Cécile Duranton is the managing director of Time for the Planet, a trail-blazing non-profit citizen fund detecting and financing climate change innovations.
Before joining Time for the Planet, Cécile trained as an agronomy engineer, as she is passionate about nature, animals, agriculture and food systems.
The young French woman tells Anne how she left home at 14 to attend a specialist highschool to continue to ride and train horses, and later to intern in the UK and in Vietnam. Cécile thrived in her travels, and shares how she discovered that bonds can be formed even when one doesn’t speak the local language (though clearly she loves trying). As a business developer for different French companies, she has worked extensively across South East Asia. Living the expat lifestyle, Cécile discusses why she chose to learn new languages — to better understand the culture and build strong relationships and an international network at the same time.
Cécile explains how she chose to study in Brazil, and later in New Zealand, and how she ended up turning from the engineering side to the business development side of the industry, changing the arc of her career. She also tells Anne how she got involved in sustainability and, in particular, climate change before making it her first mission.
Cécile designs and executes the international strategy of Time for the Planet, so Anne asks her about the mission of the business, how they inspire action in citizens, how they built their model to have maximum impact, why they have a low threshold to entry (you can become a shareholder for as little as 1 euro) and how changing their communication around climate change transformed their business from doom-inaction model to one charged with hope, energy and powering individual action.
A fascinating and motivating conversation. Happy listening!
***
Selected links from episode
You can connect with Cecile via LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cecile-duranton-71469b83/
Or discover the project Time for the Planet here - https://join-time.com/en
Pircicaba, Brazil where Cécile studied - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracicaba
The Patagonia letter to shareholders from September 2022 - https://www.patagoniaworks.com/press/2022/9/14/patagonias-next-chapter-earth-is-now-our-only-shareholder
Where to measure your carbon footprint - https://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx
Cécile's interview on the podcast 'Fille Xpats' (in French) - https://fillexpats.com/77-france/
Fair Phone - https://www.fairphone.com/
The book Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning
The book Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We_Sleep
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Hi. Hello. Bonjour, and namaste. This is Out Of The Clouds, a podcast at the crossroads between business and mindfulness. I'm your host, Anne Muhlethaler.
Today my guest is Cecile Duranton. Cecile is an engineer, a woman passionate about agriculture and our food system, and the challenges of how to grow our food. Cecile got involved in sustainability and, in particular, became passionate about climate change, making it her absolute top priority. She became a business developer for several French companies and lived a rich life in many countries, in the UK, Brazil, New Zealand, Singapore, Vietnam, and Spain, learned multiple languages, and built a very strong international network. We talk about the joys, the difficulties, the challenges that have come across the arc of her career.
Cecile now designs and executes the international strategy of Time for the Planet, a non-profit citizen fund, detecting and financing climate change innovations. I first became aware of Time for the Planet during a conference. Very similarly to Cecil, actually, within a couple of hours of having discovered their mission, I was investing my first hundred Euros.
We talk all about Time for the Planet, what they do, how they do it, what it means to have 70,000 or, hopefully, 80,000 or 90,000 shareholders, what the mission is, and what it means to finance innovation by matching great innovators with entrepreneurs. We talk about the business model and their very unique communication method, which essentially was the reason why I reached out to Cecile in the first place.
I am very excited to bring you this conversation with an incredibly smart, engaging, and passionate young woman. I can't wait to see what else she does next. Without further ado, I give you my interview with Cecile Duranton. Enjoy.
Cecile, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to Out to the Clouds.
Cecile Duranton:
Thank you.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Where am I finding you today?
Cecile Duranton:
Today I am in London. I live in Greenwich, which is a lovely area of London. Yes, at home because I work mostly from home. That's where I am today.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Wonderful. I would love for you to start by telling us more about who you are because I really enjoy asking people who they are before we talk about what they do, so if you don't mind indulging me.
Cecile Duranton:
Sure. With pleasure. I come from a very small village in the south of France, which is a lovely, lovely place but very different from the big cities like London. You have lots of nature. I used to go to the hills and just play with the goats that were free in the hills. That's the place I'm from. It's such a lovely place, and my mother still lives there. I love to come back. I grew up there.
Quite young, I always wanted to go to see something else 'cause my village is pretty cute. But I wanted to do more to learn more. I also used to do horse riding my whole life. I've been doing horse riding. When I needed to go to high school, I didn't want to go to my classical high school where I'm from. I decided to go to another place, which is in the north of where I am, so not very from Lyon, for people who are familiar with France. I did sports study there. I was writing regularly every week and competing and all of that. That was the first big change, I will say, in my life because I was 14 at the time. I left my house, which is pretty young, especially for someone from a very small village. But you don't have trains and stuff like that.
I think that was what started really the fact that I wanted to travel, to know more, to discover more things. It was an incredible experience to meet people who were from other places because you get people from everywhere. I did that for three years.
At the beginning, I wanted to work with horse riding and horses. But then I realized I wanted to keep this as a hobby. I loved biology, and somehow one of my teacher just told me about what was agronomy and agronomy engineer studies, which is basically agriculture and food systems. I had no idea it existed. I decided to do that.
One of the reasons I chose my school, the one I did, was because I had a double degree in Brazil. I was just so fascinated about it. In agriculture, especially, it's just incredible what Brazil does. It's an incredible country because you have all the different climates. I decided to do that. It was incredible. Agronomy is such an interesting field. You learn about how life works, basically, how food is grown. I loved it from the beginning.
Then, I started also to travel during my studies. My first internship in my first year was in England. I went there to train horses because I love horse riding. We just had to do something with animals or plants. I was like, "Okay, I'm going to do something I know but in another country."
I had an amazing time. I realized that when you are in a country, you can actually learn a language quite fast because I've never been bad at languages. But I've never been good either. But when you are in a country, and you have to talk to people, you just learn. It was an incredible experience.
In my third year, I went to Vietnam. I did an internship for three months in Vietnam. It was also an incredible experience. I remember we were six people. We were six French students. We were living in the university, but I was always hanging out with Vietnamese people even if I didn't understand anything in Vietnamese. If you really want to connect with people, even if you don't speak the same language, you find ways. We have ways to express ourselves other than just talking.
I was doing TaeKwonDo with them. I went to their families. One time, I went to one of my friend's family in the countryside. It was the one-year birthday, I think, the son of her sister, which is a huge thing in Vietnam because your first birthday is just such a huge thing. The whole family went there, which means I was in the middle of 50/60 Vietnamese people who didn't speak English at all. I didn't speak Vietnamese, but I had so much fun. We managed to play the traditional games. I don't know how they managed to explain me the rules. It was incredible.
That's also when I learned that when you are with people... If you really listen and try to understand people, you can do it even if your culture is different/your language is different. If you are really interested to get to know the people you are with, it works. That was just an incredible experience and to discover a completely different culture.
I remember some funny story. I was in the house with them, and actually, because it's such a huge family, they do have this thing where everyone still live together for quite a long time, not like us, where we leave our parents' house very early. They used to have everyone sleep in the living room on the floor. I was just sleeping with 15 people, where we were like brother, sister, cousins, stuff like that, in the middle of the living room, which was very surprising for me. It was quite different. But it was so much fun.
I remember also we were cooking. We were doing a chicken. You had the chickens going around. One of the boy, who was maybe nine years old, just took the chicken and killed the chicken like it was easy. I was like, "What? Exactly. I wouldn't kill a chicken now. I'm more than nine years old. It was just like everyone was participating. It's normal. The chicken are there. They live their life with the family. When it's time, they just eat them. It was just so different. But it was incredible.
Then, I went back from Vietnam. I remember it was a very weird thing to come back from Vietnam and be in France again because the culture is different. Also, French people... We tend to complain about lots of stuff.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I've noticed.
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah, that's one of our features. But I have been with people who are so much less than anyone I know from France. But still, they didn't complain. They were still supporting each other all the time and just strive as a community. When you arrive in France, and you have someone just complaining about the neighbor because the TV was too loud, it's just so different. It took me some time to sure readapt, in a way.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I've never been to Vietnam. I've been to Thailand. But generally, I've heard it said... And I'm sure it's not true everywhere. It's difficulty with generalizing that the western world versus Asian countries have more of a sense of community than we do.
Cecile Duranton:
I've lived in Asia for a while and worked in different countries. I've worked in Taiwan. I've worked in Philippines, India, Sri Lanka. I know Asia quite a lot. I've lived in Singapore and in Vietnam later on. That's something that you can feel, that they are a lot more attached to... not attached in a sense of love but to be together with a family, to be close. It has advantages and also some point that are less good.
I've been traveling the world and discovering lots of different cultures and all of that, which would have not been possible if I was like, "I won't leave my family," or anything like that. There are good points and bad points about any vision anyway. But they're a lot more grounded in their family and their place they are from, which doesn't mean we don't have it. But we have it in a very different way. After coming back to France, I went to Brazil to do my job degree, which was the reason, in the first place, I wanted to do my school.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Where were you in Brazil exactly?
Cecile Duranton:
I was in Piracicaba, which is two hours from Sao Paulo, in the countryside. It was also an amazing experience. I had the chance to live with 10 other Brazilian girls, which was a huge mess. I'm forever grateful because they welcomed me so well. I didn't speak Portuguese, to be honest, when I arrived. I knew "thank you" and "hi" basically. Some of them spoke English, but I kept telling them, Don't speak English with me. Just speak Portuguese. I know I don't understand anything. But I will eventually," which means now I am extremely fluent in Portuguese.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I expected that from you. Yeah.
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah. I mean, now my Portuguese is perfect. Brazilian people think I'm Brazilian. I don't have a French accent in Portuguese, which I have in English.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I wonder why that is, actually.
Cecile Duranton:
Well, I think because I spent so much time only with Brazilian. When I was there, you have French everywhere. You have a group of French in this university. I basically refused to see them for six months. I was like, "No, I'm going to be just with the Brazilian. My whole life was just Portuguese.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I really appreciate that because when I first moved to London, there's tons of French people in London. London, I think, is the third biggest French city in-
Cecile Duranton:
I think it is.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
...the world.
Cecile Duranton:
I think it is.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I was like, "Na-ah. I don't want to see French. I don't want to see Swiss, whatever." My friends were actually mainly Irish, I want to say.
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah. That's the best way. I mean, I always say... Because some people say to me, "Well, why don't you want to see French?" I'm the same in London. I don't really want to see French people. I'm like, "Because I already have enough French people in my life. I have my French friends. I have tons of them. I love them. But why would I move to a country to get more French friends?"
It's so much more interesting to get friends from all the places and to get to know people. I think one other thing: I've never traveled much as a tourist. I've always traveled to live or to work. I think that's the best way because I just don't just want to see a place because we have pretty places everywhere in France. We have wonderful places. But what is interesting when you go to a country is not so much to see places which are beautiful. But it's to know the people, to learn from the people, to learn from different point of views. That's why I find it so interesting to go for studies, for work, for living. Because if you just go through a country, you don't actually understand the country.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Yeah. I guess, can you please explain to us what you were studying? Because I know it sounds nerdy, but I wanted to know what it was.
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah, of course. Agronomy engineer is everything around agriculture and food system. I did study rice, wheat, all of that, how you grow them, what's the practices to grow them. I did some stuff in agroecology, so lots of different things, forestry, a little bit of everything. Then, I specialized in animal nutrition, which... To make it very simple, I learned how to feed a cow basically.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Awesome. You would be great in Switzerland then. Thank you.
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah. What I learned is how a cow/a remnant, which is a cow's, sheep's, goat's... how their digestive system and function, how you can feed them. Then, I went to New Zealand. I was a lot more in pasture, which is an absolutely incredible area, I think, because, at the same time, you are studying the nutrition of the animals and how they can have enough nutrient from the plants and all of that. But you're also studying how do you manage the pasture so they have always a good growth. You don't overgraze them, or you don't have them being too high because then you don't have enough nutrient for the animals because the composition of the grass change. It's a very interesting.
What also I love in pasture and all of that... It's a lot more extensive farming rather than intensive, which is a lot more interesting because you have lots of things around how do you lead with the ecosystem, how do you make it sustainable in the long term as well. While sometimes in intensive, because you have the food that is grown in another place than the animals, for example, or you have different parts, you, I think, lose focus on all of it as well, which is quite different in extensive systems.
I first studied in Brazil and then in France. I spent seven months in New Zealand studying pasture, learning how to know what's the amount of nutrients in the pasture just by looking at it, which I don't know how to do anymore because it takes training. You have to do it all the time. It was weird because I wouldn't expect New Zealand to be such a big cultural shock for me because it not so far from the French and the British culture. But because I had spent two years in Brazil, I was a lot more Latin American. I behaved a lot more like a Brazilian than like a French. It was so weird to arrive in a country that I didn't expect will be culturally very different from what I knew and then have the biggest cultural shock than when I went to Vietnam or Brazil. It was unexpected. I think the reason why... It was because I didn't expect it. I was just not prepared. My brain was not prepared to be like, "My god. What's going on?"
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Yeah, that's very interesting. I heard you say that one of the other things that shocked you is how little heating there is in New Zealand, which sounded so weird to me.
Cecile Duranton:
It drove me crazy. I remember that. I've never understood this. But anyway, it's like, in France, you have heaters. When it's winter you just put your heaters. We have good insulation as well and all of that. Then, I went to Brazil, where you don't have heaters, but you have maybe two days where you would need them, so it's fine not to have them. But then I went to New Zealand. It's a country where it's actually cold. I mean, it's like zero degrees. I was in the north island. In the north island, it's around zero degrees. The south is even colder. But I think they do have heaters in the south because that will be too much. I hope for them. Then, something that was so funny because any ex-pat, when they met, the first question they asked to someone was, "Do you have heaters in your home?" I had a German friend who had a fireplace. We did all of the parties at her place.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
That's crazy.
Cecile Duranton:
I actually asked the teacher I was working with. They told me, "I don't know. It's always been like that. Anyways, the installation is so bad. But if you want to heat your house, it's going to be so much energy." I say, "Yeah. Maybe just start with the insulation." Of course, I normally used to go to ski. I was cooking with them because I was so cold. I was like, "Why would you do that?" It was something so confusing. It didn't seem to shock anyone in New Zealand because they're like that. They've been growing up that.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
That just proves we get used to things. For me, my biggest shock was moving to New York where they have no thermostat. In my office building, as well as my home... But in my office, it was the worst. There was one heater that should have heated the entire half of our floor. But some reason, they had put walls around it. It was just next to my desk. Honestly, in the middle of winter, in a snowstorm, one of my colleagues had to take her top off. She was in a little camisole while it was snowing sideways outside our window. We had the window open. That's how hot it was. We couldn't change the temperature.
Cecile Duranton:
It just doesn't make sense, right?
Anne V Muhlethaler:
No.
Cecile Duranton:
It's like, "Why?" That's one of the thing when you travel, you just discover so many ways of doing stuff, working, having your life with your family. Everything is different in different countries. You tend to think that what you do is the obvious thing that everyone should do. Right or wrong, it's just different ways. But I do remember I was feeling cold in New Zealand. That was not something easy.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I appreciate that. What did you do after New Zealand?
Cecile Duranton:
After New Zealand, I started to work for a French company in Asia. I lived in Singapore for two years, and then I lived around two more years in Vietnam for the same company and all different country. I remember it was such a weird experience in the sense that I expected that someone would help me learn my new job, which was not really the case. I did have a few tips. But basically, I was like, "Oh, yeah. You are responsible for Taiwan, Philippines, Thailand, Myanmar. Go for it." I was like, "Right. I have no idea how you do that. I don't know how to do a market study. I don't know how to do any business. I'm not a business person." It was challenging.
Thanks to the internet because you have lots of things on the internet. I learned by searching what's a market study, how can you do a proper market study, how can you develop network of partners, all of that. I did lots of earth research and also basically going there and just learning. I actually learned my actual job that I'm doing since then just on the field. Thankfully, it was on something I was very good technically because I was 24. I was a young woman in Asia. I was not a business person, which was a huge challenge. In Asia, it depends on the country. You have countries where it's more or less easy to be a woman. But they do put a lot of importance on your age, first of all, which wasn't pretty in my favor.
Lots of country also are still quite... and especially in animal nutrition, which is also the case in Europe actually. Animal malnutrition is still a quite guy stuff, was complicated sometimes to be able to have people taking you seriously. But at the same time, because I was technically quite good, so I was confident in what I was talking about. I was working quite a lot to make sure I knew what I was doing. It was not easy. But I did learn a lot. I also learned, in a way, that if, as a woman, I was able to actually do my job properly, even if at the beginning they tended maybe to reject me, once they see that you're actually doing stuff, they remember you a lot more because they are only seeing guys all the time.
Once they say, "Oh, okay. She is not that bad." They actually remember you because you are the only woman they are seeing anyway. I remember them with stuff like being in a meeting in India and a guy just telling me, "Shut up, woman." I was like, "Right. All right, lovely." In the middle of a room of just men-
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Wow.
Cecile Duranton:
It was weird. You don't know how to react. Okay. I know that's cultural, but what?
Anne V Muhlethaler:
That's crazy.
Cecile Duranton:
But I think it was one of the challenge. As a woman, I'm not feminist in the sense that I'm an activist in this. But I believe we have a place in the world. We need to push to be more women in executive staff, in entrepreneurship as well. I don't think there are enough entrepreneur women as well. I think we need to push to have more women like that. We need to support each other. We need more respect because, for a long time ,we didn't have that. Even if it's a lot better, especially where we are, it's still something sometimes hard, and to be in a country where it's a lot different than that. You have to accept stuff that you normally wouldn't. You can't just come in a country and say, "Yeah. That's shit. I'm going to show you the way." You can't do that. You have to find the balance between what you can accept, what you cannot accept, which is hard.
I remember also... which was something very hard for me. It's like sometimes when you have clients that actually have very inappropriate behaviors. It's a client. They are worth 1 million. But it doesn't matter. They can't do that. You have to find the strength to say no and stop at times where you feel very vulnerable. You feel the pressure that you should appeal to the clients all the time because they are worth 1 million, which I didn't have pressure from my company but, basically, business. I was still very young. It was hard. We should have more support for women who do all of that because you don't really know who to talk with. I mean, I was working with guys as well. They didn't really understand how hard it could be.
But, I mean, I managed to get through all of that. I still love the time I spent in India/Sri Lanka. I had some bad experiences. But I also met incredible people. It's such an interesting thing when you get to know people a little bit more. You have this freedom to speak with them about this difference and what you find weird without judging to just talk about this. It's so interesting to get their point of view and to see them think about what you are saying. Sometimes you get to reach this point, I would say.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I can just about imagine. It sounds really challenging. I'm interested in the fact that you just said... I'm going to paraphrase you, that it would be good if you had a structure to support you because you don't really know who to talk to. Even if you're working with great men, they don't necessarily have any idea of... They're not trained to deal with this.
Cecile Duranton:
They don't even know how it feels.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
They don't even know how it feels. That's a very good point.
Cecile Duranton:
Because I have seen men, very supporting ones, but they just seem so surprised that it can be the case or you can feel that they are, I don't know what to do with that because that's just so much not a situation where I am and I can't really feel what you feel.
So even if they want to help you, they don't have the experience of what it is, so it's hard for them, which I don't blame them around that, but we should have a lot more support and I think network. And it's going more and more, I guess I've seen more and more women supporting other women that are entrepreneurs in business, all of that. That's great. And I think you need that, especially when you're young.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Yeah, of course. And so after your experience in Asia, so you went back to France in the end?
Cecile Duranton:
So no, I actually went back to Europe but to Spain. So the reason why I decided to go back is basically was maybe seven years I was living abroad and far from home. And your grandparents get old, your parents as well. Your friends start to have children, your family, your cousin has a child and you feel like you are missing everything most of the time. So that's one of the thing that I think is we don't talk much about because the expert life seems like so wonderful and dreamy, but a lot of sacrifice as well.
And one of the sacrifices is to not see your close ones most of the time, not be able to be there when there is a problem and stuff like that. And I actually decided to come back because one of my grandmother was getting sick and it's pretty, a very sad story actually because, and I was going to be back in February and my grandmother died on the 1st of January, which means I couldn't see her.
Yeah, it was really hard. At the same time, I don't regret everything I've done and I've done it because I wanted, but it's the kind of thing you sacrifice when you have this kind of life. It was quite hard, especially because two days after I had to be on the field with clients because I was leaving, so I had to integrate a new person and so you have to smile, you have to be happy, you have to be perfect all the time. And I was just coming back to the hotel and crying because I couldn't see my grandmother.
So that was one of the main reason why I wanted to go back to Europe to be able to be not far from my family. So I went to Spain and then I worked for another company, a French company as well, and I was in Spain, Portugal, and Morocco for some time. It was incredible to actually discover the culture as well. It was a lot easier.
First of all, the culture is a little bit less different, but also I knew my job already quite well. The difficulty was just because they had a business developer that worked there for 30 years, so they knew him so well. He is an incredible guy, but they changed from someone they knew for 30 years, a guy for a young woman they didn't know. So it was a bit challenging at the beginning, but I ended up having a great relationship.
And one of the things that was very challenging, I just came back when the pandemic started, so I'm happy I was actually not very far from my family. But anyway, so I started with the pandemic. I didn't have an apartment at the time. I don't speak much about my personal life in general, but I was with my future ex-husband. I was training in France, he was in Spain. Then I was on the way back by car because I was taking the car of my job to Spain.
In the middle of the way, I learned that the border were going to close in two days. So I called my boss and told her what do I do? Because I don't have an apartment in Spain and I don't know when it will open again and do I stay in Spain? Do I go back in France? And so she told me to go back in France and so I went back to my mother actually. So I had to go down, grab my husband at the time and my dog, and then go to France in 24 hours. Knowing that, it had been seven years I didn't actually drive a car.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Oh.
Cecile Duranton:
I did drive the two weeks before.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Oh wow.
Cecile Duranton:
So it was just such a crazy time.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Oh my god.
Cecile Duranton:
But anyway, it was so weird to go back to my mother house at the age of 28 while I left when I was 14.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Yeah, it's a bit of a gap.
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah, exactly. I was not the same person between the two and I was starting a new job. We had the world transition online, so I didn't meet any of my new clients. Not only that, but also my husband was in the house, my mother was in the house. They were bored because I didn't have anything to do. So it was such a mess and I was trying to work.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Oh god. And so you are working super hard, you're trying to do this new job and then I'm guessing the husband, the dog and the mom are just like, "What are you doing?"
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah, exactly. It was complicated. We stayed three months there and it was just such a crazy time. And my mother and my ex-husband, they are very different person as well. So they didn't really understand each other. And my ex-husband is Brazilian, she's French. He doesn't speak French, she doesn't speak Portuguese. They do speak both of them English, but that's not the same.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Yeah, yeah, I understand. That's amazing.
Cecile Duranton:
So it was like three crazy, crazy, crazy months. But then we eventually went back to Spain and I could actually do my job as you normally should do it by seeing your clients. That was also a time when I think I was not so much aligned with the values of the company I was in. So because I was more and more interested by climate, sustainability, all of that, I didn't want to take the plane as much as I used to.
I started to get engaged with Time for the Planet, we will talk about Time for the Planet probably after, but that's my company now. So I discovered Time for the Planet, became a shareholder at the time, and I was getting more and more engaged in this and whereas my job, it was quite different. And personally it was a very bad time with my ex because that's basically when we decided to divorce.
So in the same year, so in 2021 in the same year we decided to divorce and then I decided to leave my job and then my life just went upside down.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Wow. That's a lot at the same time.
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah, but I felt like it was just a time having kind of a step back on my life and being like, okay, so what do I want with my life? Where do I want to go? So the fact that was this time when I decided also to divorce, it also allowed me to step back on my professional life a lot more I think that if I was still with my husband, because when you just start to say, okay, where is my life now? What do I want to do? Why am I doing that? And also with my ex, it was not working, so I had the pressure of having all the money coming in.
When you don't have that anymore, it breaks some of your barriers just like, okay, I don't have so much constraint as well. Same time, it's like you can just think about everything again and just try find what you really want to be. So then I decided to leave my job, didn't know what I was going to do, but I was basically, the way I thought about it was I don't want to do that anymore. And I know I don't.
I'm not too sure what I want to do and I want to explore different things, but I don't see the point of staying in my job if I know that's not what I want to do. I will figure it out. Eventually I will find something I want to do. And quite interestingly, before I finished my job, because I gave them quite a long time because I knew I didn't have something just after, I didn't really have time to actually search for what I was going to do because as the co-founders of Time for the Planet, they knew me because I was a volunteer and I was doing lots of stuff for Time for the Planet and they actually wanted someone to, and I was the international side of Time for the Planet.
And so they just talked to me, asked me what was my actual job, which was what they were looking for, and I ended up working for Time for the Planet and never really get to the point that I actually tried other things.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
That's really great. So you did not even have a chance to put your CV together, that you basically had some form of an offer going through. That's awesome. Good momentum.
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah, no, exactly. 2021 was a very strange year for me. But at the same time, I think that's when you have this kind of year that you can also after that, once you out of it, kind of grow quite a lot. You grow from these kind of challenges so much and it helps you learn so much more about you, about what you want, about your values, all of that. So it's hard, but at the end it's kind of positive in a way.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Sure. If you're ready to deal with what's happening, then crisis can teach you a lot about who you are.
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah, no, exactly. Exactly.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
So tell us about Time for the Planet because I'm guessing most of my listeners don't know what that stands for.
Cecile Duranton:
So Time for the Planet is a nonprofit citizen fund, to say it in a nutshell. And the goal is to detect and finance innovations to tackle climate change. So either to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions or to capture carbon. So that's basically what we do. And I love the story of Time for the Planet. I'm not one of the founder, I joined the team later. But the reason why, and I know very well the funders now, and the reason why they built Time for the Planet at the beginning was because as a citizens, they were doing their life and at one point they just started to learn a little bit more about climate change.
And as a lot of people, when you start to learn and dig a little bit deeper at one point you're like, "Oh my God." And so you cannot feel like, okay, we have to do something about it. So as a person you start to try a few things. Well, maybe you will use less your car, try to take more of the train and eat less meat, these kind of things. But at one point you just feel stuck. You're like, "Okay, I've tried to do what I can but what now?"
So as I built Time for the Planet to be a tool for everyone, any citizen to participate in something bigger. So not only to do something by yourself but also participate in a collective action where you can have an impact. Because we have many people, you can have an impact that you would never have alone basically. And so that's why Time for the Planet was created and that's why I think the story is such a powerful one and the way Time for the Planet was built was always to really be a citizen movement.
And so basically what we have that is different from classical funds and stuff like that, the first thing is of course that everyone is welcome. So everyone can become a shareholder, it's made to be very accessible. So it's just one euro or more. You can buy as many shares as you want, but one share is one Euro. So it's made to be accessible for anyone who wants to join. If you are a student, if you have lots of money, not lots of money, doesn't matter, you can participate with just one euro. And that's really the goal. It's the more we are, the more powerful we are and you don't need to be rich to do something.
Then something that I absolutely love from the beginning about Time for the Planet is once an innovation is major, we share it through opensource inspired model. So it's like a free license. And I believe that our world needs a lot more cooperation and need to stop competing all the time, which we do. And I've been in my companies before, I've been in companies where we spend so much money on IP because we don't want to share and stuff like that, but we end up I think pretty much the same thing as the competitors anyway. Even if there are a few differences, basically that's the same.
And instead of being fighting each other all the time and spending so much money to try to not share anything with the other, I do believe that if we cooperate, it will be beneficial for everyone. And that's what I love with the free license model is like you share the innovation, so you share to anyone who wants to commercialize innovation for example, they can do it.
And one of the rules in a free license is that if anyone make any improvement, they have to share it with the others. So instead of being each one of us on their side and doing their own research, then it becomes a common effort. And what is really interesting, especially for innovation that are today basically not on the market yet or are just starting, it's like instead of just creating a company, you actually create a market which goes a lot faster. And we are working on innovation that we need to spread as fast as possible.
So the more people are using it, the more people are actually working on it, the best it is. And what we try always to explain to the innovators, because the IP is sometimes they are attached to it quite a lot, is that it's better to have 20% of a huge market than to have 100% of nothing. And that's-
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Yeah, that sounds about right.
Cecile Duranton:
Yes, exactly.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
One of the things that I saw in your pitch deck that was incredibly useful to understand is it doesn't mean that you don't own the innovation that you developed, right?
Cecile Duranton:
No. Yes.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Means you're sharing so that other people can benefit from it.
Cecile Duranton:
Exactly.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
And I think that this idea of ownership, we can work together collectively, we can share our knowledge and still retain this sense of, oh, this is, I brokered this, I made this happen.
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. It doesn't mean you are not the inventor anymore. Yeah, but it's still quite new concept. It takes time to explain. But we see actually a lot of innovators today who actually want to be with Time for the Planet because they know if they go to other investors, the other investor will want to lock the IP, which is not okay of course. And more and more people, they would really want the innovation to be used for everyone. They are doing that because they believe that we need to do something and we need to make the world a better place basically.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I completely understand why you'd want to build a fund where you invite all shareholders. I understand the power in numbers and I think you can speak to that a bit more as well. But what I found fascinating was also the fact that you are leaning on the entrepreneurial side. And I thought you could talk to us perhaps about the triangle of inaction and how your model can tackle that.
Cecile Duranton:
Yes. So basically for those who don't know the triangle of inaction in climate especially, but it can work with other problems. But in the case of climate especially, you have three bodies we'll say that are actors. So you have the governments, you have the citizens, and you have the companies. And what happens a lot is basically you have the government that will say, "Oh, it's not our fault. It's because of the companies, because they're the one producing the goods and all of that, so that's not our fault."
Then you have the companies say, "Oh, but that's not our fault that because citizens, they ask for these goods, so we are just doing what they want." And then you have the citizens saying, "Oh, but that's not our fault. That's the government that should regulate the companies." And then you can go round and round and you will never resolve that.
And as long as everyone is pointing fingers at others, it's just going to be the same. It's just going to go round and round in this triangle of inaction. But, if you start to have people that actually breaks this cycle, you will start to see all the people getting inspired and doing the stuff. And as citizens, if we start to say, "No, we don't want it anymore," then you can influence the government, you can influence the companies. As companies as well, you might know about Patagonia, which did something quite incredible.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
So wonderful. Patagonia is really a leader like no other in the business world.
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah. And you know what they did. So basically today they inspire people, they inspire other company to go this way.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Absolutely.
Cecile Duranton:
And so I love this sentence that say that every change start with one person and we can all be this one person. So if we are waiting for someone else to do things for us, it's never going to happen. And actually, the best examples in history are like anything that we were able to get like woman rights, the end of slavery. It didn't start from the companies or the government most of the time. It start from citizens. And citizens, we have the power of doing that and we are part of governments, we are part of companies. So we make our society and that's a very important thing.
And I know sometimes you cannot feel like you cannot do anything, but that's not true. We can all do something, even if it seems small because we add up all our actions, it works. And then we lean quite a lot on entrepreneurship because we believe that entrepreneurs are quite agile person. That's a way of doing things that is quite fast to try to find new solution. And that's what we need at the time.
We actually know when it comes to climate change, we know the solutions, they exist. They are here in terms of research, most solutions, they already exist. And that's not me saying it, that's the IPCC, which is the body that do the report around climate change. And so we know the solution, they exist.
The problem is most of them, they are stuck in labs or with teams of scientists who are not entrepreneur and they don't get finance because investors, they want a wonderful team that know how to execute already, but they don't care about the potential of the project itself. They care about having a team that is able to execute, which they're not wrong about because you can have the best idea in the world. If you don't know how to execute, it's not going to be anything.
When you are just looking to do profit, I understand that's what you are looking for. But what we want is to actually go to invest in innovation that have a huge potential in terms of impact. And we don't look at the team, we don't look at the financial return first. Our first thing is the impact. And once we are sure there is a natural potential of impact that is very strong, then we will look at the team. And if we need to, which happens quite a lot, we will hire an entrepreneur to join the team. Because we believe you need this person to really make this innovation go out in the world.
And the reason why we don't do mentoring, because you could do mentoring, a lot of people are doing this. First of all, mentoring takes a lot of time.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Yeah, sure. I hear you. Because the thing is that the clock is ticking.
Cecile Duranton:
Exactly. It's a long process. And second, a lot of people, they don't want to be entrepreneurs or business people. They are great innovators, great inventors, but they don't want to be like a salesperson or anything like that. So why would you force them to do that if you have actually people who have the skill and could just join?
So that's one of the thing we do, and we really believe that no matter the idea, it's the execution is just really, really, really important. And that's one of the most important thing. And so that's why we have this entrepreneur mindset. Anyway, all the co-founders are entrepreneur. That's also why Time for the Planet works like kind of a startup because we work very fast, we are very agile, we try stuff, we change, we are able to change very fast to set up something very fast when we need to, so it's quite impressive.
And so we are 10 people, which is a very small team, but my nine colleagues are just incredibly efficient and passionate and all of that. And I've never worked in a company like that before. It's a combination of having the citizens so everyone can speak to that, everyone can help us. We actually have something that I find personally amazing is in our selection process.
So first step is based on collective intelligence, which means that anyone who wants to, they don't need to be experts. They can be what we call an assessor and they can participate to assess the project. And we need 50 people to assess one project and we get a result that is similar to an expert with the same level of knowledge. So that's the way we are able to select innovations faster. And it's such an amazing thing because we actually, as a citizen, not only you can participate financially, but you can also help with a little bit of your time to do that. And that's such a wonderful thing.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
And that's how you started, isn't it?
Cecile Duranton:
Yes. That's how I started.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
So were you part of the collective intelligence?
Cecile Duranton:
Yes. Well, I discovered about Time for the Planet. Two hours after I was a shareholder. And so one of the co-founder [inaudible 00:47:08], he did a post on LinkedIn about some stuff about entrepreneurship, which had nothing to do with Time for the Planet, but I found it very interesting and I was like, "Oh, this guy seems to talk about interesting stuff, so I'm just going to follow him."
A few days after he posted something about Time for the Planet. And I was like, "Oh, that sounds interesting." Because at the time, not only I was looking for entrepreneurship, but I was also looking at investing money in ecological transition and it was a bit confusing. And then I saw that and I looked at a website and then I was like, "Oh my God, that's just perfect. That's just so great."
And one of the thing which was, I was looking to invest and Time for the Planet, one of the particularity I didn't speak about yet is you don't get financial dividend, you don't get a return on your investment, you get a return on your impact. So you get what we call climate dividend, which is tons of CO2 equivalent. So you know your impact, but you don't need money back. And actually I found this wonderful. I was like, "Oh my God, that's just so cool because that means that they will never choose something because of profits."
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Sure.
Cecile Duranton:
"They will choose every innovation because of the impact." And so there is no greenwashing when you are not trying to make profit around it. You want to have the most impact possible and that's your metric. And I loved it. I just went to the website, spent two hours trying to understand everything, said, "That's just wonderful and I'm going to invest."
So I invested 100 euro at the time and wanted to see what it looks like. Then I found out one hour later that there was a community, joined the community, started to help on different things and started to be an assessor. So that's one of the first thing I did to be an assessor. And I started to be an assessor. I found it incredibly interesting to discover innovations in different fields, stuff I would never learn about if I wasn't doing that. And it was quite exciting.
Then somehow they asked me if I wanted to be a trainer for the assessors. So I became a trainer for the assessors. And then I became the leader of the assessors in a way, organizing the life of the assessments and working with today, one of my colleague to make the process easy, make sure the training were going well, having new trainers when we needed it, all of that.
So, quite quickly actually, I started to do quite a lot of things in that, and that was just so interesting. At the time, I was not so interested by my job, which I still did seriously. I think one of the things that helped me also just say, oh, I'm going to quit my job and there is something else possible, was to get involved in something and see like, oh, you can do something in your professional life that is not something you don't care about.
You can do something that is actually impactful and you can love what you do. And it reminded me that you can actually be passionate about what you do, and it was great.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
It's interesting. I remember I talked to a really wonderful lady called Jenny Sarah Klein last year, and she had a transition period, which was really difficult as well. And she reminded me that if you do something, just experiment but do things, then you can follow the line of energy, you can follow momentum, you'll discover things that you won't know unless you actually try it out. So I think that's an amazing example that you're giving us, that you started volunteering just because you were excited about what they were doing, and now you are the managing director of time for the planet, and you are helping this impact for all of us. Now, one of the other things I want to talk about, which I thought was really, really interesting and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, is the fact that the system is built around finding innovations that don't require a behavioral change. Can you speak to that because it sounds very clever, but how'd you get there?
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah. So first thing, so basically when we talk about climate change, there is a huge problem if we need to consume less energy, less resources, less everything. You have different ways to do that. You can change your behavior, which is hard. I don't know if you have ever tried to get to the gym, stayed one week and then stop the gym, it's hard to change your behavior.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I know a lot about behavior change, so yes.
Cecile Duranton:
Yes. So it's very hard. It's hard to change your behaviors. How is it possible to change billions of people behaviors, just telling them you have to change. It's really hard. And some people are trying to do it and are working on that and they do an amazing job and they are able to change some people, but it takes so much time, and one of the things time for the planet and is about is how do we do to make sure that as a society we change? So we decarbonize our economy, but it doesn't take an effort for people to do it because when you have to make any effort, it means that it's hard. So how do you do to make what is ecological, what is less carbon intensive, something that is cheaper, better, all of that. And that's the goal is to find innovation that make this change. You won't feel it like you, for example-
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I love it. Sorry.
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Sorry to interrupt you, but yeah, I get it. It's almost like the entrepreneurial mindset is to solve a problem that people don't realize they have, right?
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
And if you do that, then people are just going to follow through because they just need that problem solved.
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah. And basically if you make it easy for people, it's a lot easier to get them on board than if you make it hard and painful. And one of the thing is climate, and I think that goes way beyond time for the planet, but one thing is climate. I think we had quite a negative narrative for a long time, which is quite depressing in saying for years that it's painful and we are going to... It's going to be horrible to make the change, but we have to do it because if not, we will all die. And I don't believe that's entirely true. I believe climate change is such a huge opportunity to change our system for something better. Today our system is not very fair.
We are quite lucky on our side of the world. There are people even luckier than us, but it's not very fair right now. And we have an opportunity to build something that is a lot fairer. We have an opportunity to also stop this crazy thing that we do to brand after everything, we don't know why, trying to buy more, trying to own more, trying to get a better carrier, more money, everything. We don't even know why we do that. We just do it because we were told since we are young that's what you want to do.
And I remember one other thing that really struck me. I lived in Brazil in a house with 10 other girls and we were all together in a room and we shared two bathroom all of us. We didn't have a super comfortable thing, but I was told from the beginning by everyone that when I would earn more money, I would be happier because it's even better. And then I earn more money and I was no happier and maybe less. So this believe that we have that we need to have always more, always the best things. I actually think it's just draining all of our energy all the time. And so we have this opportunity to say, "Okay, maybe that's not the society we want. Maybe that's not the life we want. Maybe we want something that we are comfortable, but we don't need to be running after something all the time."
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Of course, yeah.
Cecile Duranton:
We can be happy by what we have.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Yeah. What people don't realize is that the things we seek, we don't seek for what they are. We seek them for the feeling they're going to bring us. These feeling states can exist without this constant state of acquiring more. It's really interesting to me because I'm writing a blog post this week just about that topic yet. It's a difficult thing but it brings me to... I really wanted to talk about this because after listening to an interview that you did, a lovely, lovely interview that for anyone who speaks French, I'm going to encourage you to listen to for a podcast called Expat. Is that sound right?
Cecile Duranton:
The Expat.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
The Expat. You talked about your own carbon footprint. I went down a rabbit hole to go and calculate mine because I've been very careful with my energy consumption. In Geneva, we have this amazing opportunity, or I got this opportunity to invest a little bit of my money into solar panels. So actually it takes off from my consumption because I support creating energy, et cetera, et cetera. And so the big penny dropped right on my head. I mean, I must have miscalculated in some way, but my carbon footprint is huge. Not because of my car, not because of my electric bike, definitely not because of my electricity bills, but because of my consumptions of goods. Goods and services, how many, the fact that I upgrade my iPhone every year, and how much I love tech in general, and how many books I buy. I am a bit of a book buyer. Once I-
Cecile Duranton:
I don't blame you, I love books.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
It's embarrassing. There are piles everywhere near around me. But even the things that I thought I was being conscious, and sure I recycled the previous iPhone, and the blah blah, blah, but we don't consider the footprint of where it came from, how far it traveled, and et cetera, et cetera. So I'd be very interested in hearing you talk about this in two ways. First, I'd love for you to tell our listeners your story around what happened after you calculated your own. And second, where would you send people to work on their own and find out more?
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah. Yeah, that's definitely something I recommend to anyone. Anyone will ask me, "How should I start in climate? And I don't say invest in time for the planet, most of the time I say calculate your carbon footprint because that's actually budget.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I mean, tell them to do both. Just you.
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah, but I mean start with the carbon footprint and then invest in time for the planet because you really realize that your carbon footprint is terrible, and we need to do something about it. If you are in Europe, or in the US, or any western country, your carbon footprint is probably terrible, even if you're trying to do your best. So I was already trying to be conscious as well, already eating less meat. I was not vegetarian at the time because in Spain it was impossible to be vegetarian. That was just not an option. I became a shoulder of time for the planet, tell it to be in the community. And then there was a workshop to calculate your carbon footprint for the community. And I say, "Oh, yeah, let's go." And then I was calculating my carbon footprint, and I actually have not too bad of a carbon footprint because I've been not consuming much. I've been quite careful not to change much of my computer, trying to bring them to the end, buying second secondhand.
So my phone is a Fairphone if you know Fairphone is the best in term of environmental criteria and social as well. So my carbon footprint was not terrible. I don't travel by car nearly because I like only for work, but not personally. But then because I'm a very international person, I know people everywhere in the world and I mean traveling has been a part of my life since I'm 18 maybe, and really traveling far. So because I am such a traveler and because I have such strong links with Brazil, I decided to put a travel to Brazil because that's one of the country I absolutely love. And then my carbon footprint doubled. So I was like, "Oh gosh." And the moment you realize that you can't just keep doing that.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Well, you say that, but that's why I really wanted to talk about this because I feel like a lot of people, I'm not seeing everyone, but a lot of people went one of two ways during the pandemic. Either they thought, "Oh my god, I need to slow down because I've been traveling too much." Because we've all seen the impact that stopping our economies and grinding to a halt head on the environment. We saw it everywhere in the world.
And then I feel like the other half of the world just went, "Oh my god, I just want to spend my life traveling." I cannot tell you how many people I know who just would not stop talking about travel, and whether they are younger or older with families, singles, so many people I know just I feel like it's the one thing that they look forward to the most in their year or several times a year depending on their revenue.
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
And it's really impressive because it's that massive pull that your life is not complete unless you're able to have amazing holidays.
Cecile Duranton:
And I get it. I get it. And what my first thing was like, "Oh my god, I cannot do that." But at the same time, I love traveling, and I don't think I'm ever going to be someone that just stays in the same place all the time. Some people do, but it's my life to travel to meet new people, all of that. So I was in this situation where at the same time, obviously I can't just keep taking the plane to go around and just do that, but I still want to do stuff. I don't want to leave just in my village forever. So that's when you start to see your travel, see your vacation in another way. Basically, instead of being like, "Oh, I need to be going very far and choosing destinations because they look pretty. But you start to be, "Okay, where can I go? And still have been a great experience too."
So I'm lucky. I'm European and I mean Europe is such a wonderful place to visit different culture in a very small area because we do have lots of countries, but I'm pretty sure even in France itself, even if you go from one part to the France to the other. And so my last vacation this summer, instead of going very far, I did two different things. The first one was I went to the mountains and I was riding horse for one week. We were seven people. We didn't go back to the city for seven days. So we were just in the wide and just with her horses flipping outside and all of that. And it was such a wonderful experience.
I mean one of the most wonderful experience I ever had because you just feel like absolutely disconnected to the rest of the world. It's just an amazing place. It's beautiful. If you love horses, it's such an incredible experience and you feel so free. You feel absolutely free, in the middle of the mountains just galloping through a field is just incredible, that's the first thing I did. And the second one I did was to go to another mountain this time and do paragliding because that's what I've been wanting to do for quite a while. It was such an incredible feeling. And again, we come back to what we were saying about when you live in a country, that's not the place you miss. That's the experience, that's the people. It's the same with your vacation. It's not the place that counts so much. What you remember from your travel is probably more the people you met, the feeling you had, all of that, but you can't think your vacation in another way, and that's actually so wonderful.
I think one of the thing we need to get a little bit is travel is not only about going the fastest possible from one to be, it's actually enjoying the travel, enjoying the road. When you take the train, you can look at the countryside and all of that is beautiful. So there are so many things you can do without taking the plane. And I'm not saying I will never ever, ever take the plane again. I might have at one point, I might go to Brazil because I have so many friends, and I might go one time in 10 years because I miss them so much and it will be a lot more reasonable for me to go there than to bring all of it.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Yes, but I heard you say that you weren't adverse to the idea of taking the boat. So...
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah, exactly. So that's one of the thing I've been looking too. It's like you can actually take the boat to go to many places. It's a little bit longer, but it's an experience in itself. And I mean one of the thing I've been looking to is to actually go to Brazil by sailing, which is a lot longer than the plane of course, but I'm the same time.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Yeah. Can you tell me how long that's supposed to be?
Cecile Duranton:
So today, what you have is around 20 days.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Right.
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah. Yeah, that's a bit of a-
Anne V Muhlethaler:
But interesting journey though.
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah, I mean that's quite a unique journey. You can imagine yourself at a time where they were discovering on boat and stuff like that. I mean my life is built around meeting people from everywhere. But you can do it in another way. You don't have to do it by destroying everything and destroying the planet. You can do it in a way that is a lot more sustainable.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
You also have much more direct understanding I guess through all of the work that you're doing, the access to the scientific community in your community in time from the planet to the repercussions and what happens if many of us don't make certain drastic decisions. But so now, I'd like you to just tell me where can people go and calculate their carbon footprint?
Cecile Duranton:
Just one thing is when I actually did my carbon footprint, I was not so much in climate, now, I know a lot more. But one of the thing that I knew because I'm an economy engineer, even if we were not especially talking about climate, is we were already think consequences on crops and all of that. So when you work in agriculture, at one point you can see that there is something going on. So that was also, I think, what made me so much go into climate. You have tons and tons of carbon calculators. So normally each country has one. It's pretty good to go to see the one that are from your government because depending on where you are from, you don't have exactly the same impact. For example, in France we have a very low carbon energy mix because we have nuclear power plants, which are in terms of carbon, quite low, they have other problems. While in other country you will have a lot more coal and all of that.
So I really recommend to see your country normally is a government say have calculators. Most of them, at least in western countries, you can also find if you just put carbon calculator on Google, it will find for you. So just be careful to take the one for people because you have ones for business, but if you own a business you can also do it. That's a quite interesting thing. And you have more and more company helping companies to do that. So that's really something I recommend. You have different kind of calculator, you have the simplest one, which to start with is good. You don't have so many questions, it just gives you an overview. And then you have some that go a lot deeper, ask you a lot more question about you're buying habits, do you buy clothes?
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Yeah, that's what I did.
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah. So you have all kind, I mean the simplest ones, they won't be perfect, but they are interesting to get an idea. But then the one when you go deeper, you can do them different times and try to change things and see if you change this or that, what's the actual impact? And that's very interesting because for me it was obvious that not taking the plane was the main thing. I could do the first one to reduce my impact, but for some people it would be other things. And you can see different action, what they will lead to and depending of what is the easiest for you and start with the easiest for you.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
It's really interesting. And honestly I would recommend to everyone to try out because I had seen a really interesting article, the Financial Times fashion editor called Lauren Indvik. She wrote in a newsletter a couple of weeks ago about a new report from a company called Hot or Cool, which is a German research group. And they had released a study on sustainability called Unfit, Unfair, Unfashionable.
And basically what they were explaining and proving in the study that is that the richest 20% of the population need to reduce their fashion consumption. It basically to reduce their carbon footprint because right now they're buying up to 15 new garments a year and they need to come back down to eight or nine a year in order to really lower the carbon footprint. So our buying habits have a massive, massive effect. And I think unless we see it in front of our eyes using something as you said, a valid source, right? Somewhere that's trusted, then most of us are just going to shrug and pretend that it's not true.
Cecile Duranton:
I absolutely agree with you. You have to see for yourself what applies for you because each one of us, our impact is not the same for the same reason. You can have exactly the same carbon footprint but for very, very different reason. And you talked about fashion, and that's one of the thing that has a huge carbon footprint. And no one really realize this when you just go to buy a dress, you don't think, "Oh my God, I just spent some carbon." When you buy furniture, when you buy... If you have a pet, it has an impact. I mean, I have a-
Anne V Muhlethaler:
You know what? I was thinking about this because I don't eat meat, but I have two cats and a dog, and they eat and they meat.
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah. Hopefully because they need it.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Yeah, exactly. I've read a couple of things online from vets saying, please do not make your pets go vegan. It's not an option. Yeah.
Cecile Duranton:
No. I don't.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
So yeah, that's-
Cecile Duranton:
Unless it's a rabbit. A rabbit is fine. It's okay to have it.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Exactly. That was really, really interesting. So there's one more thing that I would really like to discuss with you one more. I mean, I'm seeing one, maybe one or two things perhaps they're linked. So one of the things that I found really interesting, first of all is that your reaction and my reaction when we both came across first after you, you're one of the co-founders. So I heard him on a conference, I was on Zoom, the conference was in Geneva, but I didn't have time to attend in person. He was also on Zoom from Portugal. And because I was behind the screen, I found him so interesting that I directly went on timefortheplanet.com or whatever the website is. We'll figure that out at the end.
And as soon as I saw the explanation of why don't scientists or innovators come through as strongly as you said is because they're not necessarily an entrepreneur, they're not a salesperson, they don't know how to pitch. I was like, "Oh my god, that's so logical. I will give you money." I think it took me less than two hours, and two glances, and looking at the film, the film that's on your website is very, very, very convincing, and I pledged my first a hundred euros as well. But I thought there was something very special about the way that your fund communicates. So of course, you rely on community, but it has a very strong branding. Can you talk to me about that?
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah, and actually, I mean the story behind it is a bit funny because it didn't start the way it is now.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I didn't think it would've, but...
Cecile Duranton:
No. So basically at the beginning, the line of communication was because the co-founder went and discovered climate change and they way singing it was horrible. And if they told everyone how horrible is what's going to be, then everyone will invest because I will be so stressed and I will just invest, and it didn't work because no one likes to be like, "Oh we're going to die." It doesn't work to make people feel depressed. You can't tell them about a problem, but if you just talk to that, it's not appealing. No one want to join people that seem very depressed and just on the brick of just dying.
So after this huge, huge, huge lop, they decided to change. And Arthur especially, he was the one behind the communication, I realized that one of the things that was missing in climate was to actually have positive things. Like to actually have a positive communication, a funny way to talk about it and not just be like, "Oh, we are all going to die, and that's it." And one other thing that was missing is hope. You need a hope. And actually there is a book I absolutely love about this hope subject, which you might know it's Man's Search for Meaning-
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Oh, yeah, Man's Search For Meaning.
Cecile Duranton:
For Meaning. Yeah. This book is incredible because it really shows how hope is important, and if you lose hope you won't do anything and eventually die. She is a bit of a bleak conclusion. But anyway, yeah, it's incredible. But this book shows you how much cope is important. And so if you don't give people hope, that's it. And which is not true when it comes to climate. We have a lot of things to do and we have a lot of opportunities and lot of hopes to have. And so we change the communication to be something that is at the same time talking about very serious stuff but in a very joyful humoristic way. We make jokes all the time, which is horrible for me because I make French jokes that I have to translate in English. It doesn't make sense. It's hard.
But our communication is made to be something that is joyful, and that's the same for our community. We in our community try to have the sense of togetherness, to joy, to all of that. Have events together, good for a drink together, all of that. We do the same in the team, and it's reflects in all the culture of time for the planet to try to see things in a positive way to be hopeful. That's the well point. We know there is a big challenge, but we all are very positive. And that's also one of the thing in entrepreneurship, try to reach the stars basically. And so you see the stars and you see them bright, and you think, "Okay, that's what we want to achieve and that's what we try to communicate all the time."
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Well, yeah, especially since you use planetary metaphors all over your website. So well done there. So tell me one thing. So I know you have very lofty high goals. How much money have you raised so far and how many shareholders do you have?
Cecile Duranton:
So the exact number, I will probably be wrong because it's always turning-
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Of course.
Cecile Duranton:
We are raising all the time, but we must be around 13 million that we have raised now and a little bit more than 70,000 shareholders. So we are quite a lot. And like Time From The Planer started three years ago in France, 33 years ago actually. And at the beginning everyone was saying it's impossible, no one will ever invest. That's not something that can work. And today we have more than 70,000 people with us. So it seems it works.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Yeah. And so I would love for you to speak to why does that number, the number of your shareholders, why does it matter so much?
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah, that's actually a good question. So basically what make Time For The Planet strong is the number of people we have. And just to give you an idea, so when we started Time For The Planet, we didn't have anything, but then we were about step by step to have more and more shareholders. With 15,000 shareholders, we were able to convince our scientific committee to be our scientific committee for free, which they will have never done if they didn't see that they were people behind us. Then we continue to have more and more shareholder and each time we cross a step, we are able to unlock something being like to having bigger investor, investing in Time For The Planet to have, we were able to build a climate dividend. I didn't talk much about the climate dividend.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
We can touch on this now. Yes, please.
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah. So basically climate dividend is what we use to measure our impact. And we didn't want to do this for ourselves because we think that today finance needs a natural standard measure of impact, which crazy enough doesn't exist. But it doesn't. Yeah. When we realized it didn't exist, we were like, what?
Anne V Muhlethaler:
That's crazy. I've said that a lot in this conversation, by the way.
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah, yeah. A lot of crazy stuff. But when we realized there was no actual measure that was standard, we decided to build it. And so the goal of a climate dividend is when you invest in whatever company, if this company is doing something to decarbonize our economy, you will get back your impact after the end of the year. So if the company, for example, you own 20% of a company and thanks to their innovation, they saved 1000 tons of CO2, then you will get 20% off that, so you will get 200 tons of CO2 equivalent that are saved. So that's an information.
And so thanks to the fact that we were a lot of people, a citizen movement, we were actually able to get the intonation to get part of the French government to get big standards, like Gold standard for example, very big actors of the carbon market to work with us. They will never have done that if we were not a citizen movement.
And all the time it's because we are a lot of people, that we can get more and more things done. We can get more and more big investors. We can get people to listen to us. And another thing that is really important as well and that we didn't expect that much actually at the beginning, is we finance companies and these companies, to deploy them, they need lots of stuff. They need clients, they need help sometimes on some subjects that need sometimes experts. And to have such a huge community, it's actually a community that is willing to help them.
And it's such a powerful thing because when our companies are looking for something, sometimes for a contract in a company, they want to have as a prospect, it can be anything, they most of the time can find it in our community. And today it's very true in France, but the goal is to have that everywhere in the world. And that's such a powerful thing because alone, as a citizen, you wouldn't really have this part, you wouldn't be connected to the right person because you didn't know them, you didn't know this company actually needed your help.
But because of Time For The Planet, we are able to connect these people and we are able to use the skills of different citizen. At one point we'll have the perfect skill that we need to deploy this innovation. And that's such an incredible thing. And we always get so impressed by what we are able to achieve thanks to our community, because sometimes we are looking for something and we're like, it's impossible. We'll never find someone and we do. And the more we are, the more we will be able to have this happen that shows that when citizen go together, they can just achieve incredible things by being part of the community. You might at one point, maybe in two years just change something that we began changing, but if you weren't part of this community, you will not be able to know about that.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Wonderful. Oh yeah, I didn't tell our listeners how I connected with you. So I was so interested in Time For The Planet that I wrote a blog post and posted it in my newsletter for AVM Consulting. And because of the very unique way that your company communicates with their shareholders, your email came through saying, "Hey Anne, thanks for joining." And I thought, huh, it looks like it's her actual email. Not one of those do not reply emails. I thought, well, I'm going to share the blog post because if you are communicating like this, I'm going to communicate back. And that's how we got in touch and that's how I pitched to interview you because I was like, I want to know more.
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah. And I think that's one of the things that we have is we really try to answer to everyone that send us an email, being a shareholder or not actually. And our communication is meant to be like, of course we have automatic emails, but they're always meant to invite you to answer if you want and we will answer back as well. So we try to be as close as possible to our shareholders. We are not everywhere. So in France we do regularly contact with our shareholders. We are going to do more of them as well in London. And with time when we will grow, we will do it everywhere, but it's really the goal is to be accessible to our shareholders. Even if we are only 10, that's one of the thing we really want to have is to be able to talk with our shareholders, for them to meet us when they want, to ask question if they want to and all of that.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
So I think this speaks to branding and to values. So looping back to the beginning of our conversation when you were sharing how you became disillusioned with your previous job and you started to look for something that was more aligned with your values and how you started volunteering, I'm guessing that there's a through line between your values and the way that you guys communicate. I think this is very powerful. You just said you were wanting to be accessible and that does come through in the emails that you send out. So congratulations.
Cecile Duranton:
Thank you.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Your goal is clearly, it's coming through to me on the other side.
Cecile Duranton:
That's really nice to know. And from the beginning it was that, as a co-founder we're like that. When I joined Time For The Planet, I was a shareholder, and that's one of the thing I loved about Time For The Planet. And we all have such a strong connection to the values of Time For The Planet and we embody them all the time because we believe in them.
And it's not like some companies, they have values but they are just writing on the website. We actually really believe in our values and everyone that is in the team, they're here because they want to. And a few example are for example, so all the directors, we have a limited salary for example, but the co-founders, they worked two years without any salary. So now they are paid, but they worked two years because that's the project of their life and they wanted it to work. When I started, so I ended up being paid from the beginning, but the first day I didn't know I was going to be paid, because I say to them, I can work a few months without being paid because I love the project so much. So that's fine. And on the first day, one of the other director told me, oh, we actually can pay you.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Wow, that's wonderful.
Cecile Duranton:
But the whole team is like that and all of us, we could earn a lot more if we were doing something else.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Of course.
Cecile Duranton:
But basically we don't do Time For The Planet for that. We all do Time For The Planet because we love it. And one of the challenge honestly is that we love it a little bit too much and we are a little bit too much involved in it and sometimes it's hard to just step back and just do something else.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Sure.
Cecile Duranton:
Especially for me, and one of my other colleague as well, because we come from the community, so we used to do our work and then volunteer for Time For The Planet. But once you work, if you do that, then you just get crazy at one point. And it's hard sometimes to have a step back. And I have lots of friends in the community. And something else that is quite complicated is Time For The Planet is such a interesting project. Then when you meet people in my free time, I went to a wedding of a friend, we are friends from when we were two years old. So we don't have the same career. We do different things and our friends are different.
So I didn't know anyone during the wedding, but I met people and everyone asks, what do you do in life? And most of the time then that's it. You say, oh, I'm an accountant or I'm whatever. And people just really don't ask much more. But with Time For The Planet, they do. And so even when you are on a free time, you kind of pitch Time For The Planet all the time. And even sometimes when I'm trying not to make it appealing or anything, I have a friend just coming and saying, "Oh, Cecile, you have to explain to them what you do."
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Oh wow.
Cecile Duranton:
And I love Time For The Planet, I really love it. But sometimes you just want to be doing something else.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I think you need to have a cover identity.
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah. Someone told me I should say, I don't remember.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I think accountant is a good one.
Cecile Duranton:
Accountant is a good one.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Yeah, I mean worse comes to worst, someone's going to say, "Oh, would you be free to do my taxes?" And you can always say you're too busy because many of them are too busy.
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah, exactly. Once we talk about it, we are still very happy to do it. And so that's sometimes hard to step back and to do something else.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I can just about imagine. So is there anything else that you would like to share with our listeners before we go to the quickfire round?
Cecile Duranton:
I mean I talked a little bit about it, but I think that's one of the key things I believe in, is that's not something that is here to annoy us or to be a terrible thing. It's just our planet is doing what it does, being herself, and we have to see this as an opportunity to change and to get better. And I do think there is lots and lots of hopes. Lots of people get a bit depressed or say that we won't be able to do anything or anyway because another country is not doing what they should, then it's useless and all of that. I don't agree with that. And I think the more people we have that engage themselves and get inspired and you are able to inspire people around you.
And one of the thing that I think is so important is you have to inspire people not to push them to do exactly what you want. And that's a huge difference. When you talk about what you are doing because you're passionate about it, because you love what you do, without saying to them they should do the same, people get interested, they ask question, they want to know more. But if you say to them, you should do that, that doesn't work because no one wants to have someone telling them what they should do and you don't like it either. No one does. What we need to do today, and what everyone can do is just to do what they believe is right. And by doing this, they will inspire people, they will drive the change step by step. And the more we are to do that, that's basically a snowball effect. And so that's I think the thing it's most important for me in this is really this message.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Yeah. I think it's the citizen activist or also the consumer activist. Because we have the power of our wallets. And I know that it sounds really hard if you've never done that, but the same way that you could get in touch with your local government if you're not happy about some things that are happening near you, you also have the possibility of getting in touch with various companies that you normally shop with, bank with, whatever it is, and just tell them about what works and what doesn't work and apply pressure in the only way that you can as an individual anyway.
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah. And I know sometimes you feel alone because you feel like, oh I'm the only one doing that, but you're not. Lots of people are doing it. And that's why one of the things that is important is to be part of communities, whichever is the best for you. I love the Time For The Planet community because it's such a positive one, but there are others as well. And I think it's an important thing to know that you are not alone doing stuff and that help.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for adding that. So now here are a few questions that I love to ask all of my guests, the podcast, being at the crossroads between business and mindfulness, I'd like to know what keeps you grounded? What mindful rituals, yoga, meditation, sports, what works for you? What keeps you balanced-ish?
Cecile Duranton:
I've always loved sports and that's something that is such an important thing to me to have times regularly to do sports. I love outdoor sports. That's really something that I feel is so relaxing, a lot more than going to the gym or it depends on people, but I just love to be outside. So that's one of the first thing is sports.
And then I talked about my vacation a little bit before, and going out of the city is such an important thing for me, because I mean city is a place where you have lots of things happening, lots of people. But I love the quietness and how beautiful nature is and how you can just rest your mind when you are in a forest or in a mountain or in a river, whatever it is. And I think that's one of the thing I always say, I cannot stay more than one month and something in the city without going out. I have to. And when I don't, I start feeling a bit weird and then I realize that's why. I really think that's one of the things that is so important.
And the other thing is, it might sound like a bit mainstream, but it's really to spend time with family, friends and not forget about it. Because when you start to do so much stuff, it sometimes just gets where you don't call any more your friends and you don't see it any more your friends as much as you did. And I have one rule with my friends, it is like when I'm drinking a beer with you, don't talk about Time For The Planet. So I do have rules with my friend where I'm like, that time, when it's not a time.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I love that.
Cecile Duranton:
And so I think it's important to set boundaries, especially because I have so much friends who are involved in Time For The Planet as well. Yeah, I love learning new stuff. So I'm trying to learn piano, I'm trying to learn German as well. One of the important thing is to never have your work, however you are passionate about it, being the only thing you need to have all the times, where your brain, even if it's learning or anything, but just your brain doing something else. And I encourage anyone to have sleep well, do sports, all of that. Just to have a brisk walk sometimes, just to relax a little bit. That's such a good thing.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Now what's your favorite word, but a word that you could tattoo on yourself at least for a while?
Cecile Duranton:
It's hope. I love this word. I think it's something so important and I think from hope comes a lot of thing. Also love is something that is connected to hope as well. We hope and we care and we love. And I think that's one of the word I love so much because it's just seeing something bright in the future and I just love this word and what it represents for us.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Thank you. What does connection mean to you?
Cecile Duranton:
So for me, connection is really about how you understand people. You can be connected with people and just have them as friend, but never really be able to try to understand them in the sense of being able to try to be them. I don't know how to express that. But when you think about their problems, for example, instead of just being thinking about their problems as you, trying to think about their problems of them and trying to understand the story, trying to understand where they come from, if you had the exact same life, what you will feel. And I feel like connection is to be able to connect to this point to people, to really be able to know them enough and understand them enough to feel like what it could be if you had gone through their life.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Thank you. What song best represents you?
Cecile Duranton:
And that's such a difficult question for me because...
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I'm very aware of that.
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah, and I mean it depends. I think it depends of times of my life and times, different ways. And I'm such a bad person to remember the title and name of an artist. But more than a song, I think Brazilian music in general, especially Samba, Forró, they have this thing in them that just transport you and is such joyful, and when you hear them you can't do anything but dance. And I think that's kind of me. I'm always just, even when it's difficult, I always say bright side, I'm always happy, I'm always wanting to do something, I'm always on the move. And I feel like Brazilian music, especially Samba and Forró for example, they have this thing that even when it's difficult, even when what they are thinking about is not easy, you take that and you bring the positivity out of it. And I love all this.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Yeah. What is the sweetest thing that's ever happened to you?
Cecile Duranton:
That's also a very hard question, but I would say probably that one of the best thing was to magically align everything when I decided to quit my job and all of that, and be like I had no idea what I was going to do and somehow it just went the right way. And you know when you feel just, it's just being all the planets aligned at the same time, and you don't really know why, but you just feel like that's the way you should go. And it was just an incredible feeling. And there are thousands of other things that I could talk about, but I think that was just the feeling of being at the right place and realizing I was doing the right thing. Because of course when you just change you're not sure, you're trying and you don't know. And then you having this feeling of being like, okay, that's it, that's what I want to do. That's where I want to be.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
What is a favorite book that you can share with us?
Cecile Duranton:
And that's also such a difficult question because I love books.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
It doesn't need to be your uniquely most favorite, but what's one that you love or maybe one that you've gifted a lot?
Cecile Duranton:
I mean, there is, if I have to choose one and it's probably going to be very weird, I don't know if you know this book, Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. I just love this book and I didn't think I will be so passionate about it when I heard it in the first place. I mean when you talk about mindfulness and all of that, it's such an interesting book to understand your sleep. I mean, in my life I've tend to be like, oh, sleeping is a loss of time because you are sleeping and not doing stuff, and this book just changed everything.
It's like, it's such a fascinating thing to understand what actually goes when you sleep. I always talk about this to everyone, because I just love this book. And it's just like we don't realize how incredible our brain is and this book is just uncovering some stuff about your brain that we normally don't think about, you learn about you, you learn about how crazy life and nature are and how nature was able to build systems, or brain, in this case that are just incredible. It's just amazing. Also loving this, they talk about animals that have different ways of sleeping and it's just so interesting. I love it. So if I have to give one book, that will be this one. There are so many books I love, but I find this one fascinating.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Thank you so much. And that brings me to our last question. What brings you happiness?
Cecile Duranton:
Simple things. I love to be with a friend and we are just looking at the sunset or something like that and it's just, oh, there was one time that was actually wonderful, and that represent quite a lot what happiness can look like for me. So I was riding in the mountain, so that's already happiness to me, to be riding on a horse the whole time. And then so we stopped at night and we let the horses to rest, and then we went up. It was very steep, very tiring, very hard to go, especially we didn't go the right way, so we did the hard one.
But anyway, we arrived there, we were five or six, we all sat in silence and we just looked at absolute beauty of the sun just going down, and the colors were amazing, the mountains were amazing, and it's just this kind of time where you feel at peace and it's just a wonderful, beautiful but simple moment. And I love simple moment like that. And I especially love to share them with other people, because after that, we all went silent and had this amazing moment and after it takes a little bit of time before you talk again because it's such an incredible thing to see amazing moments, when you share them with other people, that's just such a happy thing. That's just it. And I love these kind of moments.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Thank you so much. Cecile, it's been such a pleasure to talk to you.
Cecile Duranton:
Thank you. Me too. I think we got a little bit over time.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Just a tad. I thought that could happen. So I will put links in the show notes for people to connect with Time For The Planet. And if people are interested in talking to you directly, where can they find you? Social media or other?
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah, I use LinkedIn quite a lot, so LinkedIn is perfect. I can also give my email. No problem. So it's cecile@time-planet.com.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Awesome. Thank you so much. I'm going to wish you a lovely rest of the day and hopefully we'll get a chance to connect again soon.
Cecile Duranton:
Yeah, with pleasure. Thank you very much. It was lovely to talk with you.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Wonderful, thank you so much Cecile. Speak soon. Bye.
Cecile Duranton:
Speak to you soon, bye.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
So friends and listeners, thanks again for joining me today. If you'd like to hear more, you can subscribe to the show on the platform of your choice. If you'd like to connect, you can get in touch with me at annev on Twitter, Anne Muhlethaler on LinkedIn, or on Instagram at _outoftheclouds, where I also share daily musings about mindfulness. You can also find all of the episodes of the podcast and much more on my website, annevmuhlethaler.com. If you don't know how to spell it, it's also going to be in the show notes. If you would like to get regular news directly delivered to your inbox, I invite you to sign up to my monthly newsletter. So that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening to Out of the Clouds. I hope that you will join me again next time and until then be well. Be safe and take care.