Unknown: 0:02

The cosmos is within us. We are made of starstuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself. Carl Sagan. Welcome to the lessons from nature podcast, modeling the secrets of the bees, hosted by Mark Rubin.

Mark Rubin: 0:21

If you hear my voice, you're alive. And if you're alive, you've been playing the game of regeneration. Since you made it this far in the podcast, you must be a curious person who's focused on learning health in the future. It's possible to continue this trajectory in practical terms by playing games in the real world. Today on the lessons from nature podcast, we'll be discussing secret 24 from HMI as money. There's so much you can do. It's about the idea that we can improve things by creating money, learning skills, forming communities, and using some of the money created to restore and rebuild habitat for all living things, including pollinators. I like to introduce my co host, David hula. He's a catalyst for creating a better tomorrow. David is a futurist, a thinker and a keynote speaker. He's keynote at numerous conferences across the country and internationally. In the last 14 years, he's delivered over 1200 presentations and keynotes on six continents, and 16 countries. He's written 14 books, and is a co founder of a global nonprofit to face the climate crisis. It's called this spaceship earth.org. David co hosted four episodes of this podcast with b, where we discussed futurology through the lenses of the human business of making money, learning skills, curating communities, implementing new technologies, creating habitat and developing regenerative business systems to enable us to thrive. Welcome, David. It's great to have you here on the futurology series.

David Houle: 1:58

Again, it's great to be back. I mean, I really, really enjoyed this. And I think it's a really worthy project and as a futurist, and as a climate concern person. I think what you're doing is fabulous. So that's why I'm here.

Mark Rubin: 2:11

Thanks, David. Appreciate that. Today, we're going to talk about practical, practical, practical things that can be implemented in the real world through the implementation of these things, will create regenerative systems that help and so I want to begin today with something new is I'm going to read this secret from honey as money secret 24. So last secret in the book, it goes like this. There's so much you can do. Queen Claudine then says goodbye, it's time for her to go her high for eggs and babies back to her own life's ebb and flow. The girl awakens in the field now knowing so much knew. She sees a path before her and now knows it is true. She knows the thoughts she's thinking are powered by the sun, and everything around her a billion years ago begun. She heard these words in nature, from the wisdom of the bees, she knows it's so important to pass on memories. There's something she can do now to help all nature's baby bees, she will spend some of her money creating habitat and trees. She thanks again Queen Glavine for the wisdom that she learned trees and bees are all of us, honey shared, his money earned. And that's the end of honey is money. And the it's about the idea is that we can do things we can do things together to help. And what I want to do today, David is tell a few stories about things I've done, and things I'm going to do as part of Project tonyalight to create these regenerative systems around the world,

David Houle: 3:49

great. There's three things that you're doing with this project that I think about, that, I think are essential at this moment in time to face the climate crisis. Number one, you're prompting people to take an action. Number two, if the action is a B box, and there are they're doing a B box, it is a regenerative it's not just like recycling, or something like that. It's regenerative because bees have been decimated over the last decade, and also their use and functionality. And then what's the percent of our crops and plants that need pollination by bees?

Mark Rubin: 4:30

It's about 30 to 40% of food, okay, so

David Houle: 4:32

you're regenerating all the gardens and flowers. In a certain area, you take a step, you're taking regenerative step for a three mile radius, which means you're helping other people in ways that they don't know but will appreciate. And then the third thing, and this is really important. There's a total fallacy that doing something environmental costs money, it's not for business. And so what I think you've done or Learning to do is allow people to take an action that's regenerative and make money from it. That's the triple play, if you will.

Mark Rubin: 5:08

So thanks for that. That's a great lead into what we're going to talk about next, which is the box regenerative business system. And thanks for the introduction, because let's talk about money. First, I wrote a book called Honey is money. And as you know, and the idea is that the human behaviors around gathering and storing money are identical to be behaviors in terms of gathering and storing honey. And that's because time is money. And time is money. And time costs energy. So the game is the same, all the behaviors that we have both in terms of the availability of this resource and our habitat, the organization of individual work, the organization of teamwork, the job functions in the hive, the job functions in the business, scaling the hive, scaling the business, every step is the same. A lot of times when I talk about money, I have found that people are uncomfortable, even with the word money, the idea of money. And for me, it's always been related to energy, like it's just, it's just a way to buy time not working. It's just a way to it's just a thing I can convert from something to something for, you know, in some way that might help myself or somebody else was like it's a conversion mechanism to buy work, and energy and other people. It combines a regenerative business system with money. What I learned my dad taught me about money from age 14 to 16. And one of the things I learned was the idea of compound interest. And my dad asked me how old I was that day, I was 14. And then he said, How old will you be when you plan to die? And we talked about her for like an hour. And we talked about health. We talked about longevity, we talked about behaviors, decisions, and I said I plan to die at 92. After that, he said, How old will you be when you plan to feel safe with money. And based on those three numbers, we came up with how many dollars per day, I would have to invest at what the time there was like a 6%, like overall historical compound interest rate of like the stock market. And I think it was like$8 a day. And $8 a day would buy me 2.4 or $5 million, by the time I was 70. And that would be enough to live till I was 92. Based on those numbers, a little bit of money over a long period of time, through the magic of compound interest results in a lot of money later. And the point of it, and this is in the beebox regenerative business system module on the time as honey section. Is this math, if your objective at some point in life, is to have enough money to not work, how much money is it? And when? And how can you either accelerate that or make decisions and how many $8 A day decisions as a person make from the age 14 to the age 70? If those are the right numbers, but so there's about decision making over long periods of time. And these types of ideas are part of the system that I'm creating in the Vbox regenerative system to give people this knowledge of time and energy and time and money.

David Houle: 8:00

So so how does that translate into a B box?

Mark Rubin: 8:04

If all a kid ever did once a year, one time a year was sell the honey from this hive from the age of let's just say 12 to the age of 70. They'll be multimillionaires by the time they're 70. Not that having millions of dollars is the objective but to have enough money to buy enough time to stop working then and

David Houle: 8:24

in other words, Barbie box, make honey, sell honey and put the proceeds of the sale into a bank account and let it have compound interest. Exactly.

Mark Rubin: 8:36

Thanks for Thanks for the clarification. So basically, that's one of the aspects. So when I talk about money, see people, the reactions I've gotten when people want to talk about like, what they consider to be nature, and and money and combining them. Some people have had reactions that were surprising to me, but we are nature. And our energy is money. It's no different that the bees energy is honey, it's just a sense another it's we're off by one letter, but it's this that's what we use as our resource. So money in itself is not not good or bad. The human behaviors that come around, it can be good or bad could go in either direction. But understanding how it works, just this one aspect is what's critical to thriving, you know, and over in life over long periods of time. So let me get into like, how does this work? The podcast that we're on, describes the 24 secrets of the bees that are in the book called Honey is money. And there's a board game, the box the board game, which is the business of the bees played on a board as you go around the board and you learn these these secrets through the lens of being a beekeeper. The objective of the game is to maximize the number of bees that live. That's the exit and when you do that the outcome of that is more honey that gets converted into more money that can be reinvested into more hot is more expansion and creating a bigger market, it's a collaborative game. If any one player runs out of honey, they run out of time, that if any one player of the players that are playing runs out of time, then everybody loses. So it's everybody wins, or everybody loses. And the person who has the most energy bees and money at the end wins is the queen bee of that game. But that person can only win only win if everybody survived. And that's the exact, that's not a metaphor that is in the game like that is that is occurring on our planet because of climate change and decisions. And we basically creating a game around collaborating, because this is the reality of where we are, is better than creating a purely competitive game where one person wins, and everyone else loses because we're on one rock, going around a start 19 Paul's perspective together. So when he says that's the game as we all win, or we don't. And so that's how that part works. The next thing is the game teaches people, the game of being a beekeeper, the business of being a beekeeper, and also pairing of people, to beekeepers in the area through B clubs and organizations. And that creates a community.

David Houle: 11:16

So two questions come up to me. And listen to this mark. The first question is, the board game will help educate as to the value of bees. Yeah. But you know, most people think of bees is something though, it's gonna bite him, and if not good, so bees have a negative connotation, if you don't understand how significant they are for a crop growing. The second thing is, you know, I believe everything starts with a sale. But there's a lot of people who think that sales is bad, or they're nervous about selling, do you have all kinds of suggestions as to how to sell the honey money?

Mark Rubin: 11:56

Yes. Wow. That's a great question. I'll give you some examples. Imagine you're 12 or 13, whatever. And the first module is, how many houses can you walk to in an hour? Let's just say that's 1000, where you live, you can walk to 1000 houses in an hour. And the next question is, what's the average household income, where you live? And I'm just gonna just make a million dollars, because the math is easier. So that's a billion dollars, basically, is that so that would mean that you could walk to potentially a billion dollars of money? And then the next question is, how many of those people do you know, and put their name and address and phone number and email address in this thing, the CRM, the customer relations tool that's going to manage this thing? And now you have, so you have the total markets a billion, but you might be selling into a million? And then then the next question is, how many of them know you're selling honey? Okay, you know, and then, and then here's the game, I'll create scripts, email, and SMS that have to go through the parents and be approved by some process. But the idea is, I'm going to create the scripts in advance for these people that are playing this game, and they click a button, and they magically go out to the universe. And they say, Hey, I'm selling next year's honey today. Make it 20 bucks a jar, let's just say do you want to buy some and by the way, this will make you carbon negative on your birthday, because we're gonna plant five trees on your birthday, or 10 trees, it's gonna be 10 trees, I think, whatever it is, and how many jars of next year's Honey, can they pre sell? And that's books revenue, but not income yet. Okay. So basically, now they have a market that they've sold into with scripts that they don't have to say these have to read them and know like, how they work like, what are you going to say?

David Houle: 13:41

Do you envision this being mostly children, teenagers, or what?

Mark Rubin: 13:45

At first, because only because the first version will be from KCI, zero children's book, the books like around for eight to 10, I think. And then this will be like 10 to like 14, just from a lifecycle perspective. But the point to your question is I'm going to script and systematize the entire system, and basically have a push button business, they will have to keep the bees alive, and they will have to learn beekeeping skills, but as far as the operation is going to be run in software. And I've done this before, software is going to visualize the business using my gear models, and they'll have a visual interface to this whole thing by clicking on gears and drilling down into those gears that represent to the different stages of the funnel. So there'll be a gear that represents like, like leads, and they'll click on this gear that's spinning around and then they'll they'll they'll do stuff. Now. That's how it's gonna work. What other questions you have brainstorming questions about how this would work?

David Houle: 14:41

You said sell for$20? Yeah, sure. How much higher is that than what I could get at the supermarket?

Mark Rubin: 14:48

Well, I'm selling the most inspirational honey in the world. So here's a real jar of honey. Okay, this is what its gonna look like. This is full of honey. This is from last year, but this is the new the brand new logo project on Be Light, everything that says honey makes the world go round. That's the tagline. Okay? Jar, like from a pure retail perspective, you could probably buy that jar for 10 bucks. That's a fancy jar. So like the jars fancy, let's just say 15 bucks, you're gonna buy soda for 100 bucks, let's just say, let's just say 100 bucks, right? If it made you carbon negative for every birthday, for the next 10 years, and you could read gift, that gift of carbon negativity to somebody else through some game that I'm going to create, to the right people. To the right, this also talks to you about the customer. Okay, the idea of the thinking of who is the right customer, for the most inspirational honey in the world. It's not for everybody. It's not for everyone. It's for the people that care about the future that want to teach a kid help support teaching a kid, right? Or a business system that does something good. You know, and so that's a small number of people. But there's enough,

David Houle: 15:57

okay, by the time they the kids, adult, slash parents, whatever, yeah, so I divided the box, they would have gone through the book and the game, yes. And so they understand the concept. And then you're going to supply some how you know, like, how to videos or whatever it is to be a beekeeper. Because again, I feel that you have to have a learning curve to understand the significance and the regenerative possibilities of being a beekeeper. But nevertheless, most people that I know think of bees is something that Oh, no, get away. It's a B to me, right, rather than the loving way that you perceive them to be so. So your thinking is that once they get through the book and the game, you will have dealt with that perception of bees.

Mark Rubin: 16:44

That's right, there is a perception of bees. When people get stung by a bee, it's often not a honey bee. It's often more aggressive bees, honey bees have been bred for 1000s of years or livestock. So they've been bred like, like by they take a docile bee and other docile bee and they put them together. And they've been bred to be handled by people, they can be aggressive at times if they're starving, or what I put, I put an engine on top of one of my hives to take a video and they stung me. They were not happy with the vibrations, because they communicate through vibrations.

David Houle: 17:19

That's one of the things that people don't understand. They want to have children, experience dolphins, and sea whales. But then they put them both of whom live and navigate by sonar, right? And then they put them in these pools that have the sound of the air filtration system or the heating system going through it. It's just like, That's torture to the Phantom. Yeah, right. So there really has to be an understanding of the preciousness, the sensitivity, the fragile illness, and the goodness of bees. So you're saying that by the time they get to by a bee box, they will have understood all of that. Yeah, I've until I met you, I'd never thought about oh, well, I'll do a beebox. Right. And now it's something that because of your vision, and you're bringing it to market is an opportunity, it's getting the word out, scaling it up, maybe dropping the price, maybe not. But enhancing the experience. And the other thing that I've been saying with this spaceship Earth for eight years, it's like urgency, urgency, urgency, we don't have time to figure it out. We're not doing what we're saying we're doing everybody seems to think somebody else is doing it. So this is a real lesson. In past two, you want to do something, take an action. And if you want to take this action, here's what can happen in a three mile radius right of the beebox. And just think the good and regenerative good you're bringing to a radius of three miles versus taking the same time to cut your lawn or do something that doesn't help the planet one iota.

Mark Rubin: 19:02

No, I think the direct we are nature and the direct connection. See money abstracts human beings from the concept that we are nature. And I don't think a bee looks outside the beehive and things ooh, that's outside. Like when I look outside my window like I'm inside but nature is outside. But it's not I'm this is my habitat. Like a beaver has a dam. It has a hive, like whatever, like this is just where I live, but like I'm in nature inside my house right now. And I've always felt very connected to that idea. And I think the most people outside is where nature lives. And inside is where they live. And it's separate. And money enables that to happen. But there's money separates us from our food. So by creating a system where when you eat the honey or the energy was in the sun, like that's part of that like and when you trade that honey for money, you're tokenizing that sunlight, the work it took to get that sunlight, the B work, the plant work, the nuclear work, all the work gets tokenized into this concept called money that we try But you're connected to it. Because you're part of the chain of custody of energy. You're in the chain of custody of energy when you're growing something and making something from nature.

David Houle: 20:11

That's great. You know, we're sitting here talking in the middle, the middle third of June 2023. Right? When do you expect the first B boxes to be ready for market and shipping?

Mark Rubin: 20:24

Well, I have a deal with a beekeeping equipment manufacturer, and they are going to white label the project tonyalight B box kits, which basically means they're going to sell their existing super high quality equipment, and stamp it with my livers and stuff that deals in place. And that can happen anytime. The part I don't know is the software piece, the software to do what that's going to run the business, the software that's going to allow you're going to

David Houle: 20:49

in other words, they're going to purchase a B box from you. And also it comes with the software to get people to think of themselves as beekeepers. Yeah, it's a big step. So it sounds like you've thought of everything. And you're saying hold onto my hand, and I'll walk you through it.

Mark Rubin: 21:07

Yeah. Well, my background is franchising. And so what I learned in franchising is you can systematize every single step of every single business. So part of my thinking of this, I own 17 of the exact same businesses for a reason. Because that's way easier to scale than 17 different businesses, because they're all identical.

David Houle: 21:28

So the answer to the question about when they're available for sale is sometime sometime this year, right? I believe

Mark Rubin: 21:35

that the equipment will be ready this year to be sold. I don't know how far I'm gonna get with the software. But But 2024 For sure. I'll have the software ready that runs this thing. And the question is, can I go to market with a sort of minimum viable product? Okay, that just does the basics, because speakeasy doesn't really start till April. So first of all, there are beekeeping clubs all over the country, okay. And they're all local. They're local. So like every city has a beekeeping club. Second of all, I'm looking for bee guardians. Okay, which are helpers? And basically, could I see no pun intended, or pun intended? Could I cross pollinate? Aha, this idea before the B box kits are ready to get these people trained with the local beekeeping clubs, because that's where you learn how to be a beekeeper. And join a beekeeping club, could I pre organize the training, and get people going before the equipment is ready, because it takes time couple Saturdays 73 Saturdays, to really learn enough.

David Houle: 22:32

So if there's a lot of beekeeping or groups in there, local, there must be some kind of connective National Association of beat dress dress. And it would seem to me that once you're ready, they need to understand the magnitude of your vision so that they can support it back in to all those communities,

Mark Rubin: 22:52

right? Ideally, this will this will be the the best rollout structure is for me to pick a few local to meet beekeeping clubs to prototype this idea. I have a place in West Virginia hunting I glamping, where I have the prototypes built through there, I probably have enough boxes for another 10 groups to use, I already have the equipment, it's already there already logos already ready to go. So the idea would be to use this coming season as local prototypes and get the partnerships going. Right, still sell it. But what I really would love, like the ideal scenario is get the local partnerships going and then do some kind of deal with the Scouts of America. Think of a troop, right? Like I don't know. Right? Because then it could just sit in somebody's backyard. But if they're not, there are what it like it could be a group, collaborative community, okay of the right people, because they're connected to nature, those people and they have these projects that do good things, instead of selling cookies, they could sell honey and learn about business, and learn about regenerative business models. And so the ideal way to do it would be get it going locally where I live, get the kinks figured out, get it going with the National beekeepers, and then connect that to the scouts. And then go, there has

David Houle: 24:09

to be stage after stage and step after step. You get to scale you can't go to scale right out of the box. That's right. So you're gonna have to have one sold and then you'll have 10 sold and then you have 100 sold. And at that point, you can build a community. Right. So your plan is to start locally. Yeah. So every six miles, you hope to have a Vbox so you perfect or to fill in.

Mark Rubin: 24:33

Right in perfect. Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. So your idea what you just said was perfect is that there's a certain spacing of energy. Right, you know, and so you have to be in harmony with that. Otherwise, they will make it just like a business. Too many too many futurists on the same corner. Let me tell you, David, that's not going to work out. You know, you got to know I got

David Houle: 24:53

it. I got it. It's really good to know that there's beekeeping clubs in most of the city. Isn't the United States because they'll need to be some mentoring, you can tell everybody how to do it. But once people realize that, not only are they part of a new community, but they're joining an existing community, it will deepen their results.

Mark Rubin: 25:15

It's about creating a harmonious system that creates value for the world, which is business creates value for the self, which is around learning, and creates value for the tribe, which is a community. And if all three of those elements are structurally connected together, in a way that's regenerative, that's a system that can live on for multiple generations.

David Houle: 25:37

And I have to think what made me think of this is when you said scouts, you know, my son was the Boy Scout, and it was very significant event for him. And time to time as parents, we were asked to support the troop to do something for the troop. It seems to me that parents of the troop members, yeah, they all get together. So the kids don't have to figure out how the money is. And the parents can say, Well, look, why don't we get four boxes? Yeah, appropriately set for this one troop to do. So it may not be One boy, one girl scout per Vbox, it might be five or six, but that promotes the scouting community. And nobody doesn't respect the scouts, right? I mean, so it's a really good way to scale, I think, a really smart idea,

Mark Rubin: 26:31

putting in the software, a loan component, where if parents fund this through some process, either collaborative, or individually, it's a loan to these kids with interest. And that teaches them debt and the idea that it's an investment. And by the way, the software I'm creating will process the money. So basically, creating a system. It's a bank, basically, and teaching people the skills, these kids these skills about how how does the business get created? And yeah, the whole system, the whole state, you gotta value

David Houle: 27:07

just kids business. Yeah, in a way that they'll appreciate it. Because all the research shows the younger you go demographically, the more there's concern for the climate crisis. I'm sure there's 10 year olds that have no idea about it. But but all the research shows that Gen Z and the Alpha generation, which is the kids under 10, or 15. Now look at climate as the number one problem. That's a brilliant thing. And I can't think of any parent that wouldn't appreciate that, you know, one of the things for the last 30 years, and K through 12 Education is there's no place in school to teach financial literacy, and you're doing it. That's great. That money thing is good on a one by one and the parents will like it. I want to come back to what I said at the top. Yeah, there's three key things about this from my viewpoint, as a generalist, which is one you're taking an action to, it's not just some dumb, repetitive, you know, recycling, 90% of the stuff doesn't get in the landfill. Anyway, 90% of plastic doesn't get recycled. So you're taking an action for the whole community in which you live, you're taking a regenerative step, and you make money. So through time, this will be an example of how taking regenerative steps can make you money. Because right now, people think that it will cost money and there won't be any benefit. There won't be any return. But we have to do the right thing. This is the right thing and making money doing the right thing. It's just like people saying, do what you love, and you make money and everybody, anybody who does what they love makes money say I can't believe I'm making money doing what I love. Right? So this is the same thing. I can't believe I'm making money, doing something that helps the whole neighborhood.

Mark Rubin: 28:50

I'm glad you see the vision. Absolutely. That's why I'm here. Humans are effective at being adaptable and gathering energy from their habitat. Since we're all just passing through, it will be smart to play the game of energy collection in a way that is in harmony with the rest of nature. Learning about and implementing regenerative business models will improve our ecosystem by creating money spreading knowledge, forming communities, and increasing habitat by spreading honey all around. I thank again Queen Claudine for the wisdom I have learned. Trees and bees are all of us, honey shared is honey earned. If you enjoyed this discussion about regenerative business systems, please share this podcast with people in your life who share your sense of curiosity. Visit project honey light dot life. For more information about living in harmony with the rest of nature. And don't forget, Money makes the world go around.