#59 Tim O'Brien on Impactful Change: When business meets purpose head-on

Hey, and welcome back to the latest episode of the Be Better Podcast. And with me today, I'm actually super excited because it is Tim Squared, and when you have Tim Squared, you just don't know what's going to happen. And beyond it being Tim Squared, it is Tim of purpose number one, Tim o' Brien from Purpose Made. Tim, how's it going?

Yeah, it's awesome. It's great to be here. I feel like, you know, back in the days when the. The B Corp movement started, you were. You were one of the teams that we kind of connected with, and it's been a long journey, so it's exciting to have this conversation.

It is, mate, because I was actually thinking of that just this the other day. So we first met 2017, I think it was in person at the Social Enterprise World Forum in Otatahi, Christchurch. And that literally feels like a lifetime ago.

I think you may have even picked me up from the airport, and I think that was right. That's really nice, actually. Concierge service.

Don't tell everyone.

Okay. Sorry, your name's Team. You might get picked up if you're.

Tib in a B chord. Sure. Anyone else? You know, there's a thing called Uber. I'm pretty good. I gave someone a lift the other day. I'm genuinely a nice, friendly guy who will try and help people out where I can, so I appreciate that. So, yeah, and we were, I guess, calling each other Tim One of Purpose, But I generally feel that you are Tim One of Purpose because you were leading the way, and you're certainly someone who I've looked up to in terms of B Corp purpose and impact. So I fully grant you that the Tim 1 of purpose title. I'm happy to be Tim 2 of purpose. And we need to go and find Tim 3 and 4 and 5 and build a collective, maybe our own little Facebook group or community of Tim's of purpose. But anyway, enough silly talk about such things. For those people who don't know who you are, which I can't imagine is that many people, but for the two people listening who don't know who Tim o' Brien is, who are you?

Yeah, Tim, I'm the founder and CEO of an organization called Purpose Made that was sort of rebranded and elevated out of an organization called Hatch, which we founded in 2016. It was one of the early B Corps. And the work we do is really about embedding purpose in impact into organizations. And what we're really passionate about is solving social, environmental, and cultural issues through power of business. And the work we do sort of falls into three categories. One is ESG plus. So how do you take organizations to really differentiate and create value? The lens of ESG or B Corp as a. The kind of, you know, they kind of group together in my mind. The second one is impact measurement design. So how do you actually develop impact measurement solutions across that kind of range of different impacts? Which is pretty challenging but also really important if you want to become a B Corp. But also for increased reporting standards that are, that are coming at the moment, particularly for the bigger organizations. And then the third piece is something we call regenerative finance, which is a pretty fancy name for saying how do you fund things using a range of different types of capital, whether that's an investment or a grant or innovation, where you're really looking to create a systems level outcome or change. Where there's a big, wicked challenging problem that has us probably getting out of control and spiraling out of control. And either your organization or you're trying to invest and fund it to try and solve it, how do you get to the right root causes and levers of that change to make real change happen? So they're the three things we do.

Nice. And so that's possibly keeping you quite busy, I would imagine.

Yeah, it's an interesting time. I mean I was reflecting back when you picked me up at the airport and when we, when I kind of came out and we'll get to probably that story around me coming out of a corporate and setting up hatched. It was very early days around purpose and impact. Like even ESG wasn't a thing back then. And this idea around B Corps, it felt a little bit wacky when you talked about it. And you're really convincing people that, you know, this impact is fundamental. And it's also sort of what we called back in the days, which we'll go into later on. One of the biggest risks for organizations who aren't going down this track and just focusing on profits. So it's interesting that the market's really caught up now and I was at a Impact, sorry, investor relations conference last week and speaking about the future of ESG and the sophistication around investors and their needs around impact and certification and transparency and the job that those companies, the private companies and public companies are looking to attract capital to actually meet the sort of ESG criteria is pretty interesting. So we're at a wave now where everything's sort of. There's a bit of a gold rush in this space. I suppose you could call it with a lot of people entering. But in terms of doing real work with real integrity, there's a. There's a significant need for it. And which is great because that means that the power of business is actually helping solve big important problems that society and environment need to solve for.

So what's, what do you think's driving this big interest in that investor world?

Yeah, I think, I think part of the, the challenge is if you look at the wholesale investors and also the super funds, their members are actually who are investing it are actually asking those questions an hour around where's my money going? Obviously there's a, there's a need for not being put into sort of high investments that have a, you know, high carbon footprint. So there's a lot of a need to sort of avoid ones that do a lot of harm. But there's also this intention to say, actually I want to make sure that the companies are doing the right thing. So they're looking after the modern slavery. They're making sure they're accounting for the environmental footprint. There's increased regulations or reporting requirements coming in around making sure that, you know, deforestation in Europe and also around natural capital are accounted for for organization. So there's one part of that making sure there's a bit of that do no harm component of my investment and there's responsibility for those wholesale and super funds. We're handling that money to make sure it's not going there. And then there's an increasing movement to say, hang on, we not just want to go beyond do no harm, let's support those organ organizations that are actually helping solve those problems. And there's two reasons behind that, I think, I think one is they actually are, you know, have been proven to give good returns. So those organizations that are probably really relevant because they are solving environmental, social, cultural problem that is a need in the world are actually, you know, performing quite well financially. So it makes good sense to make an investment in that space. But secondly, there's also this sort of moral compass I think is growing amongst investors, particularly the younger generation, which is saying we want to make sure that the future we're creating is one we want to live in. So we're really conscious and aware of where our money goes. We're making sure that those companies are actually hold to account around their environmental, social and their good governance. And there's some really interesting stuff happening around active sort of corporate sort of activism and investment activism which is actually shifting those companies to do that. And I think it's really happening in interesting ways. Probably in the US where we do some work and in Europe there's some sort of greater level maturity. But it's really hitting home in Australia at the moment. And I think those CEOs and boards are sort of sticking their heads up and realizing that this is not only a thing that they need to do for compliance and a whole range of reasons, but also it's a really good thing to do because it's great for their culture, it's great for attracting investment and ideally good for innovation and value creation, which if we got value creation at solving problems, then we're in a really good spot, I think. So the more of that, the better.

Yeah, it does. It does feel that there's been a rapid. We're in the middle of a rapid acceleration of mindset change around. It felt like up until quite recently sustainability was the old health and safety where we're going to wheel this person out. Hey, have we broken any laws? Are we good for compliance? Great. Okay, see you in six months at the next meeting to all of a sudden, yeah, there's maturity and a level of interest and I think, well, because Kathmandu, but obviously, well, Trans Tasman company headquartered in Christchurch here they were issued was it, I think 100 million Australian dollar loan in 2021. I think it was from Anz Bank. And one of the stipulations was they need to maintain and increase their B Corp score. And talking to the team that from Anz in, in New Zealand who created that vehicle, it was really interesting. Exactly what you were just saying that there's this real sea change in the people running the funds and a lot of them are our age, I guess early 40s, mid-40s, they've got kids and they actually genuinely care about what's going on. Whereas maybe prior to that the finance industry, perhaps not best known for its lens on social and environmental impact, it was just doing what it was designed to do, maximize returns. So I think that's really, really. Yeah, I don't think we can probably actually.

Measure the speed of change that's happening right now. You've got some sense.

Yeah, I think that's a really good point. I do think there is a generational element here as well. So like you said before, there was sort of the older, the slightly older generation than ours sort of leading. Those organizations still probably are. But the wave of new leadership coming in either in the funds or in those organizations are creating a shift. And I think if you look at. We do a lot of research in the US we look at cause, affinity and certain elements that organizations need to focus on. And you can see a distinct difference between the generations. So you've got the younger generations sort of the Gen Z's coming through where there's that is like ingrained into their soul almost around impact. It's like a not negotiable. So that as that generation kind of grows with you know, coming into the workforce and then influencing decision making, that's going to accelerate that even further. Then you kind of got the Gen, the millennials and the Gen X's who are kind of, they've got those leadership roles. That's a big thing that they really focus on and they care about. And then as the sort of the boomers sort of shift out of the workforce, there's a big, big interesting intergenerational change happening and people are also able to look forward time frame. So instead of saying okay, I don't, I care about what's happening in the next three to five years which you know, even in the business world, you know, normally it's 12 to 24 months that you're looking at the next horizon to say where's the financial results? People are looking forward and saying what's happening in 10 years time? What's happening in 15? Where what's going to happen for my children? So they're actually cared about, caring about more like you know, 30, 50, 100 year time horizons. And that gives you a different sense of responsibility for what that organization needs to do. Not only in keeping it relevant so it can survive, but also mostly you know, what, what worlds are creating for the people that comes after us.

Yeah, I think we're pretty good at thinking in daily patterns and sometimes I even struggle to know what I'm doing after this, you know, recording this podcast and I remember we helped company Trineo. They actually, the company no longer exists because actually they got acquired by another B corp, a Canadian B corp and then that Canadian B Corp got acquired by Salesforce. So you know, hashtag B Corps do. Okay. And Abhinav, one of their co founders, he is of Indian heritage and he was saying, he was talking to his brother, I think it was his brother or his cousin who worked for a locksmiths in India that had been around for about 200 years.

Wow.

And the shortest business plan they had was 100 year business plan.

Wow.

And, and he, you know, working in a, in a high, a high growth tech startup where it's you know, daily acquisition rates, how many customers, you know. Yeah, that, that was and I think it Is what's the. There's a guy, John V. Who's a professor, I think it's Toronto University. He. This phrase he's got which is called combator explosive which is. It's literally like it blows your ability to conceive a topic. And yeah, that stuff is. And I guess, yeah the western democratized world we're pretty good at thinking short term whereas a lot of other cultures perhaps be a bit better at not caring about the daily cycle and thinking broader. Yeah.

And I think as the, as leader. As leaders become more emotionally healthy and have that more like greater perspective and awareness. That's why I think things start to shift and change because if you're looking at a book board, boardroom or you're an exec, you're trying to make a decision to do X, Y and Z. And if you can certainly see the environmental impact that's going to create or you can start to see that impact that's going to create directing the staff, you're more aware of the decision as opposed to hang. That's just going to make us more money and I get my bonus. But the key trick with that element, not the trick but the key challenge I think with this shift occurring is that you still need to operationalize that into business. So you need to build that into you know, executives and leaders and staffs.

Scorecards. And I understand that, you know, impact with whatever way define that's actually part of the everyday business and saying the same metrics with clicks and sales and widgets, etc. The purpose component needs to be an impact component things directly alongside it. And there's a lot of the importance of that can't be underestimated because if a leader does change or someone gets bought out and they're a B corp and there's a new owner like Salesforce, the importance of that impact and that purpose and that culture needs to be held on. And that's why B Corp is a really good mechanism for that. But more broadly it's also about how do you, how do you kind of take a long term horizon them but also be able to operationalize that so you can, you can think about today but also think about tomorrow at the same time. And I think that's the kind of emotionally healthy, you know, perspective shifting important capability that we need in our leaders and our, and our. And just pretty much anyone in the organization to be able to think that kind of like duality between purpose and profit at the same time.

Yeah, no 100% and yeah, it's just It's a really interesting time to be involved in in this whole world. But now 100 agree that and that's what I like B Corp because it helps you take the intangible or the slightly less tangible and purpose doing good impact. Okay. Like you said making a scorecard. So who, who what is. What is a measurement? That and don't be afraid to get it wrong first time around. Like we might think, you know that whole unintended consequences. We think that this is the outcome but it will the. The metric really to measure. We think this is the output. We think this is the outcome. Great. Well let's test it. You know and it's, it's better that we're testing that and finding out rather than not testing it and, and still. Yeah. Chasing the, the, the older style metrics. Yeah, yeah. No super cool. And so have you always been doing this type of stuff? I know you obviously alluded to you come from a bit of a finance industry.

My background's always when I kind of came out of university went into sort of data and innovation and worked a lot in, in the UK and, and in the US working for companies like Mascot and Vodafone. And what we did was essentially help them build new products and services. And the pretty key kind of turning point in my life was two kind of tracks that were happening. One at the same time I started to get really aware of sort of what I was purchasing in terms of the fruit and vegetables and particularly like sustainable fish. I was really obsessed by it, like particularly because I was going to farms and I was going to pubs and sort of ones that were really about traceability of supply chains. You know, talking 15 years ago which was something that most people didn't care about or aware of and I was really interested in the provenance of what I was eating and if you kind of complimented that by the work I was doing, it was really in the finance industry largely and obviously telecommunications and it was all about helping build new services. So it was early days around apps and sort of new phones and products that were Vodafone work. Creating and building in incentive schemes for organizations to innovate more often and measurements and things like that. And then there was a big moment. We were working with MasterCard and we supported them to help launch passercard, PayPal, which is the little tap and go situation. I remember we're in London and.

Walking down to get my coffee in the morning and the whole insight that we came up with was all about how do you get people to start Europeans in particular, who are very committed to the cash to start doing lower purchases and building in these sort of tap and go system. So it felt a bit easier and there was an element to that. I remember walking in and there was one of the first terminals at this new cafe that was open. And I looked up and the first, one of the first sort of MasterCard PayPal ads were on. And I was like, holy moly. This is a pretty interesting moment in my life. And although it was an amazing project and I love working with that client on creating it, it really hit home to me that there was an unintended consequence of this work. And I looked up and I thought, this is going to disconnect people from money they're going to be more likely to spend and not aware of how much money they've got in their bank account. And it started to make me realize that if you could create a product or service which was both, you know, fulfilled a copy immediate need like convenience, but also help people be more financially well, that would be much better off. So that kind of triggered my purpose journey where I got very interested in organizations that were, you know, environmentally or socially minded and embedding that into their, their business model. I found myself back in Australia working for suncorp, which was a financial services company. And it was very interesting that we started, we built an emerging risk or a strategic innovation capability for the organization where we're basically going out into the world understanding what the big things that could disrupt that organ and informing the board around the things that need to shift and change. And at that point, this is when my kind of like moment where I was like, business needs to change. It wasn't really sure of how that might eventuate. And the projects that I got to lead, which was really amazing, were working with B Lab and understanding and helping sort of support that movement in Australia when it first came here in its real emphasis. So we kind of funded it and I got very intimately involved in it, working with social enterprises in New Zealand and in Europe, working Wikihouse and alternative architecture, which was fascinating. Looking at the roots of integrated reporting, integrated thinking in South Africa and how that was about how you report financial non financial value together. Looking, working with climate kick in Europe, looking at how climate innovation could really fund and help us tackle that real challenge around global warming. And those elements for me started to think about new models and new ways of doing things. And it was evident that instead of sort of helping a large organization remain relevant, which was a very, if it was a fulfilling, it was Fulfilling work. I just had this calling where I was like, I can't get anyone do that. I need to go and support those organizations who are directly solving problems and meeting these challenges. I'm seeing so lucky enough to be part of that B Corp network. And through that it was evident that I could support a couple of the larger B Corps. And I started my first business called Hatched, which was, it was, was a b court since March 2017. Really started to work out what purpose strategy was, what impact strategy was how to measure things and actually pioneered best practice around how to certify B Corps and or recertify. So amazing time. A lot of discovery in that piece. But it was yeah, pretty amazing, I reckon.

Yeah. So do you think. So you had this kind of transition moment or this transformational moment, but do you think young Tim running around was there? Did you have an element of purpose? Like was there a purposeful upbringing when you were younger or was it so pretty, you know, standard upbringing of, you know, go get a job, maybe go to uni and you know, just get on the mill or were there any.

It was, it was more like that. I think if you look at my kind of, my origins was, you know, more of a sort of middle to lower class family coming out of the western suburbs of Sydney and my parents, you having a university degree which my brother and I got was very rare for that whole family. So that was a huge achievement. And my parents, you know, looked after us and had a lovely childhood. But my. I talk about it like, about perspective, like I didn't know like for me, when I remember walking down uni and I had to work hard at uni to sort of support myself. I remember walking down and seeing someone in a suit and like, I'd love to just have a job one day where I don't have to work on the weekends. And, and so that was sort of my kind of like, yeah, like upbringing though there was elements that my parents did around sort of supporting with a little bit of community work and there was a bit of justice and fairness that my parents embedded. But I wouldn't say that was something that was sort of, you know, embedded in me as a youngster. I think as I kind of like left the shores of Australia and had those moments overseas, also met my wife who has this different way of like thinking about the world. It's, that's when my idea about perspective started to shift and realize that, that you know, there is different possibilities in the world and there's, there's, that's what really started to intrigue me is around, around. Well, work could be anything. Work life balance can be where you can live, can be anything. I got really intrigued by like, like life design and like life hacking in really interesting ways. And I think from that perspective, I started to look at work and think about work in a different way. And seeing, you know, people working long hours and obviously doing work that they maybe weren't necessarily motivated by was probably more of a catalyst to me than, yeah, thinking there's got to be a different way. There's got to be something more meaningful that people can do that can that. That can contribute both to their own kind of getting up in the morning and feel like they're being fulfilled, but also it helps them be more healthy because they're more attached to something they care about. So there's a bit of a passion around, let's change the way currently things are done. And I think my. That kind of catalyst and then working through the possibilities of different work and different models and discovering the importance of and damage that organizations who just focus on profit can do and being involved. You know, I work for a number of those organizations, you know, through the early parts of my career, and seeing those cultures and realizing this doesn't feel right. There's something wrong about, you know, this sort of intense sales culture and pretty blokey bro culture, particularly in some of the media outlets that I worked in, which I won't mention, and realizing there's got to be a better way. And I think those questions around possibility, seeing sort of way that work damage people in terms of profit, but also individually, I was like. And then realizing as I went through that journey that there is a way to help solve these massive problems that we're dealing with. All kind of culminated me saying, there's no other. I can't not do this. This is the only thing I can do now. And that intensifies over time as well. Like, every day we get in the morning and we see we working directly in really challenging problems like decarbonization, women's violence, you know, these. These big, challenging problems that you can, you know, you can go to bed at night. It spins your brain around.

Yeah.

But every morning we get up in the morning, like, how can we solve this? How can we go quicker, better, faster, smarter, and around helping solve these problems because the world needs it, because if anything, they're all accelerating and potentially it's a world that we don't necessarily want to live in in the future.

Yeah, I think, yeah, so much good stuff. There, I think I always reflect back. There was a, a YouGov survey in the UK. I think it was about 2017 or 2018 and it was around about 30% of UK employees surveyed felt that their job provided them with no meaning and it was more than likely contributing to destroying the planet. And you just kind of go that, that those are the ones that admitted it. You know how many people that were surveyed were worried that their boss might find out, I love my job. Yeah, it's really great. Yeah. Cool.

Yeah, that's a, that's a huge percentage of people back then.

Yeah. Yeah, it'd be interesting to see. I haven't checked the stats recently to see if that's been updated, but yeah, I was talking to Abdi from Drift Time on my last episode of the podcast and similar kind of just conversations that he had. You know, he was working in advertising, ad agencies in London and what have you and seeing their work go up and it's kind of like, so what, you know, we've just helped the company sell more stuff, but is that making a positive difference? And I think, yeah, you know, people need that sense of meaning and contribution and purpose in life and if you don't have it, you know, the, the dis. Ease will lead to disease and if you're not at ease with the work that you're doing and I think a lot of people don't realize how much of that is subconscious. You know, you don't, you don't recognize the damage that doing the work that you don't actually enjoy that you know, deep down is possibly not making the world a better place and actually might make more worse place. The deep down damage that that has on you, but also makes you not be the best version of you, which then impacts family, friends, kids, wives, partners, what have you. Yeah, I mean, untold amounts of.

Yeah. And I mean there's elements of work that are necessities and people obviously need to work to get by. But I think in any organization there is, there is that piece about like, well, I need to put food on the table and those all elements. And obviously the cost of living is increasing. So it's, it's challenging. But there's, there's great companies out there that have people probably on lower salaries and you know, you know, working in, you know, factories, etc. You know, we just did some B corp work with a great organization that manufactures Windows and we did a survey for the diversity, equity, inclusion. It was a very diverse workforce. But if you looked at the survey responses from People, you know, probably from, you know, you know, probably like, you know, different cultural backgrounds have gone to university from lower socioeconomic groups. Obviously they're getting paid a, you know, you know, well for what their work they're doing. But if you look at the results and you see the meaning, the purpose, the connection, the ability for them to speak up and feel heard, it's amazing to see that in wordpools and any organization can create that and should be able to create that.

Yeah.

I think it's also worth noting that, you know, the purpose work and impact work, that's not easy work we're talking about generally, you know, you're embedding a social, economic or cultural problem into solving that through your business. And that's a really challenging thing generally because the big probably wicked problem you're trying to contribute to. But I think the difference is, even though it's, you know, you still get exhausted, you know, there is burnout from founders. It's a whole range of those elements. Once you know that you're contributing to something that's creating the world a better place, there's a different feeling which is associated to it. And the thrill. Not, I don't know if it's a thrill, but the real reward that we get and we fight ourselves in the quality of the work is when you start to see if you can measure something and make that very tangible for someone that they're doing really important work, say, for example, in domestic violence. Or you can take a pretty wicked problem and help work out a better pathway to solve it. For example, looking at prevention in mental health or helping understand the social cost of decarbonization and then shifting that to make sure there's a net positive. And you start to see the work that you've done start to have that positive difference in people's lives. That feeling is like nothing else. So you contrast that to the feeling I had when I saw the. The mascot papers thing pop up on the ad, and I should have been probably excited about it versus seeing a domestic violence program go in that we've helped support or measure or things like that. You start that feeling is like nothing. And you might see someone's, you know, tears in someone's eyes or a program directly affects someone positively or, you know, that you've shifted the dial on the environment significantly. You like that's a feeling that is really special and.

Is also it. It's, you know, the lot's gone into it, but it. That's the kind of feeling that you want people be rewarded on not a big sale that's put money into their pocket. You want to make it financially rewarding. But it's something when they go, I've helped someone today and I've, I've made a difference. That's something that is very special, I think.

Yeah, no, 100%. And I think again, the sort of, the modern world, the modern business world is all about that incentivization of performance, typically around widget, shipped dollars, invoice, what have you. But yeah, the real.

You know, humans are designed for that contribution and to be able to, you know, there is a human at the end of every value chain and it's understanding that contribution that you've made. And that's something that we try and get people to understand with purpose work we do with companies particularly, particularly people like if you're, you know, 10 steps removed from the end user, from the customer. Yeah, it's just another line of code or it's just another spreadsheet that you're filling in, or it's another thing that you've got to ship out and. But you've got to make that connection to, well, what good have we actually done? And even in some companies that might seem quite unpurposeful, there is actually still an element of contribution and purpose, and you've got that as a base. Great. Well, now let's understand how do we do more of that or how do, how do we now, you know, pivot that a little bit or transition that little bit so it's, you know. Yeah, that, that's good. You know, I guess, you know, I always sort of make the argument, you can make an argument that vaping or cigarettes have got a purpose in that there is some positive contribution that they make. You know, it's, there's social connections that you can make by being a smoker, hanging out with other smokers. You know, it can suppress your appetite. So if you wanted to lose some weight, you know, theoretically smoking could be an avenue. There's, you know, there's an element that you can sort of say, actually, you know, there is, there is a purpose to it, but there's obviously a net negative impact overall from doing that. So, yeah, you can identify the purpose. But. Okay, how do we get the social connection and maybe the weight loss without having the lung cancer and the tar and the environmental destruction of the cigarette butts floating around? Yeah, so it's, it's just interesting. Yeah, the whole purpose thing, I, I mean, I think it's, well, possibly a segue because I remember it was A few months ago now, you wrote on LinkedIn about how you said purpose statements are dead. You know, long live purpose is dead. Long live the impact statement. Which I think, yeah, and there was some good commentary on it. And I just think for me, I just think still that not enough people actually have even authentically connected to their purpose. You know, they, they typically. It annoys me. I have heard of tax accountants helping companies do purpose statements. Slightly above that is maybe a marketing brand agency where you're going to get something a little bit more sexy and exciting. As people will know, long term listeners, people who've attended a workshop with me, I really dislike accountants and finance people, but that's because I just don't understand numbers. So it's purely projection on my behalf. You're all lovely people, honestly, I love you all. So yeah, brand and marketing agency. Yeah, you're going to get slightly more sexy, slightly more connected to your customer purpose statement. But unless you actually do some deep work to understand who you are, the bad that you do, the good that you do, you know, almost doing the shadow work from a Jungian perspective at a corporate level to understand the good and the bad, how do we actually contribute? What meaning does that give us? Like you know, what, what does it actually contribute to the person then? Yeah, I kind of think purpose statements. But yeah, your, your context around that was you more around focus more on the, on the theory of change, your impact rather than the purpose statements.

Yes.

Maybe just unpack that for us a little bit.

Yeah, I think the, the kind of like the insight that we had around the, the purpose statements and when we first started, you know, 2016, we were doing a lot of that definition, those purpose statements, doing a lot of that deep work, all that self reflection of organization said look, this is the model, the purpose you want to go to, the impact model you want to create. What are you not doing and what are the negative things and doing that deep work, you know, for two, you know, it could be one, two, three years that we go through that with organizations and those organizations that have done that have gone on to be, you know, phenomenally successful and do great work. And as we sort of evolved and other people sort of got into this space, we found that purpose statements weren't necessarily used to really deeply articulate.

The deep why that an organization exists, but that normally has an impact that's related to it, that the problem they're trying to solve and someone at benefits. It was being much more used for a branding exercise to sort of help sell more products or articulate it as a. Almost like a new way to articulate, like a marketing strap line.

Yeah.

And the. The insight was that that's actually quite dangerous because you might set a purpose statement up, and what you haven't done is gone on to define the impact you want to create, look at the negative impact that you're doing. You don't actually understand how your products align to that. What you're trying to do is actually create a purpose statement and a campaign that goes up against it. And I think a really great recent example of that was Bud Light. So Bud Light, obviously, it's a big company in the US they had a new. I think it's a new CMO come in recently, an amazing woman. And.

What. What they did is they had this really desire to champion diversity and really start to expand Bud Lights market, which is a great incentive right now. Obviously, I don't know what work that they did internally, but what they did in the end is actually sort of champion a. A transgender individual who promoted the brand, which was a great idea in its essence. But what they didn't do is actually look at the size of that. That challenge, and they did the deep work. So if you want to look at diversity and equity, inclusion, and particularly in the US A lot of work here, and really understand that, you know, the size of that challenge and the issue, there would have been other steps that you may have taken over time to actually deeply address that issue. And that was obviously a great idea and way to go forward to actually look at how you go about, you know, changing advertising and making it more inclusive. But that wasn't a really key lever and actually probably did more damage to the brand, and it could have maybe solidified and angered that base you're trying to shift over time. So what we're sort of saying is that, firstly, don't just have a purpose statement. Again, it's a bit like values back in the day. We stick it up on a wall, and you're probably using it to sell a product. You might attach a social cause to it and say, hey, we're supporting this, and this is our statement. And here's our new lollipop. That's not purpose. And it happens time after time. Like now. We don't really do that work, the purpose statements anymore. What we believe that theory of change can do is almost give organizations the ability to say, this is the issue we're taking. So, for example, we did a project in collaboration with a big corp in the US called Conspiracy of Love, and we took Adidas as big social challenge. And they want to get a billion people out of poverty through the power of sport. And you can probably do that in a superficial way with a sort of a version of a perfect statement and go off and do it. We did a deep work with them to understand what are the pathways to really get inclusivity through the power sport and then use that as a way to provide economic inclusion. And that deep theory of change work set them up to look at their spend and their advertising and their work really deeply in that organization. To me, that is really powerful because that is deep business model design, deep issue, and it's really understanding issue and then the starting to paint the pathways for that impact. So my point there was that purpose statements are actually really powerful if done well. But because it's become a bit of a trend to be implementing them and it's done in a shallow way, it's actually become more dangerous to have a purpose statement that's not done well. And so you're better off starting with a theory of change to really understand the issue that you're trying to help solve for, you know, your business capabilities, your gaps, the things you need to work on, and then understanding what the best pathways to achieve that are. And that's the best way to actually have an impact and have solve those issues. And a purpose statement's useful, but generally it should be an articulation of that, not just superficial.

Yeah, yeah.

Words that you're sort of putting together to make yourself feel a little bit better are all kind of take advantage of the trend. And I see a lot of that work coming, and I was surprised that the, the reception of that sort of coming out, it was a bit of a provocation that I put together. But there's a lot of agreement from great practitioners that we collaborate with and work with admire saying, look, we're seeing a lot of that too, and it's. It's dangerous. And, you know, there's some different other ways that maybe achieve it. But it was an interesting consensus across a lot of people saying we're seeing this and it is fairly damaging at the moment, and it's giving people a bit of a false sense of impact in some of those organizations who maybe think they might be doing it well, but potentially might not be getting the right support that they needed to in order to do this work well.

Yep, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, and I totally agree. And I think it's interesting, though, because I often wonder, you know, you know, you're talking regenerative finance. I'VE got one eye on the whole regenerative business concept, you know and, and my, my loose description of that is, you know, every pro, every dollar of product or service we sell only has a positive contribution. Well, you know, at the minute there's probably a handful of companies that you could point to who are actually even close to that or truly operating in a regenerative manner other than obviously regenerative farming or agriculture where it's slightly more obvious to go yes, this is a complete circular natural based system. But you know, for a service company to be a regenerative company and I still think there's sort of stages that companies almost like stages of maturity. But whether do you think the majority of companies. Because I kind of look and go well look, we've got 6,000 B Corps globally or just over. That's about 0.01% of the global business world based on a quick Google search of how many limited registered companies are there globally. So we've got about 0.01% of companies globally have met the B Corp standard.

Do you think the general business world is ready to go from mindset right now is we trade legally and we trade solvently to impact driven theory of change model. Do you think.

We'Re at the stage where enough companies could go straight to that or do you think there needs to be an element of look, let's actually just get you a better purpose statement to get you kind of thinking at a higher level here it. And then once you've done that maybe for a year or a couple of years, hey let's actually now think about well what, what difference have you done? Let's actually do some impact measurement and reporting to see has the purpose statement made a difference then? Hey actually and I guess for us as practitioners, do we, do you think because at the minute that's kind of how we operate. It's like let's, let's just get you to be be Corp. Let's get you thinking differently. Let's help you understand there's a range of other things that you need to be thinking about reporting, understanding. Get these as KPIs for your team. Let's get that baked in. Is now that's now your new business as usual or do you think we need to be pushing people and, and are people ready do you think to go right? Do you know what, actually we're going to pause your business for a month and you know you, you keep doing what you're doing but in, in a month's time we're Gonna have this whole theory of change or six months time have this theory of change impact. And we're going to flip your business, you know, as quickly as we can to this new model. Yeah. Thoughts on a lot of question?

Yeah, there's a lot in that, I think in that kind of like spectrum of like traditional business all the way to sort of deeply embedded impact. And every dollar is actually creating direct net positive impact. If you kind of spin all the way to a future world in that space, that'd be ideal. And every time we do the work, we're always aiming that every single sale, every dollar is actually creating a net positive impact. And that I think is still.

I don't think it's still as niche as maybe we're talking about. I think there is a lot of organizations out there that if you look at it, for example, again, I think I use Thermico as example, who we're just supporting now through a process. If you look at their work, they create really amazing windows that have huge thermal value. So it significantly reduces heating and cooling and it also uses very local supply chains and their environmental footprint is very low. So if you look at that organization, I'd say every dollar that they're creating is having a net positive impact. There's a small amount of environmental footprint they need to account for, but that's sort of part of, you know, people need windows and buildings and what they're producing is significantly better than the alternative.

Yep.

But if you kind of like look at a world where all organizations are there and you're kind of ignoring the fact that all businesses do need to make a profit and ideally they're actually having a net positive impact as well. At the same time, there's a significant challenge we have, I think in the economy where there's a lot of questions around, you know, is that model sustainable long term? Is there, you know, this movement around de growth and the idea that consumerism is out of control. So there's a lot of debate, I think philosophically about is that possible and is a world that we need to shift to. And to some degree, you know, I'd love to be idealistic and say that's going to happen, but I think there's a long journey to get there. And my being slightly pragmatic and maybe a little bit knowing that if you can infiltrate around 3 to 4% of a system, you actually create very big difference in change. So we can get that.0 0.0006% of the world to be B corpse up to 3 to 4%. That's when the economy starts to shift. And there are organizations that might not be B Corp. So we're talking about organizations that have, you know, a net positive impact. I think that's a really good way of describing it. So taking that into account, we need to make sure that those organizations were having a net positive impact for every dollar they spend. A scale, not necessarily growing, they might have their own version of scale, but they're the ones that people are buy or working for because that's when the more that people sell, the bigger impact that's going to be created. And I think what we need to make sure is that those organizations were looking at this and saying, I might need to flip my business model over time and I'm not going to make money. What we're saying is you're going to make more money from doing this work and you're going to do it well with integrity and it's going to have a big impact. That's what I believe will actually shift the economy into that space. And I think it's happening. And if you then sort of move back down that spectrum and those organizations who probably only have a profit mindset. And this goes to the comments earlier on around the work we're doing doing and we do do a lot of work with medium and small businesses to become B corps. But the large amount of work we sort of have transitioned to in the last 12 to 18 months is bigger businesses and organizations who are private companies with a, you know, big footprint or public listed companies who have investors and a whole range of different dynamics happening. And I think the idea here is that, you know, there is a journey that those organizations need to go on, but it's a quicker journey than saying, hey, I think there's a difference between saying become a B Corp. I think if you go through the process and get certified and be a B corp, there's a lot of transformation that can happen in an organization. It may take one to two to three years to do, but I think that's a really good mechanism to shift those organizations along that spectrum. And there's a lot of deep work that probably needs to happen as part of that. But the idea to start an organization off with a purpose statement I think goes back to that comment that that's not enough. That's making them feel like they're doing that work without doing the work deeply. And if you look at the range of risks that those organizations now have that probably weren't there 10 to 15 years ago, they've got direct environmental risks around their supply chain. They're directly affected by flood, you know, food continuity, supply chain continuity. I know an organization that has 51. I think the future works a big problem in terms of you're fulfilling roles at the moment. Once an organization had 51 employees that they're kind of looking to attract at the moment can't fill those roles. They are partly purpose driven or purpose driven anyway. So there's these dynamics of that organization sitting there going and saying well I can't just focus on these just profits because I'm getting this investor pressure, I can't attract staff. And my business model is being directly affected by these forces that probably, probably previously wasn't. There's probably social issues that are affecting it. So you know there's a mining company who's doing some great work transitioning to renewables but there's domestic violence in one of their communities that's really high. And that social issues directly affecting their workforce. So there's these social environmental issues that are affecting those organizations. So by putting a purpose statement in and not doing deep impact work, it's not enough, it's not quick enough. So they have material risks at the board level that they need to address. So there's purpose statements really important. But you need to do that deep work to say what are the material things that are important for my business to have a net positive impact on what are the things directly affecting my business and what actually may start to disrupt my business and make it less relevant over time in the near to near future, medium future and longer term. And that's what the work I think that organizations could start on if the particularly larger ones because those risks are materially going to affect them. So do that work first and then say now what? How can we evolve our business model over a period of time to work towards the fact that every single dollar creates a net positive impact. What's that journey we're going to take? What are the causes we need to champion and materially build into our business model? How do we evolve our products, services and innovate? How do we change our financing? How do we change our culture and then say what's our purpose statement in order to sort of drive that change?

Yep. To be that the thing that kind of wraps around it and yeah that.

Almost embeds it as like the north side of. It's like that thing. The purpose statements when they work really well are that thing when anyone in that organization sees a behavior and goes we shouldn't be doing that that's, that's what we do.

Yeah.

And that Rio Tinto, there's a. We were at a conference last week and one of the board members from Rio Tinto was on the stage and talking about that mindset that was blown up for the indigenous mind side. And that was really, really, really sad. But the key thing that he mentioned was that the culture, someone in that team, it just never made sense to actually do that. Where was that purpose and that culture driving decision to say that doesn't make sense because by blowing up that, you know, ancient, you know, hugely culturally important.

Mine site, that. That only was one day's worth of minerals that they extracted from it and they didn't need to do it. So that's a type of behavior that you want to, you want purpose to avoid and navigate through in terms of the challenges that an organization has and that's better for everyone.

Yeah, totally. Yeah. Because I think, yeah, the number of organizations I've worked for historically, where the values are on the wall or they're even ingrained in stone on, you know, in the head office. And yeah, we don't actually do that. We just put that there because they look good and. Yeah, yeah.

You know, and then you go in. How many times have you gone into an organization, a big one, you know, and they've all got great intention. There's only great leaders. Say, can you go and I, you know, interview employees and say, do you know the values? And then literally sitting out maybe on a wall and like, I don't know them. And you're like, you walk past them every day. It's like, well, no one's ever talked about them. They don't have scorecards. We never, we never were even like orient. Orientated around them when we joined. But they're just stickers on a wall. And it's, it happens more often than not 100 or.

Yeah. When you, when you, when we're doing purpose works, what's your current purpose statement? Oh, hang on. I just have to go and find it on the website. And one company, like, half an hour later, she was still reading it. I'm like, well, that's catchy.

But when you had to Google your own purpose statement. Yeah, yeah. It, it generally feels though, that there is, there is some change happening. And, and we're moving from that sort of corporate bingo. Yeah, just pick, pick five sayings, put them all. Get some big posters with some motivational pictures. Yeah, we're all good to go. And yeah, get a brand agency to go and write us a New purpose statement, put it on the wall. I think it is refreshing and.

You know, when we're talking to people about if we, if we get what we call be curious people because I guess, you know, my theory of change at Grow Good is if we can accelerate the people getting on that B Corp journey to start that I think that's really the role we're playing exceptionally well right now is look, you're transitioning from the old world to the new world. You're not really sure. You just, you need some help getting into this new way of thinking. So I think that's, that's the big part we, we try to play.

I think that's really good. Well, I think our role which is evolving, which is clearer. So I think that's a really great to get that, that we always said there's always that B Corp champion organization. If you can elevate them, get the voice heard and get that to. Sometimes it's a. The CEO, sometimes it's a leadership team. But that influences that transformation. A lot of great can happen our role at Purpose Made because I guess we. There is that element of like really empowering that person that comes in. Like normally there's someone that reaches out and wants a change to happen.

Yeah.

But generally speaking we are working with executives and what we want that we want to. If the executive does come to us and is interested in doing the work, that's great. We want to champion that. But what we want to do in those organizations is to start to see the reputational risk and, and the business model risks that happens at organization if they don't do this work. And so that's almost seen. They're going, I need to start doing this work because it's going to impact my business and I'm not doing the right thing. So it's building that awareness to say and that kind of need to say I need to start this journey. And I think if you kind of have, you know, the, the B Corp champions of or purpose champions in the organizations and you have these executive sponsors that are willing to, to sort of go on this journey, then you have a really amazing mix of transformation that can happen.

Yeah. 100. Yeah. We, we call, I call them the concerned citizens and we often get a call or hey, look, I'm middle manager in this company and I really love B Corp and I'd love for us to be a B Corp. How do I convince the CEO that this is a thing?

That's a, that's a nice way of framing it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it happens a lot.

What, what I, I think it's really interesting when, when we're talking to companies who have maybe heard of B Corp, and they're. Or. Or, you know, they're just starting their impact journey, or ESG journey, and they're like, know. We're not 100% sure whether actually we're ready to do this. And I think we've alluded to a lot of it, but we, we say, look, there's four reasons why you need to think about this. Your customers will start demanding this. Your employees will want this. Your investors will be increasingly demanding it, and. Or you're at the back end of a supply chain who will be coming to you to say, hey, I need to know what your footprint is, and I want to know what social impact you're having as business. So I was. I met with one CEO of a company recently who a concerned citizen had introduced me. And my tip to all concerned citizens is, ask your CEO what are the top three things keeping them awake at night? Because whatever's keeping them awake at night, there is probably a purpose or impact lens that they just have not considered because historically it's just not been on the radar of senior executives. Think about sustainability, purpose and impact as a way of solving a problem. But it's normally talent attraction, talent retention, we looking for investment to grow. It's that kind of stuff. And you go, well, great.

Here's.

There's this thing called B Corp or impact that actually the evidence would suggest will help you solve that problem. So could we just have that conversation? And did you ever. Have you met Tim Loftus? Maybe, actually he should be Tim. Three of purpose Tim. He was a Kathmandu and trying to get them on the B Corp journey. And he realized that he had to kind of. I think it's called the Dunphy model of sustainability, where you start off with, at the beginning, it's actively rejecting the idea of sustainability or impact, and then it's kind of begrudgingly realizing that you might have to do it. And then it's kind of. I don't think the next phase is kind of like we start doing it and we recognize that there might be actually an operational saving or a benefit to the company. And then you move into, okay, actually this is really good. Purpose and impact is now strategy. But yeah, he always talked about how, you know, he was just trying to get some little wins to begin with, and he really wanted to get leds into the. Into their stores. And. And he sold it as an economic argument to say well, actually it's going to reduce your power bill by possibly millions of dollars at their scale. And so, yeah, he got the argument. And that's what we're finding with some companies is like you say, actually you kind of need to be thinking about this just from reputational or strategic needs, not from stretching you to do more good or get into this kind of do good or business for good areas. Actually, you, you, this is almost becoming table stakes and business as usual, which is really interesting. This one CEO, he was like, I don't really believe in this stuff, but I recognize I have to believe in this stuff for the future workforce that I need to employ. And it's like, well, I kind of don't mind that you're not fully into this, but that you're going to do it anyway because we, because I know that once kind of like the journey that you went on and I know the journey I've been on, once you start doing good, it's actually really contagious and you want to do more good and you recognize that actually it's not about the dollars coming in every week, it's about the, the impact that we're having and the good that we're doing. And so I kind of don't really care how you get into wanting to do more good, whether it's kind of by hook or by crook. It's like once you're in, it's actually going to be really good for you. And it's like the chocolate covered carrot.

Yeah, I think, I think, yeah, that is really interesting. There's two parts to that. One is obviously the leader you're working with and normally the CEO of the executive. I think it's really important that even though they might come in with a bit of skepticism, that it's really important as you go through that work that they are authentically believing in it and leading through that lens. And if that's not there as at the end of that process, there's a disconnect and that's when cultures can get pretty scatty. And then the second part is that I do have a bias towards action. So I do really deeply believe in strategy and design and needing to do that work really well up front to know what you're actually meant to be doing. But I love, like, it's too often the case that organizations leave it at that point and they go, I've got a beautiful, you know, it's really interesting. A lot of the organizations we come in, they've got these great like reports and Done all this trend stuff and everything's like, like what? And they're like, we're stuck. We don't actually know how to turn this into action. I think that's a really important piece that what we also believe in is it's not like a direct transformation overnight. Let's start with something small that we can pilot to show the value of this. So even putting LED lights in the shop fronts to save money, that's a bloody great way to start. But there's also, you know, ways of doing that where you pilot it, prove it works, then scale it. And so playing sometimes to business rules that currently exist is useful. And there's ways of getting business cases across the line, which we do often, piloting things, testing things. And if you can kind of start there and someone's willing to do it, that's when you go, okay, they're in, they're committed and we can prove that this thing can work. As long as you've done the design strategy. Know that thing is a, it might not work, but generally speaking, you've done the work to say that's something really good to do. That's when things will cut. Oh, hang on. With LED lights. And why don't we put that into our headquarters? Okay, maybe we should start saving some water here. Oh, let's look at our products. How can we actually maybe adopt some of those principles in here and save some money and actually do some good? And then all of a sudden it's like that person becomes, starts to get quite obsessed by like, how do we save money and do impact at the same time? And it starts to become a, an embedded decision making piece of the whole business. And that transformation starts to kind of gather momentum and something. It can happen really quickly.

Yeah. 100. Yeah, there's a little, a cartoon I've got got and it's of these two sort of Buddhist monks and one's deep in meditation and the other one's got one eye open, saying to the other one out of the corner of his mouth, you know, have you ever thought about quitting this for a life of mindless consumerism? And for me, it just encapsulates that journey. Because once you start recognizing that doing good actually can do good for you and the business, it like you say, start baking it in. Okay, right. That's now the new normal. Okay, where else can we test this and try this? And yeah, you get that contagion spreading across companies. Yeah.

One of the stories that I had was at Suncorp and this was, you know, Many years ago. And obviously weather is a really important element to an insurance company. And I remember that there was some policies in place around climate change, but what we, what we wanted to put in place was a pot. Like actually there was no real like, you know, policy around, no real policy around climate change and a real kind of like statement around it. And I remember like people sniffing around and stuffing it. And I remember getting a group together and someone was interested in a particular location and we were in this sort of innovation department. I said, oh, can we get together and maybe have started a conversation around this piece? And so what we did is we did that. And then, you know, I had one. This is like that kind of, you know, when you've got the dancer and the second person joins and all party happening, that person. Then we had a meeting and we're like, oh, maybe we can pull together a group. And I said, yeah, yeah, feel free to invite people. Then there was three people that next meeting and then we said, oh, we should probably gather people together to sort of have this as a pretty important conversation. All of a sudden there's 60 people in the room and I was like facilitating this conversation about why climate policy is important to ensure and how might we go ahead with doing this. And all of a sudden it was amazing. Like, all of a sudden there's this like group saying, I've been caring about this for so long and I've got an avenue to talk about it. We can now turn this into action and change our policy and products and evolve what we're doing and our capital spending and a lot of that foundational work and that one conversation that started with that has now translated into some really great work which obviously haven't been a part of for a long time. But that's just a moment to say, like, even in those organizations that may feel like they have a bit of a latent purpose and some corporate really great element around community and helping people feel safe, but it wouldn't, you wouldn't call it a purpose driven organization, but once you gave people that avenue to tap into something that they care directly about, movements created and something changes very rapidly because those people are in that organization, they're caring about it, thinking about it, but for some reason they don't feel like they can and express and lend like almost like focus their amazing talents on something that could actually be really powerful and important.

Yeah, and that's why I'm a big fan of, I think, you know, the B corp with the purpose. Because if you just do purpose Work without like, say, that underpinning of a theory of change or measurement of impact.

Potential to get distracted or go off on less impactful journeys. But equally, if you're trying, if you're trying to create change and get impact and measure reports without the meaning and the purpose connected to it, it's. It's just another KPI that I don't understand. What. Okay, great. I'm now just reporting a different thing to my boss. I don't care about it. And so that's, you know, I'm kind of really big and I just love that whole purpose thing. Just seeing people understand that, oh, I can bring the things that I care about possibly to my job and have a metric and, and be reporting and working on something internally that actually fulfills more than just my requirements. Turn up and get my, get my pay at the end of the month.

Yeah, look, we've had some really magical moments when we, where we, when we did the reporting. When I was running roy, which was a startup that we created, which is still going today, which I was running for a number of years, but remember, we would set up these reporting frameworks and go into organizations that were, you know, probably purpose driven, but they were like care organizations or. And you go in and show them like you did the measurement, then you present it to the leadership team of staff here. People crying. They were like, oh, my God. I knew that. I knew the work we were doing through the stories we're creating, but this is so meaningful to me because I knew that, that I know that I'm creating a difference and now I can see the figures for it. So there's a difference there to going an organization and setting an ESG or a B Corp framework and then ticking boxes and things like that. And compliance. Oh, yep, I've got that sticker on there. And I've clicked that and ticked that there's a policy done to like, like, here's the purpose that, that you're contributing to. Here's the evidence that shows that you're actually, you know, actually making difference. And that's what it's all about. Yeah, yeah.

100. I've always said if you're, if your purpose, if you know, thinking about your purpose, that's kind of, doesn't make you cry, then it's no purpose. Yeah, it's a marketing statement.

Yeah, that's a, that's a great lens. It likes you well up and you see it like when, with the work we're doing, you're like, and you know, I feel it I'm like, like, well, there's the magic. There's that piece where it's really tapped into that organization. We've kind of, like, pulled out, like, the hearts and the minds and the sweat and the tears and the effort, as well as the pragmatic business side that says this is. This is what the world needs. This is what's deeply underlying in terms of what you're solving for, and this is how you contribute to it. And once you get that magic, you can feel it in the room and you can see it in the eyes and hearts and minds. Working with. That's the kind of the purpose magic 100, man.

Yeah, it's.

It's. It's.

It's sort of tangibly intangible.

Yeah, yeah. Which is, I think, your point about, like, you go back to, like, what humans are all about. They're all about caring, connection. You know, that's what is probably going on. We kind of got away from that humanness, and that's being eradicated from education and businesses. And when you can bring that back into an organization, you can connect to something meaningful. God, it feels good. And it also makes a difference the world and the societies around us.

Yeah. What a crazy idea. My catch on, mate.

Yeah, Mike, it certainly is. At the moment, it feels like it. Yeah.

I mean, like I say. Yeah. You know, when you. You were sort of doing your work at some court, you connected the B Corp. You know, when we first connected 2016, 2017, it just felt like a desert of, oh, my gosh, this is such a hard uphill push, whereas now it feels like we're actually maybe pushing the wrong rock downhill ever so slightly, and it's just getting a bit of momentum on it.

Yeah. I remember when I first workshop, I was working with B Lab, and we got together with some of the early B Corps. I was in a room and I facilitated this sort of model, which is a bit of a systems model. And it talks about how systems regenerate, essentially. And it goes through this kind of phase of building, and then it goes through a phase of conservation. And then there's a bit of what something the systems probably, you know, needs to shift or change. And so that's called the kind of the breaking point. And then something tips and then changes, and it goes through a phase of learning and renewal to create something new. And I always get with the B Corp thing, I got people to plot where they thought it was that. And there's a lot of people saying that the economic system is in conservation and we Started to identify what things would need to shift and change in order for that renewal and breaking point to occur. And I think I've kind of back to that model which probably similar analogy to pushing the rock up the hill, turn that corner and those levers that we identified have shifted and they're starting to change. And there's something really interesting happening at the moment where that we're learning about what the old system needs to change and that renewal phase is, is coming, which is really fascinating and exciting at the same time. But also I think the responsibility to get this right now is really important. So it needs to be done really well. We need to prove this works. It needs to become the new paradigm of business and the economy needs to shift and we, this needs to be the new normal and, and that's on a lot of our shoulders and the people we work with to, to pioneer and continue to pioneer this. Not even pioneer, because it's sort of becoming more mainstream. But yeah, take on that leadership challenge to help us sort of navigate through this important period.

Yeah, but it's super, super interesting time to be doing, doing this stuff. Yeah. So you, you bumped into B Corp. Corp when you were at suncorp. B Corp. Suncorp. There we go. That's good. And so this would have been what, 2015, 2014?

Well.

Yeah, yeah. So it was 2014 and B Corp just came, was just coming through, small giants bringing that out to Australia and we got involved in that early conversation. Then we were up essentially, I was at the launch of IT in Melbourne. So there was og. Yeah, it was very early days. It was a pretty exciting actually. But yeah, something I very much believed in the principles of. Yeah, yeah.

And so then you, you left suncorp to start Hatched, was that right?

Yes, the Hatch. And then Hatch became a B Corp in 2017. And through doing that work, I would be working with organizations like SilverShef, which was a B Corp, helping me certify. We worked with aesop, which has become a B Corp, and a range of, I think, very kind of organizations that were starting to grow and move internationally and had probably purpose at the core. But we're like thinking that through as a. How do we, you know, embed B Corp, but also how do we, you know, expand our business model as we're kind of growing? Which was always a challenge that I was, I really, really, I thought was really interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so, yes, I guess you really had front row seats to the whole B Corp thing, which would introduce you to the concept and yeah, you Were fully.

Yeah, well, lucky enough.

Pretty, Pretty obvious decision, I guess, for you to go, yeah, we should probably.

Be a B Corp. Yeah, it was, it was like, you know, it was a dream to work for B Corp, so why not create one? So that was sort of the piece of the puzzle when I was coming out of Suncorp. And it was just, I mean, we did B Corp certification, so we should be able to apply that to ourselves. And we got to, you know, we got to go to the, we got to work with the founders in the US and we got to go to a lot of the different B Corp conferences in the different regions and really get to know the businesses really well. And every time we had those connections and conversations, it just reaffirmed that, that this is the way the business needs to, to, to head and go. And B Corp is not perfect in terms of the, the, the certification, but it's evolving and changing and you know, to really, when you compare it to many of the other alternatives or even to ESG standards, it's a really great framework for organizations to be part of 100 agree.

You know, it's not, it's not a silver bullet. There's some stuff that it asks you that I don't agree with. There's stuff that I don't think it asks you that I think it should ask you. But it's the only framework that's globally recognized, independently verified, and social and environmental performance.

Exactly.

Let's go with that for now. And I mean, and I guess they're always really good at taking stakeholder engagement from the B Corp community, but also from anyone else who wants to have a conversation with about what it should look like. Yeah, I think you and I were very similar. We certified 2016 and it was very much a case of, I like this B Corp idea. Oh, but there's only two B Corps in the country. Neither of them are hiring. And even if they were, they. Neither of them really do anything that I could. Could probably do. So, yeah, stuff it. I'll start.

For a penny, in for a pound.

That's it.

So, yeah, fun times. And then. So your B Corp journey pretty quick, I'd imagine. You, you, you knew your way around it. You'd been doing all this stuff. So. Yeah, and, and you, you then obviously.

Started the business in 2016, day one. You know, you have to have a year's worth of revenue. Yeah, I was literally, we were working towards it. Soon as we hit the 12 months to the day, we, it's like we, we submitted it and done we pretty much, yeah, immediately. So it was fundamental to my philosophy around business at the time and my deep passion for it. And it's really important for me as a business owner too to say I standing for this purpose but I want to make sure that my business is being built in that way. And a lot of that was less externally focused as a passion for mine around, you know it does actually lead to a lot of business development, great new connections, you know, meeting someone like yourself. But like there's been unlimited, there's been so many benefits business wise for us to become a B Corp. But ultimately it was for me to say I've got that stamp to say I'm running my business in the right way and I'm, I'm taking account of, you know, it's not perfect but I'm taking account of all the important things that I need to do when I'm running it. And that's to me the most important part of B Corp for me.

Yeah, totally. Yeah. I just kind of think if you're involved in the purpose impact, esg, sustainability space, if you're not certified independently around your own footprint, it's kind of like.

Really, what are you hiding? You know, what's not going on. So yeah, I think, I mean you know, with what I, when I started grow good we were very much more around sales training because that, that was my background. And so for me, yeah, B Corp was just a movement that I fell in love with and just, just yeah, coming out having like a hard Brexit from the corporate world, realizing that there's a lot more than just chasing money and chasing money on at a business level can lead to, you know, really bad outcomes. You know. Yeah, my, my background was selling medical devices and the company's knowingly killing people in the operating theater whilst you know, chasing profit over patient outcomes. So you kind of go the one industry that should be about just helping people isn't. Okay, so what are all the other ones doing where actually they don't have to worry about people at all? It's like so, so yeah, and same for me. I just, it's like it was just I was never not going to be a B corp. So. And I think that that the early group of B Corps that, that sort of founding B Corps across all countries typically have been very, very much driven by this is just what I'm going to do. Right. Whereas now it is almost we're getting into this phase of okay, actually there's a market imperative for me to do this but obviously you know, it would be hard for me to be a B Corp consultant or helping people with their B Corp journey if I wasn't a B Corp myself and hadn't done, done the hard yards. So yeah, it's massively important to my business now for a lot of other reasons.

But yeah.

I mean, if he's consulting on people and even purpose, but you know, on, on B Corp and you're not a B Corp. Well, there's a, there's a miss. There's a definitely mismatch there. Yeah. And I think, I mean if you look at the use cases now, particularly for larger companies that come to us to get, get supported, it is different. I mean there is a piece of, there's maybe the, what did you call them? The sort of the change maker internally. There's that.

The concerned citizen.

Concerned citizen coming who's saying I want to become a B Corp because they're passionate about the movement may be similar kind of to us. But then in the organization it says, okay, I want to go down that pathway. It is, there is an element of, you know, I'd be proud to have this stamp next to me, but there is a piece here which is saying this is going to help my business, this is going to help me with my reporting. This is going to help. There's a, there's a bit of a practical lens that's all supplier to it. I think there's also recognition that there is a lot of ESG reporting and standards and it's getting pretty confusing. And you know, some people might say that B Corp certification is part of that, but it's an elevation. It's almost like your whole business is certified and it's almost like you're, you stand out from the ESG crowd when you have that, that B Corp certification, particularly if you're either publicly listed or a multinational. That's not an easy thing to achieve. So it is. There's also an elevation of like, like it's bloody hard to get. And so that also is. It elevates it in terms of that having that there and it fits in nicely to some of the other reporting requirements that are sitting there as well.

Yeah, totally. Yeah. One of the. Well, I give the same talk with different titles and one of the titles is if ESG is the question, is B Corp the answer? It's like, it is confusing. There's all these frameworks. Well, pick the best one. That is good because I think the other thing with B Corp been reflecting on this recently. You know, I worked for a company previously that was going through ISO. So it wasn't the, the environmental 14,001. It was, was that 14,001. It was, it was one of the, it was more around process and procedural stuff.

I, I didn't walk out of having been a part of that process, going to all my friends and relatives, oh my gosh, like you guys should do ISO. It's so cool. But B Corp, for somehow some reason seems to have captured the, the hearts and minds and imaginations of employees and customers in particular, who even having gone through a, as I describe it, a rigorous but achievable process, people get through it and you see it on LinkedIn all the time or Facebook, hey, we're a B Corp. I never see anyone say, hey, we're ISO certified or hey, we've done some other. We're Six Sigma or whatever it is. It's like, it's really interesting how Beacle and I don't feel it was intentional because the, that B lab is a very certification focus. They're not a marketing led company yet they seem to have created this marketing desire cachet around the assessment.

And I think the way I'd frame that is that when we, you talk to the founders, there was always that element of, you know, to some degree this was sort of, I wouldn't say it just bluntly, but this is sort of a boring, sort of like, almost like a playbook for businesses that we want. And that's true. But the other elements they always talked about was movement creating. And that's, that's a really important element where you can connect unlikely businesses together. So this isn't a certification for accountants or like financial advisors. This is for anyone, any organization. So it is amazing when you meet another B Corp and they go, hey, I make ice cream or hey, I'm a, you know, I'm an architect. You're like, wow. But we're all kind of like there's some sort of alignment there, which is really interesting. But I think the fundamental component of that is this sort of movement creating. And there's an aspirational component to being seeing organizations like a Patagonia being a B Corp or you know, a purpose made that everyone looks up to. I'm just joking. But there is an element there where they look up these brands and say, look, they're amazing brands that I really admire. And so I want to be part of that too. And I want my organization sort of hold myself in the same esteem as that from an accountability perspective that I am doing the right thing. Not from A hey, I want to hang out with the cool kids at Patagonia. This is, I want to be, make sure I'm doing my business right. And so I think the components of movement building have been really important around this, around, you know, B Corps being encouraged to connect and help each other. You know, elements around procurement, working together and collaborating. There's been a lot of great things put in place by the community to do that sort of stuff and there's some great examples in New Zealand that you've been part of as well. And I think that's been a really important piece to the movement. So it's almost been I want to be part of this because I want to contribute to something bigger and, and I also had this sort of aspirational piece to sort of, you know, my business or my work to sort of be in that mix of those organizations doing good stuff. So I think there's a really important thing that we can't overlook here about the movement that's being created and that community part of this element that is keeping it going faster and quicker than ever. And I think that's what organizations also need to be aware of about their employees and the investors going, I want to be part of that movement of want to work or invest in those companies. So there's a bit of being, there's a bit of that h. Of like falling behind if you're not sort of, you know, along that.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah. And so what, I mean, I think I was going to ask you like, what does being a B corp mean to you? But I think we possibly kind of covered that. But yeah, so I guess run, running your business as, as a, a leader of a business, you know, of a small business, but also a leader of a movement. What do you find a challenge between balancing purpose and profit for yourself or do you feel like, you know, you are like one of the OG purpose people. So I feel like you're pretty dialed in on the, yeah, we're probably not going to do some work for you because it, it doesn't align with us.

Yeah, I mean there is challenges obviously running a small business and there's a big contract on the table and there's money sitting there, but it's.

I intrinsically believe that if you have purpose and impact embedded in your model, you will actually make and be better off financially. And I think that if I was going to go so I mean I started a business that wasn't necessarily purpose driven when I was 15 years ago and it didn't really Work out. And I think that was because I wasn't clear on why I was doing it. I think that drives you every day. So I think that purpose and probably isn't necessary trade off for us. I think that comes with some challenges. So there's some work that you have to say no to. For example, there was a conversation, you know, a couple of weeks ago with amazing advertising agent where they do work with gambling companies and stuff. And there was some talk about services. Someone like, well, we just don't do that work. We do the social impact, environmental impact piece. So that's what we focus on. But I think that focus is good and I think you, it also enables you to know that, you know, we're a services firm. So if you're starting to work, you know, nightmare clients, if you can sort of genuinely a nightmare client is someone who's inauthentic with their impact and purpose. And so you get into that work, you're like hang on, oh this is not actually there's something wrong here. The culture see and we do you navigate and work through that because this work's important. We make that commitment and we also are very clear around working and calling that out in a responsible and ethical way. But it helps us navigate where the good opportunities are as well. So I think from our perspective it's not a trade off, it helps us. The only thing is probably the biggest challenge is that there's so many problems that we want to help solve for. We've got to be careful with our time. So it's easy to go and want to help a not for profit who probably doesn't have funding. It's easy to. We started to startups so that's a, you know, a really important piece of our work. But it's also spread your time more thinly. So it's really important to us that we, we're focused on where we can create the biggest impact and for us probably more, less get. Don't get. We can't be as distracted or spread too thinly with trying to help as many people as we can, which we, which is sort of innately part of our personality. So that's been a, a lesson in the early days where probably 25 to 30% of our work was pro bono. And you think, well actually we need to make sure that's paid work that's creating that really important to do that. But we can't, we can't viably support that many businesses without, you know, fees attached to it.

Yeah. Which is, which is reasonable. Yeah. In the, in the current economic paradigm.

Yeah would be great. You know.

You know, you know there's a universal based wage and all those sort of things exist and we can go out and just literally go and find the biggest challenges to focus on the sold and we do do that generally speaking that's how we focus our work. But we also all minded about where's funding coming from, who can we support, how can we make sure that we're viable. So we're still around to keep solving these problems and we're also showcasing that you can have, you can build a successful agency that is purpose driven, having big change because that will also attract, attract the talent to do this work. More people to do this work as opposed to going oh well we just need to do be an advertising company that sells cigarettes and gambling. You don't want that.

Yeah. And you can't fill from an empty cup. You know, you've got to be able to, yeah. Be long term sustainable.

The business element of purpose works important to be very business savvy in what you're doing. And I think we can't underestimate that. We're not saying that we're doing purpose and that doesn't have those business components. You've got to be really good business doing purpose if not better because you're working in more uncharted territory, more emerging industries more generally.

Yeah, totally. So I guess final question, looking 10 years into the future, what does the B Corp movement look like?

Yeah, interesting question. I probably haven't projected that far forward but in terms of, I mean that kind of spectrum we talked about earlier from kind of like, like more conservative businesses with just focus on purpose to every dollar essentially making an impact. Ideally speaking, you know.

There'S a necessity for a B Corp for B Corp certification and ESG reporting because what's it's doing is necessitating that people are actually accountable for reporting on things they're not doing at the moment or elevating organizations to do things that they should be doing. And so these things around, you know, like, I mean safety is an example that's sort of annoying in this space because everyone's o safety. But safety is a great example where you know, people have embedded directly, you know, those problems with you know, workplace industry injuries and you know, horrific deaths on websites and stuff like that and organizations have embedded that culturally into, into it. So safety is always in the boardroom number one. And you know there's, there's key metrics like lost time injury that are boom, straight, you know front and center that every single investor is asking for. So for me, what tends to happen is that this sort of, if you know that model I talked about before where the breaking tipping point, there's a renewal and study, we can, we can really start to see a new economy starting to emerge where there's not this debate around purpose versus profit. It's like this is, this is not even a thing. Like every organization should be contributing socially, environmentally, because they won't be around if they don't. And secondly, they create more value if they do. And then all the reporting standards start to almost disappear as shock horror that we need to do this stuff. They're saying it just makes sense reporting on this stuff stuff because we need to run our business well. So this sort of, instead of it sort of being an elevation or like a big sticker that you put on your shoulder to say I'm a B corp or I, I've done this sort of ESG piece, it's like it just starts to disappear. And saying this is just how we do things. And it becomes the. Not even the new normal, but it's deeply embedded into organizations in terms of the way they're working and there's, there's not a choice or alternative not to do it. And there'll be more B Corps, there'll be more reporting requirements, there'll be more investors stuff and customers looking for this stuff, no matter what people are saying. And it's going to be, it is the new normal, but it becomes something that isn't different or new. It's just what we do.

Yeah, no, that's. I kind of tend to agree. And I think the general trend is heading in that direction. You know, like you said, the big end of town. You've now got mandatory disclosures around environmental performance. It's, it's, you know, give it two to three years. Are they going to say, actually we now need to know about it's going to be mandatory to report on slave the risk of human slavery in your supply chain. That's now another thing you have to do. So. Yeah, and I think it's the smart.

Mental health of employees. Talk about safety, physical safety. What about mental safety? That's another thing that, you know, it's not on the radar, but you could see that coming. Definitely.

Yes.

Yeah.

Interesting times, man. Interesting times to be alive. And I keep saying to, you know, the people like, like ourselves who've been pushing this idea for a few years, you know, we'll, we'll look back in what are we now I mean, we're sort of. Are you for in your 40s?

Yeah.

Yeah. So what? In 40 years time when we're all in the B Corp rest home on Mars. Do you remember that in 2016 when there was only like 5b corpse? Gosh. Do you remember know when and everyone. You know. Yeah. We'll be those crazy people that they look back on and go, oh, yeah, it was those. Was those Tim's and Purpose that did it.

Yeah. Well, hopefully we're not on Mars and the plant, we're looking on the planet and it's regenerative. They're a very happy place and then there's a lot more happier people and the environment's happy and that would be a very, very meaningful thing to be. Just sit back and go, thankfully we got here.

Yeah, well, mate, it's been an absolute pleasure. We haven't actually connected for quite a while because you've been busy, I've been busy. We need to do it more often and we'll get Tim three of Purpose, Tim Loftus involved and he'll no doubt introduce us to Tim's 4 and 5 and we'll have our own conference. Tim's of Purpose. Yeah, maybe. But I make. Keep on keeping on. Genuinely love the work that you do. Yeah, I've always looked up to the work that you do and I feel re energized and feel like there's more that I could be doing now. Now having heard more about the cool stuff that you're up to. So, yeah, thanks, buddy. And keep on going.

Yeah, real pleasure. Love the conversation and looking forward to collaborating more.

Yeah, man. I feel like there's going to be a second episode we need to do to go deep on some of this stuff. Yeah.

Oh, sounds good. Sign me up.

Awesome. All right, cheers, buddy.

Catch you later.

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.