The One With Mindy Gibbins-Klein

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:00:14]:
You’re listening to the Keith Blakemore Noble Radio Show. Interesting chats with interesting people about interesting things and no adverts. Here’s your host, Keith Blakemore-Noble. Hey, hello, hello. Welcome back. Welcome back, dear listener. Welcome back, dear viewer. Thank you for joining me for another episode of the Keith Blakemore Noble Radio Show.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:00:41]:
This episode I have a very interesting person and we’re going to have a very interesting chat. This is a person I’ve known for many, many years now. I’m delighted that Mindy has managed to squeeze us in just before she jets off to New York. Mindy Gibbons Klein is an international speaker and a coach who teaches people to be thought leaders and thoughtful leaders. Mindy has authored 15 books and her clients have written and published between them over a thousand books. That’s a lot of books that Mindy’s helped to create and get out into the world. She has delivered two TEDx talks which between them have nearly 1 million views. Pretty, pretty impressive person, this one.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:01:31]:
Now, Mindy is a native New Yorker who now resides in the UK where she runs the Book Midwife, which is an award winning book coaching brand. And she also runs the Thoughtful Leader consultancy business. Crucially, Mindy is also the founder of a social impact project called giving 1%, which raises awareness and focus on regular charitable giving in our society. Over the past 35 years, she has presented to and coached over 60,000 business leaders and entrepreneurs in 18 countries. Her content has been licensed and syndicated across the globe and her mission is to create a more thoughtful society. That is my guest today. You can see why I have her on an absolutely amazing lady. Let’s bring her in.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:02:25]:
Mindy, are you there?

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:02:27]:
I am here. I’m humbled by that introduction. I know I’m familiar with most of those talking points, but still, thank you for introducing me in such a lovely way.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:02:39]:
My pleasure. And thank you for being, for being a guest. Thank you for being on here and sharing. I mean, that’s a lot of accomplishments that you’ve got there, some amazing numbers and so on. We’re going to dive in, we’re going to explore some aspects of this. Before we do though, I do have to ask who. We’ve heard the bio, we’ve heard the numbers, incredibly impressive stuff. Who is Mindy? Who is the lady behind it all?

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:03:09]:
Thanks for asking. Here’s what I think. I think I’ve been told I’m high energy, positive, caring and really, really keen to help people achieve their potential. So I think I’m in the right line of work. I feel really good about the work I do. But also, you know, I always feel I’m living my best life. So, you know, yeah, I’m. I’m a happy person.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:03:35]:
A happy person. What, what, what. What greater thing to aspire to than to be happy? So we have a lot to talk about. I guess the first where I want to start is where I first got to. To know you. I was introduced to you as the Book Midwife. I don’t know if you’ll remember, it was a good few years ago. A mutual acquaintance of ours, Johnny Cass, was presenting an advanced speaking course and he brought you along to share some ideas as well.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:04:11]:
Very impactful ideas they were, too. How did you become the book midwife? How did that all come about?

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:04:18]:
So let me just clarify. I’m the founder of the Branded Wife, so we’re not supposed to say Mindy is the book midwife, but a really cool brand. It’s obviously. It’s a metaphor. I’m not a real midwife. It’s part of the coaching industry. So now a lot of people understand about book coaching, but When I started 23 years ago, I was doing book marketing and a book came across my desk that, let’s just say it wasn’t as good as it could have been. And I’m putting that mildly.

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:04:59]:
And in the end, there were 600 errors with it. So I tried not to work on that book. And this thought came into my head. I wish I’d been involved sooner like before it was written. And I morphed my marketing and coaching company into this book coaching brand, and it made a lot more sense because I prefer to be involved at the idea stage. I’ve written a lot of books myself and I’ve written a lot of songs, I’ve written plays. I’m a creative. I love putting other people to realise that they’re creative as well, and.

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:05:40]:
And to write a better book, because, let’s face it, it’s a big deal. It’s a big project, and if somebody’s going to write a book, it really deserves to be the best it can be. I feel very strongly about that. So I’m glad to be involved.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:05:56]:
Love it. Love it. And the figures speak for themselves. As you say, your clients have written and published over 1,000 books. Between them, you’ve authored 15 books yourself. What’s been the highlight for you with all of this and with helping all of these people to get their stories and their books and their message out there?

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:06:20]:
Well, I think I’ve run over 100 workshops where we on the kickstart. So starting right at the idea stage. Piece of paper, not a blank mind. Everybody has ideas. And to see these books coming together, to see the structure and the framework and the outline actually being born, seeing the book being born, I never get bored of that. I’m running work in New York this week and I’ve got stone for the next few months. This is a spark that I can just witness and I can be part of it. And it’s just so lovely because a lot of people who want to write a book never do it.

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:07:04]:
And some of them who start, they lose confidence, they start doubting, they quit somewhere along the line. And there are other people who take it all the way through. They spent too long years and they’re still not sure about it. And so we can fix all of that. We can just eliminate all those issues by starting in the right way with support right at the beginning. And of course we’re known for the 90 day program, which I think it’s, it’s a really cool time frame to write a book. It’s enough time, but not too much.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:07:41]:
Yeah. So just, just, just briefly tell us what, what that’s. I mean it sounds self explanatory, but one of the many things I’ve learned is never, never assume. So do tell us, tell us what’s. I mean, is that basically 90 days from idea to book on the bookshelf? Presumably not. So what, what does it, what, what is it.

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:08:03]:
In the 90 days the author gets to put their ideas together, come up with a robust plan and outline and write free drafts and the final draft they’re delighted with and we get all that done in 90 days.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:08:17]:
90 days, which anyone who has ever attempted to write a book will realise. 90 Days is a lot shorter than, than you might think for creating books so that you’re able to take them through three drafts and have a draft that they’re really happy with in just 90 days. That’s, that’s pretty cool stuff. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I have to say I’ve never, never worked with, with the book Midwife. I’ve been aware of your stuff and it was that, that talk that you gave us all those years ago actually, actually inspired me to, to get the first book done and out. So thank, thank you.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:08:58]:
Although our path never crossed to actually working together so far, who knows what the future will bring. But six books out now and it is you, you will a spark that made me realise it is actually possible. So I’ve never acknowledged that before actually so, yes, Mindy is the spark that got me started. She’s also now responsible for the fact there’s lots of books all partly written on my hard drive, all demanding to be written as well. It gets very addictive, doesn’t it? So that’s the book midwife side of what you do. You also have the thoughtful leader consultancy business in a nutshell. What’s that about? What’s the thoughtful leader?

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:09:43]:
Thought leader is a term that I recognised going back about 20 years and I heard the term and I thought, hmm, my clients, many of them are thought leaders, but why are they not being called thought leaders? And I started looking into it and created a bit of a methodology, criteria, metrics to become a thought leader. Because you can’t just throw these terms around, just say, oh, he’s a thought leader with no evidence. Yeah, but you certainly shouldn’t call yourself one. So I. Viewers are listening now when I say never call yourself, but if you do all the right things, the market calls you a thought leader. So I was writing about thought leadership for a good 10 years, and then everybody started using the term and abusing it. I just thought, we need to raise the bar, raise the game. So I started talking about thoughtful leadership, which kind of like Thought Leadership 2.0, you want to be saying something important, let’s be thoughtful about it.

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:10:52]:
And that’s where that started. And then I began to explore the other side of thoughtful, as in being considered. And I realised that it’s two sides of the same coin. So consideration of people leads to concern of ideas. If you don’t care enough about the people who you’re talking to or writing for, you want the right kind of thought into what you’re writing and saying. So it makes total sense. But of course, I believe people need to be supported through the process if they want to produce their best results and be their most thoughtful selves. So it made total sense that I would move into that area.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:11:39]:
Absolutely. As you say, it makes perfect sense. I mean, people need support to be whatever one is undertaking. It’s always good to have support and direction from someone who understands it and can help. And outside perspectives always help as well. I love that. A thing that really stood out for me there was never call yourself a thought leader. That’s not a title one assigns oneself.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:12:04]:
That’s what others say about, about you once you reach that level.

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:12:08]:
Right?

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:12:09]:
Yeah, I guess it’s, it’s. It is one of those categories, isn’t where isn’t it? Where if you have to tell people you’re a thought leader. Clearly you’re not a thought leader, Naf.

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:12:19]:
As we say here in the UK. And this includes LinkedIn profiles, which everybody knows you wrote. So. Yeah, yeah, I don’t like seeing that. It turns right off.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:12:35]:
Yes. I can think of a number of profiles where they describe themselves as a thought leaders, like. And as you say. No, you don’t call yourself that, others call you that. Anyway, all of that brings us to the key thing that I really want to explore with you today. You have created a social impact project which you call giving 1%. So tell us a little bit about what. We’ll explore where it came from in a moment.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:13:10]:
Just give us an overview of what giving 1% is all about.

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:13:16]:
It’s a concept, it is something for people to think about. It’s an initiative and it’s a bit of a mission for me, me to get people to look at their regular trouble giving. We will talk about how it started. All I really like is for people to reflect and know what they’re currently giving to whatever causes on a monthly basis and consider. There’s that word again, whether they could and whether they want to give a bit more. So 1% is just not saying you must give 1% or you should only give 1%. It’s just an easy way for people to start. If they’re not giving anything to any charities by standing order or regular payments, maybe they would like to start.

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:14:10]:
And so it’s just a bit of a calculator. People say to me, where’s money going? I said, well, there’s no money, we’re not asking for money. It is literally a place where people can calculate what percentage of their net income they currently give to charity and then reflect and then they do what they do outside of the scope of our website. I’d really like this to become part of the conversation, part of our society where, you know, people have their. All their expenses to do with their life, their house, their food and they want to give to charity. That’s in the mix. And it’s, oh, you know, if I have extra, or someone shakes a tin at me at the tube station, I’m using lots of UK expressions. I’m always saying to my client, don’t do that in case.

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:15:08]:
I’m sorry, people. If you’re from outside the uk, we have train stations and people want to steak at Cannes. You know, people put a few coins in. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about regular charitable giving. You know, donations that come out of your bank account.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:15:25]:
I get you, I get you. Yeah. And I like, I like the fact it’s, it’s 1% because I know people will think, oh, I really ought to give more to charity. Oh, I don’t know how much to give. 1%, just a regular 1%. As you say. It’s not, it’s not that much for the individual, generally. For some people it may be, but generally one can spare 1%.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:15:50]:
But it all, it all adds up and all makes, it makes a big impact.

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:15:55]:
Well, I did a calculation, keep. Finish off that subject. I had to do some calculations and research and put the evidence into some notes from my TEDx talk because they, they want to know, you know, where did you get these stats and all this sort of thing? And, you know, people in some countries are giving more than others and in the uk, we, we were not doing that well. I don’t want to start, you know, saying anything about any countries, but we could do better. And I did, you know, a bit of a calculation on what would happen if 10 million adults in the UK, let’s say 1/3 of the workforce, gave 1%. We could solve most of the problem society. And I’m talking about individuals, not even companies. Yeah, it’s.

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:16:53]:
It is very powerful and it’s a very easy ask. And that’s why, you know, I sometimes say at least one. And then we have this thing called the giving number where you could aim for 5% or 10%. You don’t have to. I think my giving number is currently 3.4%. It’s just. Be great if everybody kind of knew about this and thought about it and use these terms.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:17:20]:
Yeah, yeah, that’s, that’s. So you reckon if. What, sorry, what portion of the, the working population do you say you’re based on? One third.

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:17:30]:
So that there’s 33 million adults working in the UK of working age, but they’re getting benefits, you know, if they get 2,000 a month, could they spare 20? It’s just a really interesting thing to think about.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:17:46]:
Yeah, yeah, that certainly does give a lot to think about. I have to. It’s a great initiative. Where did the idea come from? What sparked it off?

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:17:58]:
It was those defining moments during COVID I was just sitting and doing some paperwork at my bank statement and I noticed my standing orders, the regular payments going to charities, and I had about five. I still have, I think I have six now that I give to every month. But this thought occurred to me, I thought, you know, over the years my income has really gone up. But I don’t think my giving has kept up because many of those charities never asked me to increase my donation. And so as a percentage touches, I started exploring that got my calculator out. And, you know, we’ve all heard of. I think we’ve all heard tithing, Sadaka, Dana Daswand, I remember them all. I know all.

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:18:52]:
Every religion has this theme of giving to those who, you know, are in need. And yet I knew I wasn’t giving 10% and I thought maybe five. I don’t know, which is why I did calculation. And I was shocked and very upset to see that my number was half a percent. So I was earning what I was earning and I was keeping 99.5% of it. And that just felt wrong. Immediately, I decided to do something. I started talking to friends, I started talking to people who could get the website and the app and that spread the word.

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:19:35]:
And I got free pr, I got all, you know, lots of things. We got this. And I got into the biggest charity. I’m not sure what they are. It’s an organisation that supports charities in the UK and they have a magazine and we go into the UK fundraising magazine, but we haven’t done enough. It’s like that was during COVID you know, was either nervous or felt, you know, whatever about their money, but things have settled down and I really feel people can put this, whatever percentage into their budget. So we have work to do.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:20:17]:
Yeah. Yes. So the giving 1% to the project itself, presumably it’s not about saying, give money to this, give money to that. It’s just about the concept of charitable giving in general. So when people go to the giving 1% website, what do they get there? What does that bring them?

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:20:42]:
Hopefully it’s a place to pause and reflect and everybody can do this anonymously. That’s the beauty of it. And just think about whether you are giving on a regular basis, because that’s the key. So I’ll talk about that in a second. So there are two things. Do you know you’re giving number? Do you know what you give? Are you giving on a regular basis? And then the second part is, if you do the calculation, which again, is anonymous, you look at that number and you’ll have whatever reaction you have and you’ll decide to do whatever you decide to do. The reason why I am so focused and obsessed with the regular giving, monthly giving, is because charities, and I’ve spoken to a lot of them, they cannot forecast or budget because they don’t have enough regular donors. So you know, all these fundraising activities and things, you know, marathon this and that and the money they get is very key, but they can’t do a proper budget.

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:21:53]:
And so, you know, our in the UK are struggling a lot because they were relying on the government and governments make decisions they make. I’m a believer in the people. I think that, you know, maybe governments should and could be doing whatever, but what can we do as individuals? And if millions of people actually stopped and thought about it and decided to do what they could for the charities and the causes they believe in, we can make that difference. And that’s what excites me. So you know, go to the site, watch the videos, think about it, do the calculation and then set up some, some kind of regular giving to whatever causes. Touch your heart.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:22:45]:
Yeah, yeah, I like that. Basically it’s people power. Fundamentally collectively we can, by, by giving a little each, we can collectively make a huge difference.

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:22:58]:
I agree. That was the title of the TEDx talk last year. Makes a big difference.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:23:06]:
There you go.

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:23:09]:
It’s still out there. People want to watch the 12 minute talk.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:23:14]:
12 minute TEDx talk. I, I will, I’ll get the link from that from you after this and.

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:23:19]:
We’Ll, it should be on the giving 1% website. I think it is.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:23:24]:
We, we’ll link that into the show notes as well just so people can really, really find, get, get the information. Nice. What do you see is, what do you see as the Future for giving 1%? Where would you like to take it? Where would you like it to go?

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:23:39]:
I think it’s going to be more subtle than specific metrics. I think it’s going to be a kind of zeitgeist of people feeling and acting in a more generous way and as a result feel good. It’s, you know, being altruistic actually reflects back on you. I’m sure anybody who’ve been thoughtful or given of themselves or give money, they basked in that warm feeling as well. So this is where this, we just, we get busy and we forget and we kind of these things. So you know, I just see this as becoming part of what we do as a society and as individuals and you know, earning our place in society. We can feel proud and we can feel great of ourselves. A lot of people who don’t got themselves, we don’t have time to go into that very much.

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:24:43]:
But you know, through our work, it was a mindset, you know, we meet people who really could transform themselves and others. Something simple. Maybe it’s a decision to, you know, Dance a month somewhere, who knows?

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:24:59]:
Nice. Yeah, yeah. Question. A question that comes up to me. Obviously one can’t recommend which charities people ought to give because that’s a personal thing. That’s up to each person. Suppose somebody is listening to this, likes the idea and they’re thinking, oh yeah, I could give 1% of my income, but I have no idea what channel, how do I pick? How do I pick what channel? I mean, should I give it all to one? Should I spread it among some? Do I go national, local? How does one go about choosing? Because there are a lot of charitable causes out there.

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:25:38]:
There are 200,000 registered Chekay alone. Apparently we’re not here to advise or guide or criticise or anything else or judge. I think people need to think about what has happened in their life and in the life of people they know. And most people have had some experience with either a health challenge or another kind of challenge and that becomes obvious. So there is no right or wrong. It all works out if people give wherever their heart tells them to give. If they’re looking for inspiration. We have had some fantastic sponsors of the initiative.

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:26:23]:
There are thank you page. There aren’t many on there. We’re hoping that’s going. So if anybody would like to be featured on our thank you page we should have a chat and I’ll explain just how easy it is to get on there. But they have to do a couple of things.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:26:39]:
Oh, nice, cool. So giving 1%, as you said earlier, it’s aimed at individuals. For each of us individually in society can make a contribution. Do you see this growing to incorporate corporations and companies as well or would that be a completely separate thing? That would just confuse, you know, there.

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:27:05]:
Are a lot of initiatives already encouraging and supporting companies to give back. There are also some fantastic schemes and I worked with and I’ve done some work with some of them who do work on and encourage payroll giving. So this becomes easy. So it’s a company who is organising it. But each individual decides what they give, where they give, but it comes out of pay-check. This is for, you know, people on PAYE. Entrepreneurs have to, you know, we have to manage our own budget. But there are a lot of people who are employed and where the companies actually organise this.

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:27:48]:
It’s a beautiful thing because people can, it’s just easier. They make it easier for people to give and they say, you know, you could give where you want to give. They have list of 100 charities, you know, you pick.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:28:07]:
Sorry, we just had a slight drop out There, but you’re back, which is good. So yeah. You’re saying so. Yeah, that through the givers you earn, your employers will have lists of charities you pick and they make the donations from your, from your salary on your, on your behalf.

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:28:23]:
And when I was employed, I did that. And you don’t miss it. In fact, I think some of them are giving up to 6% but it doesn’t really matter what the number is or which charity. I hope that has come across.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:28:40]:
Yeah. So the important thing is as many of us as possible do this.

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:28:46]:
Yeah.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:28:47]:
Yeah. Time, as it always does, is up against us. People who want to find out more either find out more about Mindy or find out more about giving 1%, maybe even get in touch. What’s the best place for them to find out more?

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:29:05]:
Mindygk.com and they have it in the shirts. The reason why we don’t put my full last. What’s the name is because it’s. Some people get certain letters wrong and you know, then they won’t find me. So Mindy is what we ended up with. I like having one name. It’s kind of like Beyonce or Madonna.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:29:35]:
And yeah, it’s a great point when one has a long name. I, I should probably have done that with mine. But hey, There we go. Mindygk.com you can find out a lot more about Mindy. You can find more about giving 1%, you can find more about everything that Mindy does. You can get in touch with her there. Also the link to that, the link to giving 1%. Link to some of Mandy’s books.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:30:00]:
All these things will be in the show notes for this, this episode as well as always. Keith Maple noble.com show look for the one with Mindy or just go as Mindy says. Go to mindygk.com Mindy I want to thank you for taking, taking some time out of your incredibly busy schedule to share and share with us giving 1% and share an insight into where it came from and how we can all help and how, how big a difference we can make. Any. Any final words? Because I know you’re jetting off imminently to back to New York. Any final words for us?

Mindy Gibbins-Klein [00:30:40]:
You know, it’s very easy to feel better about yourself as soon as you get the focus off yourself. And when I say people nod. Oh yeah. But so many times we don’t realise that we’re kind of self reflection and for some people, self loathing. If we can project all of our care and our hearts towards someone or something, who needs it then? It’s amazing. We can instantly feel better and doesn’t even have to cost a lot.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:31:22]:
Brilliant. What a perfect way to end. Thank you so much Mindy. Thank you, dear viewer, dear listener. Thank you for catching us however you’ve caught us. Thank you for doing so. Remember, give us a like a comment, a share a subscribe, give us a review on your favourite podcast platform. And do check out mindygk.com that’s it for now.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:31:43]:
I am going to leave you with my guest’s favourite quote only do what only you can do.