Demystifying Stakeholder Capitalism — Kent Gregoire

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing, but you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective and really well done? I think Doxa Talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have talent. Talk to Doxatalant and you won't be disappointed. Go to doxatalent.com Bill G. Again, that's doxatalent.com Bill g. One more time. Docsatalant.com Bill G. Check it out. Today we're talking about stakeholder capitalism. What is that? You've heard of B Corp, You've heard of conscious capitalism. Maybe we've had Raj Sisodian in the past, but there's a new thing and we're talking to the founder of stakeholder capitalism. It why should you care about it? What are some good examples of it? Some stories from the world of that. We'll get into all that more in just a second, everybody. I'm Bill Gallagher, scaling coach and host of the Scaling Up Business podcast. Our show comes to you every week with something to do with scaling, growing your business. So if that's, if that's your game, we got something for you. And hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of shows now. Did I say hundreds, hundreds of shows at wherever you're getting this now. Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Spotify, Apple, podcasts like that. Like subscribe, turn on your notifications, get it every week. We usually do a couple shows a week these days and we've got something for you. Pass it along to somebody else if you want to find all the shows and more. If you want to find out about our workshops, our programs of other kinds, you go to scalingcoach.com our website is scalingcoach.com and that's where we have all of our coaching programs, things like that and love to connect with you there. All right, I'm joined by Kent Gregoire. Kent is, he's a friend of mine for a lot of some years now. And although I don't see Kent very much, we have a lot of similar views in the world of business and that kind of thing. We've both been involved in the EO organization for many years, I think back when it was Yeo. And Kent's a serial entrepreneur. He's launched companies and run different Businesses since the age of 14, led more than a dozen organizations, some through great exits and big money raises and like that. He's now co founder of a thing called Stakeholder Business and it's helping companies have maximum impact in every sense of the word and working with CEOs so he'll tell us more about that. Kent, welcome to the show.

Hey, it's great to be here, Bill. Thank you.

Well, so why don't you actually say a little bit more about your background and kind of how you evolved to this world. I know you got certified or engaged in conscious capitalism. You've been very interested in sort of business from a broader perspective. Are we doing what we say and sleeping well? Feeling good about our work in the world for some time? Talk to us a little bit about your journey and how you come to this whole area of business.

Yeah, it definitely starts at a pretty young age. My dad was an entrepreneur and I really looked up to him and learned business from my dad. As it turns out, the way my dad did business back in the 70s and very early 80s is very much where we're returning to one of a stakeholder oriented approach. I did lose my way, I have to admit, at a fairly young age. I went to university and I learned what university wanted me to know about business, which created a little bit of opportunity to be at odds around the dining room table with my dad. Over the time, as I continued to do work and continued as a CEO mostly, I began understanding that perhaps the only purpose of a business wasn't to make money, but there was a greater responsibility. I happen to be very pro capitalism, so that's not what was at question. It was more about the decisions that I would make that would define me and would help create sustainable business, sustainable enterprise. So yes, I first met John Mackey, who you know, as you mentioned, you had Raj Sisodia on co founders of Conscious capitalism. I met John many years ago and that's what started me to really lean in and say, wow, there's a tribe out there. It's not just within eo, but it's also within conscious capitalism. That began my journey and I've never looked back.

So what is this idea of stakeholder capitalism?

So stakeholder capitalism is an oriented approach. Its role of business is about building a socially and environmentally sustainable world. When really companies begin to create value and look at how to optimize it for all their stakeholders, not just their shareholders, they become stronger, more resilient and more profitable value chains. And as a result, that adaptability, for example, has been very powerful during more challenging times during the pandemic. Those who really leaned in previously with this approach actually weathered the challenges much more successfully over time and do really stress time because we're talking about a sustainable business model. They tend to be more profitable and significantly more profitable, but they're also really driving other prosperity for a host of other stakeholders. And that's what really matters. I would like to know, note that oftentimes we think of stakeholders needs a little definition. It's our customers, it's our employees, our suppliers, community, environment, and our shareholders. So if we can optimize value with all of them, that's going to help us create more sustainable enterprise.

Yeah. So the stakeholders are kind of a 360 group. So you said the. The customers, the investors, employees. Right. Some obvious ones. Then there's our business partners, then there's the communities that we touch and operate around. Then there's the environment, the place that we live in. Right. And what were the others that you mentioned?

I think maybe I had suppliers. You mentioned partners in their partners. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So thinking about that 360, all the people that we touch, each of them is a particular stakeholder that impacts our business. And if you're thinking about all of them, and like the original mindset was we care about making money, which is essentially taking care of the investors. So making money spins off profits and increases valuations. But if you do it at the detriment of all those things, you undermine something, you jeopardize something. And we used to think about that, I think initially from a moral place, like, oh, I want to do good in the world, I want to look myself in the mirror. And that's great and important. Right. But the thing that you're pointing to, that we're seeing now with more and more research and tracking over time, is that companies that think more holistically about this, it's not from a moral pl. It could be from a moral place, but it's much more than that in that it's sustainable, resilient and more profitable. Right. Why would that be? You think about that like we just think even conceptually. Right. For our listeners. If you're taking care of all those people and then you hit a rough patch, who's going to work with you? Like, who's going to be your partner in navigating something because you dealt with them differently and didn't just trash them? Your employees, your customers, your suppliers are going to be far more interested in working with you.

I think not just one of the things being more interested in working is really important. But as we begin to really lean in and understand the needs of our stakeholders, we create a symbiotic relationship. What are their interest in? What are their needs? As well as them to have an opportunity to understand what our interest and what our needs are. When we begin to create that opportunity and solve problems in a new way, we help each other and we're elevating each other's particular company and our stakeholders within our company.

We've got lots of examples and I love to tell the stories because I think they help us remember the concepts better than than dryly talking through concepts. But so talk to us about Big B or Interface or where do you want to start?

I think starting with Bigby would actually be an interesting place. Bigby Coffee is Midwest company. They've been around for a number of years. And what I want to weave in here, if it's okay with you, Bill is talking a little bit about what drives financial performance, employee engagement and the positive impact on the community. One of the things that we do know when we started hitting on was that a company that's very purpose driven, that runs a stakeholder model, does extremely well and it doesn't matter, you know, where it's coming from. If it's really authentic, they're going to drive greater revenues. Why is that important? Because these types of organizations are very deeply purpose oriented. And when I say purpose, I'm referring to a higher purpose. They want to solve a meaningful problem. So I'm going to talk a little bit about that as well. Bob and Mike are the co founders of Bigby coffee. Back in 95 and when they started, they started with principles of like, you know, we want to have fun, we want to be happy, we love people, we want to make friends and of course drink great coffee. They were doing extraordinarily well. And one of the things that happened, however, is they were doing so well, they were beginning to be concerned. And one of the founders met my co founder. That's originally how I became familiar with the big B team in northern Michigan on an island around a campfire. That was back in about 2015. And during that time it was discovered that perhaps things weren't quite as strong as they needed to be. Culturally within the organization. The owner saw that they were making money, but it was no longer fun for them. They wanted to change how that looked. So they conducted a culture assessment. But here's what's startling about the culture. Culture assessment. Both Mike and Bob felt that they were doing an extraordinary job as leaders. And as it turned out, the employees didn't feel that way. And so, yeah, they didn't feel that way at all. Yeah, and they're, they're quite open about this. This is a really big part of their story. And they'll tell this, you know, when they're being interviewed or whatever might be going on. And so one of the things they did was, and I give them really great credit is they took the results and they did not parse the, the words or anything. And they read the entire report to their employees. Of course you can imagine it was really, really difficult to do that. And so one of the things that's changed in the work that they've done in really leaning in on helping their employees, they had to address some pay differences. There were some really big challenges there. And also their employees didn't feel cared for and they wanted to feel like real humans who once that was solved just within two years there was a dramatic improvement in the culture of the company. One of the other things that really helped in this organization is they were asked the question what could Bigby do that would change the world? And it really began opening up their eyes and had to think about is the way in which they're doing business going to really be supporting a planet that's going to be around for a long, long, long time. Are we going to be able to support our life on planet? And so what happened is Bob and Mike adopted this stakeholder approach. And Bob and his wife co founded an organization called Big island in Space B I G G because big B has two GS in it. And they always do things in a really big way. So from this higher purpose, which we'll get to in a little bit more closely, what they did was they really searched for farms, coffee farmers that they felt they could work with to source coffee from, that were ethical, that were sustainable, that were interested in doing things to help elevate their own communities. All the great benefits that you could think about it. Well, this was really a startling revolution because neither of the co founders had ever gone to a coffee farm that they purchased coffee from. 20 years had gone by, they had been in business. So they went out and they found these companies, their goal and that is, I want to say about the year 2028, the end of they want to have 100% of their coffee sour directly from these farmers in these purchasing relationships. But to do this was really an extraordinary feat. There may be right now about 30%. That means the other 70% of their coffee might be coming from places where child labor is used, where chemicals are used. The traditional coffee industry. There's not a lot of ways to know what's going on. So in doing this work with them, they were really, really inspired to lean into a purpose. And their purpose came down to that. They want to be able to support their employees and really their stakeholders in building a life they love. And a lot of people would think, wow, that sounds pretty gushy and stuff. But the reality is another way to look at it. It's how do you help your employees thrive in their life, both at work and outside of work? And one of the things they wanted to do is to make sure that they achieved a net promoter score of 90% by the end of 2027, where they plan on also being at a billion dollars in revenue. They're very well on their way. They're an extremely profitable company. And if their franchises, you talk with their employees at a franchise level as well in the corporate office, you get a sense there is something going on here. There's something in that coffee that's really extraordinary because people are prospering in all areas of their life. Pretty remarkable.

I'm wishing I brought coffee and not a sparkling water for the drink. Now I'm like, you know, it's an interesting thing to think about. One of the tests for our old fashioned jewelry company that we would have employ for, we had sort of two tests. One of them was what we called the sniff test. And, and that was like, if you walked around the factory, whether it was stone cutting and polishing or finished jewelry or whatever it was, did it smell so bad that you didn't want to eat lunch there, let alone like stay there? But if it, if, if it smelled or it was more than smell, it was like the whole feel of the place. Do I want to stay? And, and whether you had lunch there or not, but like, did it feel okay, safe? And the second. So that's kind of base level. And you know, there are lots of very like, rigorous criteria that sustainable manufacturing applies to checking the safety and quality of the place. But, but like at a gut level, how did it feel? The second one was, are we paying people enough that their kids aren't like, funneled directly into the same industry? Can their kids get an education? Can the family do something other? Are they trapped in that particular line of work or are they there by choice? And so we would look at what's the, what, you know, whether it's $2 or $20 an hour or 50 cents it doesn't actually matter. It matters like can you afford transportation, food, health care or house, things like that. So what is affordable in a particular place? And we would look at that like, does anyone here do their kids? Are their kids getting educated? And which isn't to say that there aren't family businesses and things like that and small shops, but those two things you could look at and say, is our work good in the world, like, or is it trapping people in something?

Yeah, it's, it's really interesting. A little more on Bigby that you just reminded me of and what they tried to do and what they've actually been successful at doing is to kill the middlemen that were taking money that actually were not adding value. Because one of the biggest challenges with coffee is that the farmers receive so little money that many farmers have gone out of business. Now, those of you, like you and I, who are coffee drinkers and others might be interested in knowing that coffee is becoming a challenge. More and more farmers are not surviving. We're going to continue to see a shortage of coffee. What they're doing indirectly, which is not the reason they did, was not a primary reason, but it is a business reason to support moving in this direction. They're going to have 100% of their coffee secured from these farmers. These farmers are making the money that they need to reinvest to help their communities to do the kinds of work that needs to be done in order to have a thriving, sustainable enterprise. So they've been really, really smart about this. I don't, you know, I know the numbers are something around. For every 30 farms or so that they visit, one of them might make it on the list. As a consideration of a partnership, they have a very, very strict requirement, but it's, it does allow people to be able to prosper not just financially, but in all areas of their business as a result of the approach they're using with their supply chain and stakeholder engagement.

Yeah, it's interesting if you see other investment going on. If people are upgrading the facilities, if they're investing back in the communities, if the people have some time off, if like all of these things, you know that you're not pushing so hard on that supplier partner that they can't afford stuff, they're not so competitively squeezed. And if you think about the middleman of things, right, going more and more direct puts. Puts more profit in the original producers, laborers, sorcerers of things than all the other people who basically are just getting it from there to you. And I mean, that's not good if. If your job is middleman.

It's not good if your job is middleman. But it also doesn't. If we don't eliminate middleman, it's very possible that we won't have very much coffee or the price of coffee. And instead of going to Starbucks and paying like I might do or you might do on occasion, for four or five dollars for, you know, plain black coffee, they'll probably be like $15 and there'll be a lot less locations we can buy it from. And I don't think it's an exaggeration because doing research on coffee, that is the potential reality. And so the nice thing about Bigby and as other companies understand how to solve these problems is they are sharing it with. This isn't to keep it all to themselves. This is to show how to do farming and how to have these types of relationships that everybody is really thriving. And I think that's extraordinary. Something that I took away from my father as a young child. I'd sit around this table and listen to his suppliers, listen to the conversations about his customers. He never asked them what they could do for him. He always wanted to know what they could be doing, what he could be doing for them. He wanted to innovate. He wanted to solve worthy problems. And my father really liked his competitors. He had an amazing relationship. And in a relatively short period of time, he bought out more than a dozen of them. And I mean, within less than two years in a very favorable place, like they wanted to sell to my father. They didn't. My father didn't ask. This was a relationship. And that makes such a big difference.

It really does. You know, it's interesting. Coffee is one of those ones that you start with organic, right. And then you're thinking about in particular the food quality, what we're putting in our bodies. But then you're also thinking about the environmental impact of how it's being produced. But then coffee is as a whole category is one of the pioneers in the fair trade movement. So how do we get more going directly to the growers and pickers of the coffee and less to the distributors that are simply conveying from one area or market group to another. And that's an interesting.

Yeah. And even their trade is hold. You know, it's kind of a holdback. It. There's so much more that the work that Bigby is doing as an example is. Is taking it to a completely new level because they're looking at it in terms of society and environment and how to really solve some really deep issues for, for everybody in that supply chain. There's a lot of situations and, and it's been a great learning experience for me. And the truth be known, there's a lot more for me to learn in the business of coffee.

Well, there's always more for us to learn in any area. Right. There's degrees of mastery that will never be done with until we retire or into the next.

I don't think you were retiring, Bill. I didn't think you were. I'm not retiring. Are you?

I, I, I, I think that my work continues to change. The pace, the nature of it continues to evolve. I'm in a temporary studio up here, spending some time up near our son in Seattle because I'm a grandfather for the first time. So we're spending a little more time and I, I've, I've set up a second studio, but, and, but I work so much on the road and I like my work and I can't imagine. And, but the nice thing about getting later in life is not only knowing yourself and having some financial security. So you do the work that you love doing. Right. I actually work harder and more hours now in this job than in my last job as CEO of another business. And in prior jobs as CEOs, I actually put in quite a bit more time now. But it's satisfying work that I enjoy doing. And, you know, so I still get a lot of time to play. You know, I like to sail and ski and surf and things like that. Like there's a great deal of quality of life. But this, but this kind of work, like sharing a message out with our listeners, coaching companies, giving workshops and things that scale is something that I enjoy doing much. Talk to us about Interface. What's that company? What do they do? At first I thought it was a software business, and then I learned, oh, no, it's a carpet company. Right?

Right. Yeah. Well, actually, our, just our exchange there, brief exchange is actually a great lead in to Interface because when I heard you speaking, you and I share something very similar. I would consider myself oftentimes working more hours now as well. And that's because I'm really connected to this notion of higher purpose, which for me is changing the game of business so that we create a world that works for everyone. So bringing us into Interface, they are a carpet company, they're out of Atlanta, and many people know them, even if not by name. It's a Carp, the carpet tile company. And they made their name. Yeah, they made their name definitely because of carpet tile. And it also happens to coincidentally be the focus of an award winning film that was written and directed by my co founder of stakeholder business, Nathan Haney. So it's pretty interesting. Ray Anderson, the founder and CEO for many years, unilaterally, after having owned the business since he founded it 20 years earlier, decided to change the the purpose of the company to become a restorative enterprise. This is a long time ago, by the way. I don't think most people had any clue, including his dream team which was assembled with people like Paul Hawken and a lot of great folks. I don't think they knew what it meant, but I don't think they really understood at that time how they were even going to tackle this major obstacle of sustainability. A lot of times people will think the story of interface and it is a sustainability story because they've gone well beyond zero with carbon. They now actually have product that sequesters the carbon from the air and the way they're doing amazing things. So they're an example. That's the best and most important business story of the past 100 years. And again, it is a higher purpose kind of story. So one of the things that happened is the CEO decided to call this thing that he had after an epiphany, Mount Sustainability. Now how this epiphany came about is interesting and it was in California. They lost a major account. He was frustrated about it, wanted to know what they were going to do. And they lost it because they weren't leaning into environmental concerns. And internally within the company, and including with Ray, he's like, well, isn't that just something the government requires us to do? And then, you know, his epiphany happened and he said, okay, we've got to do this Mount Sustainability thing. And it took a little while for his team to come on board, but wow, did they. And the challenge with carpet. So one of the most filthiest, dirtiest industries at the time that could be. And one of the things that was really horrible wasn't just the waste, but it's the nylon fiber that they use. And the entire, you know, embodied carbon in carpet is pretty extraordinary. When we talk about embodied carbon, energy, electricity, transportation, every single thing that we can track makes it a pretty challenge, pretty big challenge. So he set out, let's get to, you know, we want to make sure that we're at zero. And then his team continues that process to where they are today. But to, to try to solve the problem. He wanted to find a way and his team wanted to find a way what other product could be used to create carpet. There really isn't a better sense solution than nylon. So they challenged a number of suppliers of which you said it's impossible, just can't do it. So they did some movement internally. They found ways to make it denser, which by the way had other improvements. Customers were happier, it performed better, it always looked better, but it was an incremental process. And one of the things we have to know in this world, it's always slow and steady. But an engineer from another company they had been working with actually came up with a solution with a better grade yarn. And that's what's used today by Nike, Levi Jeans and a lot of other companies. So as they continued to move through this, they discovered that there was a abundant amount of nylon that could be recycled. I'm trying to remember what it's called. I think it's called ghost fishing nets. Forget that term. But it's ghost fishing nets that they were able to capture from the ocean, reclaim them and bring them through into their manufacturing process. But how are they ever going to get these nets that are abandoned? They were able to get the fishermen to save the nets, pay them for them, which was a good market situation for them because frankly, they had to pay somebody for supplies anyway. So they were able to save the coral reefs, save marine life, save the other challenges that come up up with all of these nets, get them recycled, create a product, and today that's exactly what they're doing. So there's so much. The story at Interface is huge.

Before you move on from this, the idea of there was something being wasted, right? Nets are being discarded, they're nuisance, so they're being dumped. And they're like, they want these nets because they realize they're usable, so they put a bounty on them. And now you get fishermen to actually bring them back because an old net is still worth something at the end of its fishing life and that we've covered before. David Katz, Plastic bank is a past guest of the show as well. Talking about adding some value to something by putting some money into the process to eliminate the waste is super powerful concept.

It's very, very powerful. I think what was said here, and it definitely checked the boxes for a lot of marine environmental organizations, is that the fishermen were just leaving the nets in the ocean. And so they needed to create the incentive, pull these nets out of the ocean, keep them, throw them in a pile, get paid for them. So now they were very interested in doing it. And the story has gotten much bigger as well. The. The thing that's really interesting, critical about Interface in the whole since the history of this epiphany, is that this restorative enterprise, this dream team bringing this higher purpose throughout the organization, never was it mandated. It was something that each employee could choose to sign on to the company was absolutely. From Ray, he was a pretty strong personality, very nice, very likable. But if Ray said, do not ever, ever use what we're doing to sell more carpet in our marketing, in our communication, he meant it. That was not something he wanted to do. He did the mastery, and it's one of the key lessons in purpose. He did the mastery. If we do what we say we need to be doing, he claimed he was a plunderer of the Earth. We've got to figure out, fix this. We've got to create an Earth that's going to be around for everyone and to help serve us. Then it's important that we show up as our purpose and that will help create good business. And since then, well, I should mention not just since then. His intention was to change how manufacturing of carpet was being done around the world. And he succeeded. It is change. It's really pretty remarkable. So the purpose aspect at Interface is what's carried this extreme, what I would call positive impact. Because the truth is, every carpet, tile they manufacture is actually repairing the earth.

Yeah. Because they're pulling stuff out, they're doing it in a sustainable way, working with people in a different way. That's actually a thing that makes stuff better where it was getting worse before, like improving. It's very cool. It's very cool. You sleep well at night, you know, you're more resilient as a result of that. I think the surprising thing is that it actually, these companies that do this, taken together, are more profitable overall, that they lead to that. And I think everybody caring more has got to be one of the factors you think about. Waste is expensive, right? Wasted energy, wasted material, all that's expense. So all of those kinds of things. If we're reducing the waste, if we're being more efficient, if we're getting people more engaged because they care about the way we do business, that you're going to see a financial benefit to that. And I think also that notion, like I remember after the 2008 downturn and we were. Were just over a barrel and not sure if we were going to survive as a company and whether it was going to bankrupt the business or us or that kind of thing. And I went to some of my suppliers. And I said, I don't know what's going to happen here, but I need some help. Can you give us any credit? And I had a number of people say to me, yeah, we'll give you a line of credit. What do you need? We're in this together. Please just be in communication. Don't screw us over. We all are facing problems. And the. The way that I'd run the relationships to that point was a big driver in the people that. That extended those additional terms to us, and then hunger from other people who wanted some business and who saw that they could fund it. The other thing, though, on the flip side, I remember when a whole bunch of our customers in a particular region were hit by a major weather event. And so I figured out where it was, and I plotted all the stores on a map. And then I just started calling all the store owners, and I'm like, hey, how are you doing? And are you okay? Can we do anything for you? And, you know, I. I reached one or two out of a hundred or something, but. But the next trade show, you know, after the storm had passed and people largely recovered and that kind of thing, people came by our trade show booth, and I was there, and they said, you know, you're the only one who called us. Of all of our suppliers and partners, you're the only one. And, you know, like, I didn't know if I could do anything or not, but I just wanted them to know we were thinking about them, you know, what a tremendous amount of goodwill that bought. Right. And I didn't actually do much. There were a couple instances where I made small things for them, but mostly I just wanted them to communicate. You're a partner, you're critical to our business, you know, and we're in this together. That kind of a notion is, I think, the undercurrent of stakeholder business and builds those connections.

Absolutely. I've been in manufacturing more than once, and, you know, some of the situations where I've been able to see innovation happen within our own company, Sometimes it's due to something not going right, or another time might be seeing a shift in supply. We had a supply situation come with recycled plastic hdpe, to be specific. And it was creating a bigger challenge. And how we discovered it in our company was we only purchase recycled plastic in pellets. And one day I walked out into the room and we had big, big silos. And out in the manufacturing plant, and I saw what they were dumping from the silo. I didn't have a Plastic. But I was smart enough to realize these pieces of plastic coming out of that silo that were going to be put into a compound or melted and all those good things were not the same color as what I saw in the past. What they were doing was they were actually giving us native HDPE plastic. Well, of course, what did I do? Not only did I call them, I actually brought two of their competitors in a room, got agreement to do this. They were all frustrated. And the the net of it is by working with these suppliers, we were able to actually find sources, solve some really big challenges. But it didn't only solve our problem. They now were picking up business that they had lost and actually beginning to work with us to create opportunities to even improve upon the compounding of our product. Bringing in other partners and our product was already a great product. What I wanted to do is to see a more sustainable product. I wanted to see it be environmentally even better. Even though we were still the number one in the industry worldwide, that wasn't good enough for me. Number one meant we needed to keep doing the work. You don't just stay number one if you just sit idle.

So in just a second we're going to talk about the steps you could take to be a stakeholder business to be more sustainable, to apply some of these things. Before we do that, I want to give a couple of shout outs. First of all to my friend and mentor, Vern Harnish, who created the whole Rockefeller habit scaling up framework that underpins our business and the show like that. So big thanks to Verne Harnish for, for instigating all of this. And then to Wanda Mitchell, our show producer who gets things going in the background and the folks over at Podfly Productions who produce our audio and get our show notes and things in the show pushed out every week. So we do a couple shows a week for you. If we can help connect you with anything or if you want to give us a little feedback you want to tell us. We'd love to hear more. What kind of shows do you want to hear more of? Is there anything you don't like and would like to get rid of? We welcome your feedback. Info scalingcoach.com is a good email to send us feedback to info scalingcoach.com also if we could help you find a coaching partner in your area or, or answer some questions about our workshops, webinars, things like that. You'll find all that more@scalingcoach.com so back to getting started. How do what are the steps to Take how do people get started like that? We'll throw the link up at the end, so don't worry about that. But what's important here.

Yeah, well, one of the things I'd say is that unfortunately in a lot of this work, there's not methodologies out there. We do have methodologies that have been tested for more than a decade now. And the things that we've identified in terms of getting started are four key areas. Also, as I state what these areas are, it's important that they're not considered linear. It's most important that an entrepreneur leaders really lean into the area in which they're called to. Maybe it's due to business challenges, maybe it's something else. So as I go through them and it's also not like you check the box on still today, while the purpose hasn't really changed at interface, the, you know, things continue to evolve and so they up their game all the time. So the first one would be higher purpose. I like to say that, you know, purpose is what drives prosperity in a company. From a CEO perspective, I feel and have operated that purpose is the most strategic decision I will ever make for my company. And every day when I woke up, I would think about that purpose. What is it I'm going to do today? And that takes the majority of my time, even today. But it's certainly when I had large enterprise that was really important to me, I saw that as a major part of my job. So purpose for us and when we talk about higher purpose is getting really clear about what problem am I going to solve? Like, is it gun violence? I heard today through one of my team members who's visiting Atlanta, that there was a waiting room that she's a patient of. She wasn't there, but there was, you know, there was gunfire, you know, and I think five women were shot. And so, you know, these tragedies come up and people are very frustrated about it and sometimes think they can't do something about it. The key is, is finding out what really is going on, what's deeper. Or maybe it's some gang violence or it's homelessness.

Us.

It's not about the Band Aid. It's going really deep. And I have to say that almost every solution is going to come from corporate environment. It's not going to come from nonprofit as much as we want to think it is. It's going to come from corporate environment. It doesn't come from government. So the more we can lean in to think about how we're going to Solve it. So that creates the opportunity to help us not only see what's going to cause our heart to really beat and the reason we get up in the morning, but we want to be able to articulate that and create the alignment within our own team. So the world class company culture, creating a stakeholder analysis and engagement plan that's going through and looking at each of the stakeholders, understanding what their needs, what their wants are, what their interests are, and understanding how they intersect with our own business. What can can we be doing to help support them? Who else could we help in that process but understanding. And when we look at a stakeholder, let's say we look at suppliers, suppliers could have subgroups to them as well. And so understanding those stakeholder subgroups, doing an analysis and developing an engagement plan, that's really important work. I've seen many stakeholders say, yeah, I'm really having problems with this stakeholder here. Many CEOs have had a problem with the stakeholder over here. This is where I want to lean in. Beautiful, lean in there first. That's exactly where you should go. That's where you're called to be. You want to cultivate the team alignment in buy in. And you know, I think one of the best examples that I can share of this, we have four more films coming out this year, but is the Beyond Zero film. Because it is really clear that a lot of the old tricks of the trade to cause team alignment and buy in were not done by interface. It was done in a way in which it was really beautiful. And it's frankly the only company I'm aware of that has gone through multiple CEOs. Ray Anderson died a number of years ago, so had to have a CEO. There was another CEO, another CEO and their first female CEO is there today. And they have not moved off purpose. And they clearly, clearly understand how to engage their stakeholders and they understand how to cultivate this team alignment and buy in. But they're not doing it in a gimmicky way because if somebody says, I'm not in this, but I'm willing to do my job, that's okay, you do your job. They can't be out of alignment with values, but they don't have to 100% buy in. Ray never felt that that was actually realistic. And then it's continuously measure and improve. So the one measurement that people really do miss, frankly I did for years and years, I didn't, I missed this one. Most of us do the most important metric we want if the most strategic decision that we're ever going to make is having higher purpose and follow that, then we better have a metric to it. And that metric shouldn't be like how many clients we're going to serve or how many tiles we're going to bring back in and recycle. It's got to be something really, really, really deep like the Hunger Project had many years ago. They said our measurement is going to be the reduction in infant like newborn infant mortality because they knew that lack of food for mothers with newborns were the biggest challenge and so when they saw that number change they knew they were succeeding.

Past guest of the show Also somebody I met at the Hunger Project many, many decades ago, Lynn Twist, who's been on our show a couple times. So very related. But thinking about that key metric is really useful in business in the areas that we want to impact like and really finding the one that's most revealing. Super useful. If you want to know more about stakeholder business, the link is stakeholder business.com stakeholderbusiness.com is where you can go find out more about Kent. It's really a pleasure to have you on.

Great. Very much Bill. I appreciate it.

Thanks again everyone for watching for listening. We'll talk to you again next time. In the meantime, keep scaling up. Talk to you soon. Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our Scoreboard software. Powered by alignment, it's the official software for scaling up. With Scoreboard, you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align, you can track your goals in real time and you'll even see results on the go. With their mobile app you can rest easy knowing that Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software, it's what I actually use to manage growth in our scaling up client teams. Unlock clarity and results with scoreboard by aligned. To try it now go to aligntoday.com Bill G One more time. Aligntoday.com Bill G that's aligntoday.com Bill G Check it out and try it now.