Getting the Whole World Humming After a Crisis
“Risk is the dominant theme of our age. What we’re doing is supporting people to navigate uncertainty and mass disruption really well,” says Elizabeth McNaughton, Cohort 5 Fellow and Co-Founder of Wellington wellbeing start-up, Hummingly. Alongside Co-Founder and fellow Cohort 5 Fellow, Jolie Wills, Elizabeth is working to create practical wellbeing resources on a global scale.
“Jolie and I have worked through disasters and led large teams in disaster recovery all over the world. We’ve seen the results of burnout. We’ve seen the results of communities affected by disasters not being able to find their way. And we realised that one community, one city, one nation at a time wasn’t enough. So we created Hummingly to ensure that everyone in the world has access to the best possible advice in life’s toughest times.” Those times are already here, Elizabeth says, and are only going to get tougher. “Disasters are increasing in frequency and intensity all over the world. Unfortunately, it’s a growth industry. But our ambition matches the problem.”
Elizabeth sites Hummingly’s biggest obstacle as not crisis itself, but capital. “Our challenge isn’t actually the disasters. We’ve spent decades mastering and understanding those. The challenge is one that faces many female-owned businesses in New Zealand tackling a problem at a global scale. Of course, dealing with disruption is always really hard but it’s easier with the right tools and knowledge - those we have. The biggest barrier for us is actually a business one; it’s moving to that international scale so we can get Hummingly products and advice into the hands of everyone that needs it.”
Launched in 2018, Hummingly offers easy-to-use tools including decks of informational and inspirational cards which individuals and organisations can use to build resilience, make difficult decisions and support disaster recovery. There are three packs currently available which have been developed with the guidance of more than 100 global crisis leaders. These are supported with live Masterclasses and video tutorials designed to provide practical strategies for enduring and thriving, both during and after a disaster.
“Our Cards for Calamity deck offers disaster support for a wide range of crises including climate change. We’ve co-branded these with the Australian Red Cross, who are now rolling them out across the whole of Australia.” The feedback from those communities, Elizabeth says, is that the packs are life-changing. “What we’re seeing, unfortunately, is a layering of disasters. We started with bushfire affected people and by now those people are also flood affected, drought affected and COVID affected. These compound crises require a new approach, which is what Hummingly has. Our products are reaching remote and inaccessible communities that others can’t. You know that it’s working when the cards are being read on local radio stations and printed in rural newspapers. The feedback has been just incredible.”
The advice and information on Hummingly’s cards includes the recognition of changing emotions, managing financial stress, coping with grief and finding the hope to carry on in the face of disruption and crisis. “About 20% of our business is online with individuals and the rest is business-to-business. Our clients range quite widely from the Australian Red Cross to Tulane University to New Zealand Post. One of the resources we’re really encouraging businesses to try is our Pandemic Parcel, which is filled with quick and practical tools for leaders and teams. It includes our Pandemic Pack which was brought to life with the help of fellow EHF Fellows Bart de Vries from Limber and political cartoonist, Khalid Albaih, a perfect example of Fellows bringing their talents together to support a world in crisis. We also have our Doing Well cards which were developed specifically for front-line support workers. We’re getting incredible feedback from ICU teams and health staff about how these are helping them create a wellbeing, resilience and performance plan in just 20 minutes.”
Elizabeth McNaughton - EHF Fellow Cohort 5 Karamu
Elizabeth describes her career to-date as, quite literally, a series of disasters. “Jolie and I both worked in disasters all over the world before we met around the time of the Christchurch earthquakes. She’s a cognitive scientist and she brings all that knowledge around how the brain works and why we are who we are. We both knew that we wanted to do disasters differently and that’s why we created Hummingly.”
Jolie Wills - EHF Fellow Cohort 5 Karamu
While there will always be an important place for the physical cards, the pair is determined now to expand into the virtual space and take their knowledge and resources truly global. “What we want, ultimately, is to do what Headspace did for meditation, but for disasters and disaster recovery. We’re currently in the Deloitte social impact accelerator programme where we’ve undergone a whole user experience and user design process for Cards for Calamity Digital.
“We have a nationwide case for impact now with the Australian Red Cross using our cards for better recovery outcomes for communities affected by disaster right across Australia. The knowledge in our cards is powerful. We know that it works. We have the evidence. We have a theory of change. We can already show impact at scale with the world’s largest humanitarian organisation as our partner. We’re getting somewhere, but we need to get a whole lot further in order to get this advice into the hands of everyone who needs it, the world over.”
One of the growth opportunities that Hummingly is currently leveraging is the global SheEO venture competition which supports women and non-binary founders, a drastically underserved sector when it comes to venture capital. “SheEO exists to combat that huge funding gap. There are amazing women all over the world who pitch in and create this investment pool for women and non-binary founders who then compete and are voted for by the investors. We’ve just made the semifinals and we’re so excited because hundreds of these amazing wāhine have all voted for Hummingly. It’s such a boost of confidence and the women in the community are incredible. But it still won’t be enough to get us to where we need to be.”
As they await the results of the SheEO finals next month, Hummingly is pressing ahead with a much-needed capital raise to enable them to scale into the digital realm. “Entrepreneurship was once explained to me as being like chickens. You have an egg, which is your idea at the beginning. As you develop it, it grows into a chicken. But the really difficult bit is to go from the chicken to the chicken farm. We’re a damn fine chicken. Now we have to figure out how to get to the farm.”
The Co-Founders and their team are determined to scale their solution closer to the size of the global problem. “Just turn on your TV or listen to the radio. There isn’t a news broadcast that doesn’t include some major calamity somewhere. Everywhere that happens, Hummingly needs to be. That’s our challenge and it’s relentless. And because things keep happening, that urgency is real. So we’re really looking for champions who also feel that sense of urgency.
“The next step for us is to put together a kick-ass, world class advisory board. Then we need a first round capital raise of $500k. And then a second of $1.5m. We’ve bootstrapped the first three years but we’re not prepared to bootstrap this next step because the digital realm requires a different way of thinking about scale and attracting more expertise to the challenge of growing the company quickly for global impact. And we know that you can’t, in people’s greatest time of need, give them a crap product that’s hard to use. It’s got to be really good or we’re not doing it.”
The timing, Elizabeth says, has never been better. “New Zealand is being recognised globally for our approach to crisis leadership and wellbeing. Everyone wants a little piece of that. And Hummingly is the Kiwi export that can actually deliver on those things. We have practical solutions that work. We want to deliver them to the world.”
On a personal level, Elizabeth's advice for all of us as we cope with a new wave of the pandemic is to ask ourselves some good questions about what we value most and need to protect. “We can get so busy with all of what lockdown brings and forget that it’s our health and our relationships that are most important. Coming out of this successfully looks like having those things in the best possible space.”
Anyone dealing with the ongoing implications of COVID-19 is encouraged to download Hummingly’s free Pandemic Pack and share it with their friends and whānau. Elizabeth also recommends the Pandemic Parcel for business leaders and teams who want some help to navigate these challenging times. “Also, if you’ve experienced disaster first-hand and understand the challenges involved, reach out – we need champions. And reach out if you’re connected to a community who is experiencing disaster. We need partners and champions who want to address the challenges communities are facing. Because, ultimately, it’s going to be a whole lot of little things that help us get to a new place. It’s only collectively that we’re going to get to the chicken farm.”
To learn more and connect with Elizabeth and Jolie, visit hummingly.co.