Goodtrepreneur

'What Makes a Good Idea a Good Idea?' First thoughts from Season One.

• Ben Peacock • Season 1 • Episode 13

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Last August I set out to talk to founders of companies and other ideas on a mission to do good for our home planet. 

I've since spoken to more than a dozen of these legends and learned a lot. The idea is to assemble their collective wisdom into some sort of simple playbook that makes it easy for more people to have a go—and succeed.

This season wrap starts with an updated missive on why these 'good ideas' are so important for speeding up sustainability in the business world, then outlines my first three thoughts on what makes the difference between a 'good' idea succeeding or not. Spoiler alert they are:

👉 They tend to 'do good' at the ends of the value chain 👈

Take Who Gives a Crap. It creates impact by donating money from sales. That  changes how the value created (profit) is distributed at the end of the value chain. Thankyou, GreenPay and Hawke's Brewing work similarly. So does Newman's Own, Inc. which has been doing it since the 80's.

On  the flipside, Tony's Chocolonely, Alt.Leather, Good Citizens and WAW Handplanes change the start of the value chain, by innovating how the product is made. In the 70's, The Body Shop did the same starting with the words Against Animal Testing. 

Of course there is also the middle of the supply chain—manufacturing with renewables and so on. It just rarely seems to be a differentiator big enough to build a brand from. 

👉 There's something for we and something for me 👈

Let's take Good Citizens as an example. Their frames are made from 100% recycled plastic from rivers and waterways, which is good for the planet. At the same time, each pair is made from just 5 pieces, so if you break an arm, you can replace it - which is good for me as a buyer. Plus they look cool. As Nik Robinson says, 'they've got to have street appeal'.

Sustainability creates a reason to look, but being better for the use I need it for creates the reason to buy.  

👉 Everything can be rethought 👈

When you’re doing something new, it’s hard to see past the ‘rules’ of your category. 

Take Talk Club for example, a charity supporting men's mental health. If you were working out how to fund such a thing, you’d naturally think about grants and donations. Ben Akers and team thought differently, creating Clear Head, a zero alcohol beer that has delivered them over 100K pounds to date. It's a completely different business model. 

💪 But here's the biggest discovery 💪 

Almost no-one I've spoken to had experience in the thing they created.

Nik Robinson & Jocelyne Simpson from Good Citizens had never worked in eyewear.

Maddi Ingham & Glenn Bartlett from GreenPay had no experience in digital payments.

Lucy Jackson & Rikki Gilbey from WAW Handplanes had never worked in the surf industry. 

David Gibson and Nathan Lennon from Hawkes had never brewed a beer before.  

Ben Akers from Talk Club had never worked in a charity. 

Maria Baker from Nobody's Princess knew nothing of snow wear. 

Tina Funder from Alt.Leather had never run a deep tech company. 

Now best-selling author Natalie Kyriacou had never written a book before. 

Showing no matter your idea to make the world a better place, if you’re prepared to put in the time to learn, you can do it.

Goodtrepreneur is the podcast about good people with good ideas for a better world.

Please 👀 follow, 👂listen, 🌟 rate and share 📢 to help spread the word and deliver on our mission to inspire and enable more people to create more world changing ideas - and succeed - more often.

Learn more at goodtrepreneur.co

Singers:

I'm gonna turn to this world today. Make those bad things go away.

Ben:

Hello and welcome to the season one wrap where I try to summarize a dozen hours of interviews into three things that I think are the most interesting findings or little lessons as I'll call them. But before I get to them, here's a few thoughts on why these good ideas are so important. I'll tell you a story about a brand called Tony's Chocolonly. You've probably heard of it. It was a Monday morning when I got a call from a global snack food company. One with lots of brands that you see in the shelves every day. Hi, Ben, they said. Hi. We'd like you to help us run a workshop. What on? Building social and environmental impact into the core of our brands and products. Okay, I thought. Thinking big, I like it. When would you like to run this workshop? Wednesday. I was expecting them to say in three months. That's the speed big companies work at. They're saying in three days. Did you have someone drop out? I asked. No, we want you to run it. Great. I said, when did you start planning this? Last Friday. Gee, well, that's urgency. So the team and I scrambled together a workshop and Wednesday came. We showed up in the room and there were about 30 people there. Every brand, marketing, and innovation lead for every snack food brand this global company owns. I'm thinking, wow, a lot of diaries got rearranged to make this happen so fast. Like all workshops, the client did the intros, and the first slide she showed is why we're gathered here today. And on it was Tony's Chocolate Only. In case you don't know Tony's, it comes in bright, colorful packaging with tasty flavors, and it's all built around the mission to end slavery in the chocolate supply chain. They put this mission front and center of what they do, and they've been hugely successful in doing so. Founded in the Netherlands in 2005, Tony's now has almost a quarter of the Dutch market, selling more than Nestlé and Mars, and it's doing almost as well in the UK, USA, and other places. Now it was coming to Australia. For me, this was a memorable moment. I've been trying to create this sort of urgency in companies for years, and here it was, an upstart startup showing big business how it's done and getting attention. You see, as individuals, we all know the world needs to change. When we hear that we've lost 80% of our home planet's forests, we know that's not good. When we see a hundred-year storms start to happen every couple of years or a couple of times a year, we know we probably can't keep running our cars and economies on dinosaur juice for much longer. And when we know that 26 people in the world own more than the poorest half, we know that's not really fair. The benefits of all this environmental destruction are going to too few, while the consequences are paid by all. As individuals, we know this and we support change. No one wants to think their favorite snack helped kill in orangutan or that a child slave made our shirt. But when we're in the business setting, these things are hard to champion. For most companies, selling more faster and beating the competition is priority number one. Sustainability can be hard to align with that. It's possible, but it's a lot of work, and that means it happens slowly through a bunch of small changes, or not at all. And that slow change just isn't enough. It's evolutionary. We need a revolution in how business is done, in how our industries and economies are powered, in what we buy and where the waste goes and how the money gets shared around. Upstart startups like Tony's are the revolutionaries of the business world. Let's say you worked at a big chocolate company and came up with the idea for Tony's. Of course, this slave-free supply chain doesn't exist, so you have to find one or make it. Even if you get past all the hurdles that takes, you'll likely find that this new supply chain costs more than the old one. Since no one's prepared to take the risk that people pay for it or mess with the supply chain of what is currently a successful, profitable business, your good idea goes in the too hard basket and nothing changes. I'm not saying big business doesn't care or want to, it does. It's just a lot of work for an uncertain reward, and that's risky. And risk is something to minimize, often rightly so. Sure, you're risking sales and profits, but you're also risking people's jobs and livelihoods, not just your companies, but others in the supply chain too. So who steps into this fold? For innovators and startups, the difficulty and risk is the point. By venturing into the unknown, they create themselves the opportunity to break into a market. So they're motivated by totally different things than established companies. It's their role to pioneer big leaps and bounds, to start small but think big, to take risks that established businesses cannot. Now that Tony's has done it, they've created a supply chain others can follow. Now for a big chocolate brand, it becomes less risky to start to improve its supply chain. It's easier because, hey, it's been done. If Tony's can do it, why can't we? In fact, once something like this has been done, it can become more risky not to follow. Otherwise, what are you saying to your customers? It's okay to have slaves in the supply chain? What you start to see is the ripple effect. One successful upstart startup shifting an entire industry. Another example of this is Patagonia. Yes, I had to mention them. For all its awesomeness, Patagonia is only around a $1 billion US dollar company. That's a fat pile of money, but when you consider that Unilever is a $106 billion company, Netflix is worth almost $400 billion, and Apple is valued at over $3.6 trillion, that's 3,600 times bigger than Patagonia, you start to see the challenge. If the biggest success story in sustainable innovation is fundamentally a rounding error in the bigger scheme of global business, then are these companies really that important? Well, yes, they are. Thanks to Patagonia, pretty much every outdoor apparel brand now has a social and environmental impact story to tell. And to tell a story, you have to do something worth talking about. Whether Northface, Arcteryx, Columbia, Salaman, Heli Hansen, or almost any other brand you care to name, social and environmental impact is now core to the category, and it doesn't stop there. Retail apparel more broadly, that's clothes and shoes in everyday language, is one of the most watched and considered categories when it comes to sustainability. You can even look up a brand before you buy it thanks to directories like Good On You. Would all this have happened without Patagonia? Maybe. Have their efforts to bring issues and answers to the spotlight sped things up? Undoubtedly. So now we're not just talking about the impact of a $1 billion company. We're talking about the flow-on effect on a $2 trillion industry and the bigger world beyond that. And that's a whole lot of ripple. But here's the biggest ripple of all. Good products like these give everyday people like you and me a chance to show that if companies make them, we'll buy them. Chances are you've seen the circular argument. Business says if you buy them, we'll make them. Customers say if you make them, we'll buy them. And nothing happens. Ideas like Tony's give us everyday people a chance to put our money where our mouth is and help break the cycle. They create a ripple effect that shows the world the way. So that explains why these companies are so important, but it doesn't answer the question of why some succeed and others fail. Of course, there's no single answer to that, but after speaking to a dozen founders, I have a few first thoughts or little lessons I've learned to share with you. The first is that it matters how you change the value chain. On the off chance, you don't know, the value chain is the series of steps that you go through to create a finished product. So if you make breakfast cereal, it's the growing of the ingredients, the transport to your processing plants, the making into cereal, the boxing of the cereal, distributing its shops, selling it. Good companies seem to do their good at one end or the other of this value chain. Let's take Who Gives a Crap for an example. They make toilet paper. You buy the toilet paper, they donate 50% of profits to water and sanitation projects. Everyone feels good and it works. They've donated over 18 million Australian dollars to date. And there are plenty more examples in this space. Thank you, Hawks Brewing, and Green Pay come to mind. So too does Paul Newman's own, once again proving this stuff has been going on since the 70s. For these companies, the impact is right at the end of the value chain. Once the product's materials are sourced, the products produced, distributed, and sold, the value created, which is the profits, are distributed differently to how an everyday company does it. I think the reason these ideas work is because they're so simple for the customer to understand. I buy the product, some of my money does good, so I'm a good person. Easy, right? For other companies, the change in the value chain happens right at the start. Tony's Chocolate Only is again a good example here. The impact is created where the cocoa is growing. Other examples include Tina Funders Alt Leather, which is well down the path to creating fully functional leather from plant materials, as well as war hand planes and good citizens eyewear, who have innovated a whole new supply chain to get degraded plastics out of waterways and remanufacture them into bodysurfing handplans and really cool sunglasses. I think these ideas work because they spark the imagination of the customer by changing how a whole category is done. It's big news and people love something big. Of course, there's also the middle of the value chain, manufacturing with renewable energy, or reducing or removing waste from the production process, or distributing with EVs, or employing marginalized people in the workforce, things like that. All these are good things to do and they're worth applauding, but in my experience, they're rarely the differentiator that makes a good idea succeed. The ones that get noticed and make an impact are the ones that innovate at the ends of the value chain. So starting with how you make an impact is the first step to success. Now let's move along to how you get customers interested in the good new thing you've created. And that brings us to the second little lesson, and that's there's got to be something for me and something for we. Let's continue looking at who gives a crap, because hey, they're a fun brand. If you look at them one way, they make toilet paper out of 100% recycled and sustainable materials, then donate 50% of profits to sanitation projects. That's innovative. If you look at them another way, they make it convenient to buy toilet paper in bulk and be proud of your purchase. It's home delivered so you don't have to lug it on the train or bus. It's bright and colorful so you can store it in the open instead of stuffing it into a bathroom cabinet. And that pretty packaging, it says, look at me, I'm a good person. It's good for we, but it's also good for me. Another example is good citizen sunglasses. They're 100% made from plastic reclaimed from rivers and waterways. They're also 100% recyclable, which is good for the planet. At the same time, each pair is made from just five pieces, so if you break an arm, you can replace it, which is good for me as a buyer. Plus, they look cool, and that's the most important thing when you're talking Sunnies, right? Would good citizens be successful if they didn't look good? I doubt it. As co-founder Nick Robinson said, they've got to have street appeal. Would Tonys have been so successful if it hadn't innovated both supply chain and flavors and packaging? Probably not. It's this duet between innovation that's good for me and good for we that makes them work. But here's the really interesting part. When you talk to founders, they say the same thing time and time again. The good for the world story gets the brand or the product noticed. But when it comes to making a sale, it's more about what's in it for me. Then when the customer takes the selfie for social media, they tell the story of how the product is good for the planet again. Their friends see it and the cycle repeats. As Ricky from War Handplanes says in episode one, the good for we story increases our sales exponentially because our customers want to tell that story, and that story sells it to other people and they market it on our behalf, which is, I think, the true power of having a story behind your product. It's ridiculously simple, but it works. You can't just make a sustainable product. You have to make a better product and do it more sustainably. It's hard, but the rewards are worth it. My last little learning, number three, is that everything can be rethought. When you're doing something new, I think it's always hard to see past the perceived rules of your category or business. Take Talk Club, for example. It's a charity getting men together to talk about how they're going and work on their mental fitness. If you were co-founder Ben Acre's and you were working out how to fund such a thing, you'd naturally think about government grants, philanthropic grants, getting out in the street to find regular donors, all the things everyday charities do. Ben and his team thought a bit differently. They developed a concept for a zero-alcohol beer and pitched it to their local brewery. After a bit of nudging, the brewery took it on, and so far it's generated over £100,000 to help Talk Club span out across the UK and help prevent male suicide. It's not their only funding, but it's a nice chunk that doesn't require putting in another grant application every year. I'll give you another example. To cut a long story short, co-founders Dave Gibson and Nathan Lennon approached Aussie ex-prime minister and beer drinking legend Bob Hawke to be the face of the beer. Bob said yes on one proviso. In order to lend his name and face to the beer, he would earn a royalty from Sales Forever, and that royalty would go to land care, which he'd helped establish way back in the 80s. So here you have a famous person who values legacy over money, helping create a new business model where Hawke's brewing can donate a good chunk of its income to doing good without it costing a cent that it wouldn't have had to spend anyway to put Bob's name on the brand and the beer. I've never seen that business model before, and it could be easily replicated across other categories and products where you can find a famous person who wants legacy over money to help support it. So that's my three little learnings from season one. There are plenty more, but hey, three's the magic number, right? Before I go, I'll give you a bonus thought. Yeah, one more. One of the things that's amazed me about talking to these founders of good ideas is how few of them had experience in the thing they were going into. Nick and Joss, the founders of Good Citizens, had never worked in eyewear or fashion. Maddie and Glenn, the founders of GreenPay, had no previous experience in digital payment systems. Lucy and Ricky from War Handplanes had never worked in the surf industry before. Maria Baker, who created Nobody's Princess, had never worked in Snowware. Alt Leather's Tina Funder had never run a deep tech company before, and now best-selling author, Natalie Kiriaku, had never written a book before. What this tells me that it doesn't matter what you're trying to do to make the world a better place. If you've got a good idea and you're prepared to put in the time, learn along the way, and bring people to your cause, you can do it. It's not easy, but it's proven to be possible time and time again. And I think that's the biggest lesson of all. So thanks for listening. And please, if you want to learn more, check out an episode at goodtrepreneur.co. Or follow goodtrepreneur on your favorite poddle platform. Cheers. See you next time.

Singers:

I'm gonna change this world today. Make those bad things go away.

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Ben Peacock

Host