Are you exasperated with never-ending, increasing apocalyptic news about humans wrecking our environment? Are you scared about your future and safety? Are you enraged at people suffering around the world?

But are you frustrated not knowing what to do?

The Solution: A Sustainability Leadership Workshop That Works!

I lead workshops in leading oneself and others effectively to act more sustainably: enduring systemic change and immediate personal change.

Best of all: they're FUN! . . .  the workshops and the actions they lead to.

Don’t take my word for it. Watch the participants:

Some came with next to zero experience acting sustainably or leading others. Others had experience in sustainability leadership. They came from diverse backgrounds. All loved it.

Because it teaches to lead using the Spodek Method, based in intrinsic motivation. Telling people facts, numbers, and instruction—what nearly everyone does in sustainability—rarely works, nor does CCCSC: convincing, cajoling, coercing, and seeking compliance.

The Spodek Method works.

So do the workshops. They use project-based learning, meaning they're interactive, active, and experiential. Most of all: FUN!

Who Am I?

I developed the Spodek Method and use it with hundreds of guests on my podcast, This Sustainable Life. I also lead workshops with government officials and with executives from places like Exxon, Google, McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, Patagonia, and Lululemon.

My work has been featured in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the LA Times, Washington Post, TIME magazine, Ars Technica, and in the media in Japan, Australia, Taiwan, Germany, the UK, and more. I’m just getting started. The workshop participants will start appearing in media too. So will you, if you want, after you take it.

I have a PhD in physics and helped launch a satellite with the European Space Agency and NASA so I know the science. I started ventures that operated around the world and have an MBA so I know leadership, building teams, and motivating them. I also decreased my environmental footprint over 90 percent in under three years so I have hands-on practical experience.

I have coached and taught for two decades. I can give you pages of reviews from clients and students ranging from gray-haired adults who have sold businesses to CEOs of publicly-traded companies to undergraduates. Some examples:

“This is one of the greatest classes I have ever taken. It was engaging, thought provoking, challenging, and fun. Josh is an incredible teacher, mentor, and friend to everyone in the class who is passionate about the subject matter. If I could take this class all over again, I would”

“10/10 would take again! I loved every second of this class, but what’s cooler, is that I think I may have loved the homework even more.”

“I cannot even begin to express how much I have enjoyed this course. It is by far the best class I have taken while at NYU. Thank you, Josh, for your time, wisdom, and passion. It made an incredible impact on my life.”

The U.S. Secretary of Defense, General Lloyd Austin, brought me to co-lead leadership workshops at West Point. He wrote of my leadership book:

Great leaders aren’t born with a ‘leadership gene’; great leaders develop the necessary skills and gain confidence through practice and hard work. In Leadership Step by Step Joshua Spodek presents a thoughtful approach to becoming a highly effective leader that emphasizes the importance of experiential learning. It will serve as a valuable resource for leaders at all levels in any profession. Indeed, Joshua’s practical exercises will help prospective, as well as experienced leaders, to master their craft and ultimately to succeed in leading and inspiring others in their various pursuits.

You Will Improve Your Life (and the lives of everyone you know)

You will achieve two HUGE benefits.

First, if you’re like everyone I’ve talked to, the never-ending news of environmental doom gives you an unhealthy mix of emotions: helplessness, hopelessness, dread, fear, rage, confusion, insecurity, and more. When we can’t act on them, we try to suppress and deny them, but they don’t go away. They fester and grow. And we know the news will increase unless everyone acts fast and big.

Did you see the participants’ results in the video? The antidote to denial and suppression is Hands-On Practical Experience, with effective action, not just flailing or doing some individual action someone without hands-on practical experience repeated. Participants gain hands-on practical experience and now they’re replacing all those emotions with determination and enthusiasm.

Second, for those who want careers in sustainability and to lead in helping solve our environmental problems, this workshop will put you at the front of the pack. You can lead a movement.

You can learn to lead workshops yourself, even to lead people to lead workshops, so the movement will grow exponentially. We are creating an online community for people like you to teach workshops to help hundreds of millions of Americans and billions of people around the world to live joyfully sustainably. We can do it and have fun doing it.

Though billions want that leadership, not everyone wants to lead. Most prefer to deny or suppress knowing about the people suffering for our unsustainable lifestyles and, tragically, tell themselves they’re powerless: “What I do doesn’t matter”

Help create the movement billions are waiting for

We will grow these workshops into a movement. Because nobody wants to watch the world burn. Billions of people want to act. They want leadership—genuine, authentic, effective leadership from people with

• Integrity
• Credibility
• Character
• Experience
• Vision
• A mission

This workshop develops these leadership traits in you. Systemic change begins with personal change.

Participants like you can become the leaders of a movement. Unlike movements that may work but are based in coercion, boring lectures, legislation without popular support, teaching children who can’t vote or change corporate policy, etc, this workshop is FUN and shows you how to lead anyone and everyone to enjoy living joyfully sustainably.

People You Know Have Used the Spodek Method

You can hear the Spodek Method lead people to enjoy acting on sustainability on the podcast with guests including CEOs, honorees of Nobel, Pulitzer, Olympic gold, and other honors, politicians, and people who are conservative, liberal, Trump supporters, military, old, young, white, black, Hispanic, Asian, rich, poor, straight, LGBTQ, famous, unknown, and every identity I’ve reached so far.

Click here for a list of podcast guests. You’ll know many of them. Most returned for multiple episodes.

You’ll learn to reach as many people at whatever level of influence you want. We want you to. The world wants you to.

A Participant’s recommendation

A participant shared the following letter after she sent it to friends, unsolicited by us. Yes, it's long, because look at how much she valued the experience:

I would like to share with you my experience with confronting climate change head on this year. I decided to make it the year I stop my gloom and doom and to let go of my self-talk that reinforced that I am helpless to do anything. I am discovering that changing my own behavior is joyful and empowering. Deprivation and sacrifice are the OPPOSITE of how I feel about the daily journey toward habits that care for our beautiful planetary home.

How did I come to this change of heart? My daughter took a class with Josh Spodek in Sustainability Leadership and I happened to be at her house while she was taking it. This led to conversations that challenged my pessimism about being able to do anything more than I was already doing. My pessimism about individual action making any difference was challenged. It fundamentally came down to “I can continue along as I am and for certain nothing will change, or I can take the reins of my part of this giant puzzle and have the chance to be a part of the solution”.

A large part of my motivation came when I used an online carbon calculator to determine my “carbon footprint”. I discovered that from flying alone for the first seven months 2023 I had belched out over 10 times the amount of carbon that is considered the “sustainable limit” per person per year. This number didn’t even include gasoline, natural gas, or any other modes of consuming or polluting. It literally made me cry. It also made me get serious.

I took the course that my daughter had taken and found a source of support, inspiration, information, and skills that were new. One of the things about this class that I think is most powerful is that there is nothing “prescriptive” about it. There are no lists of things you should do now and things you should avoid now. No one is deciding for you or shaming you into choices. Instead, it is an inward journey of connection to one’s own internal motivation that is grounded in our own experiences in nature. It is a process of continuous improvement, so I didn’t decide to reduce my trash consumption and then stop when I did that. I look every day for new ways to lessen my impact, and every time I find another way I feel GREAT and motivated to figure out what’s next.

I am writing to invite you to take this class. Josh’s model is to use conversations with each other as the foundation of connecting to our internal motivation, conversations using the Spodek Method. These conversations help build a community of people who have experienced the joy of taking self-directed action in one’s own life. As with any BIG problem, the solutions require all of us. This class helps, one person at a time, to build a community of people who see themselves as part of the solution. I think you will be surprised and delighted with the empowerment you feel to take action.

Interested?

The introductory video below gives an overview of how to understand and solve all (yes, all) our environmental problems in ways that create joy, reward, and gratitude.

The book, Workshop, and free Short Course in Sustainability Leadership describe more. Our vision, mission, and strategies lead to enduring global sustainability, not just grasping at small actions wishing they'll add up or hoping for the best.

We don't promise they'll be easy or fast, but that the work will be the most rewarding of your life. You'll wish you started earlier, as will the people you lead, who will thank you.

After the Video

1

Read Sustainability Simplified

See how our culture became stuck, how to get unstuck, our possible brighter future, and how to make it happen.

Buy the Book:

Bookshop.org | ebooks.com | Amplify | Amazon | Barnes&Noble

Or first take the Short Course in Sustainability Leadership for free, where you can download the free How-To Workbook too.

2

Take the Workshop

Start your mindset shift

and continual improvement

3

Join the Community

So you're swimming downstream, not up,

And we bring the world with us, creating joy and gratitude.

What People Say About Sustainability Simplified

Joshua Spodek has written a stunningly elegant and powerful guide on how to be a human. In the process, we may wind up saving the planet—and ourselves.

The core message concerns who we want to be in the world. His reasoning is impeccable, his arguments are brilliant, and his writing is a deep pleasure to experience and to learn from. I kept reading sections out loud to my wife simply because I was so excited to be reading such words on a page.

—Sebastian Junger, author of War, Tribe, The Perfect Storm, and In My Time of Dying

Joshua, you are a unique practitioner of the kind of sustainability the world needs today.

You inspire me. It is my hope that with leadership such as yours, we will also see clearer skies over earth in the near future.

—Ela Bhatt, Founder, Self-Employed Women's Association of India (SEWA), member of The Elders, and honoree of the Right Livelihood Award (the "Alternative Nobel Prize")

This book is a masterpiece.

Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum—from bluer than Bernie to a proud Trump supporter like me—I’m sure you are concerned about the world we live in.

Josh doesn’t claim to be on either side of the political spectrum. He’s living by his values. Sustainability Simplified shows how to improve the environment without having to protest or shout down others.

—Rob Harper, America Out Loud podcast host, author, and political commentator

This extremely powerful book will resonate with anyone anywhere on the political spectrum, who dares to look at the world, and their life, through fresh lenses. It will unite us.

Sustainability Simplified is about changing mental models. Yes, it’s about sustainability—and quite literally saving the planet—but the only way to succeed is to systematically shift our mental models and break constraints. Josh Spodek has lived it and shows us how to.

—Alan Iny, Partner and Director, Global Lead for Creativity, Boston Consulting Group

Buy the Book:

Bookshop.org | ebooks.com | Amplify | Amazon | Barnes&Noble

Or first take the Short Course in Sustainability Leadership for free, where you can download the free How-To Workbook too.

What Participants Say About the Workshop

        This is what I've been looking for my entire life.

I've thought about these problems for years and years. [The Spodek Method] is what I needed to finally do something!

People think that sustainability means more expensive. But I'm saving so much money! And I still have more free time. It's mind blowing.

These conversations have felt like a breath of fresh air in terms of connecting with people over something we both love and appreciate. Rather than the stress and anxiety that comes with the need to help and curb climate change.
Woohoo!

Don't Take Our Word for It

Listen to Lorna Davis's honest, no-holds-barred conversations with founder Josh Spodek about her concerns and fears before taking the Workshop, then her transformative experiences during and after.

Not your typical environmentalist, Lorna served as President of multinational consumer goods companies for 20+ years, including Danone, Kraft, and Mondelez. She was President of Kraft China and of Nabisco North America among others. She also led Danone as a Global Ambassador for the B Corp movement. She served as CEO and Chairwoman of Danone North America, where she established that $6 Billion entity as a Public Benefit Corporation. It achieved B Corp status in 2018, making it the world's largest B Corp.

Before

After

Here is a podcast episode describing the workshop:

And one on “The Entrepreneurial Strategy to Restore Sustainability Globally Without Waiting for Governments and Corporations”:

Leaders on The Spodek Method

Sandra Pérez, Executive Director, NYC Pride:

Sandra leads the team organizing New York City's annual Pride March. She is a native New Yorker grounded in the Bronx and Puerto Rico.

“One of the things that our conversations have made me feel better about is that—especially institutions or even individuals—we tend to say 'It's not gonna make a difference if I do it' or 'I'm not doing it right.' We will not—I can guarantee you—we're not going to do everything right this year.

We started. That's a big part of the process ... It's not limited to how we leave Washington Square Park or just cleaning up after ourselves. It's about how we want to show our pride in our work with the environment and sustainability.”

She added:

“The hardest part of taking a step like this is that you're always worried about the blow back. Because people will say, 'You didn't do this and you didn't do that.' So part of the process here has been, 'We won't do this all correctly the first time out and we're going to get feedback that may not be so positive. But that's okay because we're engaging in a dialogue.' For me it's about incremental change and doing that consistently.”

Stephen M. R. Covey, Bestselling Author:

Stephen wrote The SPEED of Trust and Trust & Inspire: How Truly Great Leaders Unleash the Greatness in Others. He is the son of the author of the blockbuster The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

After experiencing the Spodek Method, he said the experience recalled a quote from Little Prince author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

He added:

“[The Spodek Method] was emotional experience. It was great. It felt aligned and appropriate to what I was doing ... That was inspiring to me. I love this whole approach and I've been thinking about the [Saint-Exupéry] quote. That's an inspiring pull approach rather than a push strategy. That's the kind of leadership that's really effective.

You're inspiring people, not just motivating them.”

Tony Hansen, Director (former), McKinsey:

Tony said of his Spodek Method experience:

“You opened some doors. The idea was there but I'd come up with excuses for why I couldn't engage now. If [I'm] honest I'll be a whole lot more effective right now ... than I might be in fifteen years time. It makes a huge amount of sense to do right now so I thank you ... because I don't know if I would have acted on it. Now that I've committed to it, I will.

Very few have done what you've done.”

He continued:

“[Those] not doing it: 1) don't recognize what it takes, 2) don't recognize the benefits of it, and 3) can't credibly convince others.

There's no better way than trying it yourself. You can then speak with authority and awareness, as opposed to just saying oh we should do this but not really intending to.

Sometimes [we] require some form of awakening that ... gives intrinsic motivation to do something, something different ... through that action of doing something differently, you can build momentum.

The Spodek Method is one of those tools to enable that awakening.”

Oliver Burkeman, Bestselling Author:

Oliver wrote Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals and Meditation for Mortals.

“The idea that [The Spodek Method] is an act of kindness toward yourself is fascinating to me... It's not a question of having to choose between self-gratification and being good to the planet.”

“It's not that people have to exactly copy you. It's that people would discover something very rich, full, and meaningful in life by approaching limitation in the same way.”

“You're right to talk about how quickly these rewards come from voluntarily stepping into this.”

Jacqueline Bicanic, University student leader:

Jacquie took the workshop after being a guest on the podcast as a university student in Perth, Australia pursuing a Masters of Environment and Climate Emergency. Beyond the classroom, she is active in sustainability efforts, including starting and leading several university sustainability initiatives.

On her experience of the Spodek Method:

“It was really relaxing ... I became conscious of how stressed I was and how much stress I was carrying around. I found relaxing enjoyable. I found I was speaking with my partner more. It's not like we weren't speaking. it's just that usually he'd be playing his computer games or I'd be reading a book. To spend time together we'd probably watch TV.”

She added:

“It's not hard even if you think it's going to be ... It's a lot more rewarding than you think and it's going to affect more than just that one thing that you think it will. I thought it meant that I might go walking more and all of a sudden ... I'm looking at the foods that I'm eating and the packaging ... looking at rubbish in my surrounding area.

Like dropping a pebble in a very still pond ... all the sudden all these ripple effects happen and it just ripples further and further out more than what you think it would.”

1

Read Sustainability Simplified

Buy the Book

Bookshop.org | ebooks.com | Amplify | Amazon | Barnes&Noble

Or first take the Short Course in Sustainability Leadership for free, where you can download the free How-To Workbook too.

2

Take the Workshop

Start your mindset shift

and continual improvement

3

Join the Community

So you're swimming downstream, not up,

And we bring the world with us, creating joy and gratitude.

What students have said about Josh Spodek's courses:

This is one of the greatest classes I have ever taken. It was engaging, thought-provoking, challenging, and fun. Josh is an incredible teacher, mentor, and friend to everyone in the class who is passionate about the subject matter.

Since I have begun this course, I have applied the lessons I have learned to my daily interactions and I am benefiting everyday. It is the wave of the future, that I am thrilled to be a part of.

I learned a lot about simple, effective ways of caring for the environment and especially appreciated the perspective that caring for the environment doesn't have to be a chore, it can be fun and inspiring.

The course doesn't prescribe what to do, it helps you look at your own internal motivation and values to decide for yourself.

I am discovering that changing my own behavior is joyful and empowering. Deprivation and sacrifice are the OPPOSITE of how I feel about the daily journey toward habits that care for our beautiful planetary home.