Abena Poku-Awuah is the Founder and Managing Director of Legacy Events, a sustainable events agency and consultancy helping companies organise virtual and in-person events, whilst considering the environmental impact of the event, its carbon footprint, and its potential for positive social change.

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Abena welcome to the Green Element Podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm really looking forward to finding out more about Legacy Events. And, you know, what you do there and how you've actually managed to, you know, steer your way through this COVID-19 pandemic.

Hi, Will, thanks for having me. My name is Abena and I'm really happy to be invited to the green element podcast, today. So, thanks for having me.

No problem. And how long have Legacy Events been around?

Legacy has been around since the autumn of 2016. So we're about four and a half years old now. That time has absolutely flown. And in that time, we've gone from being a one-man band, me. I started legacy by myself as a sole trader. And now we're a small team of about four and still growing. So it's been a really exciting journey.

Brilliant. And if we could touch upon prior to the events that have been going on recently with COVID, etc. What kind of events were you orchestrating? And what kind of like, could you tell us a bit about your day job? Because we all know what events but we think, think of conferences or festivals or, you know, what kind of what, what were you doing?

It's a really good question. I asked myself, What am I doing? So, legacy is a sustainable events agency and consultancy. So what that means is that we help companies organise in-person, and now virtual events, whilst considering the sustainability of the event. So its environmental impact, its carbon footprint, and it's potential for positive social change. So on the one hand, we organise events, and we do this to act as a showcase for other event professionals to show that sustainable events don't have to be lesser, they can be of high quality, as beautiful, as inspiring as other events where sustainability hasn't been considered. And then we also act as a consultancy as well, because sadly, my small team can't organise every event in the world. And we really want to empower other event professionals and people working in the events industry, to help them understand what they need to do to reduce the environmental impacts of their events. So we want to help event organisers create positive experiences without the negative impacts.

Okay, and do you have a genre of events that you work with? Or do you work with any events?

We do tend to work with any events, but mostly those four businesses. So that tends to include conferences, workshops, seminars, that kind of thing. We also work on festivals as well and community group events, but primarily events to do with businesses as opposed to private events. So weddings, and that kind of thing.

Okay. And you're a scientist by background, I believe. Does that help you with when you're talking to event organisers I would imagine within the science, maybe in the science fields, because they'll go, oh, you actually know what we're talking about. Whereas if I was doing it, they'd be like, oh, gosh!

I think my background has so many benefits to working in the events industry. I think, first of all, because sustainability can be such a daunting subject. And it covers so many areas that can be quite complex, like climate change, and carbon emissions, and water use and waste. I think sometimes it helps event organisers be able to talk to me, because I understand those concepts, because I've trained in those concepts, but I can relate them to the events industry, and talk about them in a jargon-free way, in a way in real English. So I'm able to communicate those concepts in a non-scientific way. And I think, it also helps as well, because being a scientist, I really feel data and evidence is really important. So I really like to challenge some of the theories around sustainability and make sure that what we advise at legacy is evidence-based and data-driven, that it's also that it's practical for event organisers, so you won't ever find me on my team giving up fake fluffy concepts like being green, we want to try and, you know, put some of the kind of evidence behind what we're doing. And then I think it also just makes me more credible, and my team more credible, because we use theories, we use evidence, and so we know what works really. And so we try and bring that to our decisions as well.

Brilliant. And you said, you set it up, what, four and a half, five years ago. What were you doing before this?

Yep, so I'm a true eco-warrior. I have been since I started my career. So before I started Legacy, I worked as an architect at an architect's practice, so helping make new buildings and also new cities, and new developments more sustainable. I've also worked in a social organisation as a sustainability manager. So trying to empower the community to be more sustainable as well as work on the buildings and spaces that they worked on as well. I've also worked as a consultant in sustainability. So I've helped lots of corporate organisations, EU organisations, the UK Government, with their sustainability. And I've also worked directly in renewable energy. So I used to help develop wind farms and solar farms, I've got a really solid grounding in energy efficiency and sustainability, but particularly with respect to the built environment. So for me, everyone always says, well, you worked as a scientist, and you did all these jobs, and then you work, you went through events, it's so different. But to me, I don't see it as any different I've always specialised in the built environment. And that's where most events are held. It's just instead of looking at long-term solutions for the built environment, I'm looking at temporary events in the built environment, but the same principles still apply.

Brilliant, brilliant. And that sounds like you've done a huge amount. How long have you been working in this industry in this kind of field industry for?

I'm going to give away my age. And I've never mentioned I've worked in various parts of the industry, but since about 2003, actually in university as well. I've worked in sustainability and trying to reduce our environmental impact. So yeah, I have a lot of lots of experience in this sector.

Brilliant. Brilliant. I think it's really useful. And I think that I'm kind of veering off a bit of a tangent, but you talk to people in some quite large organisations. And I do not mean this disrespectfully whatsoever. But there are some people that are in fairly senior positions in quite powerful organisations with two, three years of experience. And they're making decisions that have quite serious ramifications for the future. And it does worry me slightly because you do need to have experience and depth to your level of thinking when talking and pushing sustainability forward. Because of the some, because some decisions aren't just as quite shallow, they actually do have quite deep kind of ramifications, I guess.

Yeah, I agree to a certain extent, especially as sustainability is a word that is it covers such a range of issues, like I mentioned, from energy to water, to waste to ecology. And it's hard for anyone, no matter how long they've been working in the field to become an expert in any of all of those issues. But it really does help to have a grounding in at least a couple of issues. So that you're speaking from, from data and evidence, as I mentioned before, but as a scientist, I can also say that, and it's about environmentalist mantras, well, scientists often get frustrated because they present the facts, and then they don't understand why people aren't acting on the facts. And we feel it at the moment with COVID, and the vaccine, I mean, to scientists, epidemiologists, it seems obvious that everyone should get the vaccine. And, you know, I can see many people get frustrated about those who have alternative views. But one of the reasons I moved into events is because I realised that education isn't really the issue. The issue is, is mindset and changing mindset and behaviour. And that really requires a skill and ability to work with people understand people and be able to change minds. And so, yes, having a long lead lots of experience in the sustainability industry is important. But I think more important is the ability to be able to understand people and really make decisions that can really lead. So be able to lead and make decisions and bring people along with you, I think is the key to changing the world as we were trying to do. That was that's a humbling lesson for me as a scientist to realise that doesn't matter how many graphs I show of data, that's not what's going to change things.

I think I mean, I mean, you've been doing this for long enough to remember what it was, like talking about climate, I mean, the fact it's now called climate change, for example, it was called global warming. But you had too many people go, well, it's not getting hotter where I live, so therefore it can't be global warming. It's like, what about the word global before the word warming? Okay, well, why don't we change it to climate change? Because it's kind of the same, but different. And I don't know. And the science was absolutely there 25 years ago, 30 years ago, but we chose to ignore it. And I think it's just yeah, the fact that we're now waking up and I actually don't think it's signs that have changed people's opinions. I think you're right, I think it's actually its behaviour. It's you know, seeing what's around them.

Absolutely. And that's why I think events are so important, like I found later say, as a scientist, but I really feel that events are the most powerful tool, humanity has to change these things. I mean, all of the big changes in the human condition have come across, come around because of big events. And I'm not just talking about, you know, the ones we all know, like Live Aid and Bob Geldof and that kind of thing. I'm talking about events like cop 26 coming up, like events back in the 80s, and 90s, which led to a lot of the legislation we have been made. Events really are, in my opinion, the most powerful tool that we have to do this. They're important, and they're often undervalued, I think people think events are frivolous, and you know, what we do to the party, but they're not that the ways we bring people together, I think are important for driving change.

Knowledge sharing places. So that takes us nicely into how do we get together? When we can't physically get together? What do events look like now?

So for the last year or so like everybody else, and Legacy and the Legacy team have been trapped, trapped in our homes. And we've really transitioned from being an in-person events agency to a virtual events agency. And we didn't do that solely because of the pandemic. Because sustainability is so fundamental to what we do. We've been talking about the virtues of virtual events for a long time. And that's because inherently virtual events are more sustainable. And that's a fact I love events, obviously, by what I do, I love events. I love meeting people. But it cannot be denied that in terms of carbon emissions, virtually events are 97%, they have much 7% less carbon emissions. In terms of waste, they're much more sustainable, because obviously you're not generating waste from people staying at a destination, eating and drinking, they're, etc. And they're also more sustainable socially, as well, the social sustainability is often left out of the equation when we're talking about the subject. But I'm sure we've all seen over the last year virtual events are so much more inclusive. And I mean that in many ways, first of all, you can communicate and engage with people globally in a way that you never could before. I went to a conference, an online conference last week, and some of the speakers were given case studies from Kenya, and from New Zealand. And I would never have had the opportunity to speak to those people in the world before COVID. Whereas now, it's easy. It's just a flick of a switch. But then also, in-person events often exclude a lot of groups. So often, for example, carers or people carrying responsibilities are unable to go to in-person events, people on low incomes are unable to go to in-person events. And so a lot of groups who perhaps were excluded before are able to access virtual events and so that can only be a good thing for sustainability in a social sense.

I think, yeah. Brilliant. Yeah. Totally spot on. And I think and how, but to someone listening to this, what does a virtual event look like? I know we were talking about it, prior to this podcast, but could you explain what a virtual event?

Yeah, of course. And it's still evolving. I feel like we're still at the stage, perhaps the industry was, if you are old enough, like me to think back to the early days of mobile phones. And we thought mobile phones were these huge brick-like objects that we held our heads and shouted into. And you look at where mobile phones are now you see how quickly the industry has evolved in those that space 40 years. And so with virtual events, if you think of where we are now is the shouting into the mobile phone at zero, that's where we are. But essentially, a virtual event is an event that's held entirely online or on the internet. And it still can incorporate elements of traditional in-person events. If it's a conference, it still can have keynote speakers, and networking, and that kind of thing. But it's really its own entity. It's a completely new way of communicating and engaging people. And we're still finding out about that. And I find that really exciting both of my scientists' hat on to really explore, okay, so taking the principles of what makes an event How do you translate that online and make it successful? And also just because it's exciting to be here at the birth of a new industry and seeing where that goes? I think that some of the potential with augmented reality and AI and VR but really quite exciting.

Yeah, yeah, but yeah, yeah, absolutely. And because when we were talking before you were talking about in-person and virtual and you said it's bad, it's not worth it. You know, you can't compare it's a bit like comparing theatre. I think he said that the cinema didn't and I liked that. I think that made a lot of sense because they are very, they're very different. And because I was in, you know, speaking at this event, and they had this VIP section, if people can visualise this, and you, you know, you clicked on this VIP section on the tab, and then you had this map of different tables that came up with seats, but you can see that seats were taken by people. And you saw which ones were free and you pressed with your mouse on a chair, in a table, then you got brought into, we've all possibly been on zoom rooms, or within the virtual rooms, and you just brought into a room with people and you started just chatting the people use Oh, sorry, would you mind if I sit down here? And it was nice to kind of joke about it. But of course, they're gonna go, yeah, it'd be kind of weird if they went No. Okay, but no, they were really, you know, they're really nice. We just chatted a bit, and I would never have met these people, you know, and I was sitting in my shed in the garden while I was doing this, and it just made me really realise that virtual events can actually be pretty phenomenal experiences. And you but you've got to have the same. You know, you've got to have the same mindset as you would do to, when you go to a conference, although I think a lot of people don't have the right mindset when they go to the conference, they still try and multitask, but almost more so you can't multitask when you're going to a virtual event. You literally have to go to your seats, your chair, and sit there from nine to five possibly go for lunch. But you know, not have meetings, not be phoning people not be but really be present at that moment in time. And I think they I think you've probably got quite a lot out of an online event.

I think so, I think so and the legacy team were really determined to show that eventually, the bank can be a really worthwhile experience. So we've done a lot of research on different platforms and applying the right platform to the right kind of events. And I think a lot of people think that a virtual event is just the long zoom, they're often forced to go to them by their company. So you know, they're sat there sat at the computer, one is sort of on what's happening on the zoom. The other is doing their Sainsbury's online shopping less than that. And they're not fully engaged where, as you said, a virtual event is not, it's not the inferior cousin to an impersonal event, which we're going to ditch as soon as we get back into the world, it's a completely different format of engaging people. So the way to approach it is to tear up how you've run a in-person events and start again, if you try and pick up your four day, all-day conference, and turn that and put that online directly for the same length of sessions, the same number of speakers, the same content, it's probably not going to work because virtual isn't designed for that format. But if you think creatively as to what is an event and what is it? What's the point of this event? What am I trying? What do I want my audience to do? Do I want them to meet each other and network? Am I communicating some information. So if you go back to a blank piece of paper and start from there, and then design your virtual event, you end up with moments like the one you experience where you've ended up on a table with people you don't know and the technology enables you to chat to those people in a way, you probably wouldn't do it in person. So those are the benefits. And I completely agree we ran an event looking at sustainable transport last summer. And some of our guests included people like Tesla and Virgin Galactic speaking. And that's an in-person event, if you wanted to go and speak to the person from Tesla, you can imagine how difficult that would be, there'd be a long queue of people to speak to them. And you might feel a bit nervous. All of those barriers are removed online. I mean, you're on the same level, there's much less hierarchy, you're on the same level as the, you know, the chief exec of Virgin Galactic, and that's a real opportunity for businesses and for networking. It's just about how you apply the tools. Yeah.

And are there lots of platforms out there? I mean, I guess a lot of this is based on software. And if you if you're listening to this, and you work or run an organisation, and you're thinking I wouldn't mind putting on an event, how, I guess come to you, I get home answering my own question. But, you know, how do you work out what's, where to go what to do, and are the much better ones out there are there because you talked about the long zoom and my other half is getting back to our work at the moment. And she's been on a few conferences, and I put them in inverted commas because actually, it's been quite a lot of just zoom calls and I think that's, sadly what a lot of these arts are still, they're not. So how do you know what to do?

Yeah, it's a really good question. And again, it's the way I think if it's starting question, I said, What is the point of this event? So, I'm not knocking zoom or Teams or Google meet, or whatever your online meeting platform of choice is going back fundamentally, to what an event is you're trying to bring people together, you're trying to allow people to connect. And the technology is a tool to help you do that. So if you have a small group, for example, zoom, or meets, works fine for that for small meetings perfect. In the same way, though, as you wouldn't try and run a huge global conference in your company's tiny meeting room, when you start to scale up or start to think about bigger events, zoom and meet and hangouts are generally not the right tool for that. And there's a whole plethora of platforms. And they all have pros and cons. So some of the ones that we use include hoppin, which has been in the news recently because they've received an awful lot of investment funding, we use VMO, which is what I think you alluded to earlier, where you clicked on a chair, and it's something. That's going to be organised. But you weren't even aware of what platform it was. But it obviously was designed in a way, but you just knew what to do. When you swap card as well. We use one the world, we use that we work with so many platforms, you want to try and stay platform-agnostic, so that we can really be objective and applying the right platform, to the job that needs to be done. But yeah, there are whole loads. If you think outside of your zoom, there's a whole world out there with virtual platforms that do really cool things. And some of them now are starting, like I've mentioned to incorporate VR, as well. So they are mind-blowing in, in what they can achieve. In terms of the experience.

Would you need VR headsets, in order to have VR conference?

It depends. Some of the filler platforms, you wouldn't need a VR headset, although these days with the quest, which is, you know, much more cost-effective, that's not so prohibitive anymore. But some of them were.

What's a quest?

A quest is a VR headset put up by Oculus, I believe, and it's a bit about 300 pounds or something for a headset. And that allows so if you know any teenage boys, they probably all this already very evening playing together on that. So it's not something that everyone can afford. But it's not as cost-prohibitive if some of the other headsets which costs multiple 1000s, only five years ago. But if you're not willing to invest in that for all your attendees, which I imagined not everyone is there are still augmented reality type features that some platforms incorporate. So some platforms try and create a whole 3d experience as well. So you can always recreate a stadium, or recreate going to a theme park or whatever experience it is that you want to do within the platform using augmented reality. And that doesn't require a headset.

Yeah, I mean, you quite rightly brought up earlier that virtual online conferences open up to the attendees. And there are many more people that are able to attend from all over the world from all different demographics. I guess the same is in place for the people that are running, that wanting to put on these conferences as well, because I guess, for smaller organisations, not for profits, that have a very good, you know, model, and they are doing so much good. That actually, it would be really good if lots and lots of people heard about them. But the thought of putting on a real-life conference would be terrifying because of the costs that are involved. And I would imagine there's a lot of upfront fees that are involved in the real-life conferences, because you've got to get, make sure that caterers are turning up, make sure that etc, etc, etc. It must be much cheaper to run an online conference.

Not necessarily sadly, if you think of it as a straight analogy, so for in-person events, your biggest cost is probably going to be your venue. Whereas for online or virtual events, you still have a venue as such, but your venue is your platform. And some platforms do cost more than others. So some platforms, which do have some of the really innovative features that I've mentioned at the moment, do cost more so there is a cost to putting on an online event as well. And then obviously, some of the other costs you don't have like catering, for example. But another significant cost for in-person events is to provide your delegates with some kind of souvenir or goodie bag or giveaway or something like that. And a lot of companies still want to do that for their audiences, even when the events are online, because it helps with their brand recognition and also because they recognise that their stakeholders are just fed up right now and they would appreciate a nice gift. And so there are costs to that as well. Environmental Sustainability impacts as well. So it's not entirely impact-free riding a virtual event. But generally, it's a lot more sustainable. And it's a lot more accessible, as you mentioned. And the little benefit, I think that some charities and non-profit organisations like that have is they're really connected to their audience anyway, they have a purpose. They know who they want to target, they know how to talk to those audiences. And that translates really well to put on any kind of event whether it's in person or online, or virtual.

Are those organisations that, because I would imagine these platforms say they cost 10,000 pounds a month or whatever. Because there is I would hazard a guess running a software company myself. I would hazard a guess there's an awful lot that goes on behind the scenes. And that's, it sounds expensive. But actually, if you actually knew what was going on, you'd be going, oh, wow, there's that much to have to do. So are there companies out there that almost have the software that they rent, and then they subcontract it out to people? So but that, so therefore almost they will be taking the hit? So it'd be up to them because they would say, right, well, we'll take 20% of all ticket prices. And if they, if they have an organisation, they're like, you're never gonna get enough people. I'm sorry, we're not gonna take you on as a client. Are there companies out there that do that?

Yeah, there's so many, like I said, we're like, you know, the kind of fat the bubble, the tech bubble in Silicon Valley. That's where we are with the virtual event platform. So I find it really interesting looking at the different business models are that are emerging, and I'm not quite sure which one's going to win out. Yeah, I don't really know. So the business models range from kind of, like you mentioned, so some companies will produce a platform that can be white labelled. So the platform has all the features, but a company can then brand it in the way that they want. And the company can buy that platform outright. But obviously, the downside of that is they then don't have any future maintenance. Or they can subscribe to this white-labelled platform. And then they get the benefit of updates all the time. So that's one model that works. Another model I mentioned Hoppin who I think are now worth 4 billion pounds due to recent investment, which is unheard of in the events industry. And their model is that they have a very, a relatively cheap model for organisers, which is something like $100 per month fees, the basic features of their platform, but then they also have an enterprise rate as well, that bigger organisations can take, and that allows the bigger organisation to customise the platform, it gives them more access to event support. So that model is now becoming fairly common as well. And it remains to be seen if that will work. And then other platforms, the model is a bit like Eventbrite, the ticketing platform, if your event is free, you can use the platform for free. But if you charge tickets for your online event, they'll take a percentage of your ticket price. And so yeah, I'm, again, I'm not quite sure yet, which model is going to going to work. And also, early days, there's quite a low barrier to entry to developing online platforms at the moment. It's not like with a hardware company where there's a capital investment needed to, you know, source your items at your supply chain, that kind of thing. With an online event, if you're fairly tech-savvy, you can go a lot of the way to developing a platform. And because there's a low barrier to entry, that means that I think we're going to see the next two years, really becoming quite a competitive space.

I've just realised for people, most people listen to this podcast on a fairly regular basis. And are friendly, the questions I normally ask found it really interesting talking to you. Would it be possible if we kind of delve into a bit about your you know, your organisation and what it is that you do? How do you engage staff, suppliers, and customers with your mission and purpose?

And so, like all companies, we've had to evolve in the last year, but a lot of the fundamental principles we had at Legacy have shown to be really resilient and were following. So for example, like I mentioned, I've worked in sustainability a long time and I'm a big fan of practising what you preach, in particular, well-being and having a work-life balance. So from the beginning, legacy has been a four-day-a-week company, we work Tuesdays to Fridays. Obviously, there's an event on Monday as well, because an event has a fixed deadline, but generally, our office hours are Tuesdays and Fridays. And I feel vindicated. Taking that decision. Right from the beginning because you can see now that countries like Spain and are looking at a four day week in the UK Government has to show that in terms of productivity, people who work for the weeks are just as productive as those who don't. And we also have the benefit of having a longer time to recover and recuperate. So, practising what we preach is really important to us. And then with our customers, as well, the way we engage with them is just by being really honest, and really open about what we're trying to achieve, but still sticking true to our mission, which is to make the events industry more sustainable. So we try and offer advice and expertise to our customers, and guide them to their goals. But without guilt or judgment, I feel that a lot of people with sustainability switch off automatically when you try and guilt them into making decisions. It's just not effective. So we just try and make sure that we're speaking the language, we don't use guilt. And we're just really honest about what we're advising. And we also try and be as cooperative as we can in the industry, I really feel that the only way we can change is by working together. And so we do a lot of work, we volunteer a lot of our time, we set up we offer a lot of our tools, we set up an online discussion forum as well, that's free to access for anybody called the green room where people can discuss the issues with sustainability, and events. So we try and be really generous with our time to show that. Yes, we are a business. But fundamentally, we do believe that the events in the street can be sustainable. And we're all working towards this common goal.

We'll put a link to the green room, that sounds really good. I'm definitely going to go into it as well. But we'll put a link on our podcast page. So when it comes to running an ethical and sustainable business, what would you say has been your biggest struggle so far? Can you tell us a bit about how you've overcome it?

And yeah, so it's a difficult question. I think staying true to our values is probably been our biggest struggle, it's anyone working in sustainability will know that it's, there's always a trade-off with the decisions you make. So I mentioned earlier, social sustainability being important, obviously, climate change, probably the biggest issue we face. So how do you balance the need to bring people together to bring decision-makers together in person, because that's the best way humans do make decisions. But also balance that against the need to understand that expecting people to travel increases carbon emissions. So there's a trade-off there would be a social thing. How do you balance the fact that bringing people together is wonderful for local communities if you can feed into those local communities, but again, you're contributing to more waste problems to more carbon emissions, so so that there's a trade-off there. In our work, we really like to use sustainable venues. So venues that have demonstrated that they have a clear commitment to improving environmental impact, and their social impact as well. Unfortunately, the reality is a lot of these venues tend to be in the middle of the countryside and lovely rolling hills, where they have the space to be able to move forward with their goals. But then us in the middle of the countryside are often quite difficult to access by public transport. So how do you balance the need to want to use these venues because they are true examples of sustainable venues. But you can't use public transport to get there. So yeah, I think the most difficult challenge is just understanding the trade-offs with sustainability and just being clear on what it is you're trying to achieve. And just being honest about the trade-offs that you're making.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And you say you work for a four-day week, have you had any customers or clients? I guess complain about? Oh, you know, very hard, or, you know, what, what, you know what, like, what's the reality of it? Because I think, because I'm with you, I think that it's kind of obvious, but it's, it's fine.

We've had absolutely no pushback at all. And I think now post COVID, we will have even less pushback. So it helps that we've done it from the beginning. So we don't know any other way. I mean, my team, we've all obviously we've had jobs before, we've worked in organisations where we've worked to five day working week. But at Legacy, no issues at all. We have a small note in our email signatures to say, don't really expect emails from us on Mondays. We communicate that to our clients as well. Like I said, if an event is coming up, and we need to work on a Monday to deliver the event, of course, we will work that's the same as people who might, you know, need to work on a Saturday every now and then for their work, but generally No. And when we tell people about really understanding and actually think it's a really great idea, I think it's one of those business decisions that it seems daunting and impossible to implement. But once you've done it, you can't imagine any other way you'd never go back

and the people work, say Tana because I To work in Canada and running a restaurant for in ski season, and they had the you work four days a week, but were you work 10 hours a day, four days a week.

I am a bit of a workaholic as the founder of legacy. So I need to take my own life, but we try really hard not to work long hours. So the working week is 930 to 6 pm. And we do not have anything scheduled outside of those hours, my team is then friend-free to do what they like. So yeah, it's a reasonable working week, we don't try and make up the hours that we lose on the one day on the remaining five, four days.

brilliant, brilliant. And if you could offer one piece of advice to our listeners to help them with that, what would that be?

that's a really difficult question. And I think it's one that I've really had to grow into myself, as I mentioned before, I was a scientist and thought that, if I beat people over the head with all of my, my facts, then they would change, excuse me. And that's not that's not true, because we are all humans and fallible creatures. And so, as humans, we all have a certain amount of cognitive dissonance where what we believe there's not really feed through into the way we act. And so you can see it. In the medical world, when you know, people know that smoking causes cancer, but they still smoke. And they know if they eat sweets, it might lead to obesity, but they still eat sweets. And the same is true when you're encouraging people to change their behaviour with sustainability. So just showing people, graphs, and figures, and pictures of polar bears on ice caps will only get you so far, you really need to overcome that cognitive dissonance we all have. So I think my advice would be to understand when you're talking to people about sustainability, understand where they're coming from, and what drives them, and use their language to speak to them. So if it's a business situation, and you're trying to demonstrate the case, study, the benefits for the benefit case study to show the business benefits of sustainability. When you're talking to the Chief Financial Officer, you might be wanting to talk about risk and the financial benefits. But if you're talking to the marketing person, there's a different way of speaking to them to get them to engage with you. So, understand who you're speaking to understand what drives them if you want to be successful in changing behaviour, and mindset.

Brilliant, and how, how do you you know, how do you run legacy? And from an environmental point of view, do you do carbon footprint your organisation? Do you have an environmental management programme?

We do we as we also organise events, we think that's really important. So we understand the practical issues. So we've come up with nine themes that legacy nine means of sustainability that we try and weave into everything we do. And they cover the bigger issues like energy and carbon, and waste and transport from events, but they also cover community, and ecology, and water youth, which often gets left out of the story. So for all of our events, we assess them against all nine themes to make sure we're doing everything we can against those things on there on our website, you can take a look on the legacy website. In terms of carbon footprinting, we do to an extent, we find that carbon offset footprinting can often be a bit of a double-edged sword in the events industry. Because the carbon footprint can be so high from people travelling to events that it can be off-putting to clients who want to change their behaviour. And also, and this isn't specifically related to events, there's a tendency to just jump straight to carbon offsetting when you present someone with a carbon footprint. And we don't think that's a helpful solution. So we were a little bit reluctant to only talking about carbon footprints, when we're talking to our clients, we want to talk about sustainability in the holistic sense and what that client organisation can do, particularly rather than offsetting.

That's, that's brilliant. It's really interesting. Actually, that's I, I don't know if you've listened to some of the shows before. But what we've got fairly strong views on offsetting per se, in the fact that it's kind of academically proven, they don't work. So we believe categorically, if you, you know, have a high carbon footprint, you need to be reducing in line with the 2050. Real Net Zero, and you may have to change your business model, it may, it may be really hard to do that. And there is a roadmap that you can do to act and it's not as actually frightening in most instances is not as frightening as you potentially think. But what I've just kind of we find really interesting with what you've just said, is because we have come afoot in the carbon footprinting software and we think clearly, very Similarly to you, it's I don't know, I just find that really, really I just

want to sustainability is data that you don't want to encourage people to take

your way out and actually thought about it like that. But it's kind of, it's kind of glaringly obvious. When you've just said it to me, I'll certainly take that away from this conversation, and take it back to the team and talk to them about how, you know, how do we disseminate that? And because I think you're right, if you've calculated something in your mind, you want to minus it, and that it may not well, it's not the right way. Yeah.

And we find humanising It is really powerful as well. So once you've given someone that number, that natural instinct, like I said, is to try and offset it. But also, if you present a carbon footprint, no one really except for people like me knows what a tonne of carbon is in real life. So if you present it in a way that relates to a relatable object, so it's the same, there's a graphic that's quite famous, where it shows a tonne of carbon in a balloon filled with air is the size of a balloon that's about 80 centimeters in diameter, which instantly gives you a model to relate to what's the size of so many buses stacked up, or there's so many White Houses. And using those kinds of frames of references, I think speaks to people when they're talking about how they personally can reduce their impact for the postman number, which doesn't mean much to them as opposed to coming down to a calculator.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. And so how do we find out more about you and connect with you and come and talk to you,

consults, we love talking to people, in-person and online, say, we're on we have a website like a free hyphen events.com, we're about to launch a new product as well, which we're really excited about called the legacy marketplace. And that's legacy marketplace.co.uk. And that connects people organising events with suppliers, sustainable events, suppliers, and organisers, just to make it easy and hassle-free and seamless the process of organising an online and in-person event sustainably. So to come and see us on Legacy marketplace, come to our launch on the 13th of April, so in about three weeks time. And also, we're all over social media and on LinkedIn as well. So please connect with me on LinkedIn, or follow legacy on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Who knows? Well, what we'll do is, I will ask Christina and leb to promote the 13th of April. Sadly, you're probably listening to this, and it will be after the 13th of April. So hopefully, you'll have seen it on our social media channels and telephone. All right. Thank you so much for being on today. I've definitely really enjoyed myself and I feel a lot more. I don't know, I feel a lot more knowledgeable about events now and where we're going, and what we're doing. So thank you.

Thank you. It's been a pleasure to be here. Yeah, I love to talk about this subject. Anyone who knows me knows I'll talk about sustainability, but still, I'm Shut up. So please, please do. Ask me about sustainability at events anytime and to your listeners as well. Please, please do ask me any questions.

Thank you. Thank you.