#71 Marketing and branding as a B Corp with Elena Keith of Seven

Hey, Kia ora, and welcome to the latest episode of the Be Better Podcast. Thank you to all our listeners watchers, because you might be on YouTube or you might be on Spotify or some other podcast platform, who knows? So thank you to those of you who are tuning in. Tell a friend, tell your mom, tell your dad, I don't know, tell someone. We're trying to get more people to tune in. That'd be nice. With me today I have the amazing Elena Keith from Seven. How's it going?

Good, thank you. Tim Hemp, thank you for having me on board.

Hi. No worries, It's a pleasure. So, for people who don't know who Elena Keith is and what you do, who are you?

Well, I'm Elena Keith. I'm based here in Tamaki Makara up in Auckland, and I'm the managing partner for seven, which is a design agency which has been going since 1997, so almost 26 years now.

I'm heading into my 50th year, so I feel like I'm kind of halfway through my life and, you know, making some changes that sort of reflect that. I'm the mum of two kids, Spike and Ivy, who are 17 and 19. And I've got to say, having teenagers in this day and age teaches you a lot about and how the next generation see it. And so it's been really interesting. They're far more politically aware than we were at that age. They're far more connected, they're far more values driven, I would think, in the way that they make their decisions and that sort of thing. They are the walking, talking proof that your values don't mean anything until they cost you something. And so I'm constantly learning from them, which I'm really, really enjoying. So they're heading off to university? Well, one's there already and the other one is heading off the next year. And one of them started off doing Global Studies, which is a degree at University of Auckland that looks at what it means to be a global citizen and some of the changes and policies and practices that, you know, various governments use to influence change and, you know, and how they're impacted by geopolitical situations.

All that kind of stuff.

So I'm finding all that really fascinating as a parent, because I'm learning a lot through them.

Yeah.

And then in my spare time, I sit on a number of boards, a research faculty at the University of Auckland that looks at hearing loss and vestibular disorders. That's called the Delmore Centre, which involved with now for probably seven years and I sit on the board of the hearing house, which was set up to help children who are profoundly deaf learn to listen and speak with cochlear implants and with auditory verbal therapy. And now we also have adults as part of the hearing house as well, of which I am one. I'm profoundly deaf, so it's a cause close to my heart.

Yep.

And I also am on the board of a. An organization that is trying to ban helicopters from residential areas.

I remember that conversation, though. Yeah. Because. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's almost like such a first world problem, isn't it? We want to ban helicopters, man. But yeah, I mean, helicopters in residential areas.

Well, I know, I know. I mean, it's an interesting. It's really interesting space because it's not just. It's where there's a number of kind of overlaying frameworks. There's local government, there's, you know, sort of the Auckland Unitary Plan and how that plays into the Environmental act and all this sort of thing. So it's fascinating and really what it is, is, it's the pace of change, is that government isn't keeping up with the pace of change. And so these just. It's. I just find it absolutely fascinating. We've managed to talk to lots of different politicians and lots of different groups and stakeholders, but what's really become apparent in this is the ecological effect that it. Particularly on things like birds and, you know, wildlife and bits and pieces. And we are trying to regenerate all of that sort of stuff in our city. So it's really important we preserve that and protect it. And that's a bit. I mean, I've learned, you know, how many dotto rules we actually have in the neighborhood. When you start looking for these things, you find them. So, so yeah, that's what I do in my spare time and that I have a little fox terrier who I love and adore and she keeps me really busy and I happen to be lucky to be in business with my husband. So the two of us, we run seven, but. So, yeah, live together.

Wow. And. And on Tuesdays, what. What do you do then? That's, that's, that's like your Monday covered working and boards and.

Yeah.

I, I will be honest, I get to the weekend and I'm a little bit like.

You know, when you get older. I'm not getting any younger, Tim. It's definitely a bit more of a challenge to have that energy.

Yeah, yeah, I know the feeling. I know the feeling. Just, I just, I, I sort of finished the helicopter conversation before we move on to more deeper stuff. But the other thing as well, I mean, I spent a little bit of time in the army and I flew in helicopters. They are also inherently massively dangerous because they're basically. That's, you know, for people who don't know much about helicopters. The reason why they have the two rotor blades is because the one on the top, if they didn't have the little one on the back, the helicopter would just basically fling itself apart. They're so unstable. So you'd think just from a health and safety perspective, having this massively unstable flying object with massive bits of metal that if they fly off or if it crash lands, it will possibly kill quite a few people. You think that would be top on the list regardless of any ecological or noise or.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, look, it's fascinating when you think about it. Heliports normally have clearance areas, but the actual clearance area required for a private helipad in a residential street is. It's really small, like the footprint. You look at it and you just think, this just can't be logical. Having said that, you can't fly in New Zealand unless it's sort of emergency services or police or something. Helicopters over neighborhoods, they have to come in via the sea. So there was a flight vector or sector, if you like, an approach. But you know, it gives them some license to be able to, for safety purposes, if the wind's blowing in a certain direction or something like that, that they can deviate from there. Right, right sector. So it just means that it's, it's, it. It constantly blows my mind that we can do this. And I look in other countries and other cities, you know, Sydney, you can't do it. Japan, you can't la. What's really interesting about LA is that every building you have a look at, mainly that was built, I think in the last sort of 40 years, they have flat roofs and they are designed for. Have helicopters land on them to be able to rescue people. Because they had a high rise fire one year and they couldn't get a helicopter on the top to rescue people who were trapped in it. So just that one incident changed their entire building code for the city of la. So these kind of. When you start looking around the world and what people are doing from an ecological perspective, it just doesn't make sense to have such an intense commercial mode.

Of transport area for one person as well. It's like if, if it was a community helicopter, like maybe if it was like you say, health search and rescue or. Yeah, air ambulance. Yeah, sure. Okay. Yeah, we're willing to compromise, but hey, I just don't like driving.

I don't know. Humanity. Hey, we're just. It just, it amazes me that some days that we've actually lasted this long without just killing each other because we are. With. We're all idiots to different levels. But yeah, something clearly at a greater level. So the, the name seven, it was. Was that from 1997? Is that.

No, no. Gideon, when he, when he set up Seven, before that had had a couple of companies with letters, so words in them that were numbers.

So one was called one two. He's like, this was the seventh one. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

So he had, he had ward four, and then before that he had V8. And V8 was a really interesting company and they did some really interesting things. I think they, you know, they've set up, they've done the branding for political parties and all sorts of things, but they really got their groups in rock and roll where they were doing a lot of music videos and, and lot of dance parties and that. And so they were the cool kids. When I first met Gideon, yeah. And I think he was turning 30 and wanted to go out on his own. I think they've been approached by a big advertising agency to buy them and good. Was like, no, I really want to maintain our independence. I want to make sure that if we make a decision. Decision, it's one that we want to make and we're not having to make it, you know, to fulfill profit that's going to go overseas kind of thing.

Yeah.

So he went out on his own and set up seven. And then over to sort of the last 26 years, we've, you know, it's sort of changed in shape and size.

Yeah.

Sort of where we were at. And over that time, you know, we've managed to work with lots of different companies. And I think that's the best thing about running a branding agency is that you are constantly exposed to other organizations.

Yeah.

And it's really interesting. Like, you realize that most of them are dysfunctional in their own way. And a lot of them are really good and a lot of them are trying really hard. And some of them, it's just really, it's. It makes me realize about that maturity of running a business. You know, those policies, sort of B Corp offers a lot of that. I mean, it doesn't solve like your price and your product and your positioning and all that sort of thing, but it's about getting those Brilliant basics. Right. And I think a lot of companies, if they can get that right and get that springboard right, then they can go on to do great things. But a lot of them come up with a great product, a great idea and a great service and they go, help the leather. And then they kind of look backwards and go, oh, hang on, we've got to get our house in order Y. And I think that's what B Corp for a lot of companies represents, is the ability to be able to get their house in order in a framework that gives them, you know, that.

Yeah. And I guess you sort of mentioned, you know, do we work for the big company? I guess. I guess within the realm of branding and advertising, there is this tension of the security of uk, maybe working under a big brand, but also you need that creativity, that outlet. And I guess there's always that tension between what the client kind of wants, what you would like the client to have, where you think you could take it. Yeah. I mean, because my dad used to be. I say he was almost like the Mad Men type of guys. He was in the 60s and 70s, advertising promotion, working for McCann Ericsson, big global advertising companies, mainly selling booze and cigarettes, as the 60s and 70s would dictate. Yeah. It's just. It's an interesting world. So. Yeah. How do you kind of balance that tension between, like, we've got a really cool idea that could, like, you know, particularly with that, like the rock and roll roots and. And stuff like that. Yeah. How do you sort of balance the tension between what you think the client should have versus, well, they're not quite ready for it.

This is a saying that Gideon actually says quite a bit. I'm going to borrow it, that clients always get the work that they deserve. It's kind of that thing where the best kind of client is one that has already is already quite clear about who they are and where they're going. And sometimes they haven't articulated that particularly well, just purely. They haven't gone through the exercise of doing it. But they're also quite courageous and quite brave. So they're willing to take a risk, they're willing to be open to new ideas. So a lot of the time what we try and do is establish what is the actual appetite for change. So if a client comes to us and says, we want to solve this, we want to do this, and we'll go, well, do you really. Are you really in a position to be able to make that leap? So we're trying to interpret and trying to digest really, where they're at as an. Sometimes a marketing manager is like, oh, we want to do this. But the board's like, hell, no. Absolutely. So we've got to balance that out in terms of how realistic can we be, how pragmatic can we be about what we can actually achieve with a client? But most of the time, clients will go on the journey with you. You've just got to sell the idea and, you know, but it has to be appropriate. It has to be relevant to. To their aims and their objectives and everything they're doing. So half the time we're working with quite mature organizations that have got, you know, big established marketing functions, and other times it's just a founder and he's got, you know, he's got his legal and he's got finance and he's got procurement, but he doesn't have a marketing function. Or they put it in with sales and marketing, which are two very different things. And so we sort of become a. Like a de facto outsourced marketing department, if you like. We're very much in brand and comms. It's just. It's about giving them the tools and the visibility about what they need to do to. In order to achieve. Achieve those objectives. Yeah, that tension point is probably more. It's less of a tension point and more having to do the work, having to put the spade in there and actually build that level of understanding and take that client on the journey.

Nice. Because. Yeah, it's a phrase. I was running late for a call. This podcast. I just had my haircut, and whenever I go to the. To the barber, there's one of maybe four or five people that cut your hair. And I jokingly sort of say every time I go, oh, just go crazy, like, just do. Just do something wherever you want. And they go, really? And I go, no, same as last time.

Yeah.

And I just wonder, how many times do you get somebody, she goes, look, Ashley, just. Here's a slab of cash.

Just.

Just go crazy. Like, yeah. Does that ever happen? Or is there. Is it generally people like, yeah, like, maybe change the color and see what that looks like.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, no, no, no, Definitely. And I think it's kind of. But also it's recognizing that within a lot of brands isn't. There's a lot of equity there, so you don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water. You want to retain the heritage and the legacy and bring that forward. So it's more of an evolution, a refinement and extension rather than A whole sort of change. But sometimes a business needs to change, you know, their competitors have changed or they've got a cultural issue. So we see brand very much as an internal solution as well as an external one. How you communicate internally, how you engage your staff is very much a cultural thing and brand plays a very important role in that. But I think in terms of New Zealanders and marketing tend to be very conservative. They don't have big budgets, you know, compared to when I look at what they spend in Australia or the UK or the us, it's very, very different. So it's about. And also it's changing so much. You know, when I think of the cut through that you have to achieve now, you have to be really smart about the way you go to market with your products and your services. And we bring in specialists who are able to help us do that with, you know, the likes of digital platforms and that sort of thing. Yes, make them look good and sound good and be relevant, but getting them actually in front of the audiences as a whole other art form.

Why do you think Kiwis are reticent to do marketing? Because I find it in general.

Selling, you know, historically selling coaching and training services. So obviously we do B Corp consulting as our core offer, but behind that we've got a bunch of other stuff so we can do purpose coaching, purpose training, sales training. There's a whole bunch of other stuff that I've been doing over the years that we offer and I've always found that I've spoken to quite well. We've had a couple of US clients and speaking to other people in the us it's like everyone in the US has got their golf coach, their swimming coach, their therapist, their, their pt, but they've got a coach for everything in their life. But in New Zealand it always feels like if you, if you were going to pitch to a business or I was going to pitch to a business and it's kind of like, yeah, you give us some money, we're going to change some colors on your brand palette, we're going to give you a new slogan, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's going to cost you, I don't know, $50,000 or someone else has come in the same day and they go, I've got a machine that goes bleep. It's going to cost you a hundred thousand dollars, but I can guarantee you that's going to punch out more units per hour. I always feel that they'll take the machine because it's tangible and there's like, there's a guaranteed result and. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. What your thoughts are around why in general are New Zealanders reticent to invest in. It feels like the intangible. It's just like there's something about that or whereas like I say in other, in other countries they kind of get it. Yeah. So what are you, what's your take?

Well, I think it's really how it's recognized at the executive level. So it depends. Like I said before, sales and marketing tend to be a, you know, a dual role. But really sales will always dominate that conversation because that's obviously what drives income. I think it's definitely because as you said, it's intangible. Sometimes. Sometimes you absolutely measure results and return on investment on a, on a brand. Absolutely. And the companies that do really well are the ones who invest in their brand. They. Software as a service is a really good example of this. You know, the top companies, you can always see it, they'll spend 30 cents on the dollar back towards your brand. They recognize the importance of that. I think though, I've got to say for Kiwis and New Zealand brands, we do punch above our weight globally. We don't as a whole intend to invest that much, but actually when you start comparing our brands with brands overseas, we do incredibly well. One of our team that was with us for I think almost five years has just recently gone to the UK and traveled around Europe and was messaging us going, oh my God, you know, I've just getting into Europe has made me realize how, how wonderful New Zealand is at producing great brands across the board. So I think we, we recognize it, we, we value it. But I think at the corporate level we've still got a long way to go because.

Yeah, I think because well, on the spot I can't think of any of my head but I know that there have been award winning ad campaigns that, you know, New Zealand has won global awards for. I mean, I guess some of the road traffic safety stuff but that, that's always held up and you know, generally I think the ads are pretty powerful and like the ghost chips ads, you know, Monique says you're dumb. But I think that won global awards for its kind of know, use of humor to highlight a really, you know, tough subject. But I think because also there was one of the guys who was instrumental in the success of Facebook was a Kiwi and I think one of the head, the head of design for Apple was a Kiwi for a few years and you got Then you got brands like all birds, you know, design aesthetic, you know, Kiwi founder or co founder. So yeah, I guess, yeah, punching with a weight, but yeah, it's getting it into the day to day, I suppose, is the, is the hard thing. Yeah, it's.

Yeah, it's kind of a. I look at someone like Jeremy Moon, but Icebreaker, you know, it's just such a. There's a purity, but there's also a. In some ways because we are a bit isolated and we are not so much internally focused, but we're not, we're not influenced by lots of. Particularly in the, you know, sort of 20 years ago, 15 years ago, now it's quite different. You had to go to Sydney, you had to Melbourne to go shopping because we had few local brands here. But now all those brands have come here and with online shopping, so I think we've, we've had the freedom to be able to create our own aesthetic, to create our own language. And Kiwis are by nature very, you know, kind of upfront. So a lot of those ad campaigns that you talk about, you know, the ones where, particularly around trying to create social change or you'll change, they drive great engagement. But the really good ones are actually ones that drive impact and change and that's quite hard to measure sometimes, particularly with road safety and stuff like that.

Yeah, so many, so many variables.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the best kind of advertising is the ones that, you know, they change attitudes, they change lives and they change. Yeah, they change behavior to good, towards good.

Putting you on the spot. Which would be your favorite ad that you feel or campaign that you feel? Nail bat. Is there one that stands out for you?

Oh, see, I'm a bit of a sook, so I, I mean I'm quite, you know, baby.

So the ads for me, there was one I saw yesterday for a football club, right, the uk, and it was about mental health. And it showed two guys watching a football game over a season. And one of them was sitting on the left looking kind of a little bit down and saying. And the other guy just kept getting up, he was really into the game and all this. And then at the end of it, the guy that was always looking a bit down came in and laid the scarf, the club scarf with all the colors and everything on the empty seat behind beside him to demonstrate that his friend had obviously taken his life. And it was such a powerful message. Sometimes the people who need help are not the most obvious.

Right.

You know, it can sometimes be the one that having the time of Their life.

So.

Yeah, yeah, he's perfectly content. Yeah.

Hey, well, you get being a miserable old gut, you know, that sort of thing. So it's those kind of. Those are the things that stay with me. But I think, you know, I mean, definitely the entertaining ones are funny. But when I think about New Zealand dads, there was one was, mum always brings home the bacon, and it was for a bacon company. And that was in the 60s and 70s and 80s, I think it was. You know, there are ads here in New Zealand that you talk about that people still remember, but the ghost chips one, definitely. Yeah.

There's a guy I know, John, if he won't be listening, I used to work with him, but he had it. He. He was dating a girl called Monique and it was just like, there's so much. There's so much here. Hey, John, I just. I just spoke to Monique. She said, you're done. So much fun. Put a link to that advert for People Listen overseas. You've got no idea what we're talking about. And. And, yeah. So how do you think adverts have changed or marketing changed since? Because you look back at some of the content. I was talking. I was out for dinner last night with a mate of mine. What group of people? But with one mate in particular. And we were talking about some of the British. He's British as well. And we have a very British sense of humor and sometimes we feel like our jokes are not. Not, well, dare I say it, people don't love the jokes that we find as funny. And we sort of go, it's a British thing. And then we were reminiscing about some of the great adverts from the 80s and 90s that are so memorable because there was a lot of cheeky humor in that sort of. Particularly 90s. Yeah. Sort of British adverts where a lot of tongue in cheek. We seem to see less of that at the minute. So how do you. How does society influence, you know, is society influencing advertising or does advertising influence society? And what's your sort of thoughts on, you know, where we're at at the minute versus some of those great ads? You know, is there any ad at the minute that you kind of go, yeah, in 20 years time or 40 years time, we can look back and go, yeah, that was really good.

I think it's probably, you know, when you. We talk about ads in the 60s and 70s.

Society, particularly for England, look very different then. Not as cosmopolitan as it. As it is now. There's a wonderful Twitter account that I Follow that. Talks about very British humor. And he's just.

Let's go and find that.

Oh, it's brilliant. So it's just got, you know, that sort of awkward thing where you were trying to squeeze past someone and you say, excuse me, and they barely move and you. And you still say thank you. You know.

Classic British.

Yeah, classic British. It's a great thing about being a Kiwi is that you grow up with. We grew up with BBC and with cnn, so we had different mix of both American and.

Yeah, yeah. That's synthesis of both of them.

Totally. So we can watch something like. Oh, the football series. It was on Netflix.

The welcome to Wrexham one.

No, no.

Oh, Sunderland's Ladai.

Oh, the guy one. And he went over to the UK and he started coaching a football team. It'll come to me.

Oh, Ted Lasso.

Yes.

Yeah. I still haven't seen it yet.

Oh, no, it's utterly brilliant.

It's on. It's on the one platform. We've got, like, Neon Prime, Disney. We don't have Apple tv, so the only one we don't have is. Yeah. So very frustrating.

So that makes cultural references from both America and uk and as a Kiwi in Australians and probably Canadians as well, they all get it. They go, oh, yeah, that's funny. Whereas there's some people in America going, why is that funny for the UK References? And vice versa kind of thing.

Yeah.

So it's what. What's so brilliant about that one, though, is it doesn't just manage. Manage to assimilate two cultures and the best of them and the worst of them, but it's also about leadership and teamwork and all that sort of an absolute. I mean, it literally is a teamwork playbook that they run their way through and incorporate into the series. It's just. And the character arcs and everything, it's just brilliant. But I think coming back to advertising, why it's changing because the world is changing. So we did a campaign for an organization that was set up in Singapore and all of their branding was coming out of Singapore. But to localize it for a New Zealand audience, it is a very different sense of humor, you know, and a lot of Singaporean advertising, there's not a lot of humor. It's very conservative, it's very dry. And for here, you can't get engagement unless you get that cut through where people. It's relatable, it's recognisable, that sort of thing. So I think the challenge for now is if your audience is quite broad, how do you then make it relevant? So I think the challenge is just make sure that your advertising is catering for all of those different audiences. And that's what I think touches on the change from say the 60s and the 70s is your dad was of an era where pretty much blokes across the board were recognizable, if that makes sense. Now they look very different to be a bloke. What does that mean anymore? Yeah, you know, it's offensive for some guys to be called a bloke.

Yeah.

So it's. The world has changed and therefore advertising it to change with it.

Yeah, yeah, it's. Yeah, it's just, it's interesting, isn't it just. It's almost like a.

An insight just into how the world is, you know, I studied history at university, that's all medieval history. And part of the reason I chose it is because I was quite a lazy student. And, you know, medieval history, there was only six books written or still surviving from that period of history that you could go and read. Whereas people studying history of the Second World War, well, there's all the media, there's tv, there's radio, there's newspapers, there's diaries, there's personal accounts. There's so many so, you know, primary sources that you can read through. And you just sort of wonder what it's going to look like in a thousand years time, you know, because I was looking at medieval England and France, ten hundred to twelve hundred, you know, not many books to go and read. You look forward into the future and just go, you've got everyone's Twitter feed and tick tock and Instagram and Facebook and their emails. It's like. But it's, but I guess will advertising be the thing that is, that remains? You know, because there'll be the, the, the billboard, you know, that they, you know, imagine an archaeologist uncovering a billboard with some cheesy slogan on it and go, man, what were these people up to in the 2000s and 20s? Like, man, they were some weird people.

Yeah, I think, look, it's, it's when I think about how much print we used to produce, you know, coming back to B Corp, if I think we were doing B Corp 20 years ago.

You know, after seven had just been formed, we'd be horrified at the amount of wastage that's created in design advertising. And I think there was more of a conscious effort now to make sure that we're having those conversations with clients about what their advertising looks like, making sure that they're not wastage and inefficiency and that sort of thing. But there's also the wonderful rise of the digital platform which presents so many opportunities to be able to get in front of people without having to give them a piece of paper or to give them something that, you know, obviously consumes quite a lot of resources. Yeah, but that in itself is sitting in a world where there's a lot of misinformation, there's a lot of brands can no longer just put something up and people just take it at face value. They are now part of that conversation. So I think the, I think the, the responsibility for companies that they can no longer just say, oh, we're doing this, they have to prove they're doing it because someone is going to find them out. Someone is going to interrogate their practices and their policies and everything else if they think they're being lied to or if they think that someone's been dishonest or whatever. So I think that is probably what's driving change in companies more than is that they can no longer hide. If you're going to put yourself out there, then you need to be able to be prepared to be transparent about who you are and what you do.

So that's a great point. So there's greenwashing, which I guess you've kind of just alluded to, but there's a big thing that we keep hearing more and more is this green hushing where people are scared to talk about the things that they are doing because it's not perfect or it's not good enough or they've mentioned it once and someone said oh yes, but you know, you haven't thought about this and that. And for me, my sort of go to would be well look, no one is perfect and in some situations there is no great solution. It's option one or option two, both of which are not great, but one might be slightly less worse than the other. So my, my advice is always lead with it but be authentic, Be, be transparent. Admit where you're not doing as good as you can do, explain why that's the case and, and be okay with that. But yeah, how do you talk to brands or how do you advise people to, to lead with that authentic transparency and, and not worry about, you know, the haters who are always going to hate because there's some people who just wired like that.

Yeah, it's interesting. We're working with a, a automotive company that produces EVs and the, the blowback when we put an ad out into, into digital space around where people can comment and can provide feedback is there's this other conversation going on around climate change denial that and those people who feel really passionately about.

Change that is that they feel has been forced upon them that they're having to buy this or they've been penalized for this or that sort of thing. And so for them, they feel it's a values judgment that's being placed upon them and their behavior is, you know, not keeping up to this and that. And it, it's, it's the conversation around it is you kind of look at it and you go of all the things to, to get upset about, that kind of seems I'll be getting upset about health care or, you know, inequality or inequities and health in anything or accessibility, all that kind of stuff. But they get really upset about something that you. I always find that stuff interesting. So I think we say to come, you know, clients that we work with is that you just have to look forward and keep doing what you're doing. There are some conversations you're never going to win, so you can't solve that. Discontent around what are the global movement towards, you know, people going into EVs. Eventually in the next 20 to 30 years, most cars will be, most new car sales will be EVs. So it's just essentially a slow moving change that's happening that some people are really struggling to sort of get on board with.

And so that is how much oxygen and ear you give to those sort of conversations that are happening. And just know that if you're doing things right, then you just have to, you know, look after your own health, so to speak. And this company that we're working with, which is Polestar, a really interesting thing that they've done is they have put out a statement in terms of their efforts for sustainability and recognize and you know, stated very early on up front that they're not getting it completely right, but they're on a mission, they're on a pathway to get it right. I think that's really important. Just what you were saying before. And I know when we started on our sustainability journey back in what, 2019, you know, four years ago now.

It was this big elephant, you know, how do we, how do we start? Where do we start? You know, what is, what does baseline look like? What is, what is our benchmarks? Are we going to measure ourselves against that sort of stuff? So I think for some clients, when they're dipping their toes, they want to be seen to be doing the right thing and everything else. But for most of Them, it's this big, overwhelming task that they feel they have to do. They don't see yet the value of embracing it, of assigning resources and people and budget to it. They're still just going, oh, what if we just say this? And we go, well, it's not enough to say it. If you are challenged on it, you need to be able to back it up. So these conversations that we're having, sometimes they go nowhere. Sometimes they do enact change. Sometimes they'll go, yep, we want to do this.

You know, and next year. They're always kind of kicking the can down the road because it's so big. But also, we have to recognize we've just gone through a global pandemic, which is still playing out, you know, in the economic climate. And I think for some people, when I talk to them now, particularly some clients, they feel like it's back into Bauer and then can cut those conversations again. I've now got the heat base for it.

Yep. Yeah, it's.

Yeah, I kind of say to say to people, yeah, it's like, it's. There's no perfect. There's no perfect company, you know, and do what you can with what you've got and just be doing as good. As much good as you can. There's always going to be haters. And I think, for me, the easiest way to diffuse them is to sort of go, hey, that's great, we agree. Come in and have a coffee with us and tell us how you think we can solve it. Yeah. Oh, okay. You don't want to come in? Okay, that's cool. You just want to throw a rock on us. And it's. I think I said this to T. Shirndall, who. From Ragnar Fuko, who was on the last one we just recorded.

It's like reading the comments on the. On the newspaper. Just. Just don't read it. You know, just don't. Don't go down that rabbit hole. Because there are some people who just spend all day on the Internet, throw rocks at people, because that's where they get their fun. And you're never going to. You're never going to change their opinions. So, yeah, for me, it's kind of like, yeah, you're right, we're not perfect. We're working on it. Come and. Come and be on. On an advisory committee for us then, in fact, you can come and lead it and bring 10. 10 people that agree with you and tell us how we do this better. Oh, yeah, you haven't got time for that.

Okay.

Well, that's cool.

Yeah, totally. I kind of, I think it's indicative of the climate that we're currently in. You know.

The pandemic brought about a lot of change and I agree, adapt to change really well. They just roll with the punches. They go, okay, we're doing this now and then we're doing this and they don't, they don't think about it, they just kind of get into it and they still just function. But other people really struggle with change, particularly change that's put upon them. And so it brings out some behavior that, you know, is quite surprising at times. And other times you go, yeah, of course it was going to happen, of course they were going to spin out or do this or whatever. But I think what the change that it has brought about is a sort of a suspicion of, of people, of agendas, of media, of all this kind of thing trying to.

Again, how much oxygen do you give it? How much you just kind of go. We, I, I said to my kids the other day, we were talking about when we were younger, we didn't know whether a friend had had a party on a Friday night and we weren't invited until we got. You just didn't know because there was no cell phones, there was no anything like that. So you didn't have this immediacy of information that means you have to constantly think about it. You could go, oh, I'm reading this book now, I'm watching this movie, I'm hanging out with this group of people.

Yep.

Always got this background noise going on that demands your attention and how much space you give to that is really going to dictate how focused you are on anything you get done and how much mental health you have. So it's really hard to. I just kind of, the way I look at it is just, you know, I've only got so many hours in the day and these are the things I want to achieve. And if I want to do that, then it's just tell me a lot of stuff, I've got to let go. And half of that is also looking at something like Twitter, which I love because I get so much good information, but I almost get so much bad information as well. So it, it's constantly trying to fact check, understand all that sort of thing.

Yeah, when, yeah, when, when we are, you know, sort of semi advanced chimpanzee based meat sacks spinning on a floating orb in the middle of a universe that is continually expanding in infinite numbers of universes. You know, we're with. And then we've got all the crap and bullshit that we carry in our heads and we're not actually equipped to really deal with most of this stuff, if any of this stuff. And then, and then we throw AI into the mitts and now you just don't know what's what and which way's up and. Yeah. So like I say, I think we're doing surprisingly well considering a lot of the factors working against us.

To be better humans.

Do you find, do you have any, again, the sort of attention piece. Do you have any. You know, because you are adding to this content milieu, this mix of stuff that's being thrown out. Chimpanzee based humans. Yeah. Do you feel any tension that you're part of that noise or do you feel that you're doing it as a force for good in general? So you're kind of, you know, at the top end of that and actually there's, there's other people that maybe shouldn't be providing so much noise or. Yeah. Is that something that comes into your mind?

Yeah, I think we went back in 2019 when we started looking at our sustainability strategy. We were asking those kind of questions. What is our role? You know, we were having really, I think, little to no conversations with clients about the messages that they might put out in the market, that sort of thing. I mean, you've always, you have a code of ethics that you adhere to. Absolutely. And if you're working with a client that you're a little bit suspect about what, what it is they're trying to achieve, then you just, you shouldn't be working with them. Yeah, but branded marketing, depending on where it is, can be, can be considered to be dirty words that are seen as culprits, not saviors when it comes to, you know, being good in the environment and helping people and that sort of thing. So if we're promoting something like a gambling platform, we just wouldn't do that because I just feel that it's. And there are people who can gamble responsibly and they don't have an issue with it.

Sure.

But I think as marketers and as branders, we could, we can make sure that we don't support, you know, practices like that that promote gambling or self harm or, you know, having said that, we're using mediums to promote messages like TikTok and Bits and Pieces.

Can sometimes do real harm because it promotes disordered eating, you know, in a subject matter or something like that. So it's really hard to. I think in an ideal world, Tim, we Go and live on a deserted island and grow.

Every night playing music and. And the reality of the world that we're in. And it's. There's. Look, there's a lot of bad that's coming out of it, but there's also a lot of good that's coming out of it. And as I said before, around that transparency, I think that's.

Businesses in particular that we're talking to, they're becoming a lot more, you know, we can't hide behind the boardroom practices anymore. Our team are demanding, you know, I mean, 20 years ago, you would never demand of your board what, their HR policy.

To get them to shape their HR policy.

So definitely what we're seeing is a change in employee behavior that is demanding, expecting better behavior from there.

Yeah. And I guess it's like any tool, isn't it? It can be used as a force for evil or a force for good. And I think with all of this doing good, sustainability, environmental, it's not black and white. There's gray, there's nuance. It's not always obvious that one answer is better than the other. And I think, yeah, it keeps coming back to, like, just do the best with what you've got in front of you that you think, you know, do the research, think. Think about it and. And go from there. But I think half the battle is having. And clearly you've been down a rabbit hole of thinking about it, whereas I think there's still a lot of people who haven't even thought about it, and they're just, yep, we'll just take the money. You know, it's not us to decide whether this company's ethical or moral. We, you know, they just want a new brand and they want some slick advertising campaigns. So, yeah, sure, we'll go do it. So, yeah, yeah, it's. Yeah, it's complicated.

I think it's kind of that thing where.

I just.

I think if you want to, you can tell a lot of a company around the metrics that they have, and it may be metrics that they publish or not, but things like staff turnover. And there were different, where there's a higher rate of staff turnover, but things like that, where you can actually tell a lot about a company from the outside looking at them and whether or not you want to spend your dollars with them. And I think that the next generation coming through are definitely more conscious about the brands that they engage with. And I mean, when we were kids, you kind of had two or three companies that might, you know, give you milk Give you bread or whatever, really have a lot of consumer choice. Whereas now you go into a supermarket and it's not just seven cereal brands is, you know, 30 or 40 kind of thing. So you choice and with that choice comes a need to create shortcuts around your thinking. And so, you know, we had the Healthy heart tick campaign for the heart foundation and stuff like that. So those shortcuts that are being applied, New Zealand made or, you know, it's. What do you call it, sustainable, all that sort of thing. I think we're going to see more and more and more companies embracing the idea of having a shortcut associated with their product or their service or their offering. Because that's the only way they're going to stand out or stand within a collective of their competitors and to be chosen by the consumer.

100% agree. Which is why I think we're seeing B Corp pop up as one of those. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A good number of the companies that we work with are consumer facing brands.

Yeah.

Because yeah, they see the, they see the power of being able to prove everything that we just talked about. We are a brand that does care. We're doing this as much good as we can. And here's the independent proof to validate that we're not just making a. I think, you know, the whole sales and marketing, you know, I spent most of my early career in sales. You know, in some companies the sales and marketing teams were actually scheduled to have lunch at different times so that there was no fighting between the two departments. But you know, the sales people, we always used to say, oh, what are the, what are the, what are the boys and girls do with their crayons today? You know, have they, have they painted some pretty pictures? Meanwhile, the marketing is kind of like, oh.

Speaker. Oh, there we go, we're back on. Yeah. You know, how many lunches and coffees have you had today or have you actually sold anything or you just. Yeah.

We had a client, we were involved with their product team. They want to take a product to market. And marketing had brought us into the conversation with the product team and we said to them, okay, we spoke into sales. Is sales part of this conversation? No, why would they be? And I said, well, product is not on the ground with clients, sales is. And they know what the objections are. They know what people want, how much they're prepared to pay. They know what their competitors are selling. Sales need to be part of this conversation. So I think there, there was an opportunity for. Not. For that not to happen. I think, yeah, Definitely marketing still seeing as hard liquor and best guesses and the coloring in department and you know, all that sort of good thing and sales are still seen as boozy lunches and you know, kickbacks and all that sort of stuff. But I think they're product design is becoming more of a thing, you know, whereas before it they were sort of. It's almost like not especially given prominence but they're given the respect and the space that they deserve and that they need in order to flourish. And again mature companies that do that do really well.

Yeah, no 100%. So young Elena, did she always think she was going to get into marketing, branding, advertising. Like what was, what was your path into the industry?

I was born into a family of, there were three kids, so I had two older brothers and we spent some time on a farm and I actually always thought I was going to be a farmer's wife to be honest, driving tractors and doing all that sort of thing. Loved it, absolutely loved being on the farm. But when we came back into Auckland and my hearing at that point was kind of getting worse and worse and worse so mum had German measles when she was pregnant with me, which is rubella. And then. And back in those days I did not want to wear hearing aids so I was constantly feeding them to the dog, putting them down to the couch, flushing them down the toilet. And my mum, insurance company, my parents insurance company was like we're not insuring these anymore. Like reasonable. Yeah, totally. I just totally scuppered my future by, you know, not being able to hear and so I sort of bumbled my way through school and when I got to school, which is year 12, I dropped out and I. My mum was horrified. She spent all this money on my education and you know, big dreams and aspiration.

So I, to be honest at 16, 17, didn't really know what I wanted to do. I just bumbled around at retail, went overseas, went to the UK when I was 18 for 18 months, had a ball, came back and I was like oh my God, what am I going to do now? I had no skills apart from, you know, pub work and bits and pieces. So I just sort of fell into a number of roles over the years and as my hearing got worse I had to get a cochlear implant and that point that I probably started working more with charities and not for profits because I was very much advocacy role and that was really rewarding and it was kind of one of those things where when you are to consumer voice you it's never just Your own story. You have to learn and understand other people's journeys, because everyone's journeys, they're all going in the same direction and all going to the same place, but they get there in their own way and it's understanding that and understanding the barriers and the limitations that they have in bits and pieces. So I kind of definitely drawing on my parents, both of them were part of Lyons, which was a global movement, which is very much grassroots fundraising camp organization, very much just sort of a. What would you call it, a fraternity network sort of thing, a brotherhood, if you like. So they were lions and lionesses and they were always volunteering and they were always having meetings at our place where they would come and they would, you know, make all these frozen pizzas and run magic shows and everything for kids and bits and pieces. So I'd always had been exposed to that and always knew that I would to have a volunteering role. But I think it wasn't until I had kids that I really started to appreciate that people had different opportunities and needed more help kind of thing. So I sort of fell into it through the advocacy work for hearing loss and through the hearing house. And so when I got to seven, which was four years ago, before that I was working for an IT company and I was traveling a lot. I was in and out of Australia every couple of weeks was pretty burnt out, actually. I was pretty tired, a lot of. Lot of sleepless nights. And Gideon, my husband, said, well, why don't you come work for me? You've had a huge amount of management training through your previous role and I could, you know, focus more on. On doing what I do best and get you to run the company. So I joined seven back in 2019, I think it was 2008 and it's. So it's been fairly new for me for Brand. So I don't have the same knowledge that my team do. And we're lucky. We've got a really stable team. They've been with us for a long time, so. And they're all specialists in their own right. And I've come out of various roles that has brought sort of that experience with them. So my job at 7 really is to make the most of that talent and that experience and those skills and build that team together to do the best work they can. So I'm more in a facilitation role in that respect. You know, they're amazing. They do what they do and I just try and remove all the barriers, set them up for success, success and make sure that seven is doing the best that it can by them. But, you know, it's interesting. It's. We are a small team, so there's only so far you can kind of go with us. So what we've recognized early on was that we don't have our team forever, you know, but while they're with us, we want them to have had the best experience they can, that they leave us better equipped. And when they came in, I've got more experience, I've got more knowledge, got more skills. So we take things like development plans really seriously. We did from, from pretty much when I arrived. It's like, you know, here's where you currently are, here's where you want to be, what do we need to do to get you there kind of thing. We did a monthly one on ones we do. All that good stuff that doesn't typically exist in small organizations and particularly not in design and advertising. I find when I interview someone who's come out of, say, an advertising agency and stuff like that, they. So many of our agencies are overseas owned, they're not independent and so there's a real pursuit of profit over people. So they're working stupid hours.

It's not a great setup. The business model is not sustainable in terms of how they treat their people. And I can see a real shift happening in the industry where people are recognizing they can't keep doing what they've always done. So I think that's where. And I don't think we're different from a lot of other smaller agencies who are trying to do the right thing by their people. But that was a big focus for me when I came in was to making sure that if our people were okay, then our client would be okay. If we didn't burn them out, we didn't make them really tired, they'd be creative, they would have, you know, really good ideas and to produce really good work and they would stay with us for, you know, as long as it suited them. I think when you've got a great team that's been with you for a long time, you are so efficient in the way that you work and you know each other's strength and weaknesses and there's a lot of growth and that sort of stuff. So it makes you a lot more nimble and agile.

Nice.

Yeah. I think that's a cultural thing all over the show. Like you even hear it, you know, I spent 10 years selling medical devices and you even hear now that the, the younger surgical communities, particularly the surgeons, you know, the old school surgeons Were I, I'm working hard. You will work as hard as me. And the whole training regime for, for surgeons for residency. I, I heard about this. I think it's Matthew Walker who's got a book on sleep.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The whole, the only reason why junior doctors have worked so hard is because the guy who invented the junior doctor kind of scheme program in the US was basically a cocaine addict who didn't sleep. And so the whole idea, so it's like, you know, the whole culture has stemmed from this one guy in like the early. I think it must have been like the 1930s or 40s or something. So the whole idea of you just work hard to be in this industry is based on one guy. Yeah. And I think, yeah, I noticed it as I was leaving the industry, but you definitely hear about it like the youngest surgeons coming through. Actually, I don't want to work in private six days a week, you know, just to earn more money. I actually want to be at home and see my kids. And I think in general I look at most of the people, you know, in my peer group, you know, split roles where mum and dad are trying to do a drop off and a pickup at school, you know, more, more people trying to get to, to, you know, assembly or, you know, the cultural event. Me and my daughter had an event at school a couple of, a couple of months ago. It was kind of, they had to do a project actually on environmental issues and they had an open block for two hours from like two to four parents come along. We, I was actually astounded how many parents turned up. It's like it felt like half the kids had their parents there. And so, yeah, I think increasingly people are realizing that, I mean, I had a good mate of mine pass away this year and you know, that's why I've smashed my skiing this year. It's like Ben was 45 and he died. I'm 45, you know, and I was, you know, skiing yesterday with a couple of mates and it's just like, yeah, the skiing, the skiing wasn't great. It's last day of the season. But I'm going to remember the chats and the laughs we had on the, on the lift today. I'm probably not going to remember that spreadsheet that I did, you know, the day before. And I think more and more people are realizing, and I think Covid is all part of this. People have kind of had this collective sort of almost near death experience or hey, look, actually something could come and wipe us out or wipe you out quite easily. And I think we've had a bit of a. Yeah. Kick up the bum, which is why we're seeing a rise of people wanting to do more with their life, which is then leading to the whole sustainability and. Well, actually, what are we doing at work? Yeah, it's one thing to want to make sure my kids are doing well and we're thriving, but actually I'm going to spend 80,000 hours in this office or a selection of offices over my lifetime. What am I doing there? So, yeah, interesting times.

That was definitely a cause for us to kind of look at the B Corp models because our team are looking for meaningful work. They're looking for. If they're going to spend 40 hours somewhere each week, you want them to be feeling. I mean, you can't fulfill them in every aspect of their working role, but you can definitely contribute a lot to it by, I think, showing up as a responsible employer or, you know, just, just by leading by example.

We've tried to be as transparent as we can with the team around what we do and how we do it and our planning. We've always involved them in our strategic planning and that kind of stuff because they learn by, by being exposed to that kind of stuff rather than going, oh, well, you're just a designer and that's all you really need to know. It's kind of like this is how the business is run, this is what we do. This is, you know, the results of our surveys with our clients, all that kind of thing. So the more we can involve them in that, the better they become as well, in terms of being well rounded. I mean, they may go on to run their own studios one day and all that kind of stuff. So you want to equip them for that next stage?

Yeah, no, 100%. Yeah. The need for meaning and purpose in life. It's. Yeah, I think, I think it's, it's, it's way more fundamental than we've been told or led to believe.

Yeah. At any level. And I think it, for me, it underlines the mental health crisis. I don't, I don't think. I'm not an expert on mental health, but I think it's more than just. I didn't go for a walk today, My mate didn't call me. I think there's a deeper yearning for meaning and purpose for me, it's, it's a fundamental human desire and I think that's what most people are missing. Which leads which then the second order effects of. Well, I haven't Spoken to a mate for a while. You know, I haven't been for a walk, I haven't gone to the outdoors. I'm not looking after myself physically. I'm not sleeping. All of that other stuff I think is, is, yeah, let less important than the core. I mean, there's a survey, it was a YouGov survey. British government did it. I think it was 2018. Around about 30% of the British population surveyed said 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. It's like, yeah, but I'm paying the mortgage, so I'm winning. It's like, yeah, there's a bit more to it than that.

Yeah.

So, yeah, yeah.

I mean, you're paying off the mortgage, but you're also paying off the shareholder wealth for the banks, the interest rates. And I mean, it's. I do. I had. We had a conversation recently with a guy who came out from the UK to work here and in New Zealand. He was working in hospitality and, you know, he was from Minnesota, I think it was, and he had a degree and it was environmental engineering or something. It was something quite significant. He'd done it for, you know, four or five years. He put a lot of time into it and got to the end of it and went, what's the point? So he's here having a, you know, I guess a midlife crisis or quarter life crisis. He's 26 and he's just sort of going, do I want to spend my life hustling? Do I want to spend my time working for people, creating shareholder wealth where it's not really going to anyone, but to their own back pocket? So I think those kind of conversations have been had and look to be. I've got to be frank, sometimes it's just. It's a conversation that some of us can have and some of us just don't have the luxury of having.

Yeah, yep.

You know, they're working jobs so it's a last thing on their mind. They are just trying to get through every day. So it's a, it's a luxury to be able to have those kind of conversations. And if you have that luxury to have those conversations, then you're having it on behalf of people who can't. And that's a really important thing.

And yet James Stewart from Gemelli, who, again, a recent podcast episode that should be coming out before this one, so you can go back and listen to it. If you didn't listen to it. He had that big realization as well. He, he sort of said how he went over to Sydney as a sort of young 20ish something age year old and was sort of told by someone, hey, you know, you do realize that you're probably in the top 1% of people in terms of status and revenue, full stop in on the globe. And he was like, okay, I hadn't really thought about that. And that's, that's his what's sort of really driving him. And so in his business, he gives 100 of his profits away to two charities because he's like, I've got enough. And, and I think that that's a really key thing. And, and I've heard this on a few other podcasts from, from the other people have recently where they say, you know, instead of, instead of being almost like disgusted at your privilege or what you've got, like with what you've got, do the most good. And it kind of closes that loop. And that's why a, a real sense of purpose and contribution is the ultimate selfish act. Because you feel good, you feel fulfilled by using what you've got to create good. And there's a beneficiary of that or multiple beneficiaries of it. So yeah, it's, you know, the, the lottery, the cosmic lottery of where you were born, who your parents are, you know, all the rest of it. It's like, and this is the thing, you know, so the word. Well, I think it was Aristotle was, it was Aristotle or Socrates, one of the two, you know, they said, you know, purpose. So what's the meaning of life is basically to use your genius to fulfill a human need. So what is the thing? But what's interesting is the word genius. The root of that word in Latin actually means your spirit rather than you being a smart person. Because when you say the word genius, most people think of Einstein. So the key, the key to life is to go. You have been born with a key set of skills and attributes, you know, at birth, which are then molded and influenced over time. So using that best skill that you have to create to solve a human need or an environmental or or planetary need, that, that's what would, that's what we're aiming for. And it gets lost in the of I've got to pay the mortgage and oh, I need a bigger car and I want to do this and I want to do that and yeah, yeah.

I think for me my heroes are the people who are going through a whole bunch of shit, but they're still giving, you know, there's, there's a guy I follow on Twitter who's in, I think in Thailand looking after something like 40, 50 dogs. And he's rehoming them and they're all strays and he just gets on his motorbike every day and just feeds them. He's got a route that he runs and he feeds these dogs and.

But he's, he's really struggling with his mental health. You know, he's got severe depression. He's really open about it and, and I'm looking at him going, he's got fulfillment and purpose and feeding these dogs, rehoming them and making sure that the spade are neutered and they've got all their, you know, shots and all that kind of stuff. And maybe that's his therapy, maybe that's his, his sense of self that he's found 100%. He could just crawl under the duvet for another, you know, a day and just, I can't face it or whatever. So I think those people who get back on the horse and just keep going. Yeah, that I just find, yeah, it.

Was he, he's this a really interesting guy. Sebastian Junga. He's a journalist, anthropologist, writer and he's, he followed a bunch of US troops in Afghanistan to try and work out like what is it about this close knit community with a, a sense of purpose. Whether you, you know, not saying I agree with everything that happened in Afghanistan, but you know, they have a clearly defined, un united group sense of purpose, comradeship, what have you. And then why do those guys get ptsd? And, and one of the things he, he realized was that close knit group support, like literally we will, I will die for you. You know. But one of the, one of the big things he, he talks about in the research of, I think his book's called Tribe. In terms of like mental health, he said like during the Second World War, the British government were really, really worried that when the Germans started bombing like London and the southeast of England, they were really scared that the population would then sort of capitulate and then put pressure on the government to stop the war, to stop the bombing. But what they found was mental health actually increased because what, what happens is the sense of needing. I, I needed to help other people actually stop people from, from kind of going, you know, insane or feeling that depression because it's like I feel grateful that my house wasn't bombed tonight and I now have a sense of duty that I need to go and try and save the neighbors who are trapped in the rubble. And so people were volunteering to be ambulance drivers and firemen and women. And I think that's a really key thing is like, however, if you're feeling bad, it's not kind of necessarily look to go and find someone who's worse off so that you can kind of feel a sense of sort of schadenfreude. But, like, there's always someone who is worse off than you, and if you can spend your time helping them, you're already in a much better place. And, and to have. And so, yeah, it's. It's increasingly well documented that even, you know, just if someone's having a tough time, like, get them a pet to look after or not even a pet, like, hey, why don't you go and help out the birds in the park? Like, why don't you just go and feed them and. And recognize that you can. You can be of service to something or someone and then. And then sort of build on that.

Yeah, yeah.

Really interesting research.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the mobilization of civilians in England during the war effort, you know, and I think of all those women who went out to, you know, manufacture munitions and also, like, it was just crazy. It was such a radical change in society at that time and then the online effects of that. But it gave a lot of women who were probably really smart, who were stuck in these sort of homemaker roles and opportunity dispositions to rise up and stand up and do stuff that they were really interested in and learn new skills and do all that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, it was. And I think that's a great. I think sometimes the greatest changes in society is where it's forced upon us. You know, like at universities for years, I was saying, you have to take your learning online, you have to digitize it. You have to get with the 21st century. And then Covid forced them to do that. And we'll see another shift as a result of how their consumers and their audiences start to change the way that they learn and engage with those institutions. So kind of exciting.

Yeah, Yeah. I mean, it's. It's always. Everything's always changing, isn't it? It's just how quickly and yeah. How you, how you keep up with it. And, and so how did. And so working in the business with it, with your partner and home life, is that because I. I worked with my dad for about 18 months and it was going to be a murder suicide. And so I'm like, I'm out. Can't do this. And I Feel it's like I say, it's, it's, it's. I think that is black and white. I think you can either work with family or you can't. I don't see that there's a, there's no healthy middle ground where sometimes it's okay. But yeah, I mean, you're four, four odd years in, so clearly.

Yeah, to be honest, it's kind of. It's gone much better than I thought it would and I didn't really have an expectation going into it.

Is he just doing what. He's just doing what he's told?

Well, I think it's kind of. We've both got very different roles. Gideon's been doing this, you know, he's eight years, seven years, eight years older than me. So he, he'd been in the sector or been in this, this category if you like, for a very long time. And so I was, my role was very much around the business side of it, which he already had under control. But it freed him up to be able to be far more strategic and far more client facing and all that sort of stuff and focus more on the team because I could never develop them in a design sense or anything like that. So because we've got quite defined roles and areas that we look after so mindful, you know, the finance side of it, bits and pieces and a new business, then it's, it's quite easy because you just, you stay in your lane, so to speak. But I think if we were too creative, it might be a little bit. There might be some more conflict. I don't know. I think the hardest thing is, is that running a business during a pandemic, when we went into lockdown, I literally went into fetal position under the desk. I would like, oh my God. I had no idea. I was already, you know, we had a board of directors at the time. I was preparing all of our board papers going, we're having emergency meetings. And I was thinking, this is going to be black swan event. This is going to be. My biggest fear is that we were going to lose our team. And so I was trying to make sure that we were holding on to everyone. So we were. The government hadn't brought in, you know, the wage.

So we just said to everyone, we'd already done a lot of working from home. You know, we'd done a one day with 10 people on home and just said, look, just a bit of a preparation in case this happened. So we were lucky. We could hit the ground running from day one. But a lot of our clients had to move servers. They had to do all this stuff. So the first week, they were just scrambling. But together as a. As a couple during that time, it was really good because we could be super efficient. We lived in the same house. We could.

But it also meant that we were both in IT together. So if I'd still been in my previous IT role, I would have been upstairs working in a different office and focused on that. And Gideon would have been trying to keep the business afloat in his own way, so we could be supportive. But we also, like, holy. We've got all our eggs in one basket. So that was challenging. Not from a. In the sense. I think we had our first fight and in, like, years, like a big first real fight about three or four days in, that was probably going to happen anyway because it has to go somewhere.

Yeah.

I can't remember what it was over. It was something really stupid, I think, jumping up and down saying they needed something. And I was like, we've got to move now. We've got to move now. We can't lose anyone. We've. I was in panic mode, whereas Gideon's sort of like, slow down, chill. We've got this. It's okay. And so I think for our team, God knows what they thought when we first came on. Oh, my God, it's going to be a husband and wife team. They're going to fight.

But they know more about our family than they should do, because we have conversations about this. But I think what it does mean is that. Yeah, it's. I get to see the best of Gideon every day, which is awesome. He's really good at what he does, and he's just fantastic. So in that respect, it's great. I get to experience that. But I also get to experience a bit where I kind of go, oh, we need to move more quickly on this. We need to do that. So you need to pick your battles and you need to like anyone you work with. You just gotta.

Yep. Yeah. No, yeah. It sounds like. I think. Yeah. Some. I think you've also got that yin and yang. You've got the. Yeah. And I think that's what you need. Yeah. I think when you got. If you. If you were both creatives, possibly would be a disaster. Unless. Unless you're 100 aligned. But then there's no. There's almost less value in you both being aligned on something because you don't. There is. There isn't that tension. And I think, yeah. Good relationships. Whether it's. Yeah. You know, husband and Wife or whatever or business partnerships having that tension where you're being pulled, it's almost like a magnet that's kind of pulling but pushing at the same time to sort of squeeze the best out of, out of both parties and just being adult and grown up about it. Skate. I see what you're saying. I respect it. I politely disagree, but I'm happy to compromise. Yeah, Picky battles.

Yeah.

Yeah, super cool.

That was. He was the one who bought B Corp in for us in 2019. He said, oh look, there's a guy in Australia who's done it or is doing it. And he said it looks like a really good framework, but I don't think he would have done it on his own. I think he needed someone like myself to come in and pull it together. But it was definitely a team effort. I mean, I had, you know, we're a very small team, but we had three or four of us working on it at any one time, you know, developing policies and bits and pieces because it was a massive undertaking for small organization to do. And so he was always a champion in terms of making sure that we were, you know, getting it right and doing it right and keep doing it right. So he's been great in that respect. He's been a massive champion of B Corp in the organization.

And so was that. That was a project that you, you took over or was it sort of handed to you or a bit of both.

Well, so Big Sell account director is studying part time in the sustainability sector. I can't remember quite what she's doing, but. And she's absolutely loving it. So in 2019, she came to us, she said, look, I want to pull together our sustainability strategy. And she was looking at things like mapping our impact against people and planet and profit and how we'd incorporate, you know, the EC ESG goals into our decision making and how we could adopt those to become a good corporate citizen. And so she took us through a workshop. She came up with a strategy and we recognized that we were in unprecedented times and that the climate was changing, society was changing and we needed to future proof and we didn't want to be left behind. So we were doing things like signing up to toy to and, you know, offsetting our carbon and buying carbon credits and doing all that sort of thing. But we realized that we needed something a lot more. And so B Corp, when we looked at it in 2020, we were like, yeah, we need to do this. And of course the pandemic hit and then we just. And I think for Part of our strategic planning. When I look back at our strategic plan for 2021, we had B Corp in there as a goal and we were going to get it by September 2020, 2021. We were going to get our certification. Well, we didn't get it for another two years. And I think the lesson that we learned was we should have got you in at the beginning and not at the end. I think that would have been a massive difference. We would have got there a lot sooner because it was just a spaghetti elephant that we were trying to bite off one little bite at a time. And there was lots of stabbing around in the dark. Well, there was for me, anyway. I think the team had quite a bit of clarity, but I found it really overwhelming and it brought a lot of pressure and it brought a lot of expectation. And so we just kind of picked it up and put it down, depending on how busy we were. And I think if I could give any advice, it's just you, you just have to build the time in and the resources and the money. You've got to assign a budget to it. It does, you know, it costs, it costs money to do this. And you, you really need to put aside time to get your head around the amount of information there is. I mean, you were talking about the, you know, the changes in the standards that have been proposed. I mean, there's something like 90 pages of information to work through just in the draft changes. And that you can't just skim read that. You've really got to read it and go, well, what are the implications for our organization when this comes on stream in 2024?

So you just sort of, yeah, you really need to want to do this.

You can't.

You don't do it for marketing purposes. You certainly don't do it for kudos. You do it for the team, you do it for the organization, and you do it for the confidence knowing that you're getting it right. Well, you hope you're getting it right. So, yeah, it's, it's big, but it's worth it.

Nice. Great. Yeah, great summary of the journey. And yeah, it was, it was a pleasure to help, help you out because, yeah, you were, you were doing a bunch of really cool stuff that I don't think you'd. It's always interesting when you reflect because we see so many companies doing so much good stuff. Quite often you, you are all fishing water where you, you just said, well, that's just how we do it. And yeah, yeah, but that's actually really special Because I've not seen anyone else do that. And we've worked with hundreds of companies to do B Corp and so, yeah, it's always cool to see, see companies have that moment of, oh, actually we are, we're actually doing pretty good because, yeah, I think people who want to do good, we, we typically are humble and also we always think we're not doing as much good as we could be doing. And so, yeah, it's. Yeah. So kudos to you guys for genuinely, you know, have. And I think that's the key. I think, I don't think we've, we've got. Actually we may have got like one or two clients who I'm, I'm kind of like, I don't think you're really 100% into the impact and doing good thing here. I think this is possibly marketing driven. But hey, you're going to be a B corp and that's going to force you to think differently and change some practices. So I'm okay with that. But yeah, I would much prefer that they're all in like people like yourself. Yeah, yeah. But it's, yeah, it's just you guys are doing some really good stuff and yeah, fully. You're like a textbook case. Yeah. Totally aligned behind it, want to do it, build a team around it, just go get it done.

Yeah.

Happy days.

Yeah. And I think for us, I mean, I don't really have any great lessons I can impart just purely because as a professional services organization, it's not like we had a lot of wastage that we had to minimize that. And a lot of the stuff that you do doesn't feel like it's creating meaningful impact. You know, reducing your rubbish by like 80% when you're only producing. I mean, we literally could go three weeks and never have to empty our rubbish bin because we just don't generate that much waste out of the team. So these little things like that. But I think it's more being able to formalize policies around development of your team and how you engage with clients and how you support your community and stuff like that. But I think what I'm particularly interested in is one of the new draft.

Amendments to the standards is looking at a thing called collective action and that's looking at taking joint action with other stakeholders to, you know, advance positive collective social environmental impacts and stuff like that. That really interests me because I still feel like we're acting in silos. We've reached out to other B corps and we're engaging them in various projects and Bits and pieces and as suppliers, but I think being able to even engage more in our community or our stakeholders that aren't be caught, but kind of by engaging them though, absorbing some of the stuff that we're doing, we're leading by example and we're learning from them and vice versa, that really excites me and I think it's more interesting for our team. When you're a small team, you become really siloed in your thinking. So when you bring other organizations into the mix, then you have the opportunity to kind of, you know, grow and learn and be exposed to different ideas and that sort of stuff.

Yeah, no, 100%.

No. That's typical. No, you do, you do some pretty good stuff. And so what is, what does being a B corp mean to you now, now that you've, you've got it?

Oh, I think it's, I think for us it's confidence that we're getting it right or mostly right.

I think it's building trust with our team and our clients. Most of our clients have never heard of it. They just kind of go, oh, that's cool, what's that?

So there's a bit of a, you know, kind of an awareness raising, an education that goes on there. I think there's a real satisfaction that we got there in the end. You know, it was a three year journey which was quite full on. It was humbling. When we did our first certification pro verification process and we didn't make it, I think we got marked down three or four points which dropped us down. So that was just like what? But we're getting so much right kind of thing. So that was really. Yeah, that was really humbling. And quite a good, actually quite a good exercise to go through. It's recognizing as a B corp that we don't stand still. That is always opportunities for improvement. I recently had a team member join us and took them through cultural competency training and in the midst of it just realized how inadequate and poor it really was because it was the first time we'd taken someone through it.

And so I just kind of brought it to a halt and I just went, actually, we really need to make sure that this is.

Up to a much better standard. So you're a lot more conscious of what good looks like rather than just ticking a box going, oh, okay, well we've got some videos and we've done, you know, you actually really need to do it right.

So yeah, definitely. Cultural competency is an area that I'd like to improve more on. It Definitely influences our decision making. The kind of suppliers that we use, how we hire, how we approach. Everything that we do is done through a B Corp lens. We'll have conversations and we'll go, oh, we'll just. Actually how does that look from a B Corp perspective?

There are still organizations that we work with. You know, our supply chain is, has companies from all over the world because of software and stuff like that and where you're sort of sitting there in the background going, okay, so if we work with that agency and if we work with this and this and this, we work with this client, what does that mean? Is their values alignment. So we're far more conscious in our decision making.

Nice. And that's, I think that's, like I said that I think there's been a theme through the whole thing. Just like, just be aware, be conscious of the, you know, like I say, sometimes there's no great decision but just be conscious about the fact there's no great options and be aware of that. But I think yeah, for service based businesses like yours or mine. Yeah, the environmental impact, I mean, I mean for you there's possibly some bigger ones in terms of like yeah. Advice in the client. Well actually do we need to do billboards? You know, what is the waste impact of that? But I think, and I think where you did score some good points as well, you know, for you it's client selection because you were doing, I think when we were working together, you were doing a lot of work with a, was it a local South Auckland based medical company that was about providing, you know, real grassroots medical services to disadvantaged communities. Well, you, you could be working to create a new, a really cool advertising campaign for a vaping company. But you, you know, I don't think you are, you know, so, you know, I think that for service companies is, is actually typically, you know, when you look at like a materiality assessment of, of where do we create impact for us and stakeholders. For you, it's 90 of it is the work actually the work that you're doing on the day to day. And I think, you know, you're clearly advanced in your thinking on that and you've got some great clients and yeah, you're working to use your skills as a force for good for all the other organizations that are a force for good, which is similar to I guess what we do. You know, we're just trying to help companies become a B corp and then beyond that help them do whatever else they want to do once they've done that, that. So yeah, Again, we could be consulting to vaping companies on, I don't know, how to sell more vapes. Yeah, whatever.

Yeah. And I, I guess it's the kind of a challenge in that is, is getting it right means sometimes from a pragmatic point of view, you know, the, the challenge of balancing that purpose versus profit is you still have to get paid at the end of the day to be able to pay your staff well, you know, to be able to pay your suppliers to all that kind of thing. So, you know, if you looked across your clients and went, well, you know, what state are they in? No, as you said before, no one's got it perfect. I mean, we're in a good place with our clients, but there's always kind of things where you think you, you, like I said before, you're far more conscious, you're far more aware. You no longer take things at face value. You are interrogating it. You are having those conversations. We'll say, can you really say that? Should we be saying that, that kind of thing? How can we reframe that in a different way? That you're not greenwashing or, you know.

Making claims that you can't back up kind of thing. But in New Zealand, we're pretty good. We are pretty good. You know, our corruption rates are really low, that sort of stuff. So I think most of us are getting it right. And certainly our clients, you know, we're, we're always. Yeah. Checking to make sure we're getting it right.

Yeah. And again, I think it just reflects the whole conversation. It's not kind of. It's not black and white. It's not linear. It's. It's squiggly. It's. But the general trend is. And, and that's the thing, you know, you, you can't, you can't fill from an empty cup. And yeah, you need to have some money. You need to have money coming in for you to do more good, for you to hire people to be able to provide those internal programs that helps them become a better human. Yeah. So, yeah, like I say, as long as the general, the general trend is in, in the right direction. Yeah, you're all good. There's one question I wanted to ask you earlier on. So with your, with your hearing challenges, how was that, that influenced your career and your working life? Do you feel. And for you now as a leader, is that. I mean, I guess it's, you know, you don't know because you don't know what a life without having hearing aids or an implant would look like, but has that. Do you feel that that's influenced and made you.

I guess, you know, you're obviously, you're a B corp, you're doing as much good as you can. Do you feel that influence? Because you mentioned you had a pretty good, you know, with your parents being lions and lionesses. So that kind of idea of doing good, there was obviously some seeds there. But do you think that the hearing challenge has that accelerate your compassion for other people or. Yeah. Do you think you would have got there?

Oh, no, no, definitely. Because the thing is that you don't realize how ableist the world is until, you know, you can't navigate it like everybody else.

But also too, growing up in the 70s and the 80s, you either sank or swam. There was no. I remember at school I was the only deaf kid in a school of 1500 girls. And you know, it was pretty, it was pretty full on the speech and drama teacher, but there was no counseling, there was no support around the isolation that comes with hearing loss or anything like that. So you do kind of see yourself as a bit of a defective human being. You go, oh, well, I'm not like everyone else. And all the stuff that comes with that means you are far more empathetic when people are, you know, they don't. They're not born with advantages, they're fighting that much harder to kind of, you know, get to the front of the pack or even just keep up with the pack. So definitely I'm a lot more theatre come, a lot more compassionate, but also.

So aware of my own privilege where when you start working in these charities and you start getting around. I think one of the biggest sort of moments for me was when I was working with a hearing house, when I was working for them, not just on the board of directors and we were having to post letters out to some families to create appointments to let them know that, you know, little Johnny needed to come in and had a. Have a auditory verbal therapy session because they didn't have emails, they didn't have mobile numbers, they never answered the phone because they were always at work. You know, they had five kids working two shifts and you know, they didn't have, they didn't have transport. So these kids were falling through the cracks. They weren't getting to their sessions and they were falling further and further behind. So then, well, how do we get to them? Do we get a bus? Do we go to them? Do we take the teacher? How do we group these kids rather than getting them to come to us? How do we create media services that are far more accessible? So you're constantly exposed to inequities and in healthcare and in services and stuff like that. So you're always trying to problem solve. And I think for me, when I first got into working with charities and bits and pieces it was where are the gaps? And you would see these gaps emerge all the time. And one of the first gaps I ever saw was teenagers with hearing loss. They were in these mainstream schools and some of them were in deaf education facilities, but most of them were just trying to swim on their own. So we set up a support group for these kids and we got them together and about once a month we would meet and I would take these 12 to 15 teenagers out. We'd go kayaking, we go rock climbing and we'd go go karting and we'd do all these different things. And what I realized was one day we were out on these bunch of kayaks out on the water, and all of them had taken their hearing aids out and the cochlear implants and put them on shore because the of if they've got wet, they're screwed. And we were using hand signals to communicate. And some can sign, some can't. I can't sign. I tried to learn, but I'd forgotten it all. And I suddenly realized when we were all together that no one was the odd one out, that there was no comfort and the normalization of having a bunch of people together who were experiencing the same thing. They weren't the only kid out there kayaking, going, what's going on? You know, so there was this real power in connection and community. And I think that's where I've always, both in business and in my volunteering work, is to try and build those connections, try and always make people feel like they belong, that they have connection with people around them and that sort of stuff, whether it's with their boss or their friends or their colleagues or whatever.

So, yeah, it definitely has shaped me. It definitely has made me sort of more aware of people's discomfort or limitations or opportunities and that kind of stuff. And conversely, it's also made me, you know, you've always got that imposter syndrome. You're always going, oh, well, I probably shouldn't be here, you know what I mean? Like, oh my God, I'm going to be found out. I should, you know, that kind of stuff. Part of that's not having an education, you know, that finished at age 16 kind of thing.

But yeah, I think most people in this Day and age, you are now exposed to so many people who aren't like other people. What is normal?

That's what is normal is one of my favorite expressions. It's. Yeah, it's that. What's it Con Air with Nicolas Cage, you know, where, where he's. If you've seen that movies on the back of the plane and there's the car dangling out the back and on any other day that would seem strange. It's like, yeah, well, what is normal?

Yeah, yeah.

And I think, think, yeah. Just the reason I was curious to ask that question is the, the. Over my years of being employed, I had two bosses who were the best bosses. Both of them were dyslexic and they both grew up with struggles and challenges as kids. And, And I think they have a. That sense of empathy. And I want everyone to be doing okay. It was overwhelming, just the sense of I want everyone to thrive. I want everyone to have an opportunity in this business. And I think it's just, yeah, the. And having helped set up a charity here in Christchurch. It wasn't my idea, but I was engaged to help get it off the ground called the Harpy Access Card, which is all about trying to provide more accessibility for people with people with a disability. So it's got nine recognized barriers that people with a disability might experience in the, I guess, you know, the outside world. And then trains typically either an events venue or a retailer or a shop or a cafe or restaurant. It trains their staff on, hey, these are the nine barriers in your store. Be aware that these barriers exist and how do you mitigate them or remove them? So that when the person with a disability turns up and they present the card, the retail staff know, oh, okay, yeah, you're not just being lazy and saying, I need to go and sit down. It's like, actually I have trouble standing or queuing for more than a few seconds, so I'm going to sit down and you're going to come and serve me, which I know you don't normally do. And so, yeah, just breaking down those barriers because one thing we always, when we were talking initially to retail outlets, they. They said, look, we. We just. We just don't know how to deal with people with a disability. So we either ignore them or, yeah, we just, we kind of keep our eyes down and don't engage and talk about the disability. So, yeah, I think that's like a whole other podcast we could probably do on. On that stuff. But yeah, I just think that there is this. The leaders with empathy leaders who've had some kind of battle or struggle, there's something special there. And in terms of the imposter syndrome, none of us know what we're doing, you know.

Yeah.

No, adult, actually, I think that is the big, big mystery behind the veil is all those people who you thought knew what they were doing when you were a kid, all those teachers, all those parents, all those adults, none of us know what we're doing. We are all winging it. So don't buy into the imposter syndrome because no one knows what we're doing. We're all just giving it a go as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah, no, look, I agree with that. And I always say to my team, look, you're not alone in it. Everybody's got it and people that you wouldn't suspect. But I think coming back to how to engage with people with disabilities, the best at it are toddlers. If you watch young children in a way that they engage with someone with a disability before they've like the, you know, the uncomfortableness of social practices. They're amazing. I remember my children, they wanted me to understand them because trust me, if the woman that. If the person that could give you a chocolate cookie didn't understand you, you made it your business.

So they would grab my face and they would pull it around and say, look at me, mommy, I'm, I'm talking to you. And they would make sure that I could breathe their lips, me. A cookie?

Yeah, whatever it takes to get a cookie. Yeah, I'm getting a cookie.

Yeah. And I thought no one would ever grab my face. They might kind of, you know, of course they wouldn't. But I just. Children amaze me constantly when you remove all of those kind of like preconceptions and.

Yeah. Just rules. Yeah. Social rules. Yeah, yeah. No, kids are good for that. They're very grounding in that. It's like. Yeah, yeah, that's a really good point. Yeah. Why don't I think of that? Yeah. Oh, very cool. So looking into the future then. Yeah. What, what do you think the future looks like for B corp in general?

I. Well, here in New Zealand, I hope more. More do it. I think the one of the issues that I had would be corp was that it's very American centric. It's very. So. And I mean of the obvious things, we've got acc here in New Zealand, so, you know, the public. Public.

We've got a socialized, you know, healthcare system and stuff like that. So. But I think it's more sort of Relating it back to indigenous rights and recognition of that here in New Zealand. So it's almost like if they could incorporate a module that is particular for New Zealand, how do you incorporate to Tiriti or the treaty into your everyday workplace practices? Or recognising within B Corp that, that that exists and, and perhaps getting extra, you know, recognition for that would be great. Or saying look, you need to, even if it's in Australia, it's you know, it's recognition of their indigenous rights as well. And I think that would be really good as to having that sort of that local localization if you like, of the framework. There are some charities that I've worked with that their whole.

Purpose was to go out of business. They no longer wanted to exist because no one ever needed them. And what would be great is for B Corp, no one needs it because everybody's been a good corporate citizen.

Yeah, totally. And I think with the changes that are coming or that are proposed for the draft standards, recognizing that there are different sizes. So you know, I mean we are totally over engineered because of B Corp. I think our Employee Handbook's now 126 pages long or something.

Yeah.

But for a really small professional services team you could slot that into any large organization and it would be just as robust and just as appropriate. So I think it's recognizing that for small organizations it's such a big undertaking to make it more accessible, to make it more. And also.

I would love to see something for startups where it's a brilliant basics to get them up and running because often they come up with a good product, a good idea and then looking back, oh actually like I said before, they need to get their house in order. So I think yeah, I just hope more and more people embrace it as a framework and that it gets more global recognition. I definitely know for us, you know, now.

We'Re on a number of government panels and they were seeking what they call border outcomes here in New Zealand that look like you know, 5% of your suppliers. You know, you should be targeting Mori based organizations. That kind of.

Where it just becomes almost a requirement. Definitely as a director there is a requirement around risk. But at the moment we're not penalized for say for example if we have a privacy breach and your information that I hold is out there in the public domain, there is no penalty for me. I make it known with a privacy commissioner, I have to deal with it, I have to do all those sort of things. I have to load it by you. But ultimately there was no Penalty in Australia, it's quite different. So they take things like cyber security really seriously. So I think as a director of a company wearing that hat, there needs to be far more rigorous compliance. That needs to happen at a corporate level and then for B Corp that sits nicely with that and I think then you've got a really good, robust, mature corporate framework that you can operate within.

Yeah, it's, it's tough to look the localization, globalization conversation. Yeah, it's totally, totally get it. It's one of the more, one of the more common bits of feedback is. Yeah, this is very Americanized. I think it's, you know, when, when you look at, we're just at what, 7,200ish B Corps globally, it's still 0.01% of the total possible. You know, limited limited liability companies didn't actually, didn't include sole traders on that. So it's probably even a lower percent than that. It's, it's relatively early days, but. Yeah, give them the feedback. I know, I know. Yeah. A few companies have said, you know, you need to connect in with. Yeah. Other principles of doing business. Tail moulding principles or other. Yeah. And I think there's a world of wisdom and knowledge there that we're so disconnected from that. You know, there is quite a lot of alignment between Tail Maori principles and B Corp in terms of, yeah, long term thinking, regenerative principles, community, people first, etc. So yeah, it's, it's a tough one. Yeah. Way above my pay grade.

Yeah.

In terms of that one. But yeah, I know that. Yeah, they're working. See what they can do.

Yeah. And the governance one, I think that's a really interesting one. I think having quite a few conversations at the minute about governance within the B Corp world, in fact. Yeah. Again, Tish from ragging Foucault, you know, they're in a really interesting position because they've got, I think the chairman of their board or one of their board members was the CEO of Sinlay and he, Leon, he led Sinlay through their B Corp journey. So she has got a board member who has done B Corp with a really big company and I think there's one other board member she said, who really kind of gets the B Corp thing. But the vast majority of companies that we're helping who are, who are at that medium size where they maybe have a board, a lot of board members are kind of like B Corp. Not really sure. And, and you know, with the new requirement to update your constitutional corporate governing documents, one Thing we're, we're. I'm looking at working with a. Well, Sandra Smedholes, the lead conspirator on this. I think I've mentioned it now in the last couple of podcast episodes. You know, there is no great, there's a few courses for governance around sort of climate risk. But what about being a good employer? What about being a good community citizen? What about transparency ethics? You know, some of that, yeah, should be baseline governance. But then you look at some of the big companies, you know the mainsail one for Kiwis, which is like one of the bigger. There was another governance based thing in the paper recently I heard about or read about or can't remember, but I have a real.

I don't know, what's the word? Lack of. I don't know, I just don't think governance has done well. Anyway. And then we now add on this new requirement for thinking more holistically and I don't think it's a tick box like this is the risk. I think for me it comes back to the Gus Speth quote, the guy who's an environmental lawyer who again paraphrasing badly, he said, look, I used to think 10 years of great science and information and data would convince people that we need to change how we run the show. But basically I've realized it's actually, it's a, it's a metaphysical spiritual consciousness awareness change that we need. And I think that's the piece that boards and owners and other company executives need to go on that journey of actually it. There is more than just making money. It's how we do what we do and it's the impact that we have. And, and I think that's just, it's a really interesting time to be in business which companies like yours are navigating and we're trying to help people navigate and yeah, we'll look back hopefully in 50 years time and go, wow, that was crazy. Ride can't. Why, why did, why does it take so long for people to realize that?

But yeah, yeah, for sure. Sometimes, yes, absolutely.

And so what's new and exciting in the world of seven? Obviously you've nailed your B corp. Any other exciting projects or clients coming up on, on, on the. In the near future?

Well, we mentioned Polestar back at the beginning, the ev, we've just bought one and I'm really excited about owning an ev. We're picking it up next week and.

It'S yeah, definitely a new way of living and a new way of driving and I'm Sure. We'll look back in 20 years time and go, God, what did it take so long? But I'm quite excited about it. I'm excited about what it means from an integration point of view, being able to drive into the driveway and open the, the, you know, the garage door through the car and all that sort of thing. Yeah, that side of technology really interests me. I've been able to have a. So funny. My mum's just bought a new car recently and she's like, oh, my God, it's got reverse camera and it's got this and it tells me if someone's too close and she's just completely buzzing out on what are quite standard features now, obviously the other car for quite a.

Quite a while.

And I think it's funny, we've kind of been driving these cars for so long and are so much part of the fabric of who we are as society that to make that change, I'm kind of looking forward to the conversations with friends who are climate deniers and, you know, to climate change deniers and all that sort of thing. It's just, again, it's been part of that conversation, it's pushing it forward. It's been part of the solution which I'm. Yeah, and if you'd asked me 10 years ago that I would drive an electric car, I would have said, hell no.

Yeah, I guess Gideon's previous company, be called V8, would maybe provide some. Closest to your.

Nice. Oh, super cool. Yeah, you were. Well, you were. You are a cool bunch of humans. There's really cool stuff. So thanks for having us be a small part of your journey. But yeah, thanks more for all the, the cool work that you're doing and no doubt you're gonna go on and do even more cool stuff or even more cool brands. So, yeah, if anyone's needing their branding or advertising redone. Oh, 807.

Thank you, Tim. And look, look, I just. As a, If I could say any, you know, on a final note, get someone like Tim and early, don't try and go it alone. Honestly, it is. Get a consultant and get Tim in and because it is, it's a massive undertaking and you, when you build into your strategy and your planning and your workflows and your decision making, when it's just part of your bau, then you can't imagine not having it. You're kind of like. But to get started, it is, it is, it's big. It's not, it's not a walk in the park. So get help and get it early.

And get somebody rigorous but achievable is how I like to describe it.

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Absolutely. Awesome. Hey, well, thank you so much for your time and apologies for being late. Hopefully my hair does look quite good. I just had it cut beforehand, who knows? But yeah, you keep on doing the amazing stuff you're doing and hopefully we'll see you in Auckland before the end of the year. Hopefully.

Right, thanks, Tim.

So, yeah.

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