Shubber Ali's Native Plant Revolution
Business as UNusual Ep 16 - Season 3 Transcript
Aicila [00:00:00]:
Hello. Welcome to Business as Unusual. This is Aisla, and I'm here today with Shubhir Ali. Welcome to the show, Shubhir.
Shubber Ali [00:00:06]:
Thank you, Aisla. It's great to be here.
Aicila [00:00:08]:
I am really delighted to to speak with you about your business. So would you be willing to give people a little summary of what you're up to?
Shubber Ali [00:00:17]:
Yeah. So the short version is that we are an ecommerce business in the native plant industry, and what we do is try to make it easy for people to learn about and then find and order native plants for their own yard. These are the things that support pollinators and songbirds, and they're delivered directly to your doorstep. So think of it like, you know, Stitch Fix or Blue Apron or one of those, but for native plants for your garden.
Aicila [00:00:40]:
Wow. So that's an interesting and I think a if Dairy Fitz business is unusual, what made you think of that?
Shubber Ali [00:00:50]:
So it's actually it's an interesting story. This goes back it's almost 3 different threads that come together. So I have to first set the clock back to 1994 when I graduated from business school. So I've just dated myself here a little bit. And I signed up with it was it was United Way. It was our our partner. I was at KPMG at the time. And they did one of those, you know, you can donate different charities, and I started to get involved in environmental charities.
Shubber Ali [00:01:14]:
And I started to support the National Wildlife Federation, which over the last 30 years, my donations have grown as I've been able to be more successful. But so NWF is the first threat. I got to know about the organization and what they do to support wildlife and habitat. The second one is I then started a a hobby while I lived in in the DC area of gardening, and I've never kind of it's never gotten out of my system. Partly, I think, to support butterflies and bees and all that, but also just because the first time I grew my own tomato plant, if any of your listeners or if you have ever grown your own vegetables and then you taste them, you realize how much better they are than what you get at the store. And so I've been gardening for almost 30 years, just growing. In fact, I have a bunch of, vegetable starts on my back deck right now that are getting ready to go into the garden when it gets a little bit warmer. And then the third one was about four and a half years ago, almost 5 years ago now, we moved to Maryland where we live from the Bay Area.
Shubber Ali [00:02:04]:
And the house that we got has about 2 acres of yard in front of it all lawn. And so my first thought was, let me go put in the garden and post the vegetable garden, but then also flowers for the for the butterflies and the and the bees and all that. And I was about to go to my local Lowe's, which I was the local garden center for me. And this is what I've been doing for 2 decades, by the way. It's going to the local garden center. Normally, it's Lowe's or it'd be Home Depot, whoever's closest, or maybe, you know, Ace Hardware store or whatever. And a book had just come out that was recommended by the National Wildlife Federation, which I get their emails because it's a supporter, by a professor from the University of Delaware named Doug Tallamy. And the book is called Nature's Best Hope.
Shubber Ali [00:02:42]:
And I read the book, and it was a moment like the needles going across the record, you know, like a zit moment because all of a sudden I discovered that what I've been doing for over 20 years to help the bees and the butterflies and the rest that I thought was helping was actually hurting them in the environment, which is a bit of a a jarring moment for me. So I thought, okay. Well and the reason why is that I discovered the importance of native plants. We've spent over 200 years systematically terraforming the United States, ripping out all of the native species and putting in lawns primarily, but then also, you know, all these invasive species you buy at the garden centers. So of course I went to the garden center thinking I'll go buy native plants then. I spent 3 hours googling literally every single plant they sold at the local Lowe's. Not a single one was native. They were all from other parts of the world.
Shubber Ali [00:03:30]:
And that's when the penny dropped for me that the how big the problem was because, you know, gardening is a $50,000,000,000 industry, but it's mostly selling you junk that and I mean that in the sense that it's bad for the environment, not good for the the local species that have evolved with it. And everybody knows about the monarch. Right? I've I've known about the monarch for over a decade that they only milkweed and that's why they're in such decline because we've ripped out all the milkweed. So people are planting milkweed everywhere. It turns out it's lots of different species, not just the monarchs. They're just the most extreme example, like the canary in the coal mine. So I thought, okay. Well, let me go find native plants.
Shubber Ali [00:04:04]:
So I started looking for native nurseries, and they're not easy to find. There are not that many of them out there. So I thought, okay. Well, I was a partner at Accenture at the time in in innovation and, you know, I had a unique role where I could go do work with anybody, and I didn't have to charge them for it. So I had a very special role at Accenture to do this. So I reached out to the National Wildlife Federation and said, I wanna do a pro bono project with you to solve my problem and the problem that I think many people have, which is it's they have to be aware of what native plants are, then they have to be educated about what's native to them and why it matters and how do you, you know, take care of them. And then they have to have access to them. Right? So it's a 3 part problem.
Shubber Ali [00:04:43]:
And they agreed, and we ended up doing a bunch of workshops, you know, with their staff and and some of the people from my team over at Accenture. And we created the basis for an ecommerce business. Now it turned out the National Wildlife Federation actually had a program they started in 1973 called Garden For Wildlife, which was an educational program. And so we built it on top of that. So we created Garden for Wildlife.com, which was going to be an ecommerce place where you could learn about and then buy these native plants. And they contracted with growers in different states that could grow native plants specifically, not using neonics and and other bad pesticides and things. So you don't wanna, like, plant native plants that will poison the the the pollinators, for instance. So long story short, everything went great.
Shubber Ali [00:05:27]:
We ended up building the platform for them, and they launched it. And I was the very first customer, and those plants are doing amazing in my yard. Well, about a year later, I went back to them and said, you know, that the industry is actually really, really big. It's hyper fragmented. There's no clear leader. You could create a really big business, which could be very valuable to you. NWF as a not for profit because NWF is one of the leading not for profits in the environmental space, but they're still not for profit. And as you know, having, you know, run not for profit before, funds are always something everybody's trying to, you know, find in donors and the rest.
Shubber Ali [00:06:00]:
And so I said, what if you could own a share, the majority of a company that could actually go public at some point? And it took them about 9 months to kinda really get get their heads around it because they're not for profit. But, you know, you could hire people and give them equity. You could raise money from investors. You could do all kinds of things that you can't do inside a not for profit. And you can pay salaries if you don't pay inside a not for profit. They finally agreed. And one of the the things they they said though was and I was thinking I would be like a director of this company, you know, as an independent director of the thing. And they said, we want you to come in and be the CEO.
Shubber Ali [00:06:32]:
Because I had built companies before in my previous life, you know, I done I was VP of innovation at Salesforce. I've been at Accenture and KPMG, but I'd also built a number of companies. And so they said, come in and and run this thing, which so I quit my perfectly good job. And and about a year and a half ago, I started as CEO of Garden For Wildlife. And then it took us about 9 months to actually spin out of NWO. So we spun out as a for profit company, and they are our biggest shareholder. They own about 80% of the company, but then the employees have some of the shares, and then we have outside investors as well. And the last 18 months have been kind of like drinking from a fire hose, learning all about the plant business because, again, not I mean, I've been a gardener, but actually understanding the supply chain side and all the rest of that.
Shubber Ali [00:07:14]:
This is where all my consulting skills come in, but to a different industry, right, which is Mhmm.
Aicila [00:07:18]:
Plants. Yeah.
Shubber Ali [00:07:19]:
But it's been fantastic. And just the, you know, being able to do something that actually matters and has purpose and isn't helping a client come up with the next flavor of a, like, a a cookie or whatever else. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But to me, this actually matters. And when my kids I have twins who are 14 year olds and they're both in scouts. My son and my daughter are both in scout troops. And so, of course, I have a strong interest in the outdoors and the environment and all of that. And when they see what I do, you know, seeing how inspired they are by the fact that I'm doing something that actually is helping this world that we've messed up over the last 100 years plus, It's a great feeling.
Shubber Ali [00:07:56]:
So that's that's the story of how I got here.
Aicila [00:08:00]:
So many thoughts, and I I really celebrate all of that. It's it is really important. And I I do in my consulting business, I actually work with indigenous woman organization that does climate change activism through hemp. And so Alright. And then she works with a perm native permaculturalist here in the Colorado area. And one of the things that they talk about in the indigenous spaces that I've been part of is that using native plants, in addition to being good for the species the the different wildlife species in the area, it's better for you as someone who lives here. And it's also a little easier to cultivate because this is where it's meant to be. So you don't have to be the the most amazing gardener ever.
Aicila [00:08:44]:
It's a groundley space.
Shubber Ali [00:08:46]:
That's exactly right. So people keep, you know, saying, well, I'm not a green thumb. Like, you could actually be essentially, like, a skeleton thumb, right, or a black thumb, whatever you wanna call it. Because the native plants know how to survive there. They spent, you know, 1,000 or 1,000,000 of years evolving to be in this area at the site. So you don't need all the fertilizers and the extra watering the rest. And, you know, a great example is I show people photos of the root systems of native plants versus, like, invasive species or, of course, lawn only goes down a few inches, and then it's just dirt, right, which is how it gets so compacted. And, you know, there are native plants that I have in my garden that have roots going down 10 feet, 15 feet, which opens up the soil, allows for water.
Shubber Ali [00:09:23]:
I mean, there's there's so many benefits, but you actually hit on a huge one that I'm just really discovering a lot more in the last 5 or 6 months since I read a book called The Nature Fix that came out in 2017, that the science is actually there. Most people aren't aware of just exposure to nature is actually proven. In other parts of the world, they actually know this. Right? So in Japan, they do the forest bathing and they have some other thing in South Korea and then, of course, in Scandinavia with with birdsong in the morning. This is actually proven to improve your physical health, not just and mental health, not just, like, at the moment that you're there, but they did scientific experiments where they measured, you know, like, your cortisol levels and your systolic, you know, pressure and all the rest over a month and saw improvement staying just from taking an hour walk in the woods. Now it's real woods and not, like, just going to your local park or whatever. It's it's actually exposure to real nature, and that's where the things like exposure to birdsong and other things all fit with our our that part of our brain that evolved a long time ago, and we're we're bringing that back.
Aicila [00:10:24]:
It is really vitally important to our mental and physical health. They released some things during the pandemic about the children in countries that played in the dirt more, had a better immunity to COVID. And it it's it's something I feel like as Western people and specifically the US, I think is one of the least educated on how we are actually complete beings. Like you can't actually compartmentalize yourself from nature. You can't compartmentalize yourself emotionally. We're whole people. And that means that we do kind of need some of these things like connection to the earth that, and we're we have the ability to control things a little, so you're not we're not quite as at the whim of the elements, but that doesn't mean that we are not still part of this whole system. So is that something do you do a lot of education then as part of this? Or
Shubber Ali [00:11:17]:
Not as much as we'd like to yet because we're still fairly new. We're only about 2 years old as a as a business. So we're but that's but that's actually part of what the 50 year program. So when we when we were created, there's still the education component of Garden For Wildlife that sits inside of the National Wildlife Federation, and then we're the retail arm, so to speak. Right. But you actually hit on a key piece of that, which is so I was at the climate conference in Dubai in December, the the comp I guess, whatever it was. And it was really interesting hearing the the narrative change slightly and I think in the right way, which is up until now and still many people do talk about carbon, carbon, carbon, carbon, carbon. Like, it's this thing by itself.
Shubber Ali [00:11:57]:
Mhmm. Instead of thinking it holistically, like you just said, like like, our environment, nature, us, we're all holistic and we can't compartmentalize. But that's what they've been doing. And as a result, they were fixing one problem by creating 6 other problems and not realizing that they're all intertwined. Right? So the example being, it's not just about carbon sequestration. You have to think about water and you have to think about habitat and you have to think about biodiversity because they're all linked. Right? And, well, examples of what happens when you don't do that is you plant these giant monoculture forests to try to sequester carbon and you put them in the wrong places. So there was like a met a woman who represented one of the countries from Africa and she said, Yeah, you know, we planted a huge forest of gum trees, which having lived in Australia, I'm like, yeah.
Shubber Ali [00:12:41]:
Those aren't native to that part of Africa. She goes, yes. We discovered that when they started to destroy the water table Because wrong wrong plant, wrong place. It's it's it's all about, you know, getting things back in balance. And so when you when you restore habitat the right way with the right species, you bring back the biodiversity that's been lost over time. It actually improves the water quality, water absorption, and all that, and it sequesters carbon. Right? So it's actually all 4 of these pieces come together, and that's that's kind of the earth. It's a living cycle.
Shubber Ali [00:13:10]:
It already knows how to do this.
Aicila [00:13:12]:
Right. Exactly. It's kind of like with kids. You just have to get out of the way. They know what they're doing. Keep keep them keep them alive. Get out of the way. They'll figure the rest of it out.
Aicila [00:13:20]:
And, I mean Yeah.
Shubber Ali [00:13:21]:
You might not wanna go to the lawn darts and things like that. There are a couple things that probably work to take out of the market, but generally let them play. Right?
Aicila [00:13:29]:
So and yeah. And the earth itself. During COVID, it was interesting to me how just stopping everything for a little bit led to the clean air over some of the most polluted places in the world, the animals, the fish, and the dolphins coming into bays that they had been absented.
Shubber Ali [00:13:46]:
Oh, right. Yeah.
Aicila [00:13:47]:
And I I just thought, you know, it's so refreshing to realize that we both don't know very much. I don't mean to, in any way, downplay it. We are facing some real challenges and some genuine climate crises. And there is hope that we if if we could get on board together and and create some of these impacts, like just a few months of people not driving made such a big difference. And what would it take to create that in a more sustained way that isn't about a pandemic? Because there is hope. The the people that are like, oh, you know, there we have possibilities are right, and the people who are saying this is a real actual crisis are also right. So let maybe let's bring that together.
Shubber Ali [00:14:30]:
Well, you know, and you're exactly right. And this is where the 2 things come to mind. 1 is, you know, there's always saying you can do anything you want, but you can't do everything, which is kind of the modern version of at least not at the same time. Instead of the modern version of the old Marcus Aurelius quote where he's like, a man who chases 2 rabbits catches none. Right? You have to, like, focus and do something. But then you can you know, and there's so many of these expressions that you can do more in 5 years than you think, but less than in 1 year less in 1 year than you think. Right? And they're all true because it's about focus, and it's about making sure you've got, like, a specific thing you're trying to solve for, the right problem. In the case of of this big set of problems we have right now, I I really was lucky that last spring, I had a chance to work with a bunch of students.
Shubber Ali [00:15:16]:
They were seniors in the business school at American University. And every year, they pick 2 companies to to work with as real life companies for their capstone class. And so Garden 4 Wildlife was one of them because I know, some of the folks over at American University, and they were able to get me into the system and just got some amazing ideas and and, in fact, some of which we're now implementing from these students. But what really struck me was that that generation, Gen Z, they actually referred to themselves a bit as Gen Dredd because they've been handed a planet where all they hear about is all the things we've done to screw it up for them. Right? So there's plastic in the in the Pacific Ocean that's bigger than the state of Texas. Right? The this just the the amount of it that's out there in terms of the spread. And the, obviously, the droughts because of the the water issues. And then, of course, carbon in the atmosphere.
Shubber Ali [00:16:02]:
And, you know, and then the pandemic. Things one after another comes up. Right? And but species loss. Right? And all these things that are happening. And one of the things they loved about Garden for Wildlife, and they said you really need to play on this, is that you can actually do something in your own yard. Now you don't have to transform all of it. Take a small section of your lawn, like just a 6 by 4 foot area. Put in, you know, 6 to 12 native plants, and you will see a change in 1 year.
Shubber Ali [00:16:28]:
You will see species coming back that weren't there before. And that actually gives people hope. Plus you're now exposed to a little more nature. I mean, my backyard now is I kid you not. I have the Merlin Burd app from the Cornell Lab, which is, you know, I'm pleased to say is one of these organizations we've partnered with. But they have this amazing app, which I tell people about if they don't if you if any of your listeners don't know about it or don't have it, it's the simplest way to describe it is it's Shazam for birds. So you literally open the app, you hit record, it listens to all the birds around you, and it tells you exactly what species they are. And And then if you click on them, you get to hear more of their song.
Shubber Ali [00:17:03]:
You get all the information about that bird, everything else. So I go out and in my backyard now, there are 15 different species of bird. When I started this four and a half years ago, there were 3. Right? Just the sheer number of beautiful songbirds that have shown up in my my backyard, turtles that have shown up now that I've put a pond in, that walked out of the forest and crossed my lawn and jumped into the pond, and, like, I'm living here now. Right? We get all kinds of amazing things. It didn't take much work. Mhmm. It's that easy.
Aicila [00:17:31]:
I feel like that is such an important and powerful offering to give people, that that opportunity to see there is an action they can take and that action can have an impact. And I I really agree. One of the things that I help my client create is a celebration of indigenous wisdom. That's what we do that for Earth Day. And it was really important to me to focus on celebrating because so much of environmentalism is kind of doom and gloom and understandably, right? Like we're not in a Pollyanna place. And if you don't remember why you love nature, if you don't find things to connect and be joyful about, it's hard to motivate yourself to get engaged.
Shubber Ali [00:18:13]:
Right.
Aicila [00:18:13]:
And so really saying, let's let's actually start with what we like. Let's start with what we can do. And I feel like the the other thing that I really appreciate is just acknowledging, you know, the the way that you started in terms of I was doing this, and I was actually being I was doing things that were harmful. And instead of beating yourself up, you're like, well, what can I do that isn't? And I feel like that's a really important adaptive attitude that we all need to to be more open to because it's so easy to get into a place of self flagellation instead of saying, alright, this actually was important to me, so let's pivot. What can I do now?
Shubber Ali [00:18:50]:
Well and and and it's exactly right. You have to hope is a very powerful, tool. It it it gets you through a lot of things. So you have to believe that you can make a difference. It's actually, a good friend of mine, that I first met working together many, many, many years ago in consulting, and we've worked together in different companies over time. He lives in Chicago in the Loop and has a a loft in kind of the inner part of the city there. And when I started working here, I said to him, you know, James, you need to go get some plants. And he said, why don't I get plants? I have a balcony, and I'm in the middle of the city.
Shubber Ali [00:19:27]:
Nothing comes to the middle of the city. And I said, trust me on this one. Just buy 3 plants. Just get some pots, get some dirt, and put it on there because he doesn't have a yard. He said, okay. I'll do that. A month after the plants were put in the ground, he texts me out of the woods. He's like, oh my god.
Shubber Ali [00:19:41]:
There's a monarch on my balcony. Right? So it's funny because also I think as as we get to a certain age, there's so many memes out there of this about people who become bird watchers, who become, you know, wildlife watchers, is that once you discover it, it's like this whole other hidden world you had no idea was around you. And then you start looking for it everywhere. And it's amazing because it it really does like, it reinforces almost like a flywheel. Then you get more hope and you go, what else can I do? What what other thing can I do? And that actually led to a program we launched last year, which I'm super proud of, which is, you know, is is if you're familiar with them, sure you are, Things like Warby Parker and TOMS Shoes and Bombas and how they have these programs where, you know, for every pair of eyeglasses they sell, they give away a pair of and for every pair of shoes they sell, they give away a pair for free or or socks. Right? So we're like, well, why don't we do the same thing? And so we did the say we did exactly the same thing. We launched a program that we call the plant bank, where essentially for as many plants as we sell, we donate the same number. But we don't do one for 1 because it's, you know, not really scalable.
Shubber Ali [00:20:42]:
What we do instead are gardens. And so the very first one we did was in East Baltimore last June. So I'm looking forward to going back soon and seeing it blooming now a year later because these perennial plants, you know, they they spend the 1st year really growing their roots deep, and then they start to explode outward with just amazing gardens. And we planted last year since we launched the program in June, we planted 87 gardens across the country. And, you know, each one we put in hundreds of plants to create places to really help with a bit of the environmental justice lens as well because there are lots of places that have been marginalized historically in our country. You think about tree cover, you think about obviously native plants as well. And so we're putting them in places like inner city schools, community gardens, houses of worship, where we can expose more people to this nature as well. Because let's be frank, the pollinators and the songbirds don't care what your ZIP code is and how affluent you are.
Shubber Ali [00:21:33]:
They go where they need to go. And so we're creating corridors for them. And so we we get to multiple benefits out of the same program. And, you know, we we put them in across the 41 states that we operate in. We're now in Colorado actually as well. We just opened up this year, so we're in Colorado too. But, we and we have many more that we're planning on doing this year as well and going forward. So if any of your listeners are with a community group or a a community garden or or not for profit and would love a garden, they're free.
Shubber Ali [00:22:03]:
Like, literally, all you do is is the the shipping cost, which is quite low. It's, you know, I think it's, like, $15 per tray of plants, but you get hundreds of plants. And it's on our website. You can go there and just it's a simple form, apply, and you and you get a free garden. The reason I bring that up though is that as people start to do it in their own yards, the next step is in volunteering because these gardens are planted by volunteers. And we get lots of volunteers to come out and plant these gardens, which gets people connected with each other, but also with nature and with giving back. So it becomes, again, this virtuous cycle.
Aicila [00:22:32]:
I love that. And I'm so glad you're here in Colorado. I was gonna ask. So I absolutely know so many people. I'm like, oh, now I have to call people.
Shubber Ali [00:22:39]:
Yes. We just we just opened up with our Fort Collins Nursery. It's our it's our local grower there in Colorado, and we're super excited to have them on board.
Aicila [00:22:47]:
Yeah. That Fort Collins is a lovely lovely little town. So
Shubber Ali [00:22:51]:
Yep.
Aicila [00:22:52]:
So can you share any advice that you live by or it's influenced how you approach your work?
Shubber Ali [00:23:00]:
Sure. I'll give you a a meaningful one and then I think a slightly trivial one, but it actually it was some of the best advice I got from my boss. I don't know if it's the best advice, but it was good advice I got from one of my first bosses ever. So the the meaningful one is time is the only thing you have of value, any of us have of value in in a real sense. I mean, our health, obviously, but time is the only thing you can never get back. I don't care if you're Bill Gates or or fill in the blank with whichever, you know, billionaire you want, Warren Buffett, whomever else. They can they can spend money on things that can help them optimize time. They can never buy a second back.
Shubber Ali [00:23:35]:
Nobody can. And so where you spend your time matters. And, you know, I think the pandemic really started to give people a little bit of a reality check around what actually matters, which is why you have a move toward work from home. And we're able to do this over, you know, on a a podcast. Right? Things are changing. But when you think about what matters and where where you spend your time, what can you do that actually is giving back in a way and contributing? It doesn't mean you have to go quit your job and go volunteer not for profit unless you wanna do that because I understand people have mortgages and bills and everything else. But you can still do something. And just doing one small thing, whether it's volunteering or it's putting in a garden or what have you, All of these things add up.
Shubber Ali [00:24:16]:
Imagine if 300,000,000 people in this country all donated 1 hour to a cause, the impact it could have. That is is, I think, really powerful. So time is the only thing you have of value that so choosing where you spend it well instead of, you know, too many people spend I see them on their phones all the time walking around, and they're just scrolling through social media. And while I'm on social media now because I have to be I actually have a, you know, a team that actually handles a lot of our posts for the company. Mhmm. I personally left a lot of social media years ago when I really understood this because there was a time where I was on I I won't mention any platforms by name because I don't wanna get any of them mad at me. But the I was I was on a platform, had lots of friends on the platform, but, actually, people I knew from school and college and all the rest and and work. And I realized that all these things that I was liking, 6 months later, like memes and and posts and all this, I actually didn't remember any of them 6 months later.
Shubber Ali [00:25:15]:
Right? So then why was I looking at them? It was almost like cat cotton candy for your mind. Mhmm. So I thought, well, how much time am I spending on this? When I pulled up by the little time report on my phone, I realized how much time I'm spending. I thought, what else could I have done with that time? You know, I could have learned to play the piano. I could have learned to do a lot of different things that I've wanted to do, but I kept saying I don't have enough time. Actually, I had a lot of time. So this is this is kind of where I showed them and say, how am I using my time? It doesn't mean you have to work all the time or be productive, but just think about what you're actually spending it on and maybe slightly make some allocation changes. You'll notice a big difference.
Aicila [00:25:51]:
Mhmm.
Shubber Ali [00:25:51]:
So that's the that's the meaningful advice. The other one is learn to drink coffee black. That my my boss taught me, and his boss had taught him that one. And I thought actually that was back when I was doing consulting, and I was, you know, kind of mid level, and we go to meet with clients. And he said, I'll tell you why. Because when you go to meet with somebody and their executive assistant comes out and says, would you like coffee or or whatever? You know, the answer should always be yes, not no. Because they're they have a a box they can check if you say yes. I want that.
Shubber Ali [00:26:21]:
But when you say yes, like, if you drink coffee, and then you say, do you have whole milk, 2% soy milk, almond milk, oat milk, or do you have the pink or the yellow or the blue or the a regular sugar or raw sugar? Now you're taking what was a box to check and you're turning it into a job to do, and you're giving them work. People don't like it when you give them work, but if you check their box, they feel like they've accomplished something they needed to do, they like you. He said, watch what happens when you just start saying yes. Can I have black coffee? And I was get it being able to get meetings and follow-up meetings. I'd call the executive assistant, and they'd always be happy to talk to me. It was the weirdest thing. Like, this is real. And he he was like, yeah.
Shubber Ali [00:27:00]:
This I mean, I learned this from my boss and it actually works. And, you know, he could always get meetings and it's the same thing. So then I learned to drink it black, and now I can't drink it any other way because it's too sweet and but it makes it easy because you
Aicila [00:27:11]:
can always find black coffee. No. It's true. When I think that actually speaks to something I'm observing in you in a larger sense was just to be thoughtful of other people and their time, that, you know, ultimately, being aware of your impact is a huge flex in a certain way, because then you can move through life more gracefully and more respectfully, and you can build connections with people because they actually get that you are showing up to be present with them and to engage around whatever it is that's there as opposed to objectifying or creating an agenda that you're trying to force people into.
Shubber Ali [00:27:49]:
It it's it's in in you you hit on another piece of it as well, which is, you know, all the people who sit on Zoom meetings or what used to be conference calls. It it one of the jokes is if if I was able to show slides, I'd show you the first part of the garden I put in my yard at the start of all of this. I dug a pond when I was still at Accenture. I had the AirPods in my my ears. I put the phone on mute because you spend a lot of time on meetings that you don't nobody actually participates in. But, you know, you stay in your meeting. 20 people would be on the call. 2 people would be talking.
Shubber Ali [00:28:19]:
1 person will be waiting for their next turn, and everybody else will be doing other stuff, but they were on the call. Right? Yeah. And so I dug a pond. I dug a, you know, 8, 11 by 13 foot pond and put a liner in and filled it and and then planted my native garden around it. Now it's, you know, this beautiful oasis in my yard. Well, if you're on calls with people, you're on Zoom calls and lots of people, you can tell when people are actually doing other stuff. And it's not just that it's it's disrespectful. It's you're not actually learning anything.
Shubber Ali [00:28:47]:
You're not doing you're not engaging. So why are you wasting your time on it? Because it's proven that multitasking is bad for our brains, not just, like, mentally, but physically. It actually shrinks part of your brain if you'd multitask too long. And yet we all insist on doing it. So I've been trying, and not that I'm 100% perfect at it, really trying and saying, okay. If I'm gonna do something, like, talk with you right now, I'm just going to talk with you. I'm gonna listen to what you have to say, and we're going to have a discussion and a dialogue as opposed to, well, I'm gonna do that, but I'm also gonna check my my Slack over here, and I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna because you're not doing any of them well.
Aicila [00:29:21]:
Right. Well, some of it is, I think, it's like a muscle. I because I used to be a huge reader. I get lost in books. And then I realized a few years ago that I wasn't reading as much, and I I noticed that it was similar to you. It was a social media thing where I was reading different platforms, but also short articles. It wasn't even just the social media. It's like the news articles and stuff.
Aicila [00:29:44]:
And I thought, you know, I feel like I was a more aligned, grounded human when I read actual books. And so I do I do read ebooks because I could carry many of them around on my phone, but I also sometimes read the actual physical books because I do I sort of love them. And I feel like at first it was a bit of an effort again. Like I had to really force myself to read a whole chapter. Whereas, you know, it used to be days and days. And now I you know, my goal this year is to read 2 a month. It's not not ridiculous. And some of them are a little dense, so they take longer.
Aicila [00:30:19]:
Every once in a while, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna read a candy book so I can get my checkbox. But even that feels like it helps me to have more presence, more of a mental discipline to pay attention. And like you were talking about, like, those those meetings where I know I'm not really necessary. Like, I'm I'm there to check someone else's box. So I'm like, well, you know, I'll pay up attention a little bit, but then I I do agree. Like, it it it sort of devolves that muscle, I think, for me where where I'm not as present in the other things that I wanna be really participatory of.
Shubber Ali [00:30:53]:
Right. And in in a meeting like that where you're being invited to it, I always say, look. If if there's a reason for me to be in the meeting, I'm happy to attend. But if you just want me to be there to be there, just send me the questions you want me to answer, and I'll answer them for you because it's a lot faster. And I've got an hour I can go do something else with. Right? Because I actually I started reading again. I I used to love to read. I was a voracious, like, just pleasure reading.
Shubber Ali [00:31:16]:
All kinds of books out of the the genre. And then I found that I was too busy with, like like you said, with social unrest. Now I've actually carved out. So every morning, I get up before anybody else in the house, and it's my kind of my time. And in that kinda hour and a half to 2 hours that I'm up early and I have my my first cup of coffee, the rest. I now read for part of it. I do some my thinking, my planning for the day, and the emails and the rest. I go out and listen to birds.
Shubber Ali [00:31:42]:
Now the birds are all chirping in the morning. The sun's rising and the rest. But I'm tearing through books, and I love it. And so what I do is I try to alternate between a book that I'm gonna enjoy, whether it's dense or it's the candy book, and then a book related to work in some way. So, you know, the nature fix or pick anyway, there are so many great books out there and just not enough time to read them. My only difference is I can't do ereaders. I've tried that, and I I actually have physical books. So my house is full of books, some of which I've read and many of which I've not yet read, but are on the list.
Shubber Ali [00:32:15]:
And I've I've had this debate with my wife before, which is the e reader versus the physical book. She says, yeah, but I can carry so many books. And I said, yeah, but you can only read one at a time. So I just take the book I want with me on vacation. I only have to love 1 book. And and this last trip, we took 2 I had 2 because I was already halfway done with it, so I knew I was gonna be done. So I finished that book, started the next one. But, yeah, I'm I'm with you.
Shubber Ali [00:32:37]:
And reading actually does really start to flex different parts of the muscle, you said, in your brain, which also helps you be more thoughtful, present, and able to think deeper about problems. And this is actually something I spent a lot of time in consulting with. And what led to creation of garden for wildlife even is something that I spend most of my time in that area of work doing, which is helping people really focus on the right problem to solve. Because too often, we try to solve symptoms and not root causes. And in solving symptoms, you do it over and over and over again. And there's a great quote that has been around for a long time that I I would regularly use in workshops with clients, which was, if you have an hour to solve a problem, spend 55 minutes defining the problem and 5 minutes solving it. But most people spend about 8 to 10 minutes defining the problem, and then they spend the rest of the hour solving and resolving and resolving because they're not actually solving the underlying problem. And the best innovations out there that I've ever seen are the ones where my initial reaction is essentially, duh, because it seems so obvious as soon as you see it.
Aicila [00:33:39]:
Mhmm.
Shubber Ali [00:33:40]:
But nobody's because we all lived in these these kind of frameworks of how we thought until somebody came in from the outside and said, but why don't we do it this way? Mhmm. And it broke the model, then all of a sudden everybody's like, oh my god, that's genius. And then they'll copy it because it's just a better way to do things. Mhmm.
Aicila [00:33:58]:
Yeah. I have a colleague who he specializes in what he calls the unwritten rules. He says, you know, every organization has unwritten rules, every industry. We we know that, especially, and he's really good at seeing them. And I think that that and I think it's a little easier, honestly, for consultants and exterior people to see them because it's it's almost always more obvious to folks that aren't in the day to day or invested. Yep. And it does. It makes such a difference when you can actually pinpoint, like, oh, okay.
Aicila [00:34:27]:
That that right there. And like you said, most of the time, it's a duh. Sometimes it's a duh and a we have no idea how to deal with this.
Shubber Ali [00:34:35]:
Yes.
Aicila [00:34:37]:
And and then other times, it's not you know, there's some options.
Shubber Ali [00:34:40]:
Yeah. It's it's it's really interesting because it's a you know, the term we had for it in consulting was orthodoxies. And I would talk to you about what are your orthodoxies because it's just that's the way we do things here. And anytime you join a new company or organization, be a not for profit or for profit, government doesn't matter, even the local PTA. When you first walk in the door, you observe and you notice a lot of things. You keep wanting to ask why. Why do you do it this way? After about 6 months or so, you become one of them, and then you know that that's just the way you do it. Right? And then that becomes your thing.
Shubber Ali [00:35:11]:
And the first time I saw that was about, oh, wow. It's almost 20 years ago now with a client and in financial services. And we were looking at them trying to get it. It was an innovation project. They were looking at trying to get into at the time, it was gonna it was a annuity business and life insurance, and they wanted to get into what's going to be the biggest transfer of wealth in human history from the old generations to the younger generations, 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars. And they wanna do, obviously, a piece of that. Mhmm. Every idea we brought to them of all these great disruptive things they could do that get really positioned themselves, they can say, we can't do that.
Shubber Ali [00:35:45]:
We can't do that. We and finally, I was like, okay. I gotta call a time out here. Brought all the and this is the president and the chief of staff, the entire executive suite. Now when I walked down their hallways in their offices, they had 2 nameplates outside of their doors. 1 was their name, and the one below it said 27 years of service or 23 years of service or whatever, however long they've been there. And every one of them had been there for at least 18 years.
Aicila [00:36:08]:
Mhmm.
Shubber Ali [00:36:09]:
And all I could see was 1, yeah, they should be proud that they've made it all the way to the top of the of that organization. But also that's the only way they'd ever seen things done. So they thought the way they did things was the way they should be done. So I pulled them all into a room and I said, okay. I'm gonna ask you a question. Imagine for a moment I'm Google, and I've got $10,000,000,000 and I wanna go after this business because it's a multi $1,000,000,000,000 industry. Why wouldn't I go for it? And I hire you 3 over here and then I hire your these 4 from your biggest competitor. I hire 2 more people from this company and I and started naming off all their competitors, and I hired the 3 best people from there.
Shubber Ali [00:36:46]:
And I created a new company from scratch to go after this business. Do you think we would do it the way you do it today? And there was, like, this silence and then the, oh, okay. We get it now. Because if you started a new business, you would do nothing the way you've done it through all these layers you've built up over decades decades of processes and orthodoxies and the rest. So every place has them. And if you if you look at them long enough, like, you know, I'd love to talk to your colleague at some point. You you discover fundamental insights about ways to do things differently. And, voila, a new model's born.
Aicila [00:37:26]:
Yeah. And
Shubber Ali [00:37:26]:
then that over time will become another orthodoxy. And then again, I mean, nothing ever stays static.
Aicila [00:37:31]:
Exactly. Well and there's the flip side that and I liked what you said. When I would go into this, I I revitalized 2 small nonprofits. And when I went in, the 1st 6 months was listening. Like, I'm asking people because from the outside, you're like, I don't know about this. This doesn't make sense. But then you get into it and you realize, oh, actually, given the circumstances and the resources, this is actually probably the the best way to do it. Now could we change the circumstances of the resources and therefore make this a little bit different? Yes.
Aicila [00:38:01]:
But starting with people do bring their best self to most things, or they do what they've been trained is gonna be most effective. And so acknowledging that part first before you start trying to flicks it all around is, I think, very helpful.
Shubber Ali [00:38:16]:
Well and and that's actually so the program we built when I was at Salesforce was called Ignite, and it was back in this is 12 years ago. So this is back before cloud was everywhere and, you know, smartphones were still in p d a sorry. Like, tablets were still fairly new to the world and apps were fairly new. And Salesforce was still growing. They never been in the enterprise at that point. And what we found was really effective was getting the clients. Like, what you do is you get the a whole bunch of people from the client side, not the the c suite. They had to be the sponsors.
Shubber Ali [00:38:51]:
We had to get people 1 and 2 layers down because they actually did the work. Right. Right? They actually knew, like, how things work, how to work the milkshake machine, all the rest of that, so to speak. And what we found was they knew their problem. So we do lots of interviewing like you and I talked about before this podcast, right? Just asking the right questions and listening and then understanding. We observe them in their work. We do all of that. And then we take them into these workshops where we show them the art of the possible.
Shubber Ali [00:39:16]:
Because the other half of it is it's not enough to know the problem. You have to know what new ways are to solve it that you didn't weren't aware of before. And then what we do is show them, we call them inspirations. We show them how other people solve analogous problems in totally other industries. And so one of my favorite examples to this day is still the Domino's pizza tracker, which, of course, with the pandemic, I think everybody knows about the pizza tracker now. And, of course, if you've ever used Uber or anything else, you know about being able to see your taxi or your car on the phone and all that. But when the pizza tracker came out 15 plus years ago, it was revolutionary because they solved the problem that was just assumed to be a problem that would always exist, which is you call to order delivered pizza, and then you wait 30 minutes or so, and then the pizza shows up. But you don't know where it is until the moment somebody pulls up to your house or knocks on the door.
Shubber Ali [00:40:04]:
And at 30 minutes, you're expecting it. At 40 minutes, you start looking out the window or you're you're opening the door and checking where is it. In 45 minutes, you're now upset. You're like, where's my food? Now that then triggers a whole series of operational things, which is you pick up the phone, you call the store, which then when they answer the phone means another call might get missed that could have been an order, so that's lost revenue. They have to answer the phone, and then they have to track down Bob, the driver, only to find out he's 2 blocks away because it was an accident, and he was stuck behind it. You don't care. You're already mad. Bob's not getting the tip, and you don't you haven't even tasted the product.
Shubber Ali [00:40:38]:
Right? And then all that's hap the pizza tracker eliminated all that because it just showed you where it was in the process. It's being assembled. It's being baked. It's being, you know, inspected. It's being it's on its way. And here it is. Right? When we showed this to the SVP of home loans for one of the largest banks in the US and his team, he turned to his team and said, we need a pizza tracker for mortgage applications. Right? So totally different industry, same problem.
Shubber Ali [00:41:04]:
Information friction. And it was information exists here, but not over here. How do you connect the dots between it? And you do it in a way that is automatic. That to me is, like, the biggest opportunity sitting in front of us right now, whether it's with things like generative AI, which is a huge buzzword, but it's also a true thing. Or, you know, doing things at the edge or using cloud or anything else, people aren't aware of what's possible. Mhmm. And think about all the apps that you use on your smartphone that someone showed you. Hey.
Shubber Ali [00:41:31]:
Look at this cool feature. And now you know it too, but it has to, like, get propagated out. That's where I think both an opportunity exists right now in any industry, any field For me, in the in the taking a not for profit and making a for profit out of it, it's all the same thing. Looking at the problem and then knowing what's possible and connecting the dots.
Aicila [00:41:51]:
Can you talk about how you keep yourself inspired or recharged? I feel like I know, but I'll just ask to to add to it.
Shubber Ali [00:41:58]:
So the single biggest thing that gets me recharged is I do a lot of stuff with both my kids in scouting. So this past weekend, I was camping in Virginia out in kind of one of the hollers out there. We are doing a training hike for a big high adventure in Northern New Mexico with 10 days of or 12 days of hiking in June. And so I've spent more time in the last 3 years intense than I have in my entire life, and I love it. So being outdoors, being in nature, spending time with my kids, spending time in my garden, that's what recharges me and also reminds me that what we're doing, not only does it matter, but it actually will
Aicila [00:42:33]:
work. Yeah.
Shubber Ali [00:42:34]:
It will work. And that's important. Right? I don't feel like I'm pushing a rock uphill here. It's it's very doable. It's just a lot of work ahead.
Aicila [00:42:42]:
Yeah.
Shubber Ali [00:42:43]:
And then I read. I read
Aicila [00:42:44]:
a lot. Mhmm. So folks that are listening, if they wanna participate, follow you, get in touch, learn more, what's the best way?
Shubber Ali [00:42:56]:
So three things. I am am happy for anybody who wants to connect with me on LinkedIn. Just drop me a note. It's just I'm the only one with my name in LinkedIn that I know, so just in slash chevrali. And if you send me an invite, put a note in there that you heard on this podcast and, you know, I'd love to talk with you. And then you can also go to our website, gardenforwildlife.com. I strongly encourage you, especially as this is native plant awareness month and Earth Day is coming up, go and just buy a 3 pack. Get a 3 pack of native plants and put them in your garden and wait and see what happens, and you'll be amazed.
Shubber Ali [00:43:27]:
And there are you don't even have to, like, figure out what's native to you because it's already does it. Just put in your ZIP code, and it'll automatically only show you what's native to you. And one other thing I would say since you mentioned that you've also, worked with not for profits as well is we launched a program 2 months ago for not for profits. Again, this is one of my, like Mhmm. Let's think a little disruptively. And we just copied the model from somebody else. It's not like we're rocket scientist. But we launched a platform 2 months ago for not for profits where they could sign up as an affiliate program.
Shubber Ali [00:43:56]:
They get a unique marketing link that just points to our store, but it's their code. They send it to all their supporters. Anybody who comes on and buys plants, they get 15%. So it's just an easy way to get more funding without fundraising because this is from people's gardening spend because they're already gardening anyway. Get them to buy plants that are good for the environment, and some of that money goes to your cause that they already support. So it's a win win. And, like, you know, we've we've partnered with, like, Homegrown National Park. And in the, like, the first 36 hours, they just sending out to their their followers.
Shubber Ali [00:44:27]:
You know, they generated over $10,000 in sales, and they made over $1500, you know, in 36 hours for their not for profit.
Aicila [00:44:34]:
Yeah.
Shubber Ali [00:44:34]:
So it it doesn't matter if you're a PTA, a scout troop, a big not for profit, anybody in between. Any not for profit can can sign up.
Aicila [00:44:42]:
That's great. No. Absolutely. Well and I I can talk to you all day. This is fantastic. I'm really glad I get to meet you, Shiver, and I'm excited to publish this and get the word out about what you're up to. It's it's always inspiring to hear about people that are truly committed to their work and making a difference. So is that for me, it's about, I get the profit's part of it.
Aicila [00:45:03]:
We can include people in the planet.
Shubber Ali [00:45:05]:
Yeah. Well, and Ayesha, thank you so much for having me on. I'm on a mission. Our whole team is on a mission. It's a mission that's achievable, but everybody just needs to do a tiny bit. And we could build, you know, as Doug Tellomey wrote about in his book. If we just took if we all just took a little portion of our our yards, we could create a a virtual national park across the country in people's yards that would help wildlife across the country, you know, songbirds, pollinators, bees, all of it.
Aicila [00:45:31]:
That's lovely. Well, thank you so much. Thanks everybody for listening.
Shubber Ali [00:45:35]:
Thank you.
