#40 Interview With Mark Longbottom on the Purposely Podcast - We go deep on purpose, identity and of course B Corp

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.

A really warm welcome to purposely with good grow guy, Tim Jones. This is episode one of two that I've recorded with Tim. We focus on business for good and the B Corp movement. So what is the B Corp movement? Well, B stands for benefit. Put simply, it is a for profit corporation that is driven to both mission and profit. There's 4,000 of them globally, the 70 countries, which is phenomenal and it's growing fast. Enjoy the episode and don't forget to hit subscribe, leave a review and share with a friend.

Enjoy.

Tim Jones, welcome.

Hello. Thanks for having me.

You're the CEO and founder of GrowGood. What's your mission? What's your purpose?

You make me sound very grown up as CEO and founder of a company. But hey, I guess I'll take it. So Grow Good is all all about really at its heart is trying to create as much, I guess, systemic change as we can by working with organizations and individuals within them to become the best versions of themselves in support of better social and environmental outcomes for everyone. So that's at the heart of what we do, which is why, I guess one of our taglines is purpose fueled performance, like getting everyone connected to their purpose as an individual and as an organization so that they can max out the amount of good that they can do on their small time on this planet. Which is really why we're sort of called Grow Good. It's all about growing small good in the world.

And it's fair to say that you're in more demand now than you were before with your business.

Yes.

Particularly with the B Corp side of things. So we offer a range of services, you know, we do. We help people individually find their purpose. We help organizations connect or reconnect to their purpose. We do like organizational culture change. We use a product called the Emotional Culture Deck. So shout out to Jeremy Dean, the inventor of that. We also do sales training for companies that are doing good in the world and want to do more good and, you know, scale the impact that they're having and, you know, get more revenue to do more good. Literally a year ago, you would struggle to get rid of B Corp consulting for free. It was quite a hard sell. You know, a lot of outbound outreach to companies say, hey, you do some cool stuff. Have you heard of B Corp I think you might, you know, you might get something out of it to. Now we're getting maybe three to five inbound inquiries a week from people who, I don't know. You know, it used to be really just people through my network and friends of friends or people that I vaguely knew. Now we're getting just complete strangers knocking on our door. Like I say, about three to five times a week. And I always kick off the conversation with, you know, so what do you, what do you want to know about B Corp? No, I don't need to know anything about B Corp. I just want to get, get B Corp certified and I think you can help me. And that has been a massive turnaround. Whereas, like I say, this time last year, it was a lot of conversations around, okay, well, this is what B Corp is and this is why you might want to do it. And if I had an email yesterday, I went in and gave a presentation to a senior leadership team and their board in 2020. And they emailed me yesterday to say, oh, hey, so this B Corp stuff, yeah, we think we want to go now.

You pitching them to them basically just saying, how do we do it? We're going to do it.

Pretty much, yeah. And it's been a really, really interesting turnaround. It just, yeah, it feels like something has definitely changed. And I don't know whether that's Covid or whether its time was always going to come and it's just taken this long. But, yeah, in the last six months, definitely feels like, yeah, six to eight months something's happened.

And it's not an easy process to go through, is it?

Well, I like to describe it as rigorous, but achievable.

A lot of people kind of get scared off doing B Corp because they think it's going to be really, you know, insanely hard and unwieldy. We hear quite often with his, particularly smaller businesses and, and especially kind of solo or sole traders or sole operators say, oh, it's, it's not for me. Any business can give it a go. You just need to have been in operation for more than 12 months. Some charities can look at certification. Um, but you have to be. You have to have like a limited company part to you. So I think it's limited company with charitable status is what you have to have. But we can get into sort of specifics on that one. But if you have the mindset and the desire and the intention to prove the good that you're doing, B Corp is very, very achievable. I guess, you know what what we're doing at Grow Good is just trying to make it even more achievable. So yeah, people don't be put off giving it a go. It's, it's, it's rigorous and that's, that's why it's good. It's not just something that you pay your money to and they give you a little badge and say, yeah, welcome, you're now a B corp. You have to go through this. It's a rigorous initial self assessment followed by an audit. But it is achievable because over 4,000 businesses have done it.

And it's very core. It's purpose and profit or it's a purpose beyond profit. So it's businesses who really believe in looking after their employees, making the environment better, offsetting the damage they do, going one step further and actually doing good in the world.

Exactly that. B Corp was built around this idea of business balancing making a profit whilst also having some kind of purpose. What is the contribution? So the B in B Corp stands for benefit. So you know, beyond making a profit, what benefit does your organization have to other stakeholders such as community employees that the planet? And the assessment looks at your business or organization across five areas. So it looks at your governance, which is essentially how transparent is the business in terms of its reporting? Are you Reporting and measuring KPIs around your social and environmental performance as well as just your financial performance? Is it easy to know who owns the business? Do you have code of ethics and whistleblower policies and that kind of stuff in place? Then it looks at your workers. So how do you treat your workers above and beyond what is kind of state mandated for things like leave entitlement, what are you doing in terms of training and development opportunities? Then there's the community section which looks at a little bit of your supply chain, ironically. So ideally you want to be sourcing and purchasing locally and from independent suppliers where possible. It looks at your diversity and inclusivity, it looks at your community contributions. So are you volunteering, you know, locally within your community? Are you, are you making any donations to charity, what have you. Environment looks at your essentially inputs and outputs. So yeah, depending on, yeah, like if you're a manufacturing company, you, you would have slightly different questions to say a service based company, but essentially it's looking at your energy usage, your production, your carbon emissions, so on and so forth. And then the last pillar or last section is your customer model, which is basically what, what is it that you're making and who are you selling it to? Do you have things like guarantees and warranties in place, but also potentially if you can demonstrate that you're making some positive contribution to your customer base or if you're serving an underserved population, you'd get recognition for some, some points there as well.

And on the side of bigger companies and they kind of, I've got this vision of them sending someone off to kind of, you know, like tick the boxes and transform them. Do you in your consultancy, do you demand that actually? Or, you know, it's got to be with the owners or the directors of the business. It's got to be at the core of the purpose of the business.

Exactly that. I've heard of and seen a couple of larger companies who've done exactly that. And it's typically, you know, the sustainability manager or a brand manager or a marketing manager who will go and do the assessment in isolation and then, you know, they kind of sell it into the board or the senior, the rest of the senior leadership team or the CEO and say, hey, look, I think we should do this and, and they kind of do it. And that's cool, you've met the criteria. But when we work with clients, we say, well, first off, we start off with an all company kickoff session. So we do a 60 minute workshop for the entire company. It's an interactive workshop with sound and music and gets people talking about B Corp. But we introduce the entire company and we say everyone in your company needs to get on one of these calls or one of these workshops. And, and we take people through the history of B Corp, like where did it come from? We talk them through, why is B Corp a thing right now? We look at the journey to B Corp certification so that everyone knows what's coming up. And we also then look at the ROI times two. So the return on investment, but also the return on impact. So what are some examples of B Corps that are out there doing some cool stuff? And by the end of that session, we ask the team that we've presented to and say, look, if you were in a large company and we were working with you, Mark, we'd say, look, Mark is going to be the king balance. So we have one. Or if it's a female, we typically call them the queen bee. So you have one person who is in charge for making sure the assessment is complete and ready to go. But in a small team, we would say, look at least two to three others. We've had one company, Genora, who we helped go through their certification late last year. They had the entire, I think it was like 22, 24 of their staff come to every session of the, of going through the assessment with them. So the more you can bring the team on the journey, the better outcomes you're going to get. Because A, you're going to bring the team on the journey, you're going to have massively increased engagement and just excitement from the team that they're part of this journey. But also the thing that we always find is if you're just working with one person, you'll be, you know, because literally what we do is we go through the assessment line by line, question by question, and just coach people through, I guess, how they can most effectively answer but also prod them a little bit. Well, have you done anything like this? Have you done anything like that? And they'll go, oh, yeah, we did do that. And quite often when we're working with one person, one on one, they can't remember everything that the business has done. So quite often with a sort of a hive mentality, someone will go, oh, no, hang on a minute, don't you remember we had that person come in and deliver that training on mental health six months ago? Oh, yeah, I completely forgotten about that. So having that team mindset not only helps bake in, you know, the journey, but it's just useful when it comes to answering all the questions because if you try to do it by yourself, it's. It can become a bit harder.

And I love the fact there's a recertification process and I know a company going through that at the moment and they said that actually this sort of more waiting on some of the environmental factors and they were pleased that they'd made some moves on that. But it's great that it's a living, breathing thing and I think consumers are going to already, but certainly going to bigger numbers, going to start choosing to do business or buy products from businesses who are B corps and who are. And avoid those who aren't 100%.

So, you know, I recently went back to the UK in March of 22 and it was because of March is B Corp month. So it's a month for all the B Corps. Just try and make a bit of a, you know, noise about, hey, we're a B corp and you know, what, what we, how we became a B corp and what it means and what have you. And I had lunch with a friend of mine in Covent Garden and I was a bit early for lunch and I went for a walk around within probably three or four blocks of the tube station. I found Four retail shops with B Corp logos in their windows. So that was all birds, rituals, Aesop and I can't remember the, the fourth one off top of my head, but there were four retail shops with, with a B Corp logo in their window and I, I kind of like to mystery shop and I went and said, oh hey, so this, this B thing you've got on the window, what's all that about? And without fail, all of the staff in the shops were like, yep, this is what B Corp is. This is what it means to us. This is how we did it. It's like, okay, this is happening. The UK have got over 700B Corps now. So what we're definitely noticing is in certain consumer sectors, so food and beverage and health and beauty. If you're a New Zealand based brand that is exporting into the UK or Northern Europe, if you're not a B Corp in the very near future, you're, you know, this is no longer aspirational in some consumer sectors. This is going to be table stakes. And I think we're, we're not quite there yet in New Zealand, but the trend is there. And you know, as we're working with a handful of, you know, FMCG exporters in New Zealand, you know, they'll be putting, then putting their sort of hat into the, into the ring in the uk. But it also is going to mean that when they're selling their product here, they're going to have to be corp logo here and they're going to be using that story here. So I think pretty soon, yeah, in some of those consumer facing sectors, if you're not a B Corp, this is no longer aspirational.

You clearly have a huge passion for this. You're a Brit who's living in New Zealand. You moved here in 2004. What did changing tact for a bit. But what did your early start of your career look like? You were in the British army for a period of time?

Yes, I was in the reserves in the UK for about seven years. I think joining the army was kind of what I wanted to do when I left school or went to university. Almost all my good mates from uni all joined the army as regular army officers and I didn't make the cut. I passed the selection. It's three days of sort of psychometric testing that you do to sort of get the nod to be able to go to Sandhurst to train as an army officer. And I failed that selection. So I went on a bit of a journey, lived in Australia for a year it was fun, you know, sort of bumming around, not doing much to a degree, but then that gets a bit boring after a while. So I ended up, I got into the world of medical device sales through a mate of mine who I was playing, I played rugby with just before I left, come left to go to Australia. And so I ended up, completely fell into this world of medical device sales where my job was to stand in the corner of an operating theater basically, and advise the orthopedic or neurosurgeon as to how best to place the, the implant. So like I say, initially I sold hips and knees for a year, and then afterwards I spent the rest of my career selling spinal instruments and implants. So you'd be standing in the operating theater working with a, with an orthopedic or neurosurgeon doing a spinal procedure and you know, when it gets to them, actually putting in the bit that's going to fix the patient, you are the de facto expert because you've been trained on it more than they have. And so you'll be like, yeah, left a bit, right a bit. Although don't, don't cut that bit of bone. You want to do this, you want to do that. Which is quite scary when you think there's, there's people like me standing in the corner of an operating theater telling a, you know, multi million dollar a year orthopedic surgeon how to do his job. But that's, that's true.

That is scary.

It is very scary, particularly because I, I have a degree in medieval history. Some people think I say medical history, but it's like, no, no medieval history, so definitely no links to, to anything medical in my degree course. But yeah, for me it was the earthquakes we had here in Canterbury, so 2010, 2011, that I had a big existential shakeup, that there were lots of, I guess, things going on in the world of medical devices which are best summed up in a Netflix documentary called the Bleeding Edge. I think a lot of people are a little bit, you know, aware of how perhaps pharmaceutical companies have been run historically, the medical device world, where, like I said, there's an actual physical product being put into a patient. That industry is probably 100 times bigger than the pharmaceutical industry, but a thousand times less well known. So if you imagine in any hospital that you've ever been into, everything that you see in that hospital has been sold in by a sales rep like me. You know, every machine, the sofas, you know, everything is in a hospital has been sold in by a Salesperson. And yeah, in the bleeding edge, if people get a chance to watch it, it's quite harrowing on many levels, but it's equally eye opening. Essentially there was large amounts of corruption and I would hazard to guess there probably still is large amounts of corruption in the medical device world. So globally, you know, surgeons being paid to use products, you know, backhanders, kickbacks to the point where there was also some levels of corruption happening. In New Zealand, this would have been about 15 years ago. You know, two orthopedic surgeons based here in Christchurch were taken to, I think to the High Court for tax evasion where they basically employed all their family members in their private business so that they could, you know, spread their salary across six people instead of taking it for themselves. There was corruption that I saw happening in the medical insurance world and all of this stuff. After the earthquakes and then 2012, my wife and I had our daughter that just led me, I remember to this day I was standing in an operating theater doing some spinal surgery in Ascot Hospital in central Auckland. And I walked out of that procedure and said, I just can't do this anymore. I'm done.

Just keep walking.

Yeah, literally I walked home because we lived at the time just, just not far from the hospital. I walked home, I just, I came home, said to my, you know, my wife who just recently had a baby, I'm done, I'm out. She's like, what do you mean? Like I'm done, I can't do this anymore because. And I think this is what we're seeing a lot of people going through with this kind of like the great resignation or the great reset or the great rethink what people are calling it, different things, you know, the more if you have some kind of existential jolt, so, you know, Covid, you know, potential near death experience and just the, I guess induced trauma of a pandemic. And then you have some time at home to stop and think about actually, am I on the right path? Yeah, that's dangerous. It leads you to some big thinking.

I think, purpose that you, I know you do a lot of work on and you speak to people about. And you said something in one of your talks which is around, you know, challenging someone, what is your purpose? And I think the person.

Replied with, you know, look after and feed my children, look after my family. And you. And you were taught with, actually that's just survival. That's, that's not your purpose. And, and from myself, he's been grappling with this. What is my purpose? Over the last few years.

That you're getting in touch with is my purpose to work with these doctors that you actually grew a disdain for. And you were trying to get in touch with your purpose.

Totally. And that was the thing. I got to the point where I was resentful and angry at my customers. And you kind of go, well, that's not going to work out very well for either of us in the long run. And that really for me was, that was sort of, you know, the genesis of my journey to who and what I am today and the work that I'm doing. I literally stopped and tried to work out, well, how have I ended up, you know, who I am and what I'm doing today? I can never remember the song, but there's that famous song. You know, you wake up one day in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife, and you ask yourself, how did I get here? It's like that song was written clearly for middle aged guys having their first existential crisis. Because it's so true. Like, literally, how did I get here? And you start looking back through your journey and what's been. What was really enlightening is that I kind of went through this journey to try and work out, okay, well, why am I here? Am I on the right path? If I'm not on the right path, what even does the right path look like? And I spent about four or five years, like, really delving into this topic of purpose. I didn't even really know it was purpose before. I just, I literally was like, what is the meaning of life? Because seemingly working for large corporations who just want to make as much money as possible and genuinely don't care about human or environmental outcomes, that doesn't seem like something that I want to do for the next 50 years of my life. And then you kind of go, well, what else is there? Because that seems to be what everyone's doing. And so it was kind of through that journey of discovery to try and work out, well, what is the meaning of life? I kind of got into this thing with purpose. It's like, well, hang on a minute. It's kind of seemingly having some contribution. You know, is, is, is, is the place to be. And that contribution needs to be meaningful for you.

It'd be great to avoid this, a midlife crisis. I think that would be good. And maybe that, you know, possibly won't happen to the next generation who get in touch with it because you dealt with failure, right? So you, you've been, you know, ex army. I mean, I can't Imagine fail, you know, failing to get into the officer training or, you know, been kicked out of that. That must have been really hard on you.

Massively. Yeah. And it was a really big part of me, you know, because it's like I had no plan B. It's like, you know, just going to join the army, do, do three or six years, get out, probably get a job in the city, you know, old boys network, went to a good school in the uk. Happy days. And then it's like, well, now what? So, yeah, that was a big part of it. But again, you know, looking back at the journey, you know, why was that something that I really wanted to do? Well, I think when you look at, like, it's sometimes called the golden thread. So if you look back through your life, so it's all part of trying to work out, well, who am I today and who could I be or who should I be? Is to look for the themes that are recurrent through your life. And clearly, I mean, in many ways, volunteering to serve your country, to defend it, is one of the biggest acts of purpose and potentially sacrifice that you can offer yourself, typically archetypically as a male. The, the ideal of sacrifice and putting yourself on the line for the tribe is military service of some description. Whereas archetypically, you'd, I'd argue for the female, the sacrifice was childbirth, because, you know, historically, only until very recent and even recently even now, you know, childbirth is a dangerous experience potentially, if it goes, if it goes catastrophically wrong. So the sacrifice that the archetypical male versus female makes what one is the warrior. I'm going to serve and defend the tribe and the community and the female. It's, it's. I'm going to make the next generation. And so I think it's not uncommon. I think, and particularly a lot of young males, you know, in their pre 20s, when your prefrontal cortex isn't actually on board yet and you can't make great decisions, joining the army is a great place for a young bloke to go to because it's like they feed me, they clothe me and they tell me what to do. Fantastic. So, yeah, that, that failure was massive. That sat with me for many years. It was kind of like, why, why wasn't I good enough? But then the flip side, I kind of look back and go, well, would I really have wanted to go to Afghanistan for 10 years? Not really talking to a lot of my mates who did get into the army, they were like, mate, you didn't miss Anything like it was shit. It's like we really. I would not like to, you know, I would not want to go back. And then, you know, on the flip side, ended up in New Zealand. I've got a beautiful wife, a beautiful daughter. I've got a great life here. So I, I almost have some element of belief in fatalism or, you know, pre destiny that, well, that happened for a reason. You know, I. I could have been blown up in some IED explosion in Helmland Province 10 years ago, 20 years ago. So when you have your heart set on a path that you think is the path that is for you and you don't get it, that that was, I think that was part of the kind of the existential shock. But I was too young to know how to actually utilize it and use it as a springboard forward. But yeah, when I had the second, I guess, existential crisis with the earthquakes and birth of a child, it was like, okay, it kind of. It's all part of a. Yeah, it's all part of something.

We haven't met in person. I've said to you before the recording that actually I've been sort of dwelling, thinking about pondering, contacting you for at least a couple of years. You exude huge amounts of confidence and I love the description of you on the pod on your website, which is.

Someone said you have the thinking ability of Russell Brand, the energy of Tony Robbins and the humor of Greg Davies. Are you fundamentally a really confident out there, extroverted person or what is the real Tim Jones?

That's a great question.

Thank you for listening to episode one of two with the good grow guy, Tim Jones. As you've heard, episode very much focused on business for good and the B Corp movement. The next episode focuses on purpose. Tim has some amazing stuff to say about purpose and finding your purpose.

We haven't met in person. I've said to you before the recording that actually I've been sort of dwelling or thinking about pondering contacting you for at least a couple of years. You exude huge amounts of confidence and I love the description of you on your website, which is.

Someone said you have the thinking ability of Russell Brand, the energy of Tony Robbins and the humor of Greg Davies. Are you fundamentally a really confident out there extroverted person or what is the real Tim Jones?

That's a great question. The real Slim Shady, I think growing up.

I think that the version of me now is not who I've always been. I, I went to, you know, a pretty strict private school in England, where there wasn't really much realm for artistic creation. And, you know, you really being you, you know, you kind of just. You go along. Yes, sir, no, sir. You know, you stand in line, you kind of do what you're told. And I, I do remember, I mean, getting into sales, I spent, you know, 10 years in a sales role. So clearly I'm not a complete introvert.

I'd say, if anything, I was probably an ambivert, which is, you know, where you. You're comfortable with quiet, you're comfortable, you know, with silence, you're comfortable with your own energy. But equally, you don't mind being in an extroverted position where you might have to talk or you might be surrounded by people. So I'd say I'm probably actually an ambivert rather than either either, you know, either extreme. But I do remember when I, when I was going through the thought process, like, I want to get out of medical, I started writing down some things like, you know, what is it that I feel like I'm missing? Or what is it that I feel like I want more of? And creativity and being. Being more me was definitely something that I recall and I guess who I am today. I was thinking about this just the other night. I remember, you know, agonizing over writing my first article on LinkedIn. And this would have been 2016 or 2015 when I first went out on my own. It's like, I should probably start getting some content out there. And I remember being very reticent about even post, like posting something on LinkedIn back in 2015, 2016, because it's kind of like I'm putting me out there and what if people don't like me? So I think the version of me now is massively more energetic and outgoing when I need to be, because I guess, you know, a large part of what the work I deliver is training events. You know, I still love live, which is like the Tony Robbins part of me. I love a room full of people. We get the music going, we get them thinking, we get them you asking deep questions. We have some great outcomes. So, yeah, definitely have that. But equally, I'm. I love going for a walk by myself in the morning, listen to a podcast and not talking to anyone. So, yeah, but I think I feel. I feel more at home as me than I ever have done. And I think partly that was the purpose journey that I went through. I think partly, you know, you get. I'm 43, turning 44 in July. I think as you just get older, you just Realize, know, stuff it. They can just take me as I come. Yeah, I think you lose some of, some of that, you know, from, from a younger age where you are more concerned about what people think about you.

And do you still get nervous when you go on stage? Like you do a lot of that sort of talking?

To be honest, not really. I just love it. I love the energy. If I have a little poster right in front of me above my cameras and TV screens here where it just says, you know, bring the energy and it's got little clips and photos of me delivering training events, I just love it. I really thrive on the, um, you know, most of the. When we're doing training, the consulting is pretty formulaic. Like there's a structure that you kind of pretty much have to follow. But I try and inject little bits of humor and you know, try and make going through a fairly rigorous audit process as humorous and, you know, enlightening as possible. But when it comes to training events, I have a, you know, deck of slides that I use as my. Well, I use them like, you know, they have lots of imagery on them. So it's trying to get people connecting to an idea and what have you. I love that when you get into a live event and people ask a question and you're like, hey, we weren't going to go down this route today, but is everyone cool if we go on a 10 minute detour and we can talk about this? That's what I just love that kind of live energy. And I don't really get nervous at all anymore. I think when I first started I used to be really nervous. Have I got everything? Have I got my laser pointer? Have I got my pens? You know, is the room set up okay? I get nervous if I'm doing a live event about the room set up and making sure that, you know, everything's, you know, does the AV work? But in terms of delivering the content, I think I'm, I'm so comfortable with the content because it's the content that I've spent now probably 10 years thinking.

And refining and focusing a bit on the fact that you're a British born, grew up in the uk as you said before, you're sort of half Welsh, half English. Someone who has done the opposite and kind of walked a similar journey to you, but in an opposite fashion in another hemisphere. Yeah, I actually do. You know, I found, I actually found coming home to New Zealand after a long stretch in the UK quite challenging. I think it was really around identity.

How important is where you're from in.

Terms of your identity, I think it's massive and I think this is one of the big contributions, contributors to the sort of the general modern mental health malaise. I think at the core of it purpose is something that's not mentioned when we talk about mental health crisis. It's kind of like, you know, you just need to either go for a walk, you know, hang out with your mates, it's all going to be okay. You know, I'm being flippant to a degree. I think the core part of why there's such a big mental health crisis is this lack of meaning that most of us get through the work that we do. But a big part of that purpose journey is identity. Like who, who are you? And there's a couple of really good expressions on that. This is a bit of a tongue twister, so I can't remember who coined it, but it's basically I am not who I think I am. I am not who I think you think I am. I am what you think I think I am.

So most of us are living in a world where we're so predisposed as to what other people think about us that we kind of create a different identity. This is where you get some really cool stuff. So the, the word Persona is, I believe it comes from Greek, which edit means mask. So most of us have a Persona which is a mask that we put on to let people think that we are who we want them to think who we are. So I think that that's a big part of it and again, that ties massively into the mental health crisis. So like I said, a big part of the. To sort of summarize the purpose journey, you need to know who am I today and why am I who I am today? And to do that you need to go back and work out what has led you to be who you are today. And this is why, you know, people queue up for days to go and buy tickets for the Star wars movie or the Hobbit movie or the Harry Potter movies. Because the journey of self exploration is the journey that we all need to go on, which is the, which is the purpose journey. Who am I? Why am I who I am and what has led me to be who I am today? So actually going back over your life history and looking at all those critical moments and all those influences that have led you to be who you are today, because as an adult about, you know, 95 of your day to day decision making is created, is run by your subconscious. So it is Subconscious, you know, you do not know that you're doing it, but that thinking or that operating system is put into you through the developmental years of between 0 and 7. So unless you've actually challenged who you are and how you think about everything, you are running on a very old operating system which is not potentially serving you. Some people have a great run through and they are actually very, you know, pure to who they were born or, you know, the potential that they had at their birth. One of my favorite words is genius. So if I said to you, Mark, name me someone who you would consider to have been a genius, who would you. Who, what, what sort of character or name? There's typically a name that comes up when I ask people to name me someone who you would say was a genius.

Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs.

Okay.

I like it. A lot of time we get Einstein or we get like Stephen Hawking, you know, like genius. The word genius, though, doesn't actually mean a clever person. The root word for genius is from Latin and it means spirit. And this is kind of like the key. One of the key parts of the purpose journey is you were born as Mark on a certain day, at a certain time of all of time. And the chances of you being born as you, exactly as you are so infinitesimally small that you should not actually exist. So why, why were you born as you right here, right now? And that version of you that was born has then been corrupted as you've grown up. The school you went to, you know, your parents beliefs and ideals, the stuff that they've inherited from their parents and so on and so forth. You, you had probably. Well, you, everyone has. You would have had, you know, sliding door moments throughout your life. Or do I go to university? Not university, which university? Do I take this job, to take that job? All of that has influenced you to be who you are today. So actually working out who you are and what has constructed you is massive. And again, most people don't want to do that because it's hard and you have to go and fight some demons and you have to go and challenge. Everything that you hold to be true, you need to go and challenge. And not many people want to do that. So there's. I think that's a big part of it, the other part of it of identity. So again, in front of me here, I have a big Welsh dragon flag because, you know, I'm a Jones, let's face it, you know, that's about as Welsh as you can get. I think the other part that in the Sort of Western democratized world that we're really bad at connecting to is our ancestry and working out, you know, where have we actually come from. And what I love about the Welsh flag, so for those of you who don't know what the Welsh flag is, it's got a green bottom half, a white top half with a big red dragon in the middle of it. It's very recognizable. Now, the Red Dragon standard or flag definitely came from a guy called Uther Pendragon, who was a Romano British warlord in maybe somewhere around the four to five hundreds ad. And if King Arthur did exist, it's most likely that Uther was either his dad or an uncle or very close blood relative. Now, Uther Pendragon got the Red Dragon flag from a Roman legion, a cavalry legion that was active in Britain called the Draco Legion. And the Draco Legion got the Red Dragon battle standard from Dacia, which is basically pre, sort of civilization, Romania. And we don't know where or why the Dacians got the Red Dragon from. So I, I have that there because I have a connection that goes back potentially, I mean, who knows, tens of thousands of years to some person in Dacia who decided to put a red dragon on a piece of rock or something or a piece of cloth. And I think it's important to, to think about, well, where have I come from? But also, am I upholding the virtues of every person that has looked at that Red Dragon standard, who's used that as a call to action of something throughout history? And again, I think, but probably it's the medieval history degree coming out with me as well. It's the geeky stuff. You know, we don't, a lot of people just don't even know where they come from. You might know where mum and dad came from or you might know granddad or grandma or great grandparents. I'll really geek out on this one. So a few years back, it was again, just after our daughter was born, I went through on Ancestry.com because my mum had mentioned a couple of things and I was like, oh yeah, let's, let's, you know, we'll pay for an account for it for a bit and we'll, we'll really get stuck into it. And my mum's mum's maiden name was Hall Saul, H A L S A L L. And researching her line, we got back to the Norman conquest. So 1066, the little town that is now called Halsell, before it was called Halsel, had a Saxon name. So Halsel is a Norman name. And the gentleman who named it Halsell was Gillainegel, who was a Norman knight who fought at the Battle of Hastings. And as part of his, you know, I guess show fee or attendance fee, you know, he was gifted this Saxon village. So I have a direct ancestor, Ghislaine de Horsel. I studied the Norman Conquest for in fact the Battle of Hastings 1066 for my dissertation. And I had no idea that I had an ancestor who fought at that battle. And you just kind of go, well that's interesting. You know, was something, you know, why was. And this is a long winded way of getting to the second part of the third part of the purpose journey. So part one is who am I? Do I like who I am? And why am I who I am? Go back, check out through, you know, recent history, your own history and some of your, you know, as far back as you can in your family's history to see for the clues and traces for what's led you to be where you are today. But the second part of it, Troy, the third part of it is, and this is a line from Carl Jung, you know, what is curiosity and why do we have curiosity? Because in, in many ways being curious is quite an evolutionary interesting concept. You know, what's over the edge of this cliff? Oh no, it's thin air. I've just fallen to my death versus, oh, what happens if I rub these two sticks together? Oh, it's created fire. That's quite useful. So you know, curiosity is a double edged sword for, for humanity. But Carl Jung described curiosity as it being the things that you are curious about are, is the potential best version of you calling itself to the future. And I just think like that's such a beautiful way of thinking about it. And that's the third part of purpose is, well, what are the things that you're curious about? Like what's calling you forward? What is it the thing, what is what is taking your curiosity? Because we don't really know how curiosity works. Yeah, so what, why, why, why is it there? So yeah, if you can understand who you are today, what's created your identity, check in on what's led you to be there. And this is, you know, why we have the, the, you know, it's like it's the Phoenix, you know, burning, burning the parts of you that no longer serve you off to leave space for this future version of you, this curious, this curiosity that you can bring in to fill that gap. And that's why, you know, the creation myth stories and the stories of all the main religions across time have some element of a moon God and a sun God that chase each other and kill each other on a 12 hour basis. Every 12 hours you get the opportunity to die and be reborn. And that is the underlying story in all major religions is this idea of a death and a rebirth and that's what we need to be doing. But it's hard and people don't do it.

I was just sitting here thinking and I know you've got the Welsh flag right in front of you and I was thinking about what you just said then and I remember Kiwi abroad in the UK and I'd dial up my Kiwi ness and I would grapple onto Kiwi things, I mean even to the point where I'd meet people in a cafe called Flat White just because that tickled me and they had a board out the front that said yeah, nah, which is totally confusing to Brits, which I love. But then I find myself back in New Zealand and I dial up my Britishness and I let people think I'm British and don't correct them. That kind of, and I've just kind of got comfortable with the fact that that's just the mixed up identity I quite like. And actually my heritage, my heritage is from that as well. So in terms of like going back to a little bit about identity and you know, you're ex army, rugby playing, big strapping lad, lots of confidence but what's your view on like masculinity and you know, like how do you feel as a man? Like do you put much on your masculinity? Do you as it evolved as over time?

That's a great question. You know I, I, where I live I live with my wife and my daughter and my mother in law lives with us in a like a granny flat extension. And typically when we have a family event we add into that mix my mum and my sister in law. So I swim in a pool of estrogen on a daily basis. So I actually kind of feel like yeah, I'm 6 foot 4, 120 kilos, former rugby player, been in the army, but I actually, I don't feel like I'm a, a very manly man in many ways. You know, I'm pretty crap at fixing things. I've got some bookshelves behind me, I got my mate Hayden to put those up because if I put them up they'd have fallen down straight away. But again I guess you could also then go well what is masculinity? And I do like to look back Historically and archetypically, I think in general there are generally roles that men are better suited to because of the nature of what we are and how we turn up in general. Vast, vast generalizations. But in general, men are typically better at tinkering with things. They're less empathetic. Whereas in general females care more about others, they care more about human things and they have high empathy. Because in general, historically, for the last however many hundreds of thousands of years we've been, you know, making kids, it's generally the female that is designed to look after the kids. So yes, it is interesting. You know, I tend to try and steer away from arguments around toxic masculinity and all this kind of stuff. You know, it just comes back to you being comfortable with who you are, you know, and genuinely being who you are. But I think, yeah, it is an interesting global landscape that we're in around the whole concept of masculinity. But I don't think, I don't. Yeah, I don't know, it's hard. I don't think guys should be ashamed to be guys and be, be masculine, but with virtue underneath it. You know, be a good man. Don't just be a man or a bloke. You know, I think there are, there are many. But you know, equally there are stereotypes on both sides that people can fall into. But I think in general, if you can, if you can be a strong masculine figure, you know, we, there's. I can't remember the guy's name now. He wrote it's book called. I think it's King, Warrior. They're kind of like four masculine archetypes. It's King, Warrior, Magician. I can't remember off top of my head. I'll send it through, I'll Google it and send you the links for it.

Yeah, I'll put it in the notes.

He talks about like the four. If you look at the masculine archetype, there's kind of like four generally, historically speaking, there are four sort of masculine archetypes. And yeah, I think we are at risk of throwing out some of these archetypical ideals that have been here for thousands of years that have actually gone us quite a long way. Um, yeah, it's, it's a really tricky one. Um, but I think that we, there are risks of, of masculinity. This whole toxic masculinity, you know, it just, it kind of feels like it's thrown out there really, really quickly without anyone actually kind of, you know. Well, can we actually get a definition of it? Yeah, it's a really interesting one. But I, for me, understand who you are, understand where you've come from, connect to some real, you know, proper values and virtues. You know, I think there's a massive role for men and for better men, male role models, you know, actually stepping up and doing what we're good at doing.

And just as we move towards wrapping up, just focusing a bit on, you know, you're effectively running your own business, got a small team. You admitted to me that you like working from home because you get easily distracted by other human beings. What's your daily discipline? How do you get stuff done and how do you stay disciplined?

It's like I say, I, I love getting out for a walk in the morning, take the dog for a walk, listen to a podcast that just gets my brain flowing, you know, get my body moving, get some vitamin D, get to look at some nice views out here from. I live in halls. Well, in Christchurch, if anyone else knows where that is. But yeah, yeah, get this couple of nice little reserves. I can go for a walk and then I get back, depending on the schedule. Like, sometimes I'll drop my daughter at school. Um, so I typically don't get. I don't normally book any meetings before 10am because if I am going to drop. But my daughter only goes to school at the road, so it's like a five, ten minute walk. But I'll sometimes drop her off and then sort of go for my walk. So I might not be back until half nine, quarter to ten. So then pretty much ten o' clock is when I try and hit my day. And I think, you know, with the just on, as I said before, you know, I was recording my own podcast episode before this and talking to one of our clients, Jamie. When you have a deep sense of purpose, it's actually really easy to get stuff done. And the risk is you just want to keep doing so much stuff that you stop, you know, you stop to stop and you just kind of keep going. So I find generally getting stuff done pretty good. I use a lot of sort of high energy dance music on my little speaker next to me just to get that repetitive kind of rhythmic music going in the background. The challenge I have for me is there are so many things that I want to do, there are so many little projects that I want to do, there are so many, you know, there's just so much to do that it actually just comes down for me to prioritizing what I, what I can do today. That's where I'm still I'm still working on that one. And that's why I'm starting to build a team around me of people that have that skill and that can say, hey, no, Tim, actually, can you just stop doing that? And can he go? And I'm, I'm, you know, I'm never short of an idea. I'm great at coming up with new ideas. The execution is the part that I'm not so good at, but I think that's what makes me a good coach and trainer, is that I can kind of fill that room and we can bring the energy. But if you actually sit me down and ask me to complete a project, not so good at that. But again, that's why I'm trying to build a team around me.

And for those listening, there's so much that you guys offer and you offer podcast. Tell us about that. Tell us about if you're a business leader and you sit here thinking, I want a piece of Tim's energy or I want to be a B Corp. Like, how do, how do people find you?

Yeah, so we've got a podcast, it's called the Be Better Podcast. So we, it's been interesting because we, because we do offer a range of services, but we've actually, I guess, solidified it a bit where essentially pretty. From now on, if you want to work with us, we start with B Corp. So that's kind of like our entry level. So if anyone wants to. Is curious about B Corp, wants to learn a bit more, we've got tons of free resources on the website. Go and check out the podcast. We've got a YouTube channel where there's some videos up there explaining, explaining kind of what B Corp is. And we're just about to start tidying that up and getting that a bit more of a better order so it's easier to sort of find some of that content in general. Where we're starting with most companies now, let's start with B Corp. Let's get a benchmark of the good that you are doing. Let's understand where you could maybe start doing a bit more good and then we can look at the rest of it. So let's take a snapshot of what you're doing. Then we can talk about purpose stuff. Let's go deeper on your purpose. Then we can talk about some sales training maybe to help you scale, get more revenue in so that you can do more purpose. So. So that's typically where we start. Obviously we're open to people if they just want to do some purpose work. With us or whatever else. But yeah, we're generally starting with the B Corp stuff and that's made our business a lot easier to manage by just focusing on sort of the one message and the one offer to the market in general. So. But yeah, happy to connect on LinkedIn. That's pretty much where I spend my social media time.

And just really quickly, a couple of quick fire questions if you don't mind. What are you reading? What are you reading? What are you listening to?

Oh my word, what am I not reading? I've got a mate of mine, Carl Davidson, he probably twice a week he sends me, oh, you need to buy this book. I'm like, dude, I still haven't bought the one that you sent me two years ago because you've sent me 50 others at the minute. I actually don't have a book open. I'm really just getting into podcasts at the minute. I just find it, yeah, like really easy to, to get information whilst I'm walking. I guess it's like trying to double up that time. A couple of the podcasts that I've been listening into, there's a good one by a guy called Scott Barry Kaufman called the Psychology Podcast, he's got some, he's a clinical psychologist and he interviews a whole lot of other sort of psychologists and other sort of brain experts to try and understand what's going on. I've been listening to, yeah, quite a few kind of Jungian ones. There's one, what's it called? Well, yeah, the Jungian. It's a terrible name to say a Jungin anthology podcast. So they, they post all these interviews from quite often from many years ago, like original cassette recordings of Jungin type people talking stuff. That's a good one. Guilty pleasures would be Joe Rogan. I, I, you know, we're not supposed to talk about Joe Rogan. Hashtag fake news. I don't know. But to be honest, I think a lot of people that, that lambasted him. It's like, have you actually listened to any of his episodes? No. Okay, right, we'll go back and listen to all his episodes and, and then work out if he's actually a racist because I don't think he is. But he interviews a lot of different esoteric people.

Yeah, brilliant. And yeah, we're both on anchor, so effectively we're on Spotify. So there you go. Check us out.

Yeah, yeah, I think, I mean, I should say as well, the big thing book wise at the minute is I'm actually, I've started writing a book. So I've laid it out. I've got the chapters laid out. So my main focus at the minute is actually to create a book. The working title is Get Purpose at Work, Looking at organizational purpose and B Corp and you know, what is it all about. So at the minute that's my main focus is actually trying to birth my own book rather than read. I've got another little note in front of me that says create and it's got consume sort of striked out or struck out. So it's like do more creation, less consumption of other people's content.

Yeah, fantastic conversation. We started talking about B Corp and I'm as passionate as you about that.

Not.

Not quite an accident yet, but, you know, absolutely believe in business beyond profit. So congratulations on the work that you're doing. Really good conversation.

Thanks.

Thanks for sharing your story.

No worries. Thanks for the opportunity.

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, www.growgood.co. until next time, be better.