E090 - Paul Hargreaves from Cotswold Fayre

Quick word from our sponsor, 51tocarbonzero.com. If you're a CFO or board member staring down CSRD or Scope 3 and thinking, where do we even start? We at Sustainability Solved would point you to 51tocarbonzero.com. They turn complex, fragmented emissions data into something simple and give boards clear, audit-ready visibility on exactly where the reduction opportunities are. It's not another reporting tool that adds work. It's built so the data holds up when your auditor asks the hard questions. If that's a conversation worth having, get in touch with 51tocarbonzero.com, or just drop me a message and I'll point you in the right direction. Right, back to the episode.

Welcome back to the Green Element Podcast, where we feature business leaders and innovators transforming their operations to be more environmentally and socially sustainable. I'm your host, Will Richardson, and I can't wait to meet our guest today and help you on your journey of sustainability. Paul, welcome to the Green Element Podcast. Thank you so much for joining today. Um, you're from Cotswold Fare. Could you tell us a bit more about who Cotswold Fare are and, yeah, a bit more about the company?

Yeah, pleasure to be here, Will. So Cotswold Fare is a wholesaler of artisan food and drink, so we buy lots of nice food and drink products from producers all over, mainly the UK, a few things come in from outside, and we sell those products to mainly independent retailers in the UK, so there'd be farm shops, delis, food halls, convenience stores, department stores. We do a bit with the larger grocers, but generally it's independent retailers. So it's— we're the middle person between lots and lots and lots of small producers and lots and lots and lots of small retailers, which are really coming into their own at the moment because they're a vital part of the community. So it's been really good to see some of them doing really well in the current pandemic, supplying lots of old people with provisions that they couldn't get themselves at the moment.

Yeah, of course, because not everyone can buy online, so you do really need to go to your local grocer in order to be able to get stuff.

So some of them have actually started for the first time ever home delivery boxes, set up phone numbers, turned their cafes into packing areas because obviously the cafes are shut. And it's been really good actually to see the adaptability of some of these places kind of coming to the fore, really.

A friend of mine runs a zero waste shop in Fife, and they don't have things online, but you can now email them and ask them for a PDF version of their shopping list. You can go through it and then they'll deliver it to you. It's brilliant. It's kind of like the pseudo Online stroke not online.

Yeah, same. There's a number of customers who've done this halfway house, which is probably an absolute logistical nightmare for them, but they're, you know, they know it's a good thing to do, so they're cracking on. In fact, it's been interesting to see huge amounts of adaptability at one end, and then some places just seem to have, oh, okay, well, we'll shut then. They don't need to shut their food shops, but But some of our shops have actually shut, just almost put it in the too difficult box and packed up and gone home. Yeah, so it's extraordinary really.

I guess, yeah, I guess it's at times like this you do learn. I guess we should probably talk about the fact that this is during the coronavirus. It's the 3rd of April that we're recording this because this podcast will probably go out in about 6 weeks' time and hopefully And we'll have forgotten about the coronavirus. Well, it's not going to happen, is it?

We won't have forgotten about it. Hopefully some things may have changed by then. I really hope so.

So you bring small produce and smaller producers than the niche boutique smaller shops, and you are the middleman for that. So you deliver throughout the whole of the UK?

Yes, we do actually export some stuff all over the world, but it's primarily UK and Ireland is where most of our customers are.

And what got you into this? Is this an industry that you were in before, or—

No. Okay, this is a slightly long story, but I'll keep it brief. So I was— I've always had this thing. I mean, this— some of the understanding what I'm going to say now is only from now looking back. I didn't get this at the time, but I've always had this thing about justice. So after I did a very useful degree in zoology, which was the only thing you could do was teach the subject or learn more about it after you'd finished, which, okay, that wasn't much help. So I got a sales job for 3 years. I can talk, so therefore I can sell. So I sold office furniture and drinks machines. I did quite well, actually, but it wasn't really where I was at. So what I really wanted to do was to go into inner city and try and change stuff, make life better for people. And a group of my friends were doing a project in Southeast London, a place called Deptford. So I ended up working there, doing that for about 12 or 15 years in a team doing community stuff, kids stuff, youth stuff, in and out of prisons, visiting, that was, not being banged up myself.

Yeah.

Just trying to sort out people's mess. And it was appalling. So this was in the early '90s, I started, so running right through the '90s. It was a complete and utter mess. There were the estates we were working on, the police actually never went on them because they were too scared, basically. In fact, they Half our time we were trying to convince people we weren't the police because of these 2 or 3 middle-class blokes walking around. They thought we were playing clues. Anyway, so it was great. We did stuff, things, people's lives got changed. But what I realized was a lot of that was just patching up and it wasn't really changing anything at the foundation of society. Again, all from hindsight. But I ended up running out of money, so I had to do something different. So I thought, what can I do? Well, the only thing I'd actually ever been paid to do for 3 years was sell. So I thought, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll buy— I knew some food producers in the Cotswolds and bought some products from the Cotswolds and sell them to delis in London.

Right.

Initially, and then Kent and Surrey. Again, it was very initially very part-time just to support what I was doing, but as time moved on, that got bigger. I got less money coming in for the charity stuff. So long story short, but ended up setting up a proper business in Reading being a food wholesaler. That was in 1999. 21 years ago from today.

And then hence Cotswold Fair being—

Yes, so initially it was all Cotswold products selling to shops in London. I thought Cotswold Fair seemed like a good name at the time. It then became a very bad name, of course, because people then thought, where in the Cotswolds are you? And, uh, we said Reading, which isn't the Cotswolds. That didn't work. Yeah, but so I teamed up with a guy, and actually, for our first 5 employees, we had one guy just come out of prison, we'd had one guy who was an ex-heroin addict, and we had a guy who was an alcoholic, basically. And we thought, well, let's take these guys on, give them a bit of routine and discipline in their life, and try and try and change their lives and also make some money as well. The making money bit didn't really happen very well though for a long time. And after a couple of years, the guy I was doing it with who lived in Reading— I still lived in London— he had enough and disappeared. So it left me with a business in Reading and I lived in the wrong part of the country. I had to move house.

But you're still going today, and you're a B Corp.

Yeah.

And what I'd be really interested to understand is, I mean, that initial story of who you worked with to start off with kind of sets the scene really, doesn't it? And I'm just interested to know how you heard of B Corp And what you thought of it being a purpose, social purpose-driven business yourself anyway, and how easy you found the transition into it. And be interesting just to explore that journey.

Okay, so, well, just to fill in a bit of the gap, so it started out, you know, good intentions with the business. We grew very rapidly. The industry was growing, you know, specialty food was growing, so we just grew with it. Farm shops went from being sheds in fields to purpose-built, you know, buildings with 50 car parking spaces. So I'll be totally honest with you, I lost my way probably. And just, you know what it's like with a small startup, you're firefighting the whole time, getting sucked into, have you actually got enough money to pay the wages at the end of the month?

Hmm.

Some months we didn't. And I got sucked into, in effect, running the business as if it was a single bottom line business, which is not what it started out as. So put my hands up there, I kind of failed on that front.

When you say single bottom line, as in—

Just looking at money. Yeah, all about the money. Yeah, it's tough. It is tough. I mean, I'm not, you know, it's, um, when you're growing also, you're running out of cash. regularly anyway. So it's not even if you're making profit, quite often you're running out of cash. So I'm not making excuses for myself, but we had lost our way. I think probably after 10 years, I thought, this is— we've got to be better than this. So we did. We got involved in a project in Kenya as a business, which I'll maybe talk about later. But we'd come to a point where we were outwardly successful, but we hadn't really got that purpose embedded in the business. And in 2014, we put in a new computer system, uh, went badly, badly wrong and almost lost the whole business. Um, we had lots of customers weren't getting their orders, were getting them late or getting part of them. It was a complete and utter shambles. In fact, I was only talking to someone the other day and who was in the office, um, and during that horrible time, and she said she got downloaded the voicemails at the end of the day in the office. There was 96, I think she said, messages from customers basically complaining. 96! That was from one day's messages. It's not good. So what happened is the people that kind of weren't with us, if you like, all left. So we lost about half our people. The ones that kind of believed in what we said we were doing stayed, and that in effect was the best thing that happened to us as a business. So painful, really difficult, but it was the foundation of where we are now. So it was about— it was probably soon after that time, one of our customers was Cook, the frozen food shops.

Yes.

And Ed was— has always been a friend of mine. In fact, we supplied Cook when they had 2 shops. They've now got over 90 of their own shops, that is. And he mentioned B Corp to me. This was either probably end of 2014 or beginning of 2015. And I thought to myself, that sounds far too American for me to be involved in, being a good Englishman. He said, no, yeah, I had the same problem, but have a look into it. So I did and started to understand more. And honestly, it was a huge relief. For me, it's a bit of a cliché probably, but it felt like coming home. Suddenly I thought, oh my God, there's other people in the world who believe what I believe about business, that it shouldn't just be making about making money, it should be about making a difference. So it was fantastic, and we were fortunate in that this was before the B Corp UK launched in 2015, so I had some nice people in America helping us certify, get us over the line so we could be one of the, the initial cohorts of companies in the UK. So, um, yeah. it was so much aligned with what I believed. I'm not saying I was doing it all, we weren't, but it was totally aligned with what I've always believed that business should be. So it was a great homecoming thing.

Would you mind if we just backtrack slightly to your bad time and half the people leaving? I'm really curious to know how you got Around that and what the sort of things that you put in place, because you won't be the only company to go through something like that. And it'd just be interesting to know how and whether you still have customers from those days that are still with you, even though—

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we do. I mean, it's a small world, the world we live in, specialty food. So there's loads of customers who are who almost didn't become customers at that point and left, but thank God stuck with us and they're still with us today. It was more— I mean, we had a lot of people in the business then that were friends of each other and related to each other. And there was all sorts of stuff going on. I'd lost, in effect, lost control. of my own business. The warehouse manager, just prior to that installation that went wrong, was basically nicking pallets of stock at the weekend and selling it on a— at a car boot sale. He was meant to be on the management team. So things were wrong at a fairly significant level. So in terms of how we sorted that, it really was just a case of, were some of the The people that I knew weren't with me, we found a way of encouraging them to leave, all legal of course, but the rest just left because it was too difficult to be there. So we then obviously recruited a lot more of the right kind of people that were going to help us take the business forward. I can't say that it was a great— we were still very much in firefighting mode. It really, it took the business at least 2 years to recover from that point.

Wow.

We weren't systemized enough. We got in— I got in an experienced MD/FD who helped us put a lot more systems into the business. And that's the trouble when you're an entrepreneur like me, you see, it's all passion and vision, and actually sometimes you need to put a bit more structure in. So That's where I needed help.

What would you say your business superpower was?

I think— you're going to think now that why did it go wrong? But I would say it's intuition.

Right.

Just generally. I mean, obviously the example I've just given is an example of that going wrong. Generally, I've known what to do, when to do it. I've never ever— we have now, we've got a proper finance person, but for probably 15 years, I never had a cash flow forecast.

Right.

I'm a bank manager's nightmare, I am. But I just kind of know, oh yeah, that you take on an extra salesperson, that will work, or put in another couple of people in marketing, that'll work. So it's all very much gut feeling. And yeah, I would say if I've got one superpower, that would be it.

Brilliant. Brilliant. I think there's probably quite a few people that we can relate to, to relate to what you've just said. And it is only when you get bigger that you start to realize you have to have that kind of structure in place, isn't it?

Yeah. And I think One of the— I think as you get older, which I am now, and hopefully wiser, you've got a much better idea of what you're not good at.

Yeah.

And actually, I'm not very good at much, to be honest. I can sell, but not much else. But what I am good at is getting lots of good people who are much better at things than I am to do stuff. So I don't really— I don't do that much. I just Find other people to do the stuff, and if they're the right people, it all works.

Yeah, yeah. Can you tell us a bit about how you engage your staff and/or suppliers and suppliers and customers with your mission and purpose?

Yeah, so that's, um, that's probably what's changed most in the last 2 to 3 years. So initially, the, the B Corp certification and know, for some people B Corp is initially— I don't think it is now because the world's moved on, but at the time it was not that easy for people to understand what it was.

No.

I mean, they still don't know what the B stands for, do they? But it's just not A, but it's not benefit either, which some people think. But the nice thing that's happened over the last 2 to 3 years is our kind of B Corp energy and mission is embedded in people. So a lot of the good ideas now come from within rather than being— come from me or even the management team. So that's been the best thing that's happened. We did that by realizing that doing this stuff top-down doesn't work. So we created 5 different change groups within the company.

Hmm.

And the only rule was no one on the management team was allowed in one of those groups. So each group had a certain target. I think we had a couple of environmental ones, a people one, an innovation one.

Governance was one?

No, we didn't actually have that as one of our groups. I mean, that is one of the big things, but we had 2. We basically had 2 for environment because we felt we were less strong on that and a community one. So that's a governance culture, yeah, we kind of had that in many ways. We scored highest on that actually in the first assessment. So that's— and then that's what is what created the ideas then started being generated from within the company, which is far, far more healthy than, you know, it coming from out of management meetings. So they basically tell the management team what we should be doing. We know obviously there's some things that come out you wouldn't want to do, or actually we would go out of business if we spent that much money on that. You know, the whole team, sales team having Teslas, for example.

That was one of the things.

No, it wasn't, but it could have been.

That would have been brilliant.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I've got one now, but only the 3. I couldn't afford the S. But Yeah, so that's really helped. So probably for half our time as a B Corp, the first half was trying to get people to understand what it was, and now it's a lot more organic and comes from within the company. In terms of suppliers, a lot of— I mean, food and drink actually is the biggest sector within B Corps in the UK.

Yeah.

maybe over 30 now food and drink companies in the UK out of 247, I think it is. So it's a lot of our producers are quite well aligned anyway. We had a wonderful supplier conference last year purely focusing on the environment, and it honestly, it was one of the best events when I was hosting it. So it was a pure fluke that it was a good event because I just got in a load of people who were good at their particular area, someone from Innocence and from Origin Green in Ireland, and the whole thing flowed absolutely beautifully. And at the end, literally half the room were in tears. And this is a business event. These things don't normally— well, they don't happen in my—

They don't normally end in tears.

I mean, it was not allowed to cry in business things anyway until recently, but the timing was perfect. It was after Blue Planet, Extinction Rebellion had just launched their protests in London. So May 2019. And it was a profoundly moving experience and it changed a lot of people's businesses. We made people write pledges at the end of the day. if they could see the bit of paper through their tears, they wrote stuff down which we've still got on Post-it notes in our office actually, and made them sign an inflatable globe. And it was, you know, I'm still getting emails from people who did stuff or planned to do stuff on that day that they've put into their business a year later, nearly a year later now.

Brilliant.

In terms of customers, that's the disappointing one because Retailers haven't been aligned at all. They only care about— generally only care about the bottom line. It's all about margin, very little interest in doing the right thing in my experience. It is slowly starting to change. I've seen a few encouraging signs. We won one contract last year, first time ever, where they said they were moving business to us because of our ethical standpoint. Went to a couple of meetings with different co-op groups last year, one with Waitrose at the end of the year, and normally you have to go into those and explain what B Corp was and what triple bottom line businesses were, but they knew. That wasn't happening a year ago. You know, trade shows, We've had the Bee Court logo on our stands since 2015, 2016. No one's known what it is. Within the last year now, at least 10 people per event come and say their pleas were a Bee Court, you know. So the awareness is growing. I think it will move. The current pandemic that we're in hopefully will change things. another step change in the right direction, one would hope. So yes, I'm encouraged about the future, but so far being a B Corp really has had very little commercial advantage. But that's not why we did it anyway. We did it because it's the right thing to do.

Oh, you would have been asked this question, um, because I know we were. Um, we became B Corp in 2015, and, um, they often said, so How has becoming a B Corp helped your business? I always felt quite bad by going, no, it hasn't. In fact, I probably have to take— I spend more time in sales meetings because I'm explaining what it is rather than actually explaining what we do. So I'm almost promoting you rather than promoting us.

Yeah, that's about right.

But I would say that has definitely shifted.

now.

I think that we've even got a— we vet all of our customers and we've actually got a thing, does it help that we're a B Corp? And 9 times out of 10 they say yes.

Yeah.

Every now and again they say no, don't care.

Yeah. And I'm a B Corp ambassador along with various other people. And since probably September, I think the big shift in September 2019 Since then, I've probably had 4 or 5 emails a week from people wanting to find out more about B Corp, right? And before that, it was like 1 or 2 a month. So big, big shift, um, second half of last year.

Yeah, that's brilliant, that's brilliant. And it's, uh, and it's only gonna get stronger. And see, when it comes to running an ethical and sustainable What would you say has been your biggest struggle so far, and can you tell us a bit about how you've overcome it?

Well, it's probably the fact that it's disappointment that retailers aren't buying into this stuff. That's— and obviously the sales team, you You know, they— you get them excited about what we're doing. They are excited about what we're doing, but then they expect their customers to take an interest in it, and they don't at all. So it's keeping everyone committed, saying this is actually the right thing to do.

Mm-hmm.

We don't care if other people aren't taking notice, but I'm convinced, and I think you are too, this is the right thing to be doing. So let's stick with it and stay resilient and it will make a difference one day. And I do see, as I just mentioned, the signs of shoots that actually this current year I think could be the year that it does make a difference and the sales team are getting almost welcomed with open arms because of what we're standing for. I think a lot of the poor retailers may go out of business through through this current pandemic anyway, which will leave the ones that are more aligned to this purpose.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I can see, I can see that. It's, um, you've got to really think on your feet, haven't you? And, um, think outside the box and just, yeah, it's interesting. I'm just now thinking about the conversations that we're having and in our team and what we're doing. We're coming up with a plan to help kids, 2 different age groups, pre-10 and post-10 years old, environmental management teaching courses so that it gives them something to do at home, working with teachers to deliver those. So we've got— we're kind of— it won't be within the curriculum, but at least it'll be something that parents can do.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

And it wasn't, certainly wasn't my idea. That was the team that came up with it. Yeah. Teaching. And they were like, well, why don't we use that skill set to help mums and dads around the country and potentially the world?

Well, some people should probably put kids on their management teams, some companies. It'd do them a lot of good.

In Germany, Siemens didn't.

Did they?

VW, I think, did or tried to. One of them did and succeeded. feeling it was Siemens. And yeah, they've got a teenager, I think, on there. It's bizarre. Yeah, Google it afterwards.

Yeah, I will, I will.

If you could offer one piece of advice to our listeners, what could you help them with their purpose? And what would that be?

I think the best thing we did on this was starting those change groups. and putting the direction of the company in the people who work for the company. So pretty much every single person— we're not that big, there's only 30 of us— so nearly everyone was in one of those groups. And not only are they better— come up with better ideas than I do, but obviously they feel empowered by having sense of direction of the company. And whilst not everyone probably totally gets B Corp, they all get a part of it. You know, they get the environmental bit or the people bit, which is absolutely fine. So delegation of the change to the team and getting people to feel involved with change is vital. There's nothing worse than change being imposed upon people that don't have a clue what's going on, which I think is probably The early days of B Corp was probably a bit like that when I was saying I was getting all excited about it and they, hey, what's going on? But now it's totally turned around and it's almost the other way around, if anything.

Brilliant. And so just to recap on your business, you supply smaller shops and companies. from boutique niche smaller producers and you're the middleman. So from an environmental management point of view, what sort of environmental impact have you and have you been able to reduce it?

Yes, so we are fortunate, actually totally unknowingly, being a wholesale business is by its very nature is a carbon-reducing business because people are buying, retailers are buying 50+ brands and it's all arriving on one truck rather than 50 vans coming in, small vans coming in from 50 different producers. So the consolidation model, totally coincidentally, is a carbon-reducing model. But we wanted to go further than that. So actually we had a big change in our business last year and the main reason for doing this was to reduce our carbon. It's too almost a bit— I'm not a logistics person, so very simply put, it's less of our stuff goes to hubs in the Midlands now and more of it goes straight from the warehouse to customers in the south of England. The northern stuff still goes to the Midlands hub. By doing that and moving the warehouse closer to the M25, we We took off, and this is an extraordinary figure, but we actually reduced the miles our stuff travels by 1.7 million miles, which is 46% carbon reduction last year. So yes, I mean, it's a great stat. I didn't know our stuff traveled that far, but it obviously does. Now again, it was a tough year last year because that move Not for the carbon reason. It was, you know, absolutely the right thing to do. And as it happens, this new logistic partner also much better on the people side as well. So they've just, yeah, they're very much more aligned. But it went horribly wrong. I mean, it's a big deal. I mean, we had probably 36 double-level artics moving the stock from one location to another. It went badly pear-shaped. We had another 2 months of hell. This time though, everyone was totally committed to it. Loads of resilience. Tough time, we got through it and come out to the other end stronger. And the main reason for that, we knew we were doing the right thing.

Yeah.

You know, with quite often people make the right decision, and there is a certain degree of sacrifice and pain that comes with it. I mean, this is true on a personal level and a business level. But because everyone knew why we were doing this thing, they absolutely stuck to it, worked ridiculous hours, and got us through the other side. And yeah, I mean, we've just had our year end, and we're 12th, despite August being almost a complete write-off. because of this carnage, we're 12% up for the year in terms of turnover. So we came through the other side and I've come out of it well.

Great. And I'm curious to understand, I would imagine you would have run models of what your carbon footprint will be before you did the transition and then after you did it. Are they kind of equal? Are those models— do they work?

Yeah, it's— that was our year-end 2 days ago, so we're actually— I've got someone working on a load of data at the moment, so I haven't got those figures. But they've actually, during the 6 months or so we've been with them, they've actually moved more of it from going from the warehouse to the customer. So that there's actually less now going to the hub than there was in August due to some internal changes at their end. So it will be a— we expect when we've got the numbers that it'll be a bigger number than the 46%.

Brilliant, that's really nice to hear. That's actually really nice to hear because—

Yeah, and the main— this is a big French company called GEODIS. They're partly owned by SNCF actually, which is the French rail. But they— the previous partner we were with, there was you know, nothing much smaller business. But the main problem we had with them is no blinking data. And you can only, you can only do this stuff with some decent data going on, as you know. So it was impossible to measure anything previously. It was all back of a fag packet, whereas them being a much bigger company have all the good data we need to To know what we're doing and how it's making a difference.

Brilliant, brilliant. And could you share any advice or learning with anyone listening to this podcast that you think that would be a good takeaway for them?

Yeah, the— my main thing, and A lot of people are doing something but actually secretly wishing they were doing something else. There's a lovely bit— I mean, sure, you may have heard of this before, but there's a lovely bit of Japanese philosophy called ikigai.

No.

And it's about happiness, and it comes from the— it comes from the island of Okinawa. which is where there's more people living to over 100 than anywhere else in the world. So it's difficult to argue with these guys in terms of the longevity. So they say people are at their happiest when they're doing 4 things in kind of roughly equal measure. One is doing something they love. Secondly, doing something they're good at. And I think a lot of people are probably in that area. Third, it's doing something you're getting paid for, which is always helpful— feed the kids, pay the mortgage. But fourth, and this is the one that some people miss out, it's doing something the world needs. And the great thing about being a purpose-driven company and a B Corp is we do love what we do, we think we're quite good at it, and we get paid But we're doing something the world needs. And people think when they're— they think, well, doing something for other people, it somehow hurts us some way. And it's a sacrifice and it's painful. And maybe I'll have less if I'm giving more stuff away. But actually, the more you give away, the happier you are and the more fulfilled you are and the better business you have anyway. It's, it's once people understand giving away isn't, that isn't going to make you unhappy. It's actually a good thing to do and you'll be happier and you'll have better people working for you. They'll enjoy it more. And actually, companies that do all this stuff quite often make more profit anyway.

Yeah.

So that's the joy of it really, isn't it? Giving away more actually means That you have more yourself. Yeah, but some people, due to fear probably more than anything else, find that very, very difficult to do, and they're the ones that get stuck and end up being miserable people and fearful and not really going anywhere. But I'm sure there aren't any of those listening.

No, no, and if there are, that's because they want to change.

Absolutely.

Now you've written a book.

Yes.

It'd be great to understand where we could buy that, where we could understand more about Cotswold Fair. Obviously all these links will be on our website.

Yeah, okay, so first of all, the book is called Forces for Good. It's really— I wanted to write a book that helped people understand what being a purpose-driven business was was about and something that all businesses could get stuff from. They didn't have to be a particularly clever business, they could be a gardening company or a cleaning company. So there's lots of examples in there of stuff that businesses are doing to change the world. So it's broken into the kind of— well, initially it was broken into the 3 sections of B Corp people. planet and profit. But then as I was writing it, I thought, actually, we can't do this unless we change ourselves too. So the 4th section— so actually, it's this. I did chat to John Elkington about this, who came up with the triple bottom line thing anyway. I said, actually, John, I've changed it. And he wrote the foreword, thank God. But, um, I've actually got 4 bottom lines. Is that okay? The 4th bottom line is yourself. It's that icky guy stuff I've just been talking about. So the more I go on this journey, the more I realize actually I need to change. I need to get more compassion in my life and humility and all that stuff, and then I can make a bigger difference in the world. So it's available on all online booksellers. Um, yeah, they've all got it. Um, Audible as well, which I recorded with my own Dulcet tones. That was a tough job, that was.

So now that's really interesting that you've done that, because I've heard a few people that have— and big, like, not to say that you're not a big author, but the multi-million-pound authors, you've heard some of them say, yeah, I kind of regret doing it myself. I kind of should have got someone. And I thought that was an interesting thing to hear. And I just— how, like, do you, do you feel that, or do you feel actually no, it was all right?

No, I thought I probably couldn't afford to get an actor to do it. But, uh, no, actually, I— because by the time I did that, I'd finished the book quite a while ago. This printing process seems to take a while, publishing process. So it was quite— because it was then I did it quite soon before I launched the book, so it was quite a good— oh crikey, I wrote that, did I? Yeah, so it's Yeah, it was a good challenge, but I think it adds authenticity actually if it's the author doing it.

From a listener's point of view, it didn't make any difference. I can't remember what book I was reading, but I was thinking, it doesn't matter to me whether you did it or not, but he seemed to think that he shouldn't have done it.

Yeah, I have had a few emails from people, my friends who've chosen to listen in that way rather than read the book. One of them was a guy who was on a transatlantic flight and said it was very weird flying over the clouds listening to you, Paul.

Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah, so, um, yeah, I got— literally got to the runway and we were just taking off and I'd fallen asleep.

So there's, um, that's— I mean, I wrote the book, um, because it was a good thing to do, but also it— to open up other speaking opportunities. So I, I— all stops now due to this current pandemic, but, um, I do do some talking into other businesses and conferences and stuff on the, on the back of the book, which is really really why I wrote it. So I've got my own website there, paulhargreaves.co.uk, and then Cotswold Faire website is cotswold-faire.co.uk. And if there's any food retailers listening, then obviously we'd be very happy to supply you.

Brilliant, brilliant. Thank you so much for today. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on and really enjoyable. to understand more about you and Cotswold Fair.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Today we've got Paul Hargreaves on from Cotswold Fair. He is a renowned author. He has been running his business for the last 15 years plus, 20 years. I have to do the maths on the conversation we just had. Absolutely fascinating individual running a purpose-driven business. They're a B Corp, and we got some really good insights into how his business runs and what his business does and the problems that they've had and how they've overcome them, which I personally think is a really good takeaway. And it's nice to be able to learn from other people's mistakes. Sorry, Paul. But yeah, it was brilliant. It was really, really interesting. I hope you enjoy it.