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Why B Corp is a home run

What are the benefits of becoming a B Corp? Crikey, there are just so many! Where do we start? Okay let’s start with these six gooduns.

  1. Recruitment: B Corps attract the best talent and have better staff retention
  2. Competitive edge: Empirical data shows that B Corps are making more money than non-B Corps in their industry. As well, B Corps proved more resilient through the pandemic.
  3. Brand loyalty: More customers want sustainable brands and are voting with their wallets
  4. Access to capital: Investors are now demanding businesses they give money to have transparency on their ESG
  5. Cost savings: By scrutinising their operations, B Corps have found innovative ways to significantly cut costs
  6. Legislation-proof: Have you noticed the raft of new ESG legislation that’s been passed all over the world? Becoming a B Corp means you’re not going to be left behind.

But don’t take our word for it, here are some real world examples of how it pays to become a B Corp business…

Nespresso CEO says its B Corp certification is helping it attract talent

“The main benefit of being a B Corp—and I didn’t expect it—is from the inside,” Nespresso CEO Guillaume Le Cunff says in a recent interview. “We brought 14,000 people across the world along in our journey. You will see it in the signature of people. To attract talent, this is part of the conversation. Any young talent interested in Nespresso, will browse and will see the B Corp label.”

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/nespresso-ceo-says-b-corp-051714242.html

Smallhold CEO says becoming a B Corp allowed them to quantify their positive impact and explain it to the public

We barely changed anything about Smallhold to become a B Corp,” says Andrew Carter, CEO and Co-Founder of Smallhold, an organic mushroom farming business. “We were doing all of these things already. Paying living wage, energy efficiency, circularity, sustainability, it is in the DNA of what we do, it always has been. The B Corp process has allowed us to quantify it, explain it to the public, and find ways to improve in the years to come.

“Becoming a certified B Corporation is an ongoing journey. We’re continuously working to hold ourselves accountable, which means there’s a constant need of evaluation, adaptation and collaboration— and it’s a path worth pursuing.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/christophermarquis/2023/07/12/the-future-of-fungi-smallhold-sets-new-standards-for-farming-with-b-corp-certification/

The Body Shop asked a group of Gen Zers to critique the company – and it improved the business

The Body Shop came up with an innovative way to integrate Gen Zers into the decision-making at the company by creating a youth board of advisors. This falls in line with the B Impact Assessment’s focus on engaging with all the stakeholders in a business.

Realising that while it was encouraging global leaders to embrace young voices, the British multinational beauty retailer was not actually doing this themselves. So The Body Shop addressed this gap by creating a secondary board (or as the brand calls it, a Youth Collective) to advise its leadership team. But on this one, no over 30s are allowed to join.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/body-shop-asked-group-gen-092415743.html

Embracing The B Corp Journey

The process of becoming a B Corp certified business makes the people who run a business, and who work for a business, pause for a moment to step back and take stock. It encourages people to ask themselves questions like, ‘why do we do what we do?’ ‘What kind of impact is our business having in the world – both positive and negative?’ ‘How do we increase the positive impact we’re having?’

It is a ‘rigorous but achievable’ process. This is one of our favourite phrases at Grow Good – ‘rigorous but achievable’. It’s become our mantra. Because the journey to becoming B Corp certified is not meant to be easy. It is meant to spark discussion, debate and reflection. It is meant to stretch you. It’s meant to get you asking questions about what you do; why you do it and how you’re doing it. Mainly though, it’s meant to get you thinking about how you can genuinely drive more positive impact in the world. And it’s meant to turn you into a better, more prosperous business.

Would you like help with that?

Here at Grow Good, we exist to coach people through the process of becoming B Corp certified.

The B Corp Impact Assessment framework  is free to access and provides dozens of useful insights and opportunities for any business but it can be confusing and overwhelming.

We are consultants who have completed the official training provided by B Lab, the organisation that runs the B Corp certification programme. We live, breathe and sleep B Corp. We are your B Corp buddies. We make it easier. We translate the questions into plain English and give you a host of template policies and example documents so you don’t have to start everything from scratch or reinvent the wheel. We show you how to unlock the big point scoring areas most relevant to your business.

Are you ready to go B Corp? It’s completely your decision but if you are, and if you think it would be helpful to have a guiding hand through the process, we’re here to help. Drop us a line or jump straight in and book a free 30 min discovery call with me.

Yours in purpose,

Ngā manaakitanga,

Tamara

tamara@growgood.co

 

Are you Ready to B Better?

Ready to take the plunge towards becoming a B Corp business? Let the Grow Good team guide you through the process either through 1:1 coaching or group coaching on one of our regular cohort programmes for micro businesses. Book a 30-min discovery call with Tamara here.

You can use your Business as a Force for Good.

Just get started. Take the first step. Get in touch

Kiwis don’t want their pensions to trash the planet (like, duh)

Guess what, here’s a news flash that isn’t really a news flash. Turns out that New Zealand investors want to do well and do good with their money, a new study has found.

Finally! The lie we’ve been sold about how we can only drive profit through suffering, extraction, and destruction is being unveiled as the insidious propaganda that it is.

It’s similar to the lie we’ve been sold about how businesses can only be ‘successful’ (ie profitable for shareholders) if they exploit in some way, be it pay low wages, belch greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, or pretend the plastic waste they create is unavoidable and not their problem.

It’s BS.

In truth, businesses that are a force for good in the world do better than those that aren’t. A Neilson study has found businesses with a demonstrated commitment to sustainability have grown by more than four per cent globally, as opposed to those without growing less than one per cent.

But we don’t get told this. Instead, we get told that we must accept there is a trade-off between ethical investing and earning good returns.

Oh no’, we are told. ‘I’m sorry but if you want your investment and pension funds to grow then you have to invest in companies that use slave and child labour, and that don’t pay fairly for resources, and that leave behind pollution… I know, it’s unfortunate but you have no choice if you want to have any money for your old age, you don’t want to be broke and homeless in your old age do you?…

LIKE ATTRACTS LIKE

Because it’s actually the very opposite. Just as we create more scarcity and inequality by supporting scarcity and inequality; we also create more true prosperity and abundance for all by supporting true prosperity and abundance for all.

For decades, we’ve turned a blind eye to our investment funds and pension funds being used to support industries like oil, gas, weapons of war, deforestation, tobacco, and so on, because we were told we ‘had to’ if we wanted to have a healthy retirement pot.

Shock, horror. It’s a massive lie that has caused us to fund the very industries that are destroying the planetary ecosystems upon which our lives utterly depend. At best, this unpalatable truth is kept secret. I bet most Kiwis have no idea that $68 million of our collective KiwiSaver funds and investment funds are invested in companies driving deforestation.

At last, more people are no longer falling for it and no longer standing for it, according to a new report by both Mindful Money and the Responsible Investment Association Australasia (RIAA).

The research found that almost three quarters of New Zealanders (74%) expect their investments to be managed ethically and responsibly. The number of people willing to move their funds if the investments do not align with their values has increased to 59% (+4%).

And despite this being a time where we have high levels of financial uncertainty and volatility, not only is consumer demand for ethical investing gain momentum but there is growing interest in investing for positive impact.

GROWING DEMAND FOR POSITIVE IMPACT

One of the most significant findings from this survey is the increase in consumer interest in investing for positive impact, both through dedicated funds and within mainstream ethical and responsible funds.

A growing number of New Zealanders understand that investment has real world impacts, including on issues such as climate change, and they are interested in funds that can demonstrate positive impacts.

Consumers want to know what types of companies are in their portfolios, and they are more likely to choose ethical and responsible funds that have independent certification.

The survey also shows that consumers don’t believe the old myths of a trade-off between ethical investing and earning good returns. 45% expect ethical and responsible investments to perform better in the long term (up by 5% from 2022) while 45% see the relationship as neutral.

This is consistent with a large and growing evidence base, including for Australian and New Zealand investment funds, using comparative returns between ethical/responsible funds and traditional funds.

Any business that cannot make money without exploiting in some way, shape or form is a failure. A lazy, short-sighted and egregious failure and, finally, as a society we’re beginning to see that and we are demanding that the business sector pull its socks up.

 

Kia kaha

Tamara

tamara@growgood.co

 

Are you Ready to B Better?

Ready to take the plunge towards becoming a B Corp business? Let the Grow Good team guide you through the process either through 1:1 coaching or group coaching on one of our regular cohort programmes. Book a 30-min discovery call with Tamara here.

 

The Truth about the B Corp Journey

Can businesses help solve the biggest societal and environmental challenges we’ve ever faced? Especially considering the huge part business has played in creating these challenges? B Corp says ‘Yes…’ but there are some strings…

A good chunk of my working day is spent talking to businesses that want to know more about B Corp. If you’re thinking about it, let me emphasise that this is no small decision.

B Corp will challenge you to evidence the impact you are making by using business as a force for good. This is not a vanity exercise for marketing purposes, nor just a nice badge of honour that will attract new customers (although it will do that). B Corp will hold up a mirror and ask whether or not you can say, hand on heart, that you will do authentic and measurable things to improve the lives of people and the planet. That you will no longer prioritise profit over planet and people.

Historically, the business sector has accelerated social inequity, fuelled human rights violations, and laid the foundations for climate change. With a global cultural shift underway, are businesses truly evolving from being the drivers of humanity’s biggest problems to drivers of positive and inclusive change?

Are we being idealistic to think the business world can address the pivotal challenges it has played – and continues to play – in creating? From uplifting marginalised communities to reducing the damage of consumer products, to ending the food waste that could alleviate the hunger of almost a billion people.

STRIPPING BARE

The B Corp movement is pulling out all the stops to find out. This is no time to gloss over the reality of the hole we’ve dug ourselves into, nor can we shy away from the difficult and honest conversations. Choosing the B Corp certification road for your business is a big decision. It’s the start of a journey that will hopefully never end as your organisation improves, year on year, in being a force for good that restores the health of our planet and works to drive social equality all over the globe.

By choosing to be a B Corp, you are declaring that you will no longer profit from the suffering of others, be they the Bangladeshi women working in clothing factories, or the cows crammed into the massive factory farms of America.

Being a B Corp business means no longer profiting from exploitation, extraction and emissions. Do not fool yourself into thinking this is an easy thing to do. We’ve created a system that makes it difficult not to pollute and degrade with even our smallest daily activities. From cooking eggs for breakfast on a gas range, to taking the kids to school in our petrol-fuelled car, we have woven fossil fuel combustion into every aspect of our lives.

METAMORPHOSIS

Our entire economic system is built on foundations of exploitation as well as on the lie that endless economic growth is possible and desirable. In nature, if something just grows and grows, it’s called ‘cancer’. In essence, this is traditional capitalism.

Can the business world really undo centuries of programming that worship the bottom line of profit above all else?

By taking the B Corp road, you are saying, ‘Yes, I believe businesses can be run differently. I believe businesses can be modelled on restoration rather than degradation. I believe we can create a socially just society and a healthy planet.’

And it’s okay that we are still working out how we’re going to do this. It’s okay that we don’t have all the answers yet – we’ll find the answers if we keep asking the tough questions. And that is what your B Corp journey is about… it’s about tussling over those difficult questions specific to your organisation; it’s about discussing and debating and learning, evolving and transforming.

The key is to embrace the process of this metamorphosis. Stick with it when the road gets bumpy and celebrate your breakthroughs, big and small.

If you let it, the B Corp journey will be more rewarding, enriching and fulfilling than any satisfaction previously garnered through reporting annual profits to shareholders.

Kia kaha

Tamara

tamara@growgood.co

 

Are you Ready to B Better?

Ready to take the plunge towards becoming a B Corp business? Let the Grow Good team guide you through the process either through 1:1 coaching or group coaching on one of our regular cohort programmes. 

Don’t wait to be a better business, get on with it now. The planet depends on it.

Here at Grow Good, it’s our job to help businesses become B Corp certified. Because the process can be confusing and daunting. We translate it, break it down, offer resources to make it as manageable as possible. If your business is ready to go B Corp, give us a shout or book in a discovery call.

B Corps and the new economy in Aotearoa New Zealand

As I type this from my home office in Otautahi-Christchurch, people in the northern cities of New Zealand are battening down the hatches and preparing for potentially the worst tropical storm to ever hit our shores. It’s even more of a slap in the face for Northlanders after having suffered some of the worst flooding in living memory just two weeks ago.

Overnight, Cyclone Gabrielle has been causing havoc across the top of the North Island, with thousands of homes losing power, hundreds of homes being evacuated, schools closing and trains, ferries and flights cancelled in the Auckland region. And worse weather is expected tomorrow.

It is, of course, the sobering reality of climate change. The fossil fuel chickens are coming home to roost. In other words, the 250 or so years of unabated burning of fossil fuels, particularly driven by first world greed and consumerism, has filled the atmosphere with such a high concentration of green house gases that we’ve essentially wrapped the earth up in a huge, suffocating blanket. Everything is getting warmer, including the seas, and that is causing extreme weather such as Cyclone Gabrielle. Don’t just take my word for it, read more from an actual climate scientist about that here.

So, what does this have to do with B Corps and the new economy in Aotearoa? Well, if events like unprecedented flooding and destructive never-seen-before tropical storms doesn’t wake up the people in this country to the fact we might need to reassess our values and ways of living and working, I don’t know what will.

Happily though, there is definitely a shift taking place. More and more people and business owners are saying ‘OMG we gotta do something about this...’ but then it’s often followed up with ‘...but I don’t know what…

I’ll tell you what. B Corp is what. B Corps, or Benefit Corporations, are a type of for-profit company that aims to balance profit and purpose. Certifying as a B Corp gives businesses the framework, or roadmap, for shifting from shareholder primacy to stakeholder primacy. And, boy, do we need a framework.

Because it’s going to take quite a bit of effort to shift out of the business mindset that’s been set in stone over the past 50 to 200 years or so. That mindset is ‘profit for shareholders is all that counts, it doesn’t matter how much suffering is caused in the making of that profit‘. Which is how we got modern slavery, child labour, and systemised cruelty to animals. It’s the mindset that got us into the existential mess we’re in. The way out? The B Corp movement is offering a solution. To find out more about this topic at a free webinar on 15 March 2023 called B Corps and the new economy in Aotearoa New Zealand, get your tickets here.

Let me explain what that is: Unlike traditional corporations, which are primarily focused on maximizing shareholder returns, B Corps are legally bound to consider the impact of their decisions on all stakeholders, including employees, customers, the environment, and the community. In other words, they aim to create positive social and environmental change while still being economically successful.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, B Corps are part of a growing movement towards a new economy that values people and planet as much as profit. There is a growing recognition that the traditional business model, which prioritizes profit above all else, has led to a number of social and environmental challenges, including inequality, climate change, and degradation of natural resources. B Corps offer a different way of doing business, one that seeks to create value for all stakeholders and make a positive impact on society and the environment.

To become a B Corp, companies must undergo a rigorous certification process that assesses their social and environmental impact, governance, and transparency. This process helps to ensure that B Corps are truly committed to making a positive impact and are held accountable for their actions.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, there are currently just shy of 100 B Corps. They include companies in a variety of industries such as technology, finance, and manufacturing. Companies like Kathmandu, Ethique, Sawmill Brewery, Chia Sisters, Pic’s Peanut Butter... and many more (including Grow Good!) These companies are leading the way in demonstrating that it is possible to do business in a way that is both profitable and responsible.

Overall, the growth of B Corps in Aotearoa New Zealand is a positive sign for the future of the country’s economy. By prioritising the well-being of all stakeholders, B Corps are helping to build a more sustainable, equitable, and thriving future for everyone. That is the aim. But there is no time to waste. We’ve already left it too long to take real and meaningful action.

Here at Grow Good, it’s our job to help businesses become B Corp certified. Because the process can be confusing and daunting. We translate it, break it down, offer resources to make it as manageable as possible. If your business is ready to go B Corp, give us a shout or book in a discovery call.

Kia kaha

Tamara

 

 

Are you Ready to B Better?

Don’t wait to be a better business, get on with it now. The planet depends on it.

Feeling like you’re ready to B Better and want to see if we can help? Well then let’s have a chat! Book a call here – https://bit.ly/BookGGCall

 

The NZ B Corp Christmas Gift Guide 2022

We know that people like you, who care about the planet, can be a little conflicted at Christmas. On one hand, we’re like, ‘no, don’t believe the consumerist hype!’ but on the other hand, we’re like, ‘where can I get Christmas pudding at this time of night…’

Here at Grow Good HQ we understand. We enjoy a pig-in-blanket as much as the next person but how can you enjoy Christmas while also not wrecking the planet or perpetuating modern slavery?

We’ve got one hashtag in answer to this burning question, which is:
#BuyBCorpXmas

With that in mind, we’ve created this guide to some awesome Aotearoa B Corp businesses who have some great gift offerings. Shop yourself silly!

To read or download your copy of the B Corp Xmas shopping guide, just click here

GG_Buy B Corp Xmas brochure

Remember, every time you spend your hard-earning wedge, you are ‘voting’ for the kind of world you want to create. Don’t vote for the baddies, vote for the businesses who are actively trying to do right for the world. We’ll say it again, #BuyBCorp

Merry Christmas one and all, and if you’re a B Corp that would like to be in our Christmas gift guide in 2023 or beyond, reach out to us at team@growgood.co

Are you Ready to B Better?

If you want to learn more about B Corp and if it could be the right thing for you we have:

➡️ Our free e-book “To B Or Not To B; The What, Why & How of B Corp” is the DEFINITIVE guide to B Corp – https://bit.ly/BCorpEBook

➡️ This story about how we helped the amazing humans at Jeuneora get B Corp and get purpose at work – https://bit.ly/casestudyj

➡️ “The B Better Podcast” https://bit.ly/BeBPod where we talk to B Corps about their journey to B Corp & Beyond and our YouTube channel https://bit.ly/GGCoYoTu for more B Corp-related content

➡️ Feeling like you’re ready to B Better and want to see if we can help? Well then let’s have a chat! Book a call here – https://bit.ly/BookGGCall

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