#150 Simon Holmes à Court (First Ever In-Depth Public Interview): Life influences, tech, energy, politics, climate 200 and the "trim tab"

The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal

To celebrate this milestone episode 150, we're joined by Simon Holmes à Court in a very rare public interview appearance, and we believe his first about his own story!

Simon has stood at the intersection of community, climate action and politics since May 2007 when he began chairing the community cooperative that set out to build Australia’s first community-owned wind farm. Fifteen years later to the month, at the May 2022 national federal election, one of this former Silicon Valley dot com engineer’s startups, Climate 200, harnessed community, climate awareness and politics to play a major role in shaking up Australia’s tired old political order. He is an energy analyst, clean-tech investor, climate philanthropist, director of the Smart Energy Council, The Superpower Institute and more.

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Episode guiding points:

This conversation is truly wide ranging and covers a lot of ground. We discuss his upbringing in Perth, Australia with 3 siblings and his parents being on the road a lot, and his father’s South African heritage. Simon reflects on his boarding school experience in Geelong, near Melbourne and how that was physically and emotionally character building.

Hear about his aspirations at age 18: set up a computer parts company with a friend to upgrade memory in people’s computers, Studying law but then loved the student organisation AIESEC and going down a different path. Our host, Vidit also was involved with AIESEC during my university studies and couldn’t speak more highly of the training it gave me.

Particular aspects of this conversation that stood out to us include:

• Simon and his wife left the US on sept 10th 2001 with their first child and moving back to Australia, and living in Melbourne (cautious after his boarding school scars)
• Simon’s discovery of renewable energy during his 14 years scaling a company called Observant: Building remote monitoring technical solutions, and precision water management for farmers and their family cattle stations in the Northern Territory
• How leadership of the Hepburn Community Farm Project gave Simon exposure to everything from The capital raising, the media, the politics, the engineering side, the commercials of building environmental, on ground engagement
• The fascinating story of The kids off naru project, the Sydney opera house and a horse race and Simon learning the power of Twitter through this
• Learning clarity of communication and present information in a way that makes people engaged and willing to listen and not switch off?

Two concepts that we haven’t stopped thinking about since this conversation is one: First The trim Tab from Buckminster Fuller (listen in to hear this context, small things like a trim tab can drive large scale changes), and second the Henry David Thoreau quote “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”

So be a trim tab and a root striker.

Thank you for your support of the 150 episodes to date, this has been the most impactful and enjoyable work our host Vidit Agarwal has done in his life, and is excited for what’s ahead. As always, his details are in the show notes and he loves hearing from you.

It’s now time to explore your curiosity. Please enjoy

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The High Flyers Podcast re-imagines the traditional notion of a "high flyer" and is a premier product of the Curiosity Center. The podcast showcases the journeys of relatable role models from their sunrise (childhood) to today. Listeners love the unique and direct inside access to these relatable role models, companies and industries in every walk of life to help us all be 1% better everyday, together.

150+ guests have joined Vidit Agarwal on the show from around the world including Heads of state, Olympians, Business and cultural leaders, Social Advocates, Investors, Entrepreneurs and more.

The Curiosity Center is widely recognised as a leading on-demand intelligence network for founders, investors, executives and students with an audience of over 200,000 across this podcast + Association Series Newsletter and 7-Star Events. Find out more at www.curiositycenter.xyz

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