“You can find nature everywhere if you look. The impetus for this tree hugging capitalism was, yes, protecting nature, but also valuing people.”

– Nicole Fende

I had the pleasure of speaking with Nicole Fende—aka The Numbers Whisperer®—who is the author of two books and the designer of the card game Body Be Gone™.

Drawing on her background as an investment banker, CFO, and credentialed actuary, Nicole co-founded Creatopia® to nurture joyful creativity and foster creators’ prosperity.

We discuss: 

• Exploring tree-hugging capitalism
• Transitioning to support creatives and small businesses
• Harnessing creativity to combat stress and burnout

Exploring tree-hugging capitalism

Have you ever named a tree in your backyard? Nicole did. The oak tree in her backyard is Apaka, Croatian for Grandmother, to honor her father's heritage.

Or, maybe you would go adventuring in local wild areas as a child. Maybe you still do now. 

Or, perhaps you’ve never had the chance to explore nature beyond a classroom or a crack in the pavement where a stubborn weed grew.  

Either way, nature is always with us, whether we pay attention to it or not.

Nicole has always held a love for the great outdoors, and now, she’s found a way to combine her passion for the environment and her skills with numbers for the betterment of small businesses and creatives—but it wasn’t all daisies and roses to get there. 

She first put her degree—and her proficiency with numbers—to work in the corporate world and quickly rose to high-demand roles.

“I became a CFO under the age of 30,” Nicole says. “And while I lived in Asia, I became aware of something called fair trade, which is ensuring that people always get paid a livable wage for what they do, which, even today, there are many people who do not receive a livable wage, or work in unsafe conditions, or have their children doing the labor.” 

Nicole did not want to contribute to that. She wanted to find a way to help people be prosperous financially without sacrificing safety and human values. 

The coffee trade is a prime example of non-fair trade practices, where workers who harvest the beans see very little profit for their efforts, as the revenue comes later in the process.  This truth is why coffee is one of the first industries that benefited from fair trade practices to ensure a more even and prosperous outcome for all workers.

“When I was deciding to make a shift out of corporate, I looked at who isn't getting the help they need, and who connected well with—it was small businesses, and then a step further, I do well with creative people,” Nicole says. “I react well to coaches, creatives, areas people often struggle to work well with a finance person, who tends to be a little more left-brained than right-brained. It was my sweet spot.” 

She could communicate well with small businesses and creatives, see their perspective, and channel their talents to help them make a profit doing what they loved.

This type of capitalism—dubbed tree-hugging capitalism—led to the founding of Creatopia®, a positive disruptor in the industry. 

Transitioning to support creatives and small businesses

Creatopia® provides a place to connect with curated creatives and inspire creativity. These curated creatives need a way to make money because, otherwise, they spend all their time worrying about marketing and business and no time creating. Creatopia® brings everything together. 

“It's one place where we've curated the content and created easy ways to inspire joyful creativity by providing supplies, resources, all of that. It's a membership program—although you can buy a one-off—it's a membership program where every dollar becomes a purchase dollar,” Nicole says. “On the back end, we're taking that money and investing it in creatives and helping them reach that place of sustainable prosperity.”

Nicole believes in the triple bottom line: people, profit, and the planet. 

“It's something that B Corps subscribe to,” she says. “The idea that we can help people have a better life, a better way of living, we can make a profit, and while we're doing it, we're taking care of the planet. We're using thoughtful, sustainable ways to offer these things to the consumer.”

There's research that supports the viability of these ideas. If we look at the Global Alliance For Banking Values—GABV—annual research, we find that banks and financial institutions that live by their values and are community-based, focused on working within their communities, outperform traditional, commercial banks in terms of profit nine times out of 10. 

Not only is this type of business possible, it’s more profitable. If that’s true for the cutthroat landscape of banking it can be true for just about any industry we can think of. That’s the power of fair trade and bringing humanity back into business.

Harnessing creativity to combat stress and burnout

When we feel there's no safety net or care for our well-being while working for a company, that's part of what pushes us to the point of burnout. 

“The very act of caring and acting in that way helps all of us avoid burnout and be better people, better workers, better in every way,” Nicole says.

Creativity is more than a pastime or a hobby for the sake of staying busy. Creativity is good for the soul, mind, and body.

“When you're talking about burnout, stress is such a terrible thing, not only for ourselves—being stressed reduces our ability to be creative, and finding new and innovative solutions in business requires creativity,” she continues. “I know people encourage creativity as a stress relief. However, sometimes you can be so stressed, you don’t have any creativity.”

Knowing that our employers care about our best interests can relieve much of the mental stress that accumulates in day-to-day work life. 

It’s important to allow our brains to have a break and reset. Nicole implores us to: 

• Put on a favorite song and dance
• Take a walk outside for even a minute
• Watch wildlife in your yard or wherever to can find it
• Pull out the crayons or colored pencils and fill in a coloring page

“It doesn't have to be a grand project. It could be as simple as pulling out a coloring page and coloring it for a while. That's okay. That's creative, and it's good for you,” she says. 

Genuine care for others and the planet feeds into more creativity, which inspires more care, which inspires more creativity, and so on, in an endless positive loop when done with the right intentions. 

How do you reset yourself? Have you experienced the benefits of tree-hugging capitalism?

Be sure to check out Nicole’s full episode for further insight into tree-hugging capitalism and learn more at Creatopia.studio!