framework and the passion and the energy and the humaneness within what's needed in the world, but a quotable quote

Where To Learn More And Closing

Ben Peacock39:30

is wonderful. And that would suggest that some of these listeners, probably all of them, in fact, are gonna want to read more. How are they going to find out more? Where do they go? Where would you like to send people?

David Gottfried39:42

Thank you for that, Ben. Go to my website, regen360.net. You'll find the new book is there. You can pre-order it. It's not about me, it's about me planting seeds, maybe. And maybe here I'm planting and watering. But it's not all of us planting seeds all over this beautiful world to regenerate together.

Ben Peacock40:04

Fantastic. Do you use social media? Would someone substack social if someone just wants to follow thoughts as well as by book?

David Gottfried40:14

We're just starting our substack, but um I'm deep into LinkedIn. You can find me there, David Gottfried.

Ben Peacock40:21

G-O-D-T-F-R-I-E-D for anybody who wants to go look. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so very much for your time. You've been enlightening, and I use that word in the true sense of the word.

David Gottfried40:34

Thank you, Ben, for caring for your listeners and to have this conversation with me and and guide us, curate us to get to the core, not just of me, but of why are we here and what can we do together. On that note, I'll leave it there. Thank you. Thank you.

Singers40:54