#37 - Jamie Cashmore on Balancing Purpose & Profit In A Family Run Start-up!
7 Dec 2025 · 64 min
Jamie Cashmore makes edible cups at Twice that dissolve in hot drinks. The egg-based cups hold boiling water for about 12 hours, and he's developing plant-based and gluten-free versions. He's pursuing B Corp certification and plans to scale by placing machines across North America.
Questions this episode answers
Around five years; in market about two and a half years.
300 million cups per year (New Zealand).
Egg, flour, sugar, and natural vanilla (dairy-free but not egg-free).
You can put boiling water in it and come back 12 hours later; it remains intact.
About eight hours.
Chapters
Foreign.
Welcome to the Be Better podcast. This podcast is aimed at helping you go B Corp and beyond. And in this podcast, we connect with other certified B corporations, aspiring B Corps and other aligned individuals to help you understand the what, why and how of B Corp certification.
Says it's doing it. There we go. Preparing live stream. This meeting is being live streamed.
Boom.
It's thinking about it. It's thinking about it. So Kia ora, welcome to another episode of the Be Better podcast. And with us today we have Jamie Cashmore. Jamie, how are you?
What's going on? Hello, everybody.
Yes, I'm.
I'm good, thank you. I'm good. Excellent. Sun was up at 5 this morning, so we're early. Coffees. Nice.
Yeah. Children, the gift that keep on giving on so many levels.
Yeah.
So just checking. Yeah, we are live in the. So if you are tuning into this on our. On the Grow Good Be Better podcast, we also live stream this podcast into the Be Better 100 community group, which is the group that we have for the clients that we're working with who are going through B Corp. So they get exclusive early access to this and they get to ask questions to people like Jamie. So hopefully someone is going to ask us a question. Otherwise that'll be embarrassing. But yeah. So this podcast is all about connecting with people who have done this B Corp thing and trying to help other people understand maybe if they should do it and just hear the stories of people that have been on that journey. Connect to entrepreneurs, CEOs, senior leaders from companies that are doing some really cool stuff. And Jamie, you definitely fit into that category. So for those of you who haven't heard of Jamie Cashmore, which I can't believe there's that many. And. And for those people that haven't heard of Twice, just tell us a little bit about who you are. What do you do?
Yeah, so we. Twice has been around for about five years. We've been in market for about two and a half. So we make edible tableware. Well, we make edible cups at the moment, but tableware is a general kind of. Kind of sense. I guess we've started with cups because I guess there's that big.
Waste number of 300 million cups that get thrown out single use cups that get thrown out in New Zealand every year, which is.
Just in New Zealand.
Horrific. Yeah, just in New Zealand. Yeah. So.
That'S pretty crazy. So we thought, hey, there's got to be a better, you know, another, you know, more approachable solution. Obviously you've got your keep cups and you got Your swapper cups and stuff like that.
What I like about twice is that it's, it's a very approachable, fun way to look at the single use throwaway culture that you know, the coffee culture and you know, the service industry really has and throwing away tableware. So it's really cool because people are so amazed, you know, that you can put a hot coffee in this cup and then eat it and it's delicious. You know, it doesn't taste like potato starch or ground up corn with maize and stuff like that. You know, it's a, a delicious vanilla biscuit that We've built a bunch of machinery and R and D for several years to make this cup that can hold hot liquids and obviously you can put ice creams and desserts and stuff as well. But then obviously you can eat it or you can put it in a waste stream and you can get a circular economy going and put that back into the earth and it won't actually hurt it. There's a whole nother discussion about single use cups that are compostable going into a waste stream in a circular economy, but it's actually not the earth. And you know, that's a whole nother discussion. But yeah, so that's kind of what we do. We've built all our own machinery, we've R and D everything to make them. And we're just about to reach a scale level in New Zealand in probably six weeks. We get a new machine which we've been working on for about three years.
So does it go bleep? Because you got a machine, does it go bleep? You've got to have a machine that goes bleep.
That's the limit. That's the limit of my engineering and manufacturing capability.
Does it go bleak?
Cool, I'll take it.
Yeah, it does, it does, yeah.
So many, so many great questions that I've got for you just based on, but I think just to divert quickly onto that whole compostable cup thing because I actually did a 12 month contract working for a really cool organization who used to be a B corp, but they stopped being a B corp because they went through a bit of a tough time and they couldn't afford the certification fee I believe called Kilmarnock Enterprises. And um, the two roles I had there for them sort of this 12 month contract was one to help them find some more revenue streams and the other one was to help them get B Corp certified. And on the revenue stream we, the coffee cup thing was a really big thing and so we went down a really big rabbit hole of looking at, well, do we become the center for Canterbury and potentially the south island, where we would actually take the compostable, the in inverted commas, the compostable coffee cups and actually compost them. And we did a whole lot of research. We ended up connecting with a whole lot of recycling companies. And yeah, for those of you listening, you know, like, I guess not all compostable coffee cups are created equal because many of them that claim to be compostable still have a pla, which is basically a plastic lining, which means in most truly and particularly in Canterbury, where I'm based in Christchurch, New Zealand, the composting facility here is 100% organic. So you cannot have any non organic material go through the composite. All these companies were making claims about how, yeah, our coffee cups, compostable. Meanwhile the compost facilities going, no, we're not taking those, thank you so much. So, yeah, I think it's, it's, for me, it's a great example of sort of greenwashing of. Yeah, it's compostable. Oh yeah. But just not compostable where you live. It is in Bratislava on a Thursday. If you talk to Uncle Igor, he will sort you out.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So how did you come up with this idea? Oh, man, it's just one of these like shower moments where you take the dog and you're like, hang on a minute.
It was a beach moment. A beach, A beach moment with, I think it was my wife actually, that kind of splurted out. I guess we're just kind of throwing ideas around, having a swim as you do. And she said, what if you could eat your coffee cup? And I was like, oh, that's, that's pretty crazy. And everyone kind of forgot about it. And then I was like doing some experimenting one day in the kitchen with some muffin tins and stuff and I kind of thought, oh yeah, I think we're, think this could be, could be fun.
We might be onto something. It's not such a crazy idea.
Yeah. So then it kind of blossomed from there and my dad got involved and he's got a very engineering mindset, so he's been working on the machinery and stuff like that, you know, working with our engineers and designing everything and prototyping things and things don't work and you start again and all that kind of fun R and D stuff. Yeah. So it's a fun little partnership and my, my mum's involved as well and now my wife's done branding, so it's a real family.
Nice. It's your wife's fault. She came up with the idea, so she should. If she wasn't broke then at some point I'd be quite disappointed.
Exactly.
So, I mean, so do you have an engineering background? Like what, what did he bring into this?
I studied audio engineering but I definitely nothing to do with engineering. Edible coffee cups.
Yeah, I'm spent most of my life in kind of a sales and marketing roles, mostly in the audio. Commercial audio industry. So yeah, I do more of the sales and marketing stuff. Looking at expansion, looking at new markets, what we're going to do, where we're going to go and that kind of thing. So that's a lot of our focus this year is on true commercialization.
Yeah.
Which will probably happen in North America.
Yeah, you need a, you need a big market to make them cheap enough to make it, you know, a sustainable business that is going to create true change. New Zealand's a fun place to test things out and to make things happen. And we've got a really great kind of number 8y mentality. You know, get things done, we can get things working. But Obviously there's only 5 million people here.
Most of them have been drinking coffee from home for the last two years.
Exactly. Most of them are on the Supreme Instant Vibe. So.
Yeah. Or the humming Hummingbird or whatever.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In certain fact we're not sponsored, we're not currently sponsored by any coffee brands. However, if anyone's listening, we're Happy coffee brand here.
That's typical. So I mean, what do you, what did you say you got into or you were in audio engineering? In sales. So. So like when you were growing up, I mean to get, get involved in a pretty radical startup idea as a family business, like was that on the cards? You know, young Jamie's off to school every day and he's like, oh, when I grow up I want to come up with some really crazy idea and rifle my family. And like was that. Yeah. What, what was on the cards for young Jamie?
Yeah, I guess I was always, I've always wanted to. I've always had a kind of an entrepreneurial mindset, I guess. I've started a few businesses and built a few recording studios after school and stuff. And I've always wanted to do my own thing and I guess we're big foodies in our family so we're always thinking about the next meal. So I guess it just so happened that the edible coffee cup thing that was like, it ticked a few of the boxes and so we.
It was kind of a natural progression for us to go, okay, cool, here's a business that we could do. You know, it's our own thing. We can make it our own thing. And also we can, we can drag in a few other kind of of our passions and stuff. Like, like food. And it was.
Yeah. I guess that's why we were all kind of still in it. And it's one of our main things is that one of our taglines is more taste, less waste. So it's important to us that it actually does taste good because there are other edible cutlery options out there. But in our opinion, they all taste pretty, pretty crap. So if something's edible, it has, people actually have, have to want to eat it. Yeah. Something edible if it's crap.
So you could, you could theoretically eat some of the, I mean, I know of one company that does seemingly have a pure, just cardboard cup that is recycled. Theoretically, you could give that a go. You could eat that. Probably could. Yeah. Yeah.
There was a company, it was a takeaway like a, like a fast food a couple of years ago that did. And edible like wrappers around their burgers. It was like, yeah, okay, you could eat that.
You could, yeah.
Burger. You're probably not going to want to eat the wrapper, but I see where you're going. You're trying to go check, check with.
Your GP before you eat the wrapper.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly, yeah.
Might clog you up a bit. Yeah. So it's important, it's important that it tastes good. You know, we're always working on new recipes. You know, we're about to relaunch our cups and a plant based recipe, we're going to do a chocolate one and we've got gluten free and we've got all that kind of thing in the works because the taste thing and the range thing is important to us.
And that was a question we just had from Bex from the group is. Yeah. Regards to accessibility, gluten free, dairy free, other allergen options. She wants to know what the ingredients are in the cup. I suppose you can't give us the complete 51 herbs and spices.
So the current ingredients are egg, flour, sugar and natural vanilla. So it's dairy free, it's not egg free. Then the new cups, we're going to a plant based. So it'll be, it'll be, it'll be plant based and it'll be.
Dairy free.
Yep.
Then we do have a gluten free one that is in the works. That uses coconut flour and coconut oil. It doesn't last as long. So our current cup, you can put boiling water in it and come back 12 hours later and it won't have broken or burst or anything. So it lasts a really, really long time.
The plant based ones don't last as long, but they still last about eight hours, which is amazing.
Most cups appear gone pretty cold. Eight hours. Yeah. Exactly.
How long does it take to drink a coffee? Right? 15 minutes, 20 minutes? Yeah. The gluten free ones don't last as long. So we're still playing with a recipe and deciding. I was talking to some customers this morning in our coffee bar actually, because he's a celiac. And I said, look, we've got a gluten free one.
It's.
This is what it is. You know, if we said, hey, it's only last half an hour. Well, this only lasts an hour. So be. You know, you've got to be more careful with it. If we put a disclaimer, what, however we worded that, would that be okay for you? That's fine. So maybe that's. I was thinking that would be more towards the end of this year, but maybe we might try to kind of bring that in.
It'll be interesting to get. If anyone's listening. Yeah, it'll be interesting to get your thoughts. Feel free to comment up.
There we go. Yeah. If anyone wants. Because. Yeah, because I mean, just quickly on that. You've just recently set up a little coffee bar. Whereabouts is it in Auckland?
So we're in Eden Terrace, 16St. Benedict Street, Eden Terrace. You'll see our. It's purple everywhere.
Purple. You can't miss it. Yeah. So we moved here to scale up our operations and we had some extra room. Well, not really, but we had some.
Room in our office space.
And I said to my dad, who's my business partner, I said, hey look, let's open up a little coffee bar because you know, it gets the locals through, it gets people through. It's somewhere for people to come. Anyone who wants to come and hang out is welcome. Come. If you listen to this, come get a free coffee and apple cup.
And it gives us a chance to talk to customers because we supply cafes and restaurants who get to talk to customers. We don't have as much of that stakeholder engagement. So it's really cool to be able to get those people through, talk to them about their experiences. Obviously everyone can't believe it that you can have a coffee in a cup and eat it. So, yeah, it's Been really cool to do that. Yeah, nice, nice.
Super cool.
So, yeah, what have been some of your sort of big challenges today? I mean, clearly.
When you're operating a pretty groundbreaking business, it's not if, you know, it's kind of like the whole purpose driven B corp world. If it was easy, they'd all be doing it. Exactly. If making edible cups was easy, someone would have done this before. So haven't done it before. So why haven't they done it before? What have been the real nightmares or real challenges of trying to.
Yeah, yeah, that is a good question. I mean, there are a few companies that make like a wafer cup.
Yep.
Which obviously, if you're going to put hot coffee in, that is going to disintegrate pretty fast. Yeah, we, right from the outset we identified that to be sustainable from a business point of view, so we could stay around. We needed to own our own intellectual property, so we needed to build our own machines. We didn't want to go and buy a machine, try and change it. We wanted to do it ourselves and do our own R and D process. So that's essentially what we did, which was. It is what it is and that's why we're still here five years later. And we haven't hit a global scale because to take it slowly but do it yourself was the kind of road we went down. So that's probably been our main challenge in terms of R and D in a process, to take it from making one cup to making lots of cups at a time.
So, yeah, there's been lots of challenges around that. Multiple different engineers, multiple different headaches and.
Yeah, lots of, lots of, lots of cash.
Your name is Cashbore. You clearly have lots of it.
Yeah, maybe a lot less now.
I used to be Jamie Cashbought, then I started a business.
Yeah.
So that's been, that's been interesting, but that we've now come to a stage where we've, we've completed our patent. It's been three years. That's a PCT stage. So now we've got something that we've, we've got a machine that has some, some scalability to it and we can go, we can now go to market, we can make them in for the Australasian market here in New Zealand and now in the spot we've got and we can go out to North America and scale what I would probably say true scale.
And take it from there. So that's been, definitely been our biggest challenge and that's ongoing. Right. You know, there's always things to change, there's always things to make better. Always decisions that you need to make that affect the next steps that you're going to take in the business. One of the big ones for us was, if anyone's seen our product, it doesn't have a perfect top. Like if you see a cup.
It has a. You know, the top's perfect like a paper cup, the plastic liner and it is perfect. Made by machine. Our tops aren't perfect because there's. There's a handmade nature to it. Right. We went down the road of trying to make them perfect, which was a mistake. And then we decided, halfway through that mistake we decided, hey, actually we quite like the fact that it's.
Yeah.
Individual that makes it.
Yeah. It gives you that sort of handcrafted. There's a bit of.
Yeah, yeah. So now we've gone down that road of, of making sure that they are each all unique, which I think is a really cool feature. So.
Yeah. Yeah. And so in terms of scaling, the idea is you're going to keep sort of manufacturing production in New Zealand or are you going to look to get your dad to make more machines and put them in different parts around the world?
So, yeah, we're currently designing a machine for North America.
To be. Obviously to be as sustainable as possible. We need to be making in each market.
Yeah.
So the plan is to put a machine in, up in North America to service that market and then from there we'll go on and put machines in strategic markets to service kind of more local areas.
Mostly because of freight costs, you know, especially now. And we ship a lot of air.
Yeah, yeah.
Just because of how the product is. So shipping products up to the States from here would not be ideal.
I think that's, it's a very B Corp approach to it is that. And I think we're seeing there's a couple. Well, there's Guido in the group from Innate Furniture. You know, they're looking at. They want to take their idea global and they're looking at that same idea like they source local, sustainably produced wood to. To create furniture. Well, it's not very sustainable if you're taking New Zealand wood, shipping it to Aussie and then making it. Or sorry, making it here and then shipping over there. So it's really interesting how I guess more, more holistically around the B Corp community, this idea. Yeah. Bex has just put a comment in. In the group here. Local footprint. It's. It's definitely becoming. It's a trend and I think this is for me, you know, this is where the kind of, you know, the B Corp assessment, it makes sense and it makes sense because it makes economic sense, it makes environmental sense. You're going to hopefully create local opportunities, local jobs, have that sense of community. Yeah. Going, you know, because clearly you've got a very family centered business. It'd be really cool because the risk is you go big, you turn into like an essay and all of a sudden you're big evil bastards. Inc. Even though you might still be a B Corp somewhere along the line. So.
Yeah, exactly, yeah.
It'S good that you brought up that family point because you know, when you're growing a business you either got to choose to go down if you want to be a large business and to create true.
You know, to have some kind of true sense of.
What's the word I'm looking for, you know, to make a big difference, eat a big ish. We need a big machine. You need a big company. You know, for example Starbucks, they do, they throw away 4 billion cups in the US alone a year. So you know, to have that kind of difference, it's not really sustainable to do it from New Zealand, you know, so. Yeah, but you need to grow in a way that is sustainable for your business and how you've set that business up. And I think that's what bring what B Corp brings to the table from an early stage. Business like ours is you set those things in motion first. So you set those, those precedents and you set your values and ethics and this is who we are, this is who we are as a business. We need to grow and scale significantly but this is how we're going to do that. And it's cool that we've got some other bigger, bigger companies that are coming through the B Corp process now because they're coming through and they're kind of allowing us to look at those bigger companies. Okay, cool.
We can still have true scale and be a good company that isn't ruining.
Everything and being, and this is the whole, you know, this is the challenge of the modern business is balancing purpose and profit. It's, you know, clearly that the more you scale the more positive impact you're making. But as you're scaling you, you'll be coming across more gnarly questions where sometimes you will have to make a more profit based decision in the short term to ensure the longer term survival of the bigger. And this is, this is the thing, it's, it's hard. There's not really a great.
I guess playbook of how to do this because for the last probably 100 years in general we haven't been thinking in this way, in a sort of dualistic manner. It's all just been about what, it's easy, we just maximize profit, easy decision. Whereas now it's like, well, hang on a minute, got to think about profit, got to think about short term survival because you're a startup scale up business but you've got one lens on, well here we want to be here for maybe 200 years, 300 years as an entity because people are still going to be, I mean I guess even in, when we're on Mars, people are still gonna be drinking coffee on the, was it maybe 10 light year trip to get there.
What's the climate footprint on a bloody sending coffee beans up to Mars.
Who knows? I'm sure, I'm sure Elon is, he'll be working on the coffee supply.
But yeah, it is an important thing to.
It'S an important thing to measure. And I think the great thing about having B Corp early on, kind of like I was saying before, is it attracts and it sets your precedent for the partners that you want to.
That.
You want to attract in overseas markets. You know, if you say loud and proud, hey look, we're a B corp, this is what we're about. You know, the big corporates are going to be a lot less likely to be like, oh cool, let's jump in with these guys because they know that you are trying to balance purpose and profit. So yeah, that's important. Or it's already showing. We've only been certified for what, two months and it's already showing. You know, the companies that we're talking to, the people that we're talking to, you can already tell, you know, people are super keen and some people are less keen. And so it's, yeah, it's interesting conversations. Yeah.
Nice, nice. So, yes, I guess segueing into B Corp. So how did you hear about B Corp? Has it, has it always been on your radar like before you started the business, had it been like, hey, when I grew up I want my business to be a B corp or yeah. Where did you bump into it?
Pretty much. Yeah. I've always, I've seen it around and I've, I'd seen a lot of companies kind of coming through it.
And I knew that, you know, I knew when we were talking about this business to have true impact that it would have to be a global business. So looking at those global players and looking at how we.
Yeah, like I was saying before, how, how we show ourselves.
What's the best. What's. What are the best ways that we can show people without sitting down with them what we're about, you know, and kind of where we. Where our, where our thoughts lie and what we think about the. About business and things like that. So I guess it was a natural thing for us to do.
And looking at the kinds of businesses that go through or went through the process before us, especially in New Zealand, Australia, you could see that those are all the kind of businesses that you would want to kind of align yourself with. So. Yeah, it was always something that I wanted to do and it was. Lockdown. Came at a great time, I guess. Yeah.
Got some time on my hands. I know.
Yeah, I couldn't make up, couldn't get to the office to make up. So I just thought, hey, look, let's dive in now. Yeah, I did have that thing of, hey, West Mall. We're, we're a little New Zealand company.
Yeah.
But I thought, hey, let's look at the bigger picture and let's get this done now.
And really ingrain it into how we start growing this year, you know, domestically and internationally.
Yeah.
And I'm super glad I did because, uh. Yeah, like I said before, it's been fundamental in some of the conversations.
Yeah, Yeah, I, I think you. Yeah, I, I'd say your timing was absolutely spot on for what, what you're doing. Yeah, I, I think. Yeah, I totally agree. Um, another question from Becks. Um, biggest hurdles going through the B Corp impact assessment.
Um, for me, one of the biggest hurdles was the language and the how some of the questions were phrased.
Yeah. And that's probably when I reached out to Tim. I went through probably as much of the assessment as I could myself, and that was really valuable for me because I didn't want to. I wanted to do the assessment justice. So I did spend quite a bit of time, you know, like, thinking about how our business had been in the last 12 months and then how our business was going, you know, moving forward. So it was great to do that by myself and kind of spend a couple of months in the assessment thinking about it, you know, like, I do 15, 20 minutes a day and look through the questions and really kind of answer what I could and then come back to some of the other ones and I'd use the bookmarks and stuff and come back to those. And then once I got that, then I reached out to and I was like, hey, look who recommended you. I remember now from hello Cup Maybe I don't know, someone, someone recommended. And I said hey look, oh, let's reach out to him and just get some help. Just understanding how they, what they're looking for in certain questions. Because I, I was finding that it was, I don't know, they weren't wordy. Some of the questions aren't wordy but I just wasn't sure how. Yeah. What they were looking for. So Tim was great like that. He knew exactly what to say and. Or not say.
In terms of what they were trying to ask you, what you were doing. So yeah, that was, that was probably.
They certainly haven't won a plain English language award for the impact assessment.
But hey.
Yeah.
So other than the sort of. The assessment itself I'm trying to remember, I mean you, I mean almost all the companies that we're currently helping with their B corp assessment at the minute, you're B Corps already in that you're doing. Fundamentally your DNA is a B corp. So.
I don't think that there was anything really that you, there was nothing that you were like, oh my gosh, I like fundamentally alter how we're operating the business here because you were, you were building the business as a big corp because you are of that DNA.
Yeah, yeah.
Was there anything that you recall or is there anything that I think. Because the one I remember because we're having a bit of a conversation because we, I guess we felt that you were eligible for the impact business model. Those in the community. You'll know exactly what I mean by impact business model. Those of you listening on the podcast might not know. So there's two levels to the B corp assessment that the general assessment is a measure of your operational goodness. So whilst you are making edible coffee cups, how much good are you creating for your employees, for your local community? Just I guess almost like vicariously as the of.
Part.
Part of your day to day operations. An impact business model is where you can prove that you have gone out of your way to do more positive social and or environmental performance than you are legally required to do. And I guess we, we were pushing to get an impact business model for you under the fact that your product is edible, therefore it is resource conservation. Because the alternative, the legal level for, for a disposable cup is that it's made of potentially pla. Plastic.
Yeah.
And yours is better than that. But because you didn't have organic materials in they kind of. They shot that one down.
Was a production toxic reduction. Yeah, yeah.
Whereas yeah, it's interesting, I think maybe that's Just testament to the fact that you're, you're so ahead of the curve that because I still felt that there's an element there that what is, is a better alternative to what's out there and you don't have to be doing that 100%.
It is. Yeah. I think probably what they needed was. Well, they wanted us to get that question. They wanted us to use all organic ingredients and that would have like more than doubled the price of our ingredients, which isn't sustainable.
And so probably we could have got away with it if we have done a lot of testing.
Yep.
Like significant levels of testing which we do want to do and we will do. But I don't feel like until we've got a product that's the same, you know, like until we've got a product that is the same all round in all of our manufacturing areas, what we'd essentially be doing is testing a product which wasn't 100% the product that we're going to move, you know, commercialize with. Like the perfect example is a, the cup that we're using now which has egg in it is changing to a plant based recipe. So we're dropping the egg and it does, we've had a lot of scientific testing done on that egg based cup and that does change the molecular structure. Scientifically I won't get too deep into it, but it changes a lot as does when you remove the flour. And we've tried about 30 different flowers, all different types of gluten containing and slow raising and all that kind of thing, the different flowers, but it changes molecularly the cup. So that will change how that decomposes and things like that. So once we've got a cup that's cool. Hey, this is our recipe and we're making it in New Zealand, Australia and the US and the UK and this is what, this is our product. Then we can go down that road of okay, cool, here's what it is, here's how it composts, here's how many days and then we can actually make a, make a list of this is why ours is X times better or than the alternative. And maybe we can revisit that toxic.
Yep, I think, yeah, next time around I think you'll nail it. And I think that's. Yeah, I think it's just like I say, you're clearly at a frontier of technology with your product full stop. And I think also just that, you know, if you were already in market, if you already had established presence in the US, in Europe, it would have been easy for you to pause and go, yeah, look, we're just going to put 50k and get some.
Yeah, yeah.
And do this. Whereas. So I think that's a. Yeah, I think that's a reasonable. Do you remember what your score was in the end?
Our final score? Yeah, I think it was like 85.4.
I think that, that rings a bell. Yeah. So, you know, solid first time score. Yeah. And I think you, you're really well positioned for that in three years. Time to.
Yeah, I'd love to get up above 100 when we.
I think you'll, I think you'll. Yeah, easily do that. So you sort of talked about some of the conversations you've been having, you know, and how B Corp has kind of guided those conversations. But yeah, any, anything more you can kind of allude to on that front? Like what have you seen, you know, have there been any sort of marked changes in existing conversations you've been having? And it's like, hey, we're now a B Corp. And I guess also two parts to that question. Had you indicated to people that B Corp was kind of on your radar or had you kept that powder a bit dry and it's like, hey, we're a B Corp now. Yeah. How did you navigate that?
Most people, we kept it pretty quiet.
Especially because the people that we're talking to internationally.
You know, nothing set in stone. So I didn't want to go talking about things that A weren't complete and baby, give people ideas that we might, may or may not partner with, you know, commercially. So yeah, I guess there's kind of two, two parts to it. There's the, the people that are already on the same kind of journey with us. They're on that. They have a B Corp mindset. They have a purpose versus profit versus, you know, they've already have that mindset. That's how they run their business. Yep. So as, as a now certified B Corp, we fit better with them. And there's a certain, there's a level of like, oh, like I don't have to vet you as much now because I know that you have similar ideals to me. There is still obviously vetting that you have to do because everyone's human.
So there's that part and then there's slightly controversial part which I'll, I can, I can talk to and probably some people will relate to it and some people won't. But when you're trying to do large commercial deals with the big players, a lot of the time those big players haven't been don't have a purpose versus profit mentality either looking to do it or get into that space because they genuinely want to or they're looking to do it because they want to make more money.
Yep.
And it's really hard to gauge people's intentions. Yeah, I've found, I mean I'm reasonably, reasonably young, but I've really, in the last kind of probably 10 to 15 years, I've really been trying to not judge people's intentions. Like I know my intentions and I know my business partner's intentions and I know what our company is wanting to do. So to a certain extent I kind of see we're talking to a company at the moment that is large and they're owned by a company that's even bigger and that is definitely not B Corp.
They're looking to make this big sustainability play in the US with their single use cups. And one group of people would probably say hey look, these guys are monsters. And one group of people would be like, hey, these guys are looking to do, to change up their single use cups in the US how many use cups could we save from landfill if we did a deal with these guys? So there's kind of both, you know, it's kind of, it's a give and take of hey look, this is opening up doors. And the intentions behind the door opening from these big corporates are unknown because I can't read their minds. But the good we can do good is good, you know, and change a lot easier from the inside than the outside. So that's kind of how I'm seeing the process at the moment. And I'll either be shot in the foot by my thought process or it will work out. But it's an interesting, the interesting conversations to have with people that you may or may not have been able to have conversations.
Yeah, yeah, I think, I think you've summed up a whole lot of stuff really eloquently there. I used to do some, I did some contract work for. Well, they used to be called conscious consumers but they're now called Cogo.
We had a big conversation pretty much once a week the team meet, you know, weekly team meeting. The conversation would come up, it'd be like. So part of my job was to, was sales and business development support. So I was helping Ben and the team, we were trying to onboard mainly Kiwi retailers. So back, back as it was then it was, it was a consumer facing app where you as a consumer could choose the things that you cared about. So I care about Climate change. I care about staff conditions like living wage, I'm vegan, or animal cruelty friendly, or animal cruelty free friendly. Da, da da, da. So there's about 10 or 12 different things that you as a consumer could say, this is what I care about. And the play was for the retailer. They would get access to a dashboard of who had been in their store and what did they care about. And if they weren't getting any people from the conscious consumer app in their store, then that's kind of an indication that even though you think you're being conscious, people don't think you are. So you need to come and. Yeah, and we, we'd have this regular sort of, yeah, conversation, sort of spiritual, metaphysical, philosophical discussion each week. It's like, well, what if McDonald's said they want to be on the app? What if they said, no, genuinely, we want it. We want to put, you know, cruelty free meat in all our, in all our produce. Half the team were like, nah, they shouldn't even have a mandate to exist. The other half of the team were more of your mind. I said, well, look, if we can change the direction of McDonald's by kind of 2 degrees to be slightly more holistic, well, that's a win and that's a win at scale. And I think it's hard again, this is this new realm of business that we're all trying to sense and navigate. And I'm, I used to be perhaps more, you know. Yeah, they don't, I don't want to play with them because they're big evil bastards. But I think increasingly over the years I've kind of transitioned and now it's about, yeah, it's better to have them in the tent, you know, rather than outside the tent and whether their intents are genuine and real. Right now it's like, you don't know that, we don't know that. But if they're exposed to what you're doing in your practices, it could be that there's 10 people in this monolith corporation that you might inspire, you know, that might create a small seed of change that you might never even know about. And I kind of think that's the vibe I try and take out. It's like, I'm just going to sit here, talk about B cop shit until I die. And, you know, if that you're keen to come on the journey, I'm here. If it gets you to think slightly differently, that's cool. If you're not interested, that's you, I'm cool with that. But you can only do you at the end of the day.
Exactly. Yeah. And I've been, you know, I was talking to someone the other day and I think, I won't put it as eloquently as what they said, but I think the premise of what they said is change basically happens with a lot of the time with the next generation, you know. So, you know, we've got these big corporates now that are being run by whoever it's called them baby boomers, for lack of a better. That's a very judgmental thing for me to say, but let's just put them in the older, older bracket. And now we've got the younger guys coming up that are running B corps, that are interested in climate change, that are interested in, you know, all these things that we should be interested in. And we're coming up and we're running those companies and we're selling our goods to those companies. So it's only a matter of time if we get more and more people involved in a movement like B Corp. You know, it's, it's all moving in one way. So that's kind of my mindset, you know, like you gotta, you gotta kind of get in bed with the big guys if you want to make big, big change. You've just got to protect yourself if you do.
Yep, yeah, yeah.
That you're protected.
Yeah, yeah, totally. Guido has just jumped in the chat. He said, yeah, 100% agree that big change can happen by working with big players who may not have, you know, historically had a good rep. But you know, if, if people are willing to have the conversation and are open to change, then I'll be happy to have the chat. Yeah, totally. I think you're 100% right as well with what you just said. You know, we, I've had some conversations. So I think it was May. Last year ANZ bank issued a 100 million Australian dollar loan, ESG backed loan to Kathmandu. Kathmandu, I can never remember. I think Kathmandu are the biggest B Corp in the Australia, New Zealand region. It's either them or Sinlay, either one. They're the two biggest. So this loan is indexed on Kathmandu, maintaining and increasing their B Corp score. So Big Banking is getting it and talking to the two people that created that lending vehicle for Kathmandu basically said, you know, well, two interesting things, you know, basically B Corp was the global benchmark that they, they saw when it came for us to be able to actually guarantee the ESG credentials of an organization. B Corp was the, was the one certification that we we saw as head and shoulders above. But exactly this, they were saying, you know, global markets, private equity, investment, it is all moving because there is being this generational change that the people now running most of the investment markets are in their kind of early to early to late 40s now maybe instead of, you know, and they're kind of, I guess they're our peer group, they've got kids, they're looking at all this stuff, they're more attuned to this stuff and 100% agree that there's a, there's a big change coming through. And you know, you're either going to be riding this wave of change or you're going to be the laggard who everyone's pointing to going, dudes, seriously, like what are you doing?
It's interesting. I was talking to one of our advisors the other day and I got a list of.
A bunch of essentially like high net worth people that have ties to New Zealand and the U.S. yeah, pretty much, I think it was like 80 or 90% of their funds were all run by their children.
Yeah, that's happening. It's definitely happening.
They're all coming up, you know, they're all our age, they all have similar ideals to us. They have, you know, similar things that they want for their kids, you know, and to see their futures as well. So it's all going, it's all going in the right direction. It is just a matter of time. And it's not, unfortunately it's not something that's going to, you know, change doesn't happen overnight.
No.
You know, and a good. I've been taught one of the things that I, if I can go off track a little bit. But the things that I was opened my eyes a lot was when I was working in commercial audio, I got a call from a, the project manager for this, a coal mine in Australia that produces like a quarter of the power for Victoria. I said, oh, we want this new emergency sound system. And I was designing sound systems at the time. So I said, oh yeah, cool. Fly me over to Melbourne and I'll come out to the mine and I'll go around, I'll design a system. So you said. One of the integrators from Melbourne came out with me. It took two days to walk around this coal mine. And one of the things that the guy let drop when he was talking to me was in the 80s they built this coal mine for however many billions of dollars and they still haven't paid it off. So you can see all the, it's horrific. You can see all the coal coming out of the ground and going into this thing being burned. And I was on the 10th story of this. Like, I don't know. I don't know how it all works. I'm not really interested, to be honest. But it all comes in and I guess they burn it and somehow creates power. But you just saw, you know, hundreds of tons an hour coming in and being burned. But to turn that off.
Turn off a quarter of the power for Victoria, like overnight, because it's not sustainable. So it's about bringing in the new era in a sustainable way. Like, yeah, if you've got the guy who owned it, whatever Japanese company owns it, you know, if his son, if the, If I whatever, gave the reins to his son and his son decided to close it. Yeah, they probably could close it and write off the $10 billion or whatever they paid for it. But, like, realistically, are they going to do that?
Yeah. Yeah. And I kind of feel like we're in this liminal space at the minute between, you know, the old and the new. And this one of the favorite expressions I heard a while back that I constantly use is, you know, don't forget that the person who invented the light bulb did it under candlelight. And I kind of feel like we're in this liminal space now where we've got a few light bulbs that are out there, but the vast majority is still. It's still candlelight. But it's hard. And I think, yeah, I used to be a lot harder and more judgmental on some of these bigger industries that are clearly that their future is not looking great in terms of our long term shared future survival. But like you say, it's like, what, we're going to make all these people redundant. We're going to just close them down. We're going to have blackouts, rolling blackouts in Victoria while going to turn the.
Power off for Melbourne.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's crap.
Yeah.
That's not the way.
It's a big shit sandwich and we all got to take a bite.
Yeah. And we can only do better than what we did yesterday.
Exactly that. Which is kind of why we call it.
Sounds corny as well.
It's true, though. But I mean, it's true. And that's kind of how we ended up calling this the Be Better podcast and it's the be better 100. It's like we're all just trying our best to be better. And it's. There's no pathway to this. It's like, this is uncharted waters in, in many ways. And so this is. It's. Was it when I was at university, used to watch the. I think back in the day it might have even been the Super 10 or the Super 12 rugby, you know, university in Cardiff, you know, we'd be like, oh my gosh, like, this is the best rugby we're ever going to watch, you know. Streaming in on Sky Sports.
It was an Australian commentator. I can't remember the guy's name now. I think he used to play hooker for the Aussie. But the comment was. Has stuck with me. And he was talking about. I think it might have been. I think was talking about one of the South African number sevens. And he's like, he's like street, mate. This guy's, this guy's legit. He's, he's. He's like having a shark in your living room. Dangerous, but at the same time rather exciting.
It's kind of like that feels like the phase we're in. It's like, it's dangerous, but it's exciting that we don't really know where we're going to go and how we're going to get there. But we've just got to give it our, give it our best and do what we can do so that, you know, when we are all living in the rest home on Mars in 50 years time. Jamie, remember when we did. When we did B Corp back in 2022, 2021. Oh my word. God. And you would be Corp, like number 50 out of now. 10 million B Corps.
Go.
Yeah, it's gonna be fun times. Fun times. Just on business advice, Becks is crushing the commentary today. Best advice that you've been given regarding business or entrepreneurship.
Best advice was something I got told actually the other week. I joined a like a CEO cohort that's run by.
An entrepreneur who has been very successful. She's taken companies public, she's done, she's done massive things in the States. Um, and I already kind of had adopted this mindset, but a lot of Kiwis don't. And it's basically like, think bigger.
Yep.
Like if you're trying to get someone on your board, if you want.
Whatever.
Elon Musk on your board.
Yeah.
Don't assume that he's not interested. Elon Musk is probably a good example. But you know, if you want.
No, go, go email him. Go ask him, tweet, tweet. He probably reply, you're doing a space.
Thing and you want Elon Musk on Your board, like, why wouldn't like think that he wants to be on your board, don't think that he does and try and make it happen. So that's probably the best, the best advice because Kiwis are so, a lot of Kiwis are pretty small minded and so if you want to grow a business, especially if you want to grow a business with a lot of, with like a big heart, like a big purpose that wants to do big things, you need, you need big people. So go after it. Don't be afraid. Ask for what you want.
Nice. I totally agree with that. That's been. I look back at my own business and you know, two, three, four years ago I was kind of like, let's just try and find businesses in Christchurch. It's like, you know, and Christchurch is a pretty tough market to sell almost anything into. It's still pretty conservative, you know. I didn't go to school here, although I went to a good school in the uk. You know, kind of play the good school card game if I have to. In Canterbury, your family was on the first ships.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah. But sorry, your ships were built in when. Yeah, I think.
Yeah, my school was founded in 1152 if we want to play that card. Yeah. So you know, you can go down that route normally, chop, top trump them on some, something around that. But yeah, it's, I think for me, you know, Covid was actually a really useful thing for me. It's like, hang on a minute, there's a world out there and there are people that want to be b corpse, not just in Christchurch. Crazy idea. Even in Auckland. Well, crazy idea. Yeah.
So Tim's a shithole B corp consultant, so why shouldn't he help Internationally people become big ups. But you know that, that's the mentality, people.
Yeah, totally. I can't do it yet, but exactly that, exactly that. And, and so, yeah, I agree, it's like, you know, play, play local but think global and back yourself. Yeah. It's hard though when, when it's your business, you know, all your own imposter syndrome and your own, you know, mental barriers and blocks is what's holding you back. Meanwhile, people are looking at you, looking at, potentially looking at your business, going, oh my gosh, why are you just selling coffee cups in Auckland? Like, this is insane, you should be doing this. Yeah, no, I think that's great advice and I think, you know, increasingly the world is so connected. Send them a connection request on LinkedIn. Send them a, send them a direct message tweet On Twitter, you just don't know. You know, if you don't ask, you.
Can message anyone in the world.
Well, there you go. Yeah, I know Tim Ferriss gets sponsored by LinkedIn, so if you want to sponsor another Tim LinkedIn, we're happy to take your sponsorship also. Yeah, no, I agree, It's. I always look back on, you know, when it was Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern here in New Zealand, when she became Prime Minister, whenever it was a few years back and an Australian journalist rang New Zealand Parliament House, all they wanted to do was work out whether her name was spelt with a T or D. So was it Jacinda or Jacinta? And they got through to, you know, the switchboard and so, hi, I'm just looking to get through to your Prime Minister's office, please. And they put a. Put the journalist through and Jacinda answered the phone and they were like, oh, hi, I'm just looking to see how the Prime Minister spells their name. And she's like, oh, it's me and it's Jacinta. It's like, you can get hold of Prime Ministers of countries, for goodness sake. People, just give it a go. Yeah. If you don't. If you don't ask, it's 100% no.
Yeah.
If you can say no, if you ask, your odds are at least 50. 50, because they might. Yeah, 100%. 100%.
I guess. Business. Yeah. The other question that Bex has come up, and this was a question I wanted to ask you myself. I guess there's two parts to it. So the first part is, so you're. You're a recent dad. I definitely had a big existential change in my outlook of life in general. It led me to this whole, what I'm doing now. If I hadn't. If I hadn't had. Had our daughter, who is her, it was a birthday yesterday, so 10 years ago. Obviously I didn't. I didn't do much of the hard work, but, you know, having had our daughter, I'd had a couple of. I think the earthquakes for me down here in Christchurch were a big part of, like an existential shakeup. Like, what am I doing? Life short. But even before our daughter was born, the thought of, like, oh, my word, we're going to bring in a little human to this thing. And looking around the planet 10 years ago, and you kind of go, there's quite a lot of things that, you know, what's. What's the world going to look like in 20 years hence when she's you know, kind of taking over the mantle, getting into the world as an adult. That, that definitely had a big impact on me and my, like, it fundamentally altered my, my, my life's course. And how was that for you, being a, being a young dad or a new dad?
Yeah, it's definitely, it's interesting coming in and becoming a dad when we're started our journey. It's definitely altered the way I think about work and think about. Because it's interesting because I don't think about what we do as work. I don't. Yeah, I could work all day every day and I, you know, it's fine, it's fun, it's great. So. But it's definitely forced me to kind of push back and be like, okay, cool. When I'm at home, I'm at home and you know, sometimes I do a few emails and stuff, but I try not to do too many calls. I try not to do many zoom calls and stuff with people overseas because. Yeah, you can't. I. It was interesting. I heard a, I was just, you know, scrolling through Instagram and I heard a. I think it was Jordan Peterson. He was saying, you've only got kids. Your kids are only young once. They're young for like three or four years and then they're not young again. Yeah. And then you lost them and then it's over, you know, and I already, you know, my kids one and like two weeks and I'm already like, ah, like he's walking, he's crawling. He's already getting his own form of independence.
Yep.
And that, you know, the moment of, you know, it's when they're first born, it's so hard. And when they're sleeping on you, it's in the moment. It's horrible. But I want that back.
That's the thing. Yeah, yeah. No, yes. Yeah, yeah.
You can't get it back. And the same with, you know, your, your spouse, you know, you can't get that. You can't get those years back that you poured into the business. So it's, you know, it's important to, to do. It's important to put your. The most you can into, into your venture, but not at the expense of yourself or your family.
Yeah, it's hard. I mean, it's hard to get again. This is this balance. Like, and I think we're almost, perhaps we're stupid, we're not smart, you know, because you, I think you and I are pretty similar. Like you're trying to a startup business. It' two kids or having two families. A startup business is like having a big child. It needs one of those little Tamagotchi things. It bleeps, it needs fading. Okay. It's lonely. Okay, I need to go. So you're juggling a very needy business, which is your, you know, a big chunk of your heart and soul and blood, sweat and tears is in that. But you've also got a genuine family. And, and I'm, I totally hear it, like, I love what I do. I would work 24 hours a day because it's not work. And there's like, we're only at 50 odd B Corps in New Zealand, we're only at 4000 ish globally. There's still some work to be done. It's not like we're there yet.
So I think that purpose, like coming down to that, I think the purpose when you're doing something that you know is something good and you deeply believe that what you're doing is good, is going to be good for your kids and your family and future generations, it's a lot easier to be like, okay, cool, I'm working on something here that is actually making a difference.
Yeah.
And I think that, you know, that definitely helps when you do have to do a late night call or you do have to go away or you do have to. Yeah, 100%.
And that's where, you know, within the organizational purpose work that we do. You know, I talk about motivation is, is finite. Like you can only. You can g yourself. Okay, I'm going to go and do that thing. Like you can do that so many times before you've burned all those candles. But purpose is infinite. It pulls you forward because you are so deeply connected to the positive outcome, the legacy that you're, that deepest level that you're wanting to leave. Like for you to be in 10 years, in 5 years time you would, you'd be able to turn around. One of your metrics to look at is how many shitty disposable or disposable coffee cups did we stop getting into the world? Well, that's something to be really proud of and to be able to look your son in the eye and go, I kind of did this for you. I'm not putting the pressure on, on your kid. But it's like I kind of, I've done this for you. I've done this for you and all your mates so that you don't, you're not sitting covered in a tsunami of shit cups.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It makes a massive difference.
But the Challenge is that switching off and because, you know, there's always another cup to be sold, there's always a new idea. I think you and I are quite similar. Maybe it's that sort of sales and marketing background. You're never short for an idea. Getting this old thing to switch off and actually just do nothing for a little bit is a challenge sometimes times.
Yeah, yeah.
So second question again. Beck's had this question, but I definitely had this question. So when I left university, I did a. About 6 months working for a very dodgy company, as it turned out. That's a whole different other podcast. And then a mate of mine from school and my dad kind of came together and we. This was sort of like 1998. 1990, well, 1999, sort of dot com boom was. Was going off. It was like, if you create a business and you put dot com on the end, give it a year, we are genuinely going to be billionaires. Someone's going to buy us out. It's going to be amazing. And so we created this. It was an online travel directory. So it's called Wherewill We Go dot com. And the idea was you could kind of go on and you could search for travel providers. So let's say you wanted to go mountain biking in Peru. Well, we would have found all the companies that could take that, including some local people as well as, you know, the global big companies, you know, that could run that. That thing. And yeah, so it was me, my dad and mate from school, and my dad and I just bumped heads every day to the point that I said, I'm going, because if I don't go, there is going to be a murder suicide here. So how are you, how are you and your dad getting on and your wife? Because, you know, that's. That's a big ask to be, you know, because obviously, you know, the thing we. We always found that my dad was like, well, I'm older, I know best, I've been in business longer. And I'll never forget, one night we took a mate of his who was a senior partner in Grant Thornton, one of the big five sort of consulting firms, and we sat down for a beer and I said, right, so, Ed, hypothetically, this is the situation. Hypothetically, these are two solutions to the situation. Which one would you back? And he backed my idea. And I was kind of like, yeah, mic drop. See, Dad, I do know shit. Yeah. So was it. How's it going for you guys? Have you had therapy yet?
Not yet. Not yet. Yeah, it's. It's definitely been a journey. The first probably three years were really tough. Yeah, really tough. Three and a half years. We've really kind of. We got a new.
The last couple years we got, we got. We got. Nearly got burnt by a guy. And after that we kind of regrouped. We nearly stopped and we kind of regrouped and we, we were like, what are we going to do?
This is too hard. We're over it. This is probably two years ago. And.
Then my mum actually said, oh, how about we call so and so. He's one of the top dogs at PwC. And I was like, pwc, big company, you know. And anyway, we called him and he. Because I've always been a global. I've always been like, we've got to do this, we got to do it now. We've got to raise money, we got to get investors on board and we've got to do it quick. We got to get to the States and commercialize. And Dad's oh, no, no, we're do this, we're going to do that. I'm like, okay, yeah.
Owen's steady engineering mindset.
Owen steady number eight wire. I'm like, yeah, cool, that works. And so this guy came over and basically. Yeah, just what you said. He was like, you got to get to the States as soon as possible.
Yep.
I was like, yeah, cool. And that's kind of. We've been talking to this potential partner for nearly a year and we're getting pretty close to hopefully being able to do something and that's really kind of brought us together. It's like the common goal. The common goal. This is where we're going. We're excited about it. Here's all these big companies that we're talking to. They're excited about it. You know, I just got a magazine in the post from some chicken career that.
Oh, yes, I saw that on Social. Yeah.
You know, they're excited. You know, like all these people were emailing us. I was on a zoom call early this morning with this massive company in the UK and they're excited. So, yeah, that's. That common goal of true global scale has kind of got.
Dad excited about the kind of vision that I kind of saw for the company. And now we're kind of aligned in this kind of vision and it's a lot easier. I mean, obviously there's still things that we argue about. Maybe we'll write a book when we. When twice as we'll write a book about how to nice grow a business together. But yeah, it's definitely got its challenges and I can see why people wouldn't do it.
But yeah, you know, at the same time it's that family thing, you know, like family's. Family's everything. And if you can do it with your family, why wouldn't, you know, make it work? Why wouldn't you?
Yeah, I think, I think it kind of, it's exponentially at both ends. It makes the bad exponentially bad, but it makes the good exponentially, exponentially good. Because yeah, we, we just always found, you know, the bad stuff, it would, it would almost bring up childhood trauma about. Well, yeah, but you were a shit dad and you've always done this. Well, where did that come from? And meanwhile your dad's like, you've always been a shit kid. You told. Wait at the back of the.
Hey, a weed cup. There you go. Smokable cup. There you go. You heard it here. Literally an edible. Edible.
We were going to call it Twice Edibles but then we were like, oh.
It might just pigeonhole you a certain market. But yeah, I think when it's great and you have that sense of achievement and it's like, yeah, like it's, it is cool to be able to share big wins like that as a family. So, yeah, I don't think, yeah, I don't think there's a clear path. I think this is, you know, you're a family run business startup in a progressive B corp, purpose driven. It's like you need to, you need to write the book because there's not many doing what you're doing. So. Yeah, mate, well, look, that's, we're at 60 minutes. I feel like we just keep going for, you know, hours.
Anything more than any words of wisdom, Pearls final thoughts from you before we sort of wrap up. I think we've covered a lot. I think it's, it's an inspirational story. Yeah.
Hopefully next time we talk, I might have some. Have some wins. Yeah, yeah, just keep going. You know, like you never. One thing I.
Realized when we were doing that thing with Air New Zealand was people, the power of social. You know, everyone says, you know, the power of, you know, social media and marketing and stuff. You know, everyone internationally just assumed we were this massive company making millions of cups a day, supplying all the way that Air New Zealand wrote that shout out. Well, half shout out to New Zealand. The way they wrote that press release essentially made it made it out like we were supplying them.
Yep.
We'd swapped all the cups out with edible ones which of course wasn't the case Everyone just thought we were absolutely huge, which was great for us because, you know, everyone was emailing us and, you know, Microsoft was emailing us, we want our cups for the cafe and VW was emailing us and we want you 500,000 cups for this event we're doing in bloody Hamburg or something. And it was just crazy. So, yeah, just. Yeah, it's that same thing. Like I said before, don't be afraid to just go after exactly what you. But also the opposite is true if you don't want a massive global business. There's nothing wrong with a SME. It does a couple mil a year and allows you to be mortgage free by the time you. Whatever. And you can live a great life with your kids. Yeah, it's great. Just.
Do you.
Yeah, do you. Yeah, awesome. Local change is just, just as important as global change, you know, so, yeah, it's great. It's fun. Everyone's on the same path and we're doing good stuff.
So I reckon. All right, mate, well, we will leave you to it. Go and hang out with the family or go and put some cups in a box or make a coffee, whatever. Whatever you got on. Awesome. No, mate, really appreciate you sparing the time. I think there's a whole lot of even. I was writing some notes down there. Oh, I need to pull that apart and make a little clip out of that because that's gonna be a great little sound bite. So, yeah, just keep up your amazing work, mate, and yeah, keep, keep, keep us up to date in the group as you start doing even bigger and better things across the world. Yeah, I'm sure we've all got connections. I'm sure if you're listening in and you've got friends while you're living in. I think we have, we do have a few people listening in from the States. So, yeah, keep a lookout. Maybe let Jamie know if your local cafe, you know, needs to stock some edible cups.
Yeah, anyone wants a coffee, come down in Terrace and.
Nice. Yeah, well, I'm going to try and head up to Auckland in the near future, so we'll. We'll come say hi.
Use the code word B Corp and I'll give you a second.
Awesome.
Awesome.
All right, mate, we'll catch you soon.
Cheers, man.
See you out there.
And that's a wrap. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you found it interesting, informative and inspirational. I'd love to know where you are on your BCOP journey and if you have any specific questions or people that you'd like me to interview to help you on that journey, please do let me know.
Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube for other content that you might like also. And finally, if you think that we might be able to do some epic work together, you can check out how that can happen through my website at www.growgood.co. until next time, be.
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