Tim Jones (founder of Grow Good) explains why he certified his business as a B Corporation. He recounts a ~10-year career in medical device sales where he witnessed profiteering and safety compromises (including a lawsuit after surgical deaths), then worked in commercial property and saw similar profit-maximizing behaviours. After a personal awakening following the Canterbury earthquakes and the birth of his daughter, he founded Grow Good in late 2015 with an explicit purpose focus and pursued B Corp certification (approximately early 2016). The video argues that B Corp offers a community and a framework to align business with purpose and long-term societal good.
Questions this video answers
About 10 years.
In late 2015 (speaker: 'in late 2015, me founding my own business').
Approximately early 2016 (speaker: 'my business certified as a B Corp eventually, I think it was like early 2016').
He references a lawsuit after 'around about eight people died in surgery' from a product his company had sold.
Chapters
Hey Kia ora Tim here, the Grow Good guy. And today just want to talk to you about B corporations or B Corp, and why my business Grow Good is one, and why I'm such a passionate believer in the movement and what it's doing for the world. And I guess to explain that, I want to just explain a bit about my background, my history and what led me to discover B Corp.
I guess like a lot of people, I fell into a career, I had a trajectory that I thought I wanted to be on, which didn't work out for me back in the day. And I sort of fell into the world of medical sales. So a friend of mine was working for company Johnson and Johnson and he just sort of said, look, I think you'd be a good fit for the company. Come in and get, give it a go, have an interview and see where you go. So I passed the interviews and that started a 10 year career for me in the world of medical device sales. And it was great. A lot of opportunities, lots of travel.
My job was to go into the operating theater on a daily basis, support surgeries, make sure that the outcomes that the patients were getting and the surgeons and the surgical staff and the hospitals make sure the outcomes were the best that they could be. So it was quite a satisfying job. But what really got to me over time was the fact that the industry I was working in, although it sort of does care still and did care about patients coming out in a better state, there were significant points and significant events over my career and significant events that are still going on in the industry that basically showed that the system actually fundamentally cared more about maximizing profit and in particular shareholder return than patient safety.
One of the first instances was I was working for a Swiss American multinational firm and.
Fairly early on in my career and you know, essentially there was a lawsuit put up against the company because I think it was around about eight people died in surgery from a product that the company I was working for had sold. And essentially, you know, the evidence against them was essentially showing that the company knowingly launched the product too soon or was promoting the use of the product too soon before it had been fully cleared by the regulatory authorities. Because essentially they wanted to maintain market share or gain market share with a new product. And so patient outcomes were compromised for profit. But at the time, you know, you're in the middle of the machine, I was a bit younger, hadn't been through the sort of purpose awakening that I've been through and you just kind of, yeah, it kind of gets, get spun and you kind of go, okay, well, that's just acceptable risk. I guess it's kind of like the old, you know, in the, in the motor industry, if we have so many airbags that kill so many people by accident, well, that's an acceptable level of risk. So that kind of got, you know, it's really easy to try and put that into the recess of your mind and you kind of go back to your day to day work, and so that's cool. But then a second sort of crisis of conscience occurred where essentially all the major medical device firms were subpoenaed by the Department of Justice in the United States. And what would, what had been going on, and I guess again I knew that this was happening, was that a large number of the surgical community were essentially being paid by the companies in return for their support of utilizing products, but also for them essentially going and giving a presentation or a talk at a meeting overseas where they would say how amazing this product was. And they'd maybe also get some funding to do a research paper which the company would utilize to promote their products. And the surgeon and their team kind of gets the kudos for having the paper. And this was like widespread. This was literally every major orthopaedic, you know, orthopaedics is what I was in. Every major orthopaedic company was subpoenaed by the Department of Justice and basically had to show what they'd been doing. And they all got a bit of a slap on the wrist and, you know, don't do it again. And most of the companies really did pull back that activity. But there's always a workaround, there's always a way that you can, you can make something like that happen. So again, that was kind of like the second thing that just, it kind of gnawed away at me a little bit, but I still hadn't had that full consciousness awakening yet to realize that this, this really wasn't cool. And yeah, it was really like the third step when I got to see the true economics of healthcare in New Zealand and got to understand how again, the community that is supposed to be all about fixing people actually predominantly cares about maximizing their profit and their financial return.
Look, I'm not saying that the community doesn't look to fix people. It certainly does, but there isn't. There was a significant element of how could they profiteer off the back of them fixing a patient. And this final discovery happened or occurred to me just after, you know, my wife and I had been through the Canterbury earthquake sequence. In Christchurch just after the birth of our daughter and a near death experience and the either the birth or death of, you know, the birth of a child or the death of a close relative or someone close to you. Those are two very well published, I guess, mechanisms in which your subconscious is fully challenged. And this for me was the beginning of this wake up process. And I literally came home from work one lunchtime and just said, I can't do this anymore. I've seen too much of how this industry works and it doesn't fit with my value system. I kind of had this awakening and so I quit and my wife and I had moved up to Auckland from Christchurch post earthquake. We managed to sell our house the day before one of the big earthquakes in Christchurch. So we were super lucky and managed to get up to Auckland for a couple of years, had our daughter and I said, well look, I want to get out of medical, we want to move back to Christchurch and I want to look at getting into a management or a leadership role. And so we did that and I ended up getting into a different industry. This time involved sort of around property, commercial property for the firm, surveyors and engineers. And I kind of thought that the economics of healthcare were pretty screwed up. And then you get to see the economics of property and you see how again almost all the people involved in the world of property, all they really care about is maximizing their financial return at the expense of other people, community, society and the environment. And this really, really like just sent, I don't know, like chills down my spine. I was abject horror, you know, I just was thinking, have I got 40 more years of working time? Which was a give or take what I might have, might have had left at the time where I just, I've kind of seen this stuff, I know what the externalities of all these businesses are. I can't handle that. I can't, I can't live with that. What do I do? And it was that kind of having seen it in two different industries, like initially I thought maybe it's just medical, maybe it's just where, where, where it's happening. But seeing it in another industry and seeing other industries associated with the world of property, where again it was just clear that just maximizing profit, maximizing shareholder return was, was basically all that almost everyone cared about, it just, yeah, really threw me. And so I just started doing some research on it and through that journey I discovered bcor. And because for a minute when I was looking at all this stuff and I was looking at the World through this lens. And I think a big part of it was for me having a child, I started to look at the world and sort of go, well, what, what am I doing that's creating a better or worse world for this little thing that in, you know, 18 years time is going to be taking over in the world in terms of her place in the world. What am I doing? What am I creating in terms of that world? And yes, I discovered B Core and I went on a bit of a journey which ended up in, in late 2015, me founding my own business. And there was, there was, it was never going to be anything other than something around purpose, impact and a B core because I just realized that that that was my purpose, that's what I could contribute to the world. And I guess what really drives me is this whole concept of if you seeing stuff, if you're seeing stuff in the world that you don't like, you can sit there and accept it, you can sit there and tolerate it. But when it gets to the point where you realize that it's not cool, you have to change, you have to get out of that and you have to show what the world can be and what people can be. And yes, so it's part of that. That's why I, I basically had to certify as a B Corp. It was so awesome to find a community of over 2,000 businesses around the world. Businesses, individuals, organizations that were thinking the same as me. And that was the really big thing.
Once you kind of see this stuff, once you realize that the way business is operating is not cool, it is not a framework that is going to create long term prosperity, sustainability, a long term environment for future generations, you feel very alone.
And yeah, finding this community of other businesses, other organizations, other individuals that were like, no, no, no, no, you've seen it, you know that this is the truth. But you know, but kind of welcome there is this community, we recognize that and we're working on the solutions. And so yeah, my business certified as a B Corp eventually, I think it was like early 2016. So it's coming up to my second year as a B Corps. And yeah, for me it's just, it encapsulates everything that a business has to be in this day and age. And that's why I'm such a passionate, I guess proponent or passionate advocate of BCOR and super grateful to be a B Corps ambassador in New Zealand to kind of spread that word. So yeah, for me B Corp is just a mechanism. It's a framework for me to be able to truly express the values and the belief systems that I hold to be true and that I think are going to help co create a better world and help me, I guess just check and make sure that I'm being the best that I can be in my business so that I can keep being the change and keep iterating on that and hopefully. Well, not hopefully. I know as a community we are changing the world to be a better place. And it's just amazing. I look back on where I used to be and how really unfulfilled actually I was and how it was all about just chasing money as a mechanism of success, whereas now chasing impact, chasing purpose and trying to build on that and make the world a better place. It's such a fulfilling place to be. So yeah, that's, that's my candid and transparent.
Journey as to why I chose to be a B Corps. And like I'd love to hear your story. If you are a B Corps or if you're on that journey to purpose. I'd love to hear. Yeah, what it was that led you to be a B Corps or what's leading you to think about being a B Corps and obviously grow good is all about helping people connect to people purpose. So if you're kind of in that zone where I was, where you've started to see things for what they really are and you want to help to get out, then please just do connect with me and I'd love to be a part of your journey to freedom. Thanks. See you soon.
