Joshua Coombes, founder of Do Something For Nothing, spoke to Ozone about the power of human connection at our first speaker event of 2022
At our first speaker event of the year, Joshua Coombes, founder of Do Something For Nothing, spoke to us about the power of human connection. Our Marketing Communication Director, Bryan Scott, explains more about Joshua’s story and how it can be applied personally and professionally.
The likelihood is by the time you read this we’ll be hurtling towards the end of January. The pleasantries and ‘warming up’ of the return to work will be a long and distant memory, and planning cycles will have many of us already thinking about the summer months. If, like me, you’ve found it a bit of a struggle to get going again after what felt like a prolonged break, (thanks largely to the reintroduction of restrictions and a spell of Covid isolation) you may also be looking for inspiration and motivation wherever you can get it.
Like many companies do, Ozone regularly welcomes great speakers to give different perspectives on a wide range of topics, on both a personal and business level. In the past few months we’ve been incredibly fortunate to hear - in person - from Simon Daglish about his amazing exploits around the North and South Poles with the Walking with the Wounded team, and Kathleen Saxton who shared the story of her journey from PA to headhunter and entrepreneur to fully fledged psychotherapist.
We’ve been pretty excited about starting the year with our latest session and a speaker from beyond the realms of our industry. And while our anticipated in-person event was scuppered by work-from-home guidance, we were incredibly lucky to have a virtual audience with the wonderful Joshua Coombes. For those of you who may not have heard Joshua’s name before, he’s an author and hairdresser who founded the movement ‘Do Something For Nothing’ while giving up his full-time job to cut the hair of the homeless on city streets around the world.
This post is not designed to be a recap on Joshua’s talk and the lessons of his encounters; a much better idea for that is to get in touch with him for a session at your workplace, or buy his book that dedicates 100% of Joshua’s proceeds to future not-for-profit art projects to amplify the lives of isolated people. However, the overriding and rather simple message that came out of Joshua’s talk was one we can all too easily forget; that human connection is an incredibly special gift and that our time is the most incredible thing that we can share with one another. While Joshua’s insights go well beyond the framing of the pandemic, I personally found that they resonated more with me now than they may have done at any other time.
Does anyone else fondly remember - if that’s the right phrasing - how the first lockdown brought out the ‘we can get through this’ spirit, by seeking initiatives for keeping connected while actively checking in with our family, friends and colleagues? There was a certain positive, collaborative gusto at that time which I felt decayed a little with each subsequent period of lockdown or restrictions. Over time, the spirit of adventure was turning into one of apathy.
But I don’t want to be a killjoy - the opposite actually - as it’s where we’ve been in the past couple of years that is making the prospect of 2022 very exciting indeed. We had a few months' glimpse of ‘normality’ last year when industry events returned in all their glory, and while the fist-bumping and mask-wearing were a bit of an annoyance, it was pretty wonderful to be back. In November, Ozone was a proud headline partner of The Marketing Society’s Global Changemakers conference, and there was something really special about being back and getting inspired, live in the room, with our clients. The buzz in the networking spaces during break times was a clear indicator that people were loving connecting and reconnecting again.
While it might sound a little trite to compare the often life-changing work that Joshua does with life in our industry, that is exactly what he encouraged us to do. In making connections he said, good things will happen. I’m really excited about getting out and about in 2022, and really appreciating all that we have access to that I may previously have taken for granted. After all, the world of marketing and advertising is built on connections - with consumers, with customers, with colleagues - and now more than ever, feels the perfect time to make those relationships thrive.
