People Inspired By Purpose - Purposely Podcast

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In this SHORT episode of Purposely, coach and facilitatorShruthi Vijayakumar joins us on why perfect is the enemy of good, what coaching really looks like in practice, and the moment she had to learn to back herself.
 
Shruthi's first big lesson came early and came hard: don'tlet perfection be the enemy of good. Drafting curriculum as a young, startup market employee, she felt the full weight of imposter syndrome, chasing a version of "right" that didn't need to exist. The shift came through what she now calls design thinking and agile practice – get something out,iterate, trust your collaborators to correct you, and be humble enough to be corrected. It was, she says, a reprogramming compared to how she'd operated in university or consulting, and it made the work faster, better, and far more impactful.
 
That same instinct carried her into coaching. In its trueform, she says, coaching isn't about telling people what to do – it's holding space and asking questions that bring out someone's own wisdom. She saw this play out in classrooms, where teachers asked children questions that surfacedtheir assumptions, prejudices and hopes, with striking effect. It was this – paired with her own interest in personal and spiritual development – that drew her into a field where she could do exactly that, full time.
 
Shruthi started training as a coach at 24, and admits theself-doubt was real. Her own first coach set her a challenge she was sure she'd nail: find three clients by the next call. She did it anyway, stretched and held accountable by someone who was willing to push her growth. That experienceof being walked through the discomfort by someone further along the path is one she still draws on, in different forms, today.
 
Key themes
 
Letting go of perfectionism in early career work
 
Design thinking and iteration over getting it right thefirst time
 
What coaching actually looks like: holding space, not givinganswers
 
Teaching kids to ask questions that surface their ownassumptions and hopes
 
Learning to back yourself through the discomfort of beingstretched
 
The value of having your own coach walk the journey with you
 
This episode of Purposely is brought to you by Benevity and Trust Investments

Welcoming Simone Woodland, Co-founder of Circle Living, toPurposely Podcast.
 
Simone is an architect and the co-founder of Circle Living,a people-first property development company building intergenerational, community-led neighbourhoods across New Zealand, with developments underway inWellington, Christchurch and Nelson. The idea is simple but not common in mainstream housing: design homes so people have their own privacy, while making it easy to connect with the people living around them.
 
Originally from Bristol in the UK, Simone traces herinterest in community back to childhood, when her father ran street parties on their cul-de-sac to bring disconnected neighbours together. At 15 she helped build a house in a co-housing development in Bristol's St Werburgh's, an early,hands-on introduction to what community-built housing could look like.
 
She studied architecture in Brighton and completed a mastersin urban design and planning at Bristol University, but found the traditional architecture industry limiting. Her early career as a social entrepreneur started with Paper Arts, a platform she built for students to showcase their work, which grew into a gallery, studios and a printing service, and eventually into a training facility teaching enterprise skills to young people.
 
A trip around New Zealand's South Island in 2013 convincedSimone this was where she wanted to live. She moved through the Edmund Hillary Fellowship, joining its first cohort of global entrepreneurs focused on people and planet. That move led to Elemental Design and Build, a natural buildingcompany in the Tasman region working with materials like hemp, straw and earth, and eventually to the Takaka co-housing neighbourhood in Golden Bay. Simonetalks through how that first development came together: a 14 hectare piece of land secured with a 10 percent deposit, nine months to find the rest of the funding, and a model built on loans from future residents rather than a traditional developer structure.
 
Circle Living builds on that experience with a differentfinancing model, allowing residents to buy off the plans with a deposit rather than putting large sums at risk upfront. The communities run on Sociocracy, a decentralised decision-making approach where smaller groups hold responsibilityfor specific areas rather than requiring full consensus on every decision.
Simone talks candidly about what it takes to build trust within a community, why shared resources like community solar and car share schemes help keep ongoing costs down, and her long-term goal of seeing co-housing become a mainstream choice in New Zealand, in the way it already is in Denmark, where five percent of new homes are built as some form of collective housing.
 
The conversation also gets into what community actuallydelivers day to day, including a moment when a neighbour drove ninety minutes each way to collect Simone's children after she was unable to drive, and what that kind of reciprocity means for the people who choose to live this way.

Welcoming Darrell Wade to Purposely Podcast.
 
Darrell co-founded Intrepid Travel, one of the largestadventure travel companies in the world and a certified B Corp, built on the idea that travel should give something back to the places it touches. He is also Chair of Philanthropy Australia, the peak body working to build a strongerculture of giving across the country.
 
The idea for Intrepid came together in 1988, on a nine monthoverland trip across Africa in a converted truck with a group of friends, including his now wife Anna and university mate Geoff “Manch” Manchester. Back in Australia, a good job with a strong salary was on offer. Darrell was ready to take it and put the travel company idea aside, until Anna told him he would be a pain in the ass unless he started the business. He did, expecting a 90 percent chance of failure.
 
The company was bootstrapped on 20,000 dollars between the two founders, and the first five years were lean. Darrell talks candidly about the slow build, the early days running the entire business from a single desk while Manch led trips in Thailand, and the gradual shift from a lifestyle choice into a genuine company with a plan.
 
A significant turning point came in 2011, when Intrepid solda 60 percent stake to Tui Group. Darrell describes the decision and the four years that followed as oil and water. The cultures were fundamentally incompatible, growth stalled, and in 2015 the founders unwound the deal. Within a month of separating, the business was growing again. He is direct about whathe took from it: financial logic is not enough if the culture does not hold together.
 
Darrell also talks about the moment his thinking on climatechanged. Reading Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers on a family safari in Botswana, not long after Intrepid had won an award for responsible tourism, he realised the company was not the environmental good guy he thought it was. Hedescribes it plainly: they were part of the problem. That reckoning shaped Intrepid's climate work from there on, including taking the entire office and a thousand travellers to see An Inconvenient Truth.
 
The conversation covers the depth of the COVID crash too.Intrepid went from operating in 120 countries to zero almost overnight, and the company had to make significant redundancies to survive. Darrell shares a moment from that day that has stayed with him: a staff member he had just maderedundant stopped him in the office and asked if he was okay.
 
The episode closes on giving. Darrell sets out why Intrepidbuilt structured philanthropy into the business through The Intrepid Foundation, the case for corporate giving as something that benefits customers, staff and the business itself rather than a purely altruistic add-on, and his view on doing philanthropy thoughtfully rather than assuming good intentions are enough. He also speaks to his role as Chair of Philanthropy Australia, and what it means to govern a peak body trying to build a stronger, broader culture of giving across the country rather than leaving it concentrated among high net worth donors.
 
This episode of Purposely is brought to you by Benevityand Trust Investments.
Key Themes

In this Purposely Short, we revisit a four-minute segment from our full conversation with Liz Gibbs on how mission-driven organisations can fund and invest in innovation to grow their social impact.

Liz points to examples like Eli Care to show what it takes for charities, social enterprises and philanthropic investors to move beyond one-off grants and take an investment-minded approach that still stays true to mission. She talks through how capital can be structured and partnered, so it supports good causes now while helping build sustainable, impact-led enterprises for the future.

This one is useful for charity leaders, impact investors and funders working out where philanthropy, investment and innovation meet.

Key themes

• Why more funders are looking to invest in innovation and commercial models, not just rely on one-off grants
• What Eli Care shows about blending commercial discipline with social mission
• The capital and partnerships needed to back early-stage, impact-focused ventures
• What boards and leadership teams should weigh up on risk, return and mission
• How funding strategy can build long-term, community-level impact, not just short-term outputs

This episode of Purposely is brought to you by Benevity and Trust Investments