#97 Leading with Purpose: Andrew Thornton on Heart in Business and Ethical Leadership

As I've said for the second time today, my second podcast I've recorded today, this podcast has been filmed before a live studio audience. Hopefully, who knows, it is 9 o' clock on a Friday night. So if people from the be better world are tuning in, go you.

As ever, thank you for tuning in and welcome back to any regular listeners. I do bump into a few of you every now and then and you tell me that you listen to the podcast, so if that is you, thank you so much. And as I am frequently saying as well, I listen to some fairly big podcasts on the global scale and. And they seem quite happy to be begging for likes and subscribers at the beginning of all their episodes. So you're listening in and you've listened to a few of them. Give us a, like, give us a review. It will help us undoubtedly into the future. But anyway, enough about me. Let's get into this latest episode. Really, really cool guest today. And I think we're going to cover a lot of interesting ground around some very deep topics because we've already had a bit of a chat before, not that long ago. So my guest today is Andrew Thornton. G', day, Andrew. How's it going?

Good. Good day, good evening, good morning. So it's good morning from London to good evening in. In New Zealand.

In New Zealand, we are covering the world.

Yeah. So we, we connected.

Through a mutual connection through my father. So Tony Stratton, I don't know if he's going to be listening. I don't know, we should send him a copy of this and tag him in it. But yeah, so a gentle Tony Stratton, he used to work with my dad back in the day in the world of advertising and marketing in the sort of 70s and 80s. And you and Tony worked with me.

Back in the day in the 80s. So that's. Yeah, nearly 40 years, actually, believe it or not. So giving my age away here. Yeah.

Was it. I saw something on social media today. 2050 is closer to today than was it 1990 is. And you sort of go, yeah, it is, isn't it? That's quite scary because 2050 sounds very much in the future compared to 1990, which feels like it was mainly maybe yesterday. Yes. We got introduced to this mutual connection and I think, yeah, when, when Tony sort of said, oh, do you know this guy Andrew Thornton? I was like, I'm afraid I don't, but I'll check out his website. And I was like, yeah, I think Andrew Thornton's the kind of guy I'd like to get to know because you do some very cool stuff which we'll hear about in a second. But yeah, I think very aligned with, with sort of my sort of thoughts and opinions about purpose and meaning and all the rest of it. But yeah, rather than me butchering, you know, badly describing what you do, just explain to us who are you, what do you do? What, what is your, your business heart in business all about?

Well, I'm a sort of, I'm a heartful entrepreneur if that's a description or I do describe myself as a visionary heart surgeon. That's another term. I'm not medically trained. But my.

I suppose my view on life is that we need more open hearts in business and that if more business leaders were to approach their business in an open hearted way then the world would be a better place. And what I mean by that is to be more caring about people, connecting with people, seeing people for individuals, not as a mass.

You know, body of things. And the term human resources really bugs me HR because it suggests that we've got human resources, we cash resources, we got stock resources and, and it sort of dehumanizes us. Yeah. And I've gone on a journey over the last 40 odd years from a profit focused entrepreneur to a heartful entrepreneur. So that's, that's my sort of headline. And that invol has involved all sorts of things along the way. My focus at the moment until few years ago I was running a heartful supermarket. I had a, a midlife having started my career at Mars which is where I met Tony I and worked then with Ogilvy, the advertising agency and run a consultancy myself. I then had a midlife crisis and bought a couple of supermarkets in North London. You know, as you do when you have a midlife crisis. And.

I realized with hindsight I bought those to develop and prove the principle that you could run a business from the heart and what that looked like rather than one that was just about short term profits.

And to allow me and anybody who's ever worked in retail, it's all consuming so to allow me to focus on spreading the word, writing our book, which I should of course if I was properly prepared have one right in front of me. But I have to reach my desk and pull it out putting the heart back into business.

So I sold the supermarket business two and a half years ago and focused on working with business leaders at the moment and also involved in, you know, a possible acquisition of a another organization which we're going to turn into a heartful business with a Group of others. So that's my quick summary.

Nice. Yeah. I couldn't agree more about your thoughts on hr. I remember working for a large multinational company and, you know, I had to go and have a meeting with someone from HR and I just remember, you know, them saying, I know, you know, we're here for you. And I'm like, well, you're not, are you? Because you're here for the company, because you're paid by the company and you create the policy and the procedures for the company. You're. You're not here for me. And she was kind of like, yeah, well, yeah, it's like, cool. Now we kind of know that. That's, you know, there's the elephant in the room. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's, it's interesting that.

We have become. Well, I'd be interested in your thoughts. Like how, how did business. Well, I guess was, was business. Was commerce ever heart connected or connected to the heart, do you think? And if it was. Because I agree. Because one thing I look at, you know, if, if we were back in, I don't know, the. Well, I reflect on the, on the fact that, you know, some people will have people listening in, might have the name Fletcher or Cooper or Shoemaker, and it's like your name, you might have been named after the function that you provided to your community. And, and for me, that's, that's the depth of connection we used to have as a business person was, you know, I, I am so connected to what I do that ultimately I'm named after what I do and how I contribute to our community. So if we, if we used to have that, I'd be interested in your perspective on how we used to have that heart connection. And then what happened? Like, where did it go? How did we lose it?

Well, our book is called Putting the Heart Back into Business. So that suggests there's a clue in the back. The, the original Quaker companies, Cadbury, Roundtree, Barclays Clark Shoes, a lot of them formed in the UK were really harmful businesses. So Joseph Roundtree invented the idea of the pension. He invented the idea of a staff canteen. He had houses for his workers because his view is, if I have a happy, healthy workforce, it's going to be better for my company. So none of these guys were, were just like do gooding, philanthropy sort of people. They were interested in running a successful business and they saw, and it's really the, the BCO B Corp concept. They saw if I take care of all my stakeholders, so my supermarket, if I made sure they're really considered and thought about the people who work there, the team and our customers and the community and our suppliers and oh, by the way, we sort of try and take care of the environment as well. Then what I saw, and it's proved in many, many documented case studies, is the shareholder, the sixth stakeholder, gets taken care of very well. In fact, there's a number of documented evidence that this, this, the shareholder actually does better than in the old classic profit model. And what happened? Well, it's interesting, in.

My book I interviewed various business leaders. One of them was a guy called Justin King who used to run Sainsbury's in the UK and he had an interesting theory about the whole Quaker business. He called it the Kerplunk theory. Do you know the game Kerplunk, the kids game where you pull these straws out and marbles fall?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I used to have that as a kid.

His theory, and I really get this, was that what happened with the Quaker companies because they basically all got bought out and swallowed up into big multinationals because they sort of lost their focus. And what he was saying is they kept on holding on to things. So in Kerplunk you can pull one string out and no balls fall and you can pull another one out and the whole lot falls. So they, they stopped distinguishing between the things that were relevant to do. So he used to run the food division at Ms. And M S until not too long ago, provide chiropody services for their employees. Now that may have been a thing back 20, 30, 40 years ago, but you know, it's not the sort of thing that people, young kids say, oh, I'm going out to the chiropodous later on. It's kind of, it's just a thing that's kind of moved on. We've moved on from there. And I think he's right. There's a perspective that the Quaker companies didn't keep up with what was going on, didn't stay connected to today's stakeholders. They stated they're stuck in the past, therefore a lot of them for various reasons ended up public listed companies. Because at one point that was felt if we want to really, if Joseph Roundtree wants to, the family want to get their way of doing things expanded across the world, then that they would list on the stock market that that's what you did. And then of course you lose control. So, and I'm really looking, I'm interested in the Steward of Stewardship foundation model of ownership, which is like an employee ownership Model which has a golden share in it. So that you, you can't, nobody can change the structure of the company. So Joseph Roundtree probably would have himself been horrified that Ranches got listed on the stock market. But you know, someone in the family somewhere along the way thought that was a good idea. So that's it. I think that's what happened Tim. And it just seems, and it is a very much come from the us.

A real like sort of, you know, it's all about short term profits and profits, profits, profits, profits, profit. It became an obsession. And there's a, you know, you talked about spirituality, you look at a bigger, broader way of being. There is a us humans, we, we cannot, we're either driven from a place of fear or a place of love. And the place of fear is all about scarcity and gosh, I'm running this company, I don't have enough for me, I don't, I may have millions, billions in the bank but you know, I might run out. So people in a fear based world, and we sadly live in a fear based world now, people tend to get focused on themselves and scarcity and greed tends to take over. And that I think is what's going on in the business world now thanks to people like yourselves and the whole B Corp movement, more and more business leaders are saying, you know something, this whole fear based way, profit focused way is not, is not working.

And enough, I believe, enough business leaders are waking up to the fact that this is not the way forward. And my experience is mostly that happens through a personal crisis. So I had a midlife crisis, it was like crumbs. I'd founded this consultancy firm, we had 35 people, we were doing really, really well. And I remember sitting in my garden one Sunday, sunny afternoon, Saturday afternoon, the sun was shining on the, the coast, the south coast of England outside London, thinking, is this it? Is this, is this as good as it gets? You know, I'm in my early 40s, I'm, I've got, you know, materially great things, I've got a couple of lovely kids, you know, blah blah, blah. And it's like, nah, this isn't it, there has to be more to life than this. And that was my sort of crisis moment. So it wasn't provoked by a tragic accident. And then I ended up getting divorced and buying some supermarkets and stuff happened. But my experience is that business leaders I come across who are on this journey generally and I know you and I have spoken about your aha moment. People generally have a moment where they Go, this isn't working anymore. I don't.

And there's a Japanese concept called ikigai. I don't know if you come across it. Yeah. Which is four concentric circuits, circles. What I love doing, what I'm good at, what I can be paid for and what the world needs. And at the time I didn't know it but ultimately in my consulting job I was really good at it and mostly I loved it. But I was starting, that was starting to wane a bit. I was paid very well. In fact I, you know, was paid better than I've ever been paid since. But did the world really need what we did? I didn't feel it did. It wasn't that we did bad work, we did things that were important, but it wasn't meaningful to me. And I got to the point where I thought, you know, there has to be something more. And this icky guy thing is if you, if you are in balance of all those four things then you will be more fulfilled. There's something about the heart and the soul which, beyond money and money. You know, no study has ever shown that money makes people happy. No study of people working companies. You know, why are you still working at the, the XYZ company? Money never makes it into the top three, four, five reasons why people are still working at the XYZ company. It's I feel, you know, my manager supports me or I feel work we do is meaningful or I have good friends at work or I feel seen and heard by my colleagues, those sort of things.

And, and, and going back to good old Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Once you've got, there's a certain level of income where you've got the basic needs of. I've got a roof over my head, I can feed myself and my family, I've got clothes. Beyond that money really doesn't make you any happier.

Yeah. 100.

So much to unpack. But also that, you know, that I fundamentally agree with and it's, I guess a couple of questions. Yeah, I think that, you know, clearly that us influence. I, I did a bit of delving into this. There was a guy, Edward Bernays, and if you come across him in your marketing days.

No.

So he, he wrote a book in the late 1920s called propaganda and in it he basically described exactly what you were saying. Like the fear and desire. Like if you, if you understand the emotional, the emotions that control human beings, you can get them to do whatever you want them to do. And a lot of his work was, was taken up by the world of marketing because he basically mapped out and there's, I don't know if you've ever read any, or sorry, watched any of Adam Curtis's documentaries. He's another interesting guy. He's got a series called the Century of the Self. He unpacks how Edward Bernays created the modern consumer capitalist model. And the first project he worked on was selling cigarettes. Because the cigarette industry in the, in the 20s and 30s were like, Hang on a minute, women aren't smoking. We're missing out on 50% of the market here. So they said to him, can you create, can you help create a campaign that will get more women smoking? And so he hitched the idea of women's suffrage to smoking and he, he called, they branded cigarettes as liberty sticks. And the whole idea was like as a woman, you know.

Take on this male role of smoking and kind of show the patriarchy, you know, that you're worthy of being able to include. And he then, but then they also work with advertising and industry groups. And so he was the guy who got doctors and the medical industry in the US to start promoting cigarettes as a health benefit for weight loss and anxiety. And you just kind of go man, that is genius. And you can just see how that's like one example where if you're the person running that company and someone's like, hey, we can double your market and get you more money.

It's.

But it's interesting. It was kind of around that sort of post war era that, that really seems to be where this, this real capitalist, you know. Yeah. And I think it's a difference between, I think some people kind of go like making money is bad. No, making money's not bad, but profiteering versus profiting. I think that's the thing. And it just say, I don't know whether, you know, was there a, a moment or, or a particular thing that just led business to suddenly go actually like, because like you say it's, it's, it's almost counter.

What humans are actually about at the deepest level. Like we're built for contribution and service and connection and meaning. Yet this, it just seems to have captured the sort of the CEO class of people from like the, the 30s, 40s and 50s when, when you know, the launch of all these consumer brands and products, it's like, yeah, how do we get a fridge in every house? How do we get a car in the hands of every human? Have you got any thoughts or done any research on the specifics of that?

No, I, I don't Necessarily and I'm not sure that it matters.

Yeah, it's like.

It does matter. Yeah, exactly.

The horse is bolted.

Yeah. There's this thing about, I mean profit's really important so you know, because without profit then companies don't exist. So without profit in my supermarket, I mean we, we did some amazing things. We, we really did show people that things could be done differently. So for example we, we, we were really aware of this crisis with plastic. For example, we came across an organization called A Plastic Planet who's a social enterprise whose job, whose role is to help turn the plastic tap off. And because it's a real problem, we met them, we watched the film A Plastic Planet. Sorry, Plastic Ocean and we've ever seen it. It's quite extraordinary. There's one scene where they take a submarine down to the deepest part of the ocean that's known to mankind and you can't, people, humans can't go down the submarines too. The pressure is too, too great and at the bottom it's lined with soft drink bottles. Loads and loads and loads of plastic soft drink bottles. So we, and our supermarket, our purpose was we are the community supermarket that really care about people and planet. And I know you and I are aligned on this purpose is critical to this journey. And with that purpose when Sean showed us this film it was like well we've got to do something about it.

So we launched a Plastic Free for campaign. We launched Plastic Free zone. So in 10 weeks we launched 1800 plastic free products across our supermarket which gave all our customers the chance to buy products plastic free. Now in that action we did it to help us contribute to less plastic, our customers to contribute less plastic. But mostly we did it to show the big supermarkets that there was a different way and it wasn't as difficult as they said. And afterwards Dave Lewis, who was running the Tesco business, so one of the biggest supermarket groups in, in, in well the world, second or third largest in the world, said that we changed the relationship between supermarkets and plastics globally. And that was with at the time one shop in North London. Now that links back to profit. If we weren't making a profit we wouldn't have existed so we couldn't have done that. So and it's as you said, profiteering is the, the problem, not profit per se. And, and yes that the drive to have a refrigerator in every house is motivated on one level on from a good place which is actually people can then you know, have food. Food doesn't rot.

Exactly.

They don't.

Hygiene benefits. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Then you creep into the whole obsolescence thing. It's like, okay, we've sold you one fridge, but actually we kind of want to sell you a fridge every year as opposed to, you know. Yeah, there's probably still someone of my. If my grandmother was still alive, you know, but there are people of a certain generation who still have their original kelvinator from the 1950s because it was built to last. Yeah, it's. I guess it's how it's sold and how it's packaged as much as what it is that's sold and packaged.

Yeah. And this is a heart versus head issue for me. The. Because if you look at the, the oil companies and you look at the people running the oil companies and everybody, it's, it's, it's irrefutably proven that, that extracting more fossil fuels from the Earth is destroying the planet. We've got to stop doing it. If you operate the people who run these oil companies, they're not bad people. They're, you know, they've got daughters and sons and parents and friends and their pillars in the community.

When one operates in the head, which is what so much of business is about, you can rationalize why you're doing things. You can rationalize that actually the world is better off as a result of oil. People have, can. They can travel more, they've got better qualities about. You can rationalize everything. My approach is what you need to get people into their heart as well. Because, you know, we have our head, we have our heart. In fact, there are four. There are four parts of us. There's the, the mind, the head, there's the physical body, there's the emotional body, and there's, there are our kind of intuitive body, and most of business is done from the head. And then you're only saying, I'm only using a quarter of the resources available to me. And that quarter tends to allow one to, to, to rationalize taking a route which is not a holistic route. So it might be great for ExxonMobil to keep extracting oil because they're, they're profits and their show, but for the totality of all their stakeholders. It's not actually.

And, and, and when BP became Beyond Petroleum instead of British Petroleum back 20, 30 years ago, the concept was absolutely perfect, but it was, it wasn't real. It was a sort of, bit of a clever marketing trick. Oh, yeah. Well, let's say we're doing all this stuff when we're not. Actually.

So, yeah, I think that the big company Question is, is one certainly comes up a lot in the B Corp world that I'm involved in. You know, the whole Nespresso, you know, how, how can Nespresso be a B Corp? You know, how dare they? It's, it's, you know, it's ruined the B Corp community and it, you know, it'll never be the same again. It's like, well, but isn't it better that they are in the community and now they're going to be held to account and now, you know, there's, I don't know how many people work for Nespresso. Probably a thousand or more around the world. Isn't it better that they will now know what B Corp is and you know, there will be hundreds. I'm sure the majority of their team are now going, okay, actually this is pretty cool. Like we want. Because I think this is the thing like the, the concept of doing good and purpose is innate to us. And once, once you have an ability to connect to it, you don't tend to go back to the old way of thinking because it is more of a natural thing. So I think, yeah, that, the big company thing. I was talking to Matt Sturbins, who is the guy who I interviewed this morning. Like he, he's really, really cool dude. So he was a professional skier, quit skiing. Well, as when he was a skier, he launched his own product line because he wanted to have a, like an athlete led product that he could use rather than, you know, something that an engineer designed. But he, he had his moment of like, hang on a minute, we're shipping all these skis everywhere and like there's a ton of waste and they're, they're pretty environmentally destructive in terms of the production process. So he ended up connecting with this company and they now make skis out of a bio algae and it's like, you know, practically zero waste made out of a natural based polymer now instead of you know, plastics and the rest of it. But you know, he's trying to change the ski industry. But as we were sort of saying like there's so much embedded sunk costs in the way like BP has been run since what, whenever it was founded in like the early 1900s or whatever it was. It's like it's been set up as a monolith around this way of doing business and you, it's, it's hard to expect them to just overnight go, okay, boom, chop it all off. Sorry everyone, you've all got no jobs anymore because we're transitioning to this new way of doing stuff. But equally as you said it, there needs to be some authentic and genuine movement, not just, hey, we've done a brand, a rebrand. Look, we're not as evil as, you know, well, we're not, we're not doing the bad things that you maybe think we are, but actually we, we kind of are.

Yeah.

The Good Old Green Washing One of.

The best books I've read this year, non fiction books is not the End of the World, which is a book written by a, a young.

She'S an early 30s data scientist called Hannah Richie who, who's. And she's basically saying the subtitle of the book is how can we be the first generation to build a sustainable planet? So what she's saying and what I love about this book is it's, it's all database. So there's a lot of things out there that are stated as fact that aren't actually fact. And she's saying to be sustainable there's two aspects. One is how we care for the planet and two is how we care for people. And she's putting both of them together and you know, people have sort of said oh well we used to be much more sustainable back in the pre Industrial revolution days, but 50% of kids didn't make it to the age of five. The average life expectancy was, was 41 or something.

And what she's saying is you can't, you can't look at, you can only look at, you can look at both together, which is what the whole heart concept is about. It's about caring for people and planet and, and I think that's, and, and a lot of, you know, there's a lot of great innovation like your friend in the ski industry, a lot of really cool things are happening with.

With, you know, in all sorts of aspects of, of innovation and it's, and our other thing is that the, the hair shirt method does not incur. So if you say to every look, you've just got to stop everything. Don't buy any new clothes, don't buy any meat, don't fly, don't drive. People aren't going to do that. That's not good, that doesn't work. So, so you've got to engage people. So what we did with the supermarket, we engaged our customers on this journey of how can we be more sustainable, how can we use less plastic? And with the plastic as one example, our customers loved it because they were crying out, they all know that they need to use less plastic. Everybody knows we need to Use less carbon. But how without giving up everything? So there's a massive opportunity. Paul Pullman, who used to run Unilever in his most recent book, said, this is the whole net zero thing is the biggest single business opportunity that's ever existed for businesses.

The opportunity to reinvent yourself and create something that's much better for the planet, but also for people. So that's where I sit in that camp of being positive and not all doom and gloom or not. Head stuck in the sand.

Very much the same. I think for the first couple of years when I, when I had my midlife crisis and try to work out what the hell is this all about and how did I end up in this industry? You know, I used to sell medical devices and I've said it a few times on the podcast, but yeah, you know, the Bleeding Edge is a really harrowing documentary on Netflix that describes, you know, what that industry is like and when it's almost like the, the stages of grief, you know, first of all, you're angry and then you're kind of. I can't remember what they are in detail, but, you know, you kind of go through the anger, then the kind of disillusionment or the. And I think there's a lot of people in the, in the world of business for good or, you know, trying to, I guess, yeah. Create that change who are still in that anger, you know, that, that resentment phase. And people don't want to hang out with that. And I think that's the key is, is to show not only, yeah, does, you know, doing good is actually good for you. It's not, you know, you don't have to be dragged into doing this kicking and screaming. It's actually what you're going to get is better than what you had before. And I think, yes, that's so, so needed because, yeah, people don't want to hang out with angry people who are telling you, no, you can't do stuff like, it's like, no, I'm not, I'm not interested. I'm automatically putting a wall up. Yeah. The psychology of behavior change. Yeah.

So, but, and it's interesting, remember Talking to a CEO of one of the top FTSE 100 companies not a few years back, and he was describing about an encounter with Greenpeace, and Greenpeace kept on coming and telling him, oh, we don't want to do this, we don't do. And he kept saying, what do you want me to do if you come back to me with some positive actions I can take in the position I'm in, I am really interested to hear about it. And, and he was strong. This, and this is, this is maybe 10 years ago. So, you know, things have probably moved on a bit. But it's this thing about what are the positive, how can we, how can we create positive change? How can we engage people in something that's different?

And I think in a company environment, it's all what we discovered when we, in our supermarket, in the laboratory, we discovered a couple of things by, we turned the supermarket into a laboratory. We tried all these different things. And the, the two biggest findings we had.

Both of which have been sort of researched by others, but we did them in a, in an actual, you know, we discover them by trial and error rather than anything else is the first is the importance of creating psychological safety. So what we found was that through the work we did, through how we were through coaching, through having a set of values that we cared about, people felt safer. And when people feel safer, they're more creative, they're more productive. And in fact, a Google study in 2015 proved that they looked at their teams all the way around the world, and the most effective teams are the ones with the highest level of psychological safety. And then the second thing we learned was about habits. So, so many more and more companies have decent purposes now. Most companies have values, principles and so on, but very few people live them. And that's because they don't have the habits. And what a habit is just a behavior repeated. So what we discovered was the importance of actually having habits in the supermarket.

I remember talking with a big, big, big multinational who, one of their, their principles is about to live with integrity. And we started discussing about that because that's a principle lots of companies have. People want to live with integrity. And, and the process on habits that we've developed is.

First of all, well, what's the, what's the, the habit you want to do? So if you're, if you're, if you want to live with integrity, what is, what is a habit that you might want to implement to live with integrity? And it could be people can speak their truth. So that's a good, that's a habit. So you say, okay, so we want to have the habit of people speaking the truth. The next stage is, well, what are the barriers to people speaking the truth? Well, the barriers could be it's not safe to speak your truth. It could be, I don't know how. You're my boss. You're doing something. I really, I don't think it Fits with the values of our company. But I don't know how to tell you because you're a, you know, you're a fairly direct, powerful sort of person who, you know, you might take, you might get upset if I said, I think you're stepping out of line. So then the next step in the process say, okay, so if those are the obstacles, then how can you, what are the, the skills people need? And then how do you train people on those skills? So you can train people to have difficult conversations, you can create psychological safety. So these are the sort of steps you can take to actually deliver.

The habits. So that's, that's, those are the two biggest lessons we got out of the market experiment.

It's, it's such a key thing because, you know, I used to work for a large multinational medical device company and literally chiseled in stone on the wall behind the reception, in their head, one of their international head offices, they had the, what's called the credo, which was like, you know, our number one priority is to look after the patients who are receiving our products. Our second priority is to the doctors, surgeons, nurses who are administering the medicine and products to our patients. Our third commitment or priority is the communities in which they and we all work in. Our fourth priority is to make a profit. But in actuality, it was make a profit. Make a profit, Make a profit, Make a profit, make a profit. Look, if we lose a few patients, try and make some more money. And that, that was really confusing for me as a, as a new employee into the business. But that's on the wall. And, but you're not doing it. Like, am I, am I the dumb one here? Like, am I being. And in a large company like that, where you're, you know, I was a graduate trainee. It's like, well, what. Who do I go to, to, you know, sort of go, hang on a minute, this isn't. Yeah. And it's just. I kind of feel like that's a lot of companies because like you say, typically, it's kind of like, you know, professionalism, integrity, customer focus. It's like, great. Another, you know, it's almost like the bullshit bingo on the, you know, in the meeting room. It's like, you know, almost like bingo on values. You've downloaded the same five values as 90% of other companies in the world go you. And then you don't even live up to those. And like you say, you don't have any mechanism to support the conversation around those values. And yeah, crazy, crazy. The. It's Going back to like the Maslow stuff as well. That, that was because a lot of people don't know that obviously that he had like before he passed away he had the updated version with the, the top level being transcendental purpose above self actualization. Because I think a lot of people kind of go, oh yeah, you know, you can be self actualized and still be an. And still only care. And in fact, you could argue that self actualization is very internally focused. It's like I know who I am, I know my place in the world, I know my worth, I know kind of what I'm good at. But it's still, it's a very selfish mode. And so yeah, a lot of people have. You also come across a guy called Scott Barry Kaufman. He's, he's kind of like taken Maslow's work and he, he's, he puts it into like a sailboat metaphor. So he sort of says, look, it's a bit clunky to say it's a hierarchy of well, until my basic needs. You know, you don't kind of like level up necessarily because you can, you can possibly not have your basic needs being met. You could be homeless, but still be a self actualized person. You know, you have and have no family. So what, yeah, he, he calls it like a sailboat with. So you got the boat, which I think is like the, the basics, you know, like security, what have you, and then the mast and the sail. And he sort of describes it as like a functioning boat where, where everything's interactive and it can be, you know, if, if everything's running, you know, as it should be, then the boat's sailing really good to a good destination. But if it's got a hole in the, you know, in, in the bottom and the sails are ragged and the master an angle and the rudder's gone, then yeah, you're not going to go anywhere. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think the, the other, the other question that sits in the back of my mind. So I had a good conversation with a mate of mine, Luke Ficini. He runs a B corp in Australia called the Sponge. So if you. Yeah, he, he's mainly branding and marketing stuff. So if you need some branding and marketing, give Luke a call. But he's so. He's of, you know, Muslim faith and he, we had a meeting today and he was like. I said, hey, how's your day going? He's all right. To be honest, you know, I'm pretty tired. I've been fasting all day. It's Ramadan. And I sort of do, do you know, are there many other Muslim founder B Corp people that you know? And he's like, no, I don't think I actually know any. And I was like, well, because in, I mean in New Zealand I know of two B Corp founders who are, who are deeply Christian. And it doesn't seem to be that there's many people of faith in the B Corp world and sort of in the, in the sort of the business for good sector. It's, it's quite a, generally, it seems to be quite a secular world. But we look at the history of purpose driven business, Quaker based, faith based, you know, humanitarian. Is it? Do you think that's, that's also a link, you know, the sort of the, the decreasing connection to spirituality and faith in general was that almost like a proxy or an avenue in which purpose was being, you know, put into the boardroom, put into, to the leadership. Whereas now in a kind of secular, you know, everyone for himself, post Reagan, post Thatcher, you know, there's no such thing as society. I don't know. I guess there's so many things that probably were adding force, but. Yeah. Do you think, do you think we'll see a resurgence maybe of faith or, or a new faith that will give us the basis or, or can purpose become its own religion of some description? Lots of questions in there to unpack. Sorry.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. I, I distinguish between faith, spirituality and organized religion because. So I grew up in Catholic Ireland and the Catholic Church.

Really.

In my view, abused the power they had in Ireland. They were, they, they kind of. Ireland had been invaded by all sorts of people over the years and Ireland got its independence in the early twenties, nineteen twenties for the first time really. And the church somehow stepped into the void there. So I think organized religion.

I don't connect with spirituality and faith necessarily. There's a sort of blind faith there. I think what is important is to have some personal and it's beyond purpose. I think some people call it a North Star, some, some connection. For me, I've got a connection. It's not with an organized religion, but I do, I call it spirituality. I believe there's a greater. It's not just me and you as independent people in the world. There's some greater something going on there. We're all connected to each other. We're not independent beings. And that's what's important to me. And I think.

That more people look at the world that way. And I think if you were to look at it, you know, if you were to interview a thousand B corp leaders about their faith and their spirituality, I think you might get a different answer than if you interviewed about them. Are you practicing member of an organized religion, be it the Catholic Church or the Muslim faith or you know, a practicing Jew or something like that? I think that's, yeah, I don't think, I think they're separate and the one that I'm most interested in having is having a faith that is. Yeah. A faith beyond just, it's just beyond me and making as much money as possible. That's the one that's important. And I know many, many business leaders who have that who are not like me or not part of any organized religion. And then there's some that are and then that's absolutely fine and that go to a unorganized church. And I have no issue with that. It's, it's the sort of, it's the reason behind it's the blind faith versus actually having some something and it does, you know, the whole thing know growing up in Catholic Ireland influenced who I am.

And a lot of aspects of it weren't so good. And you, the whole sexual abuse scandals that went on and I, I, I was fortunate to not to have been abused, but I grew up in a school where other boys were being abused. And that impacts you, there's no question about that. And that shaped me who I am as a person and I think that shaped me to look at the importance of fairness and, and, and sometimes companies, I believe the, the less ethical companies, if you want to use that word, they abuse their power. They do. So you know, you, you know, you talked about your medical device company. I've know who dude was, but I suspect there was abuse of power going on there. You're a young trainee, you've got a job. Lots of people got jobs. They've got mortgages to pay.

So it's, it's, yeah, it's not dissimilar to, to the abuse that some of the churches have, have used over time. That shaped me on. My whole thing about life is about creating about fairness. So the reason I've gone down this path in business rather than the well I'll use my talents to make a shitload of money and much money as possible is because, yeah, I, I believe in, because of my background and my growth upbringing, I believe in a fairer world. So we're all impacted by our childhood and one of the big things we do working with business leaders is helping people to understand that the impact and, and processing it and.

Yeah, and integrating it into them rather than running away from it. Because what we've done is we learn coping strategies when we're kids. You know.

Your father says, oh, you know, big boys don't cry, Tim. Yeah. So you think, all right, I've got to be big boy. I can't cry. And then you develop a strategy of, of not getting emotional. And what you do to avoid that, you, you know, you start drinking or you start smoking or you start whatever, whatever, whatever. And you start moving away from who you are as a human into this creature with all these faces and facades and so on. And a lot of the work I do with business leaders is helping them peel that back to their true authentic selves.

The old Persona, the. The mask, as it was called in it. Was it in Greek, you know, in. In the plays and the tragedies, like the Persona was the mask people wearing. You know, today you say, oh, he's got a good Persona or personality. So it's all kind of linked to that. And I think this, this, this is the sort of the part.

Do you know the. The. Or have you heard the quote from Gus Speth? He's the environmental lawyer who talks about. I'm going to paraphrase it badly, but I'll put it in the show notes. He basically sort of said, look, I used to think that with 30 years of good science, you know, we'd be able to solve, you know, climate issues, biodiversity loss, species decline. We sort of realized that actually it's not that it's about selfishness, it's about greed. It's about apathy. What we need is a spiritual and consciousness awakening to get people. And I think this, this stuff is the stuff that I think is really going to drive the change, like short legislation, supply chain pressure. Hey, you guys need to be better at reporting your social environmentally back. Yeah, you're going to carrot and stick. We'll, you know, beat you with a stick until it breaks and throw the carrot at you bloody get your reporting in. But the true work is going to be on the inner work with the CEOs. And I think that's what I really love about what you're doing. And it's. It's something that I want to. Look, I want to get to be doing more of because it's something that I've got a lot of stuff around. But, you know, at the minute, we're so focused on people getting on the B Corp journey, which is a part of that for me, I see it as part of, like, getting them into a new way of thinking. But I think the other thing, which is going back to the religion thing, I think, because I think when we, when we first connected, we did sort of have a conversation around how, you know, the more you go on the purpose journey, the more the idea of spirituality comes up and the idea, you know, the fact that we are all connected, we are all made of stardust, we are all part of a universe that is an infinite universe in an infinite number of universes. You're not just one person who's trying to earn half a million pounds this year or half a million dollars this year so that you can have the biggest house. Like it's such a small part of your total existence. And I also sort of reflect on some of Carl Jung's work where he, you know, he sort of said, you know, the transition from the age of Pisces to the age of Aquarius. We're not talking, we're not talking, you know, regia star sign in the sun or the mirror, but, you know, literal astrological movements of solar systems. And, you know, how he said that, you know, Pisces is the age of Christianity. The last 2000 years have been the transition from, you know, the Roman and Greek gods, Mars, Aries, you know, war power into this Christian ideology. And are we now, you know, I often reflect and wonder is, is the B corp movement? Is the idea of business for good? Is this part of the transition into a higher consciousness of humanity where maybe we do break through the barriers of all religions and go, actually, you know, there is a way to connect to the universe. Matter being whatever you, whatever we sort of are calling this thing on a more individual level where you, like I say you don't need to go and hop on one leg and spin around three times. And if you don't do it the right way, you get thrown out of church because someone 2000 years ago did it that way? I guess we'll look back when we're all living on Mars in 40 years and go, yeah, we were or no, we called it wrong.

But yeah, and I just think the, the childhood trauma stuff. Yeah, that for me is such a big piece that most, most leaders are just blissful. I think most people in general are just blissfully unaware of. And I think, again, interesting reflecting on your journey like that, that kind of existential moment of what the hell am I doing? Do you think people can only get to that moment of questioning who, what why, when with an existential shock? Or are there ways that you think we can lead People, most of the people I know who've had that transition, it was a, it was a slap in the, I call it the existential wet fish in the face. It was like that John Cleese smacking Michael Palin in the face with a massive. Sam. It's normally a big external shock. Is there a way that you think we can get people to without that shock or do you think actually people need to have that scare, that health scare or the near miss or birth of a child? Yeah. What are your thoughts on that?

Well, I think that I always felt the view that most of the leaders I've worked with had experienced something like that. However, what came along then was the thing called Covid and actually Covid gave everybody a bit of a wake up call. So lots of people around the world had a wake up call during COVID because suddenly they stopped getting up at stupid o' clock in the morning to commute for an hour and a half to, you know, their jobs in the city or wherever it might be to come back at whatever time at night, not see their kids and so on so forth. And that period of lockdown created a lot of issues and challenges for people. But also I think a lot of people went, hold on a second. You know, in the States she had the great resignation. In Britain it was called the great retirement. You know, a load of people in their 50s just left the workforce. They said, look, I've done, I, I have a, my accountant as a good friend who was a senior police officer. And post covert, he quit and he now stacked shelves in the local supermarket a couple of days a week to give him something interesting to do. But he was just done with the whole culture of the police organization. And, and it took Covert for him to think, you know, I don't want to do this, I don't need to do this anymore. So I do think there was a collective big shock everybody had which was, was just that realization because people stopped, they got off the treadmill for, for a little bit and slowed down a bit and thought, you know, am I. Because people are so caught up and like, is this really, is this really how I want to live the rest of my life? So I think that that, is that. I think two people do need a shock. But I think that the COVID gave us a chance to, for a lot of people to have that. And therefore I think more people are more receptive to that than they were pre covered.

Yeah, totally. It was almost like a global existential shock. It was like, hang on a minute, this Thing might kill us all. Okay, I think there was that level of, some people would say fear mongering or whatever, but there was certainly a level of, hang on a minute, there's this unseen thing that might get me tomorrow. And then like I remember talking, doing a purpose workshop for a group a couple of years ago. And you know, one of, one of my, I guess action or takeaway points was just like, take some time out for yourself. Just stop and think for a minute and just reflect. Like, does it feel, does everything feel okay? Like, do you feel like you're doing what you kind of should be doing? And one lady emailed me about a week afterwards and said, hey, I actually took your advice. And I told a bunch of friends that I was, I was taking one day off work to just ponder on what I was doing. And she said, they all said I was crazy. And I kind of go, well, that's, that's kind of the problem with the world, isn't it? The idea of taking a day out of your life to just go, am I doing what I really want to be doing? And you're the crazy one. It's like, okay, we're doing something really, really, really wrong here. That's where we're at. I mean, yeah, when you look at, from a B Corp perspective, I know that globally B Lab were really, really worried that when Covid hit that that was going to be the end of B Corp. Because typically tough economic time, the first thing that the finance people do is look at membership and certifications and hey, sorry, we're not paying our fee. They had a 38% growth in the movement during COVID so the complete opposite. And now they're kind of like, actually we're scrabbling to get enough auditors to get all the companies through that click submit during the COVID period. So. And you also hear stories of, you know, people, like I say, people suddenly be at home looking in their cupboards. Well, hang on a minute. What. What is in this cleaning fluid? What. What is in my bar of soap that I just buy on repeat? Because I've not had time just to sit and think. So, Yeah, I think 100% that Covid was that it's kind of. Do you think that. Are there other societies that do this better? Look, I often think that, that there are other, you know, tribal based societies maybe in developing countries where rites of passage initiation, you know, actually, no, you know, your name shouldn't be Alan because we've worked out that actually you're a Steve and a Steve that's going to be a painter rather than an Alan who was going to be an accountant. Because we've been watching you as a tribe, we've seen you go, I mean, is there a way, do you think that we can do that in the west or has that ship sailed for us?

No, I mean, I've done, I have done participated in and run initiations for people. So that whole thing of initiating people from, you know, boy boys, from boys to men, and I say this as a man.

Is hugely transformational. And the trouble is that so many people, senior leaders in the world are men and they're actually boys because they've never transitioned.

And they're boys in suits and throwing the toys after the prop. So I absolutely think the way the indigenous tribes ran their societies is, is very powerful. And if you look at a lot of spirituality and a lot of practices from that, they come from the North American tribes, they come from spiritual practices in India. So there's a lot of going back, learning from those things and bringing them in. So I don't think the boat sailed. You know, I'm part of a men's organization worldwide called the Mankind Project where there are thousands and tens and hundreds of thousands of men all around the world. And, and, and the first thing you do when you joined is you have an initiation weekend which tries to emulate what these tribes did. You know, I've, I've been on with business leaders initiation walks in, in India where.

The, the, the, the guy who, who led the walk that I've been on basically took the eight weeks he, as growing up in India went through with the tribal elders. He's taken into an eight day.

Process and, and, and, and I've now worked with others and, and we deliver these walks in different parts of the world. So it does, it is there, it is happening. And more and more people think yeah.

Because in these initiations it was like, you know, you were a boy and, and, and, and now you're about to become a man and that's very different. And the trouble is we take our childhood boy strategies and we take them into, into adulthood and they were appropriate as boys, but they're not appropriate as adults. And.

Yeah, I mean I see the, the, you know, the former president of the US and now presidential candidate for the election in November.

He'S just a boy, He's a little boy running around and, and I saw someone said, you know, with Donald Trump, it's, it's his, the whole thing is how he feels, does he feel good about something? Or bad about something in the moment that feels good. Yeah, we'll do that.

And it's really frightening, actually, that, that the potential impact.

On the world. And, and I'm just using that as a very visible example. But all the way around the world, politicians, business leaders, you see them, they are. And, and, and sadly, most of these jobs are held by men. And that's another thing we need to change. We need more women in, in, in powerful positions. And that's shifting, but not, not quick enough. And, and, and we all have our masculine and feminine side to us, and us men need to tap into more of our feminine side and some of the feminine characteristics. And it's all sort of quite politically incorrect to talk about masculine, feminine and so on, so forth. But there are certain characteristics that.

Us men can attack tap into more, like empathy and care, which are traditionally seen as feminine characteristics, but we all have them.

I mean it, I guess, you know, I just love delving into the, you know, my degree is in medieval history, so I, I can entertain myself looking at that sort of stuff. But it's almost, you know, it's the ideal of the philosopher king that we're kind of looking for, isn't it, as a leader? You know, someone who, who can play the loot, can recite some poetry, but can also be strong in making a good decision. But it's a just decision that's fair and equitable. I remember listening to someone on a podcast talking about Boris Johnson. I think they, they might have been like an advisor or something in government briefly. And they said, yeah, what? Watching him in action was like watching a kid in a sweet shop. He was just, like, distracted by it. Like if, if you just put something in front of him, he'd just go, oh, okay. And you see, like you say, just the paucity of leadership that we have on a global scale, seemingly in almost every country. It's, it's just scary. But then, but then you look at the captains of industry and again, but we're not. If it's not. Because quite often you hear that if they paid better, you get better candidates from business. You go, I'm not so sure about that. I don't see that we're overflowing with amazing, you know, examples of, of, yeah, sort of, you know, philosopher king or philosopher queen levels of, of truly, you know, individuated humans who, who actually.

It's because I think that it's interesting because I, you know, coming from a sales background, and you'd be saying, come from a marketing background, you Know, you spent a lot of time being. Well, I was. Spent a large amount of effort spent on me learning human psychology and, you know, how to influence people and, you know, obviously get smart orthopedic and neurosurgeons to, you know, you're trying to lure them to, to buy your product and just going back to that idea of like the little child. You know, what I was kind of taught was, you know, if you look at the four archetypal personality types, you've got like your CEO, dominant athletes, you know, high performance person. You've got your person, you've got your, you know, to be like your lawyer, accountant, you've got your caring, nurturing person, so your teacher or your nurse. And then you've got your yellow sort of performer, actor, singer type personality. And the dominant traits that they bring is the. What they were lacking or it was like, I say it was a coping mechanism from when they were a child. So if you're a dominant person, it's like, well, if I dominate this, I have control, so I, I will take charge so that I have to control. If you're like, I'm like the yellow personality type. And fundamentally, no, it was because, like, my mum and dad never. My dad always said to me, oh, you did, you did really well. But that's because you've got my genes. Or it's because I taught you how to do it. There was no, just like, hey, you did good. And today, like, I'm sure my mum has got no idea what I do and she's just, every now and then she's like, oh, you know, well, why don't you just go and get a proper job? It's like, there's no, hey, look, I'm really proud. You've been running your own business now for almost a decade and you've, you've actually done, you know what I mean? So I know that my performer personality type is because I'm looking for that approval. But, you know, you don't get into sales if you didn't have a massive need for approval that wasn't filled as a child. And then similarly, the caring is like, well, if I care for everyone, then I will be nurtured and people look after me. And again, I just think it's so many people just don't even know what their personality style is and they have no idea that it's actually from some fundamental part in their childhood. And like I said, we've got these people roaming around the world with keys for nuclear weapons. It's just like literally could probably put a chimpanzee in place in some of these places and they might be more self actuated.

We did this live stream on Wednesday as part of B Corp month and I discovered, I did not know this but you can get monkey slave labor. So there are, there are coconut plantations who have basically trained monkeys to pick and yeah, who knew? So that's, that's the world, you know, that we're in. But yeah, some of those monkeys might actually be more self actualized than some of the current world leaders.

But you, you're, I think you, you have a sense of general positivity and, and like you say, more and more people are actually seeking this, whereas it, it's, it certainly felt like the last decade. You, you talk a lot of this stuff in a boardroom or with a senior leader and they would probably look at you sideways and go, this is a bit woo, woo. I think. Thank, thanks Andrew. But yeah, I think we're good. But. So that's, that's reassuring.

Yeah, I think so. And I think it feels that this year 2024, there's been, there's, there's quite a big shift. I mean the world is in a real mess on one hand, but on the other hand there is a growing consciousness. More and more business leaders are starting to think or feel there's a different way forward. And, and you will have this tipping point, you know, the whole tipping point idea that there comes a point where suddenly like, ah, right, and we're not at the tipping point yet, but we're heading there. And as you said, the B Corp movement are struggling to keep up with people who want to become beat pops. That's great. People Corp movement is not perfect, but it's certainly a great step in the right direction because it forces you to consider the, all the stakeholders.

And.

There'S something. The guy who introduced me to be B Corpse, James Perry, who runs a company called Cook, which is a frozen meal company in the uk. They were the one of the first B Corps in the uk, if not the first B Corp. And he brought the B Corp movement to the uk and what he said when they did it in his company, what people felt prior to that was that all the stuff they were doing was a sort of passing phase and it wasn't kind of. And the B Corp thing made people think, oh, these guys are serious. This isn't just, you know, a flavor of the month thing that'll pass and we'll be doing something next month. This is actually really serious and, and that's what struck me that it's, it requires a certain, a lot of rigor and it requires you to be in a place where you actually have to start to think through decisions you're making with. Through a different lens. And I think that's what's so powerful about it.

Totally agreed. And as Luke and I were talking earlier, the way, the way I think I see it is when you look at, you've got the rational and sort of logical the reason, but you've got this spiritual, metaphysical on the other side. And B Corp for me gives you that rational, logical, okay, how do we index and benchmark and measure what we're doing? But if you don't have that purpose, spiritual consciousness side to kind of go with it, you're missing. I think that the. Really you put those two together because it's kind of like, well, why should we care about doing this, measuring and reporting this thing? Well, if you don't know and aren't connected to why that's important and how actually doing that might make you feel better and have some meaning that I think that's the real risk of any certification framework is it's, it's a rational tick box. Okay. Yeah, we can prove that we're doing it, but actually get your team to connect to understand why you do that and why it's important and that's where the magic happens.

So, yeah, and that's where there's a. There's an opportunity in the B Corp movement because I don't think all B Corps are in that space of, of really deeply connecting to people. There's a little bit of a. Some B Corps are still in. Yeah, we're going. It's doing this mechanic mechanistically rather than heartfully and that.

Totally agree, totally agree. But I think it's, it's, it's that they're on the conveyor belt to nirvana. So it's like cool. And, and you know, everyone's on the journey and, and yeah, I think B Corp is, is a part of that journey. And I think, yeah, there's a mix of people, but yeah, the general, general trend is it's all pushing in the right direction, which is good. Yeah, yeah. And of course, yeah, you, you as you mentioned, yeah, you are a B Corp yourself. So obviously you're nailing the, the consciousness and, and the rational and. Yeah.

So, yeah.

I don't know anything else that you feel like you want to, you want to have a chat about. I feel like we've covered quite a bit of Ground in depth there.

I mean, what's, I think, what's coming up for the future? Anything, you know, I mean, hey, what's, what's your kind of sense? Where do we go next? And yeah, anything, Anything cool or interesting that you've, you've got coming out in the near future that you want to mention?

Well, I'm involved in the process of.

With some others, acquiring a business which will, I think, you know, we'll use like we did the supermarket to do something fairly radically different. So that's my sort of thing. Can't say much more about it at this point in time, but that's a good step. It's all a continuation the same direction of actually just showing people there is a better way. And I think that's, that's the focus to keep on showing that there is a better way to do things that actually is better for everybody.

That's my, my key thing.

Really love it. I think that's, that's what I really love about your story is that you've actually tested the stuff that you're doing because there's, I think there's a lot of people who, you know, it's like, oh, I've done some coaching program or, you know, you know, I'm trained in this, in this thing and I'm going to come and drop it into your company. But actually I've never done it myself. But the fact that you've actually done it in a business, you've got the strip, you know, you've got the, you know, the T shirt, the record, the album, the, the mug, and it's like, yeah, whatever. You actually, yeah, I wouldn't try that because we tried that 10 years ago and. But hey, actually in your case it might work, so let's give it a go. So I think you're having that, that depth of authenticity behind what you do and the fact that you are a B corp yourself and yeah, I think we need more people who are walking the walk and talking to talk rather than like, yeah, you should go do this because it'll be good for you. But yeah, I've never done it myself.

Cool.

Hey, well, look, thank you for making some time to come and have a chat. If people, people want to get hold of you. Where can they, where can they find you?

Well, our website is www.inbusiness.org Nice. And the book is called Putting the Heart Back into Business. Which you can get on.

Well, you get on Amazon. What's interesting, I'm not a big fan of the whole Amazon Thing. But the one thing they do really well is, is if you order this book in New Zealand, do you order it on Amazon now? It'll be printed for you specifically. So it means. Yeah, because there's no way that booksellers in New Zealand are going to stock putting the Heart back into business. You know, it's just not going to happen.

So it is, it does mean that people can access it all around the world very easily.

So that's a, that's a positive out of the Amazon story which, you know.

Yeah.

Maybe fit a little bit more into the profit focused than the Heart focused on possibly.

I do reflect. So in a workshop or sort of talk that I give on B Corp, one of the stats that I reference is the average highest to lowest paid ratio in a B Corp is 7 to 1 and the market average is 144 to 1 in business as usual. And then I say to people, anyone will have a guess what Jeff Bezos's ratio is. And people are kind of like 200, 300. I'm like, no, 6,000 to 1. So if you want to get yourself a rocket in the shape of a, you need to be looking at 6,000 times more than your lowest paid employee. So.

He'S clearly doing all right. But yeah, look, Andrew, thank you so much. It's really great. And thank you to Tony to drop him a note afterwards and send him, send him the link. But you know, I think we're so aligned in, in how we see the world and how we're approaching trying to change people and it's, it's just good. I think it's always refreshing and good to connect with other people who are as crazy as each other. You know, when, you know, if we have these sort of conversations with most normal people walking on the street, they sort of go, okay, what these two guys aren't about, so. But it's also heartening and refreshing to see that you're getting busy and you're getting that cut through, getting that buy in because we need it now more than ever. So, yeah, thank you for all the work that you do.

Yeah. And thank you for inviting me and I really enjoyed sharing stories.

That's what it's all about, right mate? Well, you go and have a great day and we'll catch you soon.

Thanks a lot. Bye.

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