Leap Academy with Ilana Golan - Ending Hunger: How This Accidental Activist Found Her Passion | Ronni Kahn

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

Immersed in her privileged life in apartheid South Africa, Ronni Kahn never imagined she would become a leader in the fight against food waste and hunger. She went from one bold leap to the next—leaving a kibbutz in Israel to start from scratch in a new country, then building a successful business only to leave it to start a nonprofit. In this episode, Ronni shares the pivotal moments and challenges that led her to find her true calling, the importance of taking risks, and the powerful impact of small acts of kindness. Ronni Kahn is a South African-born Australian social entrepreneur, passionate activist, and the founder of OzHarvest, Australia’s leading food rescue charity. In 2020, she co-authored her memoir, A Repurposed Life, which was nominated for an ABIA award for Biography Book of the Year. In this episode, Ilana and Ronni will discuss: - Ronni's upbringing in apartheid South Africa - The values of resilience from her parents - Adapting from a kibbutz in Israel to life in Australia - The value of experimentation for entrepreneurs - Going from zero to a successful event planning business - The food waste revelation that led to OzHarvest - Overcoming doubts and finding purpose - The jump from business to nonprofit - Why you must seize opportunities - The value of small acts of kindness - Taking risks and following your passion - And other topics…   Ronni Kahn is the founder and Visionary In Residence at OzHarvest, Australia’s leading food rescue charity. After witnessing significant food waste in her successful events management business, she founded the organization in 2004 to combat hunger and reduce waste. A passionate advocate and activist, she has earned numerous awards, including being named Australia’s Local Hero in 2010. She has also been appointed Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) and named in Boss Magazine's Top 21 True Leaders. In 2020, she co-authored her memoir, A Repurposed Life, which was nominated for an ABIA award for Biography Book of the Year. Connect with Ronni: Ronni’s Website: https://ronnikahn.com/ Ronni’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronni-kahn/ Ronni’s Email: [e-mail]  Resources Mentioned: Ronni’s Book, A Repurposed Life: https://www.amazon.com/Repurposed-Life-Ronni-Kahn/dp/1911632949  Write to Ilana: [e-mail]  

750 million people need food. It's almost going to be a billion. Hunger is not going away. It is up to each and every one of us to repair the world. Passion is infectious. And I don't take no for an answer because I just like to give people the opportunity to be involved and to support.

And why would they say no? Ronnie Khan. She's the founder of Oz Harvest, Australia's leading food rescue organization. Your iconic yellow food rescue vans. You can see it all over Australia. 250 tons of good food every single week from over 2,600 food donors delivered directly to 1,500 charities that feed people

in need. Incredible. 350 staff, 3,000 volunteers. Ronnie, this is incredible. But let me take you back in time to South Africa as a kid. Was this even in your wildest dreams? Welcome to the show, Ronnie. Good morning and good afternoon to whoever's listening. Was this ever in my dreams? Not only was this the furthest thing from my mind, I grew up in South Africa. By virtue of the fact that I was white, I grew up during the apartheid era, I grew up as a spoiled little brat. A little girl who really didn't understand, in the first instance, didn't understand inequality, didn't understand discrimination, grew up knowing that I was privileged, but probably didn't even think I was privileged. And in truth, what I really wanted to be when I was big was going to be what in my mind

was so very glamorous and was that an air stewardess. Because I thought of those beautiful uniforms. I thought it was my passport and ticket to traveling the world. I did not know that that was a glorified waitress. Never getting off at any of the stations, shifting their body clock. But no, charity was not part of what I thought I'd do. And nor did I have any visions around being a leader. I was a shy little girl. Well, talk about your book, because I read a little bit and I had to say, there's also some tears that are going up there. You live a very different life, right? You live with maids, you have people take care of you. How do you start creating the

Ronnie that we know? And what are some areas in your life that now in retrospect built you to the Ronnie that we know today? There's absolutely no doubt that the experiences I went through, one of them being apartheid, is fundamental to who I am today. But probably the overriding event that shifted our family and growing up changed the way that I both think and again matured into, not because I was really aware of them at the time. When I was six, my dad had an almost fatal car accident. So up until that time, he was an up and coming architect. He had just gone into private practice. My mother, who had a university degree, but as a white South African privileged, even though compared to our peers, we were actually very poor. But I didn't know that because I didn't feel that. So my mother

hadn't worked since she had children. I'm the third daughter. And so her life had been looking after us with the help of maids, with the help of the society we lived in. So fairly privileged. And then overnight, this happened to my dad. Number one, the people around him in his private practice dissolved that practice. He landed up being in hospital for over two years. So my mother immediately had to start working, immediately had to start being the breadwinner for us. And at no point, at no point can I recall through those years onwards, do I recall my mother ever becoming a victim, ever being bitter, ever not having the energy to keep rolling out new ideas in order to make our family survive and feel safe? And yes, she had wonderful friends who supported her. So for example, one of the things that she landed up

doing was baking 300 cakes a day to deliver, to dish out. So I always say that my delivery life started because I was the youngest and had to help her pack the car and had to go out with her. And I groaned and grumbled. And trust me, I did not do that with love and compassion in my heart. But that role modeling that she unwittingly gave me. So I always say the subliminal behavior that we give out, that ripple effect, don't ever undermine it in your workspace, in your family life. How we behave is what gets absorbed. And it's really only that that I can think fundamentally shifted and changed and gave me both the energy that I have and both the attitude that I have, that you make the best of everything

because that's what I saw. It wasn't what I heard. It's what I saw. And interestingly, my dad then, once he did come out of hospital and he came out, actually, in hindsight, I realized that he was severely disabled. He had one stiff leg, one leg in a caliper. He walked with a stick mainly, but he went back to architecture. He climbed up ladders. He had a car fitted out to make him mobile. Again, we're talking 60, 70 years ago was a big deal. And I never considered him, none of us ever considered him disabled because he never complained. When I think about the pain he must have been in, because nothing functioned well, not a complaint, this gorgeous smiling human.

So I was blessed with that energy, that attitude through my childhood. So that victor mentality that you bring with you versus the victor mentality, right? And that resilience and that entrepreneurship, all of that is basically probably have been ingrained with you from your parents. So take us a little bit, because then you went from a very specific type of living, like the apartheid, all the way to exactly opposite in Israel. How was that move, right? Because that's not an easy move for a teenager. Look, in a way, it was an adventure. I did not know that I'd never return to South Africa, but that's what happened. I guess a couple of things. Growing up, I was in a youth movement.

A youth movement, which actually, again, fundamentally added to the values that my parents inadvertently were sharing. So my parents had managed to find a way to send me to a school that was very liberal in South Africa. In those days, liberal meant left. It meant that the school again espoused values of equality, of non-discrimination, as did my parents. Although we lived with maids, it was always understood never to take that for granted and to treat them well. But the system meant that they were servants and we were masters. But my youth movement upbringing is where values were embedded. It was all about socialism. It was all about equality.

It was all about idealizing both the state of Israel, but also the values that are inherent in the Jewish religion. The morality around tikkun olam, this notion of it is up to each and every one of us to repair the world. Now, I did not understand that, nor did I know what it meant, nor did I think that ever that would become a driving force for me, this notion that making a difference to others is so fundamental. I still didn't, but I knew that I didn't want to stay in South Africa. At that time, the chances that apartheid were going to be dissolved or that I could have any part in that was so remote. I had no notion of this victor quality, no notion that

my actions could make a difference. And so going to Israel was an adventure. I got a scholarship to go to university there. And I thought I would go there and do my degree, and then I'd see what would happen. And so landing upon kibbutz was the exact opposite of the life I had led. And on some level, I absolutely loved it. And the minute I went to university, it was very obvious that I wasn't going anywhere, that I would remain there. I could not have told you that I would leave to come and live in Australia then in those years. But it was a very different way of life, but one that was wildly energetic, filled with philosophy and motivation and excitement. And I was at university. And so life was good as a young adult. So you stayed in Israel for a while and then you left to Australia.

And that was the beginning of the Ronnie as we know her today. Well, in a way, I guess what happened that I didn't understand either at the time. We lived on a kibbutz after we'd finished university. My then boyfriend became my husband. He was absolutely committed to living on kibbutz. And we lived on kibbutz for 10 years. Kibbutz is a socialist society where it's a commune, where people work according to their ability and get according to their need. But the core element of a kibbutz was set up to manage the security of Israel. Kibbutzim, immigrants had come from Europe, from Russia, with communist ideals, and had set up these posts that in the early days of Palestine and Israel, and we're not getting into politics, but we're set up

based on those philosophies that everyone was equal. You shared a kettle. You didn't all need a car. You didn't all need the things that today middle-class society is based on. And it was fascinating. It was fabulous. It was interesting. But we lived there for 10 years. But I started feeling that there was no room for my individuality, for the unknown dreams that I had. And so we left and went to live in the city. And I guess that was really the beginning of me just knowing I needed to do whatever it was that I could do. My sister had just bought a florist. I'd never touched a flower. I'd never been in business. I'd done a whole lot of things on the kibbutz that

were very far from economic management of a household because you didn't have to. You were given little coupons on the keyboards as pocket money because all your daily living cares were taken care of. In fact, I recall going into the supermarket the first time and realizing that actually I hadn't even bought a wallet because this whole notion of living in a society that functions somewhat differently. Anyway, I realized that actually I wanted to have a family unit that was independent, that was dependent on ourselves. So we left kibbutz and I went to work in a florist, which I'd never done. But it turns out that I was good at business, that I was creative and could make that work.

And so in the meanwhile, there were a whole lot of reasons to leave Israel, some of them political, some of them emotional. I have two sons. There's compulsory military conscription in Israel. Politics was playing out in Israel already. And we looked at the world and thought, where could we go? My sister had moved to America. My brother-in-law had moved to Australia. Australia seemed closer to the values that we wanted and possibly were familiar with. Australia was part of the Commonwealth.

It wasn't that I knew that, but I felt like it would be similar to South Africa in many ways. And I didn't want to bring my kids up in America. The consumer society was really the furthest thing that we wanted. And so we arrived in Australia. After you leave kibbutz and after you've worked in the city, we left with, I think we arrived in Australia with no jobs, $10,000, two children, and needed to make it work. So you don't know anybody. We know my brother-in-law, but my brother-in-law was not

offering us work, housing, solace. And we arrived here with commitment to know that we needed to feed our children and find work. So you need to find work and it's easier to find work when you don't have kids. It's a little stressful when you do have kids and you're basically starting from scratch, right? How does it start? For some reason, we thought it would be easier for my husband, not because, I mean, all he had at the time was a BA, but we thought, you know, I was still in the mindset, the man goes out to work and I look after our kids. But I started looking to see what jobs were available because it became apparent that it was going to actually be harder for my husband to get a white collar job than it might be for me to do anything. And the only thing I didn't want to do was go back into floristry. It was a hard life. You have to go to the markets at three in the

morning. You're running a shop. You have to be there. It's building up a business. But in the first few weeks in Australia, we arrived in January. And January in Australia, we didn't realize, closes down. It's the summer holidays. People are not there. Only in February do things start happening. So we had rented a house. And I started looking through the newspaper.

I knew that I didn't want to be a florist. But I started flipping. And honestly, the only jobs that didn't want to be a florist, but I started flipping. And honestly, the only jobs that popped out were florist, florist, florist, florist. And we needed work. We needed us to start earning money. And in the first week in February, I thought, all right, look, I'll just take a job because kids were going back to school. Everybody, you know, were going to start school. Everybody needed. We needed to find some way of managing.

But what I didn't know, because we'd lived in Israel, and in Israel, 40 years ago, I didn't celebrate Western holidays. In our florist, the main events were the Jewish holidays. Israel didn't celebrate Christmas. Israel didn't celebrate any of the traditional Western holidays. So I arrive here and I get a job on about the 9th or 10th of February. I had not ever celebrated Valentine's Day. I didn't know that Valentine's Day was the biggest day in the calendar. And every florist needed all hands on deck. Valentine's Day is on the 14th of February.

And I was fired on the 16th of February. But I touched flowers and it didn't take long before I actually had three florists. And then I gave up my floristry life because people were coming in and saying, we love your flowers. Will you do my wedding? And I said, sure, I'll do your wedding. What is doing your wedding mean? I said, well, will you come and look at the hall? I went to look at the hall, a dreary place. And before I knew it, I was saying, I could drape the ceilings. We could turn this into a princess's fairyland. And so I gave up the florist and started my own business from my garage, putting on and doing wonderful events until I got a call one day. So I was mostly doing private events, unique moments in a person's life, but some of

them had businesses and there were conferences starting. And I started doing more and more of that work. Until one day I got a call saying the opening of the Sydney Casino, a big deal, would like you to tender for the opening. Because I was doing theming by then and my garage was now bursting and overflowing. And I won that tender. So I had to find a warehouse, move out, start building major big props. And so my event life began and I loved it. I loved it. So let me take you there, Ronnie, because there's millions of people who are trying

to build entrepreneurship. So how do you get started? Because there's a lot of challenges with entrepreneurship. There's a lot of fear. There's a lot of money beliefs. There's a lot of, how do I market myself? Tell us a little bit about challenging moments that you faced. Well, it's called necessity, first of all. It's called necessity. And when you're going to the supermarket and putting things in your basket and taking them out because you can't afford them. You know that you have to do whatever it takes. So I guess I knew flowers. I knew that I

could do. And when somebody gave me the first opportunity and said, come and decorate my party, I just knew that I could do that. I didn't doubt that I could deliver. I didn't know how I would deliver. I mean, when I think about it, I had utter chutzpah, cheek, gall, but I was driven. I was driven to make something work. And I guess that's when subliminally what my mother needed to do and she did just was somewhere inside of me that said, yeah, you can take on this party. And eight others on the same weekend with my kids decorating with my husband and my brother-in-law, getting in their cars and delivering flowers to a million places from our garage because I mean, yes, yes, I can do that. Yes, I can do that.

I didn't stop to question. I didn't stop to say, what gives you the right? How do you think you can do this? So you say yes, then you figure out the how, which is basic entrepreneurship anyway, but most people are afraid of it. But I'd never heard of the word entrepreneur. I'd never heard. It didn't exist. It didn't exist. It just was a case of, yes, I know how to do this because when I get there, I'll work it out. And they believe that I can do this. Otherwise, they wouldn't have asked me. So it's like the chicken and the egg. What comes first? I put out that I can do this. So they asked me to do this. So then I had to do this.

Let me stay there in the event business, although it's the beginning of everything else. But I want to stay there for a second because there's a difference between I'm just going to take another event just to pay the bills, just to have enough in the supermarket to fill whatever my kids want versus I'm going to create this mega event business that is actually like having staff on board. That's a very different level of business. So first of all, I want to hear about that move from let me just pay the bills because I think it's very important later when you stepped into nonprofits. So talk to me a little bit about that. The more events I started taking and from the moment that I took

on that opening of this big official six-figure event, because it was a casino, I had to be registered and go through the police, all the tax files. This was definitely stepping into another league. And I just bumbled along filling out whatever forms needed to be filled out. But interestingly, I definitely have a philosophy that the universe provides. The universe provides what you need. And someone Someone who I had once met came back into my life, a creative person who I could start relying on to help me build. Now, it's interesting because that person, 20 years later, who stayed working with me, when I chose to move into the charitable world, when I offered him my business, I realized there's a difference between people. If he'd have been able to run and start and develop his own business,

he would have done that. He could not even take the business I was giving him on a plate that he'd been so much a part of because I'd get the business, then I'd come up with a creative notion, then he would take it and bring it to life. So that difference between being filled with the confidence and sometimes it is false confidence. Sometimes it's a belief that you can do something that you have to work quite hard to make sure you can fulfill. In my line of business, there was very much a deadline and you only had one opportunity. You know, when I'd be pitching a business and somebody would come to me and say, well, you've said my event's going to cost $100,000. How do I know what it'll look like? I said, well,

you've got two options. You can pay me to do your event the week before, and then we do it again. You can pay me again to do it. We can run a trial. Or you believe that what I'm telling you I'm going to do, I will do. And I'm very lucky that people believed in me and I could deliver the vision of what I was selling. So I think each event led to the next and I just got more confident and was setting a trend because nobody was doing the kind of theming that I was doing. And I think in entrepreneurship, a big, big, big part is that experimentation that you're talking about. You need to start making decisions based on hope and dreams and then fulfill them and experiment and continue versus trying to get the clarity that I have like a thousand percent confidence. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Each time you experiment more, you take a little bit

more risk and you hope that it's going to pay off and you have the ability to be agile and nimble to shift and change when it's not exactly working out the way you intended it to be. And I think entrepreneurship is about agility. It is about innovation. It is about confidence. And I'm often asked, do you think you're born with that? Do you think you can learn it? I definitely think that there are inherent skills that make it easier, but that one can definitely learn. And get the confidence with time. So Ronnie, I want you to share, suddenly you have this mega event business.

People are coming to you. You're already known for that. And you actually have this beautiful story of how you maneuver into the world of nonprofit. In your book, you actually talk a lot about how suddenly you got inspired that one person can change the world. So suddenly you're in the event business and you're starting something completely different and you're starting to do food rescue in the biggest way possible. I think the journey is really important because one of the things that was inherent at all

of my events was food. Because food is about sharing. Food is about caring. Food is about abundance. It is about generosity. And it is also about showing success. So every single one of my events had a wonderful, generous element of food. And my events finished late. I never wanted anybody to leave my events hungry because that would have been a reflection of my client. It was that my client hadn't invested enough

in taking care of all the elements from the beauty around you to what's on your table. And so my tables groaned. And for years, I was throwing away food because you start an event at three in the morning. You sometimes finish at three in the morning. You sometimes finish at three in the morning. You've got to get out of the venue. You've got to clean up and tidy up.

And most of my venues were unique. So I wasn't in simple, uncomplicated places to think about what to do. So sometimes, yes, I take home dozens of oysters, but there's a limit to how many oysters you could eat. So we'd throw them out. Until one time I did an event that was for a thousand people, I turned it into a Roman banquet. And I don't like people queuing, so I just had stalls of food like a marketplace. Thousands of kilos of food. But I also had barrels of wine and kegs of beer. And my guests, and I always have food to counter the drink, because if you drink too much, you don't eat. My guests rushed to the alcohol, got drunk, and didn't touch the food. It was unconscionable. There was no way I could

throw away all that food. But it also was concurrent with, by this time, success and the trappings of success were built into my life. What do I mean by that? I had a red sports car because I could now afford a better quality of life. We'd moved four houses since then. The first house we bought was the only thing we could afford, maybe cost us $100,000. But at that point, I already knew that the house I wanted was $175,000. And then we got our next house. And by then we could spend $250,000. But what I really wanted was $400,000. And I was starting to feel this notion trapped in my success of, how do you know when enough is enough?

But I wasn't fully questioning it until that night when I loaded up my van because I just couldn't throw it away and had to think, where am I going to take this food? Couldn't fit into one person's refrigerator. And so I went and took it to an organization that I by chance had driven past and knew that it was open 24-7. And I arrived and there were people milling around who needed food. And I kind of, whilst I'd volunteered in many different roles in the community, I'd never really delivered food or taken food. And I saw this place and I knocked on the door and said, I have food. Will you take it? And they said, bring it on.

And it was like a light switched on because it made me realize that I had something that I could share. So that became my rogue food rescue life for a while. I would tell my clients, don't you worry if there's surplus. I'm just going to take it to feed people. Until that became more exciting to me, more fulfilling, more meaningful than tying purple ribbons and matching it with purple flowers. And so I started doing more and more of that until I decided that maybe I could do more of that, but I still needed to earn money. So I didn't leave my business for the first seven years

of building OzHarvest because I couldn't. And I'd never intended to earn money out of doing the charitable work that now just made me feel better than any money I'd ever earned. Tell us about this move. So first of all, it's just brilliant because you just proved the market fit. You proved the need. You did good. You knew that you felt great about it. But then there's a very big decision of moving from very lucrative business that pays well, that is clearly for profit, and then moving to something that, sorry, God knows how do you make actually survive, right? So how do you make that move?

And again, and I will just put in brackets, I know a lot of organizations that try to do what you do and never succeeded. So what you created in Australia, is it a whole different ball game? And I do want to talk about it. So how do you even make that move? I guess as I was doing more and more delivering food, it occurred to me that

if I had food, maybe there were other people who had food. It had never occurred to me before. And so I started thinking about, again, at that stage, I didn't know how many people were hungry in Australia. I didn't know how much people were hungry in Australia. I didn't know how much food was being wasted globally. I just thought I had this little problem until I walked into a supermarket one day and thought, hmm, I've got this problem. And other event people, I'd started telling all my event people that if they had food, I could take it for them. Because by now that one charity had shared that with others. The truth is there wasn't even a list. I went to the local council and said, can you tell me what organizations exist so that I could potentially go and visit them?

I had to ask the one and the first one didn't really want to tell me about others because they thought we're getting all this food. We don't want that food to be shared. I said, don't worry. I think there's enough. Tell me about another. Tell me. And so I had to ferret the information out. Of course, now there's a wonderful database that we could create because it didn't exist 22 years ago. And so I started doing more of that. I was a bit like the piper, not in the bad sense that people followed me to get rid of the rats, but people followed me. I got a lot of publicity because people started hearing about this and they just love the notion because when I decided to set it up in a formal charity, I needed money. I'd started and was doing this by myself, but I knew that I needed seed funding. So I spoke to my brother-in-law who worked for a big bank and said, what do you think

I should do? He said, well, come and talk to my bank. I'd never pitched. I'd never done anything, but I was as passionate then as I am now. And what I know and what is a really important quality in entrepreneurship is that passion is infectious. I didn't know that. I didn't know any of the things I know now, but I walked in and said, here's what I'm going to do. My name's Ronnie Khan and I'm going to build an organization that feeds people. And I'm going to take food because I know it. I've seen it. I do it every day. And I'm going to get it to feed hungry people. And this bank turned around and said, well, I think it's a wonderful idea, this person said. So I went out of that meeting telling everybody that the bank was giving me money. Now,

they hadn't committed to giving me money, but I heard that they thought it was brilliant. So I just thought they were going to give me money. So I get a phone call a week later from the person I'd seen and say, what are you doing? We haven't given you a penny. I said, yeah, but you loved my idea. So I figured that you're going to give me money. I kind of probably pushed them into a corner and they gave me seed funding. Oh my God. Look, one of the things people do say about me is that I don't take no for an answer because I just like to give people the opportunity to be involved and to support. And I'm so convinced that the opportunity is so phenomenal. Why would they say no? So first of all, your passion is infectious,

but you're also creating your own luck. You're finding a way to create your own luck within this space. You're not waiting for something to just fall on your lap. You're literally running. People that told me, no, I couldn't do this. I just said, mind out my way. I'm going to do this. So you just mind out my way. Those are just challenges. They're not obstacles. I can get around it. But share with us, there must be some hard moments when you're just trying to figure this out. You're waking up in the morning to say, sorry, what on earth am I doing? And why can't I find an easy life? You know, I don't recall ever waking up in the morning and saying, why am I doing this? It was more, how do I do this? It was so invigorating,

discovering, discovering this notion that I'd been completely self-absorbed, that I'd gone from living in South Africa, where the discrimination and the inequality were so obvious that I fled because I didn't think I could make a difference, to living in a society where everybody was treated equally, even if we weren't, to going into the commercial world of fighting for myself and looking to feed myself, to reestablishing my values, to reconnecting with who I really wanted to be was a journey. And I don't know, 20 years ago, my kids found a spiritual teacher and I thought they joined a cult. So I flew to India to follow them, to find out how I could get them out of the cult, but dived headfirst into becoming a devotee and believer of our teacher, because the message our teacher told me then, I had just started OzHarvest, was that feeding people was the most important act of generosity

and kindness one could do. And that if down the track, I needed to earn money in order to give and do that I was blessed to do that. And so I think I held on to the blessing that this was a blessing that I'd been gifted. And quite honestly, I totally believe that I was blessed and gifted to do this. It's not about me. It's about using me as a vessel to deliver this goodness because I have been the recipient of generosity and support. And this is not me being religious. It is being spiritual, I guess, in some way, shape or form. But it is about realizing that I've been gifted the duty to understand what duty is to deliver goodness. So you don't doubt the what, right? You don't doubt what you're doing, but the how will take more dreams than I can count, right? So, you know,

you wake up and you're like, how do I feed the house with this weird idea that I have because I want to do good, but I don't even know how I can sustain 350 staff and, you know, volunteers and trucks. I mean, I started with me and a van because I used my van. And the fact that it has evolved to 350 staff and that we're a global organization because we've shared our model with countries around the world and that I get invited to speak around the world and that I have, I think it's the why. The why is having a purpose that's bigger than yourself. When I started thinking about how I wanted a house that was bigger and that, in fact, I can only live in one room at a time. And that clearly, as far as jewelry goes, I can have more than one. Everybody can hear us.

When I started Outsharvest, one of my girlfriends came to me and said, does that mean you won't like clothes anymore and won't dress nicely? I said, well, if it does mean that, then I might have to choose clothes. So it is about a combination of understanding. And one of the first challenges I had in Oz Harvest was I thought everybody would just give us food, the surplus food they had. But I started encountering a challenge around liability. The supermarket said, we can't give you food because we'll get sued. And so I had to find a lawyer to help me say, how are we going to change the law? And we did. We changed the law in five states and the others followed suit to make it possible. So I guess when you put purpose together with goodness, somehow the forces around you seem to disappear. You absolutely resilience all of the trays that one needs. And yes, there were challenges. My board in the beginning, I didn't even know

that I had to create a board. Then I was told you can't run an organization without a board. I'd been a self-independent sole trader. Now I needed a board. And so I chose my cousin, my uncle. I didn't know what you needed on a board. I had to get rid of those people and create the appropriate governance. But I absolutely did not fit the role of a conventional board. I'd never written a board paper in my life. My board started saying, you need to provide us with board papers. I said, but I'm going to tell you what I'm doing. I don't have time to write board papers. It was challenging. It reached a point that almost

it was the board or me, because whilst they could see what was happening, they didn't like my style. We almost had to get a mediator in who turned around and said, her style is working. Exactly. in who turned around and said, her style is working. You might need to get new people who can recognize that this is a unique situation. That's incredible. And everything you talk about in the book of how you found your purpose, it's a beautiful story of your life, but also with a lot of interesting nuggets. So first of all, seriously, for anybody that is looking for that entrepreneurship,

that purpose, that impact to chase your dream, it's a beautiful book that shows you how somebody without the background, without all the accolades, just takes one imperfect steps every single day and just creates the impossible. But you share something that we talk a lot about it. And I saw it when you presented at the Richard Branson with Virginia Knight.

And you talk about the teaspoon. Will you share a little bit of what this is and why it's so beautiful? I came across a quote that just, it actually gave me goosebumps and resonated with me. And I did not realize that I could turn this into something, but it has because it's actually created a movement of its own. So I will share this quote. It's written by an Israeli author, by chance, Amos Oz, a most powerful author who's been translated, I think, into 46 countries, and his books are magnificent. And he himself was the moral compass at one point in the Middle East, and he is sorely missed because he passed away. And I was actually asked to do at a memorial service for him here in Australia, I was asked to read something,

and I came across this quote. And so I'll share it with all of you because it's very powerful. And the quote goes like this, in the event of a huge conflagration, like a bushfire, we as humans have three possible ways that we could behave being confronted with this bushfire. So the first one is we can look at that bushfire and we can run away as fast as we can and we leave those that cannot run to burn. It is an option. Number two, we can write an angry letter to the newspaper demanding that the perpetrators, those who started that fire, be punished. That is an option. Or number three, we can run and find a bucket. And if you cannot find a bucket, find a jug. And if you cannot find a jug, run and find a teaspoon.

Because every single one of us has a teaspoon. And I know that fire was huge and a teaspoon is tiny. But if every single one of us uses our teaspoon to put out that fire, we can do this. And so I invite all of you to be part of the order of the teaspoon, where we wear a teaspoon on our shoulder, or we wear a teaspoon around our neck. I wear one around my neck where I can find it, or we wear a teaspoon on our finger so that we are reminded every day that we all have a teaspoon and that we can use our teaspoon for good. So whoever's listening today, can you just take your hands, put your hands together, like cup them and look down deep into your hands because in your hand is your metaphorical teaspoon.

And can you take that teaspoon and your hands and put them to your heart, move your hands right now to your heart and embed that teaspoon to your heart and commit to doing random acts of kindness, random acts of goodness, acting on your ideas, taking action to the thing that you know might make a difference to someone. And it can be tiny or it can be huge. Not everybody has to start a charity, but everybody has to do and commit to doing good. And so I'm going to throw out a challenge to all of your listeners, Ilana. And what I'd love you to do is now that you have a teaspoon in your heart and a commitment to take action,

either for your big idea or to do good to someone every day, I want you to come back to Ilana and I. My email is ronnie at ronniekhan.com. Ilana's going to share. You all know how to share and tell us about the acts of goodness, about how it feels to be committed to taking action on one of your big ideas or your teeny little idea. It's not the size, it's the taking that first step. And I want to know about this for a very good reason, because down the track, I am going to be creating a book. You've all heard of Humans of New York. Well, I'm going to do the humans that use their teaspoons, the teaspoon of goodness, the

teaspoon of love, the teaspoon of generosity. So I'd love to put you in my book. So if you're listening to this and you've heard anything that inspires you, that makes you want to go out and fulfill that dream, your idea, because I can tell you that it fundamentally shifts every single minute, every hour, every day of your life, because that is all we have right now. Be the best we can be. And I wanted to share this beautiful quote that I came across. One of my heroes is Nelson Mandela. And the weirdest thing happened to me around this quote, which I'll share anyway. But the quote goes like this. It is in your hands to make a better world for all who live in it. So every week I write a newsletter. It's called Monday Musings to my whole team, in which I just share either things

that I've gone through through the week or things that I think we should be doing better. And this week, I sent a message. I wrote a quote, this quote, in my Monday Musings, inviting all my people to remember that it's in their hands. Now, as it happens, it's a significant time in my life because I'm moving into a new role. I'm moving out of the role of CEO into the role of visionary. And it's interesting because I've been the visionary for 20 years, but now I have a title, Visionary in Residence. And in my musings, I wrote, it is in your hands my team had organized unbeknownst to me to give me a gift unbeknownst to me my newsletter comes out and they call me in and say here's your gift and it's a little hand on a chain and it was like how did it was metaphysically, they intuited and gave me a hand.

And my message was, it is in your hands to make a better world for all who live in it. So, you know, the universe has a way of providing to us. I love that. Amazing coincidence, or maybe there is no coincidence, right? But seriously, listeners, you have the power to change the world. And we have one life to live. Let's live it. Let's create the impact. Let's find the purpose. So seriously, two weeks from now, three weeks from now, take time, do a few acts of kindness, do something beautiful, make somebody smile today and write us at

ilanaatleapacademy.com. And we'll also share Ronnie's email right there in the podcast. I want you to send us a note and I want you to share those stories because it's just incredible to watch and it's just going to make our day. And maybe before we end, Ronnie, because this is so inspiring, you are working on the Hunger Solution Lab. And I think this is a big way that we can help. So talk to us a little bit about this. We have a lot of people that would love to do good in the world.

How do they get involved? So my next project is what I've seen over the last 20 years is obviously we do good. We feed vulnerable people, we educate, we innovate. I've got us Harvest Ventures, which is a for-purpose, for-profit social enterprise business. But what I've seen is that hunger is not going away. I used to feed 3 million people. Now we feed 8 million people in America, around the world. 750 million people need food. It's almost going to be a billion. I have decided that if we've created hunger, we can uncreate hunger. So the Hunger Solutions Lab is going to be an innovative platform, a collaborative platform. There are so many people working on

how we solve hunger, but there is nobody, not the UN, not the FAO, not a single government is putting an overarching lens on what it's going to take to end hunger from education to research to corporates to philanthropists to social enterprise. I'm going to pull everybody together. So if you have either an idea, you're working in an organization that in some way, shape or form wants to be involved in uncreating hunger, in the Hunger Solutions Lab, I'm going to give us the next, however long it takes, 10, 20 years, but I do not want to be standing here in 20 years and saying that now a billion, 500 million people are hungry. We have to end hunger, and we can only do this. Not one person can do it by itself. I need all those teaspoons.

We need every single brilliant mind and dollars and money because it's going to take the same way as a campaign to make us eat terrible food, spend billions of dollars on that. It's going to take a fair few million dollars to end hunger, but I'm committed to doing that. And I can only do that with all of your help. So join me somehow at the Hunger Solutions Lab. Incredible, Ronnie. And again, if there's one person that can make it happen, it's you and you proved it in a massive, massive way. So I can't wait to see all the people

that are reaching out because it's going to be incredible. Maybe one last famous thing. We always end the show with one advice that you would give to your younger self or somebody else that is listening that need this right now. Ronnie, what would it be?

I think it would just be believing yourself because I certainly didn't. I was shy. I was a mouse. And if I could have saved myself years of anguish, know that you have the power. Every single one of us has the power. To create an incredible tomorrow.

Ronnie, this was so, so, so inspiring. Thank you for making it to the show. Thank you for sharing this beautiful, inspiring story and for continuing to change the world. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you for sharing stories to the world. And I'm thrilled to be here.