Think about it: by leveraging influencers and storytellers, substantial social changes can be made in the world. Now listen to the full episode.
Guests: Michael Sheldrick, Author and Co-Founder and Chief Policy, Impact and Government Affairs Officer at Global Citizen [@GlblCtzn]
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-sheldrick-30364051/
On Twitter | https://twitter.com/micksheldrick
Website | https://michaelsheldrick.com/
On Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/michael.sheldrick/
On Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/micksheldrick/
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Host: Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining Society Podcast & Audio Signals Podcast
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/marco-ciappelli
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Episode Introduction
In this new episode of the Audio Signals Podcast, host Marco Ciappelli sits down with Michael Sheldrick, co-founder of Global Citizen and author of "From Ideas to Impact: A Playbook for Influencing and Implementing Change in a Divided World". Michael opens up about the power of storytelling and its unique ability to inspire change in society. They express how by leveraging influencers and storytellers, substantial social changes can be made in the world.
They converse about Michael's journey, from spearheading advocacy initiatives to becoming a renowned author. Sheldrick shares captivating anecdotes, including his impactful involvement in a campaign to eradicate polio and his mobilization of superstars like Rihanna for advocacy efforts. He discusses the balance between creating awareness about issues and providing clear, actionable solutions.
Michael illustrates the importance of identifying clear, achievable goals before launching a campaign and advocates for crafting compelling narratives to gain audience support. He provides valuable insights into harnessing the power of social media for advocacy work, cautioning that while easy to use, it should be harnessed strategically to bring about a meaningful impact.
Tune in for an enriching conversation filled with compelling stories, lessons on effective advocacy, thought-provoking dialogue, and key advice on how to transform an idea into tangible, impactful change. A must-listen for anyone interested in driving social change and making a difference in the world.
About the Book
As Co-Founder of Global Citizen—an international education and advocacy organization with the mission to end extreme poverty worldwide—Michael Sheldrick has worked with governments, businesses, foundations, the artist community, and everyday citizens to distribute over $40 billion around the world over the past decade. Now, in From Ideas to Impact: A Playbook for Influencing and Implementing Change in a Divided World, he delivers an inspiring and insightful discussion on how to implement social impact by driving policy change.
This book reveals key characteristics of successful policy entrepreneurs – visionaries bridging the gap between promises and real-world outcomes. They are practical implementers who put impact first, resisting the urge to pursue the instant dopamine boost that comes from simply winning arguments at all costs. They are connectors and networkers who build diverse coalitions and broker win-win solutions to address our current implementation crisis.
An indispensable guide for individual changemakers, philanthropists, corporate social responsibility (CSR) practitioners, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) professionals, policymakers, corporate foundations, and higher education students, From Ideas to Impact: A Playbook for Influencing and Implementing Change in a Divided World, features:
At its core, this uplifting book instills hope that change is achievable despite our divisions. It showcases how individuals at all levels pursue systemic policy change through united voices, cooperation, and solidarity. Sheldrick equips readers with the tools to craft impactful narratives that can inspire countless more success stories, reinforcing the idea that we are not prisoners of fate and that actual change begins with us.
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Resources
From Ideas to Impact: A Playbook for Influencing and Implementing Change in a Divided World (Book): https://michaelsheldrick.com/book/
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Book | From Ideas to Impact: A Playbook for Influencing and Implementing Change in a Divided World | Stories That Drive Change | A Conversation With Michael Sheldrick Co-Founder of Global Citizen | Audio Signals Podcast With Marco Ciappelli
Please note that this transcript was created using AI technology and may contain inaccuracies or deviations from the original audio file. The transcript is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a substitute for the original recording, as errors may exist. At this time, we provide it “as it is,” and we hope it can be helpful for our audience.
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[00:00:00] Marco Ciappelli: All right. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of AudioCellular Podcast. We are here today to talk about stories and storytellers. This is what we do on this, uh, this show of mine. The other one is Little Advertising, Redefining Society, where we talk about society and technology. And to be honest, sometimes I'm in between.
I got to decide if a guest is going to go on one show or another. This could definitely be on that show as well, because it's certainly about redefining society. It's certainly about using technology as well, but I felt like it was more important from a storytelling perspective and how By telling a story in a certain way, maybe leveraging, uh, musicians, actors and influencers and so on, we can really, really make some changes in the world.
And I'm not the one doing that. I mean, I just, I just have a conversation. I hope somebody listen and think and act. But, uh, I have, uh, Michael Sheldrick here with me. He's the co founder of Global Citizen. He just wrote a book called From Ideas to Impact, a playbook for influencing and implementing change in a divided world.
So that's an entire episode right there. We're going to talk about, um, uh, Michael, thank you for joining me. Um, I'm very, very happy to have this conversation.
[00:01:28] Michael Sheldrick: No, I'm thrilled to be on this podcast, Marco. And who knows, maybe one day I'll join your other podcast, but really honored to be with you today. Yeah.
[00:01:36] Marco Ciappelli: Great. Great. So, um, let's start with the. Storyteller, which is you in this case as an author of the book, and I know we are all storyteller, even when we go to the grocery store or, uh, you know, with friends, but in this case, you actually thought about something that how to create impact. So let's start from who you are, and then we'll talk about book and your organization as well.
[00:02:00] Michael Sheldrick: Yeah, well, first of all, I love the emphasis on storytelling, you know, in the book. You know, which is primarily eight steps on how to create change in our world. You know, I use the term policy entrepreneurship to describe what's needed right now to disrupt our policymaking processes and really, you know, turn, turn ideas about how we can address the world's biggest issues into positive impact, right?
But fundamentally, one thing I often say is whether you are an advocate an activist, a policy entrepreneur, even. Really, at its core, you have to be a good storyteller. To be a good advocate is, is to be an effective storyteller. There's, there's no other, um, substitute for the power of storytelling because it's humans that move humans and it's stories that move, move people.
But to answer your question about why I'm here and why I wrote the book, you know, I think I can actually address that with, with a story. And, you know, in the book, I actually talk about stories of why one of my good friends growing up at school actually said, it's not what or how that make people interested, but why they do something right.
And so let me, let me just outline my why for why I wrote the book and, you know, why, why I do what I do. You know, growing up in, in Australia, you know, I grew up in Perth, which is the most isolated city in the world, um, in the Southwest of, of, of that great big continent. Um, you know, I wasn't great at sport, which in Australia is, is kind of like blasphemy, right?
Because Australia loves. We idolize our sporting heroes, but I was not that guy. I was not great at sport. And so, you know, when we used to play Aussie rules football, right, which is kind of similar to Gaelic football, if any of your listeners are into that, um, from Ireland, but, you know, you have this long oval type type of ball and.
Yeah, I would go and kick this ball at school and I would just hope that the ball would go in the right direction from which I kicked it, let alone score a goal. Right. And inevitably, cause I'd be so self conscious about everyone watching, I would kick the ball and it would somehow do something weird, like fly in the opposite direction.
Right. Everyone would laugh. Right. Um, and then we would go into these school assemblies, right. And we always had these motivational speakers who We're either Olympic gold medalists, you know, professional footballers, you know, it was all, it was always seemed to me like the motivational speaker was a sporting hero, right?
And so I'd be sat there listening to this great hero talk about how they were so good at sport and how anyone could do it. And. It was completely unrelatable to me in the audience. There I was, this kind of bookish, nerdy guy, wasn't good at sport, considered a loser in many respects, and I'd be like, yeah, it's all well and good for you to talk, um, up there about winning medals, because you've already done this.
How, how can I do that? And I just Could not see myself in that story. And, you know, I reflect, the reason why I tell that story is, you know, since founding Global Citizen over a decade and a half ago, some of your listeners may have heard of Global Citizen. Some of them may not. Um, and they can easily look up what Global Citizen does.
But in, in, in its essence, it's a movement now of 12 million members around the world. It works with some of the biggest artists in the world to create change. And indeed, it's helped ignite over 33 million citizen actions and has helped unlock over 40 billion to help improve and touch the lives of more than 1 billion people around the planet, working with some incredible partners, right?
Huge, huge impact. But I would often get emails or messages on social media from high school students, university students, you know, Rotarians, and they would all be asking, How do I do something similar? How do I campaign on an issue? And I didn't want people to take the impression or have the impression that in order to create change or move policy, they had to go out and create this huge organization, you know, hire all these people, fundraise.
You know, because that can be incredibly daunting and impenetrable. So in the same way Vera was as that kid, uh, at high school, you know, struggling to find someone to relate to, I was like, okay, let me write a book, right? For anyone who asks me, how do I create change that gives them a start. Right. And so the book, it outlines these eight steps.
Um, it doesn't pretend to have all the answers, but in the great words of Eleanor Roosevelt, who once said, uh, former first lady of the US, the way to begin is to begin. That's what the book is about. It's a place to get started, and it's a place To begin. Um, and it's really for anyone, whether you're a cultural icon like Taylor Swift, a business executive or an everyday citizen.
Um, you know, and so that's, that's why I kind of came up with the book and wrote it in that, in that way.
[00:07:19] Marco Ciappelli: That's cool. It's a great story. And I agree. I mean, I think it's a Chinese proverb that says, you know, any long, any long trip start with a, with one step, which is, and sometimes I agree. I mean, you look at all these people that are like, all right, they're influenced in a lot of people that got, especially now in our social media era and age.
It's like, I got nothing, but am I going to do? So sometimes you're so scared. There's either all or nothing. And you end up doing nothing. So before we actually talk about maybe these first steps for the people that are interested in that, I'm curious, what was your first step? So you're this kid here, you're listening to sports icon.
And like, I'm not seeing myself. Like, what was the fact that maybe if I can not be them, I can be myself and still make change. Like, what was your first, I don't know, campaign, your first action that you took?
[00:08:13] Michael Sheldrick: You know, you know, it was interesting. Um, you know, I, I wasn't great at school in many respects and I, I, you know, it wasn't great sport, as I said, but I also, for much of my early years of school, wasn't great at academics either.
Um, I would routinely be ranked bottom of the class. And then one day, Um, you know, I'm not sure if some of you actually get everyone would know this movie, at least, um, those who were alive, you know, over 20 years ago, but the movie gladiator came out with Russell Crowe, right? Yeah. Many people know that movie and we had to do this in class essay and I wrote about running gladiators.
I got home. There was a message on the answer machine. Um, my mom played it to me. It was my teacher at the time telling my mom that somehow remarkably, Michael had topped the class of that one essay. And he really came in the next day and he goes, I think there's more to you than meets the eye, challenged me to be more than what I had ever before aspired to.
You know, one of my friends said to me, you know, sometimes when people set so low expectations of us, we live down to those expectations rather than live up. And I had been doing that up until that point. As I was finishing high school my last year and starting university, suddenly I had everyone telling me, Oh, Michael, you're suddenly so smart.
You're like doing all these great things. Suddenly you're top of the class. But in Australia, we have this term never to have tickets on yourself, right? Which is basically never, never to assume that like all of your achievements, uh, entirely down to, to your natural gifted talents alone. Right? And so I was always conscious for these opportunities like that fantastic teacher.
I'm very grateful. And so as I learn about the world and I learned what was going on and just the inequities around the world and the fact millions of children, you know, who probably were far smarter than I was. You know, had all of this great potential, but because they maybe didn't have access to a great teacher that have access to education, you know, I thought that was incredible and justice.
And so my first campaign was actually just a charitable endeavor. Like I started honestly. Um, fun. I'm very good at asking people to do stuff. That's one of my gifts. And so honestly, I went around with my mom, actually the shopping center, um, close to my high school. And I just started asking them, Hey, I'm going to do a quiz night at my own school.
Would you donate gifts? And so we had all of these great, um, gifts donated, you know, everything you could imagine. And I went, went literally to everyone. I think I even went into McDonald's and said, can you give me, and they gave me some vouchers. Yeah. It's something for people. And we, we ended up raising a thousand dollars.
Um, and this went towards helping to build schools in Timor Leste, um, East Timor, which is just, um, about half an hour's flight from the north of Australia, but at the time was one of the poorest countries and youngest countries in the world, for Papua New Guinea. So that was incredible. And then in my summers and, and winters at university, I got to travel to these countries, right?
And so I'd volunteer, went to India, went to Bangladesh. And you know, as we're, as we're looking at these schools that was in part built through some of the funds that we raised through these charitable endeavors, like quiz nights, movie nights, suddenly I realized, oh gee, there's a lot of poverty here. A lot of kids that don't have access to school.
How many quiz nights are we going to have to do to meet this need? And the, and the truth is you can't, right? Like, end in extreme poverty is, is, you know, it's, it's a billion dollar problem, right? It's going to take a lot of funds to genuinely meet the need, a lot of investment. And so that's really where I got involved in what I would say, campaigning for more structural change.
So, you know, we often say, At Global Citizen that systemic, um, problems require systemic solutions. And, you know, what's the best way to elevate those solutions? Well, it's through movement building, it's through social movements. And one of the first campaigns I got involved in, on You Asked Me, first policy campaign, you know, was actually around polio eradication, which is this Ancient debilitating disease that's long since been eradicated in America and Australia.
Um, but how I found out about polio and, and this is another, another story. Um, but just indulge me one quick second as I was, I was invited, I was, I was invited to, to, um, be part of this Rotary Club in, in Australia. They gave me a scholarship while I was at university Rotary. Has more than 1. 4 million members around the world.
They do incredible work. And so I went down to this local club, went for a coffee with the gentleman who had founded it, who was sponsoring. He was almost 80 years old. His name was David Goldstone. Met him for coffee and he said, let me tell you about polio. And he told me, he said, I'll tell you about my friend, John, tells me this story about how in the fifties in Australia, his friend, John, bit, you know, young 21 year old, very healthy is walking down the main street in Sydney and suddenly just collapses.
Right? Wakes up a few days later in a medical bed in a hospital and he's paralysed from the waist down and in front of him is standing the chief medical officer who tells him, John, you'll never walk again. And John replied to these three words. Yes, I will. And David recounted to me over this coffee that his friend John slowly recovered the ability to walk over many painful, excruciating weeks, months, years.
He never recovered the full use of his leg like John when he had his kids come up to him or his grandkids later in life saying, daddy, daddy, lift me up. Couldn't, he said, I can't do that. But he was able to found a successful business. And then he went on to actually get back to eradicating this disease, polio.
When, when in, in, in Australia, for much of its existence, it had used the British pound. And when it switched to the dollar, All of the pennies left at the Mint where they produced this, John got all of these pennies together. He stamped the story of polio in the back and then he sold them and he called it pennies for polio.
I think he raised about a hundred thousand dollars. Um, and so David's telling me a story and I'm like, wow, okay, can I meet John? Like this is incredible. Like, you know, I want to, I want to find out more and learn how I can help. And then suddenly David, um, that whole time, he suddenly had a tear in his eye and he said, Michael, I've been lying to you.
It's just so hard. And I'm like, what do you mean? Is John real? Does he exist? What do you, what's not right? Anyway, in that moment, David literally pulled out the chair next to him and he put his leg on the chair, lifted up his trouser leg. And he revealed a caliper, which is, I realized up to that point, he had a limp, um, when he walked in a caliper.
was what many polio survivors had to walk. And he said, it wasn't John who collapsed all those years ago. It was me. I don't need anyone's pity or anything else. I just want to get on bloody well, eradicate this disease once and for all. And with that, you know, heavily motivated, we got together. I was at my university.
Um, long story short, we hatched this campaign with the other founders of global citizen. It was our first polio campaign. We came up on the back of the envelope. We're like, we're going to ask the Australian government to contribute 50 million because that was double what they had contributed in the past.
So there's like, what the heck? Let's, let's go out with a bold ass and long story short, you know. Again, you could write a whole book on this campaign in and of itself. We managed to convince John Legend to fly all the way to Perth for less than 24 hours. He spent more time flying than he was on the ground.
We got a face to face meeting with the then Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard. And sure enough, six months after that first meeting with David, we were at this press conference. David was there. We had all of those polio survivors. And, um The Prime Minister announced $50 million for polio eradication, um, and convinced all these other leaders to contribute as well.
And I remember walking out, um, and asking the Prime Minister's team, why, why has she done this? Like we asked him, she responded to this campaign and the momentum, and it's always, they replied with something that's always struck with me, but I think it's relevant for your podcast, they said. She loved the stories, Michael.
Like, yes, she got the, she got the statistic, she got the case, why we should be doing this, the moral argument, but she loved the story. She loved the stories of polio survivors like David. She loved the stories of Rotarians who were, who were fundraising for, to, to raise money for polio. And she loved the story of, in many cases, you know, on the front lines in Pakistan and Afghanistan, of these incredible Um, heroes, mostly women who go door to door, often at great risk, and convince people to, to accept the vaccine.
And she said she loves all of those stories, and that's really part of the reason why she, she got involved. And, you know, there's so many of these little stories that year, like, yeah, we found out that actually it was an Australian who started the whole effort to eradicate polio. We got in touch with him, Sir Clem Reneuve.
We found out. The Queen, she was coming to Australia that year for what ended up being her last trip. And we found out her very first trip, she had to stay in a boat off the coast of Australia because of a polio epidemic that had hit it. And we convinced her to put polio. Um, you know, she, she, she spoke about the great challenges of polio.
So anyway, I, I think that just shows you the power of the story. And one message I stress in the book is. If you don't have networks, you don't have access, you don't have experience, expertise in certain areas. All of that can be overcome with a great clear idea and a powerful narrative and story. Because if you can have a powerful story as to why and how an idea should be implemented, you'll find that people will come from all around to support you in bringing that idea to fruition.
[00:18:52] Marco Ciappelli: Well, you're making my podcast job very, very easy. You are a good storyteller. You have great story. And, you know, it all it made me kind of emotional when you were, you know, announcing that the guy you were talking to was that almost like, you know, kind of like the finale of a Hollywood movie and you were part of that.
So that's great. And I loved like how you do accept the challenges and you kind of like now in the book, totally empowering. Everybody to to do this. So while I would love to hear more story, I want to hear about an example of some of this strategy, like eight actionable strategies that people can find in the book, because a lot of people may think like, okay, great.
Um, I'm listening to me. To Michael, he's a great storyteller, the same way you are listening to a football player and be like, yeah, okay, easy for you to say you're already there. So let's bring it back to how somebody can get started, can get to be a global citizen or make a difference in any other way in their, in their community.
[00:20:03] Michael Sheldrick: Yeah, no, it's a great question and very, very fair to, um, use my stories, uh, I can see to hold me accountable. That in itself is a good, good example of advocacy, right? What you just did. Um, I love it. I'll be, I'll be coming. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so look, the book, you know, I make the case that, you know, to be an effective advocate or what I call policy entrepreneur, which I, I like that term because, you know, I think what we need is more entrepreneurship, more people involved in the policy making process beyond government officials.
Right? So across these eight steps, you know, I say people need to be a visionary. They need to be a diplomat and they need to be an implementer. But looking at looking at the first step, You know, one is, is to be very clear on what your goal is that you want to change, right? What is that idea? And it sounds very obvious, I know, but often I will meet people who want to launch this campaign.
Maybe it's to end homelessness. Maybe it's to end deforestation. And often, their campaign. And sometimes they've raised vast amounts of money to actually run a big marketing campaign. Often they've, you know, already got supporters on board, but what I've noticed is they focus the whole campaign on the problem and raise an awareness of the problem.
And, you know, especially now that's, that's not going to achieve much other than getting more people. to know about the problem, but in doing that without solutions, you're just, you just risk almost, um, leading people down a path towards more apathy, more indifference, um, and ultimately more anger. And so I, I take, um, my readers for a process of how do you actually identify, um, what a good goal is.
Right. And my point is, is often you don't have to come up with the idea yourself. Good ideas can come from anywhere, but. It's how do you actually access those ideas and find them and then know when you've got a clear idea or a clear solution to a problem. So yes, you need to have a problem to begin with, you need to know what you're trying to address, but then what is, what is that solution that you are advocating for?
And I use the SMART criteria, right? You know, talk, and I use examples, you know, what is specific, what is measurable. What is achievable? What is relevant? What is time bound? But, you know, to give, to give an example, and I interviewed many incredible advocates from the book, many of them grassroots advocates, not just up here working on big lofty ideals, but to give you an example, one of the I, I interviewed was, uh, she's called Freddie Reese, right?
She founded this Not non profit called Unchained At Last, um, which is focused on end in child marriage in America. And her story is she, at the age of 19, I think it was, she was living in a fairly conservative religious community, but she found herself in a situation of forced marriage, right? She managed to escape that situation and then she was like, I don't want other girls going through that.
And so initially, honestly, she would be going back to the community she would grow up in. And her, uh, honestly, like her, her actions initially were just like, how can I get kids who are forced into marriage often, you know, kids as young as. 12 or 13, like under, under 18 years old, how can I rescue them from this situation?
Right. And you know what she found in, in, in trying to rescue kids is that there are actually legal loopholes in many states in America that permitted. children to get married under the age of 18, if they had parental consent, and maybe it was justified on religious grounds. And so she realized, I'm not going to be able to solve this issue by just tackling this one child at a time.
I need to address that loophole, right? And she started like, you know, when she first got started, she started with one state, and she just started going out. Once she had a clear goal, she was like, Okay, I know what this loophole is now. I know that if I close it, this is how I'm going to end child marriage, um, across this country.
Um, you'd need to start with the law. And once she had that clarity, you know, the, the problem to, the, the, the solution to the problem, she found that state legislators, people she would meet with, You know, we're ready to support because they didn't even know about the solution, right? They didn't know this existed.
They didn't know it was something so simple. And, you know, she started this campaign, you know, maybe a little over 10 years ago. Um, and she's already managed to end child marriage in 10 states across America. And her goal is to end it in all 50 states by 2030. Right. And, and so I use other examples like that, you know, how do you.
Come up with, with, with solid goals. One of the areas I also talk about though is, is how to tell a good story, right? How to know your audience, um, to your point, you know, I think we can all be good storytellers if we just focus sometimes on our audience and understand what's, what's going to move them.
And I think in, in every area of life, not just policy advocacy, Yeah, I think storytelling can help us bridge divides, build credibility, build, build trust, but there's too, you know, some of the, the, the advice I give on how to tell good stories is don't like, I meet too many campaigners or advocates and even leaders of huge organizations, they will walk in, you know, they will get their target audience in front of them, right?
And it might be great. I've got someone paying attention to me and Then they will quickly lose that audience's interest because they would just give them a litany of statistics, of facts. And I think in our society today, too many people focus on being right. And they focus on winning an argument rather than how people feel.
One of the best pieces of advice I got early on where I was trying to, you know, smash put someone over the head with all of these statistics to convince them. Someone said, remember, it's not about winning the argument. It's about how people feel. That, that's what you need to focus on because that's what people remember is how you made them feel, um, after that meeting.
And so, you know, some examples, you know, I talk about how people can come up with their own stories of why, and often it just starts with. Asking yourself some questions and then writing the answers, right? Why are you here? Preempt it, because often, especially when you're trying to persuade someone to back your campaign, they'll be looking at you with skeptical, like, glazes in their eye.
And until you answer why you're here, why you're championing this issue, they won't 100 percent trust anything that comes out of your mouth because they might say you're here because you're getting paid. Is this just a job? You know, what, what's this to you? Why, why should I trust you? Right. Um, and then the second thing I talk about is the power of how, because I think, especially in our society, once you've got that trust and people, you know, understand your why, You know, making sure you quickly give them a solution, right?
And I talk about how to address that, how to make it relatable. Again, not, not just talking about the problem. And so, you know, again, list examples, you know, of effective storytellers. Yeah. One is this incredible activist in the Pacific, uh, from the Pacific, from Samoa. Um, she's in her early twenties and yeah, Brianna's her name.
And I use her as an example because her message I've found, even though she's from this Island, which has a lot of problems, it's on the front lines of climate change in many ways. It's future as a small Island nation is, is an existential crisis right now. But she still manages to always lead. This is how we're addressing that.
And these are the solutions. And so, you know, the final thing I talk about is bringing it back to stories is once you've succeeded in something, even if you haven't necessarily achieved everything you want to achieve in a campaign, even if it's a, uh, an incremental milestone, you know, make sure you share that story with others because right now with so much, um, misinformation, you know, with so much distrust that that exists in our world.
You know, one of the things that people do trust a lot more is stories from their networks, right? From their friends, from their family, from their circles of trust. And when you hear a story about someone getting a response or taking an action, That's one of the most powerful motivators to, to push someone to action.
And so just one last story on that, on that point, the polio campaign I was telling earlier. Um, once, um, we had achieved that 50 million, there was a write up, a journalist wrote a story about that campaign and my involvement in it, right? I got this message from a nine year old girl and her mother, um, Josie was her name, and they invited me over to their house, uh, got the net, and had Tea, coffee, biscuits, all of that stuff.
And they had been on a recent trip where they had seen these endangered elephants. And literally, Josie, my mother, was like, we want to start a campaign to save the elephants, right? And, um, she helped to form her own campaign. She got her whole school assembly on board. She convinced the Senator to table her petition in the Senate of Australia.
She convinced all these people to get involved and then lo and behold, she was sharing that story on radio later that year. And I've often thought, I wonder how many other kids might've been inspired to launch their own campaign after hearing her story. So, um, Yeah, it's, uh, you know, hopefully that gives, gives a little bit of insight, but as you can see, the power of storytelling and how to go about telling stories is a, is a key thread all the way through.
[00:30:39] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah, my head is going because I process, I don't have Q and A as you know, cause you don't have any question prior to meet with me. So I kind of go with what you say and you say so many relevant things, like so many beautiful story. Things that I agree that all of a sudden I'm like, okay, I'm going to ask this.
Nope, I'm going to ask this. Nope, I'm going to ask this. So instead of doing that, I'm going to try to maybe summarize a couple of things that I really got out of this, which is It seems to me everything starts with passion, right? I don't know if that could be something like, I'm sure you share that, like, don't pick a campaign just because it's popular.
Pick a campaign because you actually do care, because you've seen the elephant, right? Because you met with the guy, because you had that disease, and Use that power to, to fire your, your intention in a way, but then you gotta, you gotta learn it. Some people are natural storytellers. They come natural maybe because it's kids day and read a lot of books, maybe come from a family of storyteller and some other.
They may need a little bit more help with that. And I think that if you can read something where you have few advice, and that's definitely definitely a help. So, you know, I always say we're all made of stories. We just don't realize that sometimes, right? So it's kind of like a way to. To pause and stop and say, look, there is a strategy behind it if you, if you need it, if it comes natural, sure, get, get the guitar and play because you're that good, but otherwise you can learn and you can, you can learn how to write music and all of that, but it's, it's incredible.
You work with so many famous people and, and, and that's probably, is that like another lesson in the book on how to maybe bring it to, in a way, I don't know, it's not just on yourself, but you can get, somebody that can help you to represent your story and you can move that person. It's either a grant or money, but it can also be somebody that just get on stage and say, Hey, million people listening to me right now.
I, here's what we can do. And that's, that's powerful, especially nowadays. You want to connect this last few minutes. Maybe, uh, is it like the role of social media? For example, you said something like it's not about winning the argument. I feel like on social media is all about winning the argument. And instead, and then nobody really wins because there's people against people pro and, and again, okay, but how are we going to solve this problem, right?
Do you feel social media, I mean, are you guys using in, in, uh, in your organization, social media in the right way? You think there is a right and wrong way?
[00:33:32] Michael Sheldrick: Yeah, it's a good question. But I also liked what you were, you were just talking about before about everyone has a good story within them. And I just, I just wanted to underscore that point because one of the, one of the barriers I often find to people getting involved or feeling like they can speak on these issues is, is that they feel okay.
Yeah, I don't have a humanitarian story, right? Like, yeah, often, you know, you have founders talk about, you know, establishing an org and one of the stories for motivating them is maybe they went overseas, they volunteered, and they had this huge, You know, epiphany that they were going to say the
[00:34:11] Marco Ciappelli: origin story.
I call it the origin story.
[00:34:14] Michael Sheldrick: Exactly. And, and I think you can actually find incredible origin stories, even in activities that might seem mundane. Right. And so when I was challenged a few years ago to think through my, why, again, I, I. I didn't even leave Australia until the age of 18. I wasn't volunteering.
I don't have that great origin story. I just kind of started doing this because it felt like the right thing to do. And then as I dug deeper, I connected it actually now to motivation and that feeling of being a loser at school, you know, being told I weren't going to amount to anything, you know, and then the difference teachers made in my life.
And I was like, okay, well, that's. That's my why and that became the story about it, right? And so I just wanted to underscore that because often I meet too many people who feel like they don't, they don't have that story. And actually we do. Um, we just haven't expressed it or articulated it or, or identified it.
Um, but going back to your question on, on social media, you know, you're absolutely right. And in the book, I talk about the dopamine high that comes from solidarity posting right now. And it's, it's the idea of that. You know, whenever there's a crisis that occurs, everyone's quick to post on, on social media and solidarity, right?
And then soon business goes back to usual. Um, and in fact, you know, those who did post, you know, end up criticizing those that didn't post, you know, et cetera. It becomes this whole vicious cycle, right? And we get into unhealthy habits such as policing the social media of others, checking if people have posted in solidarity, et cetera, right?
There's, there's all of these, um, examples you can point to. But the issue is, is These sorts of activities by declaring you support something, you know, might leave us feeling right, righteous, certain, and safe, which is, um, you know, a great phrase from, um, a great book called Breaking the Gridlock that came out a few years ago, but it actually doesn't go towards addressing the issues.
And so, you know, I know in my experience at Global Citizen, for instance, we always believe in impact over ideology, and we ban the phrase awareness raising, right? We're always focused on clear solutions. We won't launch a campaign without having a clear impact. And, you know, we're not going to get people enraged on social media just for the sake of it, unless there's a way of channeling that rage into a concrete action.
So, Yeah, often it's like, how do I actually turn the talk into action and to your point on artists, you know, I often find that they're looking for these solutions because they have all of these fans that they've got involved. And often the reason why I end up working with a lot of advocates, sorry, artists now on their advocacy, people like Idris Elba, Coldplay, you know, et cetera.
You know, whether it's through our work at Global Citizen or often they're working on their own campaigns and they ask us for advice. Is they don't just want to go to their fans and ask them for money, right? They have millions of fans. Many of them might be young people. Many of them may not have, um, the disposable income to donate.
And so they're looking for ways to get involved, but isn't just, Hey, post this on your social media. And so often, you know, it's about identifying campaigns. That's really gonna move people to, to action and get them engaged. To give you one example, um, in May last year, um, sorry, in June last year, You know, we were working with the prime minister of Barbados.
I tell this story in the book and she's an incredible storyteller. People should look her up. Me and Notley, Google her, look at it on YouTube. But the short end of it, we were convincing all of these world leaders, right? To unlock funding for countries like hers on the front lines of the climate crisis.
And as these leaders were due to meet in Paris, you have president of the world bank, et cetera. We managed to convince Rihanna. To actually tweet the president of the World Bank with all of her fans. And it wasn't just like, I'm standing in solidarity with countries on the climate crisis. This is all really bad.
It was actually very, very targeted to Janet Yellen, president of the World Bank. And it was like, here's a measure they can do, which is not going to cost much to say American taxpayers. but is going to unlock money for countries struggling, um, whenever there's hurricanes, extreme weather events, and all of their fans got behind it.
And then when we were successful, the World Bank actually replied and said, okay, we'll do that. We went back to all of these people who had taken action and we actually saw people saying, wow, okay, my, my actions did, did make a difference. It did get involved. And so. That is always the challenge is, is like trying to identify those solutions and identify how we could, how we could get involved.
And just, just one last point since, since, since you asked on this question is, you know, I, I, um, as, as part of the book tour, I, Encountered this, this incredible researcher and group at New York University. And they had actually done these studies across 60 countries, 60, 000 participants. And one thing she found is, okay, if you want people to share stuff on social media, fine, give them all of the bad stuff about climate change, tell them how bad the world's doing, doom and gloom messaging.
And sure, lo and behold, that's the best way to get people to share. However, you know, the, the downside of that, it also decreased people's support for meaning and for policy action. Right? Because it maybe it made people think, you know, we were on a fatalistic path. There was no hope. You know, we managed get that and then, and, and, and, and the best action on the reverse of this, that on average.
Increased support for policy action, meaningful action, the idea that we can change things, was actually getting people to write a letter to a future child, um, who may not even be born yet, but who would be around in 20, um, 55, dealing with the impacts of climate change, and to actually write how we deal, how are we taking action now, what actions are we taking, and the action of expressing this in a letter was found to increase support for Ming and for policy change.
So I, I put those two actions side by side because, um, you know, there are, we think there's not consequences or negative consequences. Oh, it's just a social media post, et cetera. Getting people to share, but it can, it can be, um, very kind of productive.
[00:41:02] Marco Ciappelli: Well, you just gave me the perfect closing here because I see that the social media is easy, right?
I mean, you just go there, you retweet, you maybe you just read the headline and you, you just. Put your little heart on it. Chances are, and I was saying everybody, but chances are most people don't even really read through that article, listen to the entire podcast or whatever. So it's not really storytelling.
It's just like amplifying, but the idea of writing a letter, now that you're becoming a storyteller for real, even if it's a short one, you're telling a story to somebody, you're getting to that. Mindset of really thinking about what you're going to write. And, uh, and, and that's, that's, that's brilliant. I mean, you, you, you made the unique and, uh, and again, you, you show people that they can tell a story and make a difference.
So I love, I love that. Um, I think people will have a lot to think about here, which is my goal. I like to make people think. Um, and then eventually act, but that's more your job, I guess. So I want them to act by, uh, after they think about what we talked about, to, to go and check out on your book, all the links will be on, uh, notes for this podcast, for your social media, if you want to share it.
And of course, for Global Citizen and for your book, again, from ideas to impact a playbook for influencing and implementing change in a divided. Uh, great conversation. I would love to have you back, uh, and keep going anytime. Uh, let's stay in touch and, um, really, really appreciate it. Great stories.
[00:42:46] Michael Sheldrick: And I don't want to sound like I'm negative on social media because I'm not, but to your point.
Where a good ask of social media would be and maybe it's an artist who can tweet this on their platform is to ask people through social media to write that letter, for instance, and that would be far more constructive than just sharing more of the bad news. So I just want to clarify that it's about how we use the tools.
[00:43:10] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah, exactly. Technology is how you use it. You can't just, you know, and I'm actually glad that we went an entire. podcast without touching on generative AI. So there you go. That's for another story. Mike, so much. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. Everybody stay tuned, subscribe, uh, take, take action. If you have an idea, just try to make it happen.
Thank you very much.
[00:43:38] Michael Sheldrick: Thank you.