Rising Stars: Meet Kirby Matthews of South Denver

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kirby Matthews.

Hi Kirby, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I’ve always wanted to focus on sustainability, originally targeted at making my own products as an alternative to single use plastic, but that idea was expanded upon when a friend and I were discussing how I wanted to do more to give back to my community and help people but wasn’t ready to give up my “day job”. She asked why I couldn’t do it in my free time if it was something I was passionate about instead of waiting to start. Well how prolific as that’s the very thing I wanted to encourage others to do with their own growth mindset and what better way to apply it than on launching a business. That small question was very profound to me as it clicked that we don’t have to wait to be ready and perfect to start enacting ripples of growth.

In school, I studied conflict resolution and international affairs and you learn about all of these organizations that are for profit, non profit, NGO’s, IGO’s, etc and it all becomes a bit challenging to navigate as far as the efficacy as well as the ethics of these programs. At Kindnest, this prompted us to take a holistic, 360 view of how we could incorporate conscious social change and indoctrinate it into our ethos of the company at every turn from the products we sold, to the issues we raised awareness for and the organizations we donate to.

This means we focus our products and services towards self-care, community advocacy, and our impact on the environment all while donating a percentage of everything we make towards programs focused on social justice. Kindnest was born out of the desire to focus on what we have control over to have impact on social conscious change by breaking down the approach into bite sized pieces so that people could join in and start wherever their journey begins without feeling overwhelmed around where to start.

After researching a lot on social innovation and design, I stumbled across Gretchen Steidle who explains conscious social change as, “a process led by responsible and ethical change agents, who engage in their own practice towards deeper self-knowledge and personal transformation, while striving to advance positive change for the common good.” The adage, the more you know, the more you can help others, leading by example.

The key differentiator of that concept which we latched onto for the Kindnest business model is to start with yourself and by doing so, you will be able to advocate for others and positively impact your environment. We began to offer sustainable products so people could begin to adjust their own environmental impact, and become conscious of how they could continue to grow and improve in this area of their life depending on where they are in their journey. Maybe that means using a reusable straw or simply going without. If you can frame this in your mind as a challenging game of add-on, people can continue to do more as it works for them and know they are already doing more than they realize to help themselves and the environment. This also impacts what we ingest, how we talk to ourselves, and how that all impacts the way we can contribute to the lowering of greenhouse emissions as well as our collective health.

Kindnest seeks to collaborate and support/facilitate those in the community as working together towards a common goal, or chipping away at the areas we can enact change, allow us to focus on what we can do and not what we can’t. Sustainability and zero waste and social justice can be perceived as a net zero game (all or nothing) which feels overwhelming and causes people to avoid it instead because it can be perceived that your action isn’t enough; we’re here to tell you it is!

There is a statistic that 70% of people want to live more sustainably or focus on their self care but don’t take that next step into action. We want to help target those people that are feeling stuck on their journey to #startsomewhere and act as that catalyst for change by creating an approachable framework and program structure to facilitate a curated plan for our customers.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Although we have been doing advocacy work since 2011 and Kindnest specific projects since around 2017, we really conceptualized and formed a business in March 2020 which sent us right into the covid timeframe. As you can imagine, that came with a lot of challenges but mostly in the way of how we engage as a society experiencing extreme adversity and burnout. It inspired us to be creative around how we could give back to the community and create programs that helped people sift through the stickiness as we evolve into our new way of being through all of this.

Working with other local businesses like @that.simple.life led by Katie Kapernik on our ‘Conscious Covid Challenge’ has been a really great way for people to understand how their past and present drivers can perpetuate their growth goals by having conscious implementation in real life with an online course which is available on-demand so you can engage at a time that works with their schedule. We have also worked to create cross cultural awareness events with Sarita Parikh from @glowandgather to help our community learn and grow together. So although covid has been a challenge, it has also been a beautiful incentive for us to find new ways to connect with each other.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar, what can you tell them about what you do?
Our mission is to help people and businesses to actualize their goals by facilitating conscious change in areas of sustainable self-care, community advocacy, and the intersectionality with our environment. We offer sustainable products for eco-conscious living, we also host community events focused on addressing systemic social issues, we offer coaching and consulting services for sustainability and conscious social change, and we offer yoga and breathwork workshops as well as a series of on-demand workshops which offer some self-awareness resiliency training.

We can’t just look at one aspect of our life because they all lean on each other and influence each other and the intersectionality of how we treat ourselves directly impacts how we show up in our community and how we impact our environmental footprint. Kindnest focuses on individualistic progress as a means to help the collective, similarly to the concept of putting on your own air mask on a plane before assisting others. By curating specific programs for people and businesses to start from their current state of doing things, we allow for a digestible future state project plan for sustainable implementation. Coaching, consulting, advocating, facilitating is our passion as well as what we’re good at and the best part about working with us is that your dollar goes further as you get a service or product and we donate a percentage of everything we make towards social justice organizations such as @safehousedenver or @thirdwaydenver.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
If you are curious about incorporating conscious social change into your world, I invite you to be a conscious observer of your emotional drivers, how you can use that knowledge to help yourself, and start to play the game of add on one step at a time with your own self-care, sustainable growth, and advocacy for others. By the time you realize how far you have come, you will already be on your next growth path in your story. We would love to support you or your business along the way.

Contact Info:

• Email: Info@kindnest.com
• Website: Kindnest.org
• Instagram: Instagram.com/kindnestcompany
• Facebook: Facebook.com/kindnestcompany