[Music]
[Applause]
in August
1995 I made the craziest decision of my
life I was 27 years old
had a kid or two kids and a wife and I
just had been accepted to Harvard
Business
School but instead of matriculating to
Harvard perhaps the best career
insurance plan a man could ever
buy I decided to join a
$600,000 fledgling basketball t-shirt
company called and one now quick show of
hands how many of you have actually
heard of an
one not bad but I do have to remember
Canada hockey not Hoops I got
it so for those of you who don't know
and
one the company made its name selling
trash talking t-shirts on the front was
the player the raceless faceless
embodiment of all ball players and on
the back Trash Talk slogans
like I'm sorry I thought you could
play or grab a straw cuz you
suck my my personal favorite your game's
as ugly as your
girl I was part of a team that scaled
this organization to $250 million of
brand revenues over an 11-year run we
acquired the number two position in
basketball and truly it was a magical
run we sold the company in
2005 and believe it or not an1 was a
socially responsible business
business not because our consumers cared
we were selling kicks to 18year olds but
because it was the type of business that
we wanted to run to be to be proud of
it we had an incredibly family Centric
environment with a full CT basketball
court at the back of the office eight
dogs running through the office yoga
classes in the morning a mother's room
and benefits that were second and none
we extended this familiar approach to
our factories overseas where we had a
rigorous a conduct that was audited
twice a year we also believe that a
global business could act locally for us
that meant giving 10% of our profits to
local charities and all of our employees
had two weeks of paid time for community
service now over those 11 years it
became clear that this just wasn't the
right thing to do but good
business we had an employee attrition
rate of less than than
2% nobody ever left an1 they bled for
the company we were also a bootstrapped
business we never raised any outside
growth capital and as a result on six
different
occasions we were on the verge of
bankruptcy because we had outgrown our
cash
flows each time our
suppliers our retailers or our employees
bailed us
out we had treated them with respect and
integrity and partnership and in return
in Our Moment of greatest need they
stepped
up there were some other learnings from
an1 that were a little less positive it
turns out that it's uh easy to be
socially responsible when there's seven
of
you it gets a bit more challenging when
there are 300 of you across the globe
and when you're in a market share war
with Nike and Adidas and the business is
going
sideways it's acutely
difficult and then at the moment of
sale the moment when the mission of the
organization really hangs in the
balance you don't have any opportunity
to consider anything by law other than
maximizing shareholder value you are
legally
required to only focus on maximizing the
return to
shareholders and with regards to and
one though I bear no ill will to the
gentleman who bought an one he
absolutely paid fair price and this
isn't a story lament we knew what we
were
doing but within 3 months the sale our
remaining commitment to our employees
the community and the environment were
stripped out of the
company and it just felt like there had
to be a better
way there had to be a way that a
entrepreneur could scale raise Capital
have a liquidity event and still hold on
to Mission it was clear that business
was among the most powerful forces in
society and if harnessed appropriately
it could be a force for
good but it just wasn't built that way
there are cultural norms and legal
impediments that get in the way of
entrepreneurs who want to scale profits
and purpose
that's what brought me to my current
work with one of the partners at And1
and one of our earliest investors
college buddies going back 30 years we
started
blab bab's a nonprofit with a very
simple Mission we're serving the world's
leading entrepreneurs using business as
a Force for good our theory is that if
we can serve support and help scale
these organizations and then celebrate
them
perhaps will inspire Legions of other
companies to
follow we do that through uh beginning
with a corporate certification now you
probably are familiar with
Organic fair trade or a lead
certification for a
building so this is kind of like lead
but for a whole business it looks at the
whole organization its
intention is to make it easy in fact to
make good easy so that you all can
differentiate between a good company and
just good
marketing because the truth is if you
buy an organic
apple doesn't tell you anything about
who picked it and if you visit somebody
in a lead certified building it really
doesn't tell you about how they're
treating their
employees these organizations have
demonstrated the highest standards of
Social and environmental performance
they have taken and passed something
called the B impact assessment it is an
evaluation of their impact on everybody
they work with their consumers the
community their suppliers the
environment and their governance
practices once they've taken and passed
this very challenging
test secondly they got to make sure that
the mission of the company can last over
time and the way they do that is they
actually rewrite their corporate
governing documents to include the
interest of
stakeholders and in the process by
changing their articles or changing
their partnership ship agreement or
their membership
agreement that mission can survive new
money new management or even new
ownership now this
community if you ask them why they
joined they'd say first and foremost
it's about
leadership that they started their
organization because they wanted to have
an impact Beyond The Four Walls of their
business and all that we've provided is
a platform an identity for them to be
part of something bigger than themselves
in that
leadership it's
working they're starting to change the
conversation around the purpose of
business there are now 177,000 other
companies following their lead that that
impact assessment that I mentioned the B
impact assessment it's
free it's completely
confidential and it acts almost like a
do-it-yourself Consulting tool so that
companies can start to evaluate their
imp on the community the environment
their workers embedded our best practice
guides and case studies so that
companies can move up the curve and
177,000 other companies are now using
that tool to see how they stack up
against this community of
leaders on top of that
leadership the community has come
together to actually fundamentally
change corporate law if we really want
different outcomes from the business
business sector we got to change the
rules the way that we've approached this
particular problem is by creating a new
legally recognized corporate form so
you're probably familiar with
traditional corporations or llc's or
nonprofit
corporations this is actually a new type
of Corporation Called a benefit
Corporation it allows an entrepreneur
and a set of investors and directors to
simultaneously create shareholder value
and social
value it changes the purpose of the
business this legislation is now passed
in 27 states in the United
States and perhaps most importantly on
18 different occasions it passed without
a single vote in
opposition I don't know how familiar you
all are with the political process in
the United States that's rather
remarkable at this particular point in
time it turns out that both the right
and the left can get behind the idea of
if business has a Force for
good this legislation is actually being
considered here in Canada as
well now I am sure a variety of you are
are wondering okay this sounds great but
at what cost surely surely there must be
some Financial
repercussions of not exclusively
focusing on the profitability of a
business I'll let you in on a little
secret there are now 40 studies that
have been completed by the likes of The
Economist Harvard Business Review deoe
Accenture Goldman Sachs
MIT all of which have concluded that
higher standards of environmental social
and government
practices actually reduce Financial
Risk and over the long term will create
greater profitability for corporations
that it truly is a better way to do
business it turns out that these
companies are generating greater
consumer loyalty have greater access to
Capital and are attracting and retaining
better
Talent some data 84% of all consumers
now expect businesses to
balance social interests with business
interests and with regards the talent
acquisition Millennials now represent
50% of the workforce and they certainly
are the next generation of leaders
88% of them now say that money is not
the best measure of success in an
individual on top of that
64% would rather take a $40,000 a year
job that has some meaning rather than a
$100,000 a year job that's
boring if you asked our community the
community of certified B
corporations they tell you they're
thriving and they're thriving not in
spite of their commitment to their
Community the environment and their
workers but because of it it's made them
more
resilient most interestingly to me is
that over the financial
crisis B corporations were 64% more
likely to survive than traditional small
and medium-sized
businesses
64% it's not a rounding
error this Community is trying to in
fact create a new sector of the economy
need of a new type of
Corporation that's alleviating poverty
and rebuilding
communities preserving the environment
and creating great places to work and
their hope is that in a generation's
time we'll redefine success in business
and that Financial metrics won't be the
only way that we evaluate how successful
a company is we'll look at worker
engagement and Community involvement and
environmental footprint all of those
will be included and how we evaluate
success in a company and that in a
generation's time that we'll all compete
not to be best in the world but best for
the
world but truly at the center of this
movement are
people people who
are tired of checking their values at
the door when they go to
work people who are looking for meaning
and purpose in their
careers who want to align their values
with their
purchases who want to invest in a way
that both makes a return and also
betters the
world you don't have to be part of a b
Corporation to be part of this
movement you just need to demand more of
the company at which you currently
work you have to demand more of
yourself we
sit at a historic Moment In
Time the financial crisis changed the
landscape around this issue talking
about corporations with higher standards
of
transparency purpose and accountability
no longer
Fringe and we're at a Tipping
Point we will either
regress to the way that business has
been done over the last 50
years creating value for a very few
while externalizing costs to the
many or we can surge
forward to a sustainable future where
business is creating a shared and
durable prosperity for all we sit at
that Tipping
Point and honestly it's up to
us I hope you'll join us thank you