Understanding how to tell your purposeful story with Matthew Stibbe, CEO of Articulate Marketing

This week Yiuwin Tsang caught up with Matthew Stibbe, CEO of Articulate Marketing, to talk about the journey of certification (B corp, Investors in People) and how going through the process of certification is much more important than the destination.

Matthew talks candidly about how having a purposeful story has been beneficial to Articulate Marketing but that it goes much deeper than a badge for your website. His ethos and values are truly rooted in doing good and giving back and he ensures sustainable development goals are baked into his business planning.

Matthew is a CEO, entrepreneur, marketer, writer, pilot, wine enthusiast, and a geek. He's currently CEO of Articulate Marketing, who provide marketing for ambitious and b2b tech companies. And previously, Matthew was founder and CEO at Intelligent Games, which he sold back in 2000. 

Transcript

Yiuwin Tsang:

Hello and welcome to the beautiful business podcast. Beautiful business as a community for leaders who believe there's a better way of doing business. We believe beautiful businesses are led with purpose by people who care, guided by a clear strategy and softly grown. Welcome to this week's episode of the beautiful business podcast. My name is Yiuwin Tsang and this week I was joined this week by Matthew Stibbe, CEO of Articulate Marketing. 

Matthew is a CEO, entrepreneur, marketer, writer, pilot, wine enthusiast, and a geek. He's currently CEO of Articulate Marketing, who provide marketing for ambitious and b2b tech companies. And previously, Matthew was founder and CEO at Intelligent Games, which he sold back in 2000. 

Now I really enjoyed chatting with Matthew and found his advice, super helpful. So I hope you do too. 

We're going to talk about understanding how to tell your purposeful journey. 

So can you just give us a quick kind of run through on what you have and also what made you go out and get certified in these areas please, Matthew.

Matthew Stibbe:

This is the horn tooting part of the interview! We’re a certified B Corp since 2018. And we recertified last year, we’re an Investors in People silver company, with the ambition of being gold next year. We won investors and people small Employer of the Year, which was a tremendous accolade. And we're very proud of everything that the team has done. We are also living wage employer. So the living wage Foundation, we're a charter member of that. In fact, everyone in the company has paid more than that. 

But the marketing industry is notorious for underpaid or unpaid interns and things like that. And I just, I just, we're not that this is what we do. So I've probably forgotten some, but those are the main things that we talk about. And the reason it's interesting. I talked a little bit about me personally, and I think this will explain how we got to this stuff. So back in 2017, a very dear friend of mine was running a business in Ealing. That was a social business designed to help children of elderly parents and help them find resources in Ealing. It was a really nice operation here. And he was talking to me in the pub about the court. And I was like, What's that then? Because I didn't know anything about that. And what that means in the standards, it sets in the commitments that you make as a business. And so I went away and read up about that this is, I suppose, 2017. 

And over the Christmas of 2017 2018, I did the initial B Corp impact assessment, and we scored about 3534. And you need to be 70 or 80, to become a B Corp. So oh, that's a bit poor, isn't it? We could do a lot better than that. It appealed to me very much, because I actually, you know, I wanted a business that I could be proud of, I didn't want to have a business that was running contrary to my values. I mean, if we only just wanted to make a profit, if profit was only thing, we'd all be pimps and drug dealers, right? So there is some purpose in every business, but actually to run a business out, look myself in the mirror and be proud and satisfied about how I'm running. Okay, so that thought occurred to me, and then my competitive gaming instinct, when that's our rubbish score, a higher score than that, how do I get a higher score. And so we spent most of 2018 working on Okay, all the things that you needed to be good, because basically says you need to do this, you need to do this, you need to do this, you need to do this, ratcheting up our score until it was high enough for us to apply for certification. 

So it was a little bit of personal conviction, a little bit of gamification. And a little bit of inspiration from John, the lesson that I learned from going through that B Corp journey was, and I think I mentioned this in our previous conversation. If you set a goal and you publicly commit to it, we aren't going to be a B Corp next year. I don't know how to do it. But this is what I think we have to do join me on this journey that is very powerful and motivating. 

Secondly, objectively audited certifications are the opposite of greenwashing. Right. They're the opposite of marketing BS, you're not bragging because you've done it, you've done something. Now B corpse had a little bit of controversy in the last year or so because some very large companies have used it to Window dress and otherwise unattractive behaviour or some parts of their business haven't been completely consistent with B Corp values. And it doesn't mean that a business is perfect. It doesn't mean that the managers and owners are saints, but it does mean they have met in a series of objective standards. And as B Corp is evolving the adding these mandatory Sustainable Development Goals, it's gonna be harder for some of these companies to wiggle their way into the certification. So that sort of ability to turn around to employees to clients to the public, to our website visitors and say, This is what we stand for. We've been measured and tested. 

So that an off the back of that I then went okay, investors in people's necks because I recognise that as a small business we need to be smarter about training, development, leadership management, and that's a journey that's still ongoing. But you know, we go and get these certifications, we delightfully winner, this national recognition. And it lets me say to you, we're actually not that bad. It's not. Okay, we're pretty good, right? It's not me saying that, because I've got some proof. Marketers often talk about messaging platforms, you know, this is the claim. And here are the proof points, right? The claim is we're trying to be a good business, we're trying not to be evil. And the proof points are bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump. And here's how we validate that. I think that's really, really valuable for us. But then you get into this whole sort of rather delicate situation of English modesty, right? Don't want to toot your horn too much. We don't want our business to be seen as a sort of do Goody good business where you know, ruthlessly business minded marketing agency, we try and deliver business results for people. This stuff is just part of how we do it. 

And there are competitive advantages. There are business advantages to being that kind of company, for example, with staff retention and recruitment. And also the third enemy is greener or holier than thou and I don't want to come across too smug. Because, you know, you get into terrible dangers of hypocrisy, right? I mean, you know, as I said, we're not all saints. And we're not all perfect, but we're trying to be better. I think this is it. And I think this is the what we need to make sure that we don't fall into in terms of the public discord around being a purposeful business. It doesn't necessarily have to be as binary, you either are or you are not, you know, a lot of it is around intent and authenticity as well. And I think what you said there about, you know, big corporates who are trying to game the system to get certification, the reality is, is if there's a system, there's somebody there who's going to try and game it, I wouldn't want to, it is an objective standard, it is externally audited, if they are a B Corp, they've passed the test. It doesn't automatically mean and this is true for any B Corp or any business, every part of it is immaculate and saintly, imperfect, you may not necessarily like the business very much, there are some very interesting B corpse. I mean, I run a marketing agency and a lot of people have little respect for marketing and I sometimes joke I run a marketing agency, but don't tell my mother, she thinks I play the piano. 

And so there's a few beat cops that we know really, really well, one of which is a recruitment agency. There's two recruitment agencies. I believe that because we know both of them. One of them's and another one has gone through certification. And let's be fair, do you think marketing agencies got a bad reputation? recruitment agencies kind of, you know, hold my beer as it were. I do hear what you're saying. And it is interesting, in the sense that to overcome that green washing the cynicism I suppose it's about people just saying it, you know, are you just kind of just saying that is it a green washing, remember washing, however you want it purpose washing kind of exercise? 

The objectivity of certification removes to a degree the subjectiveness Yes, message. And I think you've used the word authenticity. And I think part of what we're trying to do is, as I've talked about enlisting, engagement and support and cooperation, collaboration of the whole company, and certainly for ally ships, and the various initiatives that we're running outside the B Corp thing, that's very important, as you said, changing your logo for Pride Month, fine, but actually, you know, can you do things to talk about it? Can you raise awareness, and so that's more important. 

So that, but also, I think the other pillar of this is accountability. It's not just the auditing thing. So we have pages on our website, and much more detail and pages in our intranet about what we're doing. We update everyone in the company every couple of weeks with our company bite size meetings. We have a scorecard on our business scorecard again, also alongside profit and growth and utilisation and lovely Marketing Management metrics. Fair is Ally ships or causes that we're supporting there is our progress towards the corporate certification and to progress towards and so they are up there on the same thing produced by the same CFO with the same ruthless sort of focus on results. I think that's quite important as well. So I think being accountable for it, sharing what you're doing, engaging people and you know, publishing that I think we're we're a little weak, and we need to do more work is on, you know, our annual report on our website. 

And I think as part of the SDG thing, we're going to ratchet that up quite a lot so that it stops being look, look at all the great things were doing, which is important. But this is what we did. This is where we fell short. This is what we're doing next year. This is our report card. So that we are as well as using biannual B Corp and IIP renewals. We're also marking our own scorecard. I mean, it sounds like in order to do this properly, in order to be able to tell you a purposeful story, you need to have that verification certification, the rigour behind your numbers and the ruthlessness as they say, in terms of your approach and your auditing to the same degree as the other business kind of KPI metrics that you would have an interesting concept around. 

We did a lot of work on balanced scorecard, the last company that was in and the whole idea of it was it is balanced. And you know, finance is not more important than developing your team or more important than your business is a balanced card. So to have your partnerships, your net zero your sustainability, whatever you want to call it. But that element that shares the same agenda that shares the same weighting as these other business parts, it sounds like that's really core to the article approach, yes. 

And baking in the sustainable development goals and net zero and investment into our business planning. And so it's if you haven't got a profitable, successful growing business, you can't do all this other stuff. So you know, that's job number one, and no one's pretending otherwise. 

But putting in as part of that, you know, as part of our Northstar goals, for example, net zero number of allied ships, things that we're going to do activities, we're going to throw and running that whole thing through exactly the same consultation, the exact same planning process, the exact same internal reporting, and so on. I think that it's not separate from running for business is not a bolt on go faster extra. It's integrated, an integral to how that's an evolution in the last couple of years, we've got a lot smarter about how we do our business planning and our business reporting. It's been part of that journey to it sort of, it's come along for the ride as we've got better at that. 

And it feels like I remember when I underwent scrum training many years ago, and the scrum trainer said, There's beware of Scrum but and that's kind of like you know, your own most using Scrum principles, but you're compromising on certain pieces, you're not really doing it properly. And you call this Scrum. But it almost feels a little bit like that until you do build it into your systems processes in your approach and treat it with the same level of rigour in terms of management in terms of monitoring in terms of KPI tracking, so on and so forth, then it remains a nice to have Yeah, but to not put people off who think that's only sounds like an awful lot of work. If you're not doing that. 

Starting to do that taking those first steps is not hugely difficult, right? Go do the B Corp impact assessment, see what your score is, and pick the top three things that you didn't score well on to go work on? I mean, you know, that's enough to start with. It's not a binary either, you know, you've got everything right. And you're doing it all perfectly. And let me be clear, I do not think we've got everything right, or we're doing everything perfectly. But we are a couple of years down the road on this. So you know, he asked me again in two years, and I'll probably give you a whole different story. 

Yiuwin Tsang:

So I just wanted to come back to Part of the answer you gave earlier about how being able to tell your purposeful journey by using verification and certification. It helps from an internal perspective. And I think you've mentioned recruitment and retention. And it's been a big part of that, but also in terms of customers and part of winning new clients on board. So I'm just very interested to know, particularly with the period of economic uncertainty that seems to be coming down the road, how you think having a purpose for story will help businesses through the coming challenges. tough economic times are like normal times just more so right? 

Matthew Stibbe:

You know, all the things that you would do to run a good business, you have to be doing them a little bit harder, a little bit better, a little bit more rigorously, a little bit more tough minded, there's no change, I think in running a good business, you just have to pay more attention to it. I hope, you know, yes, cash management and profitability probably rise to the surface. 

I mean, I'm saying this both from my own business, but also as a marketer, advising other businesses, the critical thing is differentiation and positioning. Right. So whether you're a marketing agency, or you're an IT support company, or your computer manufacturer, whatever, whatever I mean, those are sort of worlds that we're in, right, you have a choice of marketing agencies have a choice of it, service support companies. 

So how do you sound different in a world of everybody saying the same thing. And it isn't the only way of differentiating, but I bet you there aren't many IT support companies that are also B corp. I bet you there aren't many that are also investors and people. 

And so it is a way when you're communicating with a client on the website, or when you're doing a sales pitch, and you've got your proposal deck in there. Okay, this is something we're not like the others for these reasons. 

The important point is, and here's how that benefits you, potential client, right? It's not just like, we're fantastic, we're lovely. It's like, we have better trained people, we have more retention. So we keep people for longer, so they have more experience. Here's a really important thing for this beautiful business, sustainable business angle.

When you talk to larger companies, they have internal goals and requirements around that. And you can say to them, we get this quite a lot where we get sent a question out, which is right, B Corp, B Corp be caught beep, and we send them with a link to that page on B Corp that says, here's their score. And here's how they did. So all their sort of CSR and their requirements are met by us already being certified, it becomes very easy. So there's another little thing it kind of puts you to the front of the queue when you're working with big companies that want to check all that. 

I think that's telling the story showing the badges and the certifications, and then translating it into then here's why it matters to you is really important. And it's the same with recruitment. I think, you know, we have lots of about US pages and things but you know, when we're recruiting and we say things like women investors and people certified company, and that means for you, you're going to get 12 paid training days a year, you are going to get a happiness budget happiness account of 840 pounds here that you can spend to buy training courses or other things that unit, we're going to do that we have this we do this we did, you know, again, it's claim proof point detailed proof points and translating it for the audience, I think. 

So that's what works. It's very telling when we recruit people, and we ask everybody, what excites you about working at Articulate? And that question is quite useful. Because if they haven't looked at the website, you get sort of Wofully BS answer, and you know that they haven't looked at the website, if they have looked at the website, they will say something like, you know, I really respect your values, or I really would like to work in that business. 

Now, it may not be the only reason they want to come here. And at the end of the day, they still need a salary, and they need us fulfilling job and a career. But it's the thing that they latch on to, and they tell us. So we know that they pay attention to this when it comes to sales. And I would say probably that's true from 80% of candidates that we are that that's the thing, they tell us, what's the differentiating factor. 

With sales, there are a spectrum of opinion, I think more business owners are that I don't want to know, I don't care. It's not important to me. And there's not everybody, but there's definitely a lot out there that are totally irrelevant to me. But there are some for whom it's really important and really valuable and really differentiating. And they take comfort from the fact that we've got these certifications and that we care about that, for example, they might be on their own journey to be caught, or they might be a B Corp, and they want to have a B Corp forward supply chain. 

So it's not the deciding factor, but it's different. Yeah, it's an influence on the decision. And I guess to a degree, from the perspective of working with clients, we have a rule in our organisation where it's good work with good people. And whilst that's still obviously incredibly subjective, as it stands as a single statement, but if you are very clear on what your values are to the point where you get certification, where you get audits, where you get, you know, validation in these kinds of areas, it will attract people who share similar sort of values and the similar sort. And again, kind of going back into that kind of subjective point, as you say, if you if there's an organisation who perhaps kind of ticks all the boxes, in terms of scope of the project type of project intersect that that editor, but they weren't actually all that bothered about the core values and sustainability versus organisation where those are really important to them, then, almost just from a personal perspective, working with teams and organisations and individuals where your values align, that's hard to put a price on. 

Yeah, it there's an implied differentiator with all of that as well. Because you know, when you buy services from a company, you take quite a lot on trust. I mean, you might have been referred, but generally you just, you know, most of our business comes inbound through the website, they don't know us from Adam. And being able to say, we've done this, this and this, and we've had it audited and certified communicates a message that we're trying to be grown up, we're quite serious, we pay attention to details, we do apply rigour to our work. Yeah, it's visible over here and be called and investors and people and yada, yada, yada. So you can sort of infer that it's also true about how we approach websites, or how we approach copywriting or whatever it is. 

And that's a very subtle thing. And it's not a thing that we are, you know, we make explicitly, but I think it comes through, I think it's inferred, and certainly when we do a sales presentation, you know, we've got three or four slides, introducing articulate this mini creds deck, alongside the fact that we worked for and worked for Microsoft and Dell and Google and people like that. It's these signals about being good at what you're doing. And building that trust. 

And confidence is one of those, just so to speak, that just made me think coming back to that telling that purposeful story piece as it integrates deck or wherever it might be. I do love that you're kind of statement and your proof points as to where that kind of cascade from that because it again, we spoke earlier about a level of cynicism that might be in the minds of the viewer in the minds of the audience if you'd like.

 And there's a scale to that level of cynicism. But by having certification by having that validation, having it very obvious and very transparent, as well as part one. And then the second part is, well, why should you care and almost making it clear to them, this is what it means to you, Mr. client or to you potential employee. 

But you make an important point because there's cynicism and disinterest at one end of the spectrum. I don't care about any of that stuff. It's not important. But there's cynicism. At the other end of the spectrum. There are true believers and people who think that, you know, very passionate about climate change about the environment about working conditions, just and they are also very cynical. Yes, they take a lot of persuading. And there are people, they're the ones that we want to persuade them and they're the ones that were interested in hiring people are passionate. 

But there are canyon fulls of cynicism out there on both ends of the spectrum in the certifications. This feels like it's a story about certifications. I think the certification is important, but it's sort of the manifestation of the underlying commitment and activity. It's a way of saying we're doing all this stuff. And here's here's the proof that we're doing it and I don't want to get hung up on the certification on a short end date. It's much like the point that you made the certification getting the certificate, the endpoint is not as valuable as a journey that you go on to kind of give you an analogy for this. 

Actually, I used to be a private pilot. I don't fly anymore for various reasons. But for 10 years or so I was flying around with little planes and loved it. And before you become a pilot, you think the key thing is getting your pilot's licence because then you're a pilot and you can go flying, right? You think certification is everything. And as you go through your training, you realise that instructors are there to help you stay safe. They're there to educate you. They're there to help you push your limits and develop your skills and experience and competence. 

But after a little bit, they send you off on your own you most of your flying training you do on your own. As a student pilot, that's quite scary, but that's also part of their job is knowing when that's ready to go. 

Here's the thing that happened to me, I realised about 30 hours into my training that flying without a licence, but with an instructor or with an instructor's permission was also flying. It was also my hobby. And if I then look at the next 800 hours that I did in light aircraft, probably a third of those hours were with an instructor, even though I had a licence. 

Why? Because I was learning new ratings or learning new planes or sometimes just you know, I was going on a long trip and I just wanted somebody to come with me and make sure I was safe. Or the first time I flew into Amsterdam Schiphol. I was certified and licenced to do it, but I didn't want to do it on my own. I wanted to get with someone who'd done it before. So the certification is the journey. The journey is as important as the destination. The learning is as important the transformation is as important as the certification. 

Yiuwin Tsang:

Thank you so much, Matthew, for sharing your time, your advice, your ideas and your insights from running Articulate Marketing. Thank you for joining us for this week's beautiful business podcast. Beautiful Business as a community for leaders who believe there's a better way to do business. Join us next time for more interesting discussion on how businesses can bring about change, helping communities, building a fairer society and safeguarding the planet. You can also join in the discussion at www.beautiful business.uk