LEAD MAGAZINE | 2019
PAUL LYONS
FROM IDEAS TO LISTING
that I’ve carried with me into the next
phase of my life and the business I
have today.
I once saw a talk by Stephen Hawking
and at the end of that talk his closing
comment was that in a 1000 years we
will have to leave the planet. I would cast
my mind into the future and imagine our
ancestors boarding the ships to leave
Earth and hear them say: “What were
they thinking?”
I started life as an electrician working
for Ford motor Company. It was at a
time when robots were being used in
production processes to improve speed
and efficiency, effectively replacing
people. When I started, there was nearly
12,000 people working at the site; today
there is around 2,000. It was a classic
example of the second Industrial age
in action where machinery was driving
productivity and fossil fuel underpinned
the economy. I didn’t know it at the time
but this ethos has affected the way I now
conduct myself and my business.
Like all people, young and old, I was
looking for something more out of life,
a sense of purpose, a deep yearning for
fulfilment and a growing need to ‘find
myself’. So I left the North of England and
began my search. I found myself in many
different countries and many different
jobs, none of which filled the void but if
there is one thing that I have learned; that
period was a trial by fire, a rite of passage
that we all have to go through to earn the
life you want. I know this now because
the experiences I had have informed the
work I do today. Among the many jobs; I
worked in bars, as a waiter, a tree planter
in Canada, serving ice creams in Los
Angeles, an actor and several years as a
tour manager in the music industry. One
of the jobs that stands out for me though
is as a technician in the Formula 1 racing
industry. It taught me the importance of
attention to detail and that is something
20
Inspired by Stephen Hawking and
a desire to something meaningful, I
started a business in sustainability and
renewables. I figured that my technical
ability as an electrician would serve me
well in this space and I started Ecocentric
with a friend of mine who had similar
aspirations. We would do audits of
buildings in an attempt to understand
their profile of energy use. It involved
counting lights, reading nameplates on
electrical equipment, reading energy
bills and understanding the operational
activities of the site we were in. It
was inefficient, ineffective and very
boring. So pulling together my lifetime
of experience to date, particularly
from my F1 days, I built a machine, a
cobbled together piece of equipment
consisting of meters that gathered
energy information over a period of a
week. With accurate information about
the site we could provide a better service
to the customer, save them money and
do better for the environment along
the way.
What began to emerge out of this process
was an understanding that I could make
a difference in my own way but more
importantly, a sense of purpose showed
up. Through my personal development
explorations, I already knew that the
content of my mind would determine
the outcome of my reality so I cultivated
a ritual, a daily routine that kept me
focused on my purpose. I wrote it
down, articulated it in many different
ways, read it daily, morning and night,
ultimately crystallizing it into life.
It is never immediately obvious, but the
right things, the right circumstances
and the right people start showing up in
your life.
This applies to anything you give emotion
to; good or bad. I’m often woken by
‘3am thoughts’; those solutions to a
problem I am wrestling with. I might read
something or watch a movie and it gives
clarity where there was none before. I
saw a statement in a magazine once,
the line: ‘Buildings like trees’, and from
this my business has now adopted it as
a guiding principle. When you consider
what a tree does. It captures carbon,
distils water, gets its energy from the
sun, is a habitat for occupants and any
waste it produces goes into another
ecosystem that supports life on this
planet. I realized that these are things
we could achieve through technology
and the products we make are geared
towards this end.
The point of this is that a purpose bigger
than ourselves, guides this company. It is
attractive and alluring to other people of
the same mind. My experience has been
that a sense of purpose causes people to
leave high paying jobs to do something
that is more fulfilling. Many of our team
have come from corporate backgrounds
and felt they weren’t being authentic and
that there life lacked a sense of purpose.
I once heard Sting say that he would do
what he does for free because it’s who
he is, not what he does. When you find
someone that is aligned with the same
purpose as your own and loves what they
do, then you have a recipe for success.
When you have someone that would do
what they do whether they worked for
you or not then they stop having two
different faces; one for work and one
for home; they become who they are
supposed to be. You then have a team
that doesn’t need to be managed, they
know what the objective is so you just let
them go and let them do what they love.
The only way you can build a business is
with a team so the focus of a business
owner should be on them. It used to be
that ‘greed is good’ and people were a
means to an end. They were part of the
bottom line equation; expendable if it
helped to balance the books. The reality
is that if you look after your people
then they will look after the customer
and the customer will look after the
shareholder, traditionally it has been the
other way round.
Ecocentric is a conscious business such
that everything we do is to benefit
people and the planet. It is a mantra that
we declare to both our supply chain and
our customers. When a conversation
with a potential customer starts with
this statement, the dynamics change and
we are no longer selling a product we
are exploring the possibility of doing
good together.
This year we became a public unlisted
company but we are now preparing
for listing in the next 12 months. At
time of writing, we are valued at $34M