The Do Lectures (www.thedolectures.com) is a mind-expanding festival of ideas and inspiration held each year on a small farm, on a Welsh hillside, overlooking the sea. The lectures come from people with inspiring stories to tell about business, life and how to change the world. Do brings us big ideas, artisan businesses and, above all, boundless optimism.

1. ASSORTEDWISDOM
DO LECTURES 2015
MAKING EPIC SH*T HAPPEN
“Let it settle,” David Hieatt said. So I did.
Here’s what settled.

2. Big ideas
+
Hard work
=
Meaningful change

3. Be generous.
To find your true fans, your loyal
customers, first you’ve got to give
(before you try and sell).

4. Trust the audacity of youth.
It might just give us a chance.

5. Spend time with your toolbox.
There are more tools than ever.
But few people spend time really learning
how to use them.

6. Be brave enough to pick a big problem.
It will free your mind.

7. Keep on experimenting.
Experiments won’t kill you but they
might just make you.

8. Recognise that somewhere along the
way we became the grown ups.
That makes us responsible.
But having something to lose mustn’t
make us timid.

9. Celebrate the joy of eating.

10. Start small.
Think big.

11. Know why you get up in the morning.
…to get more people drinking
great beer…
…to get my town making jeans again…
Have a purpose – and really mean it.

12. Create spielzweig: the feeling of rightness.
“I approach everything in my life the same
way: if it feels right, I know it.” Kenny G
“Everything that’s meaningful is invisible to
the eye.” Saint-Exupery

13. Say “I don’t know”.
It’s the key that unlocks learning.

14. Overcome your fear of reduced status.
It will unleash the power of responsibility
in others.

15. Fight fear within your organisation.
It reduces your chances of success.
Because stress makes you less effective.

16. Acknowledge we face a daunting
challenge to rescue our planet.
But it is foremost a challenge of
leadership not technology.

17. Learn magic:
focus the audience’s attention on
something specific and always be one
step ahead.

18. Embrace the obstacles: what stands in
the way, becomes the way
“Opportunities to find deeper powers
within ourselves come when life seems
most challenging.” Joseph Campbell

19. Wake up and smell the scary shit*…
There may only be 100 harvests left.
We own twice as much stuff now
as in 1973.
50% of edible food is wasted in the UK.
We spend $1tr a year subsidising
fossil fuels.
*Some of these facts may be made up

20. Create a simple food chain:
happy people growing produce…
…to be used in a happy kitchen…
…creating food that makes other people
happy…

21. Remember:
Often wisdom seems to come from the
mouths of cheesemakers.