Doing Business with Purpose: Turning Intent into Meaningful Action

What does it really mean to be a purpose led business and what happens when that purpose starts to shape the decisions you make?

In this episode of The Great Business Podcast, we move beyond the idea of purpose as a statement or a strapline, and into the reality of what it looks like in practice. Because when purpose shifts from intention to action, it often brings tension. Between doing what is right and doing what is easy. Between commercial pressures and long term impact.

Jennifer O’Donnell is joined by Gemma Parsons, founder of Black Flamingo Homes, a business creating eco conscious co living spaces for key workers. Alongside her role as a police officer in child protection, Gemma is tackling a problem many of us do not see, but one that has far reaching consequences for individuals, communities, and essential services.

Together, they explore the reality of building a business with purpose. From recognising the problem, to navigating systems that were never designed to support change, to making difficult decisions about what good enough looks like along the way.

This is a conversation about purpose under pressure. What it costs, where it challenges you, and whether it is enough on its own to define what makes a business truly great.

And ultimately, it asks a bigger question. If the people we rely on most cannot afford stability in their own lives, what does that mean for the future of our society? 

Thanks for listening to The Great Business Podcast.
If you enjoyed it, please follow the show so you don’t miss the next episode. And if you’ve got a minute, a quick rating or review really helps other people find us.

You can find more about The Great Business Company here:
Website: www.thegreatbusinesscompany.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-great-business-company/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Great Business Podcast. In this series, we're exploring one simple question: what makes a good business and what makes a great one? I'm Jennifer O'Donnell, host of the Great Business Podcast and co-founder of the Great Business Company, where we help businesses go from good to great by embedding sustainable intelligence into how they operate. Today we're talking about something that's coming up more and more, being a purpose-led business. But what does that actually mean? Aren't all businesses purpose-led, making profit with the purpose of selling something that somebody else wants? But when you move from talking about purpose in that context to thinking about it as producing profitable solutions that address the impact businesses have on people and the environment, something shifts. It means purpose is no longer a simple single driver, it becomes something that shapes decisions alongside profit, even when those decisions aren't the most obvious commercial ones. So, what's it really like when you find yourself pushing against systems that were never designed to support what you're trying to do? Today's guest is someone who is exploring that question right now. Gemma Parsons is the founder of Black Flamingo Homes, a business creating eco-conscious co-living spaces for key workers. Alongside her role as a police officer in child protection, she has built this business from the ground up after spotting a problem that most of us never see or even know about. On this episode, we explore purpose, pressure, and whether doing the right thing is what truly separates a good business from a great one. So hello Gemma.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Hi.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

And welcome to the Great Business Podcast. Thank you for having me. Let's start from the beginning because your story is fascinating in itself. You did a good degree in design, you started a makeup business, you then went on to become a police officer, and now you're combining that role with setting up this incredible initiative that has the potential to solve a real challenge, not just for individuals, but across a whole sector. So tell us about your journey. How did you get to this point?

SPEAKER_00 2:33

So, as you said, I uh studied a degree in interior design over 20 years ago now, and um so I've always had that interest in art and design, buildings. I never went into it in the end. I went off travelling, came back, did some jobs that I didn't really enjoy very much, and then found myself in the police force. Um basically just like that, really. You know, I got called and uh I kind of needed something that would, you know, be different every day and keep me interested, and you know, hopefully do something kind of good for the community in in the process of that. But I've always had that creative side, and I and this is where sort of the makeup business and other things came along as sort of little sidelines really that kind of ended up taking over my weekends and various evenings and things. And then in 2018, I moved from uh Brighton where I was policing and had done for 11 years to London and joined the Met. And uh I've been there ever since. And for the last three years, I've worked in online child protection. And like I say, I've always had this creative side, I've always thought about you know what else am I going to do. I decided I wanted to go into property, and I've sort of come first full circle really into buying property, renovating it, designing the interiors myself. Yeah, I bought the first one in 2024, about six months after I had set up Black Flamingo Homes. I renovated that, rented it out to um a housing association who house vulnerable families, and that is in Liverpool. I thought I would kind of do the same thing over and over again, really, to be honest, but uh this new property came up from somebody that I knew that approached me and said, Are you interested? And it's led me down this whole journey of the HMO route, which I kind of thought would be a bit later on in my uh property career, but has sprung up now and um yeah, has led me on to my key worker-only scheme that which is what I'm currently focused on.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

And just tell me a little about the HMO route, just explain that for our listeners.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

So HMO is a house of multiple occupation, it's three or more non-family members that are residing together in a house. I wanted to go down that route because obviously the rental income is a lot better. There's usually there is more work that goes into it, but what I realized is a lot more people are having to share these days, and so there's a lot more of them popping up, and they've got a bit of a bad reputation for being, you know, not very pleasant places with a lot of people crammed in. And what's happening now is people are expecting much better living conditions, and so I started looking at this, and originally it was kind of because of the location of this one, the hospitals. There's there's quite a few hospitals in Liverpool, um, and this house was really close to them and close to the town centre. And then as it developed, um, I realized hold on, there's a problem here that I have been dealing with as a key worker for almost 20 years. And I started looking into other key workers, seeing that you know there's some similarities here. Um, one with the security clearances that we have in the police, the prison service also have that. And I'm hearing now that a lot of teachers are sort of coming up, not to quite as strict as us, but we have to declare everybody that we live with, and they get security checked the same as us. Um, and a lot of teachers are now having to declare who they live with as well. And the problem is when you share with anybody, you know, not everybody wants to give you their personal details. And if you're living with four, five, six people, that's even harder. Um, and you have to redo that vetting process every time it changes. So if you're living somewhere where people are changing regularly, it's a very, very stressful process that you could be doing quite frequently. I had a particular um time where I had a flat that I was trying to rent out a room. I'd been living with a with a colleague, she'd moved on, and the stress levels were just through the roof because I was thinking, if I don't find somebody, I don't know if I can afford this place on my own for too long. And there's nothing in place to help you. So you're literally just filtering adverts, trying to meet people, trying to work out what they do for a job, because we kind of try and naturally gravitate towards each other. So generally we try and find other emergency service workers, teachers, NHS staff, people that work shifts as well, because that's a massive factor when you're house sharing. Um, and people don't always understand the stresses of working shifts, sleeping in the day, not having full sleep that you would get in a nine to five. And then there's obviously the criteria of the vetting and declaring people. So I remember it just being a horrific time. I was speaking with colleagues and with friends, and we've all done the same thing. We've all just been winging it for years, trying to find those people that we think are a safe bet, and hoping that you know, when you submit the vetting, they don't come back to you and say you can't live with them, they've got to move out, which they can do and does happen. That started me off on my route, and I suddenly realized that around this particular house as well, there was, you know, an awful lot of schools, police stations. There's uh I think about six large hospitals in Liverpool alone. Um, there's obviously the police stations, ambulance bases, fire stations, etc. Um, and I was like, do you know what? I think this is a really good one, good a good place to start, and um to see if I can launch my key worker-only homes and try and relieve that stress for people.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Hearing you talk, the system just seems so unbelievably precarious. You've got you you've just mentioned like three significant pressures that you have outside. This is before you've even started about doing your job. You've got the stresses of working with living with people that are doing the same shifts and they understand how you work, and and that's something that's really key and vital. So for your well-being, and I guess for the well-being of the other people that you're living with. Um, the cost, I mean, we hear about this a lot in the news about the cost for key workers. Well, for people that are on a certain salary and the cost of rents, particularly in cities, is that and how you know how do you how do you manage that? But then on top of that, needing clearance, I just can't imagine having all of those additional pressures as well as going and doing such a pressurised job, it's an unseen problem, as I said at the at the beginning, and that just it's it's almost like the system's just sitting there, and it could it could very easily just all break down. And I I guess for what you're doing, um, when you're talking about purpose, you're not necessarily talking about changing a system that doesn't work, but you're talking about finding a way to work within it and make it function for the people that it's currently not serving. Do you have people talking to you about when they're really under pressure in a in a housing situation? And are there any kind of stories that that you know about where people have I mean, do people lose their deposit if they suddenly have to move out of somewhere?

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Yeah, I mean it's all on you. There's no concern from your job at all. It's a case of you've signed up to this, you have to declare it. They're not known for being very quick at doing these vetting things, you know. I've resubmitted mine recently, and I think I submitted it like four months ago, and I'm only now getting an email to say it's being looked at, and every document that I've sent them is now out of date, and I'm gonna have to do them all again. So this is not a quick process by which time you could be living with somebody. There's only so many checks you can do as a person, you know, you are left open a bit if you're living with people, especially people you don't know, which happens so much now. Um, and like you say, the the cost of you know, having your own flat, even sharing sometimes two of you. If you are a new recruit, if you are a brand new qualified teacher, if you are new nursing staff in particular, your salaries are very low now and the rents have gone up. And you know, how how how else do you afford it if you're not sharing? But then you've also got some people that are only maybe, particularly with the medical staff, they might only be on a year's contract. Do they want to sign up to a flat on their own for a year? You've got sometimes people in particular stressful roles that don't want to manage having a rent, a council tax, three different sets of bills, whatever. They want one payment, which is how an HMO kind of works. One payment, it's all costs included, it's easy. You've got people that their situations change. Maybe suddenly they give a notice on where they on where they're living, maybe they've had a relationship breakdown, maybe they've still got financial commitments with you know young children elsewhere or something. There's lots of reasons why people now find themselves sharing, and you know, there's no help and there's not really any concern from from employers, you know. And the I've heard that the NHS some hospitals do offer some sort of rooms, but from what I hear from people, they are like a prison cell. They're grey walls, they're cold, some of them don't have windows, they're not where you want to go after a 14-hour shift, they're not where you want to go if you've had a particularly tough day, and your brain is just trying to process and you might be upset, you might be stressed out, you know, all these emotions. They they are not homely places, and even the ones that are slightly better, there's still four to six of you sharing a toilet, sharing a bathroom, sharing a kitchen. You know, there's not really any home comforts about it. They are done as a real cheap necessity option, and you kind of accept it or you don't. With medical staff as well, they have to do a rotation. So I I I know people that are um gen uh junior doctors and they have to do their rotations and they have to go to various hospitals depending on what units are where, so that they can get signed off. And what I've heard recently is again, you know, they're moving to areas that they don't know, they don't know anybody there, they're having to just rent a room, and that they're living in places where the rest of the house is people that are either having mental health breakdowns and screaming and shouting at all times of the day or night, or they might be people with you know drink or alcohol issues that are in the house. And again, these people have just you know already done a 12-14-hour shift. They might have commuted an hour each way, and this is so supposed to be their safe space, and this is what they're coming back to.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Well, I know that's what I'm what's I'm thinking in my head. How do you cope when you've done that kind of shift? Because that's stressful anyway. Yeah. Um, you know, what impact is that having on their mental health? You know, for us that are on the receiving end of those services, if we've if we've not got key workers doing the jobs that they need to be doing to the best of their ability and being able to do it that way because everything else around them is working and they don't have to take these additional stresses, if they're not in that position, it's that what impact is that having on what they can actually deliver day to day? I was looking at some stats actually. In 2023, Way Home did some research into home ownership and said that for key workers in some parts of the UK, they'd need up to 10 times their salaries, 10 times to buy an affordable home. And in 2025, the Office for National Statistics published information that renting a one-bed flat in across of half of England for new nurses, teachers, healthcare assistants was unaffordable. And last year the Times uh said that there are cases of key workers, including police officers, who can't afford rent and are sleeping in their cars. I mean, have you heard of that? Is that is that a reality?

SPEAKER_00 15:20

Yep. Yep, I know of that, you know. I know of people buying, you know, mobile homes and sort of, you know, trying to park up near the police station and um and then you know driving off on their days off to family members or where else and because especially you know if you're looking at you know central London or something like that, it's it's extortion at prices.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

I mean, I even think about young people that I know that work in the local coffee shop in London, and they've got other jobs during the week, and then they go and work in a coffee shop at the weekend because they just can't afford to pay their rent, but you don't have the opportunity to be able to go work in a coffee shop, I guess, at the weekend.

SPEAKER_00 16:05

No, again, we've got to get permission. So, my business, I've had to like, you know, I have to every year ask for permission to do my business, yeah. So, um, yeah, it's very intrusive on your life, and again, I don't think a lot of people realise this when you join, in particular the police and the prison service, but yeah, it's very, it's very impactful. But yeah um, you know, I just feel like like you said earlier, it's not about trying to change a system, like trying to fight them to change it, and the fact that you know, you go around the country, every area has a different, it has different forces, has different NHS trusts, has different fire fighters, and you you can't necessarily fight this, you can't necessarily change it. So, what do we do to kind of work within it and try and link up everybody and make people's lives a little bit easier?

SPEAKER_01 16:58

So you've had this wonderful idea, key workers, shared occupancy, and also doing it in an eco-friendly, sustainable way. I mean, if ever there's a purpose-led business, you have got one right there. Well was it harder than you expected? And where are you at with it? Tell us kind of a bit where we where where it is at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

So Project Brooklyn's is the first one in Liverpool. It is in the building phase at the moment, so the full ripout has been done, and then we start putting stuff back in and creating the space. So it's all it's all go. The eco-friendly side of it, I am somebody that is quite conscious of the planet and of how I live, and it's about being a bit greener, it's about keeping the bills low for those tenants, making it affordable still, and just I just think we all need to start trying to live in a slightly kinder way. So um, this project has got solar power and air source heat pump. I'm looking into companies that I use. So uh, for example, my kitchen is from Howdons, they are very big on sustainability in terms of the majority of their vehicles are are electric now. Um, the fact that most of their cabinet doors are all FSC approved wood. I've been looking at various eco-flooring companies and eco-paint as well. That's the other thing. So I want to use as much eco-friendly paint as I can, which obviously doesn't have the toxins in it in it. With all these things, there's a price. Um, you know, and I am funding this whole project myself through different finance. It's the challenge of trying to fit in what I want to do and what I want to achieve within the budget. And I kind of have to accept that maybe I can't do everything this first time round, and some of it might not work, and some of it I might learn about better technologies or better things as I go.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

It's a real challenge what you're talking about there for any company. It doesn't matter what size they are. There was a post on LinkedIn that I saw last week, which was around um Unilever who had really high ambitious sustainability goals, and they were following those goals for a number of years, and then they made the decision to pull back on them because they said that they would rather focus on things that they knew that they could achieve rather than a whole load of things that they might not be able to achieve. And there's a conversation backwards and forwards about whether that's just kind of lowering your targets. Like I made the point that if you um in sales, if you lower your target just so that you know you can hit it, it kind of doesn't really achieve anything, so there's a balance. But I had a cleaning company which was very much founded on being ethical and looking after staff. And I started out in the domestic cleaning market and I paid a living wage and I employed everybody. I also had to charge VAT because we're our biggest cost was our workers, and I would often go and see new customers, and they'd be like, Well, you're like really expensive, and then their expectations were so we because you're that expensive, we want to have a really, really top-level service, and it's like, but it's uh you're paying for the workers for a living wage and you're paying to protect them with workers' rights and for the health and safety training and for everything else, but don't have to understand it if they can't see it, you know, if it's not something they can physically see as well.

SPEAKER_00 20:44

So um I'm not sure how some of it's gonna go down, like with tenants. Uh, for example, I'm using a hot boiling hot water tap, so there will be no kettle in the main kitchen. So I think you know, there's going to be a bit of training for people that aren't necessarily used to these things. Again, with the solar power and the air source heat pump, your radiators don't get boiling hot like they do with gas um central heating. The idea is you're keeping things at a very sort of constant temperature all year round. It's a slightly different way of living for people. Um, so there's there's probably going to be, you know, an element of training tenants um and getting them to realise these things as well, because you know, a lot of our homes don't have them yet. So um it, you know, it's gonna be a learning process for all of us.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

But I I do think once behaviour has to change, has to, because it's like you either do this or you don't live here, then people's behavior changes changes very quickly. You know, as soon as as soon as we had everybody had to pay for their plastic bags in the supermarket, you know, that behaviour just changed an instant. Have you had to make any decisions That aren't really aligned with your because I think there's trade-offs when you've got a purpose-led business. Because if you set yourself out, this is how I'm going to be, but actually, when you're looking at some parts of it, it can be well, that's not easy. I'll give you an example. When I had the cleaning company, we said that we employed all of our staff, but we would have some cleaners that would be really good that would say, I want to be self-employed. That's and it kind of went against what we what our whole ethos was. But that's we didn't want to lose a good cleaner, and you kind of make that trade-off. Have you had that experience?

SPEAKER_00 22:40

Not really at the moment, to be honest. I think again, a lot of the building trade is not particularly eco-friendly.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

But it is complicated looking into suppliers in terms of doing your due diligence to ensure that they are doing everything that you would want to be aligned with what you are doing. And and you're a police officer. I mean, how many hours do you work a week?

SPEAKER_00 23:03

Depends on the week. I mean, this is not 15. No, it's not 15. And uh, you know, they what do they say that that like every job they tell you it's 40 hours, but you know, realistically, I've done 20, 30, 35 hour shifts in a week, you know, and you still have to go in and do the next day, like yeah, or the day after because you've done two in the together, but um, you know, there's quite nobody to hand over to, so it's not uncommon to do a sort of 70-hour week.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

You've got that commitment, and at the same time, you're looking to be a purpose-led business and to have it aligned with your sustainability goals and ethos, but you can't do everything, yeah. I mean, you you can't, but I guess I guess as as it grows and you get further people involved, then that's when you can really start to think about how are we going to have due diligence within our supply chain? And do we need a a supplier charter that we have local suppliers signing up to? But you know, it's a big question for everybody because it's like how far does that go down the line? Does it have to go right to the very end of where the raw materials come from? You know, it's it's huge and it's a huge question for everybody. But I'm really interested in you've self-funded this yourself. Tell us about your ambitions. What what is it that you want to achieve?

SPEAKER_00 24:30

So I want to take this model all around the country. Key workers now make up a third of the UK's workforce. They're everywhere, you know, they have to be everywhere. We need we need them, we need what they offer, we need teachers, we need, you know, medical staff, we need all the emergency services. So what I would like to do is be able to take this all around the country and provide decent, affordable, um, safe housing for those people. What I would like to do at some point is set up my own management company as well so that they will all be management managed under Black Flamingo homes. All those tenancies, all the maintenance issues, all the cleaning that uh of communal areas, you know, TV licenses, all those things are in-house and are monitored and done, and we make sure that we've got the right people in each house because you know, as as it develops, it might well be that one particular house has all police in it and one has all NHS. It might be that there's a mixture in various houses, but that house people tend to stay for years, and that house is shorter-term contracts just to be able to grow really and do bigger projects and maybe even to then do some key worker flats or apartments as well. And again, you know, although those people will be kind of living on their own, they won't necessarily have the vetting issues because they're on their own. But being in a building with just keyworkers, you still can create that community, you can still create that support system, and that's something that's very important to me in all of the houses. I'm sure it's the same in the NHS, in policing at the moment. The so the suicide risk is so high. And, you know, I see on my social media every week an officer in some force that has taken their life because of the stresses of the job, something they see in. You know, I think we need to get back to knowing our neighbours, know creating communities, and there's nothing in the rental market at all. So although some there's there's a few bits that they kind of advertise on the, you know, if you want to buy property, key worker schemes, they're not really any benefit to key workers. It's a very good market employee. Um, and the same as some companies will offer rentals for key workers, but again, they're open, they're actually open to everybody. Um, so I want to go back to creating these little communities, and whether that's sharing a house or having your own place, um, just creating that that safe space for people.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

Yeah, and just to be with other people that understand and that can help and support each other. It must have been really exciting for you to bring in your interior design experience and to be able to use your creativity to be designing something that's that you know is going to be something very comfortable for people that are working in your sector to be living in? That must be exciting to be exciting.

SPEAKER_00 27:45

Yeah, really exciting, and that that design and the research of stuff um is is one of you know my favorite parts of the whole process.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

Yeah, and in terms of the um ambitions that you talked about before, what do you need from people out there to help make this dream happen?

SPEAKER_00 28:05

Investors is always good. One of the main problems I found with this project is I took a mixture of bridging finance and development finance, and the bridging finance is no problem, but the development finance was particularly painful, and it would certainly make life easier, and it would certainly make um it a lot quicker process for me to try and achieve these goals of having multiple in different cities, so yeah, investors definitely is something I'm looking at, but again, they've got to align with the project, with the the ethos of the whole thing. It's not just about money, and I've actually fairly recently not gone ahead with a deal because things just weren't aligning.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

It would be a really exciting project for a lot of companies that are going through sustainability frameworks, like our programme 12 Weeks to Future Ready, and looking for areas in which they can add value with social impact, which would give them a return on their money. It's not just that you're it's not a charitable donation, it's you're investing in something that's could have a huge impact on the way in which people live their lives, um, that are key workers, the experience they have, their well-being, their ability to be able to go and do their job well. All of these are such huge ticks in the world, the world of wanting to do something that creates big social impact. Um, I just want to end on a question, which is you've spotted a problem and you've found what a solution to it, but for lots of people, they might have an idea, particularly for a purpose-led business. What what would you say to someone um that's thinking about that?

SPEAKER_00 29:57

I think you've got to do your research, you've got to spend a lot of time looking at what is out there, how is it needed, how could this happen? But ultimately you get to a point you've got to do something, you know. Um yeah, and and anything is better than nothing. And and you know, that research is all part of it, it is a step, but um, sometimes you have got to take a risk, and sometimes you've got to take the leap of faith if you believe in it. You just gotta go out there and you've got to shout about it because you know, and and this is one of the hardest things for me is I've spent 20 years in the police not really telling people that I'm in the police. It's very much like, oh, you're a security risk, you're a target. There's all these reasons for why you don't tell people a lot of the public hate us, so you just don't want that grief. There's a lot of reasons that you don't, and now I'm going full circle again, and I'm having to shout about what I do for a living because that's my credibility.

SPEAKER_01 30:57

I think it's brilliant what you're doing, something that could really impact society as a whole. What we will do is we'll publish a link for people to be able to get in touch with you, um, either as investors or key workers that are interested in what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

Great. And hopefully at some point I can link up with, you know, all the forces, all the NHS trusts, because again, you know, there's lots of different ones for the areas. I'm trying to get in with Liverpool at the moment so that I can do that, so that again they can have a link that they can just put out on their intranet, direct their staff. They don't have to do anything at all, it's just offered as an option.

SPEAKER_01 31:34

I have um every belief it's going to be a great business. Thank you so much, Gemma. Um uh thanks for listening to the Great Business Podcast. Uh, monthly um episodes are out on the last Tuesday of every month. Thank you for listening. Bye.