#61 A Shift in Perspective to The Discovery of B Corp

And we are live with Tim Jones. I was about to say Tim bloke. Tim Jones, that decor bloke. He is CEO and founder at Grow Good. So, yeah, we're gonna talk about B Corpse. We're gonna talk about Tim's background. Tim is live from New Zealand right now, a country that apparently is separated. And two. I thought it was one booth, so my brain tricked me into thinking it was a second Italy, but it's not. And, yeah, Tim told me a bit more about that amazing country. And we both sort of Ms. UK and all its history, you know? So, yeah, I also miss that. I want to visit Italy pretty soon. They've got huge history. And, yeah, Paris was cool too. So I guess I'm gonna come back. My wife wants to go. Before we get into the pod, it's been brought to you by podpire.com if you want to start scale or be invited to a podcast like this one. Get sponsors, get great guests, grow your brain, grow your network, even get clients and leads. You know, I get one client out of 10 interviews, which is interesting. More on that later. Tim, welcome to the pod. Can you tell us a bit more about yourself and a bit about what is it that you do?

Sure. So based in New Zealand, we would say kia ora. So, hello, but I'm half Welsh and so Wales would say shamai. So there we go. We covered all our bases. So, yeah, I live in Ototahi, Christchurch, New Zealand. I am that B Corp bloke. I basically specialize in helping companies get B Corp certification.

I haven't always been doing this. Like I said, originally from the uk, I started off my career working as a medical device salesperson. A lot of people are probably currently watching Painkiller on Netflix. It hurts me to say that I was basically kind of one of those salespeople, but not as bad as that. I was selling orthopedic equipment, so hips and knees and then spinal instruments and implants to consultant surgeons. And we actually had to know a lot about our products because my job was to stand in the operating theater and help a surgeon go through a surgical procedure. So slightly less nefarious and dark compared to those nasty painkiller sales reps. And the parties definitely weren't as good as the ones that are in that series. Spoiler alert. Um, yeah, did that for a few years and then really it was 2010, 2011. So in. In Christchurch, we had a sequence of massive earthquakes over 2010, 2011 literally destroyed the city. The central city is still being rebuilt, however many years later and then in 2012, my wife and I had our daughter. And over that sort of sequence of two years, I had what would be described in the clinical literature as a subconscious awakening. So I kind of actually got to realize that the job I was doing wasn't quite as meaningful as I thought it was. And I could see the corruption and malfeance in the medical device industry for actually what it was rather than sweeping it under the carpet like most people can and still do in that industry. And yeah, that led me down a bit of a rabbit hole to explore, well, what is the meaning of life? What should I be doing? What could I be doing? Went on a massive journey of purpose, discovery for myself. Like what do I want to be, who am I, who do I want to be and what do I want to do? And yeah, on that journey I discovered this thing called B Corp and that kind of blew me away that there was this opportunity for business to look at doing good in the world and make money. Whereas the medical device world that I'd come out of was just focused on making money, even at times when they knowingly killed people and, you know, patients through supply of products. So yeah, that's kind of me. And so yeah, since 2015 I went out on my own, started my own business. I realized I was fundamentally unemployable in the real world. And yes, since 2015 I started, when I started the business, my main service was actually sales trading because that's, you know, I came from a background in sales. So when I started the business, B Corp was still very much under the radar. It's still pretty under the radar Now. So yeah, 2015, my main offer to the market was working with other mission driven businesses, charities, not for profits. Let's help you get the money and then let's get the money out of the, you know, the big evil corporations, as it were. And then since about 2017 onwards, B Corp has just slowly, slowly become more and more of a thing and now pretty much 98% of our work is just working with clients from all over the world who want to get B Corp certified but need some help to do it.

Are these companies evil? 1, 2, how do us sales folks, how can we forget or heart in the process? Because me, I started straight up in cells and a lot of people, they start straight up in cells, they even, they don't even have the opportunity to develop a heart yet. Right. It's fully, it's just a brain, it's just like money, money, money.

Yep.

So is A Corp evil who is evil in that corp? How can that change? How can cells bastardize? Or values that we've been taught by our parents but never really put into place because we have zero experience. Any thoughts on.

I think the big challenge, particularly for young men, is our brains. So the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of our brain that lets us make decisions. It's like the CEO or the general of your brain. For guys, that doesn't come online until at least our mid-20s, maybe not our early 30s. And that was my big thing. I just got sucked into this world of sales because it's glitz and glamour. It's money. You know, here's your expense card, here's your health insurance, here's your car. Here's everything. You know, you are the wagyu beef cows of the. Of the organization because you're bringing in the money. And that, for me, was a real. You know, I. I didn't have my moment or my epiphany until I was in my mid-30s, and. And then I actually started to think about my life and why was I doing the job that I'm doing and how did I end up here. And I think that's a big problem is for a lot of. A lot of younger guys, you get trapped in the glitz and the glamour because you've got no option. You've got no way of not thinking about it. And it just appeals to. To young guys. So I guess if you're listening and you're a younger guy, just be aware of that and maybe just start pondering and considering, you know, actually, do I really want to be doing this? But I think it's typically when. Yeah, when guys reach their mid-30s to. To their 40s, and you maybe, you know, you're getting married, you're starting to think about kids. You know, the big thing for me was having a child. It's like, whoa, hang on a minute. I've got this other life now. And I think that's true for the male and female. You know, you have this other life that you are now responsible for, and that makes you just look at the world in a whole different way. I'm not saying go out and have kids just to see the world in a different way. That obviously that.

That would be the challenge. Is that. Okay, well, my parents, they were good intention. My dad's an entrepreneur. My mom. My mom worked hard also for the governments. But values, I mean, I could see them do things, my parents. And that's how I model some of my values. But no one ever spent time with me to teach me about the long term benefits of honesty and about doing good.

Me Personally, it took me 5 Neo DMT to understand my connection with this planet Earth. So I wouldn't recommend that hit.

Yep.

Because that's quite a drastic one. But I mean, I mean I'm, I'm like dramatizing. There was other phases, but mostly.

Related to meditation, spirituality, going on deep retreats, feeling the grass, you know, feeling, understanding that if I have my foot in the grass, that's grounding right there, there's ions going through my body, it's health, sun exposure on a daily basis, going in the sea and feeling just floating out there and healing. You know, we are part of this world. That's what it took me. And again, this can be put into math, you know, and roi, which is a challenge there. So the question I'm getting at is that if I'm not having these values hammered in by my parents, and most folks are like that, you know, their parents, they do spend time with them, but they don't fully understand. Plus the educational system is not going to be part of it. And my friends are the same. How can I learn this hard centeredness as a teenager?

I think it's, it's something that I've pondered on a lot and I, I wonder if we are built in a manner that would mean that it's that you shouldn't do that. I feel like in some ways you need to experience what the, what the awful looks like to know what the good and what the different. You know, it's like if you go and I mean I'll pick on Starbucks or McDonald's. You know, part, part of their genius is that they're consistently average. You know, it's not, it's not the best coffee you've ever had in the world, going to a Starbucks or a McDonald's. Whereas if you go to like a really small cafe, I don't know, in Tuscany or you know, in Rome, where the guy or the girl who's making is like an expert puts all their love and attention into making the world's perfect espresso, you need to know what average feels like to know what amazing feels like. So there's a part of me that wonders yet do we need to have people have this, have these bad experiences and to know it's almost like the yin yang. But then I guess you look at more indigenous tribal groups where, you know, actually they don't there isn't that that sort of darker side? There isn't that element of chasing the wrong things because it's instilled from a very early, you know, early age that actually you, you need to be contributing to the tribe. And there's some interesting anthropological studies on tribes where when a child is born, they will be given the name at birth, but then there'll be a group of people who watch the child as they grow and develop. And when they get to the age or the time of coming to age, where typically there is then some kind of test of manhood or womanhood, after they've been through that test, they then get given a new identity that aligns more with who they have become. So there's some really interesting things that happen in, you know, in other parts of the world that I think we're just, we're so disconnected from understanding who we actually are as ourselves. So, yeah, I mean, maybe it would be interesting to do a study or to get a couple of schools and maybe, I guess you could make an argument that maybe like the Montessori type schools do do this kind of stuff where you know, getting that connection to authentically who you are from an earlier stage rather than. And this is a big thing for me, when I look back at my schooling, I wasn't who I wanted to be. I was who the school needed me to be for them to be successful. Because my, my school was all about how many kids leave this school and go to university. And ideally most of these kids are going to go to Oxford or Cambridge so that they can then turn around and recruit the next generation of kids to come in, or the next parents rather, and say, hey, you send your, your kid to this school, there's a 70% chance they're going to go to Oxford or Cambridge. And that was a big part of my unbundling. So, yeah, I don't know. I think it'd be really interesting to try and find a study on that and see. Yeah. Who's raised in a more authentic manner versus the standardized rites of passage.

So one of my mentor, Arne Rubenstein in Australia, he's the rites of passage guy, got a great book From Boys to Men. So, yeah, really important point what I'm getting out of this is, and I agree with that thesis is at us boys were naturally somewhat destructive, you know, like. And little humans as well. We need to experience first also before understanding which is natural. Right. Why listen to someone if most of these someones aren't right in the first place and if you can't be sure if you haven't lived It I think that's how the brain works now for the organizations maybe start Starbucks and McDonald's needed to destroy and go like all the way into capitalism before understanding that there's a better way. Or did they have to wait until people had to tell them like, look, we won't invest in you if you're not green.

I think there's an, I mean the way I look at it is, you know, an organization is nothing more than a collection of individuals with a shared vision or goal that they are pushing towards. And maybe with an argument that particularly in larger organizations like a Starbucks or McDonald's, the closer you are to the front line of the delivery of the product, sometimes it might be a job of necessity rather than my true calling is to go and work for McDonald's. It could be that actually that's the best job that I can get for me right now that pays enough, you know. But I think if you, if you look on the, on the meta level, how humanity has almost been captured only in the last 200ish years. So the whole idea of an economy and what is money and what is currency and how we do stuff, it's really only in the last 200ish years that the modern economy has come into place. And there's a really cool British documentary maker called Adam Curtis and he's got a documentary called Hyper Normalization. And the concept behind that is some things are now considered. It's almost like the fish in water. Some things are considered so normal that you can't imagine that the world was ever not like this. And so things like a mortgage? Well, yeah, everyone has to have a mortgage. No, they've not actually been around that long. You know, 300 years ago I would have built this house with some of my neighbors and I wouldn't have owed the bank any money. But if you said that now, hey, I'm going to build my own house, I'm not having a mortgage. People would look at you like you've got four eyes and eight years. So I think there's just been an element of capture of humanity over the last 200 years by the financial system in general. There's a really another, I guess another allegory or thought around this is Joseph Campbell in his work, you know, the hero's journey or the hero in A Thousand Faces. In one of. He's got a really cool interview series with Bill Moyers. I think it is. If you just Google Joseph Campbell interview series on, on YouTube there's about six part documentary where they Interviewed Joseph Campbell and the one thing he talks about says, you know, if you look, if you look around a city today and look, look for the biggest, the tallest buildings and look for the names on them. It is all finance, banking, insurance, wealth creation. He said 200 years ago the tallest building in a city was the cathedral. And I think that's like a really, you know, obvious demonstration of how we have been captured by, by finance and money. And that is the new God. And that whole kind of golden gecko greed is good. You know, the last, and I think the last 20 years of the last 200 or probably since the 70s have been this utter commitment to. It's, you know, it's all about the self. It's about you getting as much as you can in any means necessary so that you're okay. And so this destruction of community and, but ironically the idea of community and society and doing good and giving back is that is actually innately human. And I wonder why. This is partly why globally we have such big mental health crises is because there's this deep subconscious tension where people know that they're acting in a way that goes against their deepest human desires of wanting to serve and do good. There's a survey done in the UK, YouGov surveys. They do these surveys for the British population every now and then. This One was from 2018. I need to see if I can find an updated one. But in 2018 they surveyed the British population and around about 30% felt that their job provided them with no meaning and was more than likely contributing to destroying the planet. And then we wonder why there's a mental health crisis because I think people subconsciously know that the job I'm doing is probably bullshit and doesn't actually need to be here, but I'm only doing it because I have to go and pay all my bills. So yeah, bit of a rant but I think we've got some stuff there. Yeah, I think companies have been captured but I think this is why we're seeing the growth of the B Corp movement because people, consumers, employees, owners, supply chain and investors are all going, are all having this kind of a wake up moment. And I guess if you look on a really meta level, if you get into a Jungin psychology, you know, he talked about the, the transition from the age of Pisces to the age of Aquarius, which is what we're, it's possibly like a 600ish year transition period. But what, what he said was that this will be the coming of age of man and the rise of consciousness and humanity will break through all previously constrained mental attitudes and ideas around connection and humanity and spirituality and metaphysics and become truly unified. And, and you kind of look at that again from a meta level and you go, well, it's kind of interesting that we're seeing this rise of business for good and people increasingly look at this.

Was it like lack of data or lack of feeling and kind of blocking the heart?

I think it's that lack of feeling of blocking the heart. I think we're, I think we're awash with data. But, you know, data and science is, is fantastic. We need data and science. We need to know what the best path to do is. But if you're not connected to your spirit, your soul, your heart, your gut, you're just making rational decisions all the time. You know, apart from, I always pick on accountants, you know, but most people, when they choose, if you think about the three biggest decisions you're going to make in your life are probably who you're going to marry, the house you buy, and the car you buy. Now, not many people get a spreadsheet when they're thinking about, should I ask this girl out on a date? You just got to go, oh, there's something about you. I feel compelled to ask you out for a coffee or a wine or come to a movie with me. When you see the house that you fall in love with, you typically some people will make a spreadsheet and do the numbers, but typically you get captured by the house because you thought, how many times do you hear I fell in love with the house? I just saw it and I just felt this was going to be my home. So again, I think deeply we know what we want to do, what we feel is right for us. But again, I think in this modern, scientifically driven, data driven world, we've lost that connection, that even that ability to think and feel. You know, it's like that head, head, heart, hand alignment, think, feel, do. And I think that's massively corrupt. And again, I think that's why we have a lot of mental health issues, because people know that what they're doing doesn't feel right, but they're doing it anyway. And so that, that disconnect, it's, it's all out of whack.

Yeah, I, I would add to this, like, the job you occupy is an important decision and that would be number one to me. Like, yeah, 60% of our life, there's then probably where you live and funnily enough, like maybe like what bed you sleep in from a quantity perspective, right? Yeah, yeah. And the dating part is interesting, right? Because me, I went through the period of like hunting on, on Tinder and looking at Tinder like a sales model, you know, like if I meet 10, then maybe there will be one that will actually close for long term.

It's actually how I met my wife. But my wife, you know, I didn't meet a bunch of girls here in, in Mexico and it was from the heart, you know, and still up to this day, it's not a decision I can explain. I think there's more wisdom in the, the heart and in the stomach, just that we don't understand it Right. Scientifically.

Well, we've recently discovered there, there is as many, if not more neurons in our stomach and our heart than there is in our brain. So, you know, there's a book.

Different chakra, sort of.

Yeah.

I'm not sure how to describe it. Maybe a different vibration, maybe it picks up other signals as well. There's, you know that in the gut, there's microbiome in there. Heart is a lot about magnetism too. So it's stuff, it's really deep stuff that we don't understand. It's fascinating stuff and I guess it's not rocket science to understand that. It's like, this is the Earth we live on. This is the art, the, the air that we breathe. And if we pillage, if we keep our bed, if we trash our own bed, you know. And also it happens that every source of food comes from this planet Earth. I think it especially hit home when we've seen some creatures that we love, such as birds, have stomach full of plastics, you know, and, and fishes and turtles. And I think that was the, the okay, yeah, shit's wrong moment. Now, how do we fix all this mess? Do you feel that this scale has tipped in the positive direction? How do we fix all of that?

It is really interesting because some days I see stuff and I kind of go, it's done. Like, we've solved it. It's going to be amazing. And then within half an hour, you see something that's just utterly destructive and awful and you go, okay, no. Okay. There's still a lot of work to be done. I think there's also big risks. You know, I live in a bit of a B corp bubble. Everyone we hang out with is either a B corp or wants to be a B corp and they really get this stuff and they're passionate and they want to make change. And then, yeah, every now and then you Come across someone who you go, oh, okay, yeah. There are still people that actually just care about making as much money as possible and they actually don't care whether they kill, destroy, maim, you know, whatever. So. But I think, you know, it's, it's a non linear progression. It's, it's going like this. But the general trend is towards people acknowledging, okay, yeah, we have, we haven't been the best global citizens on this planet and we want to. And I think the key for me is, is, you know, do do as much good as you can with what you've got. You know, there's no expectation to be perfect, but at least be trying to do more good. And, and I think, yeah, I think that, that for me seems to be. Which is why, partly why I called the company. Grow good. It's like if you can just grow a little bit good every day, you're going to be better incrementally. It's that compounding interest of doing good, you know. Yeah. So I think, I think we're getting there, but I think it's really hard to say exactly where we're at.

Yeah, just like AI If I make a prediction, I think there's like too many smart people working in the area for that to fail. Generally speaking now, there will always be bad actors. My question for you though is like your B Corps, are they B Corps because they make so much profits, which they achieve by polluting, that they're B Corps or are they actually offsetted and fully vetted in a way that is like, okay, you do good in this planet Earth and you're a good company.

So yeah. So to get B Corp certification, you go through what I call a rigorous but achievable independent verification process. So by being a B Corp, it does not mean you are perfect. So the current model for certification is you have to score a minimum of 80 out of 200 points on this certification framework assessment tool. There is currently no 200 point B Corp. I think the highest currently is somewhere in the 180s. So no one has smashed 200 points and won it, as it were. Not that you would win B Corp. The median score on first attempt is 50 out of 200. So to even be scoring 80 out of 200, you're doing, you know, better than, than the market, better than average business. So B Corps are like I say, they're not perfect. There are still B Corps who do some stuff that you would kind of look at and go, hey, that's not great. But again, the principle behind B Corp is just be better, you know, measure and report and understand where you are doing good and then use the framework as a guide to understand where you can do more good and build, you know, build a plan around that. And that's where, I mean, yeah, most of the companies we're working with to help them get B Corp, they're already pretty B Corp aligned. You know, they're already thinking and feeling and operating quite like a B Corp, but they just need to capture that and maybe make some minor improvements. But once they've gone through that journey, there's then this amazing framework that they can look at and do an analysis on and go, okay, well where didn't we score? And, and where do we want to, where do we want to improve?

You started in the army, then went into cells. Tell me about that unconscious consciousness that you got. Like, where did it come from, how did it happen and where did you feel it in your body?

So in terms of like the awakening time of my life. Yeah, I mean it, it was a little, it was a kind of like a quick slow burn, if that makes sense. It wasn't kind of like an immediate boom, but over it was, it was like I say, after the earthquakes, then birth of our child, it really just, it shook me up mentally. And I think that the subconscious awakening typically happens when you have a near death experience. So the earthquakes, birth of a child, or the death of someone really close to you. So maybe a parent or a parent figure or grandparent or friend or someone really close to you. So I had two out of the three in pretty quick succession. And I think anyone who has that kind of scrape with mortality, it's, it's pretty well doc, you see it all over the show. You know, people have that near miss and they go, hey, actually do you know what? I'm selling all my stuff, I'm going to go and travel around the world or I'm going to go and do the thing that I really, really wanted to do. So that those were the kind of the moments. And I think that the big moment for me was, you know, I was working for these medical device companies. I knew that there was malpractice going on. I knew that there'd been some lawsuits against the company. But again, when you're a young male looking just to make as much money as possible because you think that's what life's all about, it's all about prestige and, you know, buying toys and having a great time.

Yeah. When you're in that bubble, they really try and sell the fact that, well, you know, everyone gets these lawsuits against them. There's nothing to see here. Just, you know, walk on, it'll all be fine. But having that moment of awakening, it's like, well, hang on a minute. I'm working for a medical device company who should be fixing people, but they've just been sued for knowingly killing. I think it was four patients on the operating table with a product that they've launched too soon in the market because they're chasing market share. And the surgeon who's done the procedures, as a shareholder in the company, it's like, hang on a minute. This just does not look or smell good. And so one of the first things I did, and I recommend this to a lot of people, is I. I was like, okay, who am I? Like, why. Why am I doing this thing that I. I now feel does not fit with my values? So it's kind of like, well, what actually are my values? Who am I? And the first piece of thing I did to explore that was I found out. I found this thing called Proust's Questionnaire, and then Marcel Proust back in the late 1800s, because it wasn't Netflix or, I don't know, going out and hanging out with your mates, going to a party. So what people used to do was hang out in coffee shops, and they take it in turns to write each other a questionnaire. And Prowse questionnaire is. Is frequently used by writers of fiction to create a character. So it's 35 questions that are things like, what values do you most admire in a man? What values do you most admire in a woman? What's your motto? How would you like to die? Who is the historical figure you'd most like to meet or have dinner with? And by answering those questions for me as authentically as I could, it's like, actually, this is who I am. And then it was a case of. And this is kind of like the purpose journey encapsulated. Who am I today? Who was I? So you were born as this innate person, you know, who. Who had potential and was. Had a possibly a predestined path that got corrupted. And so you ended up. You ended up somewhere else. And that's all that tribalization, you know, your parents, your peers, your school, your society, telling you, no, no, no, don't go do that. Go do this. Go do this. It's a series of. Of decisions that you make that aren't yours. And you're not capable of making the decision anyway. If you're a young guy because your brain, you know, you just do what you're told. And so who am I? Who was I? And sort of almost who could I, who should I have been? Maybe. But then you get to this moment and I call it the authenticity gap, where you kind of close that gap between who am I and who could I have been? But this is the key part is once you've had that realization is who could I be? And again, there's a really cool Jungian phrase where he says curiosity. I'm paraphrasing this badly, but curiosity is the best potential future version of you calling yourself towards it. And so that was what really, that was like. The next piece for me is, well, okay, I'm curious about business for good. I'm curious about how did we end up with this capitalist modern world where we just care about money? How do we. That was the curiosity. And then that's what led me down the B corp route of okay, well how do we try and fix this? How do we at least create, try and I guess create a new global economy where we factor in the impact of our decisions on more than just making money. It's like, what does it do for the planet? Community, society, people, workers, supply chain. Da da da da. So it's hard to remember because it's so long ago now, almost 20 odd years ago, well, 15 years ago. But it was, it's not a pleasant experience because everything that you thought and felt to be true is possibly shown to be false or if not built on very, very shaky foundations. And that is confronting. And that's why most people don't go and do it. And that's why behind me I've got the painting of the Rebus, which is the ancient alchemical model where it's hard for you to see, but there's a, there's a male, female split figure with the sun and the moon sitting on top of the gut, the, the dragon of Chaos. And underneath that is the golden winged object, which is basically for you, for you to, to capture the thing that is, it's, it's almost like the, it's, it's the symbol for Mercury which is used in Harry Potter, the, the Snitch, you know, the ball in the game Quidditch. So it's this thing that flits around that's really hard to catch. And it's guarded by the dragon of Chaos. And this is the whole hero's journey, you know, Joseph Campbell thing. For you to become who you should be, you need to go and slay the dragon that is your inner demons. So I don't like actually who I am. I don't like the fact that I've been working for these medical companies, taking their money, knowing that they're actually not that nice. Well, how did I end up. How did I end up here? Do all that shadow work, find out all the little bits of you that you don't like, kill them off, and then become the person who you could be. And that's a traumatic process that 99 of people won't do because it's too confronting and they'd rather just sit in the relative safety in inverted commas of the discomfort and the, you know, the dis. Ease. Dis. Ease is such a great word. If you are dis at ease, you're not comfortable, you will be diseased. You will be diseased. You know, and that's. I think that's most of the world. It's like I'm comfortably numb working in a job that I kind of hate, that I know is probably killing me and the planet, but, hey, I'm making bank.

Wow, Tim, thank you for the wisdom you've dropped today. Where can people find out more about you?

Yeah, man, I'm on LinkedIn is where I'm most prolific. If you just search for that Big Corp bloke, Tim Jones on LinkedIn. If you can't find me, the Internet is broken. If not, just Growgood Co is my website. Yeah, drop me a note. Always happy to have a chat about purpose and B Corp and doing good in the world.

I am Charles, your host, CEO Wisdom podcast dot com. If you want to start scale or be invited to a pod, that is pod buyer dot com. That was Tim Jones.

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.