Going Conscious

This episode is a recap of four conversations I’ve had with incredible pioneers of finance for people and planet. Impact investing, but not just done the same old way. Each is creating something completely different and truly new. And each is also a person I consider to be very special and am blessed to have as a friend. You’ll just hear a snippet of each conversation, so you can then go and listen to the whole episodes you feel drawn to. Now that we have over 150 episodes, we occasionally make a summary episode to help you navigate the library which still remains highly informative and relevant. In episode #148, Patrick Somerhausen, co-founder and -CEO of Funds for Good, talks about honour loans where they give entrepreneurs in need loans that they only pay back if they can. 92% come back, to go round again to another entrepreneur in need. He also talks about “funds for love” which is a beautiful concept and words you don’t typically hear together in finance! You’ll hear from Jacqueline van den Ende who, in episode #143, shares how she built Carbon Equity so far, the innovative platform enabling private individuals to invest in breakthrough climate tech. We talk about how to build something that outlives you, a new perspective on money greater than money itself, shared ownership structures, and legacy thinking, as well as getting personal and vulnerable at the end of the episode. Episode #135 with Brenden Keon is close to my heart as Brenden is my partner at our fund Barefoot Ventures, and he shares how his journey from finance to permaculture brought him to designing a new model for finance that can be truly regenerative - that’s when we met a couple of years ago. We discuss some of the core principles and thinking underpinning our fund. Finally in episode #129, Monika Vollmer shares how you can develop personally through investing, the challenges of changing rapidly, and how to feel into a company you believe in when investing, with this less tangible side being key to investing as well as the rational and analytical. I loved having all of these conversations, and together they make a rich tapestry of a future of finance that looks very different to the system today. Enjoy! Please let me know in a short review which episode, guest or takeaway grabs your attention, and always feel free to reach out to me on instagram or linkedin with any questions. To listen to the full episodes, search for: #148 From investing to society: Loans of honour with Patrick Somerhausen #143 From investor to founder: A new perspective on capital with Jacqueline van den Ende #135 From finance to impact investing: Stewarding regenerative business with Brenden Keon #129 From business to investing: The personal side of positive impact with Monika Vollmer Discover show notes, book recommendations and more on www.goingconscious.com. Connect with Nikki: Instagram & LinkedIn @nikkitrott www.consciousaccelerator.com

Anne is a pioneer of the regenerative movement in the Netherlands. In March 2024 she moved to the 45 hectare Lenteland regenerative community farm in Lochem, having started Bodemzicht farm and foundation with her partner in Malden in 2019. She’s a founding farmer of the European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture (EARA) and previously worked on the relationship between humans and the rest of life at Artis Royal zoo and co-founded the Embassy of the North Sea in Amsterdam. In this episode we talk about combining art and nature in culture, how to move beyond the dichotomy of ‘nature’ and humanity, how to find radical clarity with your statement of purpose (in 3 steps), the benefits of reconnecting with the seasons and cycles of life, and how to become native again as the deeply interconnected beings that we are. Discover all episodes and more on www.goingconscious.com. Connect with Anne: LinkedIn Anne van Leeuwen Connect with Nikki: Instagram & LinkedIn @nikkitrott www.consciousaccelerator.com

In this special episode, Nikki shares her insights on the main five themes she’s learned from over a hundred interviews for Going Conscious. What a milestone! She couldn’t have done it without all of you listeners, and extends her gratitude to each and every one of you. Listen carefully as she tells a secret! Discover all episodes and more on www.goingconscious.com. Connect with Nikki: Instagram & LinkedIn @nikkitrott www.consciousaccelerator.com

In this special episode we bring you a guided meditation to help you to connect with your true self and create your most fully expressed life.Connect with and embody your radical authenticity, enabling you to live as the most genuine version of yourself. This is a profound journey of alignment. Embracing your authenticity means you can align with the most fulfilled version of yourself, as well as with your highest skills and gifts. Being truly authentic, firstly with yourself, can feel like a brave leap into the unknown or away from a pack. And it is for the brave. But it is a journey that promises freedom, happiness, and connection will fill your life. I invite you to listen to this meditation every day and notice how your life starts to change. This meditation is set to music using Alpha waves to help you enter a deeper meditative state, bringing you calm, mind-body integration and learning. Discover podcast notes, all episodes, book recommendations and more on www.goingconscious.com. Connect with Nikki: Instagram @nikkitrott www.nikkitrott.com

Patrick is Co-founder and Co-CEO of Funds For Good which has €600 million under management and donates half of its profits and at least 10% of its income to societal impact, helping people in precarious employment to create their own jobs and supporting entrepreneurs whose primary aim is to help solve society's problems. As you’ll hear, I’m a real fan of their innovative and highly impactful model. In this episode we talk about how to approach wanting to do something more useful, where entrepreneurship and finance meet, funnelling money towards people in precarious situations, loans of honour, why size matters, micro finance as a tool to fight poverty, funding the agriculture transition, radical collaboration and business with love. Discover all episodes and more on www.goingconscious.com. Connect with Patrick: LinkedIn Patrick Somerhausen Connect with Nikki: Instagram & LinkedIn @nikkitrott www.consciousaccelerator.com

Caterina is an ESG and Sustainability advisor with focus on the luxury and fashion industries. Her clients include Maison Alaïa, Chloé and Aspesi, and she supported Chloé’s journey to become the first luxury brand certified as a B-corp. She also advises several United Nations initiatives and is a social entrepreneur herself as the Founder of SeeMe, a pioneer ethical jewellery brand whose heart shaped jewellery is handcrafted by women survivors of violence. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of World Fair Trade Organisation, a seasoned speaker and a Guest Lecturer at SDA Bocconi on the MA Luxury Business Management course. In this episode we talk about the moment of collective awareness in Paris that spurred her into social enterprise, why the human aspect of fashion’s responsibility is undermined, how we can bring our infinite growth economy to positive impact, what social procurement is and why it’s the new attitude that can really change lives, and how to understand the waves of every decision you make. Discover all episodes and more on www.goingconscious.com. Connect with Caterina: Instagram @caterina_occhio LinkedIn Caterina Occhio Connect with Nikki: Instagram & LinkedIn @nikkitrott www.consciousaccelerator.com

Hanae is an entrepreneur who has forged a career in tech startups and nonprofits. As a young Muslim Moroccan, she has had to create her own rules for success. She has worked as a consultant in 32 countries across Africa and spends half her time on the continent, engaging with senior African policy makers and leading companies. Various global companies helped finance her new book Being Other, for all ambitious creative young women. In this episode we talk about our experiences together at Davos (World Economic Forum), what it means to fully express yourself in this lifetime, how grief led to being of service, the agency technology can provide, shifting to the growing influence of the feminine approach, entrepreneurship and government advisory in Africa, when serendipity takes over, the divine right to express creativity, the calling for women to redefine how they thrive for themselves, society and nature, and her exciting upcoming book tour. Discover all episodes and more on www.goingconscious.com. Connect with Hanae: LinkedIn Hanae Bezad Instagram @beehane Connect with Nikki: Instagram & LinkedIn @nikkitrott www.consciousaccelerator.com

Simon is the Founder and Managing Director of One Climate - the app redefining how people engage with climate action. He has a background in design thinking and startup building. He likes to consider himself a metamodernist, aiming to cocreate what comes after postmodernism by understanding societal patterns and actively positioning the future we need. In this episode we talk about why Simon wanted to build something for the climate that puts the power in the hands of every person, how self-work underpins his entrepreneurial approach, how to apply design principles to your own life, and how to understand the models we are involved with that contribute to the problem - processing this into solutions. Discover all episodes and more on www.goingconscious.com. Connect with Simon: LinkedIn Simon Bail www.oneclimate.com Connect with Nikki: Instagram & LinkedIn @nikkitrott www.consciousaccelerator.com

For more than two decades, Erik has been part of creating some of the most visionary privately-owned businesses and organisations driving impact and transformation. Special advisory clients have included King Charles II, Sir Paul McCartney and the Danish Sovereign Investment Fund. He is also a non-executive director of Savory Foundation. His work is dedicated to transforming the world food-system through the deployment of natural capital. In this episode we discuss how the world food system can be transformed, how being a global citizen has shaped us both, how Erik is working to change the food we put into our bodies, how to include nature in every decision you make in business, how to contribute to the next generation not just short term financial results, why a system that only values growth is bound to break and how to deploy private equity capital to farms. Discover all episodes and more on www.goingconscious.com. Connect with Erik: LinkedIn Erik Bruun Bindslev Connect with Nikki: Instagram & LinkedIn @nikkitrott www.consciousaccelerator.com

Jacqueline van den Ende is co-founder of Amsterdam-based climate fintech company Carbon Equity - a VC and PE fund investing platform. Carbon Equity was founded with the mission to unlock retail capital at scale to power breakthrough climate technologies whilst enabling more equitable ownership. She is a founder turned investor turned founder, twice over obsessed with how we can leverage capital most effectively to mitigate climate change. In this episode we talk about how Jacqueline is building an innovative platform to enable private individuals to invest in breakthrough climate tech, how to build something that outlives you, a new perspective on money greater than money itself, shared ownership structures, creating bigger value by solving bigger world problems, legacy thinking, why entrepreneurs need presence. Discover all episodes and more on www.goingconscious.com. Connect with Jacqueline: LinkedIn Jacqueline van den Ende www.carbonequity.com Connect with Nikki: Instagram & LinkedIn @nikkitrott www.consciousaccelerator.com

Jasper is an entrepreneur, adventurer, coach and wisdom seeker. He has co-founded 4 ventures that are united by a single purpose: To empower people to live their quests. When he was 1 year old he lost his mother in a car accident. This experience taught him lessons about the preciousness of life and made him want to experience life to the fullest. In this episode we have a shared, personal conversation and talk about how we both work on integrating the loss of our mothers, how to find focus amongst so many interests and opportunities, experimenting with only telling radical truths, our experiences of removing alcohol from our lives and other life experiments, as well as Jasper’s business SoulKitchen and his “recipes for life”. Discover all episodes and more on www.goingconscious.com. Connect with Jasper: LinkedIn Jasper Mutsaerts Connect with Nikki: Instagram & LinkedIn @nikkitrott www.consciousaccelerator.com

Ariana is a mental health activist and Founder of SPOKE, the UK's leading music-led mental wellness app. She believes that vast improvements can be made to society's mental health if the culture and interpretation of wellbeing tools are connected better with those who need it most - especially men. Through working with their community of notable artists, producers, and creatives, SPOKE makes taking care of the mind as easy and enjoyable as listening to your favourite music. In this episode we talk about how purpose might not be what we think it is, the serious implications of the music we listen to (especially when our brains are still developing), why artists are the world’s natural healers and how Ariana is overturning the toxic music industry. Discover all episodes and more on www.goingconscious.com. Connect with Ariana: Download SPOKE on the app store LinkedIn Ariana Alexander-Sefre Connect with Nikki: Instagram & LinkedIn @nikkitrott www.consciousaccelerator.com

Dan is the CEO of The Tech Dept and host of the podcast Honey, I Blew Up The Business (top 2.5% of all global podcasts). In the last 5 years he starred in a movie pilot, launched a 24-hour festival in London and completed The Marathon Des Sables - 6 marathons in 7 days in the Sahara, raising £14,000 for charity KidsOut. In this episode we talk about how he blew up his business after 13 years of success and awards, the painful lesson from the universe which cracked him open, how he let go of his identity, why journaling is core to his success how, how to be a dad your daughters want to go to a festival with and his 5 elements that make up his “groove” across all areas of life. Discover all episodes and more on www.goingconscious.com. Connect with Dan: www.thetechdept.com/ LinkedIn Dan Kirby Connect with Nikki: Instagram & LinkedIn @nikkitrott www.consciousaccelerator.com

Willa is the Founder & Creative Director of W.Green, a branding and communication agency focusing on fashion, food and lifestyle. Having seen the failures of the fashion industry up close, she was drawn to modern brands spreading their message in a more sustainable and conscious way. W.Green’s motto is ‘Ethics + Aesthetics.’ She is often featured in numerous leading Dutch magazines including Vogue, Glamour, ELLE, Marie Claire and Grazia. In this episode we talk about how Willa merged her passions for fashion and social change, taking time to reconcile how to do things differently, the degrowth imperative, why we need more feminine leadership and how to take care of our direct local ecosystems. Discover all episodes and more on www.goingconscious.com. Connect with Willa: wgreen.org Instagram @w.green_agency Connect with Nikki: Instagram & LinkedIn @nikkitrott www.consciousaccelerator.com

In this special episode we bring you the second short channelled singing meditation to help you raise and empower the divine feminine in yourself and the world. Here, Nikki shares another singing meditation with you (after episode #123). Since the first song came as she gave birth to her daughter Lolotte, she has been singing channelled shamanic songs, and is now also giving shamanic sessions to people who organically come to her open to exploring the possibilities. These sessions have been leading to intriguing transformations and shifts, and Nikki wanted to bring more songs to the community here on Going Conscious after receiving multiple requests after episode #123. We invite you to give yourself these minutes to ground and align yourself as often as you feel called to. Do whatever feels good to you as you listen - lie down and close your eyes, sit still, dance, sing, or scream. Whatever feels right, go for it wholeheartedly! Just as Nikki has done here to create this channelling for you. Please come back and listen again and again. Let’s raise and rebalance the divine feminine together. And please do give this little gift to anyone you know who could benefit from it by sharing this episode with your friends. Discover podcast notes, all episodes from Going Conscious, book recommendations and more on www.goingconscious.com. Connect with Nikki: Instagram @nikkitrott LinkedIn Nikki Trott www.consciousaccelerator.com

Phillippa is a Professor of Psychology and body image and a mental health expert. She is the Founder of EVERYBODY Consulting, a global consulting group of thought leaders and social scientist experts in body image, appearance diversity and mental health. They consult with powerhouse brands like Dove, Nike and Instagram to disrupt beauty and gender norms, and create more equitable societies. What unites all the strands of Phillippa's work is a strong sense of social justice, a passion for science, and drive to help others do well in business by doing good in society. In this episode we talk about how Phillippa is working to change the images we see which impact how we feel, broader systems of body image, inclusive aspiration, how we use intuition in business, the intersection of academia and business, and the goal of everybody being able to express themselves freely. Discover all episodes and more on www.goingconscious.com. Connect with Phillippa: everybodyconsulting.com Instagram @phillipa.diedrichs Connect with Nikki: Instagram & LinkedIn @nikkitrott www.consciousaccelerator.com

In this episode I read from the international bestseller which has just celebrated its 20th anniversary, the book which Oprah Winfrey keeps on her bedside table. You’ve probably read it, and if not, I imagine it’s on your reading list. Here I revisit the book which help spur the early days of my spiritual transformation to explore psychological time, and how we are guided by the past and future, the consequences this mindset can lead to, and a strong reminder of why living with presence is the only path. In the book, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle, we learn that we each have the agency to take ourselves out of psychological pain and to return to the present moment where there are no problems. In the now, we discover we are already complete and perfect. Discover show notes, our library and more on www.goingconscious.com. Connect with Nikki: Instagram & LinkedIn @nikkitrott www.consciousaccelerator.com

Brenden is the Founder of Barefoot Ventures, the regenerative investment firm which we run together as I am the Founding Partner. In this episode we share the story of how we came to partner up on this mission to reimagine finance for good, and the core concepts that Barefoot Ventures is built upon. Brenden is passionate about business as a force for good and the world of opportunities it is creating for investors and all stakeholders. He believes the regenerative potential before us will far exceed that of our extractive past. We talk about how permaculture can lead to “permacapital” and the idea of a 1000 year fund, how to apply the realisation that we are connected to everything to the world of business, what the true role of capital is, long term value creation instead of short term extraction, why the soil should be our most valued asset and how we help businesses thrive and become regenerative. Discover all episodes and more on www.goingconscious.com. Connect with Brenden: www.barefoot.ventures LinkedIn: Brenden Keon Connect with Nikki: Instagram & LinkedIn @nikkitrott www.consciousaccelerator.com

Fanny is the founder of Rue du Paradis, a bespoke, inclusive and eco-conscious lingerie brand. As well as being a multilingual entrepreneur, she is an international tax lawyer admitted to practice in New York. A dual citizen of France and Turkey, she was born in Germany. In this episode we talk about why Fanny decided, from fashion school, to become her own “rich man” and start making her own capital. How she realised for the first time there was nothing wrong with her body, finding freedom, creating a brand to help people love themselves, how to structure an accessible bespoke brand, and why brands need to listen to what people need not tell people what they need. Discover all episodes and more on www.goingconscious.com. Connect with Fanny: rueduparadislingerie.com Instagram & Pinterest @rueduparadis Connect with Nikki: Instagram & LinkedIn @nikkitrott www.consciousaccelerator.com

James builds brands that have a positive impact. The core of his thinking builds on the triple bottom line: people; planet; profit which he uses to define what a brand should do (rather than audit what it has done). He is committed to helping as many people benefit from this powerful thinking with access to all his workshops at Rogue School and his agency Punk Works shaping brands that go further. In this episode we talk about life cycle assessment for impact brands, why doing good doesn’t harm profit, what it means to be an ally to your employees and why success means delivering meaningful interactions so brands can make the big changes. Discover all episodes and more on www.goingconscious.com. Connect with James: LinkedIn: James Hurst www.punk.works Connect with Nikki: Instagram & LinkedIn @nikkitrott www.consciousaccelerator.com