The Problem with Purpose
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Streaming here
In our inaugural episode (ooooo that sounds fancy), Kyle and Tom dissect the tension of leading a purpose-driven brand and the challenges that arise from operating in a market that wasn’t designed for it. They use big 10-letter-words and bad jokes and bring in experts Angela Wallace (COO of Bogobrush and Founder of A.W. Impact Agency), Richa Gupta (Founder & CEO of Good Food For Good), and Natatsha Vandenhurk (CEO of Three Farmers), to explore how purpose has driven their businesses, while asking the vital question: is having a purpose worth it? (or maybe more importantly, does anyone really even read these episode synopses?
Learn more about our guests:
EP. 1 Transcript
Tom Purpose.
Kyle The final frontier.
Tom These are the stories of the brave business voyagers. Purpose is everywhere. It's the big kahuna of buzzwords right now, and a lot of brands are throwing it around like a Frisbee at a beach party, like mashed potatoes on a toddler's plate. Like.
Kyle But what is purpose, Tom? What does it mean to be truly purpose driven and when does it fall flat? Also, if you are an aquatic brand, are you then porpoise driven?
Tom We talked about this man like you're going to ruin the first episode.
Kyle Yeah, I know. I was trying I what I did it on... purpose?
Tom Look, being purpose driven should scare you. It should challenge you. It should inspire you and motivate you and not become some platitude that hangs on the wall like an 80s motivational poster.
Kyle Why would you hang a platypus on a wall? What 80s did you live in?
Tom What is it with you and water animals today?
Kyle In the end, is purpose worth it? Why bother set a bar above the bottom line? This is business after all, and if you can't live up to the bar of purpose, should you even bother having one?
Tom Welcome to Commerce Chefs, a quirky and thought-provoking show for future focused commerce leaders. We're going to pit the world's most brilliant, inspiring and driven D2C visionaries, the commerce chefs with riveting questions to uncover their secret ingredients at the intersection of passion, performance and leadership in practice.
Kyle For the past decade, we've led teams of designers, strategists and digital wizards at one of the leading eCom agencies in the country to help brave brands become enduring classics.
Tom And we're here to indefinitely borrow the strategies and pro tips that will make us all better leaders and make the brands we lead better, too.
Kyle Wow, that's powerful, Tom.
Tom Thanks, man. I just I kind of felt it, you know.
Kyle Yeah, I got goose bumps.
Tom No way for me too look. Oh, wait, you can't. Yeah. It's it's a podcast. I'll send a picture.
Kyle So, Tom, I see this marketing problem that it's probably actually a business problem, say that purpose is more important than it's ever been. It matters a lot to consumers nowadays. And so the problem is, should it matter to brands?
Tom That's a great question. I mean, for the most part, it's probably easier just to keep things business as usual. And there's this kind of long standing reason for that. The business market, the consumer society just really isn't set up for purpose driven brands yet.
Kyle You know, who knows a lot about this?
Tom Ang Wallace, the COO of Bogobrush.
Kyle That's right. And she's been marketing purpose driven brands for over a decade.
Ang More and more consumers, they care about this, they care how is something made, what are the inputs, what happens to the water, to the air, to the what happens when it goes to landfill? Does it have to go to landfill? People are asking more and more questions. We've got more information and more education than we ever have. So the challenge is inherent because we're trying to drive these changes in a system that just wasn't designed for it. Milton Friedman, shareholder privacy, that whole framework. So before our time, you know, that became the way of doing business. And now we've got this this new wave of thinking and this new these new models. And so, you know, there's practical realities where you just can't create the change you want because you don't have access to the the resources, the systems, even to the technology to create the change at the scale you would like to see. So for a consumer product brand, this is especially true because there's the consumers who are aware and they're like the deep greens. They're on the edge of this. They're the leading the leading edge. And they care really deeply about it and they want perfection. But then you've got this great mass of people in the middle that also care but are combining their their values as consumers. So you want to meet their needs, everything from affordability, through design, through those values. But you might not be able to get there as quickly as some of the most progressive consumers wish you could. And so it's balancing those needs and telling the story in an honest way beyond transparency, being honest.
Tom So let's talk a little bit about what has changed that. What are the shifts that we're starting to see in the market right now?
Kyle Yeah, I mean, I think there's there's a number of shifts and a big one is just the generational shift of values. And so we see the values that the generation holds is coming into not just what they do outside of commerce, but what they do inside of commerce. And it's particularly relevant to social issues or environmental issues come to the forefront. They cross a threshold in people's minds. They want to make a difference. They want to make a change. And they realize commerce is powerful. And so they want to buy or they want to vote for that change with their dollar, as it were, as opposed to just having them as two separate things where I buy one thing that may be totally disconnected from the different world I want to live in.
Tom So really aligning not only just the brands that you associate with, but what you purchase, how you purchase, really, it's that whole consumer cycle that we're looking at that we're considering, that we're weighing against things like it being easy and convenient because it's not the only thing anymore. Whereas if, you know, you look back to our parents' generation mass marketing, you had these big brands that were pushing products and really whatever was said about it was taken at face value. But that's not the case anymore. The conversation has shifted from this self realization of the way that the system was constructed and how things have been provided or even developed in the past. And it doesn't have to be that way.
Kyle And the interesting feedback loop is that the free market system is set up to feedback that the consumer wants the consumer desires to those producing goods and services. And that's kind of moving this forward as a collective realizes they can influence the change of, like you said, the how and why it's happening in terms of how products are made, how they're purchased. But it's caught in this tension point because still the entire capitalistic system wasn't set up to optimize for purpose. It was set up to optimize for profit. And there's really good things in that. It's not that it's a bad thing, but there's this shift of not trying to integrate purpose and integrate something beyond profit. And how does that work in a system that was really set up to optimize dollars for shareholders? And now if I can steal from B corp philosophy, it's how do we optimize for the impact on all stakeholders?
Tom Yeah, and that stakeholder consideration is this shift. You know, we're not just seeing movement from more traditional or historical ways of of buying, but we're really seeing a push towards brands having purpose at the core at the bedrock of what they're doing. And, you know, we see a lot of great brands, the Patagonias of the world, really big brands that have kind of always had that. And when we see other brands that that that's coming out more and more as they see the importance and the relevance for it, and certainly with new companies coming to the market, the launching, that really is something that's that's a mainstay in what they're doing.
Kyle We were talking with Ang about that as it's this journey, is this this trudging along where, you know, you've got to try and change the system at the same time, just focusing on what's in front of you, changing your brand, changing your business, and how can we redesign the practices at a macro scale, but also on a micro scale and be comfortable by trying to make things more sustainable or better for the communities that we impact all the stakeholders in a day by day or a week by week basis. We're not going to arrive there tomorrow.
Tom In fact, I could not say it better myself.
Kyle All the board, the purpose train.
Tom Kyle, do you know what's better than a cup of coffee?
Kyle No, Tom, whatever could that be?
Tom Silly Kyle. Obviously it's a healthy round of commerce curiosities. This is where we pick a question of the day and see who can come up with the most ridiculous details on top of the starting details. It's pretty simple.
Kyle We get to keep the coffee, though, right? Because I really need it.
Tom Yeah, we get to keep the coffee, Kyle.
Kyle OK, OK.
Tom I'm going to start.
Kyle You're going to start? OK, we got to do this quick. But the question today in the speed round commerce curiosities is how impactful can a brand's purpose actually be?
Tom Oh, OK. I got one. Last year alone, Shopify merchants shipped one point one billion packages that traveled over a trillion kilometers a trillion Kyle, it's too big of a number for you, but it's that is the distance around the Earth, 25 million times or farthest planet in our solar system, Neptune. Neptune to the Sun and back a hundred times.
Kyle That's good. OK, I see that I'm going to raise you Body Shop's Activism Corner, which is in all of their three thousand locations across the world. And if you take one hundred people a day, 365 days a year, and one of those locations advocating for one of their issues important to the purpose, that's like one hundred and ten million points of activation, which for me, that's basically a trillion.
Tom All right, that's awesome. I'll see you this. A trillion kilometers is the equivalent of a billion light bulbs being on for a day and a half. That's a lot of carbon.
Kyle Speaking of carbon, I want to raise you how Allbirds raised their prices on Black Friday, Cyber Monday by a dollar instead of decreasing them and donated all that money to better the environment. So I don't know the numbers. Let's not talk about numbers, but let's just say another trillion dollars of impact. That's pretty much probably how it went.
Tom That's huge. All right. All right. One more here it is, bettering the environment that impact that trillion kilometers of shipping impact is the reason why Shopify became a carbon neutral fulfillment provider through Shop Pay so that all of the kilometers traveled and all of the carbon impact from their products shipping would be neutral. Boom.
Kyle That's pretty good. OK, I really want to win this one. So I'm going to pull out the big guns. I'm going to talk about Patagonia's famous Vote Out the Assholes campaign that was stitched in their jeans. Let's just say Patagonia, global brand. Four billion people probably aligned to this. If you just slice it down the middle, that's four billion people advocating to make better impact on the environment via little tag in the jeans.
Tom You know what I think, though, if more brands are doing things like this, maybe we all win.
Kyle I agree with that. But for the podcast record, I just I think I won this one.
Tom Well, I think we can cut that out in post.
Tom And we're back, so you now need a strong purpose more than ever as you grow your brand, but you know, it needs to be more than just a platitude? It needs to be an authentic and living purpose. It needs to show up in business decisions.
Kyle And here are a few pointers from Ang.
Ang The first thing is specificity is strength, like focus and clarity can be a huge driving force. If you try to be everything to everyone, there's a really good chance you won't succeed. And I mean that in like the you'll be spread so thin that they'll just be you know, we're all things to all people. We care about every single cause an issue and we're giving to a thousand charities. I mean, that's not really a strategy, is it? There's a lot of strength in saying this is who we are. And there's a couple of key ways you can tighten. It can either be directly related to the product, the category or the service or the area you work in. Purpose. You know, you want it to have real authenticity. You don't slap an idea on the side of your of your company like a sticker. And like this is what we stand for, like allow it to have some truth to who you are and what you do, where you come from.
Tom You know, one example of a successful purpose in practice is with Good Food for Good.
Kyle Yeah. Good Food for Good is all about delivering food to people who need it. And their founder Richa is unwavering when it comes to delivering the highest quality product while reaching the largest number of people.
Richa So Good Food for Good is all about making it easy for people to eat well and do good. My background is in fashion, so I started work in India. I was working with this group of fashion designers and superexcited first job joined as an assistant designer. I think the third month in my role they asked me to go meet with the artisans who do embroidery or like the needlework on the wedding stuff that we create. And I was so excited. I was thrilled to be able to meet these people who bring my design to life. And the minute when I, you know, they drove us through an area which was like really, really poor neighborhood in Delhi where I come from. And when I reach the workshop, I was in complete shock because I saw this room full of people just sitting around cots doing needlework. There was a gloomy sense to the room. These people not only just work there, they also lived there. So it was like a so-called live work loft, but like in the really poor neighborhood. So they would cook in that same area. They would sleep in the same area. So there was this sadness around around the beautiful textiles that they were creating, which I just couldn't forget. So when I left that place, something moved inside of me. I just wanted to do something to make a positive difference in their life. And a decade later, I was in Canada, I was working for Hudson's Bay and I was pregnant with my daughter when that same feeling crawled back in again, that, you know what? You need to be doing something more meaningful instead of fighting for buttons and thread. It was the whole industry was becoming very superficial and not something that I wanted to be part of. So I decided that, OK, I'll study. So I did my MBA thinking I would either move to a nonprofit or find something more meaningful. Did that. And I convinced myself that General Mills or working in food would give me that meaning. So Good Food for Good is about making good food for people who can afford and donating food to people who can't. It's a buy one feed one mission. So every time you buy the food that we make, we donate, we feed a person in need. So when this, you know, this idea came to mind on creating something that not only made a difference in my life, but also in lives of someone else in need because of the energy, because of the joy it brought to my life. And that was twenty thirteen. And now we are in twenty twenty.
Tom But clearly having a defined purpose hasn't come without its challenges.
Kyle Sometimes the most difficult experiences can make the most powerful purposes.
Richa The challenge is, one, leading a business with purpose and into being a person with a moral compass, and every decision becomes like an ethical decision, it's not a business decision. Early on when I started the company, I not only wanted to disrupt the industry with products that are the cleanest possible, no sugar, blah, blah things. But I also wanted to disrupt the the model of supply chain. So right now in food industry there is. So you are a manufacturer, then there is a distributor, then there's a broker and then there is a retailer and then comes the consumer. So I wanted to pass on the best price to the consumer. I wanted to get rid off the broker and the distributor model and stick to you know, I go to the retailer straight and I did have some success with it. However, very soon I realized that you can't really grow much if that were to continue. Failure in terms of the last three years, I've only grown within Ontario. So to make this and last year actually was the first year we turned profit. If I have to make this business sustainable, I need to do things that are different than what I was, the kind of business I was going to create. And then same thing with when we change the formulations a little bit. I couldn't find I was only using fresh tomatoes and fresh onions and stuff in my first few years of work. Realizing as you scale up, getting fresh organic tomatoes in Ontario throughout the year is a huge challenge. So changing to an organic tomato paste was another big ethical challenge for me, where almost every person in this country has tomato paste in their cupboard and don't really see it as an ethical or a dilemma. Oh my God, should I use tomato paste? It's not fresh tomato.
Kyle So I'll never look at tomato paste the same way again.
Tom You know, I'm not sure I've ever even looked at tomato paste.
Kyle Touche.
Tom Well, look, similar to Richa's ethical dilemma with tomato paste, when we're going about making decisions at our digital agency, PB&J we're constantly at this crossroads of making sure that we're aligning those decisions with our overarching purpose. Our purpose at PB&J is to make the future of commerce more joyful and more human centered. So having that making it visible and I know whenever we go into meetings, especially ones that are about planning or the future, I mean, this is something we always ask ourselves is does it align? Does it help us further that purpose? But it doesn't just live with those big things because those can go away. It I think a lot of it comes down to the everyday ways that we try to align with purpose. And and so even when it might seem small, even when it could be something that you could go, it's not that important. It probably doesn't matter. Just like the tomato paste, the little things do matter because they're cumulative. They add up and they they make something big in the end.
Kyle I think it's a big thing for us is to try and integrate it into daily decisions. And then another way that we've, you know, tried to is, is to make purpose practical, make it come to life in those quarterly planning. And so we try to take our purpose and say, well, what what would a more human centered, more joyful future of commerce look like? And how can we practically move that forward? So, for example, right now we're working on making our work more usable, more accessible, because a human centered future is one that's accessible by all. And so just practical ways or whether it's like we're looking into how do we carbon offset all the work that we're doing? Because joyful isn't just contained to to the people, it's to the planet too. So, making purpose practical is a really big piece of what we're trying to do, both on the daily, like he said, the small decisions and on the bigger decisions as a as a business, as we're talking about quarterly planning.
Tom Absolutely. I think the biggest thing here really is that we we make a daily choice to be brave when we're making those decisions. Be brave, not perfect. You know, look at what you're trying to achieve and don't worry about being perfect because it's not going to ever be that way. And if you're constantly holding yourself to this bar of perfection, you're probably not even going to make movement towards that at all.
Kyle So true, that's probably the biggest reason people don't show up to purpose in the first place, is because they're afraid to never achieve it or they're afraid to be not perfect. And that's not what it's about.
Tom So how do we build braver brands in a society that's not designed for them?
Kyle Well, first things first. You need to rally your troops and Natasha from Three Farmers really said it well.
Tom Yeah, Natasha's story is interesting. She works closely with her family on the day to day. But by doing that, they've really built a brand that leads by example and inspires their employees in what they're trying to accomplish.
Natasha Well, I'm a big proponent of leading by example, Alicia and I being sisters and partners and just them even just seeing how we communicate and how we challenge each other and how we keep each other accountable, I think that goes a long way in terms of setting the standard for the rest of the company when it comes to work ethic. Definitely lead by example, but we also need to rein it in and be reasonable with our expectations of other team members because we don't always show a united front will. Absolutely, if we don't agree with each other, will absolutely have that conversation in front of the rest of the team. And the hope is that. But then they'll see us come together at the end. And when the decision is made, we all get behind that decision. That is probably one of the most frustrating things for our team, is we think we hit we achieve the goal, but that we've just moved the goalposts further again. But as a growing company, it will always be our tendency to just continue to grow the vision bigger and bigger and bigger and create more meaning as we do that. And I think that's what's so exciting about getting to lead a company like this, especially in the space that we're in, in food, in agriculture, especially in a year like we're in, where I think it's been reinforced how important these industries are to everybody.
Kyle So, Tom, Natasha mentioned that when making her decisions, they often keep pushing the goalpost out further and further and further, why can this be a frustrating experience for purpose driven corporations? And what are the best ways to deal with it?
Tom I think actually it's it's probably a frustrating experience for any business. As leaders, you're you're naturally goal oriented, you're driven, you're trying to achieve something. And a lot of us even get measured in how we achieve that. So if the goal post keeps getting moved, then you're at risk to kind of view it potentially like it's something that can never be achieved. I think in this case, though, what's what's most interesting is with purpose, the goal posts should move our paradigm, our way of looking at success. It just needs to be different. So I think a really good way to deal with it is to not approach achieving purpose as something that can even be accomplished in the first place. It's something that is a journey. It's something that requires more infinite view of what you're looking to accomplish, not just kind of quarterly PNLs and KPIs. You know?
Kyle One thing along that journey is to to make sure that you do with others. I mean, there's so many great organizations out there like B Corp or Mission Brand Alliance, that that can help you feel like, you know, that it's not just about a final destination, but that you're working together on a common good, not necessarily just a common goal.
Tom Yeah. And these these organizations or frameworks. They do help to give you context as well. And a toolkit really to to frame how you go about doing that and the things that are designed within your business through H.R. or legal or policies like all of all of those things actually come into play. But they're all part of the toolkit and the support system that helps move the purpose journey along.
Tom I think Ang actually framed this really, really well.
Ang If it was easy, everybody would do it. And also there's no this is like any major social movement or cause or anything really worth doing. There's not no, not necessarily an arrival station, like congratulations. You did it. Justice has been served. And there's like trumpets and it's like there's like confetti. And I wish that was how it was. That would be amazing. We would be so excited if that was the way it was. Unfortunately, my understanding of it, working with loads of really good hearted leaders is the dynamic tension is just part of the deal. You're always going to be struggling against finding investors who won't erode your purpose, who won't push you to put profit ahead of purpose. It'll be trying to to hire those who will work for more than just a paycheck, but also drive forward that purpose and feel a sense of satisfaction there. So creating that caring culture with your people and making sure that you don't get on the, going on the wrong side of right with your folks who whose lives are really tied up in what you're doing. And then there's just the consumer side of it. You're always balancing what they need, what they want, even willingness to pay. You know, doing the right thing can cost more, especially in consumer product brands. There is often a price to pay to get a product to a level where you're serving people, you're serving the planet. You're you can be proud right down the supply chain in all directions. Kind of 360. That actually can take resources, which can mean that in your category you have to be a little further upstream on on your cost and then you have to pass a bit of that on to the consumer. What's their ability or their willingness to pay or are you too far ahead of the market. So these are the kinds of conflicts that that come up. But I just encourage, you know, founders, whether it's like they're the first to market with an aluminum canister instead of plastic bottle, like don't give up, you'll find your customer. But also recognize, like sometimes good ideas can be ahead of their time. And I've watched that happen sometimes with the most ambitious change the world people.
Tom All right, so here we are.
Kyle It's the end of the podcast.
Tom Well, don't say it like that, Kyle. We're going have another one in two weeks.
Kyle Yeah, still sad.
Tom Yeah I know, you good, though?
Kyle Yeah I'm good.
Tom OK. So what's the point we're really trying to make here in the end, is having a purpose even worth it?
Kyle Yes, absolutely. Today, customers care about the products that they're buying. It's a huge opportunity to connect with them in a more meaningful way. And you're ultimately working with your customers to solve problems that matter to us all.
Tom It's going to take grit and bravery. But the call to the leaders of this era is not about what your business could be doing, but what it should be doing.
Kyle So the problem with purpose is not about defining what it is or how to write a good one. It's about living it out day after day after day, no matter what. And in a system that wasn't set up for it.
Tom And the brands that find a way to push through won't just succeed as leaders in their market, but they'll succeed at making real change in the world around them. And that that is why purpose matters. It's both market and mission. So if we have the opportunity to change anything for the better, then we have the moral obligation to do that.
Kyle And business can help solve these problems better and faster than ever before.
Kyle Well, that's it for the first episode of Commercial Chefs, thank you so much for listening all the way to the very end.
Tom We hope you learned the secret ingredients to make your brand's purpose even more purposeful.
Kyle But if you're looking for more, make sure to join the Commerce Chefs community by following us on social at Commerce Chefs. Ask some questions. Send us requests. We want to hear from you.
Tom We're currently cooking up the next episode of Commercial Chefs. So tune in on January 21st. And remember, it's just as important to feed your ears as your mouth because as they say, the ears are the other mouth of the head.
Kyle Um, OK. Lastly, if you like this episode and want to support us, make sure to hit the subscribe button and leave us a five star rating and review until next time this has been a pinch of Kyle.
Tom And a dash of Tom will be cooking with you in two weeks.