#57 Ben G the OG G Better Than Kenny G On Why Now Is The Time To CoGo!

Hey, and welcome back to the latest episode of the Be Better podcast. And with me today I have Ben Gleissner from Cogo. Ben, how's it going? So, yeah, for people living under a rock who haven't heard of Cogo or Ben Gleissner, I was thinking actually just before I came on, it's like, you know, there's, there's Kenny G, there's Ali G and then there's Benny G. And Benny G is the OG G that you need to get to know if you don't know Benny G. So, yeah, who are you?

Yeah, great to be here and on the pod. I've listened to many episodes and it's good to now be sharing a bit of my story. So, yeah, I'm Ben Gleisener, I guess have had a history working in government and startups and charities, all with a bit of a focus around, you know, sustainability. Don't even know if you know this, Tim, but when I was owning a cafe down in Dunedin in the late 90s, so 90 for people that, you know, are born in this millennium. 1990.

1990, yeah, exactly.

We, we decided that it was a good idea to set up an alternative music festival to the gathering, when the gathering was the big, massive, you know, New Year's festival in New Zealand and it was very, very waste intensive and they were sponsored by Coke and by V. And so while I had my cafe in the need and we decided with the German to set up an alternative music festival in Golden Bay promoting sustainable development, zero waste, permaculture. And I think we started, I suppose, thinking about how businesses could be a force for good in 1999. Launching, launching visions first of all. But yeah, in the cafe as well, we were always promoting, you know, the ideas around paying good wages, managing sort of thinking about supply chain, thinking about, you know, ownership of the, of the cafe and giving staff a voice. So this is 98, 99 and I guess, yes, since then a whole bunch of things which we can talk about, but I guess it's been whatever that is now, 20, 24, 25 years.

Yeah, I mean that's like ahead of the curve.

It was really. Yeah, it was.

I believe the term CSR was invented in about 2007, so corporate, socially. 2007, B Corp came into existence. 2006. Yeah. So, man, you have been in the trenches. So, yeah, you are literally the original gangster sustainability, dude.

There were many, there were many others. I just think that, you know, it was, it felt like the right thing to do. Owning the cafe initially and then the music festival. But yeah, then I sort of got a little bit disillusioned about like, well, how much impact we were really having. We were like, people would come to the music festival and we had like, you know, during daylight hours would be a single person on the 14 different way stations around the festival site telling people how to manage like different waste streams and educating people as an example. And so then they go home and they'll be like, well, do they actually do anything about that? You know, so the ability to sort of measure impact was always a challenge and it was a grassroots, literally, you know, music festival. You know, we had Trinity roots play in 2003. That was probably the highlight. But anyway, it's 99, 2000, 2000, 1, 2, 3. But after a while I was like, I don't know if we're really creating enough impact. So I thought well, you know, what institution, where should I go basically? What, what should I do? And I thought, well you know, the government in theory has a public good sort of, you know, focus and they've got a lot of money so maybe I go back to university and, and end up sort of working in government, which I did. So I did my undergrad in environmental science and master's environmental economics on climate. Looking at climate economics. So in 2005, yeah, another, another issue which is now becoming pretty normal is I did my master's on carbon offsetting and whether we should be using carbon offsets. That was 17 years ago now. So yeah, then I went to Treasury. Yeah, I know, exactly.

You're so ahead of, you're so ahead of it. So what, what's going to happen?

I'll tell you, I'll tell you. Everyone will know the carbon footprint will be optimizing, businesses will be having a massive return on investment for doing good around social, environmental, blah, blah, blah. But anyway, let's rewind. But yeah, so that was 2005, six and a treasury.

So was that what you, you studied.

Uni in Wellington here and yeah, that was my masters did. Then went to treasury, worked on a bunch of things. Probably the two main ones were around climate change. So New Zealand's emissions trading scheme and the UN negotiating team for New Zealand on climate. And then I spent two years leading the development of the living standards framework which is, you know, the government's well being stuff now. So that was also relatively early. That took, that took another bloody eight years to really sort of, you know, start. But the well being budget, we're about to have one here obviously has come out of that work. So that was. Yeah, that was my stint in government for years, seven years. But it was pretty like, oh man, things don't really move that fast in here.

Well, the stuff, the stuff that you were working on is sort of now finally. So. Yes, it's like almost like say 20 odd years later. Oh, there's probably someone dusting off one of your reports now in, in Treasury. Who's this guy? Ben Gleisner.

Exactly. Yeah. One of the things on the UN stuff was all about how we should distribute the responsibility in countries to reduce emissions. Like what sort of like carbon budgets effectively each country should have. And that was 2000 sort of 8 and 9. And yeah, I still think we just, I don't know, we're still mucking around way too much on that. Anyway, so that was treasury and I was a good friend of mine, Melissa. We did our masters together at uni. I'd gone to treasury, she went to work at Ministry of Environment and us and a group of friends from uni. You know, this is sort of 2000 and maybe 2009, 10 time. We were like, man, it would be great to do something that actually we could have control over and could move fast and get things happening rather than waiting for, I don't know, lots of other bureaucracy to take over. So, yeah, we've. We founded a charity called the 42 Collective and then in 2010 we launched, among other things during the years, we launched Conscious Consumers, which was an app that helped you find cafes that were sort of sustainably minded, let's say. So that was.

Yeah, I think I've still got my old. I should have put it on. I've got that, the, the Conscious Consumer T shirt.

Yeah, yeah, I'm a conscious consumer. And I guess, yeah, that was 2010.

And you know, really Coco Now, 13 years on, we were a charity for the first six years and then we 2017 we incorporated as a company and we've been sort of building the company we rebranded because people couldn't spell conscious.

Yeah, people didn't want to be a consumer really. So the, the brand Conscious Consumers has sort of been replaced by Coco, which people can split and, and in Latin actually means to bring people together and move them forward. Coco.

Yeah.

And it also is going to be a verb which will mean about how do we take action on climate and, and mobilize it. So like let's coco. We often say let's go solve the climate crisis. Let's go. So yeah, that's, that's where we've got to. But there's been a lot of work in the last 30 years to get there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so conscious consumers initially, if I remember the, the origin stories, because I guess for full transparency, we, we did do some work together. I think it was around about 2017, around about then. So yeah, I came in and did some sales training for you and Melissa and then I kind of ended up being part of the team for about a year doing some sales stuff, knocking on some doors myself to, to spread the word. But yes, to begin with, the sort of 42 collective early conscious consumers, it was you and Melissa and a couple of others just knocking on doors in cafes Hospital around Wellington.

The idea was that there were cafes that had been, you know, were doing good things. They were, you know, paying a staff a living wage. They were B Corp certified. You know, they were. There weren't many back then, but there were definitely a few. And the idea behind it is, look, you're doing these good things. You're letting people bring their own cup and giving them a discount for doing that. Why not like promote it? And we as a platform will help you reach those conscious consumers out there. And right at the beginning from, from the whole thesis is like you, you're gonna get businesses move in part if they can see the business case for that as in, you know, paying a living wage or effectively doing these good things by promoting them onto Cogo's app. I'm seeing new people come into my business that weren't there coming already and people that were there already spending more money because I think that's what really will shift the world. Right. If we can prove that, you know, being good business is good for business, like in a really, really, you know, compelling and data driven way. So yeah, downloaded the app when you visited a business, you'd scan a QR code. So again, we have people, people were scanning QR codes or actually in fact not in many cases, but the idea was people would get a QR code like, I mean they do it if there's a massive pandemic and this law is legally required.

Yeah, yeah.

So again, people scan the QR code. When you signed up, you'd say, I care about, you know, what matters to me is animal welfare and plastics or you know, living wage. And so you added a little bit of insight about your values and then when you scan the QR code, your information was passed on. So it's a bit like being able to register that these things manage to me business. And you might not know that. I'm stoked that you're, you know, paying a living wage is whatever. But here, scan. And so the business then collected data on like, wow, there's a lot of people that care about these things. Often, often you'd get like a Reward. So every 10th scan you got like a little voucher for a badger at coffee in the business. So it was a sort of, you know, rewards loyalty just using the same tricks. So yeah. Started 10 cafes on Cuba street in Wellington and slowly grew and expanded and different, you know, sectors of restaurants and then clothing and. Yeah. Then we added payment data, which is, it was a big innovation as well.

Yeah, that was, I think.

Yeah, yeah.

When I was hanging out with you, that was kind of like the new thing. Yeah, I mean, I just thought what you had in that, in the conscious consumer app when I was there was a, just, it was such a genius idea. It's like capture the data of the spend, tell the, the businesses, hey, did you know that there are X number of people? Well, initially it was like businesses who were, who were on this, on the program or, or signed up to be part of it. Hey, here's some data about what's going on. And I think it was like Mexicali was a great example where they, they went, all of a sudden they were like, oh, wow, everyone cares about free range food. We had no idea. And then they literally transitioned all their chicken to be like free range chicken. And I just such a genius. It's like multiple tails wagging multiple dogs to change behavior.

I mean, the Brogan Vagabond here in Wellington is a bar that people will know that live here. And they actually, yeah, were another case study where it was like they registered with Coco consumer. So and as soon as you register as a business, you basically say, I consent to having the information. Now we moved away from scanning QR codes to the, to the users of the app just being able to register the 16 digits on their credit or debit card. So it's not, you can't use the information to, you know, buy anything. So it was all pretty low risk. But what it did though is it allowed us to then see when you spent money in the business, so it wasn't requiring you to QR code. So that was a definite, you know, a game changer. Game changer for us. And that's when we incorporated the company actually, because we were like, hold on, this, actually this transaction data is a really, you know, important thing.

Yeah.

But yeah, Rogan Vagabond was like, man, I didn't realize there was you know, 25 grand a month spent in Wellington by just these group of conscious consumers that care about Living Wage and they spend that in the restaurants and bars. Right. And so they were like, geez, maybe we should go Living Wage. Oh, that's not. And then there was also like, I don't know, 10 grand or 5 grand of people that shop with them that also cared about Living Wage. And they were like, geez, that's a pretty good market. And so they went to Living Wage. We promoted it to the customer base, and I think they found 50 new people spent money in the business they hadn't spent it before in the next month, and the existing customers spent roughly twice as much money as they had. Now that's like 2017. Like, it was the first example of like, now that is really the underlying sort of thesis of like, if we can show businesses. Yeah, yeah, this is the opportunity, big opportunity. And again, same with B Corp and others, sort of, you know, great, great movements. It would be really good to be able to show that, like, shift in the demand, shift in the consumer. So yeah, that was a. That's been huge.

Yeah. And the other one I thought was really cool. We probably shouldn't name a name on this one, but I do distinctly remember the brand. And they, they had a retail shop on Ponsonby Road and we signed them up for a trial and in the first month they had zero spend. And I remember we going, oh shit. Like, we were kind of really hoping we. And then we had a brain where we go, hang on, this is genius. Because actually we can show them anonymized Data of the 10 other stores on Ponce B who are getting a spend. So you think you are a conscious brand that people want to buy with, but you're not getting any of the dollar spend, but there's a shop two doors down from you that is getting money. And that for me was like, this is genius. Like, we can, we can, you can show the retailer like, you think you're doing good, but. But no one believes you or. No, no one's buying into your marketing. Yeah, I just, it's, it's. And I guess we'll talk into how the app is morphed, but. Yeah, I just, I thought what you had was, it was such a genius tool of, of connecting the consumer to. Or the, the customer to, to the retailer. Yeah, I just. Whether it was just. I don't know, I kind of wonder whether you almost need to keep it going or resurrect it or sell the idea.

Yeah, I mean, Someone else.

Because I think it's such a, I think right now with, with company with like the vast majority of B corps are fmcg consumer facing brands and I think there's some, there's still something there that could be.

We moved into the UK so we sort of proved it out enough and one of the challenges was always like, well hold on a second, you've only got like 60 businesses or 200 businesses. Like you know, is it going to get enough consumers? I wanted to use it. And so when we moved to the uk we actually slightly changed the business model where instead of listing only those businesses that had sort of signed up and consented to effectively like have this data shared. In other words they have to actually what's called consent their data sharing as well as the consumer in the uk, we decided to yes, list those ones in a premium way. Like there'd be, you know, three or 400, but then we got about 30,000 others from all the different accreditation associations like Living Wage, Social Enterprise, all these things. So we listed everyone. So every single business that was doing things through these third party certifications was listed including things like, you know, food rescue and things like that. So we partnered with all these other, like we're an aggregator really of different sustainability. That was great. But again you still had to get the consent from the business to be able to give them any insight because they actually had to sign up. So we're sort of still limited in our ability and you only ever saw the information on the one card or the card that they sort of registered. And so that's when we decided, look, we need to sort of. And one reason I moved to the uk, the family was open banking was coming, which was it's a regulatory sort of regime which says, hey banks, you shouldn't own your, you know, the data of your customers, that should be their data and they should just choose how, you know, they can use it and share it. And so in 2019 the conscious consumer app was rebranded actually Coco. And we basically, instead of having you register your one debit credit card, we actually allow you to connect your entire bank data and we then were able to see everything that you spent and we didn't need the businesses to sign up as well.

Yeah.

So then we were like, wow, we've got information on every spend you do. Then what we did was built the first Living Wage wallet that's called, which is basically we're able to analyze the two and a half thousand Living Wage stores in the uk. We, we, we figured out what how they showed up in the transaction data. And then we were able to show you as a user, like, hey, last month, 15% of your spending was living wage. The month before was 13, the month before was 12. And we're able to do just what you described before about saying, hey, did you know you're shopping in these restaurants and cafes? Did you know that around the corner is a living wage wine? And then we could nudge people. And so, yeah, that followed through the nudge. Yeah, same old thing. Sort of recommending, recognizing people for the good stuff they're doing. So we call that a recognition engine. And then recommending things they could do and shifting spending to improve. And that was living wage. And then we, we were like, this looks pretty cool, but still hard to make a business model in it. You know, they're already paying money to be living wage, and so why would you pay more money to, you know, get some. And so that's when we decided to build carbon footprint data inside as well. So instead of telling you how much you're spending in living wage in 2019 or early 2020, we launched a product that allowed you to see the carbon footprint of every single bit of spending you were making. And that sort of was history. And the banks looked at that and said, wow, that's a pretty cool app, but can you build that into our own banking apps? So NatWest and others, comm bank in Australia, the first two big ones, and that's what we've been doing the last couple of years, is instead of like getting, you know, I think we got like 30, 40,000, maybe people in two and a half years to sort of sign up and register their, their payment or register their banking data on. On coco in the UK, I think we got 20,000 people in NetWest do it within two weeks.

Yeah.

And now it's like, now there's hundreds and thousands of people in just that one bank, NatWest, using our product to help them manage their carbon footprint.

Nice.

Yeah, that's what we've been doing. Yeah, yeah. Scale, scale.

Yeah.

And, you know, money now and business. You know, banks pay money because they want to attract customers and they want to give them services like this. And we launched last year with zero a product for SMEs as well, to help small businesses do the same. And yeah, it's, it's all go at.

Cogo, we say it's always all go at Kogo. Yeah. And because I guess that the challenge with the conscious consumer model that I think we always reflected on was you kind of it's the classic Napoleon challenge of fighting a war on two fronts because you're trying to do consumer acquisition and B2B acquisition and it's hard to do both. And then your messaging is different for both groups and like it was like that chicken and egg where you need more customers on the platform before you can attract the business, but you need businesses before you can track the customers. So I was talking, I was talking to someone else about this the other day in Auckland. I can't remember who it was now, but similar. They were like, they were like, they were really excited.

It can really work. Flywheel guys.

Yeah, but it's getting that flywheel. Yeah. Because they were saying, oh this is, we've got a really great opportunity here because we, we can, we've got a, we've got a double edged business model. And I was like, yeah, just be careful what you wish for there. I said go and look at them.

They'Re amazing when they work.

Yeah.

It's just very, very hard to build up both sides. It's a chicken egg thing. So yeah, in the end in some ways now, yeah, we, we, you know, we, we don't. And I'll talk a bit more about I suppose which other way around the chicken, whichever one came first. But there is a little bit of a marketplace model we're starting to. But, but basically our product now is we help small to medium enterprises and households to measure and reduce their carbon footprint and we do that through banking applications, accounting software and soon you'll start seeing things like supermarket shopping apps and online and restaurants and Uber. Who knows? Everyone. And it's going to, it's coming right. People have seen the climate emergency and they want to go to bed at night feeling like they're doing their bit. Or as a small business they're being asked by their, you know, large corporate like Spark or something to be like, hey, we've committed to net zero. You now as a small business that supply to us need to tell us what you're doing on this stuff. So I think there's a, there's just a huge opportunity, you know. Yeah, yep.

No 100%. I mean scale just seems is the thing that's, that's driving you. I feel it's, it's like, you know, hey, I'm doing, I'm having, you know, small meetings in treasury here and I'm influencing 10 people who actually aren't going to do anything and then hey, I'm going to get a group of us, we'll go. Like I said, we'll take control. We can do a bit more. I also remember we used to have some good conversations around and it always seemed to be like half the team was split because it was, it was kind of like, hey, look, if we can, if we can sign up Ben's Organic Juicery on Cuba street, which is Ben doing his thing, making 50 juices an hour, like, totally. We want them on board because that's a great business. We want to support them. But equally, if we got McDonald's on board and they converted all their food to be free range, like, the scale of change of impact that you can have is clearly, you know, way bigger. So, yeah, like his scale, the scale of impact, like, has that always been something that's driven you or has it just been incremental? Or like, have you always been. Did you always have a vision of going painting?

Yeah, I guess.

The world on the big scale.

Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, with the app, the idea was that, you know, there'd be an Airbnb or a Tick Tock or, you know, that's still a product. That's a definite possibility, as you said, that people might well decide in the future that actually they don't want to necessarily have this stuff through their bank and stuff. They want to, they want to do it and, you know, maybe they'd pay a little bit or maybe we could, you know, make money when we recommend solar panels and things like that. So there definitely still is a B2C play. But as I said, the key number is it took literally two and a half years to get 20 something thousand people, you know, to connect their banking information to the app, you know, and in two weeks we had that number of people using it in that way. So back to the, like, change in the world. Like, we know we now have hundreds of thousands. I think one of the metrics we all. We was three big metrics for us as a company around sort of impact or like lead indicators of impact, number one, we call it. And there was an impact model. You can jump on our website and check it out. Big theory of change. We've done a lot of work on this space, which is like number one most important starting metric is how many people are one click away from using our product. So sitting in their banking app, it's on their, like, accounting system and they all had to do is press one button and then it's done. And so we're currently sitting at around 16 million people one click away. Yeah, so that's, that's a Good start. At 16. We've got a target of 100 million by the end of this financial year. So that's where we're on track for some of our bank partners like IMG in the Netherlands. They've got 35 million customers, you know, just one bank. And some of the American banks obviously pretty big. So anyway, 100 million that's measured we call. Oh, sorry, we call those potential. The next metric down is what we call measure. So people who have literally clicked the button and are now starting to measure their carbon footprint have seen it, have seen that, like aha. Holy crap. That was, that was a bit of a flight that I took two weeks months ago. That's whatever it is, the insight on that carbon footprint and that's currently sitting just under a million. And it's really amazing to think about the, the, you know, the fact that NatWest has got whatever 5 million or so that they're seeing like more than 10%, like that's one of the most exciting numbers to think about, which is 1 in 10, 1 in 8 people like who have the option to press the button are pressing it. So that's that. And then, then the third one is what we call reduce, which is really what it's all about, which is, well, how many people are actually reducing their footprint and then they break down even further to be like, well, were they doing that already? Yeah. Is this a new thing they're doing? And then how much can we attribute our platform and our product to actually that reduction? So an attribution metric. But imagine, you know, in a year or so's time we'll just literally be able to report to our shareholders like here's a real time data on the actual number of carbon tons we're saving per minute. And you know, and I think that, that, that's, that's, that's the sort of gold. And not just that we're saving but that we're seeing, yeah I guess solar panel companies and EV and plant based vegetable whatever the hell it is. Like we see all the demand for that and then we, then, then the key thing for us as a business is suddenly you've got 500 million people who want to do something about climate or small businesses. They're then going to say, well, what can I do? Where, where are my solar panels? Where are these things? And so that's where I said that marketplace play will come in and we, we'll be bringing all these different low carbon providers to, to, to, to demand, which nobody else will have, which is nice. Yeah, that's the Plan anyway, love it.

Connecting the two.

We want it to be owned by everybody as well. So all the staff get shares in Coco and we want to decentralize the ownership of the business. So it's not just we don't have any private equity or venture capital money. We want it to be owned by the people, for the people. So that model of sort of decentralized ownership is a big part of what we do too. Yeah.

And yeah, I am a shareholder as well.

Like me, someone says to me, don't own many shares. And I'm like, well that's not why we're really doing this thing. We're actually trying to drive some impact in the world. So yeah, it's definitely a. There's about 250, you know, small shareholders. That's what, that's what happens, that's how it's made up. And the largest shareholder is a charity called the 42 collective which we.

Is where it all began. So I guess just, just on that I'm keen to dig into a bit more about sharing ownership. But the transition from charity to limited company, obviously, because that's a question some people are asking relatively frequently. They're thinking about startup. It's like, oh, you know, I want it to be impact driven so should I do it as charity or you know, should I do as a limited company and then look at a B Corp or try and create some kind of social impact, social enterprise setup? I guess when you started the 42 collective, B Corp wasn't a thing. So it was pretty binary around, you know, we're trying to do good, makes sense to be a charity. So was it purely. It was the commercial reasoning behind wanting to scale and have the B. Have a, have an entity that led to that transition to being a company.

It was mostly capital, basically, access to be able to raise money. So we've raised something like 20, just under 20 New Zealand million. So yeah, we've raised quite a bit of money to help grow this business and what it is. And you can't really do that as a charity. You can get grants and we got about half a million of grants when we were charity conscious consumers. But it was the ability to sort of, yeah, scale and grow faster than the revenues that you're generating would allow you to. So yeah, that was the main reason.

Yeah, yeah, which makes sense because yeah, I've been, I've been involved over the last few years with a charity down here called the HARPAI Access Card and they're a very comm. The whole precept Was we wanted to set it up as a commercially facing charity where we get consistent revenue to deliver great services. But when you go to funders as a charity who's making money, they look at you a little bit sideways and go, yeah, but you're, you're getting money, so why do you need money? It's like, well, because we're a charity, we don't get enough money. You know, we're. And so, yeah, I totally get. And I think that that is kind of. Generally, I guess I'm biased towards B Corp, but in general, I'm like, get yourself as a limited company and have a business that works, that creates impact, rather than being stuck in that sort of quagmire of trying to get funding for a charity, which is then really hard to get investment and all the rest of it.

Yeah, it's like the model of, yeah, it's hard. It's the. And social enterprise, which we were as well, initially, like that whole challenge of, like, in the uk, the definition of social enterprise requires asset law and da, da, da, da, which means you can't really raise money or it's difficult to raise money. And so, yeah, it is a struggle, but we definitely are all.

Are all supportive of businesses that are wanting to, you know, generate profit and be a. Be a business that use that, you know, to drive impact. We think that's. That we would never have got, you know, 16 million people one click away from carbon footprint, just trucking along as a charity. And I guess that comes down to scale. Yeah, yeah.

And I think, yeah, having conversations with some of the large entities that you're having, if you were a charity, dare I say, the conversation probably wouldn't have even happened. Whereas if you're a business with investors, you've got some cachet behind that to be able to sort of say, look, you know, we're actually a real deal. I think there's still that impression. And I know Kilmartic Enterprises down here struggled with that. When they're trying to talk to bigger institutions about getting some support and investment, it's like, yeah, but you're a charity, which most people just think charity, you've got bad finances and you're run by volunteers who don't really know what they're doing. Not that I'm saying that's the actual case, but I think that's the perception of the business world as it's.

Yeah.

So I mean this, because what you've built. And I frequently reflect back on my time working with you and I think when on My last zoom session with the company, I just sort of reflected. I remember saying, you know, Ben, you are just this incredible human because you've got the CEO mentality of like, we're getting shit done. You're ruthlessly focused, you've adapted and changed the business as opportunities turn up. But you are grounded with this sense of purpose and wanting to make a difference. And there's not many CEOs like you around. So have you all like, where does that come from? Like, have you always been. Yeah, that way, like were you bought up and raised purpose or.

I was gonna say, yeah, these things. It definitely starts right, right back then. So yeah, we grew up in England, Dad's a doctor, Mum was a social worker and our management consultant. And we grew up like literally one of the first memories was like campaigning for nuclear disarmament on green and common. And so like. Right.

Started pretty early.

Early, yeah.

Rallies and stuff. So yeah, the first memory I remember thinking was like.

Yeah, there's definitely a really big, I don't know, I guess value sort of set that sits there. My dad was a Quaker, so we never had TV growing up for example and we got to like, you know, travel around the world and we lived for one year, traveled the world when I was nine, into India, into China, into places. So I think grew up, yeah, quite.

I don't know, I said it's quite open minded and, and acknowledging that, you know, the world was not probably quite going in the direction. Lots of social justice stuff, I suppose. And yeah, so that's why I was like, you know, I think thinking about those cafes and restaurants when, when I first bought them and around it being like, yeah, well, we gotta create impact. And again, I don't know, it feels definitely like it's not that my parents now, I mean that, you know, my dad's actually a big extinction rebellion fan so he's 88 now and his electric bike and cruising the streets and making havoc or causing havoc. But he is a sort of psychiatrist and you know, like, you know, like a, you know, he's not. Yeah, interesting chat, let's say. But I think it was definitely a family. And then I think, yeah, I guess it just feels good to go home at night and hang out with kids and stuff knowing that, you know, you're doing, doing good work for other people. That's what, you know, makes, I don't know, makes me feel good. So. And I think the business side of it as well, I think for doing work with charities and stuff for a while, it's like you know, what's going to change the world and walking in government similarly, I'm like, I don't know if a charity model will, I don't know if the government will. What does change the world is like, is, is Uber, is Google. It'll be, you know, AI. It, it's technology. You know, technology is what's going to drive the change. So I'm, you know, was pretty bullish on that. Even the 2010 people were like, are you sure we need some more apps? There's so many apps out there.

I'm like, look, this one's a bit different.

It's a little bit different. And also like, it's like, no, no technology yet. So we're big on technology data and yeah, in the future we'll be able to recommend, you know, hey Tim, you've joined up Kiwi bank customer and it'll literally, it'll know so much about all of your spending patterns, about people like you, your area and live in and it will just literally be able to recommend and reinforce the good stuff you're doing. It's like a massive sort of behavioral science, sort of big data driven thing that, you know, almost like plug the AI machine and say your goal is to get this person to reduce their footprint by 5% year on year. That's what we need to do as a species. And it will literally prompt and nudge and recommend and reinforce all stuff to you to get you, to get you on that path. And that's what we need as a species really if we're going to not have a billion refugees knocking on, you know, country's doors saying why the hell weren't you doing anything about this thing?

Yeah man, yeah. So you're definitely doing, definitely doing it at scale and, and I guess they're talking to Google. So you, you've like, I say you've had like, you seem to be tripping over investment in the business. You've like, it seems to be like almost daily.

It could be good if there was money. Like, yeah, like it's not the easiest time at the moment, right? Be honest around raising cash because it's just capital markets where they are and it's been, obviously, you know, it has been pretty challenging but we've also just made sure we don't just keep on spending money for spending sake and we're not like, you know, we're, you know, we're getting pretty close to profit. In many cases that's seen as not a good thing for a tech company. You should literally be burning Money, they say so yeah, we're not burning as much money as we were but that's good and bad.

Yeah.

But yeah, I think it's just also about like. Yeah. Being able to sort of bring the team along and as you said about the shareholding, you know, stuff getting shares and yeah, we're all transparency around the company. We didn't mention it as well but everybody at Kogo, including you when you were there, everyone knows what everyone's paid because it's fully transparent. So every single bank account, every single balance, every single pay point, every single everything is all transparent in Coco. So you have a. Yeah, you build quite a lot of trust within the organization and with shareholders and yeah, we're doing something's different. Right. It's not, it's not easy. There's not like a. Yeah, there's no playbook. It's not a playbook. It's not a traditional like company where you like get your three private equity investors and then they control the thing and run the thing. This is like. Yeah, it's a bunch of.

And then, and then you as the CEO exit is the unicorn founder with your billion dollars and everyone else and you, and you do. I mean you. I can't remember there was a famous startup, it was in the media of maybe two or three years ago about how they just burnt all this money and they just had parties in Vegas every weekend and they were just literally like just throwing the cash in the pool and. Yeah, you're not doing that which is good.

We're not doing that yet.

Not yet. Next year. Yeah.

No, no, no, no, no.

Well, you're the first guy. You're the first guy.

You know, I'm like, you know, we're not, we're very, very conscious about. I don't know, that's probably the problems of the world. They spending too much money on stuff you don't really need or want and you know we're not very efficient at driving well being and happiness is the truth. Anyway.

Yeah, no 100% but yes as part of that. So you was it. You won an award which got you the placement in the Google office.

We were one of the first year in Google for startups in the uk. When I moved to the uk we got a, an office that they gave us for free and that was handy in London rental prices and. Yeah. So we were like we're in the Google for Startups Impact accelerator I think it was called or yeah. Climate. No it was Impact. It wasn't just Climate. Yeah, the first one they did in 2019. So that was great. That gave us the space and yeah, I mean, as I said on the outside it definitely looks, you know, there's a lot of positive narrative. I'm still like, we've got to show attribution of behavior change at scale and you know, and I guess in some ways that's like, if you do that, we're on the way as a species to solve climate change. I suppose it's a rather high goal, but that is what really matters. The fact that we, you know, win an award or, you know, raise some money, it's. It's sort of almost like what matters most is that we feel confident we are driving, measurable and, you know, meaningful reductions. Yeah. And so that's our gold star.

Yeah, yeah, no, totally. Any highlights of the the UK time and hanging out with Google in the same office or was it just other.

No, no.

Startups I know weren't there. I mean I lived in Dulwich, would bike to work about half an hour across London. That was a bit of a highlight every day. Yeah.

Seeing some of the sites, see some.

Of the sights here now. It was, that was great. There's a lot of positive things about uk, but I was very happy to come home and happy to get my kids back into school here and you know, you know, crazy stories but you know, they were allowed to go to the toilet when they wanted to, not when the bell went and things. English schooling. I was schooled in England for a few years. I must have forgotten it. Blanked it from the memory.

Yeah.

And so B Corp came on the radar. I vaguely remember when I was hanging out with you and I think actually I even opened your account on the B Corp. You may well assess me.

We were already helping you. Also started your, you know, your current business. Probably in our business in some way, but no, we, yeah, we've seen B Corp around a lot. I've been connected with them in the UK and even in the States. Founders just, you know, they know about us. Conscious consumers. Obviously, you know, we, we would come across B corpse and that. So yeah, we, we were sort of an obvious choice. You know, we're living wage, we're B Corp. We're.

You know, we do a lot of. Bunch a lot of stuff. But yeah, it definitely felt like the right move. We've obviously recently put it into our constitution and our purpose, we had a pretty good purpose in there and stuff. So it's helping us, I think just like guide, I guess in some ways. We've always been this way, you know, we've always been in a B Corp before it was called a B Corp. Yeah. But we're, you know, we've been, you know, we're advocates for it. We would love to, as you say, show that being B Corp means, you know, you are seeing a, you know, a good business case around customers wanting to buy from you because they believe in what you're doing and stuff. And that's, that's just what I guess we'd like to see in time is that. Yeah. Is the B Corps, you know, get more business because they deserve it.

Yeah. And his, his B Corp certification has that. In conversations you're having with like these big banks around the world, does B Corp come up? Is that.

Has that customer here? So they're our only New Zealand bank customer. And yeah, they definitely talk a lot about it. When we were sort of part, you know, working with them on the carbon stuff, they were in the process of just having adjustment certified and we were like, great. And I think it was part of the reason they were like, oh, this is something that matters. Our staff care about this stuff, you know, and actually like, how can we now build, I suppose, products that help us not just do it within our own operations, sort our customers. And so, yeah, I think it's a, it's a great initial, like conversation starter around, you know, this whole impact and doing good for the world and not just about how we do good as a business, but how we can support our customers in the case of banks. So. Yeah.

Yeah. Excellent. And do you. Were you. Because I think Melissa probably drove most of the assessment. Did you get involved in much of it already?

Yep, I remember bits of it, but not exactly right. Melissa, my amazing co founder, was mostly on all of our certification and. And you know, we've got a team now that does all that. Yeah. So no, I don't know. I remember being quite a few questions, but ones that like, were ones that helped us. I don't know. They definitely created some conversations around, well, what is our policy around these things and how do we think about, you know, issues around diversity or whatever and you know, you know, constitution and do we give people rights and staff and lots of things that made us. Yeah, I guess. I think a more. Yeah. More credible business sort of through and through.

Like I say in terms of like. Because obviously we deal with a lot of companies going through the B Corp journey now and some of them are less B Corp than. Than you were or you are. And they're coming at it from a very they're open, that they're committed, they're interested, they want to do, to do better. But a lot of the, A lot of the topics, like, wow, you know, some people literally go, wow, employee ownership. Like, okay, like, how does that work? Whereas you were like, well, no, from day one employees, you know, so it's, it's interesting, yeah, hearing different, you know, seeing where people are in different parts of the journey. And for you, it's kind of almost like lemon squeezing because you're, you had a high baseline of doing a lot of stuff already. And so, yeah, it's just always interesting to reflect, reflect on it. It kind of doesn't matter where you are on the journey. There's always conversations to be had around, well, how do we do, how do we be better? That's why we call this podcast Be Better. And our B Corp program is Be Better. It's like, just try and be better. You know, everyone's starting where they're starting. Just think about. And I think I always talk about Genora, who we help with their B Corp journey. And they had very open and transparent conversations going through the B Corp journey to work out, well, what does matter to our staff and what do they care about? And I think that just makes such a big difference for a team. Whereas I love watching those programs intermittently where, you know, the CEO goes back to the shop floor and they realize that their staff hate working there. The point of sale systems, you know, products don't work. Who knew? It's like, well, yeah, if you actually had a conversation with your staff at any point during your career, you might have found this stuff out a bit earlier. So I think there's so much to be gained from that transparency and vulnerability and openness. To say, look, you know, this is where we're trying to get to. We'd love to be able to implement this. We'd love to be able to be able to do that. But right now, you know, we just can't do that unless you've got any ideas or, yes, we are going to do that. Like, we've already had a conversation, so bring them along. 100.

Yeah, that's all good. In the future, really, is. I think if we can get more and more businesses, it really, as I said around that business case, is probably the key thing that I think we're going to need to overcome as a community, which is this isn't just a nice thing to do, you know, and feel good and whatever. This is actually retaining staff more than we were retaining. This is driving X percent new business into, you know, whatever this is helping save X cost, whatever these are. Yeah, I think we as a community of businesses that are trying to do good in the world, we need to show that, you know, construction company, a hotel, B in starting this journey. It's a, it's a, it's not just, you know, you know, a burden and a cost and an effort. It's actually there's a return both for the world and for you as a business. And that, you know that that's, that's the goal, right?

Yeah. 100. I mean, you know, I just, for me, I'm yet to see any evidence or data saying that doing B Corp or kind of like doing good in general long term is bad for your business. There's like, if you're listening and, and, and you haven't downloaded our ebook yet, go get our ebook. There's a link to it somewhere around, wherever you're listening or watching this. But you know, there's data from the University of Ghent in Belgium. So they did a panel data set study of European B Corps that certified between 2012 and 2018. And they basically say this paper empirically shows that turnover growth rates pre one year previous is one year post increased. So one year post certification, turnover growth rates went up. There's data from the UK B corp community from a couple of years ago again showing the B corp community was growing faster, you know, turnover growth rates faster than the rest of the world. There's lots of evidence out there that points to the fact and when we're, when we're sort of talking to B corp with people who might be, be curious and they're not quite, you know, sold on it yet maybe I always say to them, well, which of these four groups of people are asking you about the good that you're doing? Is it your employees, is it your customers, Is it your supply chain or is it your investors? Because if one or four of them or if not all of them aren't asking you about what you're doing right now, give it six months and one of them will be. So, you know, you can either begrudgingly come to this and be the laggard or you can, like you say, you use it as an opportunity. And I, I mean your team have always been super engaged and you clearly attract, you know, you've got a vibe that is attracting the people that you want to attract. But you know, the cost of B Cup certification to, for you to attract the right talent and keep them and bring them apart. Like it, it's not even a cost. It's.

No, no, no, it's not. It's easy, easy thing. I don't think that that's where businesses operate. They're like, oh, another thing to do. Yeah, and compliance, blah, blah, blah. How do we show. And I think, yeah, we can. You just need to build up, as you said, those proof points and quantitatively, you know, as you say, show that. Yeah, this is something that in itself does it. But I think it's there, I think, I mean, so it's there for sure in theory. It's just there and being able to. Let's scale. Let's go, let's go.

Let's co B.

Corgo.

There's going to be something around Obi Wan Kenobi. We can work it out, give it a couple of years and so what does being a B corp mean to you and the organization? Is it something that you talk about often? Does it come up often as part.

Yeah, we definitely chat with a lot of our values that we have as a company are around the same sort of map to some of the values that sit within B Corp. We definitely have inside our constitution. As I just said, we updated it to include it as a purpose and our shareholders bought into there and we're like stoked, even posting on LinkedIn to say it's great to know companies. So I think it sort of definitely comes up, as I said with us, it's sort of, it's what we do anyway in many ways. So some companies might be like, oh, we've been building, you know, housing and doing stuff and now we've got this B Corp. We should start talking about these things. We do, we do all the time. So I suppose in itself it's like a. It's almost been in our blood from the beginning. And so it's great to be able to refer and reference back and see Kiwi bank and other partners doing it and joining with us. And that's actually one of the most positive things is another B Corp and we're working together and it's almost like you've got. You trust the businesses then sort of more of the core than just like it being seen to be like a little bit of a cool thing to do. So that's, that's definitely great.

That's. And that's definitely feedback that we get is, is. It's almost like the dickhead test. It's like, okay, they're a B Corp. There's going to be, there's going to be some shared principles or shared alignment here about, about how we're approaching life in the world. So yeah, it's kind of just helps, you know that you, you're more than likely going to be dealing with some other nice people who get what you're trying to do. Yeah, we definitely hear that.

So the future of B Corp, where do you see the future of B Corp?

I think, yeah, as you say that, you know, we've got whatever zero point something percent of businesses currently doing it. I think it'll just become more and more normal to be like, well this is actually about being good as a business. It's being able to prove that we're, you know, more than just sort of trust us, you know, trust us that we're doing good. So I think it will build in credibility. I think the more that you can see some of these large flagship new categories like, you know, the construction, you know, the hotels, whatever it is not just those nice, cool, trendy FM CG products or yeah, you know, a few of the large banks and stuff that we see. I think it's just about breakout, multi category and then, and then growing through. As I said, it would be really good to, to build that case around B Corp being something that is really good for business and advocating for that and being able to prove that, you know, the B Corp community is growing, as you say, like 10 times, three times over, the number is faster than others. So I think that'll, that'll be just what the evidence will grow and move more or build.

Yeah, no, 100%. And like I said, I think there's a, there's a big movement now as bigger companies are having to do mandatory reporting on social and environmental impact. All of a sudden if you're Tracy the plumber or Dave the, I don't know, supplier of toilet roll to a company, whatever it is that you're selling, if you're a smaller company, very soon those big companies are going to be talking to all their suppliers to go, hey, we kind of want to know, you know, what's going on and yeah, what are you up to?

That's exactly right. Transparency always come in from the top down and it definitely feels like, you know, whether it's carbon, whether it's, you know, it's diversity in your business or your ownership structure, I just think more and more transparency is being pushed for and I think B Corp will offer those businesses a way of just assessing themselves and giving them some confidence.

So 100%, that's what we say. I did a talk up in Auckland on Wednesday morning. And it was to a group of CEOs and they were kind of, I've got the same talk. And it's got about seven or eight different titles. And so the title for this one, because this is where they're at, was, you know, if sustainability is the question, is B Corp the answer? Because if you're, if you're kind of grappling to work out, where do we start?

It's like, well, here's a framework just 100%. It's like a, it addresses all the areas of it. You might then decide to double down on this issue because your customers care or yourself. So I'd say it's a perfect starting place to start navigating. Yes, climate's a big topic, but there are a whole bunch of other things people care about and I think, you know, this process is a goody one. So, yeah, do it, do it, just do it. Certified. No brainer.

Excellent. That'll be the sound bite from, from the podcast. And so the future for cogo, like you've alluded to a couple of things, but I guess, you know, the scale and rate that you think, are you going to be the first app on Mars? When have you been talking to Elon about, you know, can we be the first ones?

We want to, we want to be seen in 10 years when climate change is start to bend, curve down as being one of the main things that has helped sort of empower half a billion people to do their bit. And so we want to basically be seen as one of those contributors. People look in the mirror and go, oh my God, I'm solving climate. And they'll be doing it and feeling empowered about it and it'll be, whether they know it or not, partly powered and supported through Coco. So, yeah, we'd love to be confident that we've helped bend that curve and got the climate a bit more stable. So, yeah, nice.

Just, just a little thing to do.

Just a little thing to do.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's the goal.

From what I know of you, Ben, I have no doubt that in 10 years time you'll be looking back, going, actually, you know, that's quite easy. And then there'll be some other possible, there will be some other massive challenge.

That there will be. The law will be.

Yeah, there'll always be something.

Cool. No, look, it's been really good to catch up with you again. It's been quite a while. But you've been busy. I've been busy, yeah. Like I say, I just from the first day I met you, I was just like, yeah, this guy's gonna do something big.

At some point.

At some point. Well, don't, please have to. You know, you're doing a lot. You know, you've. I think, I think in the, in the sort of business for good sector, we kind of get a bit harsh on ourselves because there is always more that we think we could be doing. You know, reflect on, on what I've done. Have a beer. A sawmill beer, obviously. Hashtag B Corp. The more you drink. Saw me. The better the world gets. We need to get. I need to get Mike and Kirsty to sponsor the podcast. I'll have a chat about that. No. So, yeah, keep on doing what you're doing and yeah, go well, mate, and it's been a pleasure to, to catch up with you and hopefully catch you for a beer in the, in the near future.

Well, then we say let's go change the world. Let's go go. So let's do it.

Let's. Let's go go.

Cheers. Yeah.

Hey, it's Tim here, that B Corp bloke from Grow Good. If you want more content on purpose, B Corp. How to do more good in the world as an individual or a business, then you know the drill. Hit the like and subscribe. Check out some of our other videos. They're probably floating around here somewhere. You know how it works. Thank you so much. See you next time.