Karmic Capitalist - businesses with purpose

I have two firsts in this Karmic Capitalist episode. First, Harriet is the first CBE to deign to accept my humble invitation to be a guest on our podcast! Second, she is also the first guest who leads a charity to guest on this show. Why a charity on he Karmic Capitalist? What has that got to do with businesses? Simple. The challenges we're facing go cross all sectors of society. And the only...

How challenging has it been to get your company going? I think getting a new product to market has to be one of the more challenging businesses to get going. But what if... Your product is a new formulation and needs independent scientific validation for your customers to buy it? Or you need to experiment to find out how to manufacture it at all as it's not been made before? Or you need to be...

Marketing has been responsible for sooo many of the ills we're suffering in today's world. Overconsumption is the biggie. Encapsulated in the perceptive statement that "we buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like". Personally, I think in many ways, marketing just amplifies what already exists in the human condition. And so...

Trust - much aspired to within companies - starts at the top. The more you trust your team, the more of a trusting culture you will build. Henry Stewart , CEO of Happy Ltd, took that to a place very few would be willing to go. At pay review time for the company, he asked his team to decide what he should get. It's a logical conclusion if the whole ethos of your company is about building trust...

Would you sack your biggest client if they were making your team unhappy? Create a BIG hole in your revenue and profit? Actually put some of your team at risk due to the financial hit? "We want our team to be happy". Pretty much every company says this at some level. And in the inimitable words of Greta Thurnberg, "blah blah blah". It usually is as real as the staged photos of...

Rubbish data gets such a bad rap. The reality is that it can be an essential part of how we get better at recycling. That's the thrust behind Tekn Trash , founded by Al Costa who is my guest on this episode of the Karmic Capitalist podcast (find it on most podcast players). Tekn Trash tracks "point of disposal" data - yes, rubbish data - which starts to give a fuller picture of the...

Every so often, your company may donate to charity. And that's fantastic. But what if you committed to give 3% of your sales revenue come what may? Including if you were making a loss? Brave? Foolhardy? Or simply committed to do good? It might even make you think about your business differently. In this episode of the Karmic Capitalist, I speak to Laura Hannan, co-founder with Fergus Parker o...

Pleasure, people and planet. Tagline for a new line of eco-friendly 18-30 holidays? Not exactly. Pleasure, people and planet make up the driving mission behind Superfoodio , the wife-and-husband founded ethical plant-based treats company. And in this fun episode of the Karmic Capitalist, I talk to Jag and Nirali about their journey from South America - where they saw how close the Quechua get to t...

You know you need to contribute to a more sustainable planet. But your business is no giant, and you don't have Unilever's budget to play with. Is your climate contribution going to stop at eliminating plastic straws from your kitchen? Your answer may be in Sustainability As A Service. What's an SME to do on helping the environment? Well, if Bernard Lebelle has anything to do with i...

"We've become addicted to convenience, and it's killing us". So how do you respond? Well if you're Katie Hill and Jarvis Smith, you launch a lifestyle site selling things. EH? EXCEPT - you make sure what you're selling is ethically produced and sustainable, and that your suppliers work with and not against nature. Because the reality is that we *do* need to buy things...

In a world where we (rightly) look for companies whose business it is to help us solve the climate and social crises we face, do you have a role if your company purpose isn't about these things? In this latest episode of the Karmic Capitalist podcast, I speak to David Ellis, Managing Director at Station 10, about the role of purpose and values in his company, a consultancy / agency which help...

"If there was a moment that said something was wrong in this world to me..." With that opening, my ears perked up. Villagers forced off an island ("there may have been guns involved" !?!!?) to make way for a power station designed to last only for 7 years. I guess if you hear that violence and environmental damage are involved in a project you've been asked to design, you&...

What human impact does your business have? Isabel Kelly watched first hand how business influence was used to secure the release of political prisoners. That left her with a lasting impression of the power of business to positively impact human rights which she's taken with her in her business engagements with Profit with Purpose since. And what a trajectory it's been. It's gone fro...

Bo Burlingham's excellent book, "Small Giants", charts the stories of companies for whom being great is more important than being big. In each case, the founders or CEOs faced very real choices between following tried and tested growth paths or doing something different and keeping their mojo. Sometimes, that meant rejecting mouth-watering exits. But they consistently chose greatnes...

Much of the #ESG drive, especially in reporting, is to standardise what is good, what is ethical. Get to an index as definitive as sales or EBITDA for your environmental, social and governance impact. But does that make sense? Whose standards are the standard? Are anyone's standards entirely objective? This is a nuanced truth which Charles Radclyffe , founder and CEO of EthicsGrade | AI &...

To succeed in addressing today's large challenges, we need collaboration between business, government, the third sector and society. But we also need it translated from big words into a difference in communities and for individuals on the ground. In this latest episode of the Karmic Capitalist, Repc Ltd 's managing director, Bevil Williams , shows how to do both. Arriving in the UK from...

Stepping up to the global challenges we face today is going to need concerted action from us in all the various roles we play - as consumers, employees & bosses, voters & citizens, parents & role models. And, critically, as investors and business owners. To move big business in a more sustainable and equitable way, we will need to vote with our investment funds. And most of us here on...

"We have everything we need to fix things and make it better for everyone in the world. Perhaps not the billionaires." Can business leaders make a serious dent in climate change? Mark Maslin, UCL professor of Sustainability, company founder of Rezatec and author of "How to Save Our Planet - the Facts", believes that we can, that we should, and starts to arm us with the facts to...

Purpose can be a real facilitator for growth and profitability. And in turn, growth increases  your ability to make impact, while profitability allows the business to serve at a higher level. It's a wonderfully virtuous cycle when you get it right. A beautiful case study of this is Hyphen8, a Salesforce consultancy with a focus on  thecharity and non-profit sector. As CEO Elaine Forth doubled...

This episode of #TheKarmicCapitalist podcast is so back-to-back full of real life, practical lessons that it was nigh-on impossible to fit it into our standard time limit. But that's no surprise. Neal Gandhi and his team have taken The Panoply from a standing start to a publicly listed, £1/4 of a billion company in less than 5 years. And done it by wearing purpose and values very visibly on t...

"We'd like to fully electrify Africa by 2040, with renewable energy at its core". That's the vision that Tony Tiyou had when he set up Renewables in Africa (RiA), his engineering, consulting and media organisation. The trigger was seeing a satellite image showing the distribution of power across the planet, and seeing that Africa, was mostly veiled in darkness. There's a l...

Ben Brabyn's had a fascinating career across multiple touchpoints with entrepreneurship. He's ... set up and sold his own company; represented entrepreneurs for global investment at the DTI; headed Level39, London's biggest fintech entrepreneurship hub; created a company to connect entrepreneurs to people who wouldn't typically inhabit that world. This gives him unique insights...

Jan Rippingale's ambitions were never small. At an early age, Jan was looking first to be an astronaut, and then president. Ironically, working with John Glenn turned her ambitions away from this, and more towards using technology to create impact. Her chosen area of impact was our escalating carbon footprint. And her solution was to develop software that reduces the cost and complexity of ro...

Red Badger is one of the UK's most successful digital transformation agencies. Founded by 3 friends coming out of Conchango, a successful previous generation agency, they decided they wanted to do things better. At the heart of that ambition was to do two simple things. First, deliver significant change and impact to clients, and second to be a nourishing environment where the best people cou...

As far as BHAGs go, Eliminating Global Healthcare Inequalities has got to be out there with the best. Though Alphalake being a British company, it's a little more modest. "To work towards global health equality." This is just the fourth part of a strong mission, which aside from being a key part of founder Olly Cogan's aspiration, has had the unintended benefit of being a stron...