A Selfish Plan to Change the World

Finding Big Purpose in Big Problems

The author’s central argument is that you can act in self-interest and help create positive change in the world. In fact, it’s virtually impossible not to (no one is really acting with 100% altruism). But true personal investment starts with feeding your purpose. We all have something we’re born to do, we just may not know it yet. For the author, he thought his dreams were to be a rockstar. Yet he’s found purpose by trying to make us all aware of the modern slavery in front of us.

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About the Book

A Selfish Plan to Change the World was published in 2017, and written by Justin Dillon. The book is a guide to finding meaning in our lives through helping others. Through the discovery that our need for meaning is inextricably linked to the needs of the world. 

It draws on Justin’s own story as a musician turned documentary filmmaker and now social entrepreneur, as well as stories of others who found their calling by giving more of themselves to help others.

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About the Author

Justin Dillon grew up believing he was destined for rock greatness. However, he couldn’t shake the feeling inside of him when confronted with the exploitation of others against their will. Modern slavery in the form of sex trafficking, forced child labor, forced marriage and beyond. This riot within him took hold, shifting his career from making music to making a documentary Call + Response showing the reality of what modern slavery is today. And then going further to create a website and now a company to help other organizations root out slave labor in their supply chains.

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What We Can Learn

NOTE: I am going to write this from the perspective of someone who advises brands and other organizations on strategy for marketing and communications. As well as within my organization, as we build a brand of our own through the work we do with others.

Personally, I took a lot out of this book for my own self-interest and would recommend it to anyone struggling to see how they can make the world a bit better through what they know how to do.

But those lessons won’t necessarily be in here. I’m selfishly rewriting them to fit a different agenda.

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Find Your Riot. Find Your Purpose

Simply put, finding your riot is how you find your purpose

Or, What pisses you off and you simply won’t stand for it anymore?

That’s more my way of defining it, but Justin’s is more poetic.

Because what else is a riot really? But a group of highly motivated people provoked to act en masse. Sounds pretty powerful.

Arguably few brands have a known riot. But the ones that do, are distinct and perhaps beloved for them.

Patagonia’s riot is ‘man’s misuse of the environment’. In outdoor wear, Patagonia isn’t heads and shoulders above the others in features or tech. But they are in every metric that shows they matter to people.

Dove’s riot is women’s low self-esteem.

Bombas riot is the indignity of homelessness.

and so on.

I love the word RIOT because I love provoking language. Purpose. Belief. Conviction even, can feel a bit loose. A bit too grey. But RIOT? That’s a leading question. What are you willing to not only fight for but what’s going to drive you out into the streets? To march en masse? To yell at the top of your lungs. Toss cars over (okay maybe not). But what motivates you to move because you simply can’t take it anymore?

That to me gets to the heart of purpose. An injustice you cannot stand for, and therefore you are propelled into action that won’t allow you to quit. Particularly when it reinforces what you do and how you do it.

In Chaos, Move

Are you going forwards? Or are you going backwards?

We have become hardwired towards ‘stories with a happy ending’? 3 Act plays where we know the hero will overcome the odds and triumph in the end. In the chaos of the world, there are very few of these. What’s the known ending for climate change? Ending modern slavery? Migrant crisis? And so forth.

There’s ambiguity in the big issues. Ambiguity makes us all risk-averse to act. To move to the chaos. We’d much prefer stories with a guaranteed happy ending.

As marketers, we’re perhaps much worse. How many brands have their purpose laid out on a PowerPoint somewhere? Everyone someone in the organization (maybe?) knows it, but the public doesn’t know it. Because they don’t act on it. Consistently.
If it was their Riot? We’d all know. Why? Because the company would be compelled to act in every manner.

Ideas are cheap. Execution is everything.

Apple’s riot has become privacy. And into the chaos of a world where we our privacy has been compromised because we are the product: our activities, our searches, our location, and our interests all as marketable data for others to use; Apple has oriented itself towards fighting this. Through its devices. Through its fight with government regulators. Through its marketing. It’s hardly the only riot Apple has, but it’s arguably one where they are taking the lead over others.

Poverty of Means - Poverty of Meaning

A poverty of means provide(s) an avenue for people to address their poverty of meaning… and vice versa.

What is the meaning? Why am I on this earth? It’s the existential question we all face… once we have met our basic needs.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs says that the needs of the lower level must be met before we can attend to the needs higher up.

Ending on Self-Actualization, becoming a better ‘you’. How much of our modern self-help culture lives here?

The author argues, helping others does not have to be a truly altruistic act. In fact, it rarely is. We all have a selfish agenda. The person who works for a non-profit may be doing it to advance their resume in some way, as an example. But for the cause, it’s a win-win. Because they’re applying their skills to satisfying the lacking needs, the Poverty of Means, of others.

Brands suffer from a Poverty of Meaning. It’s quantifiable. Most people cannot name a single one of us with a purpose or who is doing good for the world. And 3/4 of us could disappear tomorrow and they wouldn’t care.

So much of modern marketing sits at Self-actualization. We market our products as a means to help you be a better version of you. There’s a utility in that, but it isn’t distinct.

The blessings of comfort, amusement, and approval masquerade themselves as meaning.

Here’s a great example (not in the book). Lululemon vs Alo. Both trade-off self-actualization through yoga, mindfulness, and fitness for personal growth. But there is no bigger ‘there there’. There is no signaling of being part of something bigger than yourself other than the badge value of wearing what a celebrity on Instagram is wearing. Which means, yes Alo is beating Lululemon in its own game right now. But tomorrow it’ll be someone else. There is no deeper meaning. No indefensible moat around what they do or why they do it.

Lululemon could have built in an offering that helps you by helping others. Easy onboarding for people to realize their best self both in the utility of the product and by helping someone else’s Poverty of Means - whatever that is on Maslow’s chart (which makes it a handy tool). But they haven’t and so they’re replaceable. And I’d argue Alo will be too eventually.

Parity and Pity

Pity alone is not helpful. Parity is what happens when we believe that the problems of others are as important as our own.

Why is pity alone not enough? It can be where we start (very often it is) but it doesn’t lead to lasting involvement. Lasting change.

Very often it leads to short-term charity. Think there’s a reason why we are constantly bombarded by donation requests. Going back to the 3 act metaphor, charity resolves our feeling of pity. I gave. I’m a good person. Now I move on.

But rarely does what we give result in a conclusion for those that need help. It gets them to the next day, operationally or physically if given directly to someone.

Parity is when we believe the problems are as important as our own.

This to me is a macro industry-wide brief. To solve the problems of the world, the ones in a perpetual ‘second act’ of chaos and ambiguity, we need people to care enough to commit. Including ourselves.

In the book, the author uses the migrant crisis to illustrate this. The numbers are staggering and behind each one is a human life (just this past week 300+ have died in a boat capsizing off the coast of Greece). But they’re numbers. Is it a coincidence number starts with the word ‘numb’? We’re numb to it.

Until there is an event that makes their story, our story (selfish being useful once again). In 2015, a boat capsized off the coast of Kos in the Greek Isles. A photographer captured the photo of a young Syrian boy who had drowned, lying face down in the surf almost like he was asleep. A site any parent knows. Suddenly, that boy’s story became our story. Because now everyone one of us could imagine it, put ourselves into it. And when we do that, we start to really consider what would compel someone to put themselves and that boy in such peril.

Did that last? For everyone, obviously not? But the lesson for us is, 1. avoid the impulse to rely on pity. It’s even shorter-lived and rarely moves to change. 2. make their story our story. For the millions of island nations who are facing forced relocation and potential loss of land and culture, how can that become my story? For the parent who faces the unimaginable choice of leaving their home and trekking thousands of miles across jungle and desert to come to our border to seek safety and asylum.. how can that become a hardline anti-immigration American’s story? Where can they find parity to start to soften some of our stances?

And for brands,

You Were Born for This

How can I help?

This is often the question you get when you tell these kinds of stories. When you tell others about the work you’re doing on a cause. The easy answer is ‘give money’, but often there’s more to it.

Back to self-actualization, we want to be a better version of ourselves. And being a check writing pocketbook, for many, is not enough.

But, we all bring certain skills to the party. Whether that’s the artist, the accountant, the teacher, and so forth.

I think of Jose Andres here. He sees the chaos in a world event. He sees people suffering. He sees his riot in the inaction that is leaving people hungry at the very moment they need their energy. And so he finds does what he knows how to do. He cooks. He sets up a working kitchen in the most chaotic of places and he feeds people.

The author, a musician, would call that hitting his money note. The one that he can hit ‘on stage’ and make it his own.

For brands, this is key. Going back to building meaning. All brands have something they can do.

Every brand has the ability to help, which further gives back to its meaning.

Bombas connects its socks to addressing one indignity of homelessness which lack of footwear. And it builds from there.

Apple turns its closed system and intuitive design into greater access for those with disabilities while advocating for greater privacy controls in our industry.

Budweiser cans water to send to natural disasters where clean water can’t be found.

We saw during the pandemic greats act of giving. Breweries and distillers creating hand sanitizers. Others converting manufacturing to provide more PPE to frontline workers.

In his book, the author is speaking to the individual. Everyone can lend their skill and interest. Is every Brand or Company BORN to do this?

The Double Bottom Line

The Double Bottom Line is a business strategy that marries financial profit to social responsibility. Ordinarily, the bottom-line tracks fiscal performance and financial profit and loss. DBL measures the benefit of positive impact—it focuses on more than just the return on investment.

(Definition source)

For these companies, giving back isn’t just a means to garnering favor from the public. It’s how they judge their year. Profit alone doesn’t cut it.

Not every brand is set up to have a true double bottom line, however we can all be a bit more diligent about the impact of our production and supply chains.

Because if you aren’t, you can bet someone else is

An example is the work the author has undertaken. Pivoting further from musician to documentary filmmaker / activist to now CEO of a SAAS company helping others eliminate slave labor from their supply chains. So much of what we consume doesn’t always come from virtuous circumstances. Forced labor, deadly conditions, poverty wages (if at all) are the cost of doing business in many parts of the world. Costs that do not show up in the price tag of the source materials that go into our products. Justin’s company FRDM (freedom) maps, monitors, and mitigates these risks in supply chains. Cutting off valuable funding resources for those exploiting people and land resources.

Final Thought

Our motivations to help others don’t have to be pure; they just have to be present

In working with brands, and the personalities within, there are so many agendas to navigate. It’s easy to be a bit jaded about those motives, particularly as my feed is inundated with Lions at Cannes at this moment. The agenda to win awards leads to work with a purpose, which means it’s ripe for exploiting other people’s pain for temporary gain.

Is the bit of good that comes from it worth it all? I don’t know, but if I have to indict my industry it’s in 2 things

• The chase of the ‘new’

• The chase for safety in results

The chase for new leads us to fail to commit. Fail to stick with it. We chase a new cause, a new problem. Give it a new solution. Release it. And then hunt again. Rather than sticking with the RIOT we’ve entered.

The chase for results means we shy away from the Chaos. From the ambiguity of second acts because if it can’t be solved before award entries need to be written, why bother?

The hard problems need us. Need our collective thinking. Need us to push our clients into the fray. To be better. To commit.

Once again I come back to this fact:

3 in 4 of us could disappear tomorrow and the world wouldn’t care.

Make them care and you’ll outlive your competition.