Chris Moss spoke at Like Minds last October, but is back to run a Q&A with the audience today.
Q. Glenn Le Santo wants to set up a boat to teach children things that they can’t get elsewhere. He needs £250,000, but he can’t get it.
Chris: Why do you need that much? You can get a nice barge for 50k to 60k. We always find reasons not to do things, and money is one of them. Just get going, and get excited about it. Get the ball rolling.
Glenn: I already am, on my own boat.
Chris: So you’re wrong, when you said earlier that what you do doesn’t matter.
Q. We’re working on youth unemployment. Part of our concept is the talent shop: what is your talent and how do you show it off? If you had to get young people into work, what would you do?
Chris: If you take money out of the equation, it’s amazing what people actually want to do. At school, you’re told not to daydream, but in business you need to. People’s potential is what matches to jobs today, not their general knowledge. Jobs of the future will need tools that match people with their passions, rather than giving schol children career advice. We have to inspire people to do something, rather than just getting a job.
Q. I’m part of a writer’s collective. I coach some of the older ones on social media. Some people said you should do this as a business – but this sounds like a wonderful idea. But how do I start?
Chris: Without passion and a dream, it’ll go nowhere. But if you really believe in it, it’s about going out and talking to people about building this organisation. If you can find three or four other people to help you, it’ll start happening. It’s incredible how quickly you can create stuff.
Q from Chris: Who wants 25 days more holiday a year? (A proportion of people did).
Chris has encountered a company that every two weeks, they only work 9 days. You get every other Friday off – but they work an extra hour per day. Its a great staff retention policy.
Q. We hear a lot about big groups of corporates, and how they need to work together to solve the world’s problems. I’m sceptical because corporate have to make money.
Chris: I like change, and believe passionately that ideas bring about change. Nudging a super-tanker can lead to it arriving on the other side of the world. It’s hard to see change in big companies. So maybe we should launch a new political party, or launch businesses with social profit and loss built-in.
