095 My 2022 Gratitude Journal

095 My 2022 Gratitude Journal


About This Episode

I don’t know anyone (they may exist, but I don’t know them) who endured the last 3 years, without some significant pain alongside it. That said, we can’t always live in the pain, and as I advocate to my clients, gratitude goes a long way to healing and pulling the threads together again.

Those of you who know me, know that I juggle many things in my business life, at varying levels of success. 2022 has been a year that stretched me, and I intend for 2023 to be the year that I bring myself back together, consolidate, and grow the way I want to impact our planet.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been running a gratitude campaign on LinkedIn and on Facebook, and this is the opportunity for you my listeners to join the party. Here’s a summary of my 12 days of gratitude for 2022.

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Episode Transcript

Day 1 of 12 - Growing my network with positive influences

There are amazing people doing fabulous purpose driven work all across my networks. From LinkedIn Influencers and micro influencers, to communities on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok I’ve been fortunate to fill my feeds with great positive and educational content from this rich variety of academics, scientists, practitioners, and entrepreneurs. 

My top 10 of a combined place to be and people to follow for 2023 (ignoring my podcast guests until a later section of this review) are as follows: 2 influencers, 2 podcasts (other than my own) 2 communities, 2 entrepreneurs, 2 businesses.

Influencers

Alison Taylor - Executive Director at Ethical Systems, Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern School of Business. Her quippy, witty, well informed real time commentary on ethics and ESG has been absolutely my go to guide for all things business and ethics this year - no wonder she’s writing a book for HBR on business ethics!

Akima Paul Lambert - Litigation Partner at Hogan Lovells - Equity and Inclusion Advocate| Founder- Hogan Lovells' Caribbean Desk. Akima’s Friday posts are so grounded, provocative in a good way and relevant, and she’s a clear example of how you can do a corporate job and manage an engaged and relevant LinkedIn following as well!

Podcasts

Sam Cande is keeping Sustainability & Social Responsibility at the heart of conversations with her podcast sustain talks. Sam not only shares great useful content on Linkedin, but she also hosts super conversations on her show. Listen in on Youtube, Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your supply of great content!

Archita Fritz and Olivia Grant-Cream are doing some really important work with Embracing "Only" Podcast - supporting “Only’s” in the workplace with survival strategies, and a sense of community. I can hardly think of a better source of great knowledge - Thank you for your work ladies!

Communities

The largest sustainability group on Facebook is run by my friend Austin Kasso. Sustainable Living with its 133,000 strong following is a great space to get tips and ideas about how to live more sustainably day to day. 

Women in Marketing by Stephanie Solheim. This is arguably the best run social community on the entire internet. Well done Stephanie! It’s a space for women who work in marketing, or entrepreneurs who do their own marketing to discuss their challenges, trouble shoot, vent, and maybe even get a few gigs. It's absolutely perfect. zero spam and exceedingly high engagement. Love this space!

Entrepreneurs/ Solopreneurs

I love to acknowledge entrepreneurs out there on their own, committed beyond question to their purpose. One such person is Cathy Mears - Martin - and her page Simply Sustainable Ideas. She’s an Author and Waste Activist - and always has something well researched and brilliant to share on waste control, and a special set of content to support your kids as well.

I also want to acknowledge a brilliant friend of mine: Neema Amin, Business Coach for  Investor Readiness and funding. For entrepreneurs out there looking for funding, you’ll want to have a conversation with Neema. 

Companies

Systemiq Ltd, The system change company that works for a thriving planet where sustainable economic systems drive prosperity for all. This may be the company who’s posts I’ve liked the most in 2022, you’ll want to follow them.

Patagonia - Founded by Yvon Chouinard in 1973, Patagonia is an outdoor apparel company based in Ventura, California. A certified B-Corporation, Patagonia’s mission is to save our home planet.

The company is recognized internationally for its commitment to authentic product quality and environmental activism, donating 1% of sales annually, contributing over $100 million in grants and in-kind donations since 1985.

The company made the news this year by its owner handing over his shares to the earth, using profits to support climate and sustainability related challenges. 

Day 2 of 12 Days of Gratitude: Publishing a book, 15 years after I first had the idea to write one.

I want to start with the toughest feedback I had on this journey, which resulted in me re-working the book and producing a best seller with a 4.8/5 rating from 18 reviews on Amazon:

"You have many people in you - but I feel like it has some very different personas it caters to, and not everyone has that level of integration. If I were you, I'd cut out about 40% of stuff, pick one angle, or one process, and flesh out one problem in great depth."

I am so incredibly grateful to everyone who has contributed to the success of  Do What Matters Careers - in 2022.

Special thanks to the book readiness team: Holly, Fanny, Harriet and Louisa who played their roles brilliantly. Vinitha, Shane and Heather, whose tough feedback made this book so much better. Ludwig Johanna, Carlos, Melissa, Kate and Archita whose early reviews got this book on the map, and finally Saleema, Amani, Frances, Owen, Mahalia, Fazeer and Emily who supported the marketing and PR Campaigns.

Thank you everyone!

Now for the best piece of feedback I received:

"This book is a revelation in so many ways that I cannot enumerate. Each chapter had me go to places I hadn’t considered going; to my experiences, my biases, my joys, and my gifts foremost among them! This book doesn’t just recommend what I should consider in my journey to building a net – positive life, it puts the steering wheel in my hand, with a road map and tangible actions to plot out what’s meaningful to me! I have lengthy notes. I highly recommend it"

Day 3 of 12 Days of Gratitude - Paying clients. 

Context is everything: This post is oriented from the perspective of being a business owner. In a later gratitude post, I’ll take the perspective of the customer’s challenges and or goals that we helped them to achieve.

No business thrives without customers, and If I’m being honest, that was the biggest challenge We’ve had since we started Dieple in 2019. 

Year 3, the financial year just ended in July has been our best so far, and the first time we could report a profit within 12 discrete months of trading. From consulting, coaching, course creation, speaking, book sales, we finally managed a profit, although we still couldn’t pay ourselves decently. 

This is the reality of building a start-up, in a country where neither of us have deep connections and networks. 

I simply want to say a huge thank you to every single customer who made a difference this year by opening up their problems and desires to us. From those who paid £1.99 for a kindle copy of my book, to those who paid thousands for consulting projects - you have all been crucial to helping us build our success. 

We would be nowhere without you taking a chance on us, and we certainly hope that we have consistently lived up to your expectations. 

THANK YOU.

Day 4 of 12 Days of Gratitude - My Global, Diverse and Integrative Career

Today my gratitude post is about the coming together of an incredibly diverse global career.

When I left Trinidad and Tobago in 2006 to work in Costa Rica, it was a scary pivotal moment. Learning to drive on the right side in a manual car, speaking Spanish at work, learning how to integrate with a new culture, exploring that beautiful green country. 

I then moved to Internal audit and spent nearly 6 years on the road. I participated or led audit assignments in Venezuela, Argentina, Honduras, Brazil, Costa Rica, Panama, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Guyana, Jamaica, Mexico, Malaysia, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Germany, Sweden, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Romania and more  with colleagues from a far longer list of countries than these. 

I was more often in a hotel bed than my own. I began to call the place where I slept my home. I learned to condense my belongings into 1 suitcase and a backpack. And I learned to be incredibly curious. These experiences made me peel back the onion so to speak on my belief structures, and my why, and gave me a unique insight into the lives of people who I may have otherwise “othered”.

Today I carry 2 passports, but none of them truly represent my identity.

I understood some things now at a completely different level, such as empathy, perspective, opportunity, and injustice.

I’ve now built a portfolio career, from financial reporting and supply chain skills, to coaching, to social impact, justice, change management, capability development, innovation, sustainability reporting and getting more from less.

I owe my career today in sustainability, ethics, DEI and ESG topics to the diversity I experienced in my early career, and the educational choices and educators those experiences fostered.

Thank you!

Day 5 of 12 Days of Gratitude - Helping others

My clients are a source of inspo. In 2022, I worked with sustainability professionals just completing their masters and entering the workplace, seasoned professionals becoming partners, executives at major global corporations. I helped authors, designers and social impact businesses.  I helped major companies with leadership and DEI coaching. 

Here’s a sample of reviews:

The Eco Business Growth Club Incubator:

“I just want to say a huge thank you to Katherine for all the support I've received from the incubator group. I've learned so much in this time, from finance to public relations, different business models that I can apply to achieve different results, ethical sales, and responsible brand stewardship, they have been some of my favourite modules. And these are just absolutely unlike anything I've ever seen before. Some of my other favourite really amazing, and individual modules have been things like managing stress and anxiety, how to write social media copy that is actually effective, and product and supply chain information that I had honestly never considered before. So if you're a woman in sustainable business, this is the incubator group for you. This is the most supportive group of ladies from around the world.”

Sarah Udin - Founder & CEO of Amala Periods Cambodia

Corporate Work

“In March 2022, our Amazon DACH Women's Affinity Group decided to launch a mini series of podcasts, to amplify the message of purpose and social impact and the role of both in our leadership today. We hired Katherine as an external consultant to help us shape the project, source insightful guests, plan and design the content, and conduct the interviews. Katherine took complete ownership of the project, delivering incredibly vulnerable and insightful interviews from prominent leaders in Europe, and helped us create something special for our affinity group community. Thank you so much for your professional and enterprising spirit! we really enjoyed working with you on this mini podcast project ;)”

Anna Derinova Hartmann - CSR, Philanthropy and Humanitarian Aid at Amazon.

Coaching

“Katherine and I met in the hallways of one of my previous employers in 2017. I reached out to her at the end of last year when I knew it was time to start my second career pivot. Through various self-reflection exercises, one-to-one coaching sessions, and weekly meetings in the Career Courageous Club, I have humbly landed a role in an exciting and new industry. I can genuinely say that this would not have been possible without Kathy’s guidance and support. Not only did she make herself available for last minute interview preparations, but she also gave me the confidence to step outside of my comfort zone and kick a** in those calls. Kathy – You are such a beautiful person and I feel immensely grateful to have you as my Career Coach. Looking forward to our next weekly session!”

Day 6 of 12 Days of Gratitude. Growing it together.

The WISBYS - Women in Sustainable Business Awards is coming soon to your inboxes and feeds in 2023, but allow me to introduce the women who are making it happen. 

Our Marketing Director - Gabriela Jauregui. 

Gabriela J. is a revolutionary brand strategist and designer for rebel businesses. She has worked for a wide range of businesses from multi-billion dollar high end-luxury brands to small businesses in their growth phase. Her knowledge in various operations and marketing focused roles provides her with a unique view on branding.
Categories Team - Harriet Mitchell. 

Harriet is a teacher and freelance Virtual Assistant.

After gaining a degree in Psychology and 15 years in the education sector, Harriet is a qualified teacher and works with small business owners and solo entrepreneurs to support them on their business journeys; to help them achieve a better work-life balance, specialising in editing, proofreading and small business admin.

Categories Team - Julie Breckon 

Julie is an entrepreneur who has established and runs several successful independent businesses. Julie is CIPD qualified, a professionally qualified certified bookkeeper, a Bachelor of Philosophy and holds a Masters degree in Computing. Breckon Consulting and Handmade Accounts Training were both set up to provide business owners with user friendly, easy to comprehend, accessible, support and training in the financial and legislative aspects of running a business.

Our Email Marketing Lead - Davey McConnell

 Davey is passionate about changing the way business is done by putting people and the planet above profits. Her eco-friendly virtual assistance business, the Eco Helper, supports fellow purpose-driven entrepreneurs and nonprofits with backend admin & tech systems as well as content creation & management so they can stay consistently visible in their communities. Besides helping businesses run smoothly, she also advises on how to do so in a more eco-conscious way. 

Content & Tech Team - Jen Metcalf 

Jen is a copywriter and editor for sustainable businesses and those that are heading that way. If you’re saving the world but struggling to write about it, Jen can put your actions into words that get noticed. Jen is pivoting into copywriting after 16 years as a German-to-English translator and editor for clients working on climate change. She’s a published writer and is now using her communication skills to help clients sell their ethical products, green services, and planet-friendly content.

Content & Tech Team - Vikki Ackland 

Vikki is a Communications Consultant and Illustrator with a background in managing sustainable businesses. Through her work, she’s had the opportunity to oversee marketing departments, implement local outreach campaigns, support grassroots organising efforts, and create and implement social media strategies for small-to-medium-sized businesses. Her mission is to use illustration, design and copywriting to create positive change by supporting the kind of businesses she wants to see more of. 

Project Manager - Sonia Castello 

Sonia is an experienced professional with an extensive background in Corporate Business Administration and Events Coordination. She is a Spanish and Catalan native speaker, fluent in English and Italian too. She is qualified in Business Administration, and holds a Diploma in Event Management for Marketing & Communications with distinction, by the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM).

Events Expert - Michelle Miles

Michelle is the founder of the Sustainable Wedding Alliance, a purpose driven organisation driving sustainable change in the wedding industry. The Alliance works with businesses of all sizes to help them to understand sustainability, what it means for them, and how they can develop long term sustainable strategies that will benefit people, profit and planet. 

Business Integrity Lead - Zoë Brinn

Zoë is the owner of 'Conscious Leaders' - she helps business owners find, train and retain their team members and grow their business, ethically. Zoë helps business owners to build their loyal teams which reduces their workload and stress. She believes that if we focus on one another in our businesses we can not only become more productive and driven, but also make society, especially in the workplace a better place to be. Zoë's background is in senior leadership education and she taught English for many years.

Founder - Katherine Ann Byam

Katherine Ann Byam is a  best-selling author, sustainability activist, coach and consultant for business resilience and sustainable change, partnering with leaders committed to a shared future for life on our planet.”  

This is where I also tell you about the secret code, the easter egg I’ve hidden between episodes 90 to 100 - The easter egg is “I am the earth, and the earth is me” send this sentence to me on the social media of your choice, along with an email address, and I will be in touch on your prizes!

Day 7 of 12 Days of Gratitude - Where Ideas Launch Season 5 Guests - The Great Debates of our time.

Where Ideas Launch is in its 3rd year. What an honour I have to host such an incredible set of professionals, each working to make an important difference to our lives on our one planet.

Season 5’s premise was to present ideas and discussion points that could be polarising and explore the different sides of it. It was inspired by an earlier podcast episode interview with David Gurteen on The Knowledge Delusion and Conversational Leadership, and my guests this season have not disappointed.

Season 5 starts from Episode 71 and my guests and their topics include: 

071 Jenny K Wright - The Ins and Outs of Migration

072 Susan Krumdieck - Transition Engineering

073 Marie Lockwood and Sam Pitman - Sustainability Subscriptions 

074 The 3 Engineers - The Adventures of Scout

075 Sarah Almond Bushell - Demystifying Nutrition and Feeding

078 Belinda Ng - Youth Perspectives on Food Security

080 Sarah Udin - Youth Perspectives on Periods

081 Gabriela Jauregui - Guilt Free Branding

082 Kate Hall - The Full Freezer

084 Belinda, Serena Coccioli and Kailin Spencer - Youth Perspectives on Climate and Community

085 Michelle Miles - The Sustainable Wedding Alliance

086 Davey McConnell - The Eco Helpers

087 Russ Avery - Marketing Good or Evil

088 Nancy Hyne - Becoming a B Corp

089 Selina Ho - Recloseted

090 Tara Pigott - Youth Perspectives on Design

091 Irete Hamdani - Ask Belynda

092 Katie Skelton - Duck for Impact

093 Jaime Snell - Eco - Crates of America

Celebrating all the podcasts achievements:

Listened to in # 96 countries.

Charted in # 89 different charts

Charted in # 46 countries

Top 20 in # 36 Charts

Top 10 in # 21 Charts

Number # 1 in 6 Charts

Ranked # 7 UK Innovation Podcasts

Ranked # 16 UK Sustainability Podcasts

Rated 5 Stars *****

Thank you!

Day 8 of 12 Days of Gratitude Do What Matters - Career and Leadership on Purpose Podcast

I wanted to deliver not just a static book, but a live system to help people make important pivots with their careers, particularly around topics such as climate change, social justice, and good corporate governance. 

Do What Matters is my best selling book, but the podcast provides dynamic weekly content that builds upon the ideas in the book.

Every week I post one journal entry or 10 minute lesson from me, and one interview with a guest. 

Here’s the amazing list of guests I’ve had on the show so far:

002 Shane Ward - The Purposeful Pivot

003 Tessa Clarke - Share More Waste Less

004 Sherika Sherard - Busking Through Vulnerability

005 Kysha Gibson - DEI is my Job

007 Melissa Rider Carson - Perfectly Imperfect

009 Juan Luis Betancourt - Human Intelligence

011 Chris Pirie - Potential and Purpose

013 Kirsten Forbes - Surviving Afghanistan

015 Ashley Dash - The Profitable Resume

017 Belinda Ng, Serena Coccioli, Kailin Spencer - Career Climate and Community

019 Andrew Montgomery  - Black in Design

021 Marie Claire Krayenhoff - Mindfulness and Meditation

023 Lupina Valdes - Culture at work

025 Kysha Gibson - Women in Consulting

027 Nadine Bender Branham - Women in Tech

029 Harry Vargas - Future of Work and Talent

Thanks for participating and making this a great podcast - and thanks to everyone listening, we know you have around 3 million choices of podcasts, thanks for choosing us! 

Celebrating all the podcasts achievements:

Listened to in # 52 countries.

Charted in # 15 different charts

Charted in # 10 countries

Top 20 in # 3 Charts

Top 10 in # 1 Charts

Rated 5 Stars *****

Day 9 of 12 Days of Gratitude My Team

Today is my last gratitude post until after the holidays, so this day is dedicated to my team. I do a great many things, and it's only possible because of the amazing people who support me.

My Instagram Socials Manager - Myca, who has been fundamental to my business growth on the gram!

About Myca Favorito

Myca is an Instagram Marketing Strategist for sustainable businesses. In just over a year in business, she has helped multiple small businesses and non-profits spread brand awareness,  get a warm pool of leads, curate compelling content that converts and, maintain good and lasting relationships with their audience through creating, implementing, and overseeing purpose-driven social media strategies.

Her mission is to help businesses that do good convert more people to become leaders of change and be committed in taking small, but impactful steps towards a better and brighter tomorrow.

Next is Harriet, who started off as a client, and has become the engineer behind the scenes of my podcasts, both for Where Ideas Launch and Do What Matters Careers.

About Harriet Mitchell

After gaining a degree in Psychology and 15 years in the education sector, Harriet is a qualified teacher who boasts 2 year’s experience as a Head of School.

Harriet works with small business owners and solo entrepreneurs to support them on their business journeys; to help them achieve a better work-life balance, whilst specialising in editing, proofreading and small business admin.

A passionate advocate for the planet, Harriet also has a side hustle business where she supports people to lower their waste, make sustainable choices and gain knowledge of their impact on earth. She creates a range of plastic free and reusable alternatives for the home. Her children are a driving force and are behind her business name; TillyBoo’s.

My Bookkeeper Kat Stonehill. Kat and her company Pinder Stonehill Supporting charities, social enterprises and values led small businesses to take control of their accounts and understand their numbers.

Kat is thorough, always on time, and supportive, and her support has been amazing this past year!

Finally, to my partner in life and business, Christophe.

Chris is CIO and Data Scientist and the force behind Dieple Consulting, supporting complex IT integration and data projects in medium sized companies for the past few years. Chris's work has been so influential, he's in the process of being snapped up by a larger firm in 2023, giving him the opportunity to work on much bigger projects in the future. We will miss him Dieple Consulting & Training Limited, and it will mean changes for our company! More on those changes in 2023!!

Thanks for joining me on this gratitude Journey for the past couple weeks, and tune in for more next week and the first week of Jan, as I provide the final 3 days of gratitude for a year well spent 🙂

Day 10 of 12 Days of Gratitude: Maternity

It’s a great time to dedicate a post to the importance of family when you are building anything; a business, a career, a life. 

I spent the last few days with my partner's family in France. We come from different cultures, so there are many differences in the meals, the traditions, the greetings, but there are a few fundamentals that are pretty much the same.

Mothers are the matriarchs and “boss” things when it comes to family gatherings: in a role that appears to come naturally to them. Things I’ve found to be similar between the UK and France; 

The significance of the occasion - as evidenced by the cutlery you don’t see all year long until Christmas.

The supply of such a broad variety of food: They are seldom happy until you are full to overflowing, the instinct to facilitate life through feeding is undeniable in every culture I’ve experienced; and that’s quite a few!

Family gives you a different perspective. The continuation of your line, and for most with young children, family represents legacy. This belief system is so deeply entrenched, that often we can’t see our descendents outside of the relatives they remind us of. We are hardly our own identity when around family, which has both upsides and downsides. The strength of family is in the feeling of community. 

For those of us without children, we form other types of communities, with colleagues, clients, friends. When we come to our family gatherings, there are perhaps fewer plates at the table each time, and the nostalgia can sometimes be left with a tinge of sadness.

When your children don’t define your legacy, you are perhaps more driven to make your own life mean something: represent more than just one life well lived. Some do this through wealth accumulation, others through impact. 

As I watched my mum in law work her magic, and listened to my mom via whatsapp talk about preparing food back home for the many visitors she expects to come through her doors over the 2 main holidays, I realised how much of our lives we owe to the maternal presences in them, and how their selflessness continues to inspire our own.

This is dedicated to mothers, and my gratitude for the life they give.

Day 11 of 12 Days of Gratitude - The Haters

There’s something about negativity that gives us extra motivation to succeed, if we can find a way to turn that feedback into useful insight when needed.

Life, careers, work, relationships, come with tough situations, and we are better off learning how to deal with them, than pretending they don’t exist.

Greta nailed her troll master on twitter last week, showing that even the most notorious of trolls can be thwarted.

The thing about the haters is this - often they represent a minority, and integrating their feedback without further exploration can be harmful to your business, unless the view is a common one, and these are the few people willing to share their thoughts with you. This is when that age old serenity prayer becomes relevant: understanding what to change, what to maintain the same, and knowing the difference.

The ways I’ve learned to deal with online, or other forms of hate:

1- Look for positive intentions. 

2- When the positive intent is hard to find, look at the context. 

3- The service relationship or nature of the transaction. 

4- Sometimes it’s just hate. 

5 - The Gaslighters. 

6 - Race relations. 

We don’t run from challenges, we embrace them when we think they make us stronger. 

Day 12 of 12 Days of Gratitude My Wellbeing

On my final day of gratitude, I’d like to thank me!

The last few years have not been easy, culminating in a 2022 which saw me doing more blood tests and medical examinations than any other year, mainly because of one thing: balance, or lack of it.

Still, my mind and body got me to this point, almost working against each other, just imagine what they can achieve if they co-operated for a change?

As we ring in 2023, I’ll be working on making mental me and physical me one. 

I recently watched Limitless - a National Geographic documentary by Chris Hemsworth. Everything he did in those 6 episodes is way extreme for me, but they prompted me to acknowledge how much stronger I can be if I gave more gravitas in my decision making to my overall wellbeing. 

So today I want to thank body and mind for enduring their lack of synchronicity to support me so far, and I hope for them to be best friends in 2023.

Happy New Year Everyone!

083 The Commercial Opportunity in Writing a Book

083 The Commercial Opportunity in Writing a Book

About this Episode

Is writing and publishing a book a good strategy for business and professional growth?

Conclusion - do it, with clarity on your strategy. Tune in to this episode for some key insights for your book writing journey.

Katherine Ann Byam is an author, sustainability activist, coach and consultant for business resilience and sustainable change, partnering with leaders committed to a shared future.”  

A professional with 20+years change leadership experience in the FTSE Top 10, she started her consulting firm in 2019 to support sustainable development within SMEs. Katherine holds an MBA with distinction, specialising in Innovation Management as well as certificates in ESG, digital strategy, and sustainability management from established universities. She’s also a Fellow of the Association of Certified Chartered Accountants.  

She’s the host of the internationally acclaimed Where Ideas Launch - Sustainable Innovation Podcast, ranked among the top 5% globally, achieving the top spot in 5 countries, and the top 10 in 19 separate charts.  

As a sought-after leadership and career transition coach and keynote speaker, she facilitates workshops and learning sessions for communities within global brands such as Amazon, Women Tech Global, ACCA, Stryker, Speak Up, Mind Channel and more. 

Subscribe to Where Ideas Launch

Connect with Katherine

Episode Transcript

Is writing and publishing a book a good strategy for business and professional growth?

Do What Matters - The Purpose Driven Career Transition Guide has now been live on Amazon for about 2 months and is moving into a new phase of global availability, and resources to go alongside it, workshops, corporate speaking events, book clubs inside organisations, and in November on Audio.

A book can create an entire industry, as many internationally acclaimed authors can attest. James Clear - Atomic Habits is an inspiration for me, not just for the brilliant content of his book, but through the absolute simplicity and elegance of his business model.

Michael Watkins - The First 90 days has also been a source of inspiration from the sheer longevity of his work, I first read it 2006, and he is still updating versions today.

Do What Matters is here to stay. I infused significant amounts of knowledge and insight from practice, and will continue to leverage its incredible value across my business, and any other ventures I may move on to.

In this article, I’ve put together a few ideas to encourage others who may want to explore book authorship as part of their business strategy. Here’s what I’ll be covering:

You can find the book in print or kindle versions on Amazon

Perhaps the biggest question on everyone’s mind is - is it worth it?

For 2 solid weeks at the end of July and early August 2022, I had the joy of being an Amazon Bestseller briefly, and a Hot New Release across various categories internationally for a sustained period. What an honour to have, after the six months of my life that it took to produce it, including 2 months where I hardly had the mental capacity to work on anything else.

Although the euphoria is somewhat wearing off, and I’m only just recovering from the post launch depression - (Yes, giving birth to this project, has many psychological similarities to child bearing - or at least so I’m told) it’s time to account for whether or not it was all worth it.

What does it actually mean to be a number 1 best seller, and what am I going to do with that now?

I know that most will never undertake the painstaking process of writing a book, and even if they do, they may never publish it. This was my story over the last 15 years with the first book I ever wrote, and I remember my dad doing the same for years after he took early retirement for health reasons. Book writing takes time, determination, and sacrifice, and book marketing takes all of those ingredients and more.

Having gone through it, I’ve narrowed it down to 5 fundamental questions that need clarity and strategy before you can produce and sell a winner on the book shelves, particularly as a first time writer; when I work on my second book, I will let you know the journey to repeat the success. When you are clear on these 5 things, and build strategy around it, your authoring process should yield some results for you.

The 5 questions you must answer are these:

  1. Why are you writing a book, and what does that even mean to your intended audience?
  2. Will a book that captures your knowledge in 200 plus pages cannibalise your main business?
  3. Commercial rights - how much can you integrate the work of others in your book?
  4. How do you go about promoting a book as a first time author with an average size audience?
  5. How do you sustain your product’s relevance over time?

Tune in, this will be valuable for anyone considering this process.

Why are you writing a book, and what does that even mean to your intended audience?

In today’s age of video shorts, micro learning, and bytes and bytes of free content, writing a book is not a decision to be taken lightly, but the marketplace continues to have relevance for you, if you get some key ingredients right.

Here’s what you need to ask yourself.

Is there a ready market for my broad topic?

The Answer, do your research. How much does anyone care about what you have to say? 

Let’s use my book as an example, because there are 2 important points to be made about the numbers you’ll find.  

My book, Do What Matters, The Purpose Driven Career Transition Guide has definite broad topic appeal, possibly too much. You type in the word Job in google search, adn you get 12 billion results. You type in the word career, you get in excess of 11 billion results. This is something that has a lot of appeal, and a lot of answers. Of course it does. According to the ILO, the world has a 59.3 % labour participation rate; people of working age who are employed, ignoring the dark/ invisible economy of employment. At some point in a year, each one of those people is contemplating a career change, and consuming content about it, whether they take action or not.

There’s a great case here for content in the space, but a niche that says career and or job will see you and your book lost at sea. 

Once you’ve established broad appeal, it's time to find your niche. The key things you need to ask about niche are these:

What’s changed in this space that you want to write about recently? And how is it likely to evolve in the future? This is the futuristic perspective on your topic. Applying this to the topic above, when I search for the future of jobs, I get 1.8bn results. When I search for the future of careers I get 2.6 bn results. If I looked backward - history of jobs/ careers, I get 2.8bn and 4.9bn respectively. 

Once you’ve decided your orientation about the topic, what specifically in there do you want to explore? If I added sustainability and or purpose to my search, the results keep niching down. 

Once you understand that your area is still interesting to pursue, of course, validate that you are competent and credible to talk about it, and are willing to do any required research to allow your topic to add value. 

What does it mean to your audience? 

Why are you reading this article? My guess is that authoring a book has been on your mind, or you are curious to assess how this may fit with what you want to do in the future. Anyone can write a book that’s relevant to a given audience.The main questions for you to answer is who is in your audience today, and what are their needs?  Are they relevant to the book you want to write? If not, you have a problem that will require deep pockets if this is your first book.

Here are some general audience considerations, and then more specific ones.

I discussed in my previous article about all the different aspects of this process, which you can find here. There is one bit that you need to get clear on early, as it relates to your audience, which is how personally invested are they in your journey, versus their own? 

What I’m about to say is more opinion than fact, but for most of us, when it comes to writing true accounts, guides, and self help, we have a vanilla story. Sure we’ve overcome some challenges that felt monumental to us, but for the majority of us, there’s ultimately little to differentiate our journey from anyone else. Therefore, I’m recommending that the central character of your book, be the reader, and your role, is to be the supporting guide. It’s storytelling 101. 

There are exceptions. Some people have really exceptional stories of both success and hardships they had to overcome that readers want to know about, because they want to be you, or they love your drama 🙂 if your story has the type of drama and intrigue that draws people in and you feel ready to share it, then by all means do. Otherwise, step aside in your writing, and allow the reader to explore their own drama, which is actually really rewarding for them.

How specific should you get when focussing on your reader?

This depends on the parameters you set when niching, and how easy it is to build an audience around that niche. 

For Do What Matters, my niche is broad. The aim was to capture people from age 27 to 45, who have worked within a big corporate setting, either as an employee, freelancer or contractor, and are finding it challenging to bring about the changes they would like to see. I think this is a pretty big group of people. Of all the niche parameters though, age is probably less important; the book only requires that the reader has experienced some of the examples I’ve used. 

How do your readers articulate their own challenges and struggles?

Answer; research. There are many ways to conduct research - as a desktop exercise using popular search platforms like youtube, google, tiktok, quora, answer the public, reddit, and others. Or surveying people in your audience who fit the change context. I used all of these.

Let’s wrap this up.

Anyone with something original to say and or a unique perspective on a topic that’s trending and relevant should give book authoring a go, once they’ve done the required research to flesh out the potential. 

Key lessons learnt for me were:

Will a book that captures your knowledge in 200 plus pages cannibalise your main business?

The short answer is yes and no. The key is in how you set up your business, and where this book fits in the overall scheme of what you are trying to accomplish.

What do you want to achieve for your brand, business or message with this book?

If you want to amplify brand awareness, credibility, and reach, a book could be a fantastic vehicle. Your promotional cycles will have much more reach in terms of impressions, engagements, than the book will have purchasers. True. Not because you’ve put your wisdom into the format of a book, means that everyone will consume it that way. 

I want to tell you a story about an author I really love. Her name is Ash Ambirge. I listened to her audiobook, The middle finger project in Feb 2020, while I was still in the early stages of my business, and I related so much to her perspective on life, although I shared nothing in common in terms of the specifics of her journey. What I loved is the way she audited her life and experiences, a skill I knew I’d also developed.

Her insights from her experiences also struck chords with me, by the end of the book I had an entire symphony orchestra playing in my head, about all the ways I could embrace her gift and stringing words and ideas together, to produce something that moves people. 

I signed up for her email list, and I’ve bought and consumed almost everything she has ever produced. That’s the power of the written/ spoken word, when you consume it with intensity and voracity to the point of impact, and behavioural change. 

The book should fit neatly within an overall business model and/ or brand strategy for you. Central to that is reaching the audience that is crucial to your brand strategy.

Some examples. 

Your book could give methods, examples, steps. This can then lead to  a course that provides accountability and guidance to the participants, or a set of workbooks sold separately with useful content to support the reader’s journey. Or a set of speaking opportunities at companies, who can compensate you for speaking by purchasing copies of the book for staff. Or you can win the SEO on your niche, and sell thousands of copies. Or it can help you build an audience for subsequent books. Or it can become a podcast you can monetise, or a youtube channel. Or it can become a character on Tiktok that develops into an influencer you can monetise. Or you could be featured in PR campaigns globally. I could go on.

Your book must form a considered path of your business plan, and then you need to execute the strategy you set, and or adapt if compelling evidence suggests another path is better. 

Documenting that you are knowledgeable about a topic, doesn’t cannibalise future business, if facilitates it, if you are clear on strategy. That’s therefore where the work and the money is in authoring books. 

To have a view of the free resources I currently have accompanying my book, have a look here. Paid resources will be available in early September, alongside a workshop.

Commercial rights - how much can you integrate the work of others in your book?

Banana skin. Big and slippery one. And something self publishers can run foul of quickly.

If you are used to producing content for public consumption, please be aware that the rules change when it is used for commercial purposes. A book that is sold internationally, can be exposed to copyright issues across various jurisdictions, depending on the laws in different countries. 

If you want to use a substantial quote of another’s work in your book, my recommendation is to first check what rights they have passed on, as some works may be covered by a creative common clause. If there is no creative common attribution, then write to the person or organisation you would like to quote to seek permission. If you are ignored, or permission is declined, you could turn next to fair use clauses, which is vague at best, and can leave you exposed to legal action. The final option is to remove references to others' work within your work.

Spend some time understanding a bit about copyrights if you are self publishing, or seek guidance from your editors, as this can become an issue if you achieve a critical mass of sales. Book selling platforms ask you for a declaration as to your publishing rights before they allow you to publish, thereby absolving any responsibility for themselves, its up to you to cover your own a$$. 

How do you go about promoting a book as a first time author with an average size audience?

Your audience matters. So much. A first time author needs to harness and channel the actions of their audience and following on launch, because often they do not yet have the scale to sustain performance of the book for long periods. 

This is key to achieving best selling status, as Amazon recalculates its best sellers using an algorithm that considers purchases in the last 24 hours as more relevant than purchases last week for example. 

If you are doing a book for the first time, you need a launch strategy and launch plan, and your audiences need to know what to do when. 

The best selling status is important, because it helps you to leverage the initial bump of support from your audience, and scale it after launch.

There will be various opinions and advice about how long before the book goes on sale do you start talking about it, how much do you reveal about the book cover and the name, whether to create an email list or a community. How many times to post about on socials. I'm certain that I don’t have enough experience to give you an answer about what’s the right approach. I can only share what I’ve learned. 

During the period of promoting the book, my Instagram following on my @katherineannbyam account grew 7% in 3 months, much faster than any growth I’ve experienced since setting up my business. 

My tiktok account was dormant until a few weeks before launch, so that data there is meaningless, but we saw 800% growth by being regularly active at least on the platform. This is the valuable piece, the lessons I learned from being regularly active.

My Linkedin Following grew about 2%, but my impressions grew 24% and engagement grew 43%. I looked at those numbers today, but at the peak of the launch I’m sure these figures were even better. 

My direct messages increased exponentially also, but this is more based on sentiment than data. I didn’t previously track how many messages I was receiving randomly, but during the full week of targeted launch activity, this engagement definitely spiked - I was receiving double digit DMs on a daily basis.

What does this mean? Top of mind for your brand. 

One of the questions I’ve had from a few people is whether or not a pre-order is worth it. On Amazon a pre-order is only available for kindle, and it allows you to consolidate sales that convert on the launch day. There are some important things to note though.

Although the sale will be recorded on launch day in your KDP publishing account, the sales are already counting when they happen toward your best seller and new category metrics. I believe that I will always do a limited period pre-launch of between 1 week and 1 month for the following reasons.

About the Pre-orders

  1. The algorithms on social media where I promote the book don’t show posts to everyone on the same day I post it, it can take weeks for a post to run it’s cycle, so it’s a good idea to have a window to capture new interest and trial for your book, at a lower price.
  2. It gives your audience time to decide. In traditional marketing circles this isn’t a good idea, as they promote concepts like FOMO - Fear of missing out, and pressure selling tactics, but if you are ethically minded and want people to decide on their own not just to purchase but to read it, you will reap the rewards in early reviews. People also then anticipate the release, and this excitement is positive for early reading.
  3.  At the time of writing I have 9 5 star reviews, 6 of them are from early readers, 3 of them are from people who read it post launch. This is good at this still early stage, as it shows people have excitedly read and want to talk about their experience of reading it.
  4. You have a nice period to be legitimately promoting your work as much as you want to. For me that’s psychologically positive for me - I feel more like I’m talking about the journey I’m on, than I’m forced to hard-sell this work.
  5. It creates a mental anchor for people on the price and subsequent changes - price will always be an incentive for a purchase so a pricing strategy is important, and it also creates time and space for others who want to support you to share the book with others, and offer some of their credibility with followers to you. I’ve picked up many new followers from this journey.

Organic Marketing

I generated organic traction by doing the following:

Paid traction

I have used only one form of paid support, choosing book influencers. I will be integrating other forms of paid support soon, in the form of direct ads. Influencer marketing is an interesting space, and my verdict on it is still out, I need more time to assess whether or not I would recommend it.

My exploration into paid support is ongoing and I will update on this in a few months. Knowing what I know now however, I would probably change the sequence of which paid advertising I start with; but I haven't investigated it yet so stay tuned for more on this.

How do you sustain your product’s relevance over time?

Enter the PR Campaigns. I’ve been shy about PR for my business over the last 3 years, because I didn’t feel like I had accomplished anything PR- able. I just serve my clients. I opted instead to have newsletters, on LinkedIn, Medium, Thrive global, Host my podcasts, now 2 of them, and then follow up on leads as they come to me.

The book changed that for me, because authoring a book has changed my perceptions on my sense of accomplishment. It’s not just that I serve my clients. I serve my clients, learnt so much from doing that, now I’ve captured that knowledge into an affordable package of experience and wisdom. 

PR requires a few things, including being crystal clear on your strategy, and practice at delivering to that strategy with each interview. I’m still learning here. I worked with a PR Consultant called Melissa Hobson to get clear on the direction I want to go in. She wrote about it here. I also worked with 2 other consultants, one in Trinidad, and one in the UK. They have created, so far, 1 television interview, and 2 newspaper interviews, on a part fee part pay per performance basis. I’ve also been on one podcast other than my own, and plan to do more spread out now over time. 

PR isn’t about urgency, it’s about consistency, and building more for the wider business goals, using a lever, such as the book. Allow your book to make you PR gold.

Conclusion - do it, with clarity on your strategy.

Book writing and promotion can quickly become an industry you create for yourself. When you consider the number of moving parts that go into it, finding a good publisher who understands your goals and manages the process toward that is likely to be worth it, but it’s a long game. Choose your publisher or publishing support team carefully. Ask specifics about the numbers of sales, the expected return, and make sure they  are helping you to create your long term business goals with how they position you. 

I received some free but helpful coaching support on the overall marketing and business strategy from Saleema Vellani and the team at Ripple Impact. They offer one of the most comprehensive packages of support I’ve seen. Although I couldn’t afford it in my first book, I am considering them for my second or third offering.  

Other people I am grateful to and I cannot thank enough: Holly Hudson - my book coach, Louisa Herridge, my commercial editor, Fanny Rousseau my graphic designer, Harriet Pope my proofreader, and the many people who afforded me the permission to quote them in my book, and to read, review, and generally cheer on this immense work.

If you want to get your head around your approach why not send me a DM?

079 Do What Matters

079 Do What Matters


About this Episode

Do what matters… today and for your future. You are more than your ego, and this is your moment to own that, whatever it means to you, and do something purposeful with it. Career transitioning on purpose is more than a suite of skills you can gain mastery over, It’s a way of life. 

This career guide is for people in leadership, management, consulting, change programmes, projects, freelancers or contractors working within medium to large organisations. 

Your voice has never had a more powerful sound, than when it’s coming from a place deep within. Let’s learn how to use that to have a greater impact. Doing what matters also means getting things fantastically wrong, before things change at times. The key is in the long game.

 Explore a wide range of perspectives with me on this journey. 

You will:

Katherine Ann Byam is an author, sustainability activist, coach and consultant for business resilience and sustainable change, partnering with leaders committed to a shared future.” 

A professional with 20+years change leadership experience in the FTSE Top 10, she started her consulting firm in 2019 to support sustainable development within SMEs. Katherine holds an MBA with distinction, specialising in Innovation Management as well as certificates in ESG, digital strategy, and sustainability management from established universities. She’s also a Fellow of the Association of Certified Chartered Accountants. 

She’s the host of the internationally acclaimed Where Ideas Launch - Sustainable Innovation Podcast, ranked among the top 5% globally, achieving the top spot in 5 countries, and the top 10 in 19 separate charts. As a sought after leadership and career transition coach and keynote speaker, she facilitates workshops and learning sessions for communities within global brands such as Amazon, Women Tech Global, ACCA, Stryker, Speak Up, Mind Channel and more.

She loves spending her spare time in nature, walking the western and southern coasts of the UK, France and Tobago, or on the Northern and eastern coasts of Trinidad with her partner Christophe.

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Connect with Katherine

Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam 0:00
I think my favourite exercise when I started this book with my book coach was to write the publishers headline, and think about what I'd want people to say about the book. So this is what I wrote, you, tell me what you think, insightful, unconventional, structured, and providing the reader with a framework that flexes to their needs and individual contexts and encompasses storytelling, practical advice and coaching in one comprehensive stream of thought, and provides you with the tools to make those tough career decisions with greater ease. It is a remarkably easy, yet thought provoking read. I cannot tell you the feeling and excitement you get when you produce something that could potentially even have something close to that sort of review. And I feel really proud that this book today, is ready for a mass audience.

This is season five, the great debates of our times, Season Five will be centred around the great debates. And we will be comparing and contrasting different viewpoints on various topics that are consuming the public discourse at present. The reason I've decided to take this approach is because we, or at least many of us, are losing the skill of debate. And I think this is an essential skill for us all to practice once more. I don't see how we get to the point of saving the world and saving our planet. If we don't know how to discuss our differences. I also think that the solution to most of our challenges is somewhere in the spectrum of views, but never a type of extreme. I will be working with guests to curate the content and discuss beforehand, I will understand their positions, their areas of genius, and navigate my questions around that so that the conversation is challenging and stimulating. Without being combative. I hope you enjoy season five of where ideas launch; the Sustainable Innovation podcast. T

hree years ago, I started a journey to build an independent business built around my strengths, the needs of the planet, my passions, and my economic needs. Very much the ikigai of Japanese philosophy. That business had a clear roadmap, build a digital transformation consultancy using skills I already had in change management, and my partner in IT and data science, and then integrate sustainability into the practice, as I learned more about it myself. Life, though had other plans. After the pandemic hit, I naturally gravitated to fill in two voids that I found opening up making career transitions on purpose, was the first, and starting businesses with ethical and triple bottom line values, as the second. I started my first career transition programme in the summer of 2020, and became the leader of the women in sustainable business community on Facebook in October of that year. Since then, I've met and had business collaborations and relationships with hundreds of people, all of whom have shared rich experiences with me that I've integrated it into my courses and programmes as well as the series of books I will be releasing into the wild over the next three years. Book One is called 'Do what matters: the purpose driven career transition guide'. And it is a blueprint for supporting you with making a strategic shift to include more of your concerns about the planet we share, I want to take this opportunity to share with you the outline of the book, and to advise that it will be available on or after the 22nd of July, along with a podcast of the same name. I'm really excited about this work. And it's taken a lot to produce it. But it's been immensely rewarding. Here's the table of content, I start with what is purpose? And this is an interesting conversation to have at this point in time in our world. Because businesses are talking about it, people are talking about it. And we're not entirely sure where it's going to all land. We're starting to learn more and more about science, we still have philosophy on our side, we still have religion, and these ethical and moral debates that are influencing our perception of what purpose might be. So let's get into how to find your own. The book is then shaped into an introduction section and three parts. In the introduction, I present to you the context and the case study for change. Here I talk about the planetary dimension, the socio economic dimension, and governing the system as a whole. These are all fascinating and interrelated concepts and as we start getting into the complexity, I think it really starts to open doors as to how much opportunity there really is, if we were to take the deliberate step toward more purpose. Part one is about your environment and you and your pathway to self mastery amidst all of these rolling tides. So chapter one we talk about if it's important, build a model. So creating a conscious self improvement plan. Chapter Two is 'who are you really?' and how to begin your own journey of self discovery. Chapter three, we talk about career models. These are the types of career paths that you could attempt to deliver on your purpose. And I have to say that it isn't restricted to sustainably driven careers. This really is about any sort of path that you want to take. And what I would actually advise is to blend your paths. So make sure that you're doing enough of all the things that give you that feeling of completion. Chapter four is the constant leaner and developing a growth and net-positive mindset. A net-positive is something that I want to help people to embrace because I think we need to go further than net zero if we're actually going to hit any of the targets that we've set for ourselves. Chapter five is about your goals needing conscious action, and how to take action towards your purpose. Chapter six, is a nine step career transition framework. And this one is where I sum up all of the things that we're going to cover overall, for the whole book, even though it's coming in at chapter six. The reason it's coming here is that I think you need to appreciate everything that's come before it before you appreciate what these steps really mean. Part Two goes into social credible and responsible you, and how to show up, build an audience and become an advocate for change. In chapter seven, we talk about 'what's the point of your job really?', and why you do what you do not from your perspective, but from that of the business. In chapter eight, we talk about persuasion, influence and manipulation, and how we get others to follow or lead, and whether or not we feel right about doing so. In chapter nine, we talk about money and wealth, because I think any conversation about sustainability needs to deal with money and wealth. And then in chapter ten, we look at your digital twin, and how you show up credibly and responsibly in the spaces that you're interacting in online, chapter elevn, we bust some HR myths. We want to improve in general, the human resource management landscape, or at least your understanding of it. So I want to touch on some really important points here, that may implicate how you go about doing what you have to do. Part three, we get into 'jump but controlling the landing', and governing that first 90 days. And the first chapter in the section is about onboarding. So this is navigating your new job and the change agenda by understanding what's fundamentally important to what will come next for you. In chapter thirteen, we talk about habits and context and creating a compelling mission driven personnel playbook. And this is something where you blend the past playbook that you had that had made you successful, with what your understanding now about the world and the change that you need to make. So this is going to take some integration of the learning that we've done together. In chapter fourteen, we talk about how to create the perfect pitch, and how to earn in funding for your projects and your innovations, regardless of what type of role you're doing. In chapter fifteen, we want to talk about being better than average, but not perfect. And whether or not that's good enough. In chapter sixteen we're dealing with duds and explosives. So this is about the toxic boss, or the weak boss, and how that affects the culture of the company that you're in. And then we talk about the support needed for your journey and how to know if coaching or related services are right for you in any way. The final close will come in the epilogue, and this looks towards the aligned mission and the net-positive action toward the future. And then I finally close with an afterword to tell you about the other projects that are coming up soon. So I really look forward to this project. Being live at the end of July, there's still a lot of work to do. But thank you for your support and your ongoing encouragement. And I do hope that you enjoy it. Do get in touch with me on LinkedIn, on Facebook, follow me. Let me know if you've got the book, if you've read it. Give us our reviews on Amazon or wherever you found the book. And we'd love to hear from you, any thoughts or interesting insights that came up for you as you did these exercises. Thank you so much for your support.

This podcast is brought to you today by the brand new women in sustainable business awards that kicks off in 2023. If you're a business owner who's starting a business with principles of sustainability in mind, and you want to preserve some lost skills, some handcrafting, artisinal work, or you're a social media manager supporting purpose driven brands, or you're creating fashion or something that is relevant to the sustainability and green transformation. You are more than welcome to join us and to get involved in these awards. Check out our group on Facebook women in sustainable business, or follow the podcast where ideas launch on Instagram to find out more.

077 Abortion ESG

077 Abortion ESG

About this Episode

Abortion ESG is a term I've coined to describe the implications of abortion on the environment, the societies that form us, and the governance that's meant to protects us.

A friend introduced me to the term Cognitive Polyphasia where different knowledge and rationales live side by side in one person. And this is definitely something we are all experiencing when attempting to tackle complex issues in order to make deliberate choices. If we consider that all lives matter, the dissonance becomes even louder. Because we take so much life in the broad sense of bandwidth, in order that we may preserve our own.

This is precisely the decision many women make of the people I know personally around the world who have gone through the ordeal of terminating a pregnancy.

I don't recall meeting a single one who is proud of it, talks openly about it, or does not sometimes wonder what could have been.

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Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam 0:01
Abortion ESG is a term I've coined to describe the implications of abortion on the environment, the societies that form us, and the governance that protects us. Let's get into this episode.

Here's a clip now, a friend introduced me to the term cognitive polyphasia, where different knowledge and rationales live side by side in one person. And this is definitely something we are all experiencing when attempting to tackle complex issues in order to make deliberate choices. If we consider that all lives matter, the dissonance becomes even louder. Because we take so much life, in the broad sense of that word, in order that we may preserve our own, which is precisely the decision many women make. Of the people I know personally around the world who have gone through the ordeal of terminating a pregnancy, I don't recall meeting a single one who is proud of it, talks openly about it, or does not sometimes wonder what could have been.

This is season five, the great debates of our times, Season Five will be centred around the great debates. And we will be comparing and contrasting different viewpoints on various topics that are consuming the public discourse at present. The reason I've decided to take this approach is because we, or at least many of us, are losing the skill of debate. And I think this is an essential skill for us all to practice once more. I don't see how we get to the point of saving the world and saving our planet. If we don't know how to discuss our differences. I also think that the solution to most of our challenges is somewhere in the spectrum of views, but never a type of extreme. I will be working with guests to curate the content and discuss beforehand, I will understand their positions, their areas of genius, and navigate my questions around that so that the conversation is challenging and stimulating without being combative. I hope you enjoy season five of where ideas launch; a sustainable innovation podcast.

These are the great debates and today I want to debate with you; my listeners. So feel free to drop me a message on any of the socials to share your views on what I'm about to discuss. I call this entire episode abortion ESG. The reason I chose this terminology, is because there's so much more to this topic than really meets the eye.

In the news recently, the US Supreme Court overturned the decision of Roe versus Wade, which previously acknowledged a woman's right to have control over her own reproductive rights. This right has since been taken away at a federal level. There's so much to unpack about this decision. My personal opinion is that it's too complex for the law to legislate on, and that it is completely the mother's choice, until birth. But I also understand that the view, that a life is taken when a mother decides to terminate her pregnancy, is a difficult one to swallow. Let's get into this a bit.

Some of the reasons a woman may choose to terminate a pregnancy are as follows:

She's become a victim of incest or rape,

her health and life or at risk,

her mental health may be at risk.

She has no support system around her.

She doesn't believe she's emotionally or physically ready.

 She cannot afford to have unpaid leave.

 She cannot afford childcare.

 She doesn't believe the planet has a future.

 She doesn't think she's in a relationship where a child would be welcomed.

She has ended her relationship with the father and does not want to start a family as a single parent.

She's concerned about adoption and fostering for her child, as there are no guarantees about the type of home a child she bears, but gives up, will be in.

She never wanted to be a parent.

She's concerned about her career.

She's concerned about the social taboos of having a child outside of marriage, perhaps, she's concerned she won't be a good mother.

 She doesn't want the responsibility that comes with the job.

The pregnancy was a failure of contraception, the child's health and well being would be compromised.

And any other reason a woman can contrive for not wanting to carry a pregnancy to the full nine months.

Just to add that all of these reasons are reasons that perhaps women take contraception in the first place. And abortion, perhaps, is a failure of a contraceptive method ultimately, or a failure of care.

Let's explore a few more angles to the story because there's a lot that comes up for me in experiencing this the way that I've experienced it in social media over the past week.

Abortion is not legal in my country of birth; Trinidad and Tobago, it still happens and people who can afford it are able to receive good medical care in some private facilities. But it's still illegal. I know of incredible woman who have contributed so much to Trinidad and Tobago society and economy, who have had abortions, had they been caught and imprisoned for their crime, arrested, the country would have lost so much of their talent, we will never know what their lost children would have become. Exactly the same way we do not know what so many people lost to wars, famines, slavery, attacks, diseases would have become had we taken more care with preserving their lives as well.

A friend introduced me to the term cognitive polyphasia, where different knowledge and rationales live side by side inside one person. And this is definitely something we all experience when attempting to tackle complex issues, in order to make deliberate choices instead of following the path of nature.

If we consider that all lives matter, the dissonance becomes even louder, because we take so much life, in the broad sense of the word, in order that we may preserve ours, which is precisely the decision many women are making when they take the decision to terminate. And when I talk about life, I mean all life, the animals, the plants, and the human beings, of the people I know personally around the world who have gone through the ordeal of terminating a pregnancy, I don't recall meeting a single one, who was proud of it, talked openly about it, or does not sometimes wonder what could have been.

To get to a point where you have to make such a decision is a level of anguish and torture, they would wish upon no one. And it stays with that individual for a lifetime. It seems therefore to be something where legislation serves more harm than it does any good, further exacerbating the anguish a mother instinctively feels.

To legislate, appears to me, to be an unnatural act. Let's go a bit further. So by the way, I read a post on Twitter yesterday, it said; in a situation where man holds a woman at gunpoint and rapes her. The gun, will leave that situation with more rights than either human in America.

I started reviewing some of the implications, America's federal law offers new mothers 12 weeks of unpaid leave to have a child, the 12 weeks isn't a guarantee, the individual has to have met certain employment criteria to be eligible. paediatric healthcare isn't free. And what happens to children under the age of 18, who become pregnant while at school? What are the implications on people's choices about which states they want to live in?

What will be the potential impact on crime, mental health and schooling in those states over the next 18 years, and then the neighbouring states as well? How many will be lost to medical procedures being done poorly, there's much to think about and navigate as America moves through these waters. But we also have to reflect on how this decision implicates the rest of us around the world. This is a human right conversation.

And if we're not having it, we're not thinking about the bigger picture of what implicates our children into the future. So these are important debates to have, even if we're going to struggle on the conclusion. Becoming a parent has major implications for sustainability. And this is where I'm going to get into a lot of trouble and I expect the maximum amount of pushback and debate from you. Parenting appears to change people. I can't speak from personal experience only anecdotal, and based on observation, but parents can become so consumed by the immediate and sustained well being of their children, they can lose sight of the system as a whole.

This point is most clear when it comes to education, in richer countries. Parents with more means move to locations with reputable schools, crowding out parents with less means. The biases in the education system creates a ripple effect on housing, healthcare, and other public services. As such, parents can become numb to fixing these issues, and keen to ensure advantages for their offspring.

Then there's a topic of wealth now versus wealth in the future. The accumulation of wealth, generational wealth, if you want to call it that, and the impact of compounding on wealth, have all contributed to the global inequality we see in the world today. Generational wealth sustains and exacerbates global poverty levels. Generational wealth is a factor of how we choose to parent and provide. The other sustainability concerns are these: high birth rates lead to rapid population growth and population growth leads to more sales.

This is assuming we have the resource capacity to maintain this level of growth. But we already know that we do not. If everyone on the planet ate and purchased in the same way that rich countries do, we are headed for a global ecosystem collapse. We are probably headed there anyway. It therefore seems to me that a bigger concern for us right now is to evaluate our understanding about life, and aim to preserve the delicate balance required with nature.

 I don't see how forced parenthood addresses any of our really pressing concerns about how we're going to get out of the century alive. We're going to be having many more debates of this nature in the coming years, as scientific facts come face to face with religion, morality, and ethics. And we're accumulating more of these scientific facts all the time, I want to urge you to stay in the debate by writing to me on LinkedIn, or joining one of my communities to share your views and join the conversation. These are important things to discuss. So let's have that debate.

This podcast is brought to you today by the brand new women in sustainable business awards that kicks off in 2023. If you're a business owner who's starting a business with principles of sustainability in mind, and you want to preserve some lost skills, some handcrafting, artisanal work, or you're a social media manager supporting purpose driven brands, or you're creating fashion, or something that is relevant to the sustainability and green transformation, you are more than welcome to join us and to get involved in these awards. Check out our group on Facebook women in sustainable business, or follow the podcast where ideas launch on Instagram to find out more.

076 The Profit Maximising Goal of Companies

076 The Profit Maximising Goal of Companies

About this Episode

Should companies focus exclusively on maximising profit?
Nothing in life is that straightforward, and certainly not today when our understanding of how our world works has had quantum leaps.
In this episode I explore the legacy of Milton Friedman with some needed food for thought on profit vs purpose.

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Episode Transcript

What does the raging debate around ESG actually mean to you as an economic actor in society?

I’ve been buried in research for my upcoming book - Do What Matters - The Purpose Driven Career Transition Guide, as well as completing a course from University of California, Berkeley - School of Law on ESG, and preparing micro learning on sustainability for the team at Mind Channel.

What’s been central around discussions of late is the role of purpose in organisations, and whether or not boards or shareholders have the right 

Since pursuing learning on ESG matters, I've read much on the role of Milton Friedman on the theory of shareholder primacy and the profit maximisation purpose of companies. I've referred often derogatorily to his doctrine, but I’d never read it end to end until recently.

I quote now from his article

“In a free‐enterprise, private‐property system, a corporate executive is an employee of the owners of the business. He has direct responsibility to his employers. That responsibility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom. Of course, in some cases his employers may have a different objective. In either case, the key point is that, in his capacity as a corporate executive, the manager is the agent of the individuals who own the corporation and his primary responsibility is to them.”

Now in that quote he talks about the basic rules of society as embodied by both law and custom, but this idea of custom doesn’t work the minute an organisation crosses borders, and even the law isn't uniform, and this again leaves the door open to fuel and incentivize irresponsible corporate action.

Milton Friedman also scoffed at the idea of corporate responsibility - as corporations don't have responsibilities except to the law that created them. but individuals do. Either way, the flaw in much of this article in my opinion is in a lack of integrated systems thinking.

I've listened to countless debates among professors that argue that even when shareholders act in the interest of profit maximisation, they are more likely to develop solutions that address long term social and climate concerns because it is fundamentally within their interest to do so, once ensconced in an appropriate tax structure that considers negative externalities. 

Others argue for director primacy, challenging boards to embrace a north start or purpose in balancing the interests of all stakeholders in determining their actions. 

You will see from Friedman’s article that he believes this role assigns boards powers they do not have. Whilst Friedman's arguments are interesting and worthy of some design consideration, The arguments remain as academic and removed from real life as are the doctrines of economic theory itself in my opinion.

When economists, lawyers, historians and politicians debate these issues, they are ignoring fundamentally important disciplines from their discourse. We live in a series of interconnected systems. From the individual, the household, the community, the state/county, the country, the global economic system, and all of these are bounded by biological, geological and atmospheric systems that support existence itself. 

If we want to debate what's right, appropriate, legal, fair, just, we can't do it in the same bubbles we have in the past, we need the voices of engineers, biologists, botanists, geologists, chemists, artists, physicists, statisticians, theologians, activists and a host of other siloed characters before we even understand how the system works in order to improve it.

We live in the Anthropocene; a widely disputed fact of geology (don't worry I'm not oblivious to the contradiction in this statement), which means that humans now more than any other factor are impacting on climate and other major geological systems on the earth, and increasingly in space. That this is happening isn't inherently a problem; risk always walks in the hands of opportunity.

With the capabilities we have today on data, technology, systems science, modelling, design, we can create a new trajectory for humans within the context of society and natural systems to correct, and potentially reverse the damage we've done by the weaknesses of our past understanding. It will take a strong and compelling desire for a legacy of having a continuously livable earth, at the expense of individual egos. 

When Andrew Winston and Paul Polman speak of net positive, this I believe is what they challenge us to envision. When Kate Raworth discusses doughnut economics, I believe she also addresses these gaps. Have a read and share your thoughts below.

“The purpose of business is to profitably solve problems of people and the planet, and not to profit from causing problems.” The British Academy

Perhaps this is the simple idea that we can all get behind!

#esg #sustainability #netpositive #netzero #esginvesting #esgreporting

057 COP 26 WATCH PRE AND POST

057 COP 26 WATCH PRE AND POST

About this Episode

Katherine Ann Byam (MBA, FCCA) is the wing-woman to your genius, and a business resilience / organic growth consultant. As a strategic partner to leaders,  she helps businesses design and embed effective strategies for responsible brand stewardship, to deliver outcomes that favour a wider stakeholder view.

In consulting she supports sustainable business development, resilience and business transformation projects. She is also a specialist in using Linkedin to generate organic growth and impact.

As a leadership coach, she works one to one with you as you go through any critical leadership changes; career transitions, starting businesses or scaling.

Her aim is to address solutions that consider society and environmental resiliency at their core so that her clients preserve their longevity and a fair return for innovation and ingenuity.

Her brands include Dieple Virtual Services Hub, Where Ideas Launch, Women in Sustainable Business, The Eco-Business Growth Club,  Diep Linked Agency Services, the Courageous Career Club and the WW Executive business club.

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Episode Transcript

My inner voice to me: Kathy, you're supposed to have hope, be an activist for change, advocate for better ways of living with the flora and fauna and other humans on the planet. You have to believe new futures are possible, instead of being on track to hit 2.7 degrees of warming.

As much as I'm a hopeful optimist, I am nagged by the pessimism of doubt, understandably, because we've known about the coming crisis since the Club of Rome report in the 1970s. That's 50 years we had to start doing something. And now we leave a lot of work to get done in a really short space of time. 

What fills me with hope is that our young people are learning things we didn't learn. Yes, there's a bit of carbon tunnel vision in all that learning, but it still beats denial, which seems to have finally left the building. 

Cop 26 takes place in Scotland over the next few weeks and opinions are mixed on whether or not you will make enough meaningful change. 

There are also many activists doing something from creating business models that combine a positive social impact to volunteering, designing carbon sinks and carbon sequestration projects, and creating non plastic, plastic, renewable energy and circular economy principles. 

There is hope. We're still a long, long way from reforming the economic model. However, the cuckoo in the nest of the last 50 years has been the successful efforts at treating and teaching economics as if it were a scientific discipline. Until we realised we haven't been successful at all. 

Milton Friedman is seen often as the father of shareholder capitalism, and perhaps will have a lot to account for in another life. But it wasn't only him. Many economists and leaders got this wrong. I started listening to Kate Raworth’s TED talk, and then reading her book about the revolutionary Donut Principles of Economics, and it's the first time in my entire life, I heard something from an economist that sounded sensible to me, sorry, economists. 

I'll never forget my first economics class, where the teacher explained what Ceteris Paribus meant, all things being equal. It came after almost every statement in economics and I was like, but all things aren't equal. This doesn't make any sense.

Troublemaker! That was my label. 

In brief Kate's theory is this, there are two bands, a social foundation beneath which no one on our planet should slip, and an outer band or ecological ceiling beyond which we should not exceed. Inside the donut is a safe and just space for humanity, Flora, Fauna, and where we are thought to be happiest. Beyond the donut's outer ring, we are in for a whole heap of sadness. 

The nine things that trigger planetary boundaries on the outer ring of climate change, ozone layer depletion, air pollution, biodiversity loss, land conversion, freshwater withdrawals, nitrogen and phosphorus loading, chemical pollution and ocean acidification. 

The core social foundations we need to have in place for everyone are as follows: water, food, health, education, income and work peace and justice, political voice, social equity, gender equality, housing, networks and energy. So how do we live and act meaningfully within the green band of this donut?

As business leaders adjust, the goal for the foreseeable future is to find ways to bring this green ring to life without tipping off the edges on either side. There are many ways to do this:

With your vote, what groups are supporting the donut as an ideology for the way we think about growth in the future? And how can we make sure that those groups are facilitating our future? 

Your pockets - which organisations are giving back to bolster the communities in which they live and thrive? 

Your advocacy: what groups are you interested in supporting to help raise their status and position? 

Your charity: CSR donations and support? Who are you giving to and how are they helping Your business models? What can you do with your business models to be of more direct service to people who need a helping hand? 

Your inclusion, how can you make it so that more diverse people are included in the work you do and the problems you solve? 

Season Four is all about the before and after a cop 26 Thanks for listening and joining me on this programme. 

Season Four of Where Ideas launch was brought to you today by Katherine Ann Byam business resilience and strategy consulting services. Katherine provides business assessments and strategic support to help guide your business toward a netzero future. 

Get in touch with Katherine Ann Byam on LinkedIn

052 Becoming The CEO

052 Becoming The CEO

About this Episode

Are you building a green business that works for you and for the planet? Season three of where ideas launch walks you through the process of ideas and creating, developing and scaling and green idea from start to success. I leverage my experience along with the experts and micro-entrepreneurs running green business models today. Join us for this short series of 16 episodes of positive business impact for change.

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Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam  0:03  

 Becoming the CEO.

It really fascinates me how much reference we place in titles, it seems they are woven into the fabric of the story, we tell ourselves every day about our accomplishments, or what is what we're entitled to. But the titles truly serve us, or more importantly, help us to become better servant leaders?

This is the question that I put to myself today on this episode. Servant leadership came into my vernacular in 2016. When I returned to regular work, after my sabbatical year, it was all the rage, and certainly everyone talked about it. But quickly, it was clear that too many artefacts to an old world existed in our structures, which made servant leadership hard to digest.

For example, the parking privilege of the heads of function, or the titles that they have stored, or the frameworks that we had for decision making. Most of the artefacts supported a pre-existing world, as much as we tried to become better servant leaders to our teams. When I started my business, I immediately promoted myself to the CEO, I was the only employee on record. But I immediately wanted to step up into my role of shaping the business in the likeness of a strong and connected thought leader. I'll tell you what, though, the trouble is that although it's not impossible, it's very, very difficult to step into a true place of leadership, when you are also the lady simultaneously driving the bus, handing out the flyers, serving the drinks, checking the tab, and trying to figure out the best way to minimise waste, recycle, or build a circular business model from your business. There's a lot that we have to digest and figure out when we're leading businesses that offer a modern age, when you're trying to operate within the heart of the doughnut, or let's say the green ring of the donut that keeps rearward speaks about in her work on donut economics, you have a lot to consider beyond just the team, the business fundamentals, but you also have to consider your impact. And the doughnut philosophy is, is pretty much this, that there's a sort of social foundation that we can't drop beneath. So we can't get into the hole of the middle of the doughnut, because that's where the social foundation doesn't exist. They're basic necessities that don't exist for some people. And then we have an ecological ceiling, a boundary to the donut that we kind of go beyond. So this is where you have climate change, ozone layer depletion, ocean acidification, chemical pollution, nitrogen, freshwater withdrawals, land conversion, biodiversity loss, and air pollution, among other things. So the idea when you're designing your business is to design to stay within this lovely green band, which is considered the social ingest space for humanity. But taking that on as a single intrapreneur, trying to create that framework while trying to save yourself. So often pretty difficult, right. And the essential thing that we need to do first is make sure that our business stands on good foundation of itself, almost before we can pull anyone else from outside of that ring. Or we can design our business models to simultaneously pull ourselves and others out of the middle of that circle. So this is a lot to think about. And definitely it's a challenge for many of us building our businesses today. The CEO mindset therefore starts with building a great support team. And nowadays I'm calling it a hybrid team, with people automation and great slick systems, as well as building a fit for purpose business model. Now, when you're building a team, it seems scary at first. What if I have a poor month and then another poor month? What responsibility Am I taking for someone else's income? If you're thinking like that, this is a good thing. It means you understand the stakes, it means you understand what it means to be inside that circle. But the B track to that soundtrack in your head is how do you hire so that the additional headcount that you bring in so the people you decide to lift up or expense that you take on unlocks more capacity to expand the reach of your business? If you're a solopreneur, your first hire can be among perhaps three key roles, or possibly all of them, if you are able to afford it. So the first is an operations expert to help you set up the right automated and technical solutions in your business. If these are not already in place, then you have virtual assistant, so someone to help manage your time and your diary. And then you can choose from another three sets. Depending on your ability to afford them, perhaps you can do all of them, or perhaps just one. But the three that I'm talking about are a social media manager, who takes the load off the organic lead generation and your business, an ads manager if you prefer to use ads, rather than organic traction. And that person can also take some weight off the lead generation activity, or a PR manager or a team who writes content for you to be featured in press and other media. So all of these are all of these activities are needed to help grow and scale your business. It's up to you to decide what balance you want to inject into your team, and what fits with your business best, what fits the interest and the need and the design of your business model best as well. Other hires would considering an associate or an understudy, who can start delivering some of the more routine aspects of what you do. And this can potentially overlap with your operations manager depending on the skills required. You may also want to consider an accountant. That's a hugely for many business owners, knowing that someone competent is looking after their books, and preparing financial statements, things that you're going to rely on in your business. You can also think about a business development manager to look at bigger contracts, collaborations and partnerships going out there to strategically make connections for you and your business. If you're scaling, you need to be mindful of the bandwidth you have for your business. And as such, you may need to look at your service model. For example, perhaps you might need to add more group services rather than one to one services. Or you need to bring up that team of understudies to be able to provide some of that one to one basis so that you only provide the absolute bit that you need to provide it giving some of the more routine aspects to that understudy.

Price also becomes a consideration if you only have so much capacity to scale your service in terms of hours. But most of all, as you scale, you need to consider that your impact is becoming more we talk about growth. And we know that cannot be infinite growth in a finite world. However, when we talk about growth, sustainable businesses, we're really talking about untapped capacity, untapped demand, we're also talking about sort of head on competition with businesses that are operating in a less sustainable way. So in a way, your untapped demand is a latent demand in the market for things that are more sustainable. So if people find things that are more sustainable, they're going to reallocate funds, and allocate them to your product. There is some competition, there is some head on competition that you will be taking on in order to grow. And you need to be aware of that too. That part of your game is going to be competing with businesses that haven't made the transition that haven't made the commitment to lifting people to the right place and to and supporting initiatives for the planet. As you scale and grow your impact. Your advocacy work becomes even more important. The funds you can contribute to helping people escape, the doughnut expands and management of that impact becomes even more important ensuring it's reaching the right people, the contributions you were making to reduce your impact on the outer limits of the doughnut also become more important. And ensuring your growth is neutral or positive for the planet will be essential. In the next episode, we go into the mindset of becoming the leader of your business, and some of the things that can derail you. Before we close However, there are two more important things that we do need to cover when you're building out your scale and your business to grow for the future. And they are legal, and HR. Please don't underestimate the importance of having good legal contracts in place for looking at the right ways to put those contracts in place so that they are fair to both parties. And also looking at the employment law as the employment rules, especially as we move towards more remote working more flexible working employees living in different countries and different jurisdictions from where your business is based. So you do need to get expert support to do those kinds of roles. But the good news is you don't have to hire them full time anymore. So tune in to the next episode to understand the kind of leader you need to become in order to really be able to deliver On these goals that you've set yourself, I'm looking forward to supporting you through this in the next episode with my guest. See you soon. This episode was brought to you today by the Eco business growth Club by Katherine Ann Byam. And by the space where ideas launch. The eco-business growth club supports positive impact SMEs with coaching new health, and community support toward achieving the impact and reach they set out to meet. You can find out more by connecting with where ideas launch on Instagram or following the hashtag where it is launched across all of your social media.

050 Eco Business Growth Club Incubator

050 Eco Business Growth Club Incubator

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Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam  0:03  

Hello, everyone, and welcome to this episode and the session on the Eco Business Growth Club Incubator. So this incubator was conceptualised after I started working with Women in Sustainable Business in October 2020. And I started to learn what are the challenges that small businesses and micro businesses are facing, and then thinking really broadly about how I can help solve those challenges with the community that I have, the networks that I built, and the structures that are taking off today in terms of digital and technology and platforms actually. 

A lot of the members of my community, women in sustainable business and indeed on my Instagram feed of Where Ideas Launch where I have one over 1000 people who are following and committed to the podcast and the message that we're bringing. One of the main things that they struggle with is really amplifying their own voices. So we do have a bit of a bubble, we work with each other, we collaborate with each other. And we all know that a sustainable consumer and a sustainable business owner are usually one and the same. But we also know that the way we change the world is to move outside of our own little bubbles because what we need to do is really resonate with people who are not yet identifying as being sustainably-minded. 

So one of the ways that I decided to help businesses to overcome some of the challenges is to build an incubator. It's interesting because I went to put out a poll in my group to ask what people felt about incubators and they thought it was eggs in a basket. You know, it was basically eggs being warmed until they became grown animals of whatever kind. And yes, that's kind of what we are, we're small until we can actually get the right systems and product together in order to scale. 

The business incubator has 12 modules. It is pretty intense and each module will be covered during the course of a month. So I'm trying not to overwhelm anyone. And the idea is to level up on each one of those things as you continue to build your business. 

Module 1 is the most fundamental module and I call it micro and small business enterprise business models, ways to deliver value to yourself as a business owner, and to the wider community. As a responsible actor. This module looks first of all at business models and your product suite, and how you design it to best fulfil all the causes that are important to you. We will go through business planning, looking at your full business self-audit. Then we will build 2022 based on your strengths today. As a business owner and the opportunities we've identified together, you will walk away with a complete clear plan and a new direction. We also develop your cycle plan within this module. So we look at how you launch or how you bring new ideas and new products to market. And we help you shape the plan for when you promote and when you rest, most importantly, because we need to make sure that the time you spend in your business is productive and sustainable. 

The third part of this module is the operations plan. So we look at what software will impact and what works best for you specifically. And as an add on to the course you can also have us do a full business audit for you. So if you want to upgrade once you have this programme, and have us do the full business audit for you, we can help you with more detailed operational planning to help you slick your systems up as well. 

Module Two is about ethical and responsible brand stewardship. So something that maybe not all my listeners know but one of my last jobs was as an internal auditor to a FTSE Top 10 Tobacco Company. And what I learned from that job is how important brand stewardship is and how critical my role as internal auditor was to the reputation management of the company, especially in such a controversial industry. I've taken a lot away from my experience in working in this space. And I want to bring back this brand stewardship conversation. So the first thing we will go through is eco branding and what are the fundamentals of branding in the sustainable space and the benefits of nailing this to the growth that you will have in the future. It's so important to really know what the ethos is and how to articulate those ethe in the wider world. Then we look at personal branding because for micro and small entrepreneurs personal branding is essential to the overall picture of your brand as well. You need to show up for your business as much as possible. And therefore we need to look at how you marry your personal brand with what the business is doing. We can then look at marketing, and then we cover how this complements your brand. So we look at marketing from the perspective of branding, we also look at your brand assets. And we explore how these can support the persona of your brand. And we look at your brand footprint. So we assess options to lower your digital brand footprint, and how to optimise it where possible. So module two is pretty big as well. And it doesn't get smaller. 

Module Three is all about copy and content for impact. So we understand the different types of copy and the purpose that they save. So we look at how we inspire, how we motivate, how we connect, how we engage, and how we convert and serve. All of these are critical elements to lifting the profile of sustainable businesses of green businesses with a deeper purpose. And your copy needs to represent all six aspects of what your business does. 

Module four is all about ethical selling strategies. And when I talk about ethical selling, it means recognising that you're there to serve, first of all, and you're there to help people not make bad decisions, you have the event to help people make better decisions. So when we talk about ethical selling strategies, it is about educating. It is about making sure that you're showing up where you need to show up. And it is about challenging the status quo. So we will talk all about that. 

Module five is about product development. And we cover user experience and what's trending now in the gaming verse, and how we can bring these features to your brand. 

Module six is the supply chain. We work on all the things you need to know to know your supplier and all the certifications that will support you. And also how to challenge those certifications when the time comes. We need to be more rigorous with our certification bodies and with our suppliers. So we're going to talk a lot about that. 

Module seven is organic public relations. And when I say organic public relations, I mean public relations that you don't necessarily pay for. It still means reaching out to those who can represent you. So it still means reaching out to journalists who want to cover your story, but ensure that your story is covered in a responsible way. Okay, we will show you how to do that, how to reach out and how to connect with the media and provide a body of research and sources that will be great for your brand. 

Module eight is about data and how to manage your net zero or net positive impact, the tools to support you and how to support your customers with this as well. 

Module nine is finance and legal, how to budget, prepare for scaling, and to attract clean finance. We're also talking about the legal in terms of intellectual property contracts and insurance for your business, I will be getting experts to talk to you about that. So don't worry. It won't be me even if I am an accountant. 

Module 10 is about sustainable living talking about farming within your city house. So this is going to be a really interesting session. I'm super excited about it. 

Module 11 is advocacy. So this is talking about how you advocate for something, how you represent and become an influencer for a path and a cause that is important to you. So we're going to talk all about advocacy. 

Module 12 finally is about partnerships. And we will explore how collaborations and long term partnerships can be built and developed to ensure both parties get the most benefit from the relationship as opposed to being a one-sided thing. In addition, each month we will continue to have two guest speakers. One will always be on health and well-being because if it's one thing I learned as an entrepreneur, your health and wellbeing can go up in smoke in minutes. So I'm really getting a very, very special person to come in and support us on health and wellbeing every month. And I believe that this is probably the most game-changing thing about this incubator. You will have access to all the training that has gone before. So I have a bank and repository of about 80 pieces of training that have already gone by. You will also have new and relevant training coming up as well as relevant resources that are coming online as well. In addition, I have negotiated some deals with two of the newest and biggest platforms that are the major sustainable competitors, Amazon. 

So Lola Fernandez and Austin both have great platforms that I will be getting you access to at a discounted rate as a part of the Eco business group club. So this is the power of connection. This is the power of networking, and I really want you to enjoy these benefits that I am pulling together for you. This is what the incubator is about. If you're interested in the incubator, it may or may not be open at the time that you listen to this episode. But if you're interested in the incubator, do send me a message on LinkedIn. Do reach out or join Women In Sustainable Business. And you'll find out more about the incubator there. The idea is that people join, and they join for life. So we're going to look at those modules, we're going to update them. And if there are changes, as time goes on, we're going to give you those updates so that your business continues to grow and scale. But most importantly, you have that rich community of people who have gone through the same journey as you in the same place pretty much forever and you can start supporting each other. And now I'm just giving you a one-off price for this service. So really looking forward to having you inside. Do let me know if you're interested or not. And I will talk to you again soon.

048 Ethical Scale

048 Ethical Scale

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Episode Notes

Growth is scaling your business in line with your goals and sustainability parameters. It can include more substantive financing and capital injection, as well as market and customer base growth.

In this section we review:

Marketing a Product – A Case Study

Nicola – Hand Crafting Coach.

 Nicola is the founder of a handcrafted business and is an online business mentor and coach helping makers, artists, and crafters in business with her unique approach. Nicola founded her handcrafted business in 2013, after running successful and award-winning handcrafted stationery businesses for eight years.

Nicola started off as a photographer in the days of darkroom development before her sight changed and she made her first pivot into marketing obtaining certification at the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

Her decision to start a family then prompted another pivot into her handmade stationery business.

In the beginning, she tried to serve everyone, until they realised it was unsustainable, and that they would have to niche so she can do bulk orders. they then niched into weddings and funerals as they could coordinate bulk orders through both! She worked with Funeral Directors and Bridal shops to consolidate her efforts into a few key strategic partners.

Nicola rewarded her partners too, with a 10% referral fee. The approach was phenomenally successful due to personal word of mouth recommendations, and they were able to display her work as well.

Nicola then pivoted into building a digital service business and a platform for photos, and then built her coaching business for handmade businesses.

Nicola’s strengths were identifying viable niches, building a strategic incentivised network, and of course having a high-quality offer that people are willing to refer to.

Marketing a Product – A Case Study:

Bridgete – Product Entrepreneur Coach                                                   

Bridgete is a product entrepreneur enthusiast with over 12 years’ experience she started her first online retail business in 2008, working from her spare bedroom with 2 toddlers at the time.

She scaled her business to seven figures in a 6000 square foot warehouse with numerous staff and spent many weekends packing orders. She is now building an online retail business as well.

She started her business after the birth of her first child. She wanted more time at home so opted for voluntary redundancy from Dell computers.

She wanted to find the ultimate product to sell and started exploring eBay. The journey started with educational books and fictional books for children. She developed relationships with publishers in London, and her proposition was creating bespoke book collections. This went well for 8 years, until some publishers started competing and eroding the margins for the business.

Bridgete pivoted again to project management, but her heart wanted to remain in entrepreneurship, so she produced a new idea.

Bridgete loves a good laugh and decided to get into designing a line of fancy dresses, fashioning items based on retro looks and fabrics as well as new creations. She built this business with her daughter and imported work from China.

For Bridgete, she approached her businesses by finding a problem to solve within the context of something she loved. Her fun-loving nature took her to develop products with “rude sentiments” too!

Bridgete has built up experiences having traded on eBay, Amazon, Alibaba, and her own website.

Her advice about working with Amazon, eBay and the other players is to be aware that they will push their own products over yours, and the better you craft a niche, the better it is for you. She recommends Etsy, as you can carve your own niche there, stipulating the design of the products and the source of your supply etc.

Bridgete’s latest pursuit is building an account with her dogs as the stars on Instagram. Be ready to explore your interests on any front!

Marketing a Service-Based Business

Katherine – my journey

When I started my service-based business, I knew my personal connections would be key. So far, 100% of my paying customers have come from relationships I have built either from a lifetime, or from months of consistency and effort, showing up with content on social media or through my engagement with their content.

 I did not anticipate that every customer relationship would take so long to build, but I also did not anticipate a global pandemic. Given the time it takes to invest in relationships, it makes sense to me to invest in strategic relationships as much as possible.

Relationship Building for services

As with everything, it starts with understanding the profile of the clients you want to work with, and mapping what you know about them. You can easily use demographic information like age, gender, location, but I have found a more granular way to profile my ideal client, and its stage of life or career, suppressed ideals and views, expat lifestyles. I have found these 3 to be the factors that most draw my ideal clients to me because these features are me.

The next is in the value you give. In a world where knowledge is increasingly free, you need to design a business model where you are not just selling knowledge. This means you are trading in experiences, your own time and work output, or in an emotional reset and support you can provide.

The starting point for strong relationship building is reading, then listening. It works best if before you engage with someone who fits your ideal client, research them. Learn all about them. Then when you engage, listen with every fibre of your being. Ask questions. Explore their points and side comments. And when you offer a service, make sure it’s targeted to fit their needs and means.

Growth – Strategic Partnerships

Strategic alliances and strategic partnerships are fancy terms for business friendships. From politics to private businesses these have been around for an exceedingly long time. Key modern-day drivers for strategic partnerships are sharing resources, assets, technology, costs, and capability or to scale more rapidly.

They are much sought after, but also do not always work. They can take legal forms, such as minority equity investment, JVs, or contracts, or sometimes the formation of a new entity for the purpose. They work best when they are mutually beneficial, and the risks, and governance are also equitably shared.

COVID-19 has changed the playing field massively, but many of us have not pivoted and adjusted to compensate. The trends that have accelerated are:

It suggests that if you are not into technology, you are at a disadvantage when we look to the future.

The types of strategic alliances that can be useful to sustainable businesses are:

To explore these points, it is advisable to:

Growth – Business Development & Sales

Business development is the art of looking forward, and anticipating opportunities for your business, as well as capabilities that will be needed to leverage the future.

It is also at a foundation level about making connections and developing a consistent flow of leads and potential customers for your business.

Business Development is the Opportunity, and sales is the conversion.

When you have low-priced items, you want to design a system that automates sales as much as possible. This may include listing your product or service on sites that do the marketing for you.

For higher-priced or higher volume items, you want to engage with your buyers in a more substantial way.

Steps to consider in selling:

·       Position yourself or service as the answer.

046 Green Commerce

046 Green Commerce

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Episode Notes

Commercialisation

Preparing to go to market is separate from going to market; there are a host of other decisions that need to be made at this stage, principally around audience building and or client attraction. For product marketers, it includes critical supply chain decisions, as well as the choice of commercial strategy.

For service businesses, as well as product businesses it is about audience building, generating a buzz and excitement for your product, being  visible and  discoverable online, and the different paid and organic means to realise these objectives.

In this episode  we will be covering:

Launching

Launching is quite different from making your product or service available. It is about building anticipation with an audience you are actively building. Creating a sense of momentum toward a goal is the main thing here, as you don’t want people to purchase your product and not use it, this is waste, whether it be digital waste, or physical waste. You want to heighten awareness of the problems your product or service solves, or the lasting joy it will bring to the consumer, either through celebrating their ability to make responsible choices, or having something that lasts much longer.

Entire industries and a lot of wealth in the world has accrued to businesses that launch things that go from shop to landfill in mere seconds after entering the hands of the consumer. All the supply chain costs, poor wage rates, endless pollution, that create problems for city councils to take care of.

Launching a green business has to excite people about being responsible. It has to help them raise the lid on green practices that feel good, as opposed to unethical marketing, sales, and product strategies that leave us with a moment of pleasure and eternal regret.

I hope I painted that picture pretty clearly!

It’s case study time. I use some of my case studies not as examples of model businesses, but to explain the principles of what we can learn from the example. My first case study is Apple.

When Apple launches a product, people queue up physically or virtually to buy it.

There’s a big reveal, a demonstration of contemporary design concepts and all their marketing effort is directed at this single focussed product of the launch – They do not talk about any of their other products, although they still sell other products, by bringing audiences to their store or web page.

This is what launching can feel like for a green business if you study the art of making it happen for ethical businesses.

Maybe you don’t have the means to do a launch on the scale of Apple, but you can do a well staged launch using the audiences that you have. Wherever they are. This is what Season 3 of this podcast is for me, it's exciting my listeners to start amazing green businesses that excite people.

The fundamental principles of launching are to have a sustained effort at one period to launch your product or service to the world.

These are the broad steps you should consider.

o   Make it with me /or do it with me challenge for 3 to 5 days

o   A bundled offer – potentially with collaborators

o   A party of some kind that uses your product or service

o   A limited time promotion

o   A summit or series of speakers.

o   A marketing campaign through ads or other

o   A Masterclass

o   A waitlist

This is an intense process, but this is what it takes to launch well.

You do not have to launch in a big, controlled rhythm like this, but you are likely to generate more long-term traffic and sustainable income this way, than having to promote your product or service every week.

A sustainable business must not only be sustainable for the planet.  It must also be sustainable for you as the world or your community needs to benefit from the existence of your service or product.

Your values are key to helping you drive the outcomes you want for both the business and the planet. Building an audience is the most underestimated but critical element that we underestimate because we believe that people share our purpose and our passion.

The challenge with audience building is trust. If you start something new, even people who know you have reservations about trusting you.

In this internet age, it has really become self-fulfilling at times, as the bigger your brand gets, the more people trust you, but if you are not yet on the growth ladder, you need to find ways to get on it.

For all our planet friendly intentions, we still need to compete, sometimes with each other, but more significantly with brands who do things in less ethical ways.

If we plan to live and eat from our business, we need to make it viable, which includes competing with others, or finding the underserved niche, and sharing with them how your product or service will transform their outcomes.

The better you get at organic growth, the lower you can get your prices, but advertising as a strategy may be needed to build the initial audience, so consider those strategies well.

Throughout the experience of your launch, you need to have considered and prioritised customer service; this should be pre-designed but adapted as needed.

To run a sustainable purpose driven business you need strategy to achieve the objectives you have yourself in a metrics-oriented way.

And therefore, you need to document as much as possible, the whole sequence of events, with all your finances, and everything considered.

Launching summary