Ep9: Harry Benetto

Victor Lagos: 0:03

Welcome to the debt to financial freedom podcast. I’m your host Victor Lagos and the founder of Lagos Financial. I’ve been in the finance and lending industry for16 years, and I’ve personally made financial mistakes and learn from them. I started this podcast to share stories and lessons on my own journey, and to share insights that may help others on their journey. And I interviewed people that I’ve connected with that share the same values and mission to help others create financial freedom.My goal this podcast is to share raw, honest, transparent and helpful stories that you can relate to and inspires you to take control of your finances and only have debt that brings you closer to financial freedom.Everything on this podcast is general in nature, and for education purposes only. None of your personal objectives,financial situation or needs has been taken into consideration. I highly recommend you seek personal financial, legal taxation and credit advice before you take any action on what has been heard on this podcast. Welcome to Episode Eight of the debt to financial freedom podcast. I’m your host Victor Lagos. I am also the founder of Lagos financial, a finance brokerage business.Today I’ve got a special guest.Her name is Sally Irwin. I want to give her a bit of an intro.In March 2014. Sally founded the freedom hub survival school that rebuilds the lives of victims provides long term support and a peer support program. In 2016,she opened a business for purpose, which now consists of two cafes, an event venue, and an ethical online retail shop to fund the administration of the survival school. The Freedom hub businesses is accredited by social traders Australia. And as one the New South Wales Business chamber social enterprise of the year for the region of Sydney,Sally was awarded one of Australia’s top 50 business leaders by inside small businesses in 2018. And in September 2020, to one the third sector award as Social Entrepreneur of the Year, Sally has been an active advocate to end slavery and help victims by sitting on numerous advisory boards and networks. With over14 years experience working face to face with victims of slavery,Sally and her co workers are helping survivors of modern slavery, rebuild their life to a point where they can be employed, be self sufficient,and have regained their self worth. Welcome, Sally.

Sally Irwin: 2:41

Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Victor Lagos: 2:43

Look, it’s it’s a touchy topic, because a lot of people don’t even know, you know, what modern slavery is.They know, obviously, the term slavery. But I’d like to sort of get a bit of an understanding.So if you can maybe share your story and what helped you, you know, to create the freedom hub?And why is it your calling to help end modern slavery in Australia?

Sally Irwin: 3:07

Well, we could spend the whole half hour on the back story really, but I, I basically started working with this, in this area when I was living in Europe with my husband, who was posted to the Australian Embassy in Berlin.And as a diplomatic wife, I wasn’t able to work. So I went looking for charity work to do and made this head decision that it was sort of not right that women should be trapped in slavery. And particularly in Berlin, it was sex slavery girls that were being sex trafficked out of Eastern Europe, into Western Europe, being brought in to believe they’re going to be hairdressers or working in a bar or whatever. And I just felt that that was really wrong. And here’s me in this high society,drinking champagne every night doing all the embassies every night, I just felt that the two worlds were so far apart, that I could try and use the wealth or help use the wealth of the situation I was in to try and help fund and help some charities that were working in this area on the streets of Berlin. A few probably months into it, I realized that you can’t just donate money. People want to know where their money’s going, what’s going on. So I ended up going down and volunteering in what was nothing more than like a needle exchange in a very, very, very dark street of burly and it was a pretty horrible place to be. But in that time, while I was sitting in this little needle exchange where women would come in, in the morning, covered in blood and having been, you know,been abused all night, spending my days helping them get their ready for the next night,changed my life. I would then be at cocktail parties that night drinking champagne with high society and with Commissioner,the police and all the ambassadors from all these different countries and thinking, how can I bring these two worlds together? What can I do so I realized that very early in the piece this was in 2008that I really needed to become a voice for these women. out ended up doing what I’m doing right now the freedom hub is another massive leap. But if you wind forward after four years of doing that, I found that slavery was happening in Australia. And that just completely changed my world. Because I always thought it was a big step for me to think that slavery was happening in Europe, because I always thought it was going to be in countries that were very, you know, Asia and South America and Africa and poor, really poor nations, because I thought people really were escaping poverty looking for work and ended up in slavery. I never saw Europe as being like that. And then to find out what’s happening in our country, was just now it’s game on, I can do something in my country, I was always restricted in Europe, I couldn’t lobby, because of you know, visions of Sydney Morning Herald, you know, husband sent home diplomat sent home because wife was too political, I had to be very careful in how I did things over there. But once I’ve got back here, I thought, well,now I can be a voice, I can lobby government, I can make changes. And so I really spent a year or twos, just over a year,really working out what the gaps were in our country, what slavery looks like, here. I’m still a great believer, we could be the first country to have no slavery, because the main reasons that drove slavery in Europe that I saw was poverty.But also the organized crime gangs that funded it. The, the women that were sort of escaping, were being lied to like all this sort of corruption with the police being involved.And there’s a lot of networking happening to make it happen. But in our country, where it first of all, we’re in Ireland, so that we don’t have to worry about borders as much. We don’t have the massive corruption of men of police. And we don’t have the huge organized crime gangs that are making the profit, it’s the second largest profitable business in the world. So we don’t have that either. So really, with good collaboration and awareness raising, I think we could be the first country to have no slavery. So that’s really what sort of gets me out of bed in the morning. And what started the freedom hub really became there was no long term care for people that have been victims of it in this country.So it started as a survivor school, to help them get jobs and get back on their feet and recover and find out that in our country, there is human rights,and there are award wages, and you do get superannuation and holidays and you should be treated fairly. So it became educational to start with, and it’s grown since then now we’ve become trauma experts, and we’ve become wellness experts. And we’ve got a whole methodology of helping a survivor journey through to being fully employed again.

Victor Lagos: 7:37

Yep. Well, and I like how the freedom is set up.You mentioned that it’s a it’s a business for purpose. But is it considered a social enterprise?

Sally Irwin: 7:47

Okay, so this is really interesting a year into being running the survival school, I realized that I’m not naturally a charity type person,as in, I didn’t like asking for money. So what I wanted to do,being an X business procurement specialist being business person, I wanted to be able to come up with a way of funding our work as much as possible. I never wanted it to be 100%funded by business, because I still believe that there’s a place for the, for the people to engage in this issue, and corporates and businesses and people that want to be part of the solution. But I wanted to be enough self funded to be able to pay salaries and not have the stress of constantly worrying about money. And not worrying about the women that are in my care. So I, I went down the business path of getting a cafe in Waterloo. And it’s beautiful,big venue. So it turned into an event space. So we have weddings and bar mitzvahs. And, you know,every weekend, it’s full of events happening, and yet people use it for corporate dinners and all kinds of things. So that’s some. So that was sort of how it all started. But what we did back in 2014, it’s was very unique at the time is instead of becoming a social, Proprietary Limited, we kept those businesses as part of the Freedom hub charity, I actually employed lawyers to research whether it was legal that a charity can run business without becoming a business. So what’s happened since there’s the world has really bloomed in this area,and social enterprises are becoming huge. So it’s easy for me to say to people, we’re a social enterprise that a charity because people can’t understand the business model. But traditionally, of social enterprise was a normal business like a normal cafe or just a traditional Proprietary Limited business that gave a percentage of its profits to do good in the world. We’re on were 100% and we’re all internal. We are the social enterprise giving 100% of our profits to ourselves, but ourselves is our survivors of which we’ve got about 107 At the moment, so it was very unique then It’s still pretty unique.Now. In fact, I was teaching at Sydney business school two weeks ago, and someone put the history of social enterprise in Australia upon. And it started in 2015, with the government saying we need to do more indigenous purchasing. I’m like,hang on, teach you people something back in 2014. And the law firm found one other precedent, only one in Australia, where a charity was selling things. Well, I now know, like Wesley’s got a coffee shop. There’s a number of charities following us now, but it was really unique back in2014.And that just allows you to, to keep growing without needing,you know, government contributions and charity contributions. Yeah, rely on the revenue.Yeah, it was a perfect model pre COVID.

Victor Lagos: 10:46

Yeah, well, now that things have opened up again, yes. And everywhere.

Sally Irwin: 10:50

Yes. It’s certainly a lot.

Victor Lagos: 10:51

And it is a nice cafe. I’ve been in there a few times. I’ve even sent my laptop there and just worked for a little bit. It’s really good spot. It’s what’s the street?It’s on? Again?

Sally Irwin: 11:00

Young Street,

Victor Lagos: 11:01

Young Street. Yep.Awesome. And touch more on the modern slavery piece, because many people don’t know what modern slavery is. And I know there’s a specific definition. I don’t know what that is you.You’ve said it to me a few times, but I can’t remember. Are you able to give a bit of an overview of of what modern slavery is? And then, of course,if people can detect it, how,how can they do that? And then possibly, how can they report it as well?

Sally Irwin: 11:29

Yeah, so the term modern day slavery has come about only in the last probably four or five years as an umbrella term that we all use.Now. Australia is the first country in the world to define it, modern day slavery with definitions, and we’ve got seven definitions. But it’s an umbrella term for those seven types of slavery. So that’s,I’ll tell you what they are. But then I’ll tell you my opinion on this. So the seven areas are going to make sure I get them all for slaver sex trafficking,which is what people have heard just human trafficking,servitude, as well as slavery,which is, you know, no pay, just working. But servitude slightly different. The worst forms of child labor, so not working in your dad’s garage, or helping your mom’s in the shop or restaurant, it’s like the worst worst forms of slavery of slavery for child labor, organ harvesting, have got more debt bondage. So they’re all independent sort of definitions.And what that does is help us prosecute, it really just helps the lawyers. The reality,though, is that modern day slavery is anything where anybody is using someone else to profit. So using them for free labor, or exploitation for profit. So we can constantly be coming up with more definitions.For example, the latest scam, or the latest, newest style of modern day slavery is people being tricked to have a job and being locked up in a factory and doing that scanning that we all get, you know, or getting messages and methods of scamming. That’s factories and factories of people coming in and out of Thailand, China and into parts of parts of Asia that are being made to scan make constant phone calls and texts.So they’re being

Victor Lagos: 13:24

held as slaves to the scam discourse for money.

Sally Irwin: 13:27

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.So you know, we haven’t got a law around that. So it’s, it’s a really tricky area. It’s just people exploiting people,people. And it can. Yeah, it’s very difficult. The other reason people don’t know about it is up until 2014, Australia had no law against it. We just assumed our,you know, Westerners, why would people would people do that? No,they won’t. But when they did,so, human trafficking definition was so long, it was impossible really to prosecute people. So they often went for attempted murder, or kidnapping, and other ways of trying to prosecute. So in 2014, for the first time in Australia’s history, we got a law against forced labor,trafficking of persons harboring a person, sorry, which means you can sell the person to someone but the person that’s harboring or keeping them in slavery,there was no law against that.There was no law against organ harvesting, and there was no law against forced marriage. So those laws didn’t come in until2014. And then it takes four to five years for someone to be forced to be for the court case to catch up like it takes four or five years to get through a court. So so it was really we weren’t expecting to get any prosecutions until 2018 19. So we’ve starting to get them now,which means the media can now start reporting on facts and not just hearsay from Sally Irwin.It’s actually you know, facts.So we’re starting to get more and more cases revealed. We do know that only one in five people in Australia would be coming Forward, most people would not come forward. You know, a lot of them now are school mums, or, in fact, I was only just reflecting on this the other day when I was in Melbourne speaking to all the brokers, the women in fin shore down there, three women came up to me at the end and said, I’ve been a victim of slavery myself,one of them, she’s, you know,these are suited up investment brokers, you know, that you would never ever pick it. One of them’s husband doesn’t even know that it’s a part of their life that was so shameful, then they’re not prepared to come forward. And then certainly many will not go through the criminal justice system, they just escape and get on with life. So it’s,it’s a very hidden crime. So if we’ve got one in five coming forward, how do we find the rest, which is probably the next part of your question is how do we identify that most of the people that we have come forward now tend to be people that are good old or the spirit has gone?Hey, do you need help? Or can I can I call someone on your behalf or someone saying, you know, I’ve got to clean and next, my name is a little cleaner that I haven’t seen outside for five years or three years, I’m a bit suspicious. So I think reporting anything that you’re suspicious is best, and that is through the federal police. They do the investigative work, they spend25 30,000 hours tapping phones and emails and things to be sure before they would actually go in and rescue somebody. So that’s the official way of doing things. And we were the freedom hub. We don’t take on investigative work like that.But if someone came to you and said, or passed you a note, or if you’re a nurse at the hospital, and you pretty confident this person is asking for help, where the freedom hub will step in then. But we have to have a direct line to the survivor, we’re not going to do something on suspicion, we’re not the police. So we need to know that person wants help, and then we can get involved. So so we have three referral systems.One of them is through the federal police that the the government’s response to slavery is that if someone is identified by the Federal Police has definitely been in slavery. The Red Cross is the paid organization to help them with their visa and Centerlink. And getting, you know, getting the criminal justice system in process. It’s a 60 day program called the support for traffic persons program, but then they’re on their own. So this is why we needed the freedom hub,we actually can then help them get on with life rather than sit in a refuge and wait for five years for their court case. So that’s one referral. Another referral pathway for us is we get victims referred to us from Social Services, Community Services, nurses, as I said, I do a lot of training in the hospitals. And we do training with midwives and people that are frontline service providers that will suspect someone has got slavery was got they’ve got wounds that have not been looked after. And they’re not allowed to speak the person that’s with them as only the only person speaking and there’s there’s signs that you can they can pick up on. Also, since COVID, we’re getting a lot of referrals from domestic violence centers now where people before a woman before may have or a man there is domestic violence for men,but they’re there, they’ve been in a situation where they could before they might have got the odd beating or be you know,coercive, controlled, but they could still hold down a job and they’d keep it a secret themselves generally from their,from their peers. What has happened during COVID Is that they’ve been locked in. So in that time, they’ve lost their phone, their friends, they’ve lost their bank account, they’re being 100% controlled, and allegedly the house unsupervised, that’s when it slips into servitude. And, and so that type of slavery now being presented many domestic violence centers that don’t know how to manage someone with that sort of complex trauma. So we get referred to them from domestic violence centers. So all and then we often have youth being presented, presenting at youth centers as street homeless youth, but they’ve been on the run from being forced into marriage from their grandparents. Often, you know,it’s necessary that you know,they’ve got a situation where they’re being told they have to marry someone, and they run rather than put their family in front of the courts. So they end up homeless, so we’re actually getting youth referred to us that way as well. So So that’s the second way that we receive people is through a community services. And then the final way, which is the one that’s growing is because we’re getting more and more known people say ring, the freedom hub, they’ll help you and so we will get direct referrals or people saying to us, can you help me in some way? We tend to get a lot of them from interstate which is very tricky for us right now.We’re trying to expand our school into Victoria and Perth at the moment we will set up in Queensland.

Victor Lagos: 19:41

So this is when a victim or a survivor or to be survivor, they’ll contact the freedom hub and say, I’m in trouble and I’ve been servitude.I’ve held capital whatnot. So it’s not when someone sees or suspects that that’s happening to someone they know they don’t contact them how For that they’re going to contact AFP.

Sally Irwin: 20:01

If they do, we will ask them to contact the AFP because you just don’t know that there’s 10 Other people reporting like the AFP, yeah,keep a record of that they keep a record of all reports on a business, particularly if it’s forced labor or something like that. They will, they will, and they could be someone that they’re already watching. It adds to the evidence. Yeah, we just don’t have the resources and the time to be

Victor Lagos: 20:24

but you are growing, which is good. And, you know, being able to, you know,help survivors across Australia is really important, because some of these people that are put into slavery, they, they come in through, say, Tasmania,or something, right, they want to work in a farm. And

Sally Irwin: 20:43

yet we send all our working students and people like that out to the country to do farm work. And no one’s checking his recruiting them. And let’s,and they weren’t report because they don’t want to get caught up in our criminal justice system,because they’re on a two year holiday working holiday. So they run? Well,

Victor Lagos: 21:00

crazy. This goes on in our backyard. And you mentioned that five years,approximately, it takes to go through the court system and the prosecution, the survivors, for them to, you know, stand up in court and actually point the finger. That’s not an easy thing for them to do.

Sally Irwin: 21:18

No, no, it’s It’s hideous. And I feel that one of the things that for us that we see as a major success for us on one of the reasons I set up the freedom hub is because I think these women should be able to stand up there and face that perpetrator, full of confidence full of let’s get them as opposed to sitting there waiting. And that looming date becomes more and more terror for them and scared and they form deeper depression and, and then they need a lot of medication and so on. They’re in this cycle of just going downhill. I wanted to say no, in our country, you can work you can have a job, we can help you get mentally healthy, physically healthy, you can become an independent and strong woman in our country. And by the time that court case comes out, you’re ready to get in there and get him or you know, or female, if it’s there are many, many women traffickers, by the way. So it’s it’s it’s facing that perpetrator with strength, and confidence that I think is a great sign that they’ve actually started that they’re on the right road to recovery.

Victor Lagos: 22:21

And going through the, you know, the time with as far as school, they learn these skills all over again, yes,skills that were taken away from them.

Sally Irwin: 22:29

Yes. Yeah. I mean,as simple thing as choice. Yeah,if you’ve, the longer you’ve been in slavery, the less choice you’ve had. So there’s parts of the brain that even that have a meltdown, just choosing whether they have to have an apple or an orange, if you put that basic can be right at the very beginning which two buses arrive, which one would I catch,that can be the beginning for them. So actually, helping them rebuild choice is very important.

Victor Lagos: 22:51

This is why it resonates a lot with with me,because, you know, I am an advocate of financial freedom.That’s why it’s called that the Financial Freedom podcast. And,you know, many people want to create financial freedom for them and their families and future generations. But they don’t realize that the simplest freedom of being able to make a choice, you know, is taken away from a lot of people. We don’t know what that’s like, I mean,if I want to go catch a bus or train, or if I want to visit a friend, if I want to travel, I can do that. Yeah, there’s no part of me, that tells me I can’t obviously there’s gonna be some financial constraints at times. But the part of my brain that says that I can choose is,it’s alive. But for people that have gone through these traumas,it’s been taken away from them.And you know, I want to acknowledge you for the work that you did, because you really do help build them back on. So like, they have that, you know,just the the freedom that we take for granted every day.

Sally Irwin: 23:49

Yes, yeah. Yeah. I think the closest we can relate to it would have been very early days or COVID. When the whole world was changing. We didn’t even know how it was being caught and stuff I don’t know about you. But in business, you rapidly reached a point of what I would call decision fatigue,because you were just all day just trying to fly and you just get to a point where I can’t make another decision. I can’t.And that would be the closest I’ve ever been to myself where I’ve just gone cut edge and living with this every day. Just being making a basic decision is hard. And I think the one good thing that’s come out of COVID I suppose there’s a few good things but humanity has become more compassionate to this and become more open to understanding what it is like to have compassion or to have decision fatigue and, and not being able to just get out of the house and it’s so much more easier to stay in your pajamas in bed and you know, all that stuff that people that have trauma they live with every day.

Victor Lagos: 24:45

Yeah, they’ve been isolated for so long. Yeah,living with you know,

Sally Irwin: 24:49

even just getting back out socializing for us has become a big deal and someone who’s been in that situation with you for 510 15 years.

Victor Lagos: 24:57

Wow. Well, you mentioned it now. One of our earlier conversations that you’re also a property investor,and that I wanted to ask a little bit more around that,because a lot of my listeners are property investors. And I really want to sort of showcase the fact that when you’ve got enough recurring income to cover your costs to live, then you can focus your attention on something that you’re really passionate about. Yeah. And was that something that you went through? That gave you that freedom to focus on this,

Sally Irwin: 25:28

I would say my husband’s the property investor,because I literally have no money, I can’t remember probably20 years, 30 years, I don’t earn an income, because I really want to be able to use my skills to change the world. And I And as you’ve said, I’m fortunate enough that I don’t need to that we invested very young and very early, you know, early 20s. In Paddington, which is a bit of a nice place to look back and go,Well, we only spent $25,000 on a place and yeah, so yeah, giving away my age for things. But it was 17% interest, I want you to know, it was full on. But I had a career in procurement as a national buyer for my as Australia and my husband has and still has his massive career. So it’s, but we did that young and we every time we got a pay rise,we just pumped that money into that mortgage, and the faster we could get that mortgage down, we did. And then when we decided to have children, we, you know,crossed the bridge and went to the North Shore and, and every time we’ve just got in a situation where they’re more financial, we’ve just bought a bigger and bigger place. And then we have bought in cans,that was not as great a decision because the jet was just before the GFC hit. So it’s only really got back on its feet in the last five or 10 years. And we’ve bought property overseas,because when you’re living overseas, like we were living in Berlin, it’s easier to you can navigate the legalities much better if you’re there and you can make decisions rather than online. I think it would be really scary. But I know plenty people do buy overseas, online,but I’m we were there. So it was a convenient thing to do. And yeah, I think we’ve we’ve also tried the stock market, but I have to be really honest property has been our thing.It’s really worked for us. And and yeah, the tenant says you rent them out pay off your mortgage. And yeah, it’s it’s I think it’s, um, certainly my son is 28 has already started that process so

Victor Lagos: 27:29

I can help him with the mortgage. Yeah, like,it’s good to hear this coming from the other side. Because a lot of people do have that pot in them that they want to make a difference in the world. Yeah.But if they haven’t sorted out their own home, dealt with their own needs. Usually it’s on the back burner. One day, one day, I can make a difference when they won’t have enough money I can I can do what I really want to do.So it’s nice to hear your story because you’re living it every single day. Yeah. And and I know it’s not easy. You were sharing earlier that you’ve got about five businesses under the Freedom hub. So, but at least you’re you know, your home is under control, right? Does your current income there you can live and then you can focus all your attention.

Sally Irwin: 28:12

Well, we’re just facing retirement too. So we’re not going to be able to sell we’ll keep the building one because everybody has to have a place to visit. It’s being AB invade most the time. But it’s nice to go into retirement knowing that we won’t have to worry about mortgages. Yeah,yeah. So.

Victor Lagos: 28:27

So I wanted to ask a little bit more about the modern slavery act. It’s something that is relatively new, but there are new obligations for businesses. And that’s another part of your business that you focusing on,on the corporate side. Can you can you help us to understand a bit more?

Sally Irwin: 28:44

Yeah. So I really feel that the freedom has been positioned for this time in history in Australia with regards to the fact we’ve now got this act, which as part of lobbying for and there’s a whole collaboration of us that were it really is making the larger corporates hold some kind of ownership of the issue of slavery overseas, particularly overseas, but in their own business organization and practices as well. So of the,it’s now 50 million is the official figure of people in slavery in Australia in the world. 75% of those are in Asia Pacific region. So we’re talking about our backyard, our shopping ground for private, we’ll do you know, Amazon and Shopify and all that stuff. So private for consumers. It’s the shopping ground for private enterprise.And it’s also the shopping ground for government, right? So we in Australia, all of us,every single one of us can now play a part in helping reduce that 50 million number. By holding the largest companies including our government, with any country in the world that includes the government in the act, by holding them accountable for auditing supply chains. It actually means that we’ve got a massive piece of the pie doing something about slavery in the Asia Pacific. And what the x To actors, for businesses that have a consolidated revenue of over$100 million, they must submit every year, a modern slavery statement that has seven major mandatory requirements. And supply chains. One of them everyone thinks it’s the supply chain acts, and it’s all about auditing suppliers. But it’s not just that it’s also on your HR,it’s making sure you’ve got whistleblower policies in place.Making sure factories and people that you work with overseas have got whistleblower and all your policies to do with HR and survive and not just worker voice and systems to make sure that things are being done correctly, people’s contracts being written in their own language, you know, little things like that there’s a lot in it. And it’s going to make a huge difference. For us in Australia, it makes a huge difference because all these corporates also part of what they need to do with them other Soviet just train all their employees, because how do you make sure that the receptionist is running out to buy chocolates for someone that’s leaving and using the corporate card? How are we making sure that they’re thinking, oh, gosh, I better make sure I’m spending company money on something ethical. So it’s actually raising awareness,which is means the freedom hub has now been launched into this beautiful place where we can now work and partner with corporates and major companies to actually help them steer and navigate the world of modern day slavery,which as you’ve said, most people don’t even know what that means. So we’ve got right from helping employees understand that this is happening. And it’s real, to corporates going well,gosh, how do we map this supply chains particularly are really complicated. You can have25 35,000 people in the in the,in the process of, you know, of one product. So it’s it’s some,it’s very difficult to do. So we have and because I’ve got my ex procurement experience, I know,I know how hard work it is. So I think that helps us the freedom has worked at a level with companies that many other organizations that are stepping into this space can’t, because they’ve got the broad picture and understanding of slavery,but they’ve never actually one worked with survivors and have lived experience to make sure those policies will work, which we do, but also the procurement of that I’ve had an understanding of the delicate balance. Every business has to go through managing their shareholders and profits and people. Yeah,

Victor Lagos: 32:19

yeah. Yeah. And the whole implementation complex. Yes. Yes, yes. And there’s different layers of the business department heads that you need to talk to exactly. The team. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds like a big effort. But is that something that you’re putting a lot more focus on?

Sally Irwin: 32:38

There I am.Personally, I’ve pulled trying to pull myself out of a lot of the operational side of the businesses, I’m still extremely active within the survival school, because that’s my heart.And that’s my why. And I’m spending a lot more time working with kids consulting and helping doing advisory and helping businesses work out how to navigate this, because it’s a long term thing. Now, we’re not going to sell slavery overnight,and everyone’s got slavery in their supply chains and in their, in their value chain regardless. So it’s definitely something that I’m spending a lot more time on, because there’s going to be it’s a lot of impact can be made to try and end global slavery through this.So you mentioned

Victor Lagos: 33:17

that you’re looking for a CEO, a chief operating officer, what would that person look like, in an ideal person to?

Sally Irwin: 33:27

Another? No, I, I think I, you know, I don’t need to be worrying about a catering order that’s gone out to a corporate not arriving, I need to have someone who’s really on the operational side of things,just you know, rostering staff and barista, hospitality at the moment is just struggling to find shifts and baristas and you know, training people and, and all that sort of thing. It’s,it’s been distracting me, from what I can see, it’s better value than I spend my time being a voice for the survivors.Helping companies have survivor voice included into their cup into their policymaking. What’s been happening since the modern slavery act as they were writing these great theories. It’s, I shouldn’t call them that. But they were writing policies and stuff, because lawyers are telling them how to write it.And then I’ll have it I’ve got a survivor advisory board of people who’ve been through slavery, who in every type of all those seven that I talked about, and we will actually pay or get the company to pay them to give advice on whether that’s really going to work on the ground. And there’s companies that choose to engage our survivor board, making much better policies and changes to their systems than the ones that have lawyers. I mean, they have to, they’re big companies,they’ve got to have lawyers write them, but the ones that are really doing well are the ones that are going okay, we’ve now got our main requirements for the modern slavery act ticks. That’s the compliance bit done. Now how can we really authentically go ahead and change and end the slavery problem and get out team and our employees engaged Jin Xin wants to be engaged in this. Gen Zed wanted the planet and people being helped. So it’s the companies that are doing the best. And I think going forward,the companies that are the future world will be businesses that have values that actually align with environment, and people on planet.

Victor Lagos: 35:21

And the freedom hub Cafe also has an online store where people can buy ethical products, as well. Yeah,yeah, I’ve actually bought one forum for a gift, like a tea set that you had.

Sally Irwin: 35:33

Oh, cool. Yeah,we’re about to launch a new range for Mother’s Day, should be out the next few weeks. Well,that

Victor Lagos: 35:40

was something I wanted to also ask for the listeners that want to support the freedom hub, and they want to get involved. Would that be that’s one avenue, which is to buy the products and use the venue?

Sally Irwin: 35:51

Yeah, the retails there, because one, I’m an ex retail. But two, I wanted to when I was growing up, in the seven years, we have the whole Ethiopian crisis. And no matter how much my parents told me that if you eat your veggies on the table, salsa, some starvation in the world, I just knew that was not true. So I just couldn’t cope with the thought that I could be running around with this whole oh my gosh, there’s people in the world and slavery.And also, you can’t do anything about it. I wanted someone in Broken Hill to be able to hear about what’s going on in our country and go, Oh, what can I do? Oh, I can jump online and at least buy some coffee that’s ethical that’s helping X child soldiers or helping rehabilitate child soldiers. I can I can buy a candle or you know they can.So that was really to reach the original and the remote areas of the country that we can’t, that can’t come and have a coffee in our cafe, or can’t book their wedding in our in our venue. We had cafes, we had two other cafes, I’ve had to close over over COVID It would be lovely with a COO that we’d be able to get a coffee back cafe in each state again, because it is it becomes a central hub for not just for people that feel that they can go somewhere and make a difference align their, you know, the money we spend in cafes, and move that into an ethical place. But also it becomes a hub for people that want to talk about the issue,raise awareness hold meetings.So I’d like to get cafe’s back up and running throughout Australia. So people can do that. They can go retail, they can, obviously if they’re in Sydney, they can use our space.We have what we have like a volunteer methodology around Australia whereby we’ll have a ambassador and that Ambassador will have a team of people. And they are like our local advocates. I’m a great believer that the five and one in five coming forward, the other four would come forward if they felt there was someone in their community they could talk to. So we really want at the moment we’ve got teams on the Gold Coast in Toowoomba, and Brisbane and Vanderburgh. And Wollongong,Sydney, Canberra and Victoria is just starting. And we’re launching in Perth, Perth,hopefully in the next month. So the idea is, if you want to just volunteer, whatever skills you’ve got in your local area,there’s a team that you can join. And they work out with the skills they’ve got on that team,what they can do Viet awareness or fundraising or whatever. So they that people can volunteer.If they’re highly skilled, they can. If they’re highly skilled,they can actually volunteer to help us save money with the head office, marketing, Shopify, you know, whatever, they can do that as well. So there’s lots of ways that people can get engaged and get, get involved in what we’re doing.

Victor Lagos: 38:45

The other thing I wanted to ask you was about conscious consumerism.

Sally Irwin: 38:49

Yeah, that’s a great way that people can engage and help. Once again, back to Gen Z, this is their life,they’re always looking for ways that they can spend wisely,whereas our generation was a little bit like blase with how we spent money. So there’s a million apps now out there that you can actually jump on to make sure that you’re shopping ethically, fast fashion is one of the biggest areas that not only impacts environment but people and that is we wanting and demanding to change our clothing all the time. And so sweatshops and people in factories just trying to create back in the day when I was a buyer for Meyers, you know, we’d have the seasons, the seasons would be one or two seasons that we’d be trying to get our fashion and get everything because now it’s like, there’s810 seasons in a year. So So choosing to reuse things is a great option for the environment and for people but purchasing through ethical companies and there’s plenty of ethical fashion stores. There’s plenty of ethical, everything electrical every area now there’s opportunities. What’s difficult is finding them and all I can say is apps you know like the put on new app is a great app for shopping, even my husband uses that now you go into, you go into a shopping mall, and you think, Oh, I’ve not heard that story before I’m about to go shopping in that store that looks like a good sale. And you can just put into that app, the name of that store, and it’ll tell you how it’s rated and graded. It can or you can put in a brand and see how that’s traveling around the world. You know, you could put an address on Nike or whatever and it’ll it’ll rate. So the good on your app is really great for the fashion. There’s appropriately for Easter right now the good chocolate guides out naming and shaming all the good eggs and all the bad eggs basically. So you use that for all your chocolate purchasing.The high risk areas are chocolate fashion, fish, there’s a lot of online apps and things that you can jump on. And believe it or not, Australia still imports 80% of has seafood, and a lot of it slavery. So these are young boys that are on fishing vessels for10 or 15 years and then they if they get sick, they’re thrown overboard. I think it’s shocking what’s going on in the unregulated fishing industry. So really picking you’re really thinking it particularly in the right now, coming into Easter,Good Friday, people that deep fish are at Christmas time, like really looking at only trying to only purchase Australian not imported seafood would really help. So it’s just becoming aware our website, we’ve got blogs, in fact, in our website,under Articles, you can go into fashion fish, we’ve got an article on all the areas of high risk and what you can do and how you can do stuff. So that’s yeah, so becoming a conscious consumer will help the world,

Victor Lagos: 41:40

Moses and that’s the freedom hub.com But you.org.org Okay, the freedom hub.org. So that’s the freedom hub.org Yes. Okay. So I wanted to ask you about financial freedom, given us the name of the podcast? What does financial freedom mean to you?

Sally Irwin: 41:57

Well, I guess we’ve sort of covered that in the way that I do like the fact that I can continue to do what I’m passionate about without worrying too much about money.Having said that, business is always a worry about money, it’s sort of like you sit there thinking only so if I could just get a donation of a million dollars, then all my problems would be solved. But I think what it really does is scale your problems. So yes, I think,I think, to me, if you’ve got financial freedom, you should be giving back. Like, I just think that’s, I think the worst form of life would be to have financial freedom and be spending it on self. Like just self indulgence. It’s just, you know, you don’t need we don’t need stuff, we’re killing the planet. We’re killing people in buying and constantly buying, I think we need to be using our financial freedom to lift What’s that saying, We’re all the boats rise in the tide. If the tides up, or the boats rise, that we’re actually those of us that are well off, we need to make sure we’re actually helping lift the lifts the tide for everybody.

Victor Lagos: 43:03

So those who have reached financial freedom or have access to a lot of capital that they’d like to contribute.There is a term that I’ve only recently started to learn about,which is impact investing. Yes.Do you take on investment for people that are looking to, you know, invest for impact? Yes,absolutely. And what does that actually look like? Do you track how much impact comes from that?

Sally Irwin: 43:29

Oh, absolutely.Have to Yes, I think it’s really essential. I think impact investing is the answer for charities and for people that are trying to change the world.Because we’re on the ground and we’re actually doing it and and for the company. So it’s it’s in the old days, charity was very much just giving out money because it made you feel good.Now it’s very much a partnership or certainly is with the freedom hub, we will partner with an organization because their employees full of last longer,be more engaged, feel that they’re making a difference.It’s there’s enough research out there now to show that people will change jobs or choose their jobs now based on whether they feel that their company is having an impact in the world.So that’s really critical to helping us change the world. And we can actually help them with all their policies and processes and the way that they do things to also ensure that they’re not ruining the imprint on humanity or the environment. So impact investing is were very rewarding. We also give back to them, or direct you know, the analytics, how many survivors that have helped how many have been helped with wellness and psychology and how much they’ve helped contribute to reducing slavery in Australia or globally and, and so on. So it’s, um,it’s great

Victor Lagos: 44:47

raising, I will definitely be doing impact investing as my business grows,and I will be supporting the freedom hub and just help also create more awareness out there.So I wanted to ask how the listeners can connect with you.I know when we talk About the website, is there any other way they can reach you?

Sally Irwin: 45:02

Yes, just by emailing us on the website,there’s a contact form. And in that you can actually tick for which area that you specifically want to be engaged with us, you know, whether you just want to get our newsletter, which is great, or you want to watch,we’ve got YouTube, I’m just starting catching up with all your young people. But you know,if they want to be involved in booking an event or booking our venue, or if they want to be more engaged in corporate, in our ethical business services,and all that’s all on my contact form.

Victor Lagos: 45:31

Amazing. Yeah, and I’m sure people, even if it’s not them, I’m sure they know someone else that they can introduce to help the freedom hub and of course,

Sally Irwin: 45:39

straight donations,always welcome to

Victor Lagos: 45:44

donations. Yes,anyone listening out there that’s got some some cash,please, please donate. It’s definitely a worthy cause. It’s in your backyard. It’s close to the heart of everyone. What I want to do is just really, thank you for coming on today for sharing your story for the work that you’re doing day in, day out. I would love to do more.And I will continue to support you the best way that I can.Thank you. So yeah, we’ll stay in touch looking forward to doing more in the future. See you next time. Thank you. Thank you for listening. If you’d like that, please subscribe to our channels and follow us on our socials and I’ll see you in the next episode.