The triple bottom line, what is it and why do you need one for your business and your
life?
Stay tuned and I will also share with you how I feel the triple bottom line connects
to joy
If you're new to my channel.
My name is Barbara Heffernan and I am a psychotherapist.
I am also a Buddhist and a mindfulness meditation instructor.
And I created this YouTube channel to try to help bring tools to more people so they
could increase the joy in their life.
And so if you support the work that I'm doing here, please subscribe to my channel, give
my video alike and make some comments below.
That's all extremely helpful.
So why am I talking about an accounting concept?
Let me share with you that I also have a business background.
I have an MBA in finance from Columbia university and my first career was actually on wall street.
I was there for 16 years.
And of course I'm an entrepreneur, so I own my own practice, I own my own business.
And the triple bottom line is very important to me personally.
And I also would like to share with you how I utilize the triple bottom line in my private
practice and my online business.
And I also think the triple bottom line is an important concept for us all to understand
because we are all participants in a global economy and given what's going on right now
in the world with global warming and the dramatic devastating income inequality, the triple
bottom line is a wonderful organizing principle to help make sense of how we can change things
going forward.
So the traditional bottom line is a very simple accounting concept.
It basically is that you have your revenues, you take out your expenses, you get pretax
profit, you pay taxes, and then you get your net profit.
Net income, net profit, bottom line all means the same thing.
And basically the bottom line or the net profit of an organization is how we traditionally
look at valuing what that company or enterprise is worth.
And that is an evaluation that looks only at the financials, the dollars and cents.
So the triple bottom line includes the environmental and the social impact of the enterprise as
a way to value it.
Now, from its very beginnings, capitalism has included the concept that a pure capitalist
society will not include some very significant social costs.
Even Adam Smith in 1759 the originator of the invisible hand and one of the founders
of capitalism, he acknowledged that capitalism will not adequately include social costs.
So valuing social costs is part of the current United States economy and part of the economies
around the world.
For example, we regulate emissions on factories, cars, other enterprises, other means of production.
We prohibit toxic waste dumping.
We have laws against discrimination.
So our society already includes a concept of a triple bottom line, but it's not explicitly
stated and it's not used as a way to truly value businesses, public businesses, private
businesses, your own business and your own life.
And of course, how society values these additional social costs is very important.
And I think it is very, very clear that right now we are not adequately valuing the cost
of plastics, the cost of CO2 emissions and the cost of poverty, the horrendous pain and
suffering around the world because of poverty and income inequality.
So our society right now is not valuing those things in my opinion and in the opinion of
many others correctly.
So the concept of the triple bottom line is often attributed to Freer Spreckley, I hope
I'm saying his name right - international development consultant.
And he posited that social enterprise is the modern way to run a business.
And what did he mean by social enterprise?
He basically stated that enterprises should measure and report not just their financial
performance but their social wealth creation and their environmental responsibility.
And then the other person who is attributed with the term triple bottom line is John Elkington.
He had a book in 1997 called Cannibals With Forks.
Don't you love that title?
Cannibals With Forks, the triple bottom line of 21st century business.
And in 2007 the United nations and an organization called ICLEI basically made the triple bottom
line the standard for urban and community accounting.
So basically public sector, full accounting, this became the standard.
It's encouraging, right?
We are making progress as a society perhaps, and I'm talking about a worldwide society
here, maybe a little too slow, but we are making progress.
We are all interconnected - people, planet profit.
And really what is profit about other than sustaining people on our planet?
That's really what it should be about.
I mean, we earn an income so we can sustain our own lives and our own families and worldwide
and as a society we should be looking at generating profit as a way to support all of us and take
care of our planet.
Before I go on to tell you how I incorporate this into my life and my business, I'd love
it if you would comment below, let me know what your top values are and how do you implement
those in your life and your business.
So just leave a quick comment, just your top three values and a shout out if all of this
is making sense to you.
So how do I incorporate these values into my business and my life?
Over 20 years ago I developed a personal mission statement and it holds true to this day and
my personal mission statement is to live a sane and joyful life while helping others
do the same.
And that has been such a wonderful guiding principle for me and it helped me to leave
wall street where I was making a lot of money, quit my job, move into social work where I
was not making a lot of money, but I had a much better lifestyle.
I was able to really live in connection with my values.
So as a lifestyle entrepreneur, I think we can look at our lives and say, okay, yes we
need to earn income, but we don't want to be earning that income at the expense of our
lifestyle, our family, our self care.
And we also don't want to be earning that income at the expense of other people, the
environment and society.
So we can incorporate all three of these and this is how I think about my business and
actually my life.
So my lifestyle, very important.
Live, laugh, love is what I put on this slide and I used to have that in the last house
I lived in.
I had it up on the wall and I need to add that to this house.
And then in terms of the social impact right now I do believe I am engaging in work that's
helping people and that's very important to me.
And when I get feedback from a client where they let me know how I've changed their life,
it means so much to me.
That's really what keeps me going.
I'm also in the process of moving my therapy practice to be completely online via video
therapy, which I believe has a positive environmental impact.
The third way that I bring the concept of social impact into my business and my life
is by charitable giving.
And two of the organizations that I will be donating to this year are Charity: Water,
and the International Rescue Committee.
And I think both of these organizations are very committed to alleviating suffering on
a global basis and I look for organizations that will have an impact in really helping
people live happier lives, which is an alignment with my overall mission.
And the fourth way I bring this concept into my practices with this YouTube channel and
with some other free resources that I'm developing - including a Facebook group.
It is free.
It is geared again towards bringing people more joy.
I will be going on the Facebook group live once or twice a week so that it can be an
interactive dialogue.
I will be providing some mindfulness meditation instruction.
During the next couple of months, I'm going to be talking about boundaries during the
holidays, which is something that I think we could all benefit from and I would like
to invite you to join me in that Facebook group.
You can find it via my Facebook business page, which is @awakenjoy.life.
I truly hope this video has been interesting, helpful, and inspiring for, and please do
make full use of the free resources that I have available, all of which are in the notes
below this video and share this video with a friend who might benefit from it and give
me a like, give me some comments and I will see you the next time.