#80 From basketball to B Corp with co-founder of B Lab Jay Cohen-Gilbert

Welcome back to the latest episode of the Be Better podcast. Thank you as always to our regular listeners. I'm thinking there might be a few new listeners for this episode because we have without doubt our most prestigious guest on the show to date. Not only is the gentleman we're going to be talking to today a legend obviously within the B Corp world, he's also a star of Netflix. I mean, ladies and gentlemen, I mean that is just, you know, unbelievable that we've managed to get J. Cohen Gilbert on our podcast. Jay, thank you so much for being here.

It's great to be with you, Tim. Thanks.

Now there will be some people possibly outside of the B Corp community who live under a rock and don't, you know, don't know what B Corp is and don't know who and one were and what basketball is all about. And so for those few people, Jay, who are you?

Thanks Tim. Most importantly, husband and father of two 20 something year old kids here in New in in the US that are just getting into the work world. And.

And I've been really fortunate to have had a professional career for the last 30 years. I've gotten to work with my best friends, you know, now in three con, three successive endeavors. The first was with the basketball company and one that you mentioned before that was the subject of that Netflix documentary. And then with the B Corp movement with my partners Andrew Kasoy and Bart Houlhan, the other co founders of the B Corp movement. And, and now in this sort of third leg doing a lot of.

Economic and racial justice work with a group called White Men for Racial Justice. And, and so those have been like over the last 30 years, the three things I've been working on. And, and I've been really blessed to be able to do that with really fun, smart, great people that are doing cool things that are meaningful and trying to make a difference in the world and having a lot of fun while.

We'Re doing sounds like a pretty good recipe. And that's definitely the recipe that we're trying to. The vibe we're trying to create at Grow Good. I remember when I first sort of connected to or realized that perhaps the path that you know, we were going on in the business community wasn't perhaps the one that was leading us to great outcomes. Initially I think the response is to, it's like almost like going through the stages of grief. You know, initially it's anger. It's like why, why are people doing this? This is so dumb. Why can't people see that? But.

I guess funnily enough, people don't like to connect to that vibe. And so I think, yeah, creating that, that kind of look, we're here for a good time and we're also going to make some impact is such a cool, cool vibe and I think it's something that the big world is definitely being good at. So. And one let's. Yes. If people who don't know about AND one talk to us a bit about AND one and how did you. Because I think that the backstory to how you sort of started AND one was, was pretty cool.

Well, I, I got to start AM one with my best friend since seventh grade. We were, he was getting out of business school at Wharton, trying to figure out how never to put on a suit and tie and, and whatever he could do not to go to work for Goldman Sachs. And I had been working at McKinsey & Company for a few years and then had made a transition to work in the public and nonprofit sector in New York City and was clearly at a point where I needed to make a, make a shift.

And a bunch of, a bunch of trips to the local jazz club over, over a three or four month period exploring different business models and different ideas eventually landed on something that was a database marketing business to try to create before the Internet because that's how old I.

Am.

Wow. Create a database of, of folks who were, who, whose primary identity was they were ball players and how to, how to get them better deals on better product at a better price. That led us in a pretty emergent way to say not only should we be bringing brands to those ball players, but there actually, there wasn't a brand that actually spoke directly to those ball players. And so when you looked at brands like Nike, they were in their own language designed to the exact specification of championship athletes. And they were ballplayers and they were track stars and they were football players and they were tennis players and they were whatever and. But they were nothing that said that they're even wear Nike and say I'm a basketball player, I'm a ball player. And so we recognized that basketball was the most popular sport in the US and the fastest growing sport in the world and the largest category of athletic footwear and apparel. And yet it didn't have a brand that was specifically speaking to those athletes. And so out of that sort of modest market insight came the idea to create a brand that was just for ballplayers. And, and then it became a little bit more focused on ball players who talked a lot of smack but had the game to back it up. And so that was sort of where the energy and the attitude of the brand came from. And if Nike was designing stuff for, you know, professional athletes and college ball players, we were coming from street ball and, and every, you know, sort of designing it for every ninth grade, you know, point guard in New York City who thought he should be point guard for the Knicks, you know, and that his next stop was going to be point guard for the New York Knicks. And so it all came out of that. And, and the three co founders of that and ultimately the six partners of that were all pretty much basketball junkies.

And, and we put like our love of the game at the center of the company. And that meant we knew the customer better than any of the other bigger brands that were basically putting marketing professionals and product designers into a category. We weren't coming at it from that standpoint. We were coming at it from the standpoint of what's the coolest stuff for ballplayers that would help identify them as a ballplayer and the kind of ballplayer that can pick up any other four guys on the playground and run the court all day. And that was the energy for the brand. And we had a really good run for about 13 years. And it became the number two basketball company in the world in pretty much every market right behind Nike and grew to a several hundred million in revenue business both in the US and around the world. And became quite well known for some entertainment properties that we created called the M1 mixtapes that themselves became a pretty big deal culturally at least here in the US and then on the M1 mixtape tour and on ESPN show and an Activision video game and, and all kinds of other fun stuff that sort of combined street ball and hip hop music and became a bit of a cultural phenomenon here in the US for about five or six years.

Yeah. A bit different to.

McKinsey. A little bit. Yeah. The experience of McKinsey was useful, but not too.

Useful. Yeah, I've got a good mate of mine is. He's actually. Well, he, he was a partner elect. I think he possibly might be a partner in McKinsey currently. Yeah, he.

Loved. Love you. I won't name his name just in case he doesn't want his name publicized, but he's. Excuse me. Yeah, he's not a basketball, hip hop kind of guy. So. Yeah. Did you find, was there an element clearly you. Well, was. And one more you than McKinsey I'd suggest, clearly because you, you were there for so long and you were a Part of.

It. Well, for sure. For sure. And one was more of my personality and energy than McKinsey. And it's fair to say that the, the other partners at, AT AND one.

Were much more like eating, sleeping, drinking, breathing, basketball than I.

Was.

Right. So I was like, I was like close enough to the game and played enough that I think I had a good enough detector that I could, as head of product and marketing, know what was authentic and what was not.

Authentic.

Yep. I could sort of hear the tune, but I couldn't play the.

Tune.

Yep. Which are two different.

Things.

Yep. And so I was close enough that I could. I wasn't tone deaf, but I, But I was also. But I was also distant enough that I also could bring some of those other McKinsey or business skills to bear and, and understand what might be translatable into a broader marketplace and how to grow a business and how to build a brand because I wasn't so attached to.

It. Yeah.

Yeah. So I think I was at an interesting middle distance. That was.

Helpful. Yeah, you can sort of bring that detachment to, to a decision. So how, how did young Jay end up at McKinsey and then going to. And one, like, what was the. Because I'm always interested in the path people had that led them to, to ultimately to B Corp. And it's, it's mixed. Some, some people have always been really, you know, grounded, purpose driven people. There might be a big influence from parents, you know. Yeah. We've always been volunteering and doing good and kind of like doing good and impact's always been a part of it. There's a few people we've had who are very faith based and like, this is part of my religious belief system about doing good and doing business for good. And then there's others who are more like myself, who I was just completely out myself. And then I had a big moment that led me to realize actually this isn't working for you or other people. So. Yes, growing up, you know, like the path to McKinsey, it seems like a pretty well worn path of, you know, you do well here, you do well here, you do well here, you, you get there. So. Yeah. What was that trajectory like for the young.

Gay? Yeah, so I'd say a little bit meandering and not particularly direct.

My path to McKinsey was more one born out of ego and the sense of. Back in the, in the 80s, when I was in college in the late 80s and people were getting out. If you were among the best and the brightest at an elite Institution of higher ed in the US you were getting recruited by investment banks and consulting companies, management consulting companies. That was sort of where you went. And it's very early on in the tech space, but that wasn't really a thing at the time. It was a little bit early for that. And, and I had no interest in doing finance. And so management consulting was sort of like the, the, the place where if you weren't truly going to sell out entirely but just sort of sell out, sort of sell out, you would go and still think that you could look yourself in the mirror. And, and for me it was like a bit of the ego of I can prove that even though this isn't something that I think of as a career, I'm good enough that I could get that job. And, and then the less pure ego driven thing, but the more utilitarian thing was I'm never going to find any better training ground in, in how to build an organization, how to run a business than if I did it at McKinsey. And my mom was an entrepreneur herself and she was a headhunter executive search. And so she was also very clear that Jay, you'd be an idiot not to take that offer because you're going to have that on your resume forever and it's going to be a, it's going to get you into lots of rooms where people say well if McKinsey hired him then he must be start and it will give you some credentialing and credibility to do lots of other things whether or not you want to stay there forever. And so for me, even though at the time I knew I wanted to go into the time into the non profit world around youth, education, development etc, that kind of thing where I could get the skills to do that effectively, get some private sector skills to bring into the non profit NGO world that McKinsey was a good place to do that. And so a combination of.

Sort of let, let me, let me build some skills in a good place and also let me prove to myself and to others that I'm every bit as good as those folks who are going to, into investment banking and on Wall street, even if it's not what I want to do. But I could, I could prove to myself and others that I was capable of doing that. And that was sort of the ego.

Part. Yeah. And because it's interesting, I do quite a few talks and there might be some younger humans in talks these days. And you know, some, some of them are I just want to go straight, straight to work for, you know, A company that's doing good. But there's, there's a little part of me because I work, I was on the graduate training program for Johnson and Johnson. Nowhere near as prestigious as McKinsey, but similar kind of concept. It's like this is a really big company that knows a lot of stuff and they spent thousands of dollars trading me, particularly around, you know, my job was in the sales department. So thousands of dollars spent on, you know, trading me on human psychology, how to sell, you know, a bunch of skills that have been super, super useful and certainly having all my CV as a young graduate, you know, Johnson and Johnson, 12 months graduate training programs. Like, yep, this guy, you know, I think there was something like a thousand people that apply for it every year and me and three other people got it. So it's like, okay, this guy's not a complete dummy. He. Yeah. And so would you say for people in this day and age, is it, is it still worth. Because the thing we hear is, you know, are the people day, the McKinsey, you know, these bigger consultant things are struggling to recruit because people don't want to come and work for the big machine anymore. But do you think there's still value in going in, seeing possibly the dark side of some of these big machines and learning how it's done and then, because that was kind of my, my breakout to grow good was if I can take all the skills that I've just learned in the, in the commercial world, which I don't, which I see is going down a bit of a, you know, a path to destruction, you know, socially and environmentally. What if I could take those skills and take them to the good sector? So do you think it's still worth people doing that or would you say get straight into doing.

Good?

I guess I'm not as binary about where the good is in the world and, and I'm sure we'll get to nestle and other things in the B corp movement later on in the conversation. So I'm, I'm, I don't spend a lot of time wringing my hands over.

About being a purist. You know, I think that the world is a complex place and if we want to have transformational change, we're going to need all ores in the water and we're going to need some, some built for purpose companies and we're going to build some companies that have to be transformed along the way to finding their purpose. And so for me, if I'm talking to young folks in any of the classes that I'VE taught. I would say I'd much rather McKinsey pay me.

And train me than me pay a business.

School.

Yep. To acquire the knowledge. And so I'm, I'm, I'm much less of a fan of folks going into debt.

To pay somebody to educate them for in a, in a business school versus getting hands on operational experience. But, but I'm not mad at whether it's J and J or PNG or McKinsey or, you know, any of the big five. Like there's plenty of, of terrific companies that, that train people really.

Well.

Yeah. And you're going to learn really useful skills. The question is, how do you use that skills and for what purpose? And, and you can, you can do that at a consulting company, you can do that at a finance company, you can do that at a consumer products company. It's not so much what business you're in, it's how you choose to do the business. And, and all of those questions, they're not going to teach you at business school and they're mostly not going to teach you at those places either. That's going to have to come from somewhere else. And, and ultimately it's that somewhere else that I find more compelling. And at the end of the day, people got to find their own lane on that and find their own comfort level on how they're going to determine which way they're going to go. You know, and, but there's nothing wrong with if someone's going to pay you a good salary, especially early in your career, and maybe help you pay off some of your higher ed debt that you've got from having gone to university and give you good training that you can then deploy in other places.

Or use there to make to, to deploy their, their skills, their assets and their resources to help transform organizations. That's all. Again, we need, we need people everywhere bringing purpose to their work. And, and in order to create an economy that works for everybody, we're going to have to have every aspect of the economy work for that purpose. We can't.

Just. Yeah. Just one part of it. Doing.

It. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so as an example, Tim, like we, the original declaration of Interdependence for the B Corp community used to talk about building a new sector of the economy.

And we changed that along with the global partners about, I don't know, seven or eight years into the development of the B Corp global movement. And we instead said we envision a new global.

Economy.

Yep. Because we went from saying, oh, we're going to Build this new sector that's going to exist alongside the traditional sector to recognizing that that was an insufficient strategy at best. It was an interim strategy. But the ultimate long term strategy, the ultimate long term objective was that the whole economy doesn't have to become a B corp, but we want the whole economy to behave like B corps and take into consideration their impact on all the different stakeholders and seek to make a positive material impact on the world. You know, and, and that, that should be required of all companies, not just a special little sector of the economy that we can say, oh, isn't that cute? And if you want to go do purpose stuff, go over there in the corner. Yeah, and, and play with your kids toys. We want to be, we want to be playing on the main stage and that means transforming the entire economy to be more purpose driven. And, and that requires us to be a little bit.

More.

A little.

Bit more gracious about how we're treating the companies that are existing already in the world and that have significant work to do, their legacy institutions and how do we help them change and transform. That's really important work and I, I don't want to, you know, diminish or dismiss.

That. Yeah, 100 agree. I think, yeah. When I first got into this idea of the, you know, business for good, purpose driven business.

In my mind it was initially really binary. It was, you know, these people don't, don't get to exist. These people do get to exist. And it was actually at a, at an event here in Christchurch where the social enterprise sector was, was sort of burgeoning at the time, sort of 2017, 2018, and possibly a similar sort of arc of the journey. There was people in the movement saying, yeah, look, you know, we need a separate sector, we need to build this sector of social enterprise that in, you know, the end goal is to envelop and take over normal business. And to do that they need resource, they need capital, they need, you know, to be like these sacred cows. And there was a person in the room from a local charity and he just said, well no, I think, I think you're doing this wrong. You know, why should we be the sacred cows? You know, this. So you particularly look at New Zealand. The majority of businesses in New Zealand are small businesses, mom and dad enterprises where they're doing the best that they can, they're trying to pay the best that they can to their team. They more than likely donate some money to a local charity or they're, you know, involved in their local school or their kids sports teams or what have you. And he's like, why should that effort be diminished because you are this sort of holier than thou sacred cow. And that for me was, was a real moment of revelation. It's like, no, you're right. We, we, we need to bring others into the fold. Like we, like you say, we need to create that, that the pie needs to get bigger, not create our own little, you know, side serving of, of some beautiful dep or source for the pie to maybe go into every now and then. And it's gray and it's complex like you say, you know, and ultimately who gets to decide what business has legitimacy in the modern.

World? Yeah, and I agree with all that. And what I'd say, Tim, is that the thing that attracts me to the B Corp movement still is that there are real standards of performance, there's real transparency and there's real legal accountability. And so.

Recognizing the value of what everybody is doing is like a useful place to start. And that's like a big tent approach that, that meets people where they are. And I'm fully in support of that. And.

We need people to, to measure their performance against independent third party standards. We need their performance to be transparent so it can get evaluated and judged by the marketplace, whether it's consumers, investors, policymakers, work workforce, or whatever it might be, so people can make a more informed choice about what they buy, where they work, what they invest in, etc. And there needs to be real legal accountability.

Climate change would be the obvious example, but you could also look at inequality and other things that are, that are huge, existential, systemic threats. And I don't think it's a stretch to say that we've learned the hard way or we're learning the hard way that companies that only have a sort of maniacal and mono focus on maximizing profit are inherently unstable and, and destabilizing to the system and, and don't serve anybody. And, and so one is, it's fine to say, let a thousand flowers bloom and meet everybody where they are, but that would be coupled to me with a regime of real third party, credible, comprehensive performance standards. A way that they're.

Visible and transparent to everybody so the marketplace can judge about where to allocate capital and scarce human resources. And also that it may be that once companies get to a certain size that they're actually obligated to take on that stakeholder governance. That's sort of the key source code innovation of the B Corp movement. And they change their legal governing documents, they change their fiduciary duty for their boards of directors. So they are obligated to consider the impact of their decisions on all their stakeholders. You know, and that last piece for the first 10, 12 years of the B Corp movement, we said, great, that'll be voluntary. People opt into that. They opt into being a B Corp. We pass laws in, you know, 42 U.S. states, six or seven other countries to create the opportunity for companies to choose to be a, a different kind of corporation that has adopted stakeholder governance and an expanded sense of fiduciary duty. I think what we came to realize, Tim, was that the rate of adoption of that legal structure was too slow.

In order to meet the challenges that we're facing. And so while we don't think it's a good idea to require every company to, to adopt stakeholder governance, we do think the place to start is a company's over a certain size. And maybe it's a billion in turnover, maybe it's a thousand employees. Whatever the, whatever policymakers will, will, will end up deciding. But over a certain size.

You'Re too big.

To not care about anybody but your shareholders because your impact is too big on society. And so once you, you can choose to be big, that's fine. We're not saying the big is bad, but we're saying once you get above a certain size, you should be legally required to expand your fiduciary duty of care, to expand your circle of care to include not only your shareholders, but, but also your workers, your community, the suppliers, the environment. Because your impact is just too great for us to pretend it doesn't matter and stick our heads in the sand and say, oh, we hope it'll all be fine through some kind of magic of trickle down economics that if you're good for your shareholders, you're good for everybody. Because that really hasn't been demonstrated to be.

True. Yeah, totally. I remember talking to a young, recent, probably grad, ish, couple of years into his role at a consulting firm in New Zealand and he said, look, I'd love to have a coffee and just talk about this B Corp thing. He said, you know, I've recently been given this project at work where they want me to run the numbers for a company about basically buying a machine that would get rid of like 20 employees and I can do that all day long. But he said, I pushed back to my partner and said, well, should I also run the numbers on the impact that would have to those employees and their communities? And so, and the partner was like, no, we're not paid to care about the communities. We're paid, we're paid to care about our customer, maximizing their, their income. And that's the thing. You know, I think it always amazes me when those sort of, when the CEO, those programs, when the CEO goes undercover and they go and meet their staff and they actually see how they're struggling and how decisions that are being made in this sort of maybe ivory tower boardroom actually do have an impact on real humans. And I don't know, it just feels like in general big, well, business in some ways. But it's almost like we've been captured for the last hundred years or so post industrial revolution in this concept that just getting as much money as possible is the thing. Yet there's so much evidence from psychological literature that actually just chasing the money isn't good for you on an individual level. And it will create all these ripple knock on effects. And yeah, it's just, it's fascinating that we've been led down that rabbit hole. But I guess this is where you and the team shot shine the, shine the light on it to go. Look, you can do good and do and do.

Good. And just to be clear and just to be clear, there are some times when you're going to make decisions to invest in that technology and that's going to have some short term effects that aren't going to be great for those 20.

People.

Yeah. Or shift your factory production from here to there or exit this business or enter that business. And so we're not trying to say that.

That you don't have to run a profitable business if you don't have a profitable business. You don't have a business, you have a charity 100 and, and what we're saying is that you need to consider the impact of your decisions on all those stakeholders and when you assess all of that over time that you've done a good job balancing those stakeholders as opposed to only trying to maximize the impact for one.

Stakeholder.

Exactly. And that just requires a, a little bit more caring, expansive mindset. Without being prescriptive that you have to do this or you have to do that. It's just saying we're going to judge you by the sum total of your actions over a period of time. And that gets back to the importance, Tim, of making sure the legal structure aligns with that and make sure that the performance standards, the measurement and the management systems align with that. Because otherwise you're just trading.

Anecdotes.

Yeah. You're going to say, oh, you don't care about those 20 people. And the CEO is going to say, well, if I didn't do that, I'm going to get killed in the marketplace. I can't compete with price. Shut down the whole place for 200 people. And so like, like neither of them are.

Wrong.

Yeah. And neither of them should be viewed in isolation. The question is how do we assess the impact of the business as a.

Whole.

Yeah. Not any individual decision. And that's why the, one of the most important parts of the B Corp. Model is that's a company assessment, not about an individual.

Practice.

Yep. Right. Or individual policy. But we're looking at the company as a whole. And, and companies have to recertify every three years because practices change and the marketplace has changed. And so we want to make sure they're continuing to meet that bar over time because ultimately that's what we're, that's what we're creating that trust mark for. At the end of the day, the B Corp logo is a trust mark. Right. For consumers, for workers, for investors. Say, oh, I know this company is thinking about these things and I know they're using their best judgment to try to balance the positive impact across all their different stakeholders. And I'm going to believe in them that they're going to do that. And I get to see empirical evidence of, to the extent that I think they've done that well over.

Time. Yep. Again, you know, I totally agree. It's the nuance. It's, it's gray. Doing good is gray. It's not black or white. Because like you say, there's, you got to think of the long term profitability of the company. I think, I think the key, I guess, you know, being born out of the U.S. you know, where you, when you're the CEO of a company in the U.S. your only sort of fiduciary duty is to make more profit or more revenue next quarter than you did the previous quarter. Whereas that pressure is typically outside of listed companies. That pressure is less, I think in, in other jurisdictions in the world. But that, that, that mantra, that mindset that has been, that has been the only decision that's been driving the large part of the global economy is you need to have a bigger, bigger return next quarter than this quarter. And I don't care. It's like, I don't care how you do that. And I think that's, that's the, I think for me that that was one of the big moments of realization for me at the heart of the B Corp movement is that's actually the key thing is it's changing the mindset, the decision making of yes, yes, we could, we could do that, but at what cost? Okay, we get rid of our call center stuff and we outsource it and then we have worse customer service. We've just decimated a community of some people locally, our, you know, corporate reputation, the local community is going to go down. You know, is the call center going to be up to speed? Because we've outsourced it and it's overseas and that can sometimes lead to challenges. You know, so the net effect actually is going to be maybe in the next quarter we're even further behind. And so, yeah, just, it's just thinking we, we worked with a company here called Trinio who then were bought by a Canadian B corp that was then bought by Salesforce, so they no longer exist. But one of the co founders, Abhinav, he was talking about, he's of Indian descent and he said, I think it was one of his cousins working for a company in India. He said the shortest time frame business plan they have is 100 years.

And so, you know, we're so focused, we've been so focused on next quarter and if you're in the startup world, it might even be tomorrow, next week. You know, when's the roadmap out? Like have we, we need 10 more clients. And so I think for me that that was the heart of it was like, let's just, let's just think bigger. Let's just think about actually what's the long term interest. Yeah, let's just at least start to consider that rather than just take the cash, you know, open the box, take the cash, take the cash every time. Yeah.

So you mentioned earlier on that, you know, that the sort of McKinsey journey, you, you sort of alluded to the fact that you were maybe prior to that or at the same time you were looking at, or you were interested in, in the not profit, not for profit sector and sort of youth development. So where did that idea come.

From?

Yeah, I don't know. Like, I think I grew up in a pretty affluent household in New York City and was always around, recognized that I had a lot of advantages that other folks didn't. And so whether it's from there or from different travels, we were lucky enough to be able to travel around a bit as, as a young family and I could see that like not everybody could live the same way that our family lived. And that felt a little bit unfair. And, and I knew that the schools that I was going to Were had different resources in the schools that in other parts of the city and that felt unfair. And so there's probably some of that was just sort of baked into my DNA from where I grew up and how I grew up. And.

And so that was, and that, that was, that was sort of there for me coming out of school, coming out of university and.

But I got a job offer at McKinsey and my mom said you better take it. And I said yeah, it's probably a good idea to take it. So I.

Did.

Yep. And the rationalization was I'm going to learn some skills that I could eventually apply in the non profit world which I did for a few years and then realized that that was for different reasons like not, not the path for.

Me.

Yep. And, and started and one with like I said, with my best friend and moved from New York to Philly and and that business took off like a rocket ship from pretty much the very beginning. And so like before we knew what we had it was a, it was a million dollar business, then a multi million dollar business then 10, then 50, then 100, then a couple hundred million dollar business in its first six, seven years. So it was, it was a rocket ship. And, and that was a lot of fun. And we had.

A service mission inside of OF Ann. One because we wanted the company to be a place we'd be proud to work, that our parents would be proud that, that we were running and that our kids ultimately by that time we were young parents that our kids would be proud that their parents were running and eventually even that sort of ran its course. And we realized there was only, there was only so much good that could be done through the model that AND one had started with. And I started to get more feeling a little bit more constrained and started looking around to other businesses that were, that were even more inspirational to me like the Patagonias, the body shops, Tom's of Maine, Ben and Jerry's. A while early what then were called socially responsible businesses. And I thought they were doing amazing things far and away more, more impactful than what we were doing at AND one and I we tried to bring as many of those practices into AND one as we could, but there was a limit, you know, because it hadn't been. The company hadn't been started with that intention. And I wanted to do something that was a little bit more focused in that area. And eventually over a period of years of discernment and learning and listening that led to the idea of a B Corp. And, and then we sold and one took a year of sabbatical, which was a lot of fun, including some time down in your, in your neck of the woods in a camper van running, you know, for five weeks through the south, the south island and had a blast with the kids at the time who were five and six and, and then came back to start B Lab and the B Corp movement.

Because it just, it just sounds like, you know, because for me the B Corp is, it's this blend of purpose and profit. It's you know, like he's, like we said, you know, be a profitable business, but it's how you're making the profit, but also with the profit that you're making, you know, what are you doing with it. And, and I guess yet to a degree the operational, you know, how you're treating obviously, you know, for the people who haven't looked at B Corp, you know, it's, it looks at the governance so your transparency of ownership and what you're reporting, how you treat your staff, your community impact, including your supply chain, your environmental footprint and then how you treat your customers. And so again that's, that's me why I kind of felt so much attachment with the Big Corp movement. It's like, because I think it's, you know, you've got experience in the not for profit sector. I've had a couple of guys in the not for profit sector that the business world typically looks at the not for profit sector. And it's like, oh, look at you, pat on the head, you're trying really well, but you don't really understand business. So you just carry on, you know, doing some stuff and then charity looks at business going, yeah, but it's you lot causing all this trouble. You know, if you could just give us more money, we'd be better equipped. And, and, and so I kind of feel again that the B Corp is sort of melding the two together. And it's, it's almost this hybrid where partly in my mind I almost imagine the long term future where maybe there's a bunch of charities that we don't almost need to have anymore because the challenges that they were picking up the slack on are no longer there because the business community has taken that on and solved the problem so that it's, it's not like an endemic challenge that needs to be, you know, have a band aid put up. And so I think it was just interesting to reflect on your journey that you had this idea of not profit. You went and did the McKinsey and you ended up with B Corp, which is putting the two.

Together. It was meant, you're 100 right, Tim. It was meant to be a middle path. And we think that there's real power in the, in private enterprise and the for profit model.

For lots of reasons. It can aggregate and, and allocate capital effectively. It can attract talent in a way that the non profit sector can't.

And, but by slavishly serving the single master of, of maximizing profit for shareholders, it loses its soul and it causes lots of harm. And that doesn't mean the people that are doing it are bad, evil people. It just means they're in a pretty amoral system that has pretty immoral output or outcomes. And similarly, the non profit sector has a ton to offer. It's super purpose driven, it attracts folks that are going to make that their priority, but it's also like not particularly scalable. It's hard to attract and retain talent and it's hard to attract capital and solve problems at scale. And so we wanted to marry the purpose driven aspect of the non profit sector with the, with the, the profit driven discipline and scalability of the for profit sector and say that's a, that's a, at the time, that's why we said it was a new sector of the economy that was marrying those two things. And I don't think it will.

I don't think it will ever negate the need for civil society, NGOs and non profits. They're going to be plenty of places the market doesn't go and plenty of problems the market does not fix and will not fix. And so we're going to need incredible non profit entrepreneurs and managers out there. But yeah, maybe, maybe they can be doing less remedial work than they're doing now. They don't have to clean up so many messes, but they can be, you know, blazing new trails and taking us places that can then make a market. Well then once that's happened, proof of concept, et cetera, then maybe there are other things that can flow in to that space. But we're not going to. This doesn't replace the need for civil society or the public sector. It just says we need to be a better partner to those sectors.

Of the economy, sort of lessen the load on them so that they can stop being the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff maybe. And yeah, yeah, and I guess also part of the B Corp framework, you know, gets a lot of companies to maybe consider, well, could we have some partnerships with, with charitable organizations which maybe historically we've Just given some cash. But maybe you know, could we, you know, through the lens of the assessment maybe we could look at deepening some commitments and. Yeah, it's, that's super cool. So the, the. So my understanding, and I'd love to be corrected if I am wrong, but my understanding is that you know, and one, the whole ethos really was to beat Nike. You know, that was kind of like underpinning the most of the decision making in the company and that was working up until you had a bit of an existential moment of realization that maybe this wasn't the right path. Is that, is that I've read that in a media report that, you.

Know. Yeah, no, I, I don't think we, I mean our, our objective was to be the number one basketball company in the world and in order to do that we'd have to beat Adidas, Reebok, Converse, Nike, all of them. But we, we didn't spend all of our time trying to figure out you had to take your, take your aim at Nike because they were in the number one dominant.

Position.

Yep. But we were, we spent 99 of our time focused on the customer, you know, focused on the ball player, not on Nike and our competition.

And where what happened? A number of things happened but one of the main things that happened is.

We were a little bit late to the party on the Internet and we had started a separate company called hoopstv.com where we had raised a bunch of money from venture capitalists to pursue to take the Amwin mixtape property and turn it into a, into.

The core content for an Internet based basketball site. And we were both too early for the broadband revolution before video was actually functional on the Internet. And we were too late for the frothy.

Evaluations of, of the early first wave of Internet companies. We got caught in between and also didn't execute very well. But more importantly than that we split our team. And so we, we used to have the best team in the, in the industry with more talent and, and lots of Ben bench strength. If you use a sports metaphor. We had a very deep bench of talent when we started Hoops tv. We basically split the team and had half the team going to run that business which meant that we halved or more the amount of talent, focus, energy that we had on and one and you can't, you can't take on a dominant player in industry only focusing part of your attention and part of your resources on that. And so we had some self inflicted wounds that wasn't so much about.

Self inflicted wounds. Where we, we were, we, we. We diluted our focus from just focused on developing the best product at the best price for ball players into doing lots of other things. And I think it was more that dilution of focus that was the, the core.

Problem. Yeah.

And in, in terms of some of the. Because my understanding is some of the CSR stuff that, that you implemented early in the day, you had a bit of an exit. The media report I read was that you had a near miss where your sister was involved in 911 and then a couple of weeks after one of your colleagues or one of the team members and one passed away. And you sort of mentioned that that was because for me it was the earthquakes here in Christchurch and then 2012, the birth of our daughter. Yeah, that's what led me to go. All the stuff that I've been seeing because I used to sell medical devices, hips and knees and spinal instruments and implants and those big existential shocks led me to see the stuff that I knew that was happening but wasn't really seeing. I could, I could now see it in sharp relief. And that was the understanding I had. Yet you had this kind of couple of week period where you kind of like actually realized maybe there's more to life than just selling as many shoes as we.

Can. Yeah, for sure. And so, and so I think what you're referring to is September of 2021. Sorry, of.

21.

Yeah. 911 happened. My. Our father died, my sister was in. Was pulled out by first responders a block from the Trade center and. And a dear colleague named Jean Bernard Jude was killed in an automobile accident all within three weeks of each other in September of 2001. And for sure that rocked me and forced me to take some time and think about what was most important. But what I'd say, Tim, is we. We already had.

A.

We were already running what would have been considered to be a responsible business at the time. And we were already doing the typical things, donating 5% of profits to charity and all those kinds of things. What that helped me realize was that there was a lot more that I could be doing and that and one could be doing. And how can we maximize the service opportunity within the business model that we had? And so that that time period led us to create then the N1 service mission that I mentioned before.

That that called us to use every aspect of the business as a service opportunity. And, and that led to a lot deeper exploration of all those things, whether it's around supply chain or worker ownership or environmental practices or whatever it might be.

And that eventually between 2001 and 2005, when we sold the company over those four years, there was a gradual deepening of those practices at N1, but also a realization that there was only so far that could go. Yep, inside that company and inside that the, the financial constraints of that industry at the time, which was consolidating and putting tremendous pressures on margin. And so as we got closer to the sale time of the company, I had also independently decided that I was going to be leaving to do something different that was going to be more fully purpose driven. It happened to coincide with the sale of the.

Company.

Right. And so the early, early ideas for the B Corp. Movement started in 2001, 2003, 2004. And then by the time we sold the company in 2005, there was already a gestating energy with some, with some of the companies that eventually became the founding B corporations.

And, and it took till again I, I said mentioned earlier that we, after we sold the company, I took a year off on a family sabbatical. The B Corp thing had already been started. It already had early, early movement on that that got put on, on a hold or a pause.

And then came back in in the spring of 2006 and with Bart Houlihan and Andrew, we then founded B Lab and within a year after that had developed the standards that became the basis of the B Corp. Assessment. And by the summer of 2007 had certified.

The first 18 companies at what was called the Bally conference, the Business alliance for Local Living Economies conference out in California. And we introduced those 18 companies as leaders in the field and they're the ones who told the rest of the conference why they became B Corps. And so you mentioned earlier, I think in our pre call that you'd been a big evangelist for B Corp. Since almost day one in New Zealand and yourself, your own company was the sixth B Corp in New Zealand. And that as you were evangelizing and being an ambassador in New Zealand, that folks weren't really particularly ready for the message. And so what we realized is that people didn't need to hear from Jay Barton, Andrew, about B Corps and systems change and all that. What they need to hear from us, from other CEOs, talk about why this was meaningful to them. And so in our very first public appearance, we were given the mic to share about B Corpse at this business conference. And we said great. And we spoke for two minutes and there were 18 chairs lined up behind us with 18 incredible entrepreneurs behind us. And we got off the stage and let them come up one by one and share with the, with their peers why, even though they were already known as a leader in their industry or in their region.

Why they decide that they wanted to become a certified B corporation. And, and then for the next five, six, eight years of the early parts of the B Corp movement, it was always peer to peer word of mouth marketing where a CEO would say, hey look, this has been one of the best things that we've ever done. It's helped us attract and retain the best talent. It's helped us build a really powerful corporate culture around purpose. The standards are a really great educational tool to help us see things that we weren't seeing before, to find other opportunities to have a positive impact. And yes, eventually all of those things are going to mean something to a consumer. But we know that that's a little ways away because no one knows what the heck a B Corp is. But we're willing to invest in this now so that it's useful in the future. And all that stuff happened because it was CEOs who were early adopters and their teams that were early adopters that said this is meaningful to us. This helps us create the change we seek in the world. Because we know no matter how big and incredible our individual company is, the economy is a heck of a lot bigger. Our industry is a heck of a lot bigger than us. And so how can we have an outsized impact? How can we, how can we punch above our weight as change makers? And we can do that a lot better as a community of companies that share a unifying set of credible standards and can project our voice with power into the marketplace. Ultimately that was the bet. The bet was that we can do something together that we can't do alone. And that was the power of the B Corp movement wasn't about J. Barter or Andrew or about. It was about the community of companies that could help shift culture about what's possible in business. And, and that's the thing that still inspires me the most about the B Corp movement. And ultimately what I think the future of the B Corp movement is, it's about this kind of collective action. And whether that's about being net zero by 2030 or it's about reducing inequality in the workplace, or it's about achieving racial equity in the workplace or whatever it might be, it's about how can we take collective action as a community of companies to drive change. And sometimes we'll be successful like changing the laws to create the stakeholder Governance structures and sometimes we won't be right away. Like what happened with your brothers and sisters in Australia where they came out and supported of the constitutional amendment to create voice for aboriginal peoples in Australia and that got defeated. But my bet is that that will eventually pass in Australia and that having the voice of a business community that's saying we're not afraid of that, we don't think that's going to be a slippery slope to making bad decisions or feeling bad about ourselves. We think that's going to be a beautiful next step to being looking at ourselves honestly and our history honestly and making sure we create a society that works for everybody. And we're totally in favor of that, you know. And so I think having business voice show up to impact public policy around social and environmental issues is going to become an increasing part of the B Corp movement over.

Time. Yeah.

That'S just really cool to hear the backstory from the horse's mouth, so to speak. Because yeah, you pick up sort of as expression we'd say in the UK you pick up fag ends, you know, little cigarette butts and you try and create the full thing. So that's interesting that you, you'd been kind of scheming on it for a few years because yeah, the understanding that I'd had, it was more of a kind of like actually, you know what I, I want to change, you know, almost on a dime. So that was interesting that you're sort of having those pre conversations because Bart was part of the team at, at AND one. Is that correct? And then Andrew came.

From. And so Andrew was, Andrew was an investor. We all went to college.

Together.

Right. And Bart, Bart was one of the original partners at AND one, Andrew was one of the original investors because he was one of our friends who worked on Wall street. So he had a little bit of extra money so we could invest a little bit of money in, in, in our little crazy venture. And so we were all, we were all best friends since college and but when, when, when Bart and I sold AND one.

He had already been engaged in some of the early thinking about B Corp. As it was sort of gestating during that, that period. And then while I was in Australia and New Zealand and in Costa Rica during that year off, he and another friend were sort of doing some stress testing on the early B Corp model and the early B Lab model. And, and by the time I came back, they had done enough sort of critical assessment. I'm a bit more risk taking, entrepreneurial energy and they're a Bit more, a little bit more sort of prudent, you know, solid business.

Discipline.

Yeah. And so they had done their, their, their tire kicking and, and, and interviews with folks to see if this had legs. And by the time I came back, they said, yeah, we think it does have legs and we'd be interested in doing it together. And so when I came back, we were ready to go. And we, you know, we bought our desks from ikea, put them together in my spare bedroom above the, above the garage. You know, called the phone company, set up the lines and, and started, you know, calling people and developing the standards, and a year later had that conference in, in California where we had those 18 companies. It basically helped us create the standards, like they were the ones who helped inform us about what are the different ways we should measure positive impact. And, and we were sort of done all in consultation with the leaders in the field, which is why they said, hey, if you're going to be speaking about this in public, we want to be there on stage with you, because if the curtain's going to open on the B Corp movement, we want to be there for the first act. It was really their credibility that made everything work. And it's been the same case everywhere in the world. Wherever there's a new country that's opened up, it's always those first entrepreneurs like yourself that took the risk to say, hey, I know it means nothing here. I know nobody knows what I'm talking about. They look like they got three heads and horns and a tail. But, but I think this is important. And I'm going to, I'm going to show people by doing it. And then it's going to be with two friends and two friends. Now there's 10 of us, then there's 50 of us, then there's 100 of us. And all of a sudden it starts to create some momentum and all of a sudden it starts to be a better party. And people always want to join the better party that's got better music, better food, and cooler people. And so if you can attract those type of folks to be the starting, to be the starting group, people are then going to want to join something that feels fun and successful. And that's what the B Corp movement has been. And it's still, the truth is it's still in the early stages. There's now over 8,000b corps. So I think we're right around 8,000b corps in the world. And that's still, of course.

Tiny.

Yeah. You know, and it's wonderful that there's dozens of publicly listed companies that are billions in turnover, and there's all kinds of billions of dollars of venture capital has gone to the B Corp community, and that's really gratifying. But we also know that we're. We're still at the very, very early formative stages of this where, you know, we all need to be in this together. And, and which is why I always come back to the collective action. And the collective voice is we don't need everybody to be a B Corp. We want everybody to behave like a B Corp. And that's going to become. Because they're going to hear your podcast, they're going to meet the companies that you interview, and they're going to say, oh, I bet we could do some of that. You know, that sounds. That sounds. That sounds pretty cool. And that sounds like it's certainly not going to hurt my business, and it might even help, but it'll probably be the kind of company that my kids will be proud of that their dad or their mom is in. And. And that feels pretty good, too. Ultimately, that's a pretty good reason to do this, is we all want our kids to be proud of what we're doing, and we want to make our parents proud for whatever advantages and whatever gifts they've given us. We're just sitting in the middle of that baton relay from our parents to our kids, and we're just trying to run our leg of the race, you know, with some integrity, you know, and give it all we got. And this, to me, is the highest and best use of what you can do in the business world is try to use your business for a higher purpose than just making more money for.

Yourself.

Beautiful. Yeah. I think, I think Tony Robbins has got the quote, no one ever regretted doing good. Yeah, that's a good. It's like, it's true, you know, you'll regret plenty of things you bought or doing the sneaky thing that, you know, you probably would have been caught on, but I did some good. I'm never going to regret that. So. I love that idea of the baton. Yeah, it's. It's so true. It's like, you know, we. You are the. The guardian of. Of the baton for a small period of time, and it'll go in a blink of an eye. So. And, and for me, you know, definitely when my daughter was born, that. That was a big moment of realization. It's like, I've got a responsibility here. It's. I. I'm now. Yeah, I'm going to be handing something over to her. You know, the part. My little part of the planet. So why wouldn't I leave that in a better place, you know, holistically, rather than just making sure that, you know, maybe she's. She can start her life debt free, which she probably will do, because she's gonna be a lucky little. Little tinker. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's like, beyond that. Yeah. What else would you want to leave for your kids? So, again, but it's. I think it's questions that typically aren't asked. Well, maybe they are increasingly these days, but historically, I guess when you were at school, you know, that's probably not a question that you're. You're pondering on the past in McKinsey, it's like, you know.

It'S.

Yeah. I went through the McKinsey training program, and it was a lot of fun. I learned a lot. And I could use an HP12C calculator, and I can calculate net present value. And I could do lots of good best practice studies and other cool things. I could learn how to do great charts with, you know, no more than three. Three bullets on a chart. And I could learn all kinds of great communication techniques. But never once did anybody talk about.

Why.

Yeah. You know, not once. Anybody talk about.

Purpose. Yep. And I think that's changing. I. I generally get a sense.

Yeah. Yeah. And again, I'm not hating on them. I'm just saying it. Like, things are evolving. Right. Our intentions are evolving. Our institutions have to evolve with them. And B Corp represents that. It's an evolution of putting our best intentions into business as opposed to compartmentalizing. So. Well, I go to. I park everything. I park everything that I love and care about.

Outside.

Yeah. And then I go into.

Work. Yeah. Maximize everything in this one lens. Yeah. And then I go back.

Out. That seems, like, pretty unhealthy. And also just not a lot of.

Fun.

Yeah. You know, it's nice to compartmentalize your life. It's much more fun if you're doing it all holistically, you know, and.

Yeah. Anyway, so that's. That's. I think. And then the lens of. How do you want to explain what you do to your grandkids? Is a pretty useful lens. Yep. And. And so when your grandkids say so, you know, Papa. Like what? Like climate change, all this other stuff was going on. What were you.

Doing? What were you doing?

Yeah. Oh, well, hon, you know, I. I would have done more, but, you know, like, the constraints of shareholder primacy and market forces. There's only so much I could do. Like, that's not. That's not going to be a great conversation, you know, and so how do we show up with humanity and as human beings first that are then using business as a tool as opposed to feeling constrained by the structures and systems in the business? Because we created those systems and.

Structures, we can recreate 100%. There's Adam Curtis, who's a British documentary maker. He's. He's got a quote which I'll butcher really badly, but essentially it's like, you know, the world is. Is a creation of our imagination. We can imagine a different world. It's. It's like. It's so true. We. But we. He's got a really cool documentary called Hypernormalization where he just talks about there are some things in the world that are so normalized that you cannot imagine a world that doesn't have that. That, you know, idea or that structure. But this is what he's saying is like, that all the structures around us have been created by us. And, you know, you just need to challenge those structures and challenge the ideas behind them. Keep the ones that are good and serve us, but reconsider the ones that are no longer a service to us. I've also often thought that a guerrilla marketing tactic of sort of trying to get more corporate people to sort of have a bit of a think about the. You know, they're part of the baton. It would be to send a copy of the Lorax to every small child in the world and get them to go and read the story to the most senior person in their household in business and just. And just have that moment to try and crystallize the fact that, you know, there's other things that your grandchildren need than a big house and a flash.

Holiday. Totally. So. And Tim, I'm. I'm looking over my. Over on the other side of my screen here, and there's a. A signed print from one of the art cards from the Lorax, which is on the Lorax. I speak for the trees. Yeah. And so, like, right over my. Right over my shoulder here. I couldn't, Couldn't agree more. And. And so who's going to speak for the trees? Right? Who's going to speak for the folks who don't have a voice? And as business leaders, we have some of the most power in our culture. And so with that, with that power comes an awful lot of responsibility and even more importantly, just a lot of opportunity. We have more opportunity to do good than almost anybody else. And, and what a shame to squander that opportunity because of a failure of imagination or a failure of courage, you.

Know. Yeah, I was doing a purpose workshop last night for an organization. One of the questions I like to ask about trying to get people thinking about why purpose is important is, you know, give me the name of the richest person in the world in 1968, 1969. And typically no one knows the answer. And from the research I did, it was Robert Wood Johnson, one of the founding brothers of Johnson and Johnson. There's a few other people that you know there or thereabouts. And then I'll say, okay, well who is the rich? Who is the richest person in the world ever? When you account for inflation and currency change and da da, da, da. And over the probably six years I've been doing this workshop, two people have ever got the answer. And that is Mansa Musa, who was Emperor of Mali between 1280 and 13. He literally was set on a gold mine in Mali. And you know, so then I'll go, okay, well, let's go back to 1968, 1969. There was a guy in North America who wrote and delivered a speech about having a dream for a group of Americans to have a better future. Who was that person? And even the sort of 17, 18 year olds in the room will go, MLK. And this is the thing, it's like people don't remember what you had. No, I asked this to sort of CEOs if we're talking to them and they're a bit reluctant about the B core. Okay, okay, can you give me the name of the company that was listed number four on the New Zealand Stock Exchange in May 2013? And they just go, well, I've got no idea. Right, so why do you care so much about maybe being number one next month? Because in two years time no one's going to remember yet. The feeling that you can engender by doing a piece of good that might resonate through thousands of people across communities. That will be a story that will be anchored and told possibly intergenerationally well is, you know, is that worth pondering on? And yeah, it's just, it's just I think we're getting there. I think we get, I think more and more people are having these moments. I guess it's as some of the younger CEOs step in who have been more up with this kind of thinking. Yeah, we're getting there. But those early days must have been pretty exciting. Just, I mean, those Initial companies were companies that you kind of knew when, when, I mean, obviously when the Patagonias started coming on, you know, how did you, were you just like knocking on Yvonne's door saying hey, or did, were they coming to you at a certain.

Point? There was, there was a fair amount of door knocking, a fair amount of just going to be on the conference circuit and talking about it and ultimately getting the other CEOs to talk with their peers and invite their, and invite their peers in. We had been talking with Patagonia for five years. Patagonia was, that was B Corp. Number 500. And so there were, there were, there were 499 B Corps before Patagonia ever became a B Corp. We've been talking to them for six or seven years before they agreed to do it. They're very, and that's beautiful thing, like they were, they were super deliberate and they wanted to make sure it was the right thing and not just as a fly by night flash in the pan and that it was really rigorous and would be a value to them as a company that had helped set the standard for 20, 30 years prior to that. And so it was a huge honor for us that Patagonia ultimately said, this is something that we think is going to add value to our company. They then became the first company in California to incorporate, using the new law that we had passed to create stakeholder governance. And so while they were the 500th certified B corporation, they were the first company in California to actually use the newly created legal structure to embed that in their governing documents, which they carried forward. Even when they did that Perpetual Purpose Trust last year, when they basically sold the company to Mother Earth and made Mother Earth their shareholder, they still retained their B Corp status and their stakeholder governance because they realized that what you do with your profits is only one aspect of the positive impact you can have on the, on the world. Like how they make their products, who they make them for has huge, huge impact, arguably larger than any philanthropy that they're ever going to do. And so it was the combination of those two things that made sense. And this gets a little bit back to the big tent and play the long game approach is because we assume that we're trying to build, we're trying to envision a new global economy. That means we need everybody on board, which means we have to be patient, you know, and it doesn't mean we don't have to be firm and clear that standards matter and performance matters and, and make a good case for why there's an urgency to this, but we have to have like an urgent patience.

And allow it to take its time for that individual entrepreneur, because not everybody can be going at the same speed, you know, and, and hopefully the conversations that you were having four and five and six years ago that the resistance is, is a little bit less than it was than it is now. Hopefully some of the reasons why people are giving that they're, that they're not quite ready for it, are different than what they're giving now. And now what I hear mostly is it's, it's about timing. I've got this going on this quarter or this 12 months, or I've got this capital raise to do or whatever. I've got this internal challenges because of COVID et cetera. So I've got to really focus on that. But it's not a question of if, it's a question of when. And that's a very different conversation than we used to have, you know, 10 years ago. And so, you know, slowly, slowly, all of a sudden, it becomes inevitable that this is the way people are doing business. And the question is, when do they choose to move down this path? And, and do they, do they want to be part of a B corp community, like, and literally get certified or do that? Like, maybe that makes sense for folks and maybe it doesn't. But at the end of the day, if you're only concerned about your own company's performance, you could say, look, I'll use the B impact assessment as a free tool to understand where to. Where to create the biggest impact. I'll even use your legal standards to help make sure that my mission is baked into my legal DNA and it can withstand.

The tensions that will show up when we have outside investors or if we were publicly listed, etc. But I don't really need to join your, your little.

Club.

Yep. And at the end of the day, that mindset is sort of like the last holdout mindset, which is usually someone who's got a fair amount of ego, who at the end of the day still saying, this is still about me and my company. And that's really my only frame. And the people that are most inspiring to me have always been the people that speak in the language of we instead of the language of me. And realize that we're trying to shift the whole system. And that requires collective action and collective voice. And that systems change is going to require much more than individual businesses, whether it's 8,000 or 80,000 businesses, it's going to require Policy changes that create the incentives and the guardrails that enable us to build an economy that works for everybody and for the long term. And that's going to require collective voice of business leaders saying that that's a direction we want to go and that we support it. Because traditional business doesn't want to have government engaged in any part of the private sector. They just want them out of the way. And that's again, a myopic view of where value is created and for whom. But if we're trying to create value for all and we're trying to make sure the systems themselves are healthy for everybody, including your daughter and her eventual kids, then we're going to need to have a supportive public policy environment that's going to recognize that we need business to operate within natural, within the limits of natural systems and, and in support of healthy, vibrant democracies that are inclusive, etc. And so, like all, that requires business voice. And that requires more than just Tim or Jay speaking from the voice of their companies. It requires us to speak with a collective voice as companies that use business of force for good. And now we have a name for those companies. They're called B Corps. And you don't just have to believe what those CEOs say. You can look and they're actually evaluated by rigorous third party standards and they're transparent with their performance and they are legally accountable to balance profit and purpose. And that makes their voice credible. And that's the next frontier of this work is really in that collective action for policy change that will drive economic systems.

Change.

Love it. Yeah, I mean, I always reflect. Yeah, I think we're, like I say, close to 8,000 in New Zealand. We're about 120B Corps. And from the calculations that I've done on just limited companies, so LLCs or limited companies around the world, it's about 0.01% of the global business community is currently a B Corp. So, you know, when people kind of go, oh, you know, it's like you are literally joining the top. Like you're the top gun of the top gun of the top gun of businesses in terms of ones who are demonstrating. And you're right, the resistance is even three years ago we were still, you know, having conversations with people and it was educating them on what B Corp was and maybe why they should do it. Now the conversation we're having is when should we do B Corp and how do we do it? And that has been in the three years. And the only other thing I'd Add certainly bigger legacy companies. And even in the medium sized sort of companies, quite often one of the fears that they have is we're not good enough to be a B corp. Because they almost see it as such a high standard that how can we be a B corp, you know, because Patagonia is a B corp. Or locally we've got companies like Ethique, like a really successful people, like I'm not as good as them. And it's like, well, it's a framework and it's not a competition as to whether you're better or whatever. It's like just use the framework and then use that as a guide to work out where you can be better. So don't be afraid. And quite a few of our clients have actually been shocked. They go, oh my gosh, we are actually a big corp. Oh, like we've done it. It's like, yeah, because you're good humans doing some good stuff. Like you're not perfect, but no one's perfect. There is no 200 point B corp. Like no one has one B Corp, you know, ring the.

Bell. That's.

Right. We've won it. It's like this is a journey of, of exploration and connection. And we always say to people, look, you know, don't year one just get certified? Like, don't even stress about implementing a whole bunch of new stuff because there's gonna be enough work for you to get, get it done initially. But just make sure that you, you aim to be, you know, do as much good with, with what you've, with what you can, with what you've got available right now. But just use that as a lens to the future to know where you can think about doing more good. But don't stress that you're not doing it all.

Today. Right. You could think of it. It's a road of a continuous improvement in a community of practice.

In which people are having a really good time doing cool things that they're proud of. Like.

It'S a pretty easy thing to say yes to when you frame it like.

That. Yeah. What's it's. Unfortunately, Dr. Peppers is not as well known in New Zealand. If it's like, what's the worst that could happen? It's, you know, it's like you might like it, you know, and your business might do better and you might get some more customers and you might have employees knocking on your doors and investors might be more willing to give you a better rate. Oh, no. Right. So back in the day, did you, I guess you wanted it from day one to be a global movement? Are you, do you feel like it's, it's kind of meeting your expectations? Is it on track in terms of the growth or. Yeah. Did you have any intentions around that or you just were like pleasantly surprised that more than the first 10 people? Sort of. Okay. Actually these guys are like, like.

I said, I said about jokingly about like taking the route to McKinsey or like, is, I have a pretty healthy ego. And so if the goal of AND one was to become the number one basketball company in the world, like that wasn't short of ambition, you know, for what we wanted to do. And, and when we started B Lab and the B Corp movement, it was to transform the global economy. So that's also not like short of ambition and hubris. And, and so, and I, and I say that with a smile only because like that's, there's a famous quote from Henry David Thoreau that he said, you bet. It's something along the lines of, you better, we better aim high because at the end of the day we only, we only hit the targets. We aim at that. And so why, why would you shoot for anything other than the beautiful radical transformation of the economy so that works for everybody and for the long term. And so you have an economy in which everyone can thrive. Like that's such a lovely future to be working towards. And, and so we always envisioned it as a global, a global community. And whether there's 8,000 or 18,000, I don't think we ever had any particular, you know, projected 10 year plan, let alone your friends, 100 year, 100 year business plan. Like we haven't, we haven't really specialized in that, but we said that like, we know this is the direction, we know this is the destination and we know that's the direction of travel and we know we can only get there if we go there with others, you know, and so let's start, let's start walking down that path and, and make it as fun and as meaningful and rewarding as possible so more people want to join and we'll get there as fast as we get there, you know, and yeah, and so there's things that we've done way faster than we thought and that there's things that have taken way longer than we thought because you never know. And a good entrepreneur is able to sort of like play with the, with the hand that they're given and react to different market forces and see what's happening. And so we're trying to be thoughtful, entrepreneurial. And as we, as we mentioned maybe before is I haven't been, you know, in an operating role in the B Corp movement and now almost four years and the amazing things that are happening since I've stepped back are phenomenal because there's new leadership in every region of the world, in every country and at B Lab Global that are doing incredible things I never would have thought to do. And they're doing them really well, you know, and, and there's constant evolution and creative tension in any, in any worthwhile venture and there are things I would do differently and that's like, who cares? Like, like they're, they're, they're going to do the best they can with the information they've got and they're going to make some great decisions that I would have thought were terrible, but that will end up being like genius. And, and that's the beauty of it is I get to step back and they get to step in and lead it for the next, for the next phase of.

Growth. Yeah, it's like you've created a beast for sure. It's like it's grown tendrils and tentacles and yeah, I think it's, it's true for any sort of, you know, it's a startup organization where you were one of the, one of the co founders. There always comes a tension point where you can't really be in charge anymore because you are the constraint. And it's interesting. Yeah. Have you done any personal development work on taming the hubris and the ego? Or do you think has that happened over time? Yeah, both.

Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think as we get older we probably like, hopefully our ego gets a little bit more in check because like the world happens to.

Us.

Yeah. Yeah, I've done, I've done, I've done a fair amount of personal work and, and, and the, the biggest challenge for me is letting go and, and particularly letting go of control. And as someone who's grown up and always seen himself as like his identity is attached to being smart and having answers and etc like that can be really useful at certain parts of your career and certain things. It can be really harmful in other areas. And I have found that.

That coming into any room with that energy is, is more and more harmful in today's world than I ever imagined. And so a lot of the unlearning I've had to do is to try to unlearn all the different characteristics of what we used to think of as a strong leader and, and actually amplify a lot of the qualities.

That were, quite frankly, just underdeveloped, including just the ability to listen and to say, I don't know, and to say, well, that sounds good. If that's where you, if that's where you think we should go, let's go that way because I'll follow your lead, you know, and so becoming a better follower is one of the, the most important jobs of a leader right.

Now. Yeah, I think. Is it the, the Gus Speth quote, the environmental lord, you know, his quote, again, we're both paraphrasing quite badly. He basically said, you know, I used to think of 10 years of good science. We'd be able to solve most of the environmental problems in the world. But I've actually realized it's not a crisis of science, it's a crisis of consciousness and humanity. And actually what we need is, you know, spiritual and cultural growth as a species. And I think, yeah, that's a big. That's the thing that, you know, I'm kind of more interested in sort of the esoteric, the, the metaphysical, the spiritual side of, of the business. And how, how do we get more business leaders to think at a higher level of consciousness, which gets them out of that ego mindset? Is that, I mean, a great phrase? You know, your ego is not your amigo, but you think it is because it's directing you. But actually who's in charge? You or the little voice in your head? And yeah, I think it's just interesting talking to people and seeing what they've done around that.

We're getting close to time and I've got a couple of, couple of questions I need to get in from my community. This is an anonymous question for you. And this is an interesting, I think it's quite interesting question. So essentially, you know, B Lab has got a monopoly on the certification of the B Corp framework because you guys created it.

Obviously over the last couple of years, due to the monumental growth in the movement, there's been some challenges with certification times. I know you're a little bit out. You know, obviously you're way out of the organization. But.

Do you think, is there an argument that there should be other companies that could, that you could go to to get audited? Because this one person, they're almost a B corp. They have had a little bit of a long run. And they sort of said, look, we've been waiting six months for, you know, for some work. You know, if, if there had been an alternative to B Lab to get the assessment done, you know, would competition in the market have meant that maybe it would have done quicker. But I guess on the flip side, you've got to maintain standards. So. Yeah, thoughts, thoughts on.

That. Yeah. So, so B Lab is using third party already assessment partners to help speed the queue, you know, for certification. I don't, I don't know currently what percentage of those that are certified are coming through that, through that pathway. But that, that's already happening and, and it needs to, and we need more of it. You know, there need to be other folks that, other third party providers, but they have to be. B LEV has to develop the capacity to train and maintain quality, as you said, of those third party assessment partners, or else we end up losing the credibility of the certification. If we lose the credibility of the certification, the whole thing's a useless exercise in greenwashing. And so whenever, whenever we've had the choice between moving fast.

And jeopardizing credibility, we've always chosen to move slower and prioritize the credibility of the standards and therefore the movement. And that's frustrating for everybody. And so I, I totally empathize with folks waiting in a queue for six months or.

Longer.

Yep. You know, to get certified, that's super frustrating. And, and we're trying, I know B Lab Global is trying to address that as best they can, as fast as they can and never fast.

Enough. Yep. I mean, I think in many ways it's, it's, it's, it's just reflection of the fact that B Corp's now a thing, you know, and it's, it's tough. Yeah, we, we try and help companies navigate. Did last year. Definitely seemed to be peak Q for this region and it's, it's rapidly coming down and great. I guess I sort of blatantly say to people, well, you should have been here six years ago. You would have got through in like two.

Months.

If you were a little bit faster, you were quicker on the draw, you would have been earlier in the.

Queue.

Yeah. So. And to put it in perspective, for folks who don't know there, there are as many, there are as many companies in the queue to become B Corps as there are B.

Corps. Yeah.

It'S. And so to give you a sense of the exponential growth all the way through Covid and everything, like we expected that to be a significant drop off and the opposites happened. And so it's, it's a high class problem of trying to keep up with demand.

But again, the priority is always on the credibility of the certification because ultimately that's the credibility of the collective voice. That's ultimately the purpose. And so if, if that voice is no longer credible, then the whole effort has been.

Useless. Yep. No, totally. It's, it's tough. You know, it's, it's like this is a, it's a whole new concept. It's a whole new thing. You know, no one's done this before. Yeah. In many ways we're sort of building the plane as it's now just about to hit Mach 2 and we haven't got a guidance system that's. Yeah, it's like. Yeah, so it's all good. We're getting.

There. Yeah. It's a fair.

Question. It is a fair question. I think. Yeah, I think we, we're getting on top of it. Well, I'd say be definitely getting on top of it now. Q is definitely rapidly coming down. A question from Hayley. Do B Lab do any lobbying on behalf of the B Corp community? So, you know, I know in California there used to be tax relief for Bingham. Is that correct? Was it in San Francisco or was it, was it municipal? There was some.

Benefit. So there are two, there are two different things. So in general there's no, there's no different tax treatment for B Corp anywhere. But in Philadelphia there was a modest tax break like, like a tax abatement that was given to B Corpse, but it was fairly modest. And, and we didn't, we didn't lobby for it. We got a call one day from the then city councilman who then became the two term mayor whose term just ended yesterday as a matter of fact, or I guess today technically. Yeah. In the elections, who called us up and said, hey, we're going to introduce a bill tomorrow to create a tax break for B Corps. We just wanted to check a couple facts. We're like, wait, hello. And like an intern had picked up the phone and they put them on, put that person on hold is in somebody from Councilman Kenny's office saying something about a tax break for B Corpse in Philadelphia. Who should we put, who should they speak to? And so no, that wasn't anything we lobbied for. And similarly in California, there's a procurement preference that was the one for government.

Contracts.

Yep. For, for B Corps. And there's a similar thing with the gsa, the federal government, where B Corps are listed among, among a set of preferred sort of provider relationships that give people like an additional point or whatever in their trying to achieve federal contract status. But our, our, where we're not, we're not, we're not set up to do advocacy work. Right. We're, we're a C3 in the US so we don't do advocacy. We do, we do educate legislators. And what we have focused on in the US and increasingly with our global policy efforts is really around the stakeholder governance is. We think that the place for us to intervene in the system is at the, at the systemic level, which is at the governance level. And so the, the, the thing that we want to advocate for as a community is that all companies above a certain size should be required to adopt stakeholder governance, which just means that they're required to care about more than just their shareholders. They're required to care about all their different stakeholders. That's, that's a leverage that affects the entire system and creates a, it elevates a level playing field. Right. It creates a level playing field and it elevates it to say it's not just we're all level in a race to the.

Bottom.

Yep. Just carrying about, maximizing profit. We're going to elevate the playing field so that we are caring about our impact on all our stakeholders. And instead of it just being these few companies that elect to do it voluntarily, once you get above a certain size, it should be a requirement. And that feels like a public policy objective that's worthy of the B Corp movement's collective.

Voice.

Yep. So that's like, that's one example that I think is arguably the most important example. Because if you, if that were true, then all the other.

Public policies that support living wage or net zero or whatever it might be, all of those policies are going to make much more sense in an economy where companies are required to adopt stakeholder governance and care about all their stakeholders. Because then that just becomes a. How. Well, how do you do that? Well, how you do that is you would, you would give incentives for a living wage or you would require a living wage in certain industries, or you would say you need to have a credible plan to net 30 using science based targets, etc. Etc. Because that would be how you demonstrate that you are successfully considering the impact of your decisions on all stakeholders. And the highest level we could come in to intervene in the system is at the level of governance because it feels also the less, it also feels like the least regulatory. Right. It doesn't cost anything. We're not, it's not like this Big Brother or Big Sister, like looking over your shoulder questioning every business decision. Again, we're trusting in the business leaders to exercise their judgment. We're just actually asking them to expand the aperture on the lens about that which they're exercising their judgment. So they're no longer exercising their judgment just upon what's going to make the most money for my shareholders. Yep. That's current.

Law.

Yeah. What we're saying is like, oh no, no, you, you should, you should be exercising your judgment about how you create value for your shareholders, but also how you create value for your workers, your suppliers, your community and how you're good stewards of the environment. And we think you're smart enough to do that. Like we believe in you. You know, you and you and your board can do that, that you can walk and chew gum at the same time. We have confidence in.

That. It's such a great phrase, walking, chew gum. Yeah. And that's, you know, businesses follow the smart people who, you know, theoretically can do anything. Like you say, resource capital, human capital. Like just, just change your focus one degree over here and see what.

Happens. Yeah, that's right. That's.

Right. Some quick fire ones then. Just to finish off before we're completely out of time.

What any new or emerging topics that you think will be built into? Obviously there's a big chat or the draft standards are up for discussion still or about to be implemented. Maybe beyond the next changes. Are you kind of looking for the fringes of like the next.

Topics that might come in and I guess how do you choose them? It's probably a bigger question than we've got time for.

Helpful. Yeah, I think that those are great. That's a great question. And that's a great question for the global governance team. You know, like that's, that's the team that's got to make those.

Decisions.

Yep. And ultimately, as I've said before, I think the biggest decision is not just what are the standards that help people become a B Corp or improve their individual company performance. I think the big next frontier is what are the areas for collective action for the B Corp community as a whole? And that may be globally or maybe just in, in New Zealand or maybe how do the B Corps in Australia have collective voice for something important in Australia? How do they do it in France or whatever it might be. But I think the big question is how do we use the power that we have for more than just.

Doing better for our own business? I think that's the next frontiers around collective.

Action. Nice. Where do you think B Corp will, in terms of like the movement? Where do you think the next biggest growth will come from? Obviously the UK has just, just gone bananas. US is doing pretty good. Aussie, New Zealand's doing pretty good. So maybe outside of those three, who do you think is going to be the next region to really get into.

It? Yeah, I mean there's great things happening in South America. I am, I'm forever optimistic about what is happening in, on the continent of Africa. It's, it's, it's hard and slow going but that's going to be the most populous continent in the world and, and we're going to need to be. We, we want to be a leapfrog technology for business in, in, in Africa where they don't have to go and then then re engineer bad practices which we, which we've developed bad habits in every other part of the.

World.

Yeah. As, as we're building a small business and a mid sized business community in, in Africa and we're not just talking about like massive companies and, and micro enterprise. We're developing that, that, that middle, that is the driver of middle class and innovation.

B Corp should be a leapfrog technology for that, for, for that business community. And so I would hope that there's real growth there. And we have, we haven't touched the surface in Asia you.

Know.

Yeah. And obviously India and China in particular. But all, all throughout Asia there's lots and lots of growth opportunity and it's really complicated to do business in those marketplaces with tons of particularly in, in East Asia with, with the massive importance of family business and more aggressive state and private sector interaction that's much more challenging. And so that's why it's been like a slower growth area. But over the next 15 years I would expect that those are areas that we'd see certainly higher growth rates and also see a lot of innovation that might be really useful for all of us to follow from the rest of the.

World. Totally. Because you look at the, I kind of, you look at some of the well the scale of opportunity just in like India and then maybe Japan and you kind of go well if those two markets, if they, if they capture or if they get captured by the ideals of BE Corp. Like kind of like something like the UK has that, that is significant impact. Yeah. Pretty quickly. So yeah. Watch this space for sure. Last couple of questions.

Where do you see the B Corp movement in. I suppose we've kind of almost answered that one like in 2030 I think we've probably done that one. So okay, some final question that. Do you think have we reached the tipping point? Do you think we've reached the global tipping point? Like I said, We're 0.01% of businesses. In my mind, it doesn't sound. Every now and then I get, you know, I get excited. We're at 7,000. Like, I remember meeting Steve Arda and I think there was less than a thousand B corps when we first met. I'm like, okay, I wanted, like, this is like a secret club of like awesome companies. Now we've got some really big names joining the movement. We didn't, we didn't really have chance to talk about the Nespressos, but I guess I think we kind of did. We talked about have them in the tent, you know, let's put them, put the accountability on them. Yes. Do you think we're at the tipping point or is it, is it still to.

Come? No, I think it's still to come. You know, I think, as I said, I think we're early stage and I think we're approaching critical mass, but I don't think we're there yet. And I think that's also a big part of why the collective voice matters, because I think that 8,000 B Corps, all doing 8,000 different things and all talking to the little corners, has one.

Set of ripples that it puts out into the world. But groups of hundreds or thousands of B corps that are speaking with one voice about here's the future of business, that, that carries a lot more cultural weight. And, and I also think we're, we're in a, we're in a. Separate from anything we've talked about today. Tim. I think we're in a very delicate time globally right now with, with not just climate inequality, but with war and rising sort of authoritarian governments and democracy. Things that I've taken for granted for 55 of my 56 years on Earth that I no longer take for granted. And.

Many folks who study this would say where, where the center right moves in times like this will dictate where society heads, whether it's into totalitarianism or whether it comes into a more progressive movement. Yeah, and I, I don't mean progressive politically. I just mean progressive in terms of like, more freedom. Right. And more opportunity for more people. And when you think of center right energy, that's another way to talk about the business community by and large. Doesn't mean there aren't center left or lefty business people. It just means that in general, yeah. In general, business is a center. Center right energy. It's conservative stability seeking, institutional energy. And so if that's true, if those historians about social change at these moments in history, if they're correct, that history will pivot on which direction the center right moves at a time of.

Really stark choices.

Then the business community, those in the business community that, that can speak to each other in their own language and are given real credibility from each other. If there's a. If they're business leaders who are willing to use their voice to say to other business leaders, this is a more promising path for us. Let's not go, let's not throw in our lot with, with a more totalitarian energy that's going to be restrictive. That if we don't think that our best effort, our best interests are in that, in that direction, if our best interests are aligned with more.

Movements around equity and inclusion and actual equal opportunity for folks around the world, if we believe that that's the path to long term innovation and higher performance and better quality of life and a better future for our kids, it's that business voice that may end up tipping the scales. And that's why I think that, that B Corps finding their voice.

In matters of public. Public issue, not just private sector issue, but sort of public interest and speaking about the common good. I think that's where the future power is needed and it's needed right now because we're in, we're in a decade of that will be.

Quite decisive in terms of which direction we go in around big issues of not only inequality and climate but also even just liberal democracy. And so for me that's the biggest area of need and leadership right now. And where I think a business community like the B Corp community is desperately.

Needed. Nice. Which is very super pertinent because we've literally just elected a center right government here into New Zealand. So maybe we will be the test case for this. Certainly don't see any slowing down of interest in B Corp. You know, despite changing and sometimes, you know, everything goes on hold while the government's coming in. Well, Jay, thank you so much. We are, we are at time, which is slightly over time. Just huge appreciation. I mean you literally what you and the guys did, you know, changed the course of my life. I was firmly on a different path between you and Steve Arda, you know, you are firmly responsible for my life as it is today. So huge gratitude, gratitude for the, I don't know, just the foresight that you guys had to. I think you have already, you know, you have created that collective action already by creating the B Corp movement to help people. Because I think there was this emerging group and still emerging group of people who have this sense of dis. Ease that yet business can and should do more, but I don't know how to do that. I don't know how do I articulate it, how do I have legitimacy to go and do that? And I think that's what the B Corp movement has.

Kindled. I super appreciate that. And, and we did nothing but like, create the platform and put the megaphone out there. And at the end of the day, it's the B Corp leaders themselves that are the movement. And so it's folks like you, you know, as number six in, in New Zealand, that, that make it okay for other people to join. You know, like that's where the real leadership is. And so I'm just, I'm just in a huge debt to you and all the folks that are doing stuff all around the world because you're the ones who are making the community happen and you're the ones who are attracting other people into it. So just a big thank you to.

You. Thanks to everyone.

Awesome. Yeah, thank you so much for your time. Yeah, I will put even more focus on the baton that I'm currently holding and, and how I, how I pass it on. So. Yeah, thanks, Jay. Thank you so much. It's been great to, to finally connect and, and say g'.

Day. Thanks.

Tim.

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