BONUS CONTENT - B Better Purpose Virtual Summit Day 1 - Organisational Purpose Panel

So yeah, while Carolina just sorts out her, her computer, we'll get the rest of you jumping in here. And I was saying Beth's gonna be the mc, but I reckon Brianne's gonna be the best one to jump into this one because you, you've done some investment recently and you're a B corp and you do a whole lot of cool stuff. So. Yeah, over to you.

Okay, well. What. Cool.

Yes. So we have done, we have to give you all some context. About two years ago or about a year.

We had a big chunk of investment come in and a large chunk of our shareholders, we did a lot of equity crowdfunding to fund the company in the early stages. So at one point we had about 350 shareholders and we had a lot of them exit and taken place by this bigger, more typical investor who happens to be very values lead. And so through our journey of sourcing investment, it was always really important. It was mission critical to me and I'm very unreasonable when it comes to these sorts of things. It was mission critical that whoever our investor was wouldn't change anything about the company in terms of sustainability. We call it regeneration or any of our values, social, environmental or otherwise. And we've spoken to many PE and VC funds and I don't speak glowingly of most of them because they will talk a big game at the beginning and say yes, yes, we're totally on board with all of this, I think it's great. But then push comes to shove, you see a contract and actually oh, that might impact profits or that costs a little bit too much, so we won't do that. So we partnered with our current investor because none of that was a concern because it genuinely values lead. It's more of a family office than a typical VC I suppose, but they donate a significant amount of money and time and effort to, to ocean protection themselves, which fits really nicely. And to them it was a no brainer that if you changed anything about a teak at all, you, in terms of values and sustainability and so on, you would be massively impacting the brand. So it was never even a conversation that came up with people who actually understand how these sort of things work. Purpose is the reason a teak is profitable. It simply comes down to that. Don't know if that answered the sort of question, Tim, but it's a start.

Starting point. It's a starting point. I mean, like I say, your Ethique is, is the B corp that I use. I, I talk about you almost every day because it's just You're a great example of a business that has really nailed the purpose and profit piece. You know, you're a globally successful business that has scaled horrendously massively. I remember when I first met you in your tiny little office in Waltham, which for those of you not in Christchurch, it's like it was probably the. Was it the right or the wrong side of the tracks in Waltham? Hard to say. It was. Probably was on the tracks versus now. You're in your new beautiful new office and you're. You've got a global bit, but you've held true to the purpose and the mission of removing plastic from the bathroom essentially since day one. And it's like I say, it's really hard to hate a teak. Like, you just look at everything you do and just go, you're just really good. I want to be like you when I grow up. So good.

Thank you.

Which maybe, maybe that will segue into Lawrence, because you work for Synlay, which a lot of people kind of go, sinlay is a B corp, but they sell milk and stuff and they have cows. How does that work? And you're publicly listed, like, oh my gosh, like, how did you even vaguely become a B corp? But you did do it, so maybe.

We hardly did, though.

Hardly. Hey, just is good enough. Like if you get over 80, you get over 80, you know, you're still a B corp. We take everyone over 80. Yeah. Talk to us a bit about your journey and what were some of the pressures that led to B Corp coming onto your radar?

Yeah. So the history behind the B Corp certification at Celine is that at near the 10th anniversary of the company, the founder, John Pineau, understood that sustainability was going to be vital for the next decades for the business. And so he asked to repurpose the company. So we changed the purpose to doing milk differently for a healthy world, integrated sustainability in our strategy. So we worked on a strategy for climate, for welfare, for water, for transparency, for circular economy. And we needed to find a way to beyond the environment, to comprehensively measure and demonstrate.

Air position and, you know, air progress versus air purpose. And the only certification that we could find that was suitable for that was B Corp, which is why we decided to go for B Corp certification. And we also aim to increase, you know, year on year, well, every three years, Air score. It was the only.

Certification that looked at social and environmental, you know, that had that holistic approach. It also enabled us to have that common language with some of our customers. So we've got customers like Danone, who are themselves B Corps. And so we kind of understand each other and they understand what we're trying to do and try to achieve.

And I personally very much like the legal aspects of B Corp because it kind of shows. Goes beyond words. Right? I mean if you have to actually go to an AGM and ask for shareholders to vote and for a change in constitution that says that, you know, you're balancing people, planet and profit and taking into account all your stakeholders, it sounds symbolic. Maybe it is, but it's probably still better than just saying, you know, at a conference. So yeah, that's our story with B Corp. Nice.

I have a question for you, Lawrence. Beth Riley speaking. Thanks for being here. How did or did when you went through the bia, the B impact assessment and you decided to become a B Corp, how did your organization embrace the process? Was there any hurdles that you had to get over? And did it change the culture or add to the culture to be more purpose centric?

Since, since. Well, I guess we, we had BU from the board and from our executive leadership team. So that made things easier. Right. And, and I, and the thing with sustainability is that people just want to do it.

Right?

I mean people are genuinely interested and motivated and engaged by this kind of stuff. That's what makes my job easy. Right. I mean you do get that traction.

But interestingly, since we've become a B Corp and since we've communicated internally widely about it, we have had instances of people come to us and say, well, we've got this project, we've got this waste issue, it's probably going to impact our B Corp. What can we do? So it's kind of front of mind for a lot of people. And now when they engage in a new project or think of a new product, they're, you know, we're more likely now to have questions around is this actually going to have an impact socially and environmentally that we wouldn't have thought of before.

Nice. I remember you talking on a B Corp event about how you had like these grizzly 60 year old engineers come to you and ask about, hey Lawrence. How we've really, we've struggled to find a replacement part for this machine. Whereas you know, five years ago you said they would have just bought a new machine. But, but it kind of, you got it, you've got it to that level of.

I think, I think yeah, you really have done something culturally there. From what I've heard you say before, like there is, there is a mic, but this is the thing like doing good is Contagious. People want to do good. It's just, it's, it's hard sometimes to do good in a traditional corporate environment. Which would probably lead us nicely to Angela, who is CEO of Consult Recruitment. Talk to us about the human side of things from, from your perspective. Like, are you seeing the great resignation? Is it a thing for you? Yeah. Is purpose a thing for employees?

Yeah.

Totally. Good to be here, guys. Thanks. On board, I think. Yeah, it's all, it's all about purpose at the moment. The last two years have been hard on everybody, but actually it's been a little bit of a gift as well and that it's given people the opportunity to sit back and reflect on purpose, perspective, what's important, how they want to live their lives, how they want to articulate the organization and actually what matters to them as they move forward. And so what we've seen is now candidates are sitting back and they're actually reflecting on what makes them tick. It's not good enough anymore just to work for an organization that pays a good salary. Because when you're in an environment that.

Gives you anxiety and a lack of safety, for want of a better word, what you yearn for is something where you are kind of emotionally aligned. And that's why I think personally, purpose is really, really important for all of our organisations. Being able to articulate as an organization what is really important, what matters to us as an organisation, how we see the world is exactly what candidates are looking for now. So I guess before we've had the great resignation, which we do have, which is why I look really tired, we've got this great resignation going on. But before that we've actually had the great reflection. How do I fit in here? Is it where I want to be? Is it how I see myself growing and developing in the future and my values aligned? And now candidates are going out and they're looking for organizations that are emotionally aligned with them so that they feel good about, about themselves and about where they're working. So it's, it's such a fascinating time to be in recruitment. Yeah, real blessing.

I think it's just an interesting time to be a human, full stop.

But yeah, I think this is the, I think for me this is the, the big upside to the pandemic. If there is, you know, an upside. Not discounting the, the challenges that people have been through and personal losses and, and what have you. But, you know, we only change when we're sick and tired of being sick and tired. And I think this, this has been A great pause moment where you've, you've maybe been off work for a bit or you've been told to go and work from home and the dog's been walked to within an inch of its life. And on that walk you've had some time to reflect and go, actually, do I even like what I'm doing? And I think this is what we're seeing and I think this is only going to escalate the.

Yeah, the, the, the, the, the rise of purpose here. We've got a question here. I'm sorry, you go, Angela.

No, I was going to say totally. Like, I've. In the last couple of years, I've seen people who are incredible at what they do. I'm thinking of a woman CFO that I know, and she, she literally Covid. Gave her the opportunity to step away from kind of that, that treadmill that we're on and actually reflect on things. And she, she gave up her job and she's, she's an artist now. And I think that's really cool, you know, So I think, yeah, it is, it is an opportunity.

Great quote on that. I'm just going to see if I can find it from Maslow again. He knew some stuff, that guy.

Where's the quote gone? It is. Here we go. A musician must make music. An artist must paint. A poet must write if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man must, can be, he must be. Apologies for the mansplaining, but I think the, the, the sentiment behind it is this is the thing and this is the whole point of purpose is your unique genius as an individual, your unique genius as an organization. Be authentic, connect to it and go and deploy it into the world.

Right. We've got a couple of questions from the floor, so let's maybe bring these in and see. Carolina was kind of, she started answering this one. But I think this is a really great question from Katie Vickers here. How do you manage businesses that say they are focused on purpose and sustainability when it comes to making business change? They, they often say they have operational needs to deal with first that will drive profit first. Then they can kind of focus on, on their purpose. So, yeah, thoughts from. From the room here. Maybe we'll go back, go back to Brianne because I think you've done this pretty successfully. Talk to us as from a CEO who's having to make those balance, you know, those balanced decisions between purpose and profit. What goes through your mind?

This comes back to be me personally being idealistic and stubborn about it. Is it's always our purpose first, end of story. And I appreciate that that is not possible in probably more conventional businesses. So take my point of view from that point of view. But to me, they're not mutually exclusive if.

It'S not. Often we come across an operational decision that would be problematic for our purpose because we have from day one been structured in a way that everything we do is about trying to give as much back to people and planet as possible while still growing and scaling a company that provides a waste or a lower waste alternative to a particularly horrific industry.

A good example would be. So we were offered about. It was about a $3 million deal for a first order for a big retailer in the usa, but they wanted us to pack every single product in a poly bag, so plastic bag for their warehousing process. And I understand why they want to do it, but I said flat no. And we turned down $3 million several years ago when that would have been probably half our revenue. But it wasn't a hard decision and it wasn't a hard decision for the entire company because our purpose is built throughout. So it would for a tek. It is easy to manage those decisions because the entire team is on board with the purpose. We understand what we're trying to do and there will be a time, I'm sure, when something will come up and it's a much harder decision. But thus far I'm pretty confident that we will make the right one based on the history. I don't have any advice because it's just always been our reality and it would be that much harder in a publicly listed company, for example.

Definitely. And this is from James, I think, a colleague of yours here, Angela. He sort of nailed it, really. If you, you know, you know, you're really living your purpose, if it sometimes costs you money. And it goes back to some of the comments I put in my presentation, like, you know, don't tell me what you're. What you're doing. You know, show me where you're spending your money and what are you actually doing. And I think, like I say, that's why you're a great example, Brianne, of, of living and breathing that. Who else wants to jump in on that one?

A comment as well, Tim? Am I muted?

Nope. We can hear you.

I read. I read as I was preparing for this two days. I've done a lot of reading recently and this was sort of. I'm going to put this to you, Carolina, because this, this kind of comes into your sphere as well. So if Someone promised you a million dollars tomorrow.

Or $10 million in five years, which would you choose? So as you know, in, in, you know, I'm in the United States, we are first and foremost capitalist society, right? So B Corp and the, the culture and environment here, we are hyper profit focused businesses, I think kind of different than down in New Zealand for sure. So while I hear Brianne making a very strong statement that I would love to replicate here among many, many businesses, it is a bit of a harder, a harder proposition because as you know, entrepreneurs, success is constantly measured on how quickly you can turn a profit, the profit you generate. Investors care about exit strategy, timeline, financial projections, and ultimately getting their money and then some back. So venture firms know that only about 1 in 10 investments, after vetting hundreds will actually realize returns. Right?

So the decision making has been pretty laser focused on that. But if only the math worked, you know, for the American economy, you can't benefit the environment and the social good and also be, be profitable all the time. Something's got to give. So it turns out that it doesn't translate into corporate social responsibility. It just can't.

So in fact it promotes the opposite. It promotes, you know, cutting jobs, offshoring, outsourcing, lower wages, lower quality goods. So from the money, as you say, Tim, following the money and impact investors and the sea change that I feel here and through my exposure with venture capital and equity groups that are representing impact investors who are thankfully becoming more and more like Brianne of the world.

I think that that question about when, you know, operationally it's going to cost you money, we're going to have more and more case studies where over time the ROI is going to be extremely, extremely exponentially steeper than it would be otherwise. And you know, right now, through all of this frenzy around frameworks and trying to drill down to the best one, the right one, the most effective one, what's going to boil up is a heightened awareness around how these operational decisions need to be aligned with ESG and us. I mean un SDG goals. So Carolina, can you address that from an investment perspective? I knew you could.

Well, I have a slide for it.

Look at that.

Yeah, no, basically, and this is 2019 data, which is in my opinion, it's probably. There is probably a new report about to be published. This is a McKinsey report. It's available for free on, online if you guys want to double check. There's a lot more data to it, but it's fascinating because again, like they made an interview with a bunch of Fortune 500 CEOs. And those are the results. Like 82% saying it's important to have a purpose. 72% saying purpose should receive more weight than profit. 62% saying the organizations have a purpose statement. But then it goes back to the question, how do you execute on that? And how do you really measure? Right? And only 42% of the organizations had purpose statements to drive impact. And that's kind of sad because I wish that number was higher. Hopefully in 2022 that number will be higher. But the reality is I'm a big believer that it's on the hands of the shareholders. And like, look at Calpers, look at the California system, look at all the pension funds, how far they have come. And this is less than a decade when they decided to unite and start changing and start asking for board seats. And, and, and then the beauty of it's the following. When you have a board seat in a big corporation, you have representation. And when you have representation, then you can basically tell the CEO to put people before profit. I mean, of course you're not going to take the company bankrupt, but you can really start talking about circularity. You can. I think you really have the power to start. Like, almost like I'm, I'm wrestling with certain CEOs to basically.

Tell them, like, you know, don't just. And also to tie. I guess the most important part is it's actually new, is tying compensation back to results. Not just profitability results, but sustainability results overall. And then that's where the ESG metrics, that's where the, I guess the, the fight for which metrics are you going to use? It's going, it happens. But, but also remember, different industries have to use different metrics because you can compare mining with a supermarket. You can compare a cloud company with a food supplier, you know, so. Or like craft foods, let's say, or InBev, which is huge. I used to work for them. You just can't. But again, the CEOs, I mean, I've known the CEO of InBev and he's highly committed with recycling the aluminum cans and highly committed with reducing water consumption. And those are wonderful things. And they publish those metrics. And there are other areas where they might not be doing that well. But if there's commitment from the CEO and the pressure is coming from the board and the investors, you will see results, you will see results a lot faster if it's just government. And that's, that's my personal opinion.

I know it goes country by country and I'M I'm vaguely aware that the UK public publicly traded companies have compensation directly tied to their sustainability regulations.

Do you know, I, I can't remember the name of the. You. I thought we were talking about this before, Carolina.

But if you're not remembering it, I have to look it up.

We're talking about the task force on.

Yes.

Yeah. I mean there is definitely increasing regulation. I mean maybe Lawrence, you can talk a bit about that as a, as a bigger company that's a B corp. And what reporting you're having to do. Sorry Carolina, you got one more thing?

Yeah, no, the task force is actually requesting it. But it's not mandatory, it's voluntary. But again, the beauty of it, normally when something's voluntary, it will be mandatory. And that goes back to my next slide which I guess Tim, you decide when you want to pull that out.

Here we go.

Here we go. Yeah, that's just a little example of the amount of investments out there.

Yeah.

And if you look at the global growth and sustainable investments is just consistently growing and that, that's only. This is the, these numbers are from Europe and Japan, but when you look at the American, if you add the United States, Africa and Latin America, that's where the 130 comes, comes to play. And the 130 is on the website of the TCFD, which is the framework that the SEC in United States just recently adopted. It's not again, it's not mandatory, it's adopted. So it's a suggestion. Normally that's the first step before it becomes regulation. And even when it becomes a regulation, they normally give like layers. Right. So $5 billion and above have to disclose two years from now and then they start tickling down to the smaller companies just like everything else related to regulation. So it's I, I find that to be good news. But at the same time, if you talk to someone that's a hardcore environmentalist, they will be like listen, we only have 10 years, it's 1.5 within the next 10 years. Otherwise we're not going to have this conversation. 10 years from now the world will be over overheated. So it's a tough, is a tough balancing act reality, especially when it comes to the E to the environmental metrics. But again, the more people that that do the try, I think the better that's conversation will be moving forward.

Right.

I can't post in comments so I can't answer. I don't know why. But Ivan, to answer your question about studies, at the rate that customers are becoming more Sustainably conscious. I do have some metrics on that I'm going to share tomorrow.

Thanks, Carolina.

Thank you.

Because I think that is what will change companies priorities. Yes. Millennials are changing companies priorities. In one one word, Millennials. Millennials are driving. They're driving strategy, they're driving consumer behavior, they're driving what's happening in hiring. And we're going to dig into that a little bit tomorrow. But they.

They are much more sustainable than their predecessor, Their, their previous generations.

There's. Yeah. On that. There's some Michael von Hirschberg here commenting. There's McKinsey, which is. This is the thing like when McKinsey is talking about purpose and doing good, like, you kind of know that we've gone. We've gone into the mainstream. There's a really good report I'll endeavor to post while we're doing some stuff here from. I think it was 2020 where they showed that. Yeah. That the pandemic had created a massive increase in conscious consumerism. So people at home, they're looking at all the cleaning products in their bathrooms. They're thinking, maybe I should be buying a teak instead of something else. Yeah. There's been some massive stuff and I agree that consumer pressure and employee pressure is going to play a massive role in this.

Yeah.

Lawrence, we were going to go to you on. Yeah. Sort of investment side of things and reporting. Yeah. How does. Because you're heavily involved with that as part of the sustainable. Well, you're the leader of the sustainability team at. That's in like. So, yeah. Talk to us about how you're seeing pressures and more reporting and coming to.

I would have said that. I mean, government pressure and investor pressure are definitely there and it's good that they're there. And they probably could do much more. I think that it's really the customers that are driving it in their case and in general, I think that the customers really have that power.

And it triggers a direct response. Right. From companies. So I mean, to answer Katie's question on what to say when a company says, oh, well, there are operational. We need to do profit first before we can focus on sustainability stuff. I think that today you need to be.

Well, pretty blunt.

I'm going to be offensive if I say that. But not to see that customers are just required. Requiring that we have a multinational customer just saying that sustainability is an equality. If it's not there, they just won't buy from you. It's as simple as that. So it's not a question of not doing it. And the difficult thing is obviously tying and demonstrating that your sustainability performance is what keeps them buying from you.

Because it's not always as straightforward, but it definitely contributes and they tell you. And once again, not all customers are the same. I used to have a boss who said that we have the customers that we merit and the customers that we want instantly are those that have the same sustainability agendas. And Brianne demonstrated the same thing with that example. She chose not to have that customer that was asking plastic wraps around whatever it was you said Brianne. But you choose the customers that you want to go with and in our case they're the ones that are systems you focused and that drives the continuous improvement thing.

Sorry, regulations, it's too boring.

That's all good. That's a. Yeah.

Does regulation play a part, do you think? I mean, you sort of said briefly, you know, that pressure, external pressures, it does pulls people up to a higher.

Level potentially, of course, but it's just a threshold. Right. Regulation is always going to be that bottom threshold that keeps going up. And I'm not saying it shouldn't be there. It's really important that it's there. And in New Zealand, I mean, I'm French by the way, and I kind of have a sense that New Zealand is really better at doing that job. I mean, they've been very good with dairy. You know, we've had climate, water, biodiversity regulations, all of that and it's great.

But it remains a threshold. Right. And the consumers and air customers will be definitely one step ahead of that.

Nice. I think Brianne will bring you back in there because like I say, you're a very customer centric organization. I was one of your initial investees as a customer way back in 2017 at the Social Enterprise World Forum. Feels like literally four lifetimes ago. I'm sure it feels the same for you, but yeah, like customer centricity is massive for you. And like I say, you just have raving fans. So talk to us about how that's worked for you.

We do and that's great. We have raving fans and we have lots and lots of following from people who have the environmental bent. Right. Who are interested in the environment and solving social issues, which is fabulous because those are our early adopters and that's whenever we enter a new market or a new retailer or whatever, that is the kind of person we target. But I'm really not interested in that group solely. I want a mass audience because the way we are going to change the world and truly eradicate single use plastics is by converting everyone to understand A, alternatives and B, most importantly, why you want to get rid of it. So the key is to create a product that is as good as, if not better than, their typical liquids or whatever it is they're looking to replace. And at the heart of it, that is what goes to making a happy customer. There's loads and loads of studies out there that will tell you that 86% of people say that a company's environmental and sustainability social policies will factor in their purchasing decisions. And yes, that's great. But when push comes to shove, very few people will spend money on the product that is only good for the environment and it's not good for them. So at the end of the day, the way we ensure that we have happy customers is making sure our products rock, our customer service is awesome, and that they don't feel like they're giving anything up, but they are still contributing to this massive machine. That's awesome. That is, you know, we're not only a product that is better than the alternative they have to use. And the vast majority of people, certainly in the markets we operate, use some kind of soap or shampoo product every day. But they're also supporting a company that operates as ethically and sustainably and socially as possible. And that comes, that gives them such a good feeling that they come back for more. So then you are converting people. And we're often referred to as a gateway bar or a gateway business because people will make this one decision and they're like, cool, well, I'm using shampoo bars now. I've got rid of plastic on one side. Where else can I can I move and what else can I look to do better? And we find that with a lot of our education outreach, people will go and find where else they can implement better choices. And I think part of our responsibility is educating people outside our industry. And then the other side is I'm very, very particular that we don't make the customer feel like this is their fault. This is brand's fault, this is business. Business has created almost every problem we face right now, which is why it is businesses obligations to fix it. I have people argue with me all the time that the sole purpose of a business is to make profit. And it's just old school nonsense thinking business created these problems, business needs to solve it. But unfortunately they will only do so in the majority of the time if consumers make them do so. So the more consumers that use their voice and say, even if they don't necessarily mean it, with every dollar they spend. But if they go to a brand and say, hey, I really like what you're doing but I can't support you because of this reason, then those brands are going to change. And that's how, that's a big part of what I feel my responsibility is, is to educate and push consumers to go and demand better other brands as well and prove that it is totally possible to be 100 purpose need and very profitable on the other side.

Yeah, it's not mutually exclusive and I think that's exactly what I was saying in my previous presentation is the old school profit at all cost just, it does not work. It leads to some really, really bad outcomes for everyone. There's a really interesting guy, I think he's Dr. Tim Casser, he's a psychologist, I think who's done a whole lot of research on human motivation and what do we actually need? And the evidence is clear that just chasing a life of profit and trinkets and things does not lead to long term happiness or satisfaction on any level. Yet the entire system that we've built is around, you know, the person who dies with the most toys wins. And, and it's like, like I say, you know, we were saying to Carolina before we kicked off the whole thing this morning, it's like we're, we're in a transition phase and I think you as, as organizations on here, you are at the front, I mean particularly like I say, Brianne, B number two in New Zealand, like you are at the front, front lines of this, this transition. And so yeah, kudos to you Angela. Yeah. What are your thoughts on all of this? And also we should, we should, for full transparency, we've just been helping Angela and the consult crew on their B Corp journey. So recruitment is definitely an area. We've got the team at Trinity just mentioned that they're on, on the path to B Corp and we've also got another company we've just helped who were in the, who are in the recruitment area. But yeah, talk to us about why B Corp for you and yeah, any other comments you've got on, on stuff that we've just been talking about, about customers and.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a couple of things just on what's been set up until now. I think there's, you know, we focus a lot on return to shareholder and profitability and I think, I think with any good change, whether it's, you know, women getting the vote or, you know, DNI becoming a really important thing for us all, it's actually the power of Little and often inconsistent. So we're not going to get a step to change just because we wake up one morning and every, every business sees the value in it. It's everybody actually coming together and all providing their own kind of effort to make the change, whether it's as an employee of an organization or being a shareholder. I mean I think it's fascinating the shareholder activism that's starting to go on now as a way for affecting this kind of change. So I just wanted to get that in. And then the other thing I wanted to say is.

Brianne is an awesome example of someone who is successfully running an organization with purpose at its forefront. So, so what that means is if we really want to affect change, we've got to make sure our leaders are capable of it. Because you know, listening to Brianne, I want to come and work for you now, you know, so. And because you passionately believe in what you're doing and that is so infectious. So as we are looking at our organizations and certainly as we're recruiting for organizations that we're working with, we've got to make sure the leadership is able to articulate these things in a really coherent way that connects with the audience, whether it's a shareholder, a future employee or whoever it is. So to talk about what you asked me about now, Tim, so good we are on the B Corp journey. For us it's been, it's been a wonderful thing. I think, you know, most of you have dealt with recruitment agencies. Most of them say that they're amazing and we do this and we did it as an, as an organization consult's not very good at selling ourselves. We're quite a humble organization. We don't like to kind of talk ourselves up but we do believe passionately about a lot of things. Looking after people, putting them in organisations where they feel aligned is really important to us. Always has been since 2008. And actually a bunch of our team are really focused around environmental side of things. We do a lot of things that we provide travel allowances to our people so that they can get public transport. We were a four day work week organization now so we've always done kind of stuff in the background but for me bcorp when I came across it was a wonderful way for us to be able to authentically articulate. Articulate actually what's really important to us as a business and it's not about this recruiter marketing blag that's kind of a little bit like ticking a box which is what we see in some organizations. Authenticity is so important to me. You know, being who you are and being able to turn up for work and not pretending that you're something you're not, I think is really important. Otherwise that kind of leads to exhaustion. So, so the B Corp process has actually, actually been a wonderful team building opportunity. We have brought together a bunch of our people internally that are really passionate about, about BCorp and I didn't even know until we started talking about it. I didn't know that they really existed within our organization. But we, we do have a bunch of beekeepers as, as we've stolen from Tim. And yeah, it's been a great, it's been a great team building opportunity. It's also really importantly, I think for all of our organizations. It's allowed our people to.

Without having to be a leader or manager. So they're able to stand up and they're, they're able to articulate things that are really, really important and their peers can actually see them as more than just, you know, Bob who does recruitment or Janet who sits in accounts or, or whatever it is. And I think that is really, really important for all of our people as well.

Nice. I think based on the number of people that I meet who say to me, oh, do you know Brianne? I would you be able to introduce me to her? Because I'd love to work for her. You could probably be Brianne's like recruitment person who just walks around with her and goes, yeah, give quickly, give me a cv. I'll have a quick look at it.

They're like falling over themselves literally.

I don't know how Brianne does a recruit because the number of people that I know. Do you know Brian? I go, yeah. They go, oh, can you make an introduction? I'd love to work for her one day.

Well, it's case in point, right, Because I'm pretty sure no one asked Brianne how much money the business made last year.

No, they just want to come and work for ethic. Yeah. And no doubt Senle, I'm sure you're getting, I mean that's an interesting question for Senle. Have you had people seek you out specifically because of B Corp yet and, and having like a clearly articulated purpose.

As an employee, you mean?

Yeah, yeah.

Well the, the, the insight we have is so we've got a graduate program called Future Leaders and so there's a whole recruitment process for that with jury and stuff. And.

It'S clear that a lot, the vast majority of young students wanting to join that graduate program are joining Stly because of air sustainability commitments.

But I'd say that more, even more interestingly. So we've got a new CEO.

Who has joined us from, from Morocco. And, and he did say when that he joined Simli because of that system commitment as well. And that to me has got probably as, as much, if not more importance to have a CEO from another dairy company.

Joining us for that reason. Well, among, among other things, of course. But, and, and one last, last signal that I found really interesting is CEO Leon Clement.

Is now chairman of Raglan. So another Raglan coconut company.

Yeah, exactly. Nice.

And I just find it great. Right, so it's, it's a guy who has worked at Fonterra all his life. The big corporate, the big machine, joined Stanley, got, got Stanley converted, well, certified to B Corp and then has joined Raglan. And that to me is just delightful.

Nice. And I think that there's a lady, Shannon, she used to work for Toitu Envirocare and they were a B corp and she now works at Kathmandu. And I believe she was the first person in New Zealand to inter transfer between two B Corps. And that kind of blew my mind when that, that happened. It's like, oh my word, like you're the first person to move between B Corps in New Zealand because we now have more than Brianne and Equal Protect and sort of me and one other B Corp back in 2018, whatever it was. And I think this is the thing, it's just like, it's really as, as we get more and more purpose driven companies, it's. I call it the self sourcing chocolate cake of goodness. It just keeps. You just want to go. Once you've got that bug inside you, you want to just go and work for, for more companies doing more good and take and build on those learnings. That's super, super cool. Beth, any reflections for you? I've got. There was a question from the crew here, but yeah, have you got any quick reflections from you, Beth, in terms of what we've been talking about? We've got about eight minutes left, so if you got any burning questions for the panelists, get them in the comments now.

I don't have any burning. I mean I'm, I'm, I'm dying to like get into the comments.

Like it's killing me, but it's good, it's making me stay present for a change. Right. I just, I just can't wait to get to tomorrow because.

You know, this whole idea that profit and purpose need to be separate, I, I think that what Is that what we're going to talk about tomorrow? And what, you know, once it's on your radar and you start to think differently, you're going to realize that profit happens because of purpose. Purpose focused companies are going to far outpace for profit companies that have always been the, you know, offshoring purpose at any cost and they just aren't going to survive companies. And, and another thing I wanted to say, I'm stealing my own thunder from tomorrow about this whole thing about, about, you know, recruitment. And you mentioned you have a leadership development or a graduate development program. Lawrence. There are actually universities here in the States that are incenting their graduates to go to work for B Corps and will repay their student loans if they do. NYU is one of them. Columbia is another New York City. And there are more and more that are developing their sustainability educational track and tying it together with incentives for the next generation to go and do the work that all of academia is, is, you know, doing the research about. So that's really, really exciting and encouraging.

For me to, to see and hear. I have three kids in college, so, you know, fingers crossed that's.

I did not know that. That is super, super cool. I'm gonna, I'm gonna tag Elsamari Bota from the UC MBA program and suggest that because I co. Teach the impact, creating impact led enterprises at Ucmba, I think that's something we need to put on the table.

And I will be posting, I'll be posting the research and where I'm getting all these fabulous facts tomorrow. That's a little teaser for everybody.

Nice. Yeah, yeah, you got it. You've got to come back for tomorrow. We had, so we had one. There was one question which I think Brianne has kind of touched on a little bit and maybe Angela a little bit, but maybe just we can close off this question. So in what ways do you have you or can you engage with, encourage and influence other individuals and businesses to steer towards being driven by purpose over profit? I think Brianne, you, you clearly articulated some thoughts around that. Yeah. Anyone else want to, want to jump? And Angeli sort of mentioned a little bit about, you know, the leadership within organizations, but. Yeah. Anyone else want to jump in on that one or have some further thoughts on that?

I'm going to do about an hour on it tomorrow, guys. I mean, most of my presentation tomorrow is about the ROI of B Corp.

I have, you know, I have tons of metrics around resiliency, around.

Attraction and retention of talent, the generational things that are happening.

You know, and and how to articulate purpose in a way that is directly tied to profit. It's, you know, I think that Brianne said it best today though. I mean it really is top down. If, if executive leadership and, and you know, the boards on our public companies aren't in engaged, there's not a lot you can do. So you know, it has to be top down, bottom up. It has to be a push and a pull strategy. You know, consumers are going to push companies to improve. Companies are going to pull the right, you know, the right suppliers, the right supply chain, the right clients, the right.

The right partners that are aligned with their purpose. But they have to, you know, they have to stake a claim and they have to proclaim what their purpose is and get buy in from all the stakeholders.

Nice. Carolina.

You know, I'll say, like when you mentioned roi, like the conversation we had about sri, right, which, which is going to become mainstream either you like it or not, because the social impact does count. And like you said, the investors, the consumers, everybody is demanding. Like you see a whole class of students graduating and asking questions in the interview. Do you have an ESG strategy? Like sometimes I get calls from, from folks saying, hey, can we publish this? Because I'm getting those questions. HR say we need to say we have a ESG strategy. What can we put on a website just to prove that we, we have an ESG strategy. And a lot of the tech companies are feeling the heat now, not just in emissions, but also improving emissions because sometimes the way they incorporate they have the servers located in countries where the energy that's powering the service is actually coal. And now they have to prove that they're not putting their service in those countries or at least within those regions in the countries. There's so much going on. It's amazing. And anyhow, it's very inspiring. Thank you for having me and nice to meet you all.

Well, and that sums up some of the feedback we've had. So Jessica saying this is the most inspiring leadership panel she's seen in the long time. Amazing work. And Katie, yeah, epic session. Thank you for all your insights and thoughts. I think I agree there is an exciting future ahead with these amazing people we've got here. Ivan, amazing session. Thank you all for this. It's been a pleasure. Apologies for the tech challenges. Hopefully, hopefully tomorrow will all be good. And Claudia, great job in inspiring us. So thank you all. Feedback generally seems to be really good. We have got one last question that's come in, which is this, when it comes to people I'd like to hear your thoughts on working with indigenous cultures worldwide to help tackle some of the environmental issues. We've got a couple of minutes left. Who wants to have a go at that fairly large in depth complex question?

Well, I would say there's a company in Brazil called Natura. They're. They're huge. I mean they've been. They do an excellent job working with indigenous cultures. If so, you might want to look at their case study. And they're being committed to sustainability way longer, long before it was fashionable to be committed to sustainability. Basically the company, it's not a B Corp, I think, but, but it was created and incorporated in a way that's super similar to B Corp. So they, they give it.

They are certainly were they. They were I think the biggest B Corp in the world.

Yeah, because they operate, they operate like a B corp before B Corp existed. So that's why it makes so. And they do a great job of indigenous populations. But again, I, I don't think they are nearly as. I mean they're excellent but. But they're just a little drip in the bucket. There are other companies that should be doing the same. So there's a lot of work to be done on that end.

The only thing I can add is that in the B impact assessment there are a lot of points to be claimed for working with indigenous people and underserved communities, if you know the underemployed, if you will. So there's, there's, you know, it is a metric for sure.

The one thing I would add for us when it comes to working with indigenous communities is kind well to one. I think one of the biggest ways business could have a real impact is actually sorting out their supply chains. Because it's all well and good. Everyone focuses on the marketable stuff. But not a lot of businesses talk about where they actually source their ingredients. So we work directly with indigenous communities and cooperatives around the world to source ingredients. We pay them a well above market price and we let them decide what, you know, it's their money. We don't go in and. And you'd be surprised how many companies do go in and say, oh, we want you to build this, we want you to do this because we want it to look good for our marketing. So one of the best ways businesses can work, I almost want to say for indigenous communities, is to pay them a fair price for a product they produce. Give them support if they want it, but they know what you know, there's no need to rock in and input you know, pile on our values and what we think is important. And I think that's what a lot of companies do because it looks good on paper. There's a very small piece of a complicated topic indeed.

And there's definitely a movement here from B Lab regionally to connect more with sort of Teo Maori principles and the overlap between indigenous beliefs and structures around long term thinking and you know, people and planet First. In many ways, what B Corp and purpose driven entities is we're kind of reinventing the wheel. And like I said in my talk, we're getting back to first principles of I'm the Cooper, I'm the Fletcher, I'm the, I'm the shoemaker in the village and how am I contributing and am I doing that in a manner? Look, I think an easy way to think about organizational purpose is imagine you are a person at a house party. Are you a person who's helping tidy up and serving drinks to other people or are you the idiot trashing the place and stealing other people's drinks and eating the food and not. Not paying any money, you know, towards. It's like a really simple. Just don't be, don't be a WhatsApp. Yeah. Cool. We are at, well, 1101 New Zealand time, whatever time it is for. For Beth and Carolina. Welcome to the world of international panels and trying to arrange people for times.

Sum up the last two hours in.

Three words. Maybe it's four, I'm not sure. Don't be. What's it?

Don't be. What's it?

That's my key takeaway.

Nice. Any final thoughts from any of the panelists before we close to tomorrow?

I hope everyone can join. This has been amazing. Thank you so much to our panelists and Everybody joining on LinkedIn Live.

So yeah, same, same times globally. Tomorrow we have a similar event. Hopefully Streamyard will be turning up for us tomorrow morning and we're going really in depth on B Corp and we're talking to some current B Corp corps about their journey to certification. So if you're really interested in the B Corp stuff, tomorrow is going to be a good day for you. But yeah, any, any final thoughts, comments from the panelists? If not, we'll, we'll wrap it up here.

Nothing.

Thank you.

Awesome. You lot just, you lot just keep doing what, what you are doing. Yeah. Thank you so much to our panelists. Round of applause. Thank you so much. We will just remove you from the the stream one by one. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. And yeah, Beth, so a bit of a teaser for tomorrow. Like I said, we're going all in on B Corp. You've got all the stats, all the evidence. It's a slam dunk.

All the things. Yep. I've got. I've got slides, I've got metrics, I've got links, I've got, you know, I got. I've got it all.

He's gonna be wowed with the amount of B Corp data that we will throw at you. Excellent. So, yeah. Well, that's. So that's a wrap from us today. We certainly had a bit of fun. I hope you enjoyed today recordings. We will endeavor to get any. I think most of the links that people were after. We've. I've managed to get them in the comments. But yeah, if you're catching the end of this, we will get copies of the video up and we'll be messaging everyone who registered for the event and all that kind of stuff. So you will not miss out. But, yeah, same time, same place tomorrow. Be there.

Thank you.

See you tomorrow. That is the end of the broadcast.