How to run a sustainable small business | Xero Now - YouTube

joining me is Kelly Asimus our social and environmental impact advisor Kelly

thank you so much for joining us today pleasure

what does it mean and what areas of the business does it encompass I look after

the social environmental impact strategy so this is a new strategy for Xero that

we're rolling out globally it's all around operating our business with

credibility and discipline looking to optimize our environmental footprint

support our customers in the community and also engage our staff and all of

their passions in doing good for the environment and the community as well

that's great so you know why would you say it's important for a business to

think about their social or environmental impact well I think it's

becoming really topical at the moment and not just a nice to do or a good

thing but something that a lot of businesses are really expected to do and

it's also becoming a standard business practice so and why that is is because

of course it's good for the environment it's good for the community but also if

you run your business in a sustainable way you become more efficient more

successful you can attract and retain really good staff and you also build

stronger relationships with your stakeholders your customers you can

build advocacy and pride it can help open up new business opportunities and

help you attract investors a lot of investors are actually looking at

environmental social and governance as a key reason why they would invest in

the company as well so what advice would you give small businesses that want to

start looking at their social and environmental impact it doesn't have to

be hard or expensive you can really start small pick one or two things and

do them really well I'd suggest establishing a simple strategy and then

try to alone what you're wanting to do with what you do as a business and what

your business goals are - then I'd say set aside some money or resources just

ring fence that so you know how much time energy you're putting into this and

you can also monitor that and ramp it up you know as you become more mature in

this space and think about your suppliers are they green and

and then also have a look at how you're running your office and look at ways of

becoming more environmentally friendly and then really engage your staff in

this process that's what really makes a lot of these programs more successful is

getting the passion of your people behind them and then celebrate what

you're doing and promote it so that your shareholders your stakeholders your

customers and staff all know what you're doing and we also have just created a

business guide around some sustainable tips really focused on what you can do

in terms of your environmental sustainability so please check that

out there's a lot of good handy useful tips in there and also we wanted to

highlight some of the great work that our Xero staff are doing around the

offices in terms of environmental sustainability as well that sounds great

of course for those watching at home we'll make sure to include a link to our

to that guide that you've created in the episode notes so also really interested

to hear what Xero is currently working on in this space a couple of initiatives

that have been really well-received lately and could be quite easy for you

to emulate in your business too are our not-for-profit discount so we offer a

25% discounts and not-for-profit organizations on their zero plan and

we're also looking at how we can extend that offering out so that we are

supporting not-for-profits in the best way we can and a lot more and more of

our professional service organizations are offering discounts to support

not-for-profits so that's a growing trend and it really is a great way to

support the experts in doing good with your services at a lower and more

sustainable cost Xero staff are given one paid day off each year to make a

difference in the community they're able to take time out to give back and know

that they have a Xero's full support so it's a really tangible way to empower

your staff to give back and also has some really great flow-on benefits it

sounds like of course at Xero we're taking a number of different approaches

supporting our customers who want to use Xero and you know provide back to the

community as well as you know engaging the future of our industry and

supporting Xero's themselves as they look to engage and assist in causes that

they believe in so all might be small things but add up to it a much bigger

impact really cool thanks so much Kelly I

really appreciate you sharing your insights with us

I have a local restaurant that I go to in my neighbourhood a couple of weeks ago I

went in and I guess he had been reading about the recent regulation changes in

relation to plastic paper was going to be a bit more expensive for him and I'd

happen to bring in my own container that day to pick up my food and then it just

got us talking about well you would think about bringing in your own plastic

bag to a grocery store but why not also bring it to a restaurant as well as

bringing in your container and so just that kind of example I think illustrates

you know the ongoing conversation that you can start up and you don't really

know where it's going but it can often end up in a really good spot as a small

business owner I think you can also kind of think beyond the customer as well

right to your vendor relationships who are you speaking to who are you doing

business with that is able to maybe offer you a better deal for a

sustainable option you know which are the vendors that are really championing

out in the market sustainable approaches can you work with those vendors as a

small business obviously there's some things that are always just really

important like payroll cash flow so you have to kind of think about those things

constantly how can you intertwine that with your

sustainability focus as well I think that's the best way to think about it as

opposed to an either/or type of way of thinking let's do both right and and

take the the conversation in that direction so I work in workplace

experience so we deal with pretty much everything that our staff works with

and in Australia doing composting on a larger level is really hard that's

something that we as a team have worked really hard on so I personally supported

that but it was driven quite hard by our WX team personally I just try to make

sure that everything that I do doesn't leave any waste here I also did 365 days

with no new clothing and having a workplace where I could do that where I

didn't have to wear corporate I didn't have to worry uniform made that so much easier

I always have so many questions I want to know where it came from I wanna

know why it's there if I can't find out on the label I I get quite frustrated I

like transparency if I don't know I walk out the store without it if I can't I

can't you know weigh that up for myself so I

think for me as a consumer and you know also as an employee is having that

knowledge and having that transparency is a huge part of it it's it's one thing

to want to do it there's another thing to be able to so I think by not even if

you're not doing it a hundred percent by being upfront about it you're at least

acknowledging that you know where you stand and if the conversation comes up

around sustainability and someone asks questions be willing to answer them

upfront and don't be afraid of that it's just about giving people power we talk

about a top-down and a bottom-up approach and what that means is you

might have someone on the higher level sort of talking to the leadership in the

business and deciding on what are our big initiatives what are our big

strategies and what are we going out to market with so to speak but then at the

same time you've got people on the ground level and what can they do in

their day-to-day job to help be more sustainable I guess and to educate each

other and you know just do better by our planet and I think it's also about

making the most of everyone's time obviously we're very limited in what we

can commit to it so we've got to make sure we're doing the most we can with

what we have so big challenge I see and I experience a lot myself as well is

this I guess kind of like a social anxiety around bringing your own

container to like pickup takeaway food or something like that it's hard to

shake that feeling that you're going to disrupt the normal workflow of the

business but I mean nine times out of ten it's totally fine and a lot of the

time the businesses are really happy to support it and they'll even comment and be

like oh yeah nice like you're doing a good thing what I'd really like to see

is kind of like that BYO container attitude become the norm

joining me is Joel Hanna Xero employee and founder of Big Little Brush Joel thank you

so much for joining me today thanks for having me Joe always keen to be on Xero Now

always good fun welcome back so besides being a current and very early Xero

employee you also are part of Big Little Brush a socially responsible

business on the side can you tell us a bit more about Big Little Brush yeah cool so Big Little Brush is a

social enterprise that I founded with a handful of mates and we sell beautiful

biodegradable bamboo toothbrushes and we use the profits to help fund health and

hygiene programs in remote communities in Australia fantastic yeah so you know

a lot of our episode today is about sustainable business what made you

decide and your co-founders to start this business yeah it kind of came

out of a personal experience that I had of having a broken wisdom tooth that got

infected I was just really struck by how fortunate we are in developed cities and

communities and countries to have access to health care and particularly dental

care so just sort of did a bit of research and realized it's a pretty

massive problem internationally but even here in Australia there's a lot of

opportunity to just help with some really basic stuff around education and

also access to things like a toothbrush and toothpaste for example a tube of

toothpaste will cost 15 bucks in a remote community you know in the

supermarket here will probably cost your back or maybe two and same thing with a

toothbrush they're just really hard to get access to so what we do is we sell

our products online our toothbrushes online and we pass all of our profits to

program delivery partners that kind of do that work of education and also

supplying our toothbrushes and toothpaste into community as well people

who run sustainable businesses have often talked about the triple bottom

line yeah which actually I'm not familiar with could you walk myself and the

viewers through it triple bottom line is about people planet and profit and

treating all of those things is like first-class considerations inside the

business you know for a really long time corporations and businesses have been

focused on producing value for shareholders and by virtue of that

haven't had to or really been able to think about the other impacts of their

business can and do have so it's different to like a

charity or a not-for-profit where you don't have to worry about profit because

you have other sources of funding but for a business like ours we really do

need to consider the sustainability of our business in all three of those areas

we can't just think about planet and people we also need to think about you

know generating revenue off our products and profit off our products as well so

it's about thinking about all three of those aspects in all of your business

decision making and what some businesses will do is sort of fold that into their

annual reporting and that kind of thing as well and when people use that

term triple bottom-line what they're talking about is people planet and

profit in equal consideration cool so you know working in a business such

as Big Little Brush and taking that into consideration how do you find that

you as a business work differently with that in mind yeah it's a really

good question it's probably really relevant particularly in the early days

when we're making decisions about what kind of products are we going to

sell where are we going to sell them how are we going to sell them where are we

going to source them we know our suppliers really well we've worked

really closely with them to understand what their manufacturing processes are

we know where our bamboo comes from for example and we know how that's sourced and

how that's grown and as few kind of truck miles are put onto the bamboo as

possible it's a whole bunch of other things that go into that like kind of

that kind of process but in some ways it's it's kind of like making doing

business a little bit more challenging a little bit harder but it's for a really

good reason so if we didn't have to think about truck miles and the impact

on the planet for example we could just source bamboo from wherever it was

cheapest and we could have our brushes produced by anyone it didn't matter what

their working conditions were and but that's just not how we operate and how

we ever intend to operate I just think it's it's a really big paradigm shift

that lots of businesses are making and it's really largely driven by consumer

expectations so we can't show up as an ethical brand who does a good thing with

our profits for example but have a really crappy manufacturing process you

just can't do that but it means that you know we can hand on heart say that we're

doing the very best thing we can and we have a truly sustainable business at

that point as well um so if you know for those watching and you know and maybe

they want to start discovering this or understanding how they can make their

business more sustainable to not be overwhelmed what would be a good way

to start as with starting any business just test a few things and

do your research of course but it's not really a business book but there's a

book called The Most Good You Can Do by Peter Singer he's a Melburnian guy and

he wrote it ages ago but essentially it talks about no matter what you're doing

whether it's business or being a parent or being an employee or whatever but

doing that having the greatest positive impact that you can in those

those domains of people and planet so that'd be a good resource I'd recommend

check out but otherwise just shoot me an email and we'll have yarn about it I'm

always happy to chat about that kind of thing Joel thank you so much for joining

us appreciate you sharing your insights with us thanks for having me

joining me is Jon Kane founder and director of RBK advisory an accounting firm based

here in Victoria and also Xero partner of the year 2018 John thank you

so much for joining me today thanks so much for having me Joe cheers

so today we're talking about B Corp certification which RBK is certified

can you just walk us through what B Corp certification is and what it entails

B Corp certification entails a framework where you're measured against

other businesses and a performance framework internally from B Corp on

different parts of your business and how it runs and social and environmental

aspects or performance as a business is scored against those the the framework

and if you achieve a certain score then you become certified and then it gives

you an extra framework then going forward to improve what were some of the

things that motivated RBK to undertake this process we we really wanted to

have an impact apart from just being a business that is run for a profit

purpose it took us about a year to get through we had to audit our entire

business audit even the water usage and the energy usage of the places that

we that we rent from really just strip the business back and have a look at

our environmental and social impact for example digital signatures our business

is completely digital that way so we don't print paper we don't have our

client's print paper even to the point of looking at the flow levels on our

taps and that in in our spaces our energy usage in our spaces because we

work out co-working spaces as well we try to

share resources and we try to push our co-working spaces to use

ethically minded businesses as well so then what they might use a power company

that you know has a certain percentage of their power generation from a

sustainable source you know have you found any benefits as a business in

terms of being B Corp certified bringing you different clients or just

in general how you feel you're running the business yeah yeah I think it's it's

helped our decision-making and it also helps the buy-in from the staff point of view

because our team love that we are B Corp certified and the online

website which has all the framework how we rank and everything like that

and our team can go in there jump in have a look at it they can see where

they can make improvements to help RBK make improvements so that's

been a fantastic thing internally and then externally we we've dealt with a

lot of businesses now that are B Corps and even some that are in the same

industry as us and essentially you know competitors but we actually get together

and chat and you know combine ideas and do things and its really fantastic it's

provided a good little network to try and

you know enact some positive change in the world

great well John thank you so much for sharing your insights and the things

that RBK have learned on the journey to becoming a B Corp