#3 Michelle Sharp on purpose and B Corp.

Foreign.

And welcome to In Pursuit of Purpose with me, your host, Tim Jones, the grow good guy.

Hello. And what is up? People of purpose or people in pursuit of purpose? It is so great to have you back for what is episode number three. And this is, this is a firecracker of an episode. It's short, it's sweet, it's straight and to the point. And it is with the amazing human and good friend of mine that is Michelle Sharp. Now, I was working with Michelle briefly at this amazing organization called Kilmatic Enterprises, which is based here in Little Otatahi, Christchurch in Aoteare, New Zealand. And Kilmarnock is an amazing organization. It is a world leading pioneering organization that provides meaningful education and employment opportunities to members of our community who have intellectual disabilities. And Kilmarnock is. It's phenomenal. If you're in New Zealand, I would suggest that you make every effort to come down and see the team here. They run tours regularly and it's a great place to come and hang out and it's just got an amazing vibe. And Kilmarnock has been running since the late 1950s, early 1960s, supporting those with intellectual disability and helping them connect to community, to purpose, a sense of meaning, a sense of community. Just a phenomenal place. Anyway, to this interview, Michelle and I worked really hard to get Kilmatic Enterprises certified as a B corporation. And you'll understand why that was such a trial and tribulation and why that was so important for Michelle. But really beyond that, we just talk about what does purpose mean for Michelle and how does she see the modern business world evolving where essentially without giving it all away, how the not for profit sector and the for profit sector can actually learn so much from each other to create these kinds of hybrid organizations exactly like your mark. Anyway, you know the drill. Go and get your cup of tea, sit back, relax, put your feet up and go on another journey in pursuit of purpose. See ya.

So I'm here with Michelle.

Michelle, me too.

I haven't seen you for so long.

I know.

So I've been working with you and the team at Combat for the last almost year, which is scary and crazy on all sorts of levels. And I think we're both noticing right now there's a real movement. A lot of businesses are starting to really connect to this idea of purpose and impact. And I just thought it might be useful. You know, we have a lot of people coming through here on tours and they, they really connect what happens at Kilmarnock. And so I really wanted to See if we could just have a quick chat and some, and just throw some questions at you to see if we can elicit what is some of that stuff that people are picking up when they come for tourists? We can get that message to more people.

Sounds like a boom, I reckon.

Cool.

So, I mean, for those that don't know, what is Kilmarnock? What's it all about?

So Kilmarnock has been around for 60 years and in that 60 year time, our core purpose, the reason why we exist, hasn't changed, but how we deliver it probably has. So our reason for existence is to provide. The karma today is to provide a real, tangible, exciting pathway for school leaders with disabilities to learn skills and to gain confidence so they can ultimately go on into sustainable employment. So, yeah.

Cool.

So a pretty deep sense of purpose and mission.

Yes.

We exist primarily to solve a social issue like that.

So you mentioned like the social mission is like the core of what you do. And I guess that's typically very different from most businesses where realistically, yes, they might have a customer problem that they're solving fundamentally, but really their whole reason for existence is to maximize profit, make money. You've been on both sides of the fence.

I have.

What, what is, what's like the one big thing or maybe the top two things that you see is different about the two types of businesses and why maybe one might be the future rather than another.

I think one of the things I would say, because we operate like a commercial business, ultimately, you know, we, we can't survive, we don't make money. So we, we do have that same requirement, if you call it that as a corporate. The biggest difference is ultimately that we're not prepared to do something that involves making money if it's going to do something bad for the world, for humans, for people. And secondly, whenever we make a business decision, I guess we always have ultimately our social purpose at the forefront of how we do it. But the thing that's really different, I found recently in particular, is because we are so driven to make sure we succeed as an entity, we probably do the commercial side almost better than our purely commercial counterparts because it's so important for us because we're so passionate about what we do and the purpose of what we do, that we need to absolutely make sure we've got to do it and then we succeed. So we just do it really, really well.

Yep. I think that that's shown out a lot of research that, you know, purpose is this thing that pulls you, whereas results are something that pushes you and that pull is stronger than that push.

Yeah, that's right. But in terms of us as a business, it's tough. It's like any other business. You. You have to make tough decisions and you've got to. But the difference being how we ultimately get to those results. I would say 100.

I mean, I've run I don't know how many tours. Quite a lot of tours. You've obviously run about 5,000 tours or something. That's the number of talks. How many tours do you reckon you've done the last 12 months?

Well, just about doing one every day between one and another, pretty much. There's probably three tours going on a day between us.

Yeah. And the one. The common thing, the common comment that I've had from everyone that I've taken for a tour around Kilmarnock is they all just go, there's something special here. There's a vibe, there's an energy.

What do you.

It's like, I always ask people, can you unpack that? Like, what was it? But what is it that you see as the special secret sauce that Kilmarnock has, that other organization, if they could tap into that?

Yeah, it's hard to say. I mean, clearly it starts with having a really strong.

Placing a lot of importance around your culture and who you are and understanding what that is. Because you can have two cultures that are amazing, but they might be different. And I think in our case, the fact that we are a group of people, 100 or so, who each understand what it is that we're doing and each allowing ourselves to be the person who we are, so allowing our whole self to be brought to work and ultimately with a very, very high level of trust, I would say, where you can have really open conversations which are challenging, but in a non confrontational way.

I would say, because everyone's wanting to do better, to get to that hopeful utopia of creating this perfect world that.

We'Re aiming for, I think we all understand what we're here for and, you know, we've knocked hierarchy on its head. I honestly reckon that when people walk off, you know, into here from the street, who wouldn't have a clue who we are, they couldn't actually tell you who. Who's in charge.

We know, actually, that's right, we know that.

And I think that's really important because we each have the role that we play. We each understand our strengths, we each understand what part it is that we're doing in order to achieve our greatest part purpose. We do it by being Good human beings and we don't take ourselves too seriously, but we work really hard.

Clearly though.

So I think it's really hard to say, but it is unique. I definitely feel that. But I think that that real strong sense of purpose, purpose at the heart of everything that we do is critical.

That's the key.

Yeah, I agree. So with the, with the purpose thing. So I was on a panel recently this week with Mr. Stephen Moe of Parryfield Lawyers, the man who is helping drive this movement of sort of purpose and impact. And that's crazy, people trying to change the world. And one thing that was abundantly clear to me was the risk for business, you know, for profit business that wants to transition to being more purpose driven is that it's relatively easy to try and bolt purpose onto the side and kind of go, hey, look, you know, the equivalent I use is it's like having a sausage sizzle over here whilst your business as usual over here is doing something really destructive and that you can kind of salve the conscience a little bit. But I mean we're in the room here, we've got the UN SDGs on the wall here. Purpose is baked in here. How do you see bigger or any organization that is for profit that's transitioning, how do you start baking that in? What's this? Where would be the first step that you'd recommend they undertake?

I think that for me, what I would say is it's got to be aligned with what they're doing in the world. So there's no point in a bank whose, you know, in terms of what they do in the banking world, study work out, that their purpose is something to do with something over here, that they have no skills, no knowledge.

No, they can't connect it.

They can't connect anyway. So if we take the example of a bank, a bank can embed it by making sure that in terms of how they do banking, how they partner, they're actually unlocking potential for their customers, for their employees through what they do as part of their day job. I think that's really, really important. Otherwise ultimately it's not sustainable.

It is just that add on.

It is just an add on. I mean, you know, they could end up being a bank that just gives a bit of money over here. But if they actually. It's part of how they bank and what they do, they embed it, then you move the needle massive, then it actually becomes part of your business doing good.

Which is what is so evident here.

That's right.

It just, yeah, it's Just it's there throughout everything, throughout every day. So do you think that needs to come from senior leadership or do you think it's something that people on the ground floor can kind of push? Or is it.

I mean, typically it requires clearly investment from or buying from a leadership team, because you can't have people amongst the team who are trying to drive it. If ultimately the people at the top are going, it's only about money.

We're not doing that.

The reality is the money will follow, always. Because if you're a good, you know, a good employer, a good customer, a good stakeholder, you will always. The rest will follow. But it does have to have a core understanding and there are clearly various ways of making that happen.

Yeah, but then I would say if you, if you have permission from the leadership team, then it's getting in a few ambassadors amongst different layers to actually really drive change. But it does have to. The purpose has to be called integral to what it is that that business ultimately is doing. And what they need to see is through that purpose, what impact can they have? I think it's kind of. It's matching purpose and impact again, 100%.

And I think that's what here. That was one thing I was really impressed by. I mean, everything you almost agree, like you were almost measuring too much impact because there's so much good happening here. And that's quite interesting where I think most organizations aren't measuring any impact or increasingly perhaps environmental impact, but looking at the wider impact. And I think it's proper integrity. It's that, you know, on a spiritual level, you know, on a human level, it's that integrity of mind, heart and hand, you know, the connection to how. What I think, what I believe, how I feel and what I actually do. And I think that what you just summarized is that's what organizes, you know, just doing it as a bolt on, as perhaps a marketing exercise or a recruitment tool. Tokenistic. Yeah. It doesn't wash. And I think it is Kilmarnock. It's interesting because you've had the purpose baked in, in many ways, but I think you've brought it to that next level and been able to demonstrate it a bit more. But I think it's going to be hard work, isn't it, really? If you're not thinking this way, there has to be an element of transition to thinking a different way.

That's right. And the thing that I'm really fascinated with is I genuinely believe that the biggest disruptor to the current business model is going to be organ who have purpose and impact at the core of what they do because they will do the job better as a result of having that engagement with their employees and with their customers and their community. So it's fascinating.

100 changes.

Yeah.

And I know that's something you mentioned recently. Like you know, big business or business needs to watch out for the charity, not profit and the.

Yeah.

You know, impacts organizations because people want to gravitate towards that.

That's right.

100, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Very cool.

Good times. It's good times because as I explained, you know Kilman, because of our scale we can do clearly a certain amount of good and clear. We do a certain amount of good. But you get one of the big banks to actually start doing focusing on impact and their 1 degree needle move is way bigger than what we could in terms of impact. So I think that's what we need to start talking about is impact and how it's the impact that's going to drive us living in a better Society. Ultimately 100% agree on that one.

So breaking news. Kilmarnock has just achieved something that was pretty cool. Tell me a little bit about that. And why was it important for you to do this?

That you've just done a big announcement.

Where the poppers and streamers are. Can you add those in later?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Special effects.

Exactly.

And this is really exciting. So it would have been about possibly 4 years, 4 years ish ago that somebody commented to me that there was this thing called B Corp which was a, do you call it a movement?

Is that right? Movement.

Yeah, community movement. And clearly you're an expert, not me that we should go for because basically if you accredit as a B Corp, it means that you're actually a really good as an organization, really good citizen. You're doing things well, you're doing things well internally, externally, for the environment, for your people, for all these different things. And we started going through the process of looking at it and realized very quickly that we hit a roadblock in that you can't become accredited as a B Corp if you have a not for profit status.

Yep.

Which was frustrating. But in true karmaic way we never give up and have to say thank you very much Ms. Jones. With you joining the team, it was great to have that ability to focus on how can we convince them and demonstrate to them that even though we have a knot for profit status, we actually operate 100% like a business and therefore they should allow us access.

Which they did.

Which they did.

Yay.

We need to do a high 10.

You're the math genius. We know that. Yeah, yeah, for me it was just like a no brainer and I think yeah, you first talked to me about it maybe a couple of years ago when we first really connected and yeah, it was computer said no pretty much. Which was cool because know that whole framework has been about that. You know, if we can get, you know, you look at some of the big B cores are on board now. Danone, the world's biggest B core. Netura, a $6 billion corporation, you know, Unilever are committed to getting as many of their brands like Ben and Jerry's and others. We've got allbirds, just got $1 billion of investment. It's a big, it's a big business tool, it's legit. And I could really understand that their focus was, you know, exactly that. How do we transition those big businesses to be more purposeful. But by the same token it was really frustrating when I heard it was a no that like, like you say, you, if every business was operating like your money, then the world's in a much better place to be excluded from that. So yeah, no. Highly deserved and very excited. Number 23. I think you're going to be in the B core community. You would have been probably number one or two.

That's the.

World which is very.

And we've changed the global regulations to allow others and it's because of that, the fact that you're trading for your impact.

That's right.

And I think that's the key. And I think as part of our conversation with B Lab we were sort of saying if B Corp had been a thing in 1958 then we would have been a B corp probably from day one.

Correct.

But it wasn't here then.

So yeah, really good news. And I think why is it important for us?

Important for us because what I think it starts doing is demonstrating that it's not them and us, that actually we are no different to some of these organizations who actually, even though they, they originally might have set up for making money, they're actually doing it in a really good, honest way as good citizens. And therefore it becomes there's no them and us. This is just how you do good business.

Exactly.

That's why it's not.

And I think you're right. And I think the fact that as a charity being let into the community, it breaks down that barrier and that's, you know, a lot of people comment, you know, when they come for a visit or a tour or they they hear you or me talk about Kilmarnock, that it is that marrying the two together, the commercial and the heart, and you put the two together, you get good things. So happy days.

Happy days.

We're not gonna sing that, though. So on a personal note, how did you discover this world of for purpose and doing something different? I know you kind of. You've talked on stage as well as around here. There was a very specific moment that you recall in. In your previous life, as it were. Yeah, I call it the FTS moment.

Oh, right, yes. Let's not say that on camera.

When you just kind of. It just suddenly goes like.

That's right. I mean, as a very ambitious kid, I always. I always wanted to do an entrepreneurial. I always wanted to do well in business and had these aspirations of, you know, I thought what I wanted to do was just to be a CEO by the age of 35 type thing. That was kind of what I thought. Thought was my aim in life. And when I got to the top of my ladder in the corporate world, I kind of looked around and thought, why is it that I'm behaving and my thoughts and values are so different to some of my fellow directors who ultimately still cared more about the profitability than the staff, the environment and all these other really, for me were really important things. So I got to the moment of thinking, this is nuts. You know, this is crazy. I'm. I'm investing so much energy and time into something where it's clearly clear that my value alignment is not the same with. With others. And I truly believe that if by being a really good employer and looking at putting our people first and center of everything, that actually we would make probably more money than what they were.

Sort of aiming for.

That's right.

Through their own. Yeah.

So for me, it was an opportunity. I moved to the other side of the world and landed in New Zealand and a real opportunity to be able to, I thought at the time to take the good learning from the business world because I do enjoy good business and applying it to the charity world without a clue that this thing called.

Social enterprise, you'd have this tiger by the tail.

That's right. Yeah. So it was the choice to move away from the corporate world or the very for profit, you know, that aggressively for profit world was the deliberate one. The move into social enterprise was something that happened because it made sense.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think that's. I think you touched on quite a lot of things there. You know, there's so many. All the evidence Is there you look at, you know, mental health challenges we face in New Zealand, lack of, you know, rates of disengagement or lack of engagement in work. And that for me, I was very much the same. Like I came to this realization that the industry I was in was prioritizing the money over the people. You know, in the health industry you're thinking, well the patient should be front and center. But actually on every metric it was just how much money could we make?

Yeah, yeah.

And yes, I think that's sort of my call to action for people is like if, you know, if you're feeling that disconnect, just look at how you can start connecting some of the good that you want to do in your organization. Because as you said, if we could get every organization to become 2% more purpose driven and positively impactful, that's a lot of change that you can make overnight.

And I think the time is right now. We've talked about a bit, haven't we, that 10 years ago, almost any way to affect the change was to go and do what we have done, start charity, whatever, win with business at the core of what you do or a business model of core of what you do. I think the time is right now actually to mainstream it, if that makes sense.

100% agree.

And, and, and therefore it's not just like not everyone has to become a social enterprise. You just have to put impact at the heart of what you do. And yeah, as you say, if everyone moves the needle a little bit, that we're going to be in a very happy place with happy people, engaged, good community, good environment.

What's sign me up? What's not to like?

Exactly.

I guess like we, we're trying to paint this picture to a degree that, you know, being on purpose and being impactful is, it's like it's this place that everyone should go to right now though quite often you and I will kind of go, why is doing good so hard? Yeah, my take on that is, you know, we're kind of like salmon trying to swim up the waterfall because the predominant current is still going that way.

Correct.

Yeah. And you alluded to this in the recent report that was co written through. Well, I've dropped Stephen Moe's name obviously. There was Jane Horan as well and a few others. But the whole, you know, structuring of business for impact, one of the challenges and there are, it's like, I think one comment I made was it's not just about trying to put a square peg in a round hole. We're digging the hole and making the peg and trying to work out like we even need a peg. Yeah, yeah. Out of all the challenges that you've had to surmount in this impact world, what. What's the one that you would.

For me, the biggest challenges all come back down to financial model. That kind of. Which then leads into the legal model. It's all intertwined. I mean, ultimately, as we've described, we are a business. Therefore, we require the same tools that businesses require in order to succeed. And as. As per the report said, there are times we require access to capital, there are times we require access to R and D money. And that becomes more challenging when you're operating in the model that we are because it's a not for profit. Typically you can't access those things. It's harder to get investment because you're not for profit. It's harder. It's just about impossible to get R and D money. So I think that's the hardest thing for us is we're trying to operate in the same way as this group of people, organizations over here, but we're constrained by a model that sits tied.

Behind your back and you're blindfolded.

That's right. And I'd say for other social enterprises, one of the, especially the startup ones, the challenges there is people typically are starting something because they want to address the problem, the social, environmental, economic, cultural problem. But you have to make sure there's a market. You have to be able to sell whatever you're selling. You have to be able to sell your services, your product, otherwise, like any other business going to fail. And I think that's probably the biggest challenge for people who are frustrated by a problem when they want to create such advice to address it, solve it. It's no different to any other startup business. There has to be a market validation. You almost got to start with that, say, is it a market what I'm doing? And how can I solve the problem that I want?

And is it solving the problem?

Is it solve the problem? Was actually exact conversation. That's right.

Very cool.

So another question. I've definitely noticed that you get a lot of people. I mean, you do a lot of public speaking and you're amazing at that, so rightly so.

Thank you.

You get a lot of people, and even when we run tours, we get people saying, you have any jobs here? But a lot of people I know contact you for sort of almost like career advice, like, how do I. How do I get to move into doing something more meaningful? Like you're doing so to, I guess, those people? Or is there a particular group of people that you. That you feel that are particularly contacting you? But is that. Yeah. What's your advice to people that are kind of like seeking that feeling of meaning, as I call it, and don't know what to do?

I think there are two groups of people I found. I don't know if you agree with this. One is the.

Group of people, the youngsters who've just come out of university who've typically probably done a degree in either accounting or law or professional service or something, and have gone to work in an organisation and within one or two years they're saying, I want to do. They're demanding more from their career. It's not just a career, it's actually a lifestyle and they want to do good and they want to change the world and they want to do whatever. My advice to them is actually stick it out. Because ultimately if you and I had started doing this 10 years before we did, we wouldn't have had the skill set to actually do what we're doing. So they need to actually understand good business before they can go and make business good.

And on that, I think you also need to know what bad looks like. You need to not say everyone's bad, but if there is that disconnect and you see things aren't being done as ethically or sustainably or morally as you think they could be, I think you need that reference to then go and build good. Otherwise it's kind of like you're just getting a really bland coffee. If you don't know what a bland one tastes like, you don't know how to make a really amazing one.

That's right. And my second group of people, I'd say, is more our age group who've gone for a career in the for profit world and now see that there's actually another way. And interesting. My answer to this one has changed probably in the last three years. So three years ago I would have said, do what we've done. Exit and come out and let's, you know, go and find an incredible cause and actually underpin it with good business. I almost say, now use your position in leadership, because by that point you tend to be in a leadership position to influence how you operate the business.

Love it.

And so that's changed in three years. I'd say time is right now.

Yeah. And I was the same. I think for me, I had quite a what I call a hard, you know, hard Brexit or soft Brexit. Does anyone know what's happening in Brexit? Who knows?

Yeah. I had a pretty hard exit from the corporate world, which left me really disillusioned. And I was very much like, they're just gone. Like, I'm not even interested. I really struggled to sort of think about, well, what could I do? Like, I'm unemployable. And so for me, I had a rapid entry into that do good world, like, trying to get into the social enterprise, you know, ecosystem and work out how could I come and play. But I totally agree. Like, if I was there now, I'd like to think that, you know, I would have discovered, you know, I kind of discovered bcorn. I was like, man, this is amazing. There's a whole community of people that understand that the way that we're going isn't working. Yeah. And I mean, to a degree, at the time, I did suggest B culture, but it was such a new fringe idea that it was too early. But I wholeheartedly agree. Like, I'm the same. Like, two or three years ago, I would have said, no, like, bring them all down, leave en masse, you know, remove their mandate to exist. Let's all go and create new businesses over here. But. And we had this same conversation at Conscious Consumers when I was working there with Ben and the team, and, you know, half the team were kind of split. It's like, well, if McDonald's rang us tomorrow and said, we want to join the platform and we want to do better, would we let them on? And some people are kind of like, well, no, they don't deserve to exist. But others are, like we said, if they change even 2% of their business practice.

That's right.

Positive impact that they make and the reach that they have to a consumer base.

Yeah, it's huge.

Yeah. Very cool.

Yeah. Easy.

And that's a wrap. Hey, thank you so much for listening in to my podcast.

As I say, I'd love to know.

Where you are on your journey and pursuit of purpose. And if you've got any questions that.

You'D like me to try and answer for you or people you'd like me.

To interview on this podcast, please do let me know through a message or a comment. Also, do connect with me on other social media platforms. You'll find me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and on YouTube. For more information about me and what I offer through my business, Grow Good. You can also go find me at www.growgood.co. that's GrowGood.co. if you want to get in contact with me. My email is really easy. Tim at Growgood Co.

I'd love to hear from you.

Until next time, go well and keep on pursuing your purpose.