Welcome to the Telling of Story podcast. I’m your host, Storyteller Jewels, and along with my guests, it’s my endeavor to explore the art and science of storytelling to attract, engage, and retain a business audience, and to unpack why it works for some and not for the many that try.

Listening as Geert talks about the correlation between systems and stories.

Geert: All the symptoms of things are going wrong with people and with the planet are based on systems. And systems are based on stories. So our idea when we founded ReStory was, if we tell another story, maybe we can change the system, and then All those symptoms of 300, 000 people or half a million people who weren’t able to work, the pollution, everything, all those symptoms maybe can change also.

So, it’s our idea, it starts all with a story because the economy we live in is also a story we believe in.

Jewels: In this episode, I have the pleasure of talking with Geert Degrande. Geert is a journalist, copywriter, ghostwriter for more than 40 years. In 2021, he founded www. restory.be

Geert, welcome to the show. 

Geert: Good morning or good afternoon. 

Jewels: That has to be my shortest bio that I’ve ever read out on the podcast.

Well, thank you for providing it. So you’re going to have to help me out a little bit more and help the audience out just a little bit. Take me all the way back. You’ve been writing for more than 40 years, which is a fabulous effort. Well done and continue to do so to this day, right? So take me all the way back.

And when did you know you wanted to be a writer? 

Geert: I think already when I [00:02:00] was, uh, very young, when I was a child, I’m a very fond of sports already as a little child, I made my own newspaper of the Tour de France of cycling. When I got the articles in the newspapers and I put them in my own book and I wrote some comments on that.

So, and in school, it seemed that I was very good at writing when we had a task of writing. I was very good at it. And I’m coming from Belgium, you didn’t mention it, I don’t know if, but in Belgium we have two languages. We have Flemish speaking part, Flemish is Dutch in fact, and we have a French speaking part.

And part of my youth I spent also in France, so I am speaking the two languages. So, together with my talents for writing, I knew very soon, That I could help companies with translating, because in [00:03:00] Belgium, of course, we need the two languages. So, I started working as a translator and a journalist after my military service.

And that I did for, yes, indeed, more than 40 years. When I look back, I can say I worked 10 years. I’ve always done it as a freelancer. I’ve worked 10 years, more or less. Writing for every client that asked me for every newspaper, for every journal, for every magazine that asked me. Then I was 10 years active and very much in HR and then 10 years in finance.

And the last 10, 15 years, I worked a lot as a ghostwriter means writing books where other persons put their names on. I’ve written some 40 books. All about leadership, marketing, finance, coaching, that kind of things. 

Jewels: Did you say forty or fourteen? Forty. Forty, wow. 

Geert: Yes. And then one of the books I wrote was seven [00:04:00] years ago.

And it was all about the fact that so many people, I don’t know how it is in your country, but in Belgium we have a phenomenon of burnouts. So many people get burnouts and I wrote that book about that and I talked mainly about the fact these burnouts come often from the problems with leaders, with the managers.

It’s often said you don’t change jobs because of the job, but because of your manager, and it was not to say that the managers are guilty because most of the managers and those who have a leading role. Do this with the best intentions, but you have very often, you have the problem that are growing, are making promotion.

And the example was always, you have a very good nurse and because of her competences as a nurse, she becomes head nurse and then she has to lead a team of 20, 25, 30. Nurses and there the problems start [00:05:00] because that’s another job than being a nurse simply. 

Jewels: Yes 

Geert: So that book was about that and it was seven years ago Then we had in belgium three hundred thousand people who are out of work Who weren’t able to work anymore for more than a year?

Of course, it’s not all burnout. You have also people who have, uh, heavy accidents or cancer, but the number of burnouts is very high, so that puzzled me. And yeah, at the same time, I began to read about the fact that our economic system of the neoliberal capitalism is maybe one of the causes of the fact that so many people are.

let’s say lost a little bit in their life or are searching or are suffering from burnout. But then I began to read books like The Donut Economy, written by Kate Roward, or The Value of Everything, written by Mariana Mazzucato. And a lot of economists are [00:06:00] saying we have to change our economic system. Not only to preserve the planet, because you came across the World Overshoot Day, I think.

Every year there’s a day called World Overshoot Day, the day on which all our resources for that year are already used. And that day comes every year a little bit earlier in the year. I think this year it was in March. The only year when it was later was when we had the pandemic, when there were no planes, when there was less traffic and so on.

And in fact, you see all the symptoms of things are going wrong with people and with the planet. And all those symptoms are based on systems and systems are based on stories. So R. I. D. when we founded ReStory was If we tell another story, maybe we can change the system and then all those symptoms [00:07:00] of 300, 000 people or half a million people who weren’t able to work, the pollution, everything, all those symptoms maybe can change also.

So, in our idea, it starts all with a story. Because the economy we live in is also a story we believe in. And that’s the story of the neoliberal. Capitalism that has brought us very much after World War II, we were very prosperous and everywhere in the world, we had, we have benefited from that system, but we see all those symptoms now that this comes to an end and our belief and our conviction is that If we tell another story by talking to people who open new ways in the society and in the economy, then we can also change the system and then we can make disappear all those symptoms of things that are going wrong with people and with the planet.

And that’s in short, [00:08:00] The reason why we started re story, and in our opinion, the story must be a zebra economy. I don’t know if you know that, if you heard about Zebra economy, in fact, zebra economy is a name that was found by an American entrepreneur, a young woman, Mara Zed. When she had her startup, she didn’t succeed to find money to fund her startup.

Why? Because the venture capitalists were only interested in what they call the unicorns. A unicorn, maybe you heard about that. It’s a name that is given to startups that rise very fast and have a value of one billion dollar. Very soon. But Mara said, I don’t want to be unicorn because the unicorn, that’s an animal.

Or I don’t want that my company is named to unicorn because a unicorn is an animal that only exists in fairy tales. [00:09:00] An animal to a company, for me, it must be a zebra. And this has two reasons. A zebra is an animal that takes care of the group of animals, that lets no animal behind. That’s one reason. And of course, the most important characteristic of the zebra are the white and the black stripes.

And she says, for me, that symbolizes on the one hand, good financial results because a company has to make benefits. But on the other hand, the other color, whether it is white or black, it’s the societal return. When you are an entrepreneur, you have to be aware of the fact that you have an impact on society, on the planet, on everything, on all the stakeholders that you work with.

And in fact, it’s very simple. And it’s one of the initiatives that we saw also coming from other organizations. The OCDE, for example, has written a report, I think three years ago. [00:10:00] It’s called beyond growth. Also to say the same thing in corporates and in companies, you can not only strive for financial benefits.

You have to take into account the societal impact of what you are doing. OCDE report beyond growth. There were in America and the United States, I think 182 of the Forbes top 500 enterprises. The CEOs have signed the document. We will change shareholder capitalism into stakeholder capitalism. You have an initiative of the Pope, Pope Francis, and it’s called the Economy of Francesco.

And he gathers economists, young economists of all over the world. I think this initiative started also in the pandemic, so it had to be postponed twice, but afterwards he got reunited in Assisi in Italy. 100 [00:11:00] economists of all the countries in the world, young economists who say, in fact, the same thing about the zebra economy and the zebra economy of the ideas of the zebra economy are also now in the legal texts in Japan.

If you want, I can send you some information about that. 

Jewels: It sounds incredibly interesting. Yeah, I’d love for you to send me some stuff on that and I’ll include it in the show notes if there’s any links. Or anything to the information. Just let me take you back to what you mentioned there about burnout in Belgium.

Do statistically, is it worse there than anywhere else in the world or is it? in par with everybody? I mean, we see it here as well, but I’m not sure at a statistical level how we might compare. Is Belgium particularly bad or? 

Geert: Yeah, I think you can see it everywhere in the world. And of course, I don’t know the statistics of other countries, certainly not in, in Australia, but I think it’s a general phenomenon.[00:12:00]

You can, in France, for example, it’s also, it’s the same nearly. And you see that at all levels. One thing that’s important is you see it at all levels, not only workers are blue color, but also white color. I know a lot of, uh, coaches. Who are working with high potentials. And it’s not that they have that they all have burnouts, but what I see, and especially after the pandemic, it’s very notable that a lot of CEOs also are, or CFOs or CMOs are really searching.

And they are asking questions. What are we doing? What am I doing? Is this it? Is it all that works? Maybe because of the pandemic, they had time to reflect. And that has helped a little bit, but I think it’s also the general conclusion. Of course, if you are a CEO and you have, I don’t know, if you have a small company, you have maybe 50 or a hundred [00:13:00] employees, but when you see a percentage of 10 percent that is falling out and you have to look for replacement, then you are confronted.

Constantly with that problem. I think that the scientific reports and the, the declarations of Antonio Gutierrez of the United Nations, I think it was two weeks ago when he said, we are playing Russian roulettes with the planet and we need to leave the highway that leads us to hell. We need to get out of this road.

And it’s incredible that so many people still don’t see the urges. I think, I don’t know if you saw the movie, don’t Look Up. 

Jewels: Yes. Yeah, 

Geert: it tells it all is that we are seeing, you have all the declarations of the scientists and I, for me, particularly the declaration of Antonio Re who says we are really playing Russian roulette and still many people do, as if nothing is wrong.

So our goal is to tell stories on [00:14:00] our platform. Re story. And that proves that it is possible to act otherwise and to try to have, yeah, the zebra economy, but it can have many starting points. You can start on mobility, on food waste, on energy, on circular economy, on sharing economy. It has so many possibilities.

But, yeah, in the mainstream media, they don’t get attention or don’t get enough attention. Because what do we see about economy? It’s still always the same story about GDP growth. When the Financial Times or whatever great newspaper talks about the economy, one example that strikes me very much is Black Friday.

They say, Oh, 13 billions have been spent on Black Friday, and it means that the economy is going well. I don’t know. I don’t think it’s the right way to [00:15:00] look at it because it is. I think people must see now that if you take GDP growth as the only measure to talk about the health. Of the economy, it goes wrong and there’s another phenomenon.

I think in fact you have, and that that’s in every country. I think you have on the one hand, you have some people who are extremely rich and that group is growing. But on the other hand, you have more and more people who are poor, and neither of the two pays taxes. The rich don’t pay taxes because they do nothing illegal, but they have so sophisticated ways to not pay taxes.

And the poor can’t pay taxes because it’s every month a struggle to survive. So you have, in between, you have a group of, yeah, the medium group. But this becomes smaller and the pressure on this group is every day higher because they are the only ones who pay the [00:16:00] taxes and every nation is confronted with deficits because of they had to spend so many money for the pandemic, they had to spend so many money for the Ukraine war and so on.

So where do they look to find the money? Yeah. By taxing the medium group because the rich don’t pay and the poor don’t pay. So in this medium group, you get also the financial stress more and more. And that leads also to these burnouts. So this is a system that, that is going, yeah. Towards bankruptcy, in our opinion.

Jewels: You mentioned something earlier, which I absolutely love that what we do is based on systems and the systems are based on the stories that we tell. And that’s part of the reason you started Restory. Tell me a bit more about that because I love that idea. How do you change the way a system works through stories?

What’s the goal there? How do you actually [00:17:00] influence? When these things are embedded often, right? So systems, economies, et cetera, but have been embedded for a long time across many different continents and industry and whatever. So how do you change the story in order to change the mega systems that exist?

Geert: Yeah, what we are trying to do is by giving examples. I’ve interviewed for ReStory, a very interesting lady from Great Britain, Hilary Copham, worked for the World Bank. And she says, in fact, You need to unite four pieces of the puzzle to come to this transition. The world’s needs, the world needs, and you have what she calls the intellectuals and that are all the academic people, like I told you, Kate wrote Mariana Mazzucato, Christian Felber.

You have 30 or more already who wrote books about the need to change the system. That’s the first, uh, piece of the puzzle, the intellectuals. Second, you have [00:18:00] the politicians, but there she says it’s very difficult because they are so focused on the short term, the next elections, they don’t look further in the future.

It’s only the next elections. In that way, a very interesting book written by the husband or the partner of Kate Roward is called Ruman Krishnarik. It’s The Good Ancestor, and it’s about long term thinking, what we don’t do anymore, but indigenous people, they have always had a tradition to take decisions, and to take these decisions taking into account seven generations further.

He explains it in that book, very interesting, I can, I can send you this too. So intellectuals, politicians, third. You have the entrepreneurs and there, she says it is key because if entrepreneurs, CEOs are taking the direction and are leaving the road to [00:19:00] hell as called by Gutierrez by transforming the way they act and by adopting the principles of the zebra economy and by not.

Only thinking about benefits for the shareholders, but by taking into account all the interests of the shareholders, then you have a really important key to change. But if that doesn’t work, then she said, we will see. And I think you already begin to see it. It’s revolution. Like we had in history with the French revolution, with the Russian revolution, when all the medium class that pays all that taxes.

can’t stand it anymore, then you will have revolution. I don’t know if you saw in France, for example, if they talk about that in Australia, but you had the movement of the gilets jaunes, the yellow jackets protesting. Yeah. They have been protesting for [00:20:00] more than two years every weekend. So I think it’s really possible that, that it comes from there until now, what you see is everywhere in Europe.

And we saw it now with the European elections, you see, That this revolution is not yet on the street or fighting, but in the voting. And so many people vote by despair for extreme right. And I think it’s the same in the U S with Trump. He tells he, for me, I don’t agree with what he’s doing and telling, but for me, he’s an excellent storyteller.

He tells a story where he reaches so many people who believe that story. And that proves also the power of storytelling. So if you can have the same force and the same power with them, another story, a story of the zebra economy, a story of solidarity, a story of empathy, a story of [00:21:00] co working, a story of cooperation, then it’s possible to change.

And I think that’s also the, those two movements are taking place at the same moment because you see. Again, I don’t know how it is in Australia, but you see also much more companies that are led in another way. You can talk about steward ownership or cooperation. That’s another fiscal or, uh, juridical statute, but it’s also coming up.

So you have the two movements you have on the one hand, the despair and the voting for extreme right, and even the protesting in the streets. But on the other hand, you have also, and that is what we are trying to enlighten and to emphasize on ReStory. You have the other movement of people who are working together locally, who are trying to do it differently, who are putting up businesses, [00:22:00]taking into account what they are doing for society.

Here in Belgium, we have an, for example, an excellent example of a company that is active in student housing, and they do it very differently than traditionally. They work with student coaches, they work, they start from the, yeah, the human aspects of the students. And then you can see, that’s fantastic.

They are a zebra company, but they are also unicorn, because by acting that way, They have earned more money than the others who are, who are doing it in the traditional way. 

Jewels: Does that list stop there? So the intellectuals, the politicians, then the entrepreneurs, is there other people involved in change?

Geert: Yeah. Everyone can be involved in change in a certain manner, but I’m only telling what Hillary cotton told me because I found it very insightful that she said, you have the intellectuals, the politicians, [00:23:00] the entrepreneurs and. Yeah, the people and that’s in fact, everyone, but that there is the question, will it have to be by revolution and by protesting against something or by acting positively and by demonstrating by example that it can be done differently, positively with active hope.

That’s a concept of Joanna Macy. She calls it active hope. Yeah, I find it also very interesting. You can say we can hope for the best, but if you do nothing, it won’t come, but you can hope for the best by acting in that direction. 

Jewels: Is that the premise of ReStory, to enlighten us or accelerate the spread of some of these fabulous organizations that are thinking a little bit differently, thinking outside of the box, trying to instill change?

Geert: Yeah, surely. But one remark on that, we don’t use [00:24:00] thinking out of the box, because if you use those words, thinking out of the box, you are not changing radically enough. Because in that case, the box stays your reference point. So in fact, you have to throw away the box to start something new. There was an American philosopher in the 18th century, I think.

And he was inspired by the Greek philosopher Socrates when he said. If you want to change things, you don’t have to fight against, but you have to build a new system that makes the old one obsolete. 

Jewels: I love that. 

Geert: And that’s what we are trying to do by saying also, yeah, it’s another story. It’s not the story you read every day, again, in the traditional newspapers about the economy and about the way the economy is considered.

It is something [00:25:00] new. And therefore that is difficult because we are so, yeah, there are so many things that are, that we think about as it is, and we can’t change it. It’s the word of Regan and Thatcher. There is no alternative, but there is an alternative. And that is what we are trying to say. And that is what we are trying to tell stories about.

One thing that is not so. Yeah, that explains also that it’s difficult is that it’s, as I said, many people are doing already good things and things that can help to realize the transition and the change. But it’s, yeah, for many people on their own island a little bit when they are active in food waste or when they are active in energy that they don’t see the other things that, and all is connected.

I refer often to the Stanford speech of Steve Jobs when he said connecting the dots and that’s about when he talked about that was about [00:26:00] technology, but you can also connect the dots in the way we are trying to tell another story about the economy. 

Jewels: Kurt, what’s the ultimate goal for ReStory? Where do you want it to go?

Where would you love to see it? 

Geert: We would like to contribute a little bit with our talents to change the world, to take that exit where Guterres talked about, when we can have, and we have also chosen cooperation. Cooperative society. We have now 120 members of our cooperation. That’s also different because we are the only in Belgium.

We are the only media platform that works in that, with that statute. 

Jewels: I love ReStory, I’ve been looking through it avidly over the last few days just as part of the research and they’re beautiful stories and I really like the way you’ve sort of split the categorization, particularly the top three amongst thinkers, doers and makers is my favorite three sort of categories that you’ve got [00:27:00] economy, education, agriculture, food, society.

So there’s a number of different categories. I do love the way you’ve split that. So for anybody listening, go have a look at restory. be, re story. be. It’s a fabulous bit of writing, quite a lot of writing, in fact. And one of the things I did love about the storytelling in the In there is that often you would end with a question to sort of prompt some commentary.

So to sort of wrap up today’s session, you and I could talk storytelling clearly for, for quite a long time. And you’re obviously passionate about storytelling. You’ve been doing it your entire life, but I’d like to ask you one of your own questions from the website itself, which I think is a good segue from where you’ve just come from.

So the question was this, Being meaningful, what does that look like in your life? 

Geert: Being meaningful is, yeah, trying to, to live every story and to listen, [00:28:00] that’s very important, listening. And when you talked about makers, that’s also a thing that is missing very much. And, uh, of course, with the extreme right votes, it will be missed more.

That is that artists don’t get many possibilities to express themselves. And artists are for me, yeah, you can call it the photographers of the time, but not only by photography, of course, what they are doing with theater, with poets, culture. They are showing, they are visualizing the symptoms I talked about, the symptoms that we see about illness, about burnout, about climate, heat, about flood, everything.

And artists are symbolizing that. And for me, yeah, it’s important to tell their stories also. So meaning is, yeah, what is meaningful to listen to people and try to tell. You can look at [00:29:00] things in another way. One sentence I use very often also is this, you can, you have the fact that every metal has two sides, and I don’t know if that’s an expression in English too, maybe you can look at the cube.

There are six sides on a cube and maybe it’s important to look differently at things and the meaning, what is meaningful is, yeah. Yeah. To open eyes and to tell you can look at things differently and be open. Don’t go with the actual flow of this is right. And this is wrong because I’m very passionate about zebra economy, but that doesn’t mean that I judge everything from neoliberal capitalism.

It has brought us many things. I had another podcast in Holland when the interviewer asked me, does that mean that Before you started ReStory, you were right, and now you are [00:30:00] on the left side, politically spoken. And that is not true. It is, I think it goes beyond that. The only way we can get off this highway to hell is by working together.

Co working, co sourcing, co financing, co housing. It must be. Together, because one of the things also of one of the stories we have been told is we are all individuals and we have to find solutions on ourselves. And if you do that, you’re a hero and you are successful and so on. But if you can’t or if you are unlucky, you are a loser.

And that is also one of the things together with that, uh, taxing thing that I explained. That is also one of the reasons you have so many burnouts and so many people who are really searching and looking how they can change what they can do and so on. So, yeah, telling the [00:31:00] message that if we want to solve the problems and the poli crisis we are in, it has to be together.

And together, that means together with people, but together with nature, certainly, and together with AI. Why not? 

Jewels: Thank you so much. There’s, you’ve left me a hell of a lot to think about, and I’m sure the listeners have got a few things to ponder over as well. Where can the audience find out a little bit more about you?

Geert: About me on my LinkedIn profile? And Valtteri’s story on the site you mentioned. Okay, 

Jewels: I’ll put those links in the show notes. Thank you so much, I really appreciate your time today. And I look forward to reading some of the material that you’re going to send through. 

Geert: Certainly. 

Jewels: Thank you. 

Geert: Thank you very much for having me and bye bye.

Jewels: There was a lot to unpack in that discussion. For me, change the story, change the world. Much [00:32:00] love, chat soon.