Some people stick out of life’s messy pile, shining little beacons of intrigue and possibility. There’s no defining feature that easily identifies them, at least not one I can see – no pattern or trademark. I suspect that it’s also an individual thing: that the people I find compelling, inspiring and brave are not the same ones you would.
My shiny people are a diverse mob of business people, parents, hippies, outdoor types, creatives and more – some pillars of public amazingness, others school mums. There are lots of these extraordinary folk, and I find them everywhere. Some are close friends, others I bump into randomly, interview for a story, hear about somehow. Each time I’m intrigued, buzzing with questions, desperate to understand what makes them work, to absorb their certainty and strength. What I really want is a little vial of what makes them so goddamn amazing so I can gulp it down and become one of them: someone who knows what they are about and lives life to suit.
So far, here’s what I’ve got: their attitude. I know its nebulous, but these folk are so full of life, of curiosity, of fun, that they don’t seem to see the obstacles, only the opportunities. They’re open to possibilities and play, they know who they are and how they want to be in the world.
Lately there have been a few more shiny people added to my very long list. This week Cedar Anderson and Kylie Ezart dropped into my MBE class to talk about the first nine years of their Flow Hive business. Cedar grew up in an intentional community in the Northern Rivers region, was a paragliding instructor, inventor and dreamer. Beekeeping was a family passion, and he became obsessed with the idea of inventing a different way of harvesting honey, one that was easier on both the bees and the keeper. He and his dad spent ten years inventing the revolutionary hive, billed as the most significant advance in beekeeping in 150 years.
The traditional way of harvesting honey involves donning a suit and sedating the bees with smoke, opening the hive, removing the honeycomb, then doing all the messy, time-consuming work to extract the honey, all while being attacked by angry bees. With a Flow Hive, when the honey is ready to harvest, you turn a handle and the plastic combs slide apart, allowing honey to come pouring out: you don’t need to open the hives or disturb the bees.
While Cedar was busily inventing, the couple were living a hippy life in a tin shed near the beach. Then Kylie was pregnant and the property was put up for sale, lending urgency to their April 2015 crowd-funding appeal.
They met their first funding target of $US70,000 in seven minutes; reached $US1 million in two hours; finished with $US12.4 million 30 days later. FlowHive smashed all existing crowd-funding records, and they ended up with more than 20,000 orders from all around the world – it was a success beyond their wildest dreams.
There were a few challenges to overcome, and that’s putting it mildly. They had no business experience, had never produced an actual Flow Hive, and had promised deliveries all around the world by Christmas. And that’s without mentioning the imminent arrival of their baby, the hundreds of thousands of emails and their deep commitments to minimising the negative impacts of the business and increasing the good they did in the world.
In amongst finding a factory in Brisbane that did 24/7 manufacturing, overseeing the production of the hives, sorting out the customer database and service, the delivery, setting up the systems, finding staff and the thousands of other things (including learning how to parent!), they made time for fun and community. When Vanuatu was hit by Cyclone Pam, they sold raffle tickets for the chance of being the lucky recipient of the first ever Flow Hive and donated the proceeds ($100,000!), then repeated the process (and the sizeable donation) for disaster relief following Nepal’s massive earthquake.
The winner of the raffle just happened to live near Mt Tambourine in Queensland, and Cedar loves paragliding... So when it was time for delivery, he put a bee suit on under his harness, loaded himself up with the first-ever Flow Hive, and launched himself off the mountain for a personal delivery.
I can’t tell you how much I love this. In amongst launching a business and meeting all the resulting deadlines and complexities and the challenges of new parenthood and the unimaginable stress and learning and change this required, here’s what they had time to prioritise: fundraising for massive donations to disaster relief, sourcing and purchasing a bee suit and organising an aerial delivery!
Flow Hive is going wonderfully, is a B Corp, and is deeply committed to leveraging its success into better outcomes for the naturally world. As it says on their website: ‘The commitment to raising awareness of how crucial bees are to human survival is real and unwavering, the importance of sustainability, recognition of the interconnectedness of all life on Earth and the broader message of treading as lightly on the planet and with as much love and as little cruelty as we can.’
There’s a lot to be amazed about in this story. Cedar and Kylie’s possibilities and playfulness, their adaptability and flexibility and the way they’ve allowed themselves to change. They’ve kept their hippy roots and values, but become innovative business people, consummate storytellers, philanthropists and changemakers, doing things their way. They’re a wonderful example of people who see the possibilities, not the obstacles, allow things to change while not forgetting their connections, their values and their joy.
Flush with rain
It's been raining and raining in Sydney (and the entire east coast it seems), and it’s bringing back memories of that dreary, flooded year where it never seemed to stop. I was finding waking to the sounds of wetness outside rather depressing. And then I found this episode of the wonderful Poetry Unbound podcast where Pádraig Ó Tuama talks about Rita Wong’s poem ‘flush’ – a praise song to the expansive and unceasing presence of water in our lives. It’s wonderful, and only 15 minutes long – listen.
Building boats (and other things)
In the spirit of other things I’ve found that I love, here’s a quote:
‘If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.’
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Listen well…
I’ve mentioned Nancy’s Kline’s Time to Think book before. It’s about the importance of establishing a ‘thinking environment’ in all different types of situations – work meetings, brainstorming, families, relationships and more – with the aim of letting people think for themselves. In the family sphere, she says that if you do nothing else but try these two things you will transform your family life:
Give five times as much praise as criticism.
Listen. Let people speak without interruption. They don’t want your solution, they want to think it through for themselves.
I’m trying, and it’s bloody hard. Often my kids don’t get through their first sentence before I’m piecing together a plan in my head, ready to dispense wisdom, lay out their best course of action and wrap it all up with a nice, pretty bow.
But I’m trying. If nothing else, it’s shown me how little genuine praise there is going around, and how much work there is in listening well.