#39 Interview With John Holt and Mitchell Winton-Smith on the TBC Podcast - Talking all things purpose and B Corp

Foreign.

A podcast about the startup journey from Inception to acquisition or failure.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, John and I, we kind of keep going back and forth and. And I don't know, he. He had one name keep. Keep getting sent to him and then I had the other one, which is classic. It's just. We've just been. It's been so 50, 50 with. With both of them. But I think we're just gonna settle on it on Mike just now and just. Just announce it live.

Yeah.

And then talk about it.

So.

No, we're good. We've had some. Some good feedback on both of them and.

Yeah, I don't know, maybe.

Maybe you'll throw me a curveball when we're sitting here.

We'll have to go back to the other one again. Or maybe we'll say, look, we're not quite ready to name the venture yet, but we're going to keep the podcast called TVC at this stage.

Yeah.

It's got a cool name, eh?

Yeah, I quite like it.

Got a bit of intrigue behind it.

Exactly. And people already. I mean, there's not that many people that have listened, but people have probably already associated us with that brand a little bit TVC thing. So we've got the website up and everything. So we'll. I think we'll just. We'll just keep. Keep it going. So it's just. Just our landing page to be confirmed nz that we were sending people to give us feedback.

Yeah.

But we'll.

We'll figure it out on Mike. That's pretty funny, though. We. After editing the last one.

Just picking up on all of your little quirks and habits and not being close enough to the mic or, you know, peas really go popping on the mic. Peas and deep breaths before we start talking.

You're a bit tired. Hey, You're a bit tired.

No, no. Be quite early last night.

All good.

But yeah, I mean, do we want to now, just while the mics are hot, figure out exactly what name we're running with, or have we figured that out?

Well, I think we said that.

My feedback was probably discounted and leant towards fourth wall. Yes. And your feedback probably has. Whichever way you look at it, either super has an additional kind of weight to it versus my.

Community.

And they were big on Paddock, right?

They were, yeah. Yeah. Paddock was kind of the one that stood out from a lot of my mates and I think the thing that pushed me over the edge with it. Well, there was two things. Firstly, it sounds less like a consultancy.

Yeah.

You know, and that's kind of what we're going for. We're trying to be a little bit outside the box.

Yep.

Non traditional. So that's one factor that pushed me in that direction. And then the other one, we got a really great email from my friend Alex.

Yeah, great email.

And Alex said that we should go with Paddock. And he suggested. Which we probably won't call this podcast, but maybe a future podcast. Call it Field Recordings.

Yeah.

And then I thought Field Notes would be a great email newsletter name.

Yeah, it all sort of flows together quite nicely. Yeah.

Yeah. So that kind of pulled it all together for me. But if that's what we want to go with, then we can just commit today.

Let's do it.

Perfect. Exciting. You're the first to hear it, Kaushik.

Cool. All right, well, just want to kick us off. We can go off this podcast, this script a little bit.

Yeah, I'm just trying to find it.

So it is in the content hub and it's episode two. Episode two. Tim Jones of Groguard teaches us.

So we're doing the intro to that one.

Yeah, we're doing that one.

Yeah. Cool.

This episode contains strong language. If there are children within earshot, please press the pause button. Use some headphones or throw the kids out of the car.

Done that. Kyora Koto. Welcome back to tbc. I'm John Holt.

I'm Mitchell Winden Smith. We have a name for the business and the podcast.

John Paddock. Be outstanding in your field. Badoom Dom.

There we go.

We're an anti consultancy supporting companies realizing their ESG strategy in the short term. And you're listening to tbc, a podcast documenting the startup journey from inception to acquisition or maybe failure. It's a Dear Diary kind of thing, really. And alongside the story is. Yeah, an altruistic company finding its feet. And we aim to educate our listeners each and every week.

I've got a swear word in the scraps, but I'm not sure if I'm going to do it. Why not? Fuck me up, John. There's a brilliant ring to it. We have stories and we want to be educational as well as documenting the startup journey. My dear friend Laurie Evans, who works for a large consulting company in Sydney, guided us on this. And I actually also want to throw in there. Just a quick thank you to everybody who listened to episode one of the podcast and helped shape the brand and the name and everything. Specifically four friends in particular, which was Alex, Laurie, Nuts and Fisher.

Yeah, what a great nickname.

Yeah, he was very, very helpful. So thanks, guys. And yeah, I think we're just going to proceed with documenting the journey of the startup and educate our listeners on this ESG space.

Yeah, that came through pretty strongly wanting to take something away from each episode, so we thought we'd just get that out of the way now actually, I haven't fact checked it, but I reckon the Ganges is probably the second longest river in the world.

I think what he meant was to educate on ESG specifically, John.

Oh, right, right.

Well, after our next episode we were going to ask for help with branding and design. We want to do a deep dive on ESG and actually just really respond to that feedback from the listenership about what it actually is, what's going on.

And I can't wait to get a creative partnership sorted out beyond this ESG educational stuff. Branding really pumps my tires, fertilizes my field, if you know what I'm saying.

Yeah, I'm pretty pumped about it. It's been interesting sort of couple of weeks, some stagnancy, but also just a lot of progress. Right. And mainly about talking to folks, getting feedback and yeah, we're finally here, but let's not get too echo chambery and self indulgent.

Anyone who knows me knows I love a self source. John.

Yeah, if you could just refrain from that certainly, while I'm here. For the meantime, Mitch, we don't need another podcast of your ramblings.

Fair enough. Right back at you.

Yeah, possibly more fair enough. Actually, I think the older you get, they probably tend to drone on a little bit longer. But it's all about the content, isn't it? And we've got plenty to chat about. Well, we've got a podcast in the bank which we need the world to hear and it's a great one, mainly because it's not either of us as the topic or the kickoff.

Exactly right.

So Tim Jones is a highly intelligent business consultant. He'd probably say that of himself. I think he's fairly confident sort of dude. But he's a real pioneer around getting this B Corp concept and organization seeded into the New Zealand marketplace. And obviously it's growing like a weed across the world. And he's really done the mahi around, getting at a lot of those sort of initial years and hours of work where people didn't really know what he was talking about or how it fitted in or why they should care about it. And it's really starting to come on its own. So it's actually great to have him very kindly spend a couple of hours with Us talking to us about the journey and what B Corp's all about. Yeah.

He was kind enough to spend a couple of hours with us riffing on purposeful business and I absolutely loved it. If you're joining us from Tim's network, Kia ora Heidi Mai. The conversation we have is incredible, really, with Tim. He's such an inspiring guy. And editing the podcast, going over the audio file, which I did previous to this wee preamble that we're recording now, and having another listen to his insights really was quite invigorating. And I've talked to you about this, John. Yeah, I loved it. He is just full of passion and energy and it really, yeah, was encouraging hearing his thoughts on what we're trying to do and also just what businesses are trying to do in New Zealand at the moment and beyond with B Corps. If you could humor us, go back and take a listen of episode one. It's only 24 minutes long. And we'll give better context to Today's episode.

Mere 24 minutes of your time. Yeah. I tell you what spun my wheels with the last episode. ANZ's $100 million ESG investment into sort of what's a loan, really. It's not an investment per se, as I understand. It is basically contingent on them increasing their B Corp score. So I think recently that was one of the first pieces for a lot of us not so youngies in the corporate world that says, hey, this esg, this focus on purpose, and a lot more things than just the balance sheet is actually here to stay.

Absolutely. And what I loved about that is the fact that these banks are keenly aware of the way that financial markets are trending. Ethical investment is on the up.

Yeah. I mean, let's actually just flick flicked him on because I think he really encapsulates and tells the story a lot better than we do.

Yes, he does. So I'm trying to apologise for the fact that the audio recording for Tim's conversation last time around was a bit quiet. And that was something that I noticed in the first episode of our audio files. And I had to.

Get the levels.

Right because you and Tim were sitting a little bit further away from the mic than I was, and I just had to work my magic as best I could, being an absolute rookie.

Yeah. But, you know, even then, the late millennial did better with the technology than the Gen Z.

We've learned our lesson. Next time we'll be better, won't it, Jon? It is on the fly.

It's all about the learnings as we go, mate. And you know, this really is what the podcast is all about. It'll give you more of a flavour of why we're doing this, which essentially is to document the startup journey, which sounds simple enough, but not a lot of people do it and hopefully it's a piece of business history and hopefully we'll actually be much better at this soon as well. And you'll be hearing from us every step of the way.

Yeah. So please do go back and listen to episode one. As John says, it'll give you a bit of flavor of what we're trying to do here and the style that we're doing. But let's get into it. Thanks for tuning in. This is the last you'll be hearing from us today. Please indulge us and share this podcast. We'll have another one or two out before Christmas.

Yeah, yeah, we're not a one hit wonder, mate.

Thankfully not. So here's the raw, pretty much uncut conversation with Tim Jones of Groguod where we talk about the B word.

One there. Yeah, cool.

Easy peasy.

Nice.

Okay, so I can keep this here.

I can keep talking here. Cool. Well, you can.

This is bigger than mine.

Probably something to do with the gym.

Maybe just an age thing. Yeah, yeah, good on you. That's hilarious.

I'm digressing from the topic. Yeah.

Well, introduce yourself before we get too far off track here.

I'm John and I'm working with Mitch on this project, which sounds disheveled because it is. And yeah, we're pretty excited with. Don't do that. Good. Stop fiddling with my microphone.

But actually pretty passionate about it and pretty amped to have you here, Tim, because you've been doing the hard mahi around this space for a long time and we want to sort of dig into that because I guess the audience that we're hoping will hear this at some stage really should hear it. And there's just some realities coming down the track around purpose and sustainability, which are words that everybody uses and everything now. But we want to really rip into what they really actually mean for them around the words that they truly understand, which are like profit and customer retention and customer attraction and talent and all of the things that I think ridiculously haven't really been thought through that much, particularly in the short term. Which brings us back the value prop.

Yeah. But before we do that, maybe Tim, do you want to introduce yourself and have a wee chat and then I can kind of jump on the coattails of that. Hopefully and explain where we're at currently with our business and how that might relate to B corpse.

Cool. So yeah, Kia ora. I'm Tim the Grow Good Guy is my self appointed moniker. I guess I run my little business here in Ototahi, Christchurch called Growgood. And yeah, it was kind of born out of an early midlife crisis sometime back in 2012. 2013.

Sort of an oxymoron, isn't it? Early mid life crisis.

Well you know, get in early, beat the rush. That seems to.

Yeah.

Yeah. Since I've been out my own since 2016. Oh late 2015 it's like, like dog years working for yourself, aren't they? They sort of blend and feels like a lifetime. It is a lifetime. Yeah. Went on my own late 2015. Started a consulting business loosely initially around sales training for business for good because that's my background was in, in sales. I figured if I can take the skills that I've been taught and Learned over a 10 or year career in medical device sales, if I can take those skills and give them to typically smaller medium businesses trying to make the world a better place, maybe that's, that's a place for me. And then over the year that's over the years that's kind of morphed. Stumbled into B Corporation in terms of what that is as a framework. Around about 2013 ish certified my business in 2016 I was B Corp number 8 way back in the day before it was even vaguely cool. So and that was really important for me to be one of the first within the top 10. It's like if you can claim top 10 B Corp you're kind of, you're legit. It's like you were there before it was even trailblazer. Yeah it's like so it's pretty, pretty cool. When I saw number seven come across like oh my God, quick, quick, quick, quick.

But yeah, since 2016 my business has morphed and changed direction and to now where yeah I'm spending a lot of time helping companies navigate people B Corp certification which even three to four months ago wasn't as big as it is and certainly not in 2015 when I started. So yeah, small consultancy, coaching, training, business all about purpose, fuel performance. So helping companies and individuals work out and tap into it. It's like a super fuel. It's like this never ending supply. It's like nuclear fission. If you tap into it, it just will take you and your business to the next level. And helping companies and individuals navigate that journey and using the B Corp as a framework to sort of hang off the operational side of things. But it's also, it's trying to balance the almost like the rational, logical and the spiritual metaphysical of why, why do I want to do good?

Sure.

What does it mean to me and why do I feel good by doing the good, but then also capturing it operationally in terms of, well, how do we now report that and tell stories of that good and connect other people to that? So, yeah, that's kind of what I'm all about.

Yeah. Cool. Cool. And I guess there's a darker element to that that I want to dig into because I like the dark. I like the dark. See what I did. There we are in Dark Matter. Thank you to Dark Matter Studios for letting us use this podcast studio. It's available by the air. It's fantastic. Resource and cross church odatahi yeah, because there's what you said. But you know, I am drawn to doing good because basically I've been told to by somebody else or I'm on a, you know, dare I say a trend bandwagon that says that, you know, this is the latest trend that is something that only exists for a certain period of time and I just need to tick the box. And I think, you know, part of the reason we're here around, you know, our anti consultancy concept is that I think that's wearing a bit thin and there are boards with their executives and their heads of sustainability who just realize that, yeah, there's got to be a long term strategy, there's got to be some validated and certificated components to that. But there's also an audience which is out there buying or thinking about buying stuff right now in some pretty obvious areas in the short term that you kind of should be looking at because they're either doing you a lot of harm or they're an opportunity to use unrealized stuff.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of the people that we've been talking to so far is the pain point or the stress around sustainability and ESG and B Corps and everything is this rapidly changing landscape and not necessarily want to maybe jump the gun too much and get accused of being disingenuous. There's a lot of greenwashing out there, purpose washing and whatever short term.

Plan that they might have. Maybe they don't want to jump into too quick because they do have this long term ESG strategy or they've got all these milestones that they want to hit, but there's nothing particularly confronting, at least for executives and boards and Stuff. I mean, we were talking this morning about how the turnaround for a CEO on average in terms of their tenure is about four and a half years. So trying to capture or mobilize some of these key players in corporate New Zealand and these corporates, these businesses to actually make meaningful change in the short term is what we think employees and.

Consumers, they want. But it's about actually doing that and doing that in the right way. And it's scary.

I think it is scary.

I mean, referencing back to the dark stuff, anything that is hard or difficult or confrontational for you as a.

Leaning more on the purpose side of things rather than B Corp. B Corp is a way to measure and report the good that you're doing in your business. And if you just do the certification, like that's pretty cool. But the risk is that I see this happening less so currently in New Zealand, but it has happened. The sustainability manager does the certification in isolation. They go and get the data that they need to meet the reporting standards that they need and then they kind of go, ta da, we're a B corp. And the whole company goes, were we a C corp before? While we're in A corp, I have no idea what this thing is.

Yeah, C Corp sounds kind of better. Acorp sounds better.

So there is a real risk. Whereas the key is to go on the purpose journey, to bake in operationally into the hearts and minds and the souls of the employees and the company, which then spills over into the customer, you know, the other stakeholders who want to go on the same journey.

Well, we're going to get into the C word, aren't we?

Which one's that?

Culture.

Culture, yeah, culture. Vulture me, mate. Going down to Spain every year, get myself some Stella. Yeah, yeah. But it's, it's, for me, it's, it's deeper, it's almost deeper than culture. And this is the.

This, this is the hard part that people don't want to actually go and do like this. This is when you get into your Jungian psychology stuff of like the shadow work, like, who am I? Why am I? Who I am? What are the bits, what are the things that we do as a company that are actually semi tyrannical or actually, we know, are really bad.

Yeah.

But we avoid talking about them because no, no one wants to go there. It's like the elephant is in the room here, people. But we're all just ignoring it because that's a hard conversation.

Yeah. And this is the point where half of you sort of, dare I say, it. And I'm happy to because I'm one of the male pale style executives. All start, you know, running for the trees to hug.

Yeah. Because. But they don't even want to do that because they're too scared to think about going hugging a tree.

But.

And if anything, this, this is the work that really needs to be done collectively at the leadership level is like, well, why are you CEO of the company? What is driving you to want to be in this position and what is driving your decision making? Is it actually you or is it you just want to be a CEO because of all the. Literally it comes down to typically the childhood trauma. Mommy and daddy didn't give me enough hugs. I'm looking for affection and love. Therefore I'm going to go be a CEO of big companies and people love me.

Only reason I did it.

There you go. I mean it's like. And that's what's driving most. Unless you've done some deep, like really deep personal development work to go and work out why you're even doing what you're doing in the company, you're probably doing it for the wrong reasons.

Yeah.

And that's the part there's some awful statistics. I think it was from University of Virginia, I think it was 2017. They got a group of grad students and they got them into the room and they said, cool. Kind of, I guess like a studio like this. And they said, right, we're going to. There's a little room to the side. The study involves you going into the room. I think it was for 20 minutes by yourself. And if you don't want to be in the room for any longer, you can self administer an electric shock and get out of the room. So they have to be in a dark room with nothing but their own thoughts for 20 minutes. It was about 70 or 80% of people self administered the electric shock.

No way.

They weren't asked to challenge their thoughts, like listen to their thoughts, confront. It was just basically be in a room and meditate for 20 minutes. We'd rather not do that. And that for me is the next frontier of business is like, I kind of don't care if you want to do B Corp for marketing reasons right now because you're going to be in the system. And once you start connecting to the good that you're doing, we are genetically and even culturally disposed to contribute and want to do more good. And so once you start doing it, you then go on the journey.

And this is where the F word starts coming in. Isn't it the fear. Fear, yeah. This is something that NCA at MBA didn't come cover. This is not Stanford grant school. You know, I'm going to have to look into myself and it's starting to sound like a Brene Brown episode rather than a, you know, kind of a business thing.

100%. I mean, shout out to UC here. I co teach one of the MBA programs here with Misha Boss Rover and it's called Creating Impact led Enterprises. And one of the sessions I run is on purpose, like, who are you? Why are you doing an mba? Like what's in it for you? Like are you doing this for the right reasons? And that's quite. It's what I call the existential wet fish to the face. It's like you need that slap across the chops to go, whoa, hang on a minute. Why am I doing all this?

That's very interesting because I've definitely thought about an mba and I only finished studying a couple of years ago, but it's definitely in my future. But you're right, now that you're kind of putting it that way, I think probably the main reason I'd want to do an MBA is to get to that C level place. But I don't even know what for.

Right.

I mean, I mean I'd like to think that I'll remain, you know, idealistic and trying to do things for the greater good and the environment and socially and stuff, but I'm sure, you know, that kind of wanes over time, especially.

Once you get kind of deeper into this thing.

Well, if you're not prompted, I mean from my experience, and I'm a little bit older than you, only slightly permanently staying 49 years old.

Nice.

You just can wake up one day and I've had this conversation with a lot of colleagues and friends and just realize that you haven't. You know, it's like the classic mission statement for the organization. Right. And if you flip that back, which very few people do, to a CEO or an executive who's created a mission statement and say, what is your mission statement, Tim?

Who are you?

They have often a very uncomfortable silence or you know, feels response that clearly says haven't really thought of it in the same terms that they've basically imparted onto an organization 100% and that's for.

Me, I call it the purpose horizon. You can only see so far into the future as to how much good you want to do based on your current level of sort of consciousness, awareness and purpose and desire to do good and 99% of people in the current world are pretty much driven by the whole, I want to have more stuff than my neighbors, that people like me. And I feel like I'm a better human. Stuck on the hedonic treadmill of just more, more, more, so people will kind of. I can't remember the guy who I think might be Dave Ramsey. You know, we spend all our life buying stuff we don't want to impress people that don't care. You know, it's like, that's the majority of humanity.

Yeah.

And I catch myself on that every now and then. It's like, well, yeah, I'd love to kind of have a Tesla one day. And it's like, well, why do I really want one? It's like, I don't need one. Like, I kind of want one because it's a bit cool. And people go, oh, wow, look at Tim McGregor. He must be doing well because he's got a Tesla. It's like, even the people who've done some of the work, you still get trapped in it because the world is all about more, more, more. But, yeah, once you get onto that purpose journey and start extending the purpose horizon for you as. And it has. It's kind of like it's chicken and egg. You can start at the organizational level. Yeah, let's get you a nice, pithy little purpose statement by doing that. You'll have to uncover the little things about you, though, and then that will get comfortable. And that's actually. I think we can do more than that. And you kind of riff off the feedback you're getting. It's like, yeah, but to take it to the next level, you got to get the senior leaders, typically, to start with, to go on that journey. Who are you? What do you want to be?

Yeah, and I want to reverse back here a little and apologize profusely to Brene Brown, because I love her work. And, you know, focus on that V word. Right. Because it's a vulnerability thing, I think.

Going through them all. The F word, the C word. Yeah.

We could do the whole Alphabet if we really.

I've got some P words coming up.

But we'll wait for that.

I'm struggling with X at the moment, but we'll get there. But, you know, seriously around that vulnerability and also, you know, the horizon piece, because, of course, if you're an executive in the last three years, your horizons. And I was talking about it with a mentor of mine this morning, you know, as chair of a number of different companies and you know, who had in Their worst case scenario forecasts a revenue drop of 100%. And so how do you actually own that? Because, you know, there's always a subconscious conscious, well, I set the worst case scenario and you're off by 70%. So it's much less about filling the space with an active plan. And I know what to do in this and I have a playbook and stuff. And more about, let's really define the purpose of the organization as the guiding star. 100%, which isn't really going to have much bullet point detail of the actual actions other than be careful not to go too far too fast.

Totally. And it's, I think there's, there's a lot of confusion around, you know, vision, mission.

Yeah.

Purpose. A lot of people using vision statements as purpose statements and mission statements is. Yeah, yeah, that, that lacks clarity, I think generally in the market. Whereas for me it's kind of like your purpose is, it's, it's almost a, it's like, you know, we, we are aiming to do this so that, you know, that's kind of like Simon Sinek's model. I guess. Like we, at a highest level, we're about doing this to create this outcome. The vision is then typically, well, if we reach that state. And it's pretty highly unlikely you'll ever reach the state because it needs to be so big that you're kind of, it's really unlikely that you're going to. And ideally not in your tenure as a CEO. It's going to be, this is going to be the 100 year vision. We get to hear the mission is the thing that changes. It's like I spent some time in the army, like the mission is a specific thing that you achieve. So it's like right now we're focused on doing this, which ladders up into this. I think there's a lot of confusion. There's so many purpose statements out there. You just look at it and go, that's like a weak mission statement at best.

Right.

And that I think increasingly savvy consumers, investors, suppliers, employees are going to look at it and go, yeah, you've just, you've paid for a marketing consultant to come in and whip that up. It doesn't actually reflect the depth of who we are and what we stand for or what we could stand for. What we, you know, it's that, yes. That spiritual side of it, almost the soul part of it that is missing from the transactional nature of like you say, strategies, documents, plans.

It's like, well, I'll get off this eventually, but it's the R word, isn't it? It's like the risk and sort of how you actually mitigate the risk of being more open.

To. You know, you talk about military style and military historian by academic training and you know, the difference between a live rounds exercise and an exercise that everyone knows is an exercise is that most mainstream will make a 30% contingency of people just freaking the frick out because they know the bullets are real. And so you can't really practice or drill, fire drill, that sort of stuff. And it sort of feels like one. We've got these consumer audiences coming into a much more accessible, you know, through digital view of purpose as well as a processing of that where they're quite frustrated about the state that corporates in particular have got to, which is where we're seeing.

It's like the great resignation and the great reshuffle and you know, in a tight labor market where people can't move around the world, of course, you know, pressure's going to be on.

So enter, grow good. Yeah, yeah. That's purpose, fuel performance.

That's the plan.

What, what you know, and to whatever degree you're open to, we hope this will get out to a relatively big audience, you know, between 5 and 25 people eventually. Fingers crossed.

Yeah. What have been the frustrating because I mean that's, you know, it is, it's stuff, man. It's like.

Yeah, I mean I kind of had, like I said I had my purpose epiphany. It's literally. It's called a subconscious awakening. So 2012, 2010 to 2011, earthquakes here in Canterbury, you know, collective near death experience. A lot of people had a change of direction in their life. It's well documented, you know, near death experience. I wasn't trapped in a building, but just having that your mortality questioned, you know, briefly, totally. The world is big and dangerous actually. I might not be here tomorrow. And then 2012, our wife and I had our daughter again. Another critical moment in you know, life journey where you have a change of perspective on everything. And so yeah, that's when I literally down talks and it's what I call a hard Brexit from the corporate world because I started to see stuff happening because I used to work in the medical device industry. There's a really. The best way to encapsulate it is go and watch the documentary the Bleeding Edge. It has been on Netflix, you can probably find it on the Internet where people kind of, I guess it's topical in the, in the current World of global pandemics. People are kind of skeptical of the pharmaceutical industry and how they make their money and where it all goes. But that's kind of out there. The medical device industry is more insidious, bigger and less well known. So if you imagine going into a hospital, as soon as you've walked into that door, everything that you can see is sold into there by a company right all the way through to the hip, the knee, the cataracts, replacement, whatever it is. Every, every single thing in that hospital is sold in there by one or 10 or 20 companies that are competing for that business. So there was endemic corruption globally within the industry. It's all well documented. The one company I work for, you.

Know, for you can say it will bleep it out.

Well, it's in. I can't remember the name. I think it's the Philadelphia Inquirer. The company I used to work for when I first moved to New Zealand called Synthes or Synthase or Syntase depending on Swiss. You were sure, you know, four patients died on the operating table with a product that they were knowingly pushing to market too soon. But the surgeon who was running the procedures was an investor in the company. And they realized it's the classic thing like if we don't get it out to market first, the guys down the road will get it out. We'll lose market share.

So we're going to hit the V word now or values.

Values.

Do we always use the V word?

Well, I think we heard the V word already. Yeah, it's okay.

Just hit values without the V then.

Yeah, so there was that. And then a couple years later, pretty much every major orthopedic device company was slapped by a subpoena from the US Department, Department of Justice around basically anti corruption behavior. So, you know, people, surgeons around the world were being gifted flights and accommodation and more, in some cases cars and all sorts of stuff. And when you're in the industry, it's like, yeah, but we're all doing it. It's a level playing field. There's no, no harm, no foul. And with the sort of patient deaths, well, you know, you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. You know, this is about, you know, pushing the boundaries of medicine so we save more people ultimately. And when you're in the system, you're a young guy in your mid-20s or early 20s, they're paying you really well, you get to go to conferences all around the world. You kind of like, yeah, well, I guess I kind of see, see what you're saying. But, yeah, for me, this subconscious awakening led me to go, why the hell am I doing this? I'm working for companies that are knowingly killing people and doing bad stuff. And I wouldn't do. If this was my business, I wouldn't want to be doing that.

Yeah.

And that was like my kind of, yeah, I guess, inception point of like, who am I doing this?

That's also kind of emblematic, I think, with the kind of wider sentiment among consumers and people generally, is the kind of companies that they want to align themselves with aren't nefarious, aren't insidious, as you say, and they have spent a lot of time thinking about their values and their purpose and establish that either early on or if they haven't, then they're making really deliberate steps towards shifting that C word culture to really embed it within their organization. And, you know, I think I'll get to the P words now.

I actually wanted to swap that last V word with a P in terms of principles.

There we go. Okay, cool.

All right, well, I've got a couple.

Of P words, so we can, as.

A mate of mine at university, say principles. That's a shot for girls.

I've got a word span of about 5, so I'm probably done on that.

Nice.

Now, how many letters of the Alphabet are they?

20 at least.

More than 5?

26. John.

There you go. Balloon something on each one of these pictures.

And in Welsh, wise vowel.

So there you go.

Look at that.

It's kind of like the add on as well, isn't it, in the Maori Alphabet as well?

Why is.

Actually, I couldn't. Maybe that's not right.

I don't know.

You've definitely fact checked that one. We can cut that out.

Maybe it will.

Beeping yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So problems and pain points. Points that you're kind of hearing, you know, obviously you're working with a lot of corporates, a lot of executives that are coming in, sustainability managers that are trying to get B Corp certified, and there's essentially a mountain of things that they could earn points on. Out of 200. I understand.

Yeah.

And then is it 80 the pass?

80 out of 200, which a lot of people go, well, how hard is that? It's not even half marks.

Sure.

And then most people try it and they get stuck at 50.

Yeah.

Oh, okay. It is a little bit harder than I thought.

Yeah.

Which is good.

It is good.

If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

Exactly.

And I think that probably obviously gives B Corp A lot of credibility, at least in the market at the moment, being kind of that gold standard for certification and sustainability and other things obviously, as well. But, yeah, what would you say are some of the really obvious pain points among some of your clients? If you are comfortable talking about that?

Exactly.

I mean, typically it comes down to probably three main areas. One, the easiest ones are, look, we just want to do this, we want to do it quickly and we want to get as many points, genuine points, as we can without mucking around. So it's like, we just want to do this, we're fully on board. The second one would be, we've been having a stab at this for the last 18 months and we're just stuck. And, you know, it is a hard process to go through, but it's not insurmountable. But if you're trying to do it by yourself as a sustainability manager or you've got a small team around you, you get overwhelmed with business as usual and other stuff that gets thrown onto your plate. So in that regard, it's kind of almost the accountability of sitting down with me and going, well, you've kind of paid for me, you've booked into time, you're going to go and do it now.

But also, I guess the value for me is, from working with me is like, you have to take a test. I've taken the test loads of times. I kind of know what the answers are. If I don't know what the answers are, I know roughly what they're looking for. And I've got a whole suite of supporting documents and policies and other things that I can kind of just go, no, it's going to be. This is going to be your answer, so you can't have that. But also, I guess for both of those clients, it's just sort of prodding and poking. Well, just tell me a little bit more about what you're doing here, because there's kind of two parts to the assessment. One is a measure of your operational goodness. So whilst we are making our widgets, how much good are we co creating for our, you know, our employees in our supply chain? Are we being, you know, what would be the word, considerate of our local community? What's our diversity inclusivity, like, what have you, what's our environmental impact, you know, what is the actual widget we're making, so on and so forth. But above that, it's what's called an impact business model. And one of my recent clients, she described me as the Pokemon Hunter, because you're kind of like hunting for this or I used to call it the same Super Mario bonus level. Like, you know, if you kill the end of level boss, you get to level up. And an impact business model is where you're going out of your way to create more good than you are legally expected or required to do. And for me, one of the best examples would be Etique or the Cheer Sisters.

Oh, yeah.

You know, and both of them. And I think this, this is something for you as an executive, if you're listening to think about is like, how easy is it for the consumer or employee to hate this business? And when I look at a taking the Chaser Sisters, it's like, it's really hard to hate you.

Sure.

Because you're doing so much good across your entire business and it's really hard to go, yeah, but you're not doing this or, yeah, but you haven't sorted this out. It's like, yeah, you're doing really good.

I almost think that's like becoming the standard now. We were talking about that at lunch today. It's not necessarily this really well defined standard when it comes to sustainability or social issues that companies are trying to help. It's more about, you know, the areas maybe that they're not doing so well and that people tend to focus on, which is kind of crazy to me. But it's essentially where it seems like it's at in terms of, you know, consumers and everything. Like, I mean, Kathmandu, I think, is a relatively good example, at least just personally speaking. I'd say that they're B Corp certified and I know that they've got a lot of synthetic materials and they're still just a huge company that mass produces clothing and we don't really need any more clothes on this planet at the moment. So it's a bit like, oh gosh, it's really hard for me to actually buy into the sustainability if it's when I know that there's this huge, I suppose, skeleton in their closet, it's really easily discernible for the modern consumer.

And I think the key to that, and I think this is the digging into this message where we start this line of questioning. It's do the good that you can do now and once you connect to the good that you're doing, recognize what you've got, you'll see where you can be better. Because when you take the impact assessment, there's an improvement report that you can download, which basically gives you a list of all the questions that you didn't score highly on. So that's basically your indicator as to where are we not doing well. And like I said, it's all part of the journey. There's a really cool phrase someone said to me a while back, which I can't remember who it was. I don't think it's an actual quote, so I'll claim it now. The guy who invented the light bulb put it on the candlelight.

Yeah.

And this is where we're at. It's like, yeah. In an ideal world, Kathmandu would be selling no synthetic material. But could they do that? Is there a supply chain of purely natural based material that they could plug.

Into right now or even be able to recycle completely recycle the synthetic materials and make it circular? But it's still. Yeah, it's not quite there yet.

Right. But from what I know of the people that I know who work at Catman, it's on their radar.

Sure.

And I think this is again one of the areas where companies maybe are missing the mark is be really transparent on telling that story. Like we know that we can be better here. We have searched this company I've just started working with yesterday. Packaging, like packaging for all consumer goods brands. It's the nightmare.

Yeah.

There is no bulletproof good solution. That is yes. This is the answer. Particularly not when you're exporting globally. It's like it's in some jurisdictions this is homecoming possible. In some it's not. In some there's no clear cut solution. They're like they're front footing it. Hey look, we have done this amount of hours of research. They're a really small business with great export plants. We have done so much research. From what we've understood, this is the best solution that we can get right now with the resources that we have. If you have a better solution, tell us and we'll look at it. That's all you can do. Front foot where you're not doing so good. Ask people for help on the journey.

Yeah.

But I think. And the other part of it is if you're a truly purpose driven company, your competitor is not your. Your competition is not your competitor. Your competition is the bigger problem. Like I look at, you know, Apple and Samsung, you know, what if they actually came together and how do we solve into human communication instead of who can sell the most phones? Like that's purpose and we're getting there. This I was part of a facilitated a workshop last week in the wool industry and we had people from carpet companies to wool producers, Mons Icebreaker, Terrellana, the insulation company. They all want to work together and work out like, let's map out the complete value chain of who's sourcing from where. How do we make sure it's the best in terms of environmental and socially sourced material, but how do we collectively work together at end of life to make sure that we can upcycle and recycle and.

Cool.

But it's happening.

What, what do they all wear when they come together for like a wool industry?

There was a lot of wool based products.

Merino is breathable, John. You can wear it when it's warm.

But there were a couple of people in cotton shirts and I'm like, whoa.

Yeah.

Hey, you're in the wrong. You're in the wrong. You're in the wrong place here.

Yeah, it's an imposter if you see a cotton shirt walk out there.

Yeah.

Just sneaking.

But you know, it's happening because people are realizing that we can't, you can't solve this in isolation. It's going to take collaboration. And you know, we talked about Allbirds before, you know, Allbirds and Adidas working together.

Yeah.

It's like, I don't know that.

Well, that's cool because you're not going to solve this. Why would you want to solve this problem independently? Just so you can sell more stuff? You know, Volvo is another great example. They recently released all their safety data.

Yeah.

Volvo is known for safety. Like I imagine their IP lawyer was just pulling the hair.

What are you doing?

This is insane.

You know there's a.

This is the.

This is the.

Yeah, they could be an advantage. Yeah.

There's a TikTok of them rolling one of their latest SUVs off a forklift at high speed and just letting it roll six times. See the crash cage, you know, and that's. So I guess when sort of boiling that down, I come to. I come to, you know, a word beginning with I which is intention. Right.

Nice. So many letters.

Yeah. Well, I try and only work in small.

Maybe, maybe ABC should be. I think someone got. Oh, they've got alphabets. You could totally have ABC as your company name. ABC, TBC.

TBC. Yeah, there we go. Yeah. I think the URL's taken the ABC.

Do you really look into that?

But it's that intention. Right. And that's the thing you've got to. And they say nowadays in terms of brands.

And I talked to a guy, you know, very long standing agency guy that I respect in this area and he actually wrote a couple of pages on it that the brand is actually no longer owned by the company, the brand has actually shifted to the perception be that the right one, the wrong one. And so what a lot of people are looking for to stay loyal to brands is actually what's the intention, knowing that if there are humans involved, nothing is ever going to go full to plan.

Yeah.

And so how do you communicate that in a way that, you know, embraces the Kathmandu example, which says, look, we're on a journey here. We probably never actually get to the end of it.

Yeah.

But you can see that our intention, including this is sort of where I'm getting to. In your experience, you know, the elements where they go, holy crap. Yeah. This has really not gone the way that we thought it was. What do we do? Do we roll Jane in from marketing or Jim, or do we put the CEO in front of it and say, look, we just basically messed this up big time.

Yeah. And I think increasingly people are looking for that authenticity. We will make mistakes. And it's better to own it, you know, than to try and hide it. I think the days of, you know, PR and spin and hiding. Yeah. Everyone's too wise on that now. We've been burnt too many times by. Yeah, nice try.

But it's behavior isn't. I mean, it's the natural sort of there's a crisis, you know, for corporates, bring in the PR do to a dude to just like, patch it over with some. Whatever it takes. Yeah. And it just doesn't stick, does it?

Not these days. I think increasingly consumers are. Wait. I mean, I still do a bit of sales training because that's where I kind of transitioned into my own business. And, you know, it used to be caveat emptor, buyer beware, but now it's sellable where it's caveat venti. Because the consumer knows more, probably knows more about your product. There are some consumers who will know more about your company and your product than you do as a salesperson, because they care more about getting the right solution, whereas you're just trying to make budget.

Well, who would have thought we'd live in a world where, you know, a relatively young person sits on Reddit and essentially creates a run, you know, positive or negative, on a publicly listed, you know, NASDAQ stock or.

Yeah.

You know, you know, and I think that's got really. People quite fearful.

Yeah.

Of how they actually begin to approach this as a company.

Yeah.

But that definitely speaks to being authentic and vulnerable.

Right.

But you know, why. Why is it still such a point of apprehension.

Right.

When they know that that's probably the best way they can spin it. Maybe then it becomes a question of actually our internals aren't good enough yet to align with this for us to be that vulnerable. Because we know that if we kind of open ourselves up to that, you know, all this, this dirt could be dredged up a little bit here.

So I have a theory on this.

Go on.

And I'm interested in your view. I think it comes down to metrics because if I'm a CEO, coming back to that four and a half year average tenure and I look at a problem where, you know, all of the ABC plans take six to 50 years depending on how well you want to fix or embed the solution to the problem. And you've automatically got a, you know, a material challenge to doing, you know, the longest term beneficial thing versus the thing that aligns to the way that you're measured and seen as a leader.

I think that's going to, that's changing now Obviously we've got Dr. Duncan Webb, local Labor MP, he's got a private members bill looking to amend the Companies Act.

Yeah.

Which would basically put like a purpose clause and a stakeholder clause, which is interesting because in the B Corp world in Australia, New Zealand now for you to certify as a B Corp, you have to amend your corporate governing documents to add a purpose clause and a stakeholder clause.

And preparation. Yeah.

And if you're of a certain scale, you've got a bit of time, I think it's 12 months or 24 months to get your board on board and shareholders if you're publicly listed. But it's real. It's not a mark in the sand. This is a mark in the concrete. It's like you have to be willing to alter your company corporate governing documents to say you have a purpose beyond just making money.

Yeah.

And I think this is going to be the key and one of the drivers behind that is to bake in the purpose to the organization. So it's not reliant on the four year CEO who might come in and go, hey B Corp, this is going to be my thing that I'm stamping on the company. This is going to be my kind of, you know, legacy. It's like, no, this purpose now sits within the company. So it's beyond the CEO. It's. And you know, then that hopefully will mean it attracts the next CEO who wants to build on the purpose and the legacy, not on the metrics. But fundamentally that's, that's the challenge, you know, in A, in a world of finite resources, we're putting material, you know, infinite assumptions around the metrics that we want to chase which don't make any of us feel good or happy, you know, in the long term.

So there's regulation now and it's. And it's pretty, you know, pretty close around the corner.

Yeah. I don't know what would. I haven't had the time to look at the private members, build details and what would stop it getting through.

Through.

But I think it needs some public support to get behind it, you know, and certainly as the B Corp community, we're saying, well, we're kind of already doing this, so yeah, why not? And if it doesn't get through this time, I would hesitate to suggest that within a few years we won't be far off that, you know, the constitution for a company off the shelf in New Zealand would have that clause in there. It's like, yes, one of your aims is to run in a solvent manner and provide a return to, you know, directors and shareholders. However, not at the expense of. So if it doesn't happen this time around, I reckon within the next five years we'll easily be at 500B Corps in New Zealand and we'll all then be campaigning and say, this should just be business as usual now.

Yeah. And I mean, it's got precedent too. Right. Because the Reserve bank actually now requires a much higher level of.

Disclosure and reporting and preparation for full integrated reporting as a regulatory or, you know, companies.

And at the end of the next level there's environmental reporting.

Yeah.

I think in the UK they have the purpose clause as part of their Companies act, but it says, I think they use the language.

The company may consider the old lawyers. There we go.

Whereas what we're obviously looking for is let's leapfrog that and go to must as a first principle here. But it's happening. And I think the other thing to consider is having spoken to. I mean, well, in May this year, ANZ issued $100 million ESG backlog to Kathmandu, which is basically premised on them maintaining and increasing their B Corp score. It's like the money people.

I didn't realize that. So that's one of the criteria. Isn't that phenomenal in terms of a term and a kind of commercial kind of really good.

When I've been talking to people that, hey, this is like I say the pitch to companies is it's going to be your employees, your customers, your supply chain or your investors who demand that you start looking at this at some point in the near future. I used to use the example of Danone as an ESG backed loan vehicle. Like most people kind of heard of Dano and all they could, you know, work out who they were. Now it's like we've got a live example in New Zealand. It's like this is how. Yes, it's at the big end of town. Yeah, but this shows you. And it's back to the intent word. This shows you the intent that's coming from the financial markets. And talking to the team at ANZ who organized that, that vehicle, you know, they were saying, globally, the private equity market is now moving, that the next generation are coming through, like mum and dad, who might have been the high net worth individuals who had money invested in private equity. It's now becoming the sons and daughters who are kind of going, well, why have we got money invested in cigarette companies and tire companies?

Yeah. I call it the consumer sandwich.

Yeah.

Yeah. Because the younger generations are more active, but they're also more influential on the older. And there's sort of some people in the middle just fluffing around. I don't know what to call them. Yeah, they're the ice cream. There's two generations of the wafers. And you've got this whole sandwich analogy going now. But that seems to have the biggest potential to move the needle really fast, 100%.

Like when the money people get it, this is no longer, you know, greenies, tree huggers. Do the right thing, man. Yeah, it's like, we'll get you to that point. But right now there are actually going to be commercial imperatives that, I mean, particularly if you look at certain industries in particular. So May, June, July this year I was part of a team delivering some work through nzte. We ran a business for good program. They put it out to NZTE backed exporters in the FMCG sector. They were hoping to get 20 for a cohort. They had 80 who were interested and they got 43 in two cohorts. They were like, oh my gosh, we had no idea this is gonna be so popular.

Yeah.

If you're now an FMCG export business in New Zealand, if you're not B Corp certified, within the next six months you will start losing market share. Because in the, in the uk, as an example, Waitrose, the supermarket, Boots, the chemist and Okvada I think it's called, they have on their, on their online stores, you can search by brands that are B Corp certified.

No way.

So if you are claiming to be a holistic vegan, friendly, plant based, you know, nutrition brand. And you're not a B corp in a global market, they're going to look at you and go, yeah, well, why, who are you? What, what could are you doing when the five local competitors are going to be B Corp certified. There's also, I've seen, I've got some stats here, some stats ready for you. There's some really interesting stuff.

It was very prepared of you. It's probably more prepared than I just thought. They're topical and much more prepared.

The SO B lab runs their own impact report. So they collect data about what's happening and how a company's doing. So from the 2021 impact report, which basically looks at 2020, 52% of B Corps hired more employees in 2020. So in a global pandemic, 52% of B Corps hired people. 47% of B Corps had 15% growth of employees in 2020. And two out of three B Corps globally saw increase in revenue in 2020.

Wow.

So in terms of resiliency.

Yeah.

You know, we are getting more, there are more and more data points that are showing that if you just care about the money, you should, you need to be thinking about this.

So I'm trying to process that as a summary. I mean, does that mean that they more tend to be more diverse companies with. Because of course there's some industries in Covid that just, you know, if you can't get on a plane to be tourists, you can't be.

Or hospital. I think that the key for like the conscious capitalism is it Raj Sodia.

Yeah.

You know, they, they had a lot of evidence from maybe 10 years ago showing that companies that had a higher purpose or were doing more good were more resilient.

Right.

And I think for me there's two parts to that. Like if you have this sense of purpose and you know why you're doing what you're doing and why and why it's so important and you have a real connection to the good that you're doing, you're just going to go harder for longer.

Yeah.

This is the super fuel business purpose. You just less likely to quit.

Yeah.

And I think that does create a little bubble of energy that flows over customers are more likely to like you're doing so much good. We, we have to try and support you so that you can keep doing the good that you're doing.

I wonder whether it's actually a mind space thing too, where if you're more resilient and more stuff's put on you. Your mind spends less time dealing with that and more to be more innovative or creative.

And there's some really, it's, it's like.

Fog of war stuff.

Yeah. I mean, Sebastian Junger, he's an anthropologist and he's done, he's a journalist, he's got some really cool stuff. But one of the things he talks about was, you know, during the Second World War, when the Germans started bombing London, the government was like, okay, this is it. This is going to be our, I guess our own internal D Day before. Because before D day was actually thing. But it's like, you know, this is going to be the crux of the war because if the civilian population capitulates under the bombing, we're going to lose the will, morale, you know, morale's going to drop.

Yeah.

Their boys are all away. What are we going to do? Actually, the reverse happened. So during, during the bombing, the actual, the resiliency and the, I guess, psychology of the local community, particularly in London, actually went up because it's really hard to be depressed when you're helping someone else.

Yeah, right.

You know, when you're so focused on, my neighbor's house is gone. I need to see if there's any survivors here. That takes. You're not thinking about yourself. And again, this is one of the big parts of the purpose things. If you focus on doing something bigger than you to make something better for someone else, you're going to keep going for long because that's. We're wired for that. Like if you think back to cavemen and women's society, you know, I'm going out getting the wildebeest, you're making the campfire, whatever, you're rebuilding the shelter because we all have to contribute to everything.

I say I'm building the shelter while we're out getting the wildebeest. But probably on Netflix. Sorry, guys. There's a bit of.

Bit of wind in it.

Yeah.

But you know, there's. We're built for contribution and to help each other. But in the modern world, you know, most companies metrics are, what was sales? You know, what's revenue, what's profitability? Well, who was. If you look, think back. So challenge for Both of you, 2013. Who was number three on the NZX in March?

Oh, I'm gonna go with.

Fletchers.

Who cares?

Oh, you don't know?

No.

Number three in March 2013.

I'd like to look that up now. Maybe it was Fletcher's john, but that's.

The metric we're so focused on. Typically in a business. But people won't remember what you, you know, what you had to remember what you did and how you did it.

Of course, you know. Yeah.

And that's. But it's hard because you can't measure that. You can't measure that.

Well, even if you did measure it, it's not going to sit in your four or five years.

No.

And you know, one thing we haven't touched on to avoid really picking on CEOs is boards.

Right.

Yeah, totally.

Because board tenure is, you know, sometimes mandated minimum two times, three year terms.

Yeah.

So you've only got slightly longer. Yeah. To, you know, even debrief on how. Well, you know, you've got two fiduciary obligations to hire and fire the CEO and act in the business of the company at all times.

Yeah. Which is why I think this purpose clause is so.

Yeah.

But I know, you know, the guys from Trinio, you'll know those guys when I'm first met with them before they started their B Corp journey. You know, Abhinav was talking, I think it was his brother or his cousin who is part of. He's a senior leader in a business in India which is like a locksmith. And it's, I think it had been in operation for like 250 years. And they have the shortest business plan. They have is 100 year business plan. And it's like that was part of his journey in terms of like, why are we so focused on three months?

Right.

It's like three months will take care of like three months takes care of itself. And there's not much you can do this month to actually massively influence in three months time. But the seeds you're sowing today, you know, it's the corny thing, like you're planting the seeds of the tree that in 100 years time will give someone to shape. And we don't even think about that at any level.

Well, it's not, it's not an analogy competition. But you know, there's also that one with the Chinese philosopher when they asked him about the impact of the French revolution on the 21st century and he just said it's a little bit too early to tell.

Nice. Or I studied the French Revolution.

Oh, we're in competition now.

Here we go.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, keep going.

The answer I thought, which French Revolution are you talking about? Because there were multiple.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you could plug that on several countries immediately in terms of, you know, what we remember to your point and what we don't.

Yeah.

I might chuck in another we V word here, if that's okay with both of you.

We've been three now.

There has been three. Yeah. Still on balance, the, the V word that I wanted to touch on is valuable. You've already said values, but I suppose just bringing it back to what we're trying to achieve with this wee project that we've got going, this little thing that's still kind of, I suppose, just festering, we're trying to figure out exactly which direction it's going to go. And I don't know, John, if you wanted to talk about the value prop, just briefly for our listeners, just because some people might be here just listening to, to Tim, they don't care about us, which is probably.

And vice versa.

Very likely.

Most people. Yeah. I mean, I think the value proposition is that everything we've been talking about makes perfect sense but is actually freaking hard to operationalize. And we've covered the fact that, you know, culture plays a role and it's probably more culture than, you know, from what I'm hearing in the way we have discussed things with you, than it is the expense of the things you have to do, the 80 score or what have you. Because that will get in the way of everyone getting behind getting to 80 faster than it will the fact that you don't have the right assets for coming to that score. So what we're doing in terms of riffing around this value prop is saying is there a missing kind of space.

In the market where there's a lot of strategies and long term thinking being done. But I think it feels like there's a lot of executives and boards saying surely there's something we can do that's more impactful right now?

Yeah, it's almost a bit of an ancillary function. Right. And we did have a quick chat before we got on Mike, but you know, there's a lot of consulting companies out there that are entering into these huge strategic projects for companies and have their 2030 net zero plan or whatever their 2050 targets. But in terms of right now, they don't really have actionable short term goals that they can really delve into. So that's essentially where we're at at the moment. And just going back to valuable, the question I want to ask, and we want to ask you is how valuable do you think it would be for us as a very young company, very small, that's still kind of setting up its processes and trying to find its way purpose to actually enter into this B Corp process and start things from Day dot, essentially. And hopefully through your answer, maybe that could encourage some listeners to look into doing the B Corp thing because they're a lot further down the line than we are.

Us right now.

Still don't have a name, which I.

Wouldn'T mind actually running that past you as well, if we've got time.

So typically to start the B Corp process, you have to be in operation for more than 12 months because we need to see 12 months of operational data to see how much money have you been earning over the last 12 months.

Could we outsource that?

Is that from registration or is that.

Yeah, registration is typically. So that would be your one challenge. But the flip side to that is actually as a startup company, with my. My advice would be to take the assessment. It's free, you can go online, you can create an account, you can go through the assessment.

Yeah.

Start thinking about, like when you're about to get your first employee. Well, what did we say we'd like to do when we had some employees? When we've been through the worker section. Cool. Okay. Well, as a, as a part time employee joining, we need to offer them the benefits that we've already got, which might be nothing because you're a startup and you've got. But you know what I mean, it's like it gives you the lens as to how to build the structure of the business before you get big. The big challenge for big companies is the sunk cost, the embedded nature of how. We've been doing it this way for 50 years. And, you know, Synlay had challenges with that. It took them two years to get to, I think, 80.1 or 80.2 points.

Right.

And they had to fundamentally alter the structure of some of the ways they did business. And as Hamish Reed, their director of sustainability, said, if it was easy for them to get B Corp, it would be the wrong assessment. And, you know, this is the thing, you know, build it as yourself scaling. When you get to 12 months, you can go, cool. All the policies already written because we've preempted getting to this point. So it's a really cool framework for startups to just look at and consider. Well, before we start hiring, before we go and look for suppliers, well, let's just have some considerations about what we might need to ask them or let's go. So typically you score more points for working with independent, small, independent suppliers who have an underrepresented leadership team.

Right, Right.

So, cool. Let's have that in mind when we're looking for a of suppliers. Let's go and try and find those companies if we can.

Yeah.

So very interesting.

Makes sense.

Definitely makes sense. Something that we probably should be getting on to.

Yeah.

I might know that I could help you.

Just giving them a pad and a pen to write that down.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We probably wrapping up, but you probably detected we're relatively lazy interviewers.

That's great. I mean the only way to do it. Well, I am anyway.

Sorry.

Go in the fly.

So, you know, still learning how to do this.

Yeah, we are. We talk OVER each other. We.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm disappointed there wasn't as much weed and whiskey as Joe Rogan has.

All the farting. All the farting gets bleated out. Right.

Yeah, we're going to be.

So is there anything that, you know, I think you've got the gist of where we're trying to go and sort of help educate and inform people about, you know, B Corp and just general purpose and good. Anything we've missed that, you know, you go, why the hell didn't they ask me that?

No, I think we covered a good round of stuff. Like I said, you know, just. If you don't start today, was it worry if you don't. If you don't do it this year, you'll be a year older. When you do.

Sure.

Start having a look. Because if you're not starting now, someone in your competitive landscape. Not that I want to. You shouldn't be competitive. But it is for now. Someone else is going to be doing it and you'll be a year behind doing it.

Yeah.

Start it now, have a look, get on the journey of working and you're not gonna be able to fix everything tomorrow. Break it down. What could we do in three months? What could we do in six months? What could we do in 12, 24, 36. And let's build the roadmap to us becoming a great company.

Because then you authentically answer the question by saying we're on the path, but we just haven't got to the first gate yet.

Exactly. There are, you know, we're at 48B Corps in New Zealand. Like there's plenty of space for. For people to come do more good.

Yeah.

Like there's a small group of businesses that are kind of nailing it right now. Not to say there are plenty of companies doing great stuff that aren't B Corp certified.

Sure.

But it's. It's not like we're at market saturation for good being done in the corporate environment. There's 4,000 globally. It's not a massive number, but it's moving. The B Corp movement grew by 25%. 20, 20, 2021. So it's. It's going places.

Yeah, great, thanks.

But Tim Jones. Yeah, really appreciate you coming along and yeah, we'd love to have another chat and just because it's a journey, not a destination and I think we're both in exciting places to. To help people out with this challenge.

Keep collaborating.

That'd be great.

And where can people find you as well? If you want to do a bit of a.

In case. When you get to that web page or podcast, explain to the people all about five listeners.

You just. Stephen, Moe. I don't know if you've connected with him. You should talk to him. He's got a really cool podcast called Seeds and he did a podcast on my podcast. So I've been on his like three or four times. I felt bad that he had been on mine and we got a really piece of glowing feedback from his mum and dad saying how much they enjoyed our interview. So pressure's on you guys to get mum and dad to provide some input on your podcast. But yeah, growgood. Co if you just Google Tim Jones, the grow good guy. If you can't find me, the Instagram, the Internet is broken, all the power is off because I'm pretty much spamming the Internet and connect with me on LinkedIn. That's where I normally hang out. Always happy to hear from people. Have a chat, see if I can help.

Fantastic. Thanks, mate. Kakirti. Thank you.

Beautiful.

Thanks.

That's a wrap.

I am. I do need to go on this phone call.

Cool. Hey, I've got to get off too.

That was awesome.

Thanks so much.

Time.

You're still not fully sure what you're doing, but a bit more about what you're doing.

Exactly.

Yeah.

No, we're definitely staying comms and I'm sure after we get that first podcast.

Out of the way and we can.

Get a little bit more.