BONUS CONTENT - B Better Purpose Virtual Summit Day 2 - B Corp Workshop

Hello. Well, it looks like we're live. Fingers crossed we last longer than 10 seconds, which is what happened to the live stream yesterday. Let's see what happens. Good morning or good evening, Beth. How is it going?

Good afternoon here on the east coast of the afternoon.

Yes, it's all very confusing, this international time zone stuff, as we've been working out over the last few months, as we've been hanging out and doing some B Corp stuff.

So thoughts on yesterday, day one of the Be Better Purpose virtual summit. What do you reckon?

I thought it was fantastic. I thought we had a lot of great interaction. I thought we got some really excellent questions and comments in the chat. During both your presentation as well as the panel.

We. There were a lot of people that were chomping on the bit to get ahead to the good stuff today about what it actually means to become a B Corp.

So, you know, while I tried to curb the enthusiasm to get people to come back today, it was, it was heartening to see that people seem to get the idea of why purpose is important, how you can inject purpose, and how you can, you know, maximize on the goals of sustainability within your organization by injecting and promoting purposes. So I'm excited today to bring the framework to life and talk about the roi, which everybody seemed to ask about yesterday. So if you all are tuning in to hear about the ROI of purpose and B Corp, you've come to the right place.

Definitely. Yeah, I think. I agree. I think it was interesting how, yeah, the focus was sort of on purpose, but we pretty quickly got to B Corp as being a really useful tool when it comes to measuring and reporting your purpose. And, yeah, I guess that was also. We had quite a few b. Well, we had. Were they all B Corps on the panel? Almost all B Corps or almost B Corps, apart from Carolina. Yeah. So I think that was. That was. That was probably part of it. So. Yeah. So today we are getting stuck into. Part one of today is going to be Beth talking us through just basically the slam dunk argument as to if you're not a B Corp, why you really should be a B Corp. And then after that, we will be moving into our panel event where we have some aspiring B Corps and current B Corps who have either been through the journey to certification or currently on the journey to certification to just, yeah. Help you answer any of the sort of the questions that you might have about why you should go on the journey. So let's kick into it. Beth, over to you.

Thank you very, very much, Tim. And before we begin, I think everybody probably knows either Tim or I, but how we got together is kind of a funny story. Tim and I are in the same mastermind group of entrepreneurs and, you know, brilliant business minds. And when I mentioned that I was trying to niche down my consultancy to be focused on purpose, Tim pointed to the little sign behind him. Tim, if you want to point to that sign, I guess we can't see you, can we? There's a little sign right there. Have you ever heard of B Corp? Like, no. I thought I was pretty smart. I thought, you know, I've been around the block a few times, run some businesses. I've had a startup, I led. I led sales teams and business development and Fortune 50 companies, but I never heard of B Corp. So I'm like, what the hell is going on and how come I've never heard of this? I need to know about this now. So Tim very kindly raised his hand and decided to tell me everything he knows about B Corp down in New Zealand. And I'm like, well, who's doing this in North America? So he's like, well, why don't you do it in North America? And I thought, that's a great idea. I think I will try to learn as much as I can and spread the B Corp love. And so the rest is history. Tim is the foremost authority down in New Zealand and points, I don't know if that's east or west of. I just don't know. I'm in New York.

Go either way, really.

Yeah, you can go either way. It's down there.

So I am, you know, very, very honored to that. He took me under his wing and I can't, I won't profess to know even really a hundredth of what he has in his brain about B Corp and purpose. But I have taken up the mantle here in North America and I can't be more excited to be part of Grow Good and leading the charge in this part of the world. So today, for the next hour or so, we're going to talk about B Corpse. And yesterday Tim talked about purpose, which is sort of the reason behind the B Corp movement. So I'm going to go ahead and kick it off with my little deck here about.

To be or not to be the what, when and how of B Corp certification. So the challenge around B Corp, you know, why does it exist? Getting certified as a B Corp is hard. The B Corp impact assessment is legit. So I want to dig in a little bit about where it came from, what it's for. Why it's so effective.

And how if you decide this is a framework for you, you know, full transparency, we here at Grow Good can help you. And we have some people on our panel today who we have helped through this process and I'm very, very keen to hear their, about their journeys. So you can, we can sort of bring what I'm about to present to you to life. So with that, I will kick it off. So what is a B Corp Certified B Corps are businesses that seek to balance purpose and profit. If you were here yesterday, we talked a lot about purpose and how purpose benefits your organization, why it's important to, you know, for recruiting, for retention, for just, you know, everything to do with profitable, successful businesses.

Rather than solely focusing on profit maximization, B Corps consider the impact of their ops on workers, customers, suppliers, community and the environment. So you're going to hear about that a lot over the next hour or so because those are the pillars of the framework and because of the B Corp. Frame and B Lab, which I'm going to talk about in a moment, it's really led to, from more of just a business framework and how to set up your business to a global movement. The B Corp movement is a community of companies that have made commitments beyond profitability. So I'm going to talk a lot about that.

In fact, I think in this post pandemic world, we can all agree that community has become.

Something that's just imperative to have in business and you know, as human beings that are in, you know, trying to make a difference in the world. So let's move into the origins of B Corp. Where did it come from? And why do I have a picture of a shoe company? I mean, a shoe on the screen. So, and one is an apparel company that was started in the early 90s. I would say it was a very successful apparel company, mostly basketball. The guy who started it.

His name is J. Cohen Gilbert.

In 2001, his sister was involved in the Twin Towers attack. She survived, but it shook him. Shortly thereafter, one of his business partners was killed. And both of those events made him ponder, what in the world am I doing with my life? You know, we've all had these instances, I call them, you know, these transitional experiences that make us question, you know, kind of what's it all about, right? So once he went through that, he decided that he needed to do something more. So he sold the basketball apparel company and he wanted to start something different to address what he viewed was shareholder primacy. And that's kind of a common theme in B Lab is addressing shareholder primacy when the stock price dominates the measure of success of an enterprise at the cost of everything else. So here in the states, that's sort of a basic premise of capitalism. Here, shareholder primacy is what everything is built on. You know, public companies, it's all about stakeholder value.

Which leads to toxic short, short termism. That is, we only look at business a quarter of a time and how each, each quarter is adding to the value of our. Our stake in the business.

So in 2006, he got together with some partners and they developed B Lab. B Lab is a nonprofit organization that deigned to bring businesses together as a force for good. The new organization was to allow companies to apply for a designation that would publicly hold them accountable for the ways they benefited their employees, communities, the environment, and their customers beyond stakeholders. So the B Corp was born. The B stands for benefit.

So that is the birth of B Lab. So what is the difference between B Lab and B Corp? So B Lab is the nonprofit organization, the, the oversight organization that is driving this effort, driving this community. B Lab started in. I know I said 2006 on the other, but it was actually officially chartered in 2007. So B Lab exists to change the culture and practice of business and it's transforming the global economy to benefit all people, not just stakeholders, not just profit. Okay. A leader in economic systems change. A global network of B Labs creates the standards, policies and tools for business. And they're the ones who certify B Corps. So sometimes it can be confusing when you hear people talk about B Lab, B Corps, Benefit Corps. I'm not going to get into Benefit Corps today, but we should probably do a session about Benefit Corps versus B Corpse in the US this is more is trickier. But today we're going to focus on B Corp. Why should you do it? What does it mean? What are the benefits? How do you go about becoming a B Corp and all of the ins and outs. And I will just pause here for a moment.

And I can't look at the comments at the same time I'm talking, but I do want to just pause and ask everybody watching for any comments so far About B Lab vs B Corp I can address before I move on.

Tim, I'd love to have your input here at any moment. You can jump in as well.

You're muted.

You're muted.

The.

The theme for 2022. Yeah, no, it's all crystal clear so far. We've got no questions so far. But if anyone has got throughout, throughout this. Any questions I'm moderating the comments and questions, so chuck them in the, in the comments on the live stream and we'll get them through to Beth.

Okay, good. I like to have interaction.

But in, in the absence of questions, I'm going to keep on trucking. Okay, cool. So here we go. So I'm just gonna. Overall, what is the benefit of B Corp? This is just. I'm going to get into details, but I just wanted to kind of recap what we talked about yesterday with purpose. People want to work for, buy from companies that they, they can trust. At the core of this is transparency, trust and alignment with values. So they want to get purpose at work in your organization, see an increase in team performance, team engagement, profitability, etc. Purpose leads to profit and I'm going to talk more about that as we go. For businesses that are already doing good, the B Corp framework is really the perfect tool to explore and record your positive contribution across governance, workers, environment, social impact, performance. You know, it's one thing to put beautiful pages up on your website talking about your mission, your vision, your sustainability goals and objectives and your performance, but it's quite another to pull back the curtain and show evidence of how you're performing against those goals. And that's what the B Corp framework provides. So not only is it the right thing to do, but it makes economic sense as well. So research shows that performance against these goals leads to higher profit. And I'm going to show you some metrics around that, which I know a lot of people are asking about yesterday.

So are we having a B court moment?

Of course I say a resounding yes. I've never, I've never.

Witness something that has not been on my radar, which got on my radar. And I know there's a psychological aspect to this, but no matter where I go or what I do, I see B Corp everywhere. There were B Corps that put the B Corp emblem on their ads during the soup, the American super bowl, which just blew my mind that it's now become so much more mainstream than I, I could have imagined.

So there are now pushing more than 1500. It's. I can't keep track of these numbers and the B lab tries to update them as they go, but we're pushing 1500 B Corps in the US.

My little slide advanced thing is a B Corp. What does that say? 25. Increase 20 to 21. Sorry, I don't have this, this deck printed and some of the, the, the steam pipe graphics are covering what's on the screen. So 4000 plus global B corpse. And, and again it's got to be pushing 5,000 by now every month. It just compounds.

But if you haven't been asked, especially if you're in food and beverage or health and beauty, if you haven't been asked about B Corp, if you're not a B corp, when you're going to become a B corp or you know what's going on with your B corp story, you will soon in those particular industries. It's almost becoming. If you're not a B corp, we won't, we don't want to hear anything about you.

You know that, that sounds extreme, but I keep hearing it from, from people that are attending conferences and meetings and are kind of embarrassed like I was six months ago when I hadn't heard of the B Corp framework. There are leading executives in large health and beauty and food and beverage who are getting mad that they didn't know about this when they're called out at meetings. So it, we are definitely in the, in the, the beginning of a B Corp wave. You know, I talk about it, I'm a frustrated surfer, longboard surfer. And you know in surfing when you're sitting out waiting for the, the sets to come in and you spend a lot of time waiting and you finally see a set that you might be able to paddle into. We are just now beginning to paddle into A wave and we haven't even begun to reach the crust. I love my metaphors you guys. You know, you have to forgive me.

So that's all great, but what is the impact? So B corpse walk the walk when it comes to making positive impact. So b corps have 2x. They're twice as likely to be offsetting their greenhouse gas emissions.

That seems low, but it's pretty significant.

B Corps is 63%. They hire more workers from historically underserved populations. The pay ratios in B Corps are 7 to 1 versus 144 to 1 for a typical, you know, traditional non B corp sort of, of company. And that, that's significant and we'll, we'll get into that a little bit more as we go. So these metrics are being tracked and data is, is being compiled by the big consultancies, especially now.

More and more it's almost too big to get to get our arms around. So we tried to pick out the most impactful numbers to put into this deck to, to kind of.

Prove the point. I'm just looking at the, we're currently at 4878. Love it as of today. So yeah just shy of 5,000.

And B Corps are resilient. And this is particularly important now that we're in, you know, whatever you want to call this thing. We're in the great resignation transformation moment that we're having in the global workforce thanks to the pandemic. 52% of B Corps hired more employees in 2020. During a pandemic, 47% of B Corps experienced employee growth of more than 15% in 2020. Two thirds of B Corp Saw the increase in revenue in 2020 during the pandemic.

I'm just going to be quiet while that sinks in for a moment. I'm always shocked at that. It's good stuff.

So let's talk more about ROI.

Resiliency. Certified B Corps have demonstrated 90 to 99% survival rate versus nearly 70% average for small businesses in the U.S. so nearly 100% of B Corps survive versus 70% of small businesses in the United States. Brand ID, transparency and rigor of the BIA fosters trust. And we're going to get into what the BIA is. It's the B Impact assessment. So we've all heard of trustpilot, the Better Business Bureau in the United States. This framework is, is a global standard that really shows, shows how companies are walking the walk separates the good companies. This is kind of a snarky, a snarky bullet for me to include considering I was a global head of marketing for a. For a tech company at one time. But it does separate the good, good, quote unquote companies from those with good marketing departments. Not only is the B. Is the B Corp moniker great, a great marketing asset. It actually has meat to it. It has teeth to it. We're going to talk a lot about that today. Network and partnerships companies like Patagonia, Etsy, Warby, Parker and thousands in 130 industries in more than 70 countries.

Are part of the B Corp community. According to the CEO of these companies, one of the leading benefits is being in this network, creating partnerships, coming together around a common framework that everyone is involved in. It's a living, breathing community that has verifiable high value cross pollinization, pollination. Pollination.

They work together. That's what I'm trying to say. For the benefit of each other. And then this last slide, which you might have to help me with, Tim, because I'm covered up a lot of it. Capital attraction. I talked a little bit about this yesterday. In a recent international survey, 67% of respondents said that they prefer to work for socially responsible companies. And 55% are willing to pay a premium. So this was what we discussed yesterday about kind of the pull and the push. You know, companies at the highest levels of leadership need to set the standard for what kind of company they want to be. Do they want to have purpose? So are they going to attract people based on, are they going to pull people in, pull in clients, pull in employees, pull in community based on the standards that they set that are beyond profit? And are we as consumers going to push companies to be better?

So as the purchase power of the largest group of Millennials grows, the value of the B Corp designation is only expected to increase. Millennials are driving. They are going to be driving business into the next generation. And this is all going to, you know, in 20 years time. And that's being, you know, extremely conservative. B Corp is just going to be de rigor. Everyone is going to be a B Corp if they want to be in business or deploy a framework that is like B Corp.

And then I wanted this to have its own slide about the workforce. Workforce attraction, retention, promotion of human capital is the one thing across the board that is keeping CEOs up at night.

And I've done my own primary research. I've scoured the Internet for research on what keeps leadership up, not only in companies, but in countries.

So engaged employees, and Tim really nailed this yesterday, are three and a half times more likely than their unengaged counterparts who invest personal time in innovation and company problem solving. All of us who work in organizations or have worked in organizations, or have had to work with people.

Know that no people that are are phoning it in versus the ones who are driving activity. Bias for action is kind of the hot term right now. If you aren't engaged with a company that is aligned with your values, you're highly likely to be phoning it in, not engaging, not being, not, not really caring. And there is evidence after evidence after evidence that this is the thing that has driven the great resignation. People don't feel engaged. So what can CEOs do to make their employees feel engaged? They have to talk about purpose.

So B Corps attract talent. By 2025, millennials will represent 75% of the workforce. And studies show that mission plays a significant role in how Millennials choose employers. I don't think this is news to us, and I touched on this yesterday, that this is.

This metric is driving not only how companies are structuring to attract this talent, but how schools are addressing nurturing that sensibility within their student body for the next in the next in the Next graduating class that are going to be entering the workforce. So schools are creating incentives to encourage graduates to work for mission driven companies. Yale School of Management, NYU Stern and Columbia.

Have set up loan forgiveness programs for students who choose to work for B Corps. And this is just going to exponentially expand because it's going to be a private public partnership where companies who are B Corps are going to say to the Yales and the Stanfords and the Harvards and the, you know, all the big universities in the world, you know, have your students come work for us because we're getting it right, we're going to address their engagement and we're going to serve a bigger purpose than just shareholder primacy.

So let's get down to brass tacks. Hopefully that nailed a lot of ROI for everyone. I really wanted to drive this home so that the rest of our discussion.

You know, you just want to, you just want to get to the, to the good stuff. Like, okay, I'm, I'm sold. Let's become a B Corp. The basic, basic criteria for B Corp certification for profit businesses of any size, any industry or geography, any legal structure in operation for more than a year. Tim's an llc. I believe I'm an llc. S Corps, B Corps.

Benefit Corps. That is any any legal structure all over the world can certify.

And here's just some of the logos that is so Denone's a global brand. Patagonia, obviously, Allbirds, Warby Parker, the Myers Briggs Company, all different kinds. Service companies, consulting companies, food and beverage, obviously apparel. Any industry.

Can certify.

So how do you certify?

I talked a little bit about the B impact assessment. It is a series of questions.

Tim, I did log in to the bia. If we have some time at the end, I can go through a bit of it.

So it measures your company against governance, workers, community, environment and your customer model. I'm going to get into that a little bit more. But it consists of a series of questions that assess your positive social and environmental environmental impact of your business. So you have to get 80 out of 200.

Points. And then once you're verified by a B lab assessor, you can pay your fee and become a B Corp. And it's good for three years. So every three years you have to recertify and they keep on iterating the assessment to keep up with the latest and greatest, you know, global regs, mostly based on the UN Sustainability development goals.

So beyond operational questions, there are also even more points around an impact business model or IBM. I'M going to talk a little bit about that as well. IBMs measure impact.

Beyond the basics, where you create positive benefits for the benefit of stakeholders, where you're going out of your way. We're going to talk about some examples of what that might look like.

So this is just a snapshot of what the B impact assessment looks like. You would click on these and you can go into them and see the questions. This is a snapshot of the platform. So governance, workers, community environment, customers, and a disclosure questionnaire, which I don't know what that is, but we can talk about that later.

So here are the five pillars we talked about. So under community, we got job creation, you know, how do you, how many people work for you, how many, you know, where do they work, how much diversity do you have, what kind of diversity is in your supply chain, and so on. So that's community environment inputs and outputs. So this would be about carbon, primarily recycling, things like that. Workers compensation, professional development.

You know, how much does your, does your frontline workers, how much do your contractors make, how much does your executive suite make? Professional development, how do you develop? Do you provide.

Tuition reimbursement and do you have, you know, employee stock option program or is it a, is it a co op, for instance?

Governance, ethics and transparency. So this is where your, your D, E and I stuff comes in.

Mission look. Is that what that says? I can't even read that. Look. Yeah, Mission look. Mission lock. Help me out, Tim.

I'm muted. Sorry. Mission. Mission look. So.

This is definitely worth raising. Increasingly, it's in most US states and in most jurisdictions around the world now there is a legal requirement for you to, if you want to certify as a B corporation, you have to update your constitution or your articles of incorporation or other corporate governing document to, to include a stakeholder clause and a purpose clause which basically gives the CEO and the board of a company.

A right to say, look, whilst we intend to make a profit, and particularly in the us where you kind of have to make increased profit each quarter, it gives you the right as the governor, you know, as part of that leadership team or governance team, to say, look, we aim to make a profit, but we're not going to do damage to our stakeholders, such as our community, the planet, our workers next month. So we're not going to just lay off 50 staff next month so that we can keep our profits up. It gives, it gives you. Yeah, partially. It lets you avoid making those decisions and it's about putting the lens on you in being focused on the good that you're trying to do rather than just solely focusing on that profit maximization. So that's kind of the main intent behind it, but also baking in the B Corp into the company because quite often it's not uncommon that, you know, a CEO might have it as a personal project that they want to certify the company and then they. CEOs typically leave companies at a pretty high rate, you know, three years maybe. And it means that rather than it being a pet project of the CEO, it kind of bakes it into the organization. So.

Right. And that, you know, that. Thank you. I, I was going to talk about that a little bit more.

But yeah, that, that, that's incredibly important and that's sort of where the rubber. Rubber meets the road, where a lot of companies will talk about this, where they won't sacrifice.

Profit or purpose for profit, but they actually have to legally declare it. And it's not as onerous as it sounds, but it is serious and it is a requirement to become B Corp certified.

Oh, okay. I see you posting all the links over there.

Put some links to the B impact assessment and the legal requirement and stuff like that as you're talking about it.

Yep.

Okay. So I alluded to kind of the guiding principles around B Lab and where this comes from, but B Lab has, has linked up with the UN to continue to iterate on these goals so that they are working together.

And when, when you review any of the, the UN SDGs, they talk a lot about B Lab and the B Corp framework as being, you know, incredibly beneficial and, you know, globally accepted as a standard.

So let's talk about beyond B Corp. So business as usual is.

Hopefully not where people on this call are operating. You probably have some corporate social responsibility.

Principles and practices that, that are part of your company. And that's great. That's awesome. So if you want to take it to the next level and become a B Corp, we've talked a little bit about what that looks like and I'm, I'm going to talk more about how you go about doing that after this. The ultimate goal of B Lab and of this, this whole movement in general is sort of referred to as, you know, a purpose horizon. And the ultimate goal is to move from, you know, business as usual to becoming regenerative. And a regenerative business refers to businesses that actually leave the world a better place than they found it. So you're adding to humankind or the environment or, you know, society in some way. And that is, you know, what this whole Thing is about we want to give and we don't want to take.

So let's talk about if you're ready for B Corp. And what, you know, what we do at Grow Good is we help companies become B Corps.

And I'm gonna, you know, kind of toot Tim's horn for him and he who can jump in at any time. But Tim is the foremost authority down in New Zealand. He was one of the first in the top, in the first 10B Corps, I believe. Do we have that right, Tim?

Number eight.

Yeah.

And you know, as global expert, as global experts, we help you along the way of, of discovering the good you're doing, rewarding you for the good you're doing, discovering ways you can do more good. And I do want to kind of emphasize that the B Impact assessment and becoming a B Corp is all about.

Building on the good that you are already doing, not punishing you for the good you're not doing. So in the US our college entrance exams are kind of around. You don't get penalized for the things you get wrong, you get points for the things you get right. So that's sort of important here. So, so if you are, you know, you may not have the right kind of insulation in your building, but if you're, if you're recycling the water you're using, it sort of offsets each other. That's a very basic example.

But back to Tim. Tim's been doing this work since 2015. He really is absolutely second to none. And I'm learning a ton from him and have learned a ton from him in these last several months that I'm able to sort of carry forward here to North America as we, you know, kind of drink from the fire hose of companies that want to become B Corps.

So here is the Grow Good roadmap and how we operate and help our clients become B Corps. So we help our clients understand the requirements and engage the team. And this is a key, key part of, of becoming a B Corp. So if you decide that you, this is for you, you want to do it, become a B Corp.

That'S great. Especially, you know, if you're a sole proprietor, it's a slam dunk. But let's say that you have 100, a thousand, 10,000 employees or more, it's going to take more people to get on board because they're going to have to cooperate, buy in and, you know, provide information that we're going to need for the B Impact assessment. So the more excitement and, you know, sort of creating that Groundswell around the effort is really, really important in making sure that it goes smoothly and quickly. And.

I have to say that Tim is the master.

You know, motivational dude to, to inspire, you know, teams to become excited about purpose and the B Corp framework. So that's the first step. So we, we kick off the effort, we assign.

What we call, you know, a king bee or a queen bee and then they assign beekeepers and we start the bia. So it's, it's a process that we, that's done. We can either come to you on site, we can absolutely do it remotely like we've been doing for the past two and a half years.

But it's a series of questions we take you through step by step. We identify the areas that you're doing really well in. You know, check, check, check. We identify areas that maybe you need to up level in and we have, we have tools to help you do that. So if you don't have a mission statement or you don't have a code of ethics or you don't have a policy around, DE and I, we have tools available to, to provide that you can, you can use to develop those assets. So once you reach the 80 out of 200 thresholds, you have to get to 80 points.

You submit to B Lab, pay your fee to B Lab and they verify the certification and you become a B corp and then that's three quarters of, of the work. And after that you embed the B Corp and purpose into your organization. So then it becomes part of the fabric of who you are as an organization. And there are a multitude of ways that you can, you know, use that new purpose, that new designation, the new certification to your, your advantage, you know, to build marketing assets around, to build, you know, employee attraction assets around. There are many, many ways to, you know, spread the B corp love and we can help you with that and with our multitude of partners that we have that are B Corps as well, you'll be part of the, part of the family and, and it's all good from there. So this is just more information I wanted to put in the deck specifically about what, what it looks like. We don't have to go through this in detail, but we are going to make this deck available to everyone after the session. But it's here for you. You know, we meet with you, we provide one on one assistance.

Specific advice. You know, Tim especially has been through this hundreds of times. He can zero in on the low hanging fruit if you will for your organization very quickly so that we can Maximize the time and get you to a point where, you know, you're not quite at 80, so we've got to do some work to get you there or, you know, you've blown it out and you're already at 150 and it's like, you know, a slam dunk. So it's sort of like we've taken the test a bunch of times. We know, we know the answers and, you know, we can help educate you around the areas that, you know, you might be able to find more points and become that regenerative, you know, the. On that purpose horizon to become the regenerative business, which is the ultimate goal.

There is the beautiful B Corp coveted.

Logo that you only get when you become a B corp and they're very, very strict at B Lab. You can get it while you're going through the bias. You can, you can get something that, once you register and you start the process, it says, in process, Tim, help me out, you get a provisional logo.

So, yeah, in. Only in the us and it's, it's actually for startup businesses. You can have B Corp pending. So if you haven't been trading for that 12 months period, because you need to have that 12 month.

Of data to be able to be audited on. Yeah. So if you, if you're a startup, you can do the assessment, you can pay your fee and you have B Corp pending at the end of your 12 month of, or first 12 months in business, you can, you then, yeah, have to have your. So long as you then meet the. The criteria, still you get the full badge. Yeah, but, yeah, until you've got the verification. We just helped a company in the UK and they're really keen to talk about the journey. And I said, look, you know, you can totally talk about how you're on the journey to being a B Corp, but please do not use the logo to say that, you know, to say that you are. We've just had a question. Maybe we'll just, we'll fill this one from Christine liggins. She says 80 out of 200 seems a low pass mark, which I, I get this a lot. People sort of go, well, it's not even like 100. Surely would be the pass mark. The thing to bear in mind, Christine, most companies, so most limited companies who are just doing their thing, who take the assessment for the first time, they will score 50 points out of 200. So to even get to 80, you are significantly outperforming your peers as a business. And there's quite a few B Corps that sneak in with an 80.1 or an 80.2, sure. It's like, you know, just is good enough. You're still a B Corp. You're still outperforming your peers and the market. There is also within the B Corp community a thing called the best for the world. And every year the highest scoring B Corps are recognized. So 80 is, it's kind of like any regulation. It's a threshold. It's a minimum threshold of achievement. But certainly as people get into the community there is a little bit of healthy competition for people to want to be better, which is why we make use of the phrase be better and increase their score over time. But yet to achieve 80 is no mean feat. So yeah.

Back to you.

Well, I'm about to. This is my last slide. So.

Just a couple of quotes from the folks at Patagonia, the former CEO. The B Corp movement is one of the most important of our lifetime. Built on the simple fact that business impacts and serves more than just shareholders. Has an equal responsibility to the community and the planet. And then more recently, Vincent Stanley's director, they have a director of philosophy at Patagonia which I think is fabulous. The B Corp cert and or incorporation gives us the common tools we need to assess the positive and negative impacts of our practices, make and measure improvements and share what we learn. And I can't stress enough that the transparency here is what is the game changer between companies that have really great sustainability goals. And you might hear about big companies that are all about sustainability and they're, they live and breathe. The UN SDGs and their ESG departments are huge.

But there's nowhere you can go to actually see, I mean short of, of a public company filing their sec, you know, regulation on their carbon capture. There's nothing that gets to a common practice and a common measure of all the things that make up a great purpose fueled company that is, you know, living what they're saying on their marketing pages like B Corp does.

So I hope that that was beneficial to folks who want to hear more about roi. We can circle back and, and talk more about any other. You know, yesterday we got questions around operational. How do you justify.

Prioritizing becoming a B Corp with operational challenges? And you know what I would say to that is that sounds like short termism.

You know, I used an analogy yesterday. Do you want to make a million dollars tomorrow or $10 million in a year?

So.

You know, that's the real question and I see that, that question from Christine is B Corp just for companies or also for social enterprises and charities. It's for for profit companies. So they can be social enterprises as long as they're for profit. There are a few carve outs for non profits. I didn't really want to get into that too heavily here. But Tim, maybe you can weigh in on the for profits that are carved out.

Yep. I mean.

It'S a great question, Christine. Yeah. So fundamentally the B corp movement was built around the principle that the it's for profit businesses that typically have been causing some of the drama in society, whereas the, the 100 for purpose businesses or organizations, I. E. Typically charities have been the ones that are trying to solve the, the challenges in the world.

That so. Yeah. So social enterprises I guess globally social enterprises. For those of you who are a bit unsure maybe what a social enterprise is, the rough definition of a social enterprise is kind of you're a hybrid between a charity and a business. So you have a mission lock like a charity. So you have a cause or some social and or environmental problem that you're, you're aiming to solve through a business model. You trade for your revenue. So rather than being reliant on donations or philanthropy, you're, you're trading so you have some kind of business. But the differentiator between a, a full for profit business and a and a social enterprise is the majority of your profit. Typically 50+ needs to be demonstrated to be being invested back into solving that problem. Now socially, it is quite a hard.

Benchmark to reach. Um, there's also some data out there that there's maybe quite a few social enterprises that actually are more charity than, than trading. So there's, it's a bit of a, it's a bit of a gray area I feel. But essentially if you're a social enterprise, if you're trading for impacts and revenue, you can totally be a B Corp. Charities, they have been a bit of a gray area. We. So I was hanging out with Michelle Sharp when she was CEO of Kilmarnock Enterprises based here in Christchurch and we, I believe I'm correct in saying that we managed to talk our way through the different.

What'S called standards committees. So there was a regional standards committee for the B impact assessment in Australia, New Zealand, there's a regional Asia Pacific one and then there is a global standards committee. And because Kilmartic Enterprises was a char. Was a business with charitable status, I believe it's is the, is the, the structure that they had. We were basically able to, to provide the evidence to say look, we think Kilmarnock should be able to certify as a B corp even though it's technically a charity. And so I believe I'm correct in saying we were the first non for profit in the world to be able to certify as a B corp. So we kind of, yeah created that precedent to say look, if you're a charity but you are more, you know, I think the threshold is sort of 80, 90% plus of your revenue is through trading then you, you could, you can certainly ask about going through the, the process to be a B corp, but you have to have a commercial like in, in like the charitable states or the charitable structures around the world vary quite differently. But in, in this region essentially if you're a business with a charitable status, you have, you have to have, you have to be able to prove that you're trading for your. Yeah. For, for revenue as opposed to being reliant on donations. Because again like I say, the whole differentiated for B corp is this is for helping the for profit world get more purpose driven. So I mean it's an interesting question to pose. Maybe we can pose this to the panel at some point later. My kind of thoughts for the world is having worked in the non not for profit world and the for profit world, I kind of for me personally feel that for profit enterprises that are solving problems but are doing it for revenue is, is the way forward. Because charities typically struggle. The thing they always struggle for is money and you know, structure and you know, running more like a business. And business sometimes, well, frequently doesn't have the heart and soul of a not for profit. And you kind of put the two together, you get B corps and they're a pretty cool type of entity that's doing some good stuff around the world. So.

Hopefully that answers your question.

Christine.

What'S copia Kai PI?

So that's like well done basically in Mali. So there we go, look. We're a truly global holistic show today. We're learning people, learning everything.

Cool. Any. Yeah. So any, anything else from you, Beth? We, we got, I think we've answered all the questions that are here so far. So you've clearly done a good job at letting people know what's what and who's who when it comes to comes to B Corp.

Christine's happy with our answer.

That's all I've got. I, I see that you've put in the chat how people can find out even more about how to become a B corp and how to engage with, grow good and you know, once in Our next hour we're going to hear from some folks who have worked with us to do their B impact assessment. You know, we're on kind of a push. We have this Be Better 100 campaign going on now in the States and, and you know, I've kicked it off in the States a couple of months ago. You know, we want to Certify the first 100B Corps as soon as possible and I, I kind of adjusted the number from 100 to a thousand because.

It, it just seems we're having a moment and.

You know, we'd be delighted to work with as many folks as we can to spread the B Corp love.

Definitely. I mean, like I say, I, maybe we do live in a bit of a bubble, but I certainly look at my LinkedIn feed and almost, I don't know, multiple times a day I'm seeing congratulations to so and so certified B Corp. Or, or we're proud to announce that we're now a certified bit. It is frighteningly hard in a good way to keep up with the data points around how many B corps there are, who's certified and the metrics and stats around why you should be doing this stuff. It's insane. It's just like overwhelming data points and it's like, it's really hard for us to keep like the deck that Beth was going through earlier, we need to update it almost on a weekly basis. It's, it's insane how quickly this movement is growing. And I think as you mentioned, if you're in the sort of the FMCG fast moving consumer goods sector, like if you're not a B corp within the next six months, you know, good luck. I think Serena, who's going be joining us on a panel, she's got a bit of experience in the marketing branding sector. Be really interesting to see. See what? Or hear what, what she's seeing out there.

As well. Yep, yeah, of course. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean this thing is a, we've, we've got a tiger by the tail here with B Corp. And you know, I've been involved in this movement since, well, I came across it first off in about 2014, 2015, when there were two B Corps in New Zealand and there was just over maybe a thousand globally. Probably not. Maybe not even that. It would have been just over a thousand globally.

You know, just looking at who we've been working with, we've, we've worked with over 50 companies that grow good to help them navigate the B Corp assessment. About 35 of them have been in the last three to four months. So, you know this, this thing is just kicking off. It's. Yeah, be there or be square. For sure.

Well, I know that I, I said that I had logged into.

B Lab, but I did the whole.

Rearranging of the tabs. Or do you want to log in?

Yeah, yeah, that's actually, that's a good idea. Yeah, I will, I'll log in. I've got a. Just to show people real quick before we kick off with the panel event in about six minutes. Let me sign in. Please hold callers.

Come on.

It's me. I've got a demo account here which we show people. Right, Share.

Share screen.

We will share a Chrome tab and we will share that one. Cool. Hopefully you can all see. Yeah, it looks like you can. I can see it on, on the screen. So this is what B B impact assessment looks like. So when you create an account, this is basically where you'll be slightly different when you first log in because it will ask you to essentially go through a lot of these types of questions. So we won't, probably won't do Russia because I think they can't. I think they put a hold on all B Corps coming through in Russia at the minute whilst stuff's going on there. So let's. Where can we find a country? Let's find New Zealand. There we go. So yeah, when you first log into the assessment you'll need to say where you, where you are in the world, what region you're in. So we are in Canterbury. You then put in your company size. So I don't know what he. 50 to 249. One thing to note is, is if you are a large and complex organization, you will typically have to go and talk to B Lab to begin with. Large. Some sign. Really, really large organizations. I'll put, put a link in, in the comments for this. So you know who you are. Yeah. But essentially if you're operating in multiple countries with multiple subsidiaries with. I think it's over. I can't remember the employee number off top of my head but with a certain number of employees and I think it's over 100 million US dollar revenue like there, there are the really big companies. You will have to go and talk to B Lab before you can start certifying because you could just overwhelm the system with, with a, with a, with a business of that magnitude and sometimes there are complexities with. There could be regions that your business is operating in where you may not actually be able to be a B Corp yet. So yeah, there's some complexities and some things around really, really big companies. But yeah. So yeah, so you go through, you choose what, what sector you're in. It's relatively self explanatory. We do have like, I have like a, a Word document which has the full list of all the options that are available. So if you're stuck, let me know and we can help you try and work out what, what the most appropriate, it's called, your track selection is. So I don't know, what do we feel like being today? Let's be an edu. Well we are an education company. So okay, let's kind of go with who we are really. Although we don't have 50 employees yet, we're working on that. So the B impact assessment, you click on the, on the, the tab here on the left hand side. B impact assessment. And literally, I mean what we do with people and what you can do as an organization is you pretty much start at question one and you just work your way through.

So the questions look like a mixture of answers where you have like a radio button so you can tick one answer which would be the most appropriate one. Other questions you can tick multiple boxes and typically the more boxes you're ticking, the higher score you'll get on that question.

A really, really useful tool for people.

Is this, this bookmark feature. So if you're going through the assessment for the first time by yourself and you just, you know, you're not sure what the answer to that question is or I mean certainly when we're working with people and taking them through the assessment at the deeper level we use, make extensive use of the bookmark feature because you can come over here and go to reports and go to bookmark report. So this, this kind of becomes your rolling to do list and once you've actioned it you just unbookmarket and away you go. So that's a really, really top tip for people going through the assessment. But yes, this is what the assessment looks like. It's worth also just noting that there is no one assessment. So, so depending on your track selection, so depending on what country you're in, what sector you're in, you will have a slightly different assessment. So for example, we'll have Jasmine joining us from the Co Op bank shortly. There is a specific track selection for the banking and finance industry that has specific questions about the types of facilities and lending and how does a bank operate in terms of what services it provides. Whereas if you're a manufacturing business or a. Yeah a company selling a food and beverage products, you will have specific questions around your cost of goods sold and where are you, where are you getting that from and stuff like that. So, yeah, but that's what the assessment looks like. More than happy to do. If people are interested, we could, I'm sure we could put together a, a quick session running people through some, some high level stuff on the assessment as a separate, separate session, but yeah.