May 24, 2021
Profit With a Purpose, Gain A Competitive Edge With Real Social Impacts with Phil Preston
Learn how and why you should build purpose into your work. It's a great feeling to do something you love that has a positive impact socially. Purpose also helps your employees and customers connect with you and your business on a deeper level. Have a deeper purpose in your work can also prevent burnout for you and your employees. Be inspirational.
About Phil
Phil traded in a high-flying corporate career to help businesses use purpose to make a difference and grow their bottom line. He's a speaker, facilitator and strategist, and the author of the book, Connecting Profit With Purpose. He works with small-medium enterprises through to multi-national corporations and everything in between, as well as helping public and social sector organizations work more collaboratively with the private sector. Outside of work he's over-invested in coffee, chocolate and trail running!
Download my Corporate Purpose Blueprint
Info about the book Connecting Profit with Purpose
LinkedIn Page: Navigating Purpose and the New Economy
Email: phil@philpreston.com.au
Web: philpreston.com.au
www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com
Full Transcript Below
Profit With a Purpose, Gain A Competitive Edge With Real Social Impacts
Sat, 5/22 1:47PM • 35:15
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, people, purpose, costs, guess, idea, company, challenges, run, waste, philanthropic, bit, helping, eviction, problem, solve, thinking, opportunities, phil, connecting
SPEAKERS
Phil, Roy Barker
Roy Barker 00:02
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the business of business podcast. This is your host, Roy. So we are a podcast that brings a wide variety of guests that speak on diverse topics to you know, help our listeners, maybe identify some opportunities for themself or if there are some deficiencies, it also gives us experts to reach out to to, you know, try to help us be more successful, be more profitable as we go through our business. So today, we are lucky to have Phil Preston, and Phil traded in his high flying corporate career to help businesses use purpose to make a difference and grow their bottom line. He's a speaker, facilitator and strategist and the author of the book connecting profit with purpose. He works with small medium enterprises that through all the way to the multiple net, multi national corporations and everything in between, as well as helping public and social sector organizations work more collaboratively, collaboratively with the private sector. Outside of his work, he's over invested in coffee, chocolate and trail running. So Phil, glad to have you. I'm a little tongue tied this afternoon, but glad to have you with us. Thanks for staying. Thanks for taking time out of your busy day to be with us.
Phil 01:27
Yeah, no, it's great to be with you, Roy. Thanks very much. And I've already had my run today's heavy in a pretty good, okay.
Roy Barker 01:34
Now I was kind of getting on the dig in the coffee and the chocolate. And then we got to trail run him like oh, my gosh, I don't know about that one. Well, so yeah, you know, it's an interesting concept that we hear a lot about more. And that was one reason, you know, when we connected, that was why I had invited you on the show. I want to just learn more about, you know, tying in purpose with business, and, you know, making a business more successful helping our bottom line. And then, you know, also I think it's the, you know, how can we use purpose in our business to maybe even step over into that public and social sector, which are all needing so much help nowadays, it's a very timely subject.
Phil 02:25
Yeah, look at I think, particularly for small to medium sized business owners, like you and I, and many others, it's often tempting to think of purposes, that thing we do outside of our work. And, you know, we don't have a lot of life outside of our work, sometimes we're pretty flat out. So it's a real bonus if you can build purpose into your work as well. And and I guess this was some of the revelations that came to me after I left my corporate lifestyle, that there's many different ways of approaching purpose. And as long as you know, the first step is to be aware of, for example, the three different types in three different ways you can do that, because then you can make conscious choices about how you pursue it and don't end up I think a lot of people want to make so much different civil, they run around doing lots of things, and that adds to the burnout in their life. So you don't want to have that situation. If you can build on on things. That's far better. Right?
Roy Barker 03:19
Exactly. And you know, the The other thing about that is, if you do something you like, and you know, I there are many days that go by get tapped on the shoulder and say your workday is through, it's time to get up and do something else. And that's just a, I guess that's a byproduct of actually doing something you love, that you feel has a purpose. And I think it makes it, it makes your work life much easier. Because I don't ever feel like I work a day in my life. Because I feel like there is that purpose. I think it's a very important factor that, you know, I guess a lot of times we fall into businesses or end up somewhere. But, you know, like you said, if we don't feel that purpose, it can lead to burn out in a hurry and mess up a lot of other things in our life.
Phil 04:10
That's right. Yeah. So it is, you know, we do philanthropic things where they're their causes we want to give to whether it's personally outside of business or within our business. That's all good. There's, you know, things we do to be responsible as a business. Like we might want to know, the paper we put in our photo copiers might be from some, you know, the polpo Forest resource that's been accredited. So we're doing the right thing there. But there is a third level, once we go beyond the philanthropic and then the responsible things to do. There's a third level which is really exciting. And that's the area like to get into where things actually line up with your business in a way that helps you grow your bottom line, but also make a really big difference in the world. And that's something that's not always easy. But if we can get there, look, it just makes our lives almost perfect. Oregon can't get perfect,
Roy Barker 05:06
but close to it. Exactly, exactly. So how did you come out of the corporate world and get involved in specializing in trying to I guess match businesses with a purpose or find the their purpose? I guess it's combination of the business that they're in and the owner what they are interested in, I guess there's a lot of variables that go with that.
Phil 05:31
Yeah, well, I guess I, I, when I grew up, I had a pretty, I'd say, linear or simple view of the world, I thought, you know, you get a job, a career, you work in a business or for business, and you give back what you can when you can, right? And you know, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. Yes, yes, you can do that. However, you know, taking a cue from lady called Judith Roden, who was the head of the Rockefeller Foundation in the US for some time. She made the point that even with rising levels of philanthropy, there's, there's not enough resources there to really make a difference. So you go, Okay, well, philanthropy does play a role, but it's not going to make a big difference in solving challenges. What do we do next. And the next port of call was media. In my role, I was working in the investment industry. And we were looking at companies being responsible. So you know, they're doing the right thing by by the customers or by people they're buying goods from, they're doing the right thing by their staff. But really, those activities, even though they're good, and companies need to do them, I realized that they don't change the world, either. They're really just about companies protecting their brand and reputation. And I don't think you and I are going to run around going Yes, we're going to change the world by protecting brand and reputation. So when I left my corporate career, I sort of got to a point where I'd been working in the investment industry for 17 years and, and I just stuck my head up above the parapet, and I realized I didn't want to do this for the rest of my life. So like a jet foot, like a jet fighter pilot who hits the ejector seat button, when he's in trouble. I left and started researching the different ways companies make a difference. And what I found was on top of the two approaches already knew about I found this third one that just one or two companies were able to do really well. And instead of making you a different sort of at this level, they're making a difference that was way up here. And it took me a while to figure out what the formula was. But when I figured it out, I was like, Oh, this was I found my life's calling, because those companies were the ones that could make a difference in a profitable way. And if they could, if they could do that, it meant they kept doing it and kept investing in it. And I can give you some examples as we go along. That's the key to it is connecting profit with purpose. So a really nice, or a couple of quick examples. And this is one in my book, Comm. This is a case study. Some real estate agents in an area not far from where I live in Sydney, Australia. We're helping to reduce tenancy evictions. Because there are some tenants who just don't want to pay the rent. They know they can, but they won't. We're not trying to predict them. But there's there's a range of tenants and in COVID, you know, we know people have health problems, mental health problems, people lose their job. And you don't want those unnecessary evictions if you can help it. So instead of the real estate agents just going through the process of evicting people, when they couldn't pay their rent, they actually changed their own internal process, and they didn't have to do a lot, there was only a little thing that had to do by making referrals of those people to the right support agencies, what they found was they could save more than 50% of those tenancies. And so there was a really, really big social impact here, but at the same time, they realized they were saving themselves money by avoiding that eviction process, right. So yeah, that's when we get those really nice win wins. And so they have an incentive to keep doing it. And they also have an incentive to, to make a difference at a big on a bigger scale than they might through some of their other means.
Roy Barker 09:23
Yeah, and that's, you know, like, again, that's a timely message, because instead, I assume, instead of going through all of that costs for eviction, and then sometimes even though we have all the legal rights, it can still take a long time, this is a way that they can at least recoup a bigger portion of their money and and and also keep the tenant and probably not forced them to lose their livelihood as well.
Phil 09:51
Well, that that's a really good point, because it's one of the things we did in this study was actually put numbers around those effects. So for the real estate agency themselves, there was $1,000 in hard costs that that was saving. And that's before, you know, extra stress and extra time they had to spend going through those eviction processes. But when they added it up, they landlords were saving, on average about $10,000. Wow. Because, yeah, it's a sizable amount, because as you alluded to their eviction processes can take a long time. So yeah, the landlord's potentially losing rent for months at a time, they then have to do up the property, there might be some damage and things that need replacing, and then they have to pay related costs, right. So when you start making, you know, when you start putting numbers around it, it becomes a business case. Not something as nice to do. Exactly, exactly.
Roy Barker 10:45
So yeah, there. So there is that financial impact. And there is this man's a great example, because it's, it's a win win. It's the, I guess, the financial impact for the real estate company. But then there was also that social aspect of being able to, you know, help the tenants or point them in the right direction. Again, unfortunately, in that position, sometimes people don't know where to reach out, or how to get that help. So, you know, have a company that having those resources that that's awesome. So what are some other cons, if you, you know, can speak to them? What are some other examples of a type of an industry where they've been able to use purpose?
Phil 11:28
Yeah, sure. Another one, I recently stumbled across, which I love is a lawyer, who was turning away people from her practice. Now she was practicing in family law and a lot of divorce cases. Okay. And apparently, the average cost so this is in Australia, I don't know what it is, in the US. The average cost of legal services for a divorce that doesn't run, there's not really fractious, but that maybe doesn't run completely smoothly is around $100,000. Wow, two? Yep. So both parties are going to end up $100,000 worth. And if there's kids involved, you know, that's, that's the kids sort of losing the value of that money as well. Exactly. So, yeah, she found she was turning away six out of 10 clients because they couldn't afford first or the the industries services. And what she ended up doing was creating an online product, and she invested a lot of money in it. So the people who look like they're gonna have a fairly straightforward process, they can use the online product, there's a lot to do, but at the end of it, they end up with an agreement that's legally enforceable, and both parties can sign. And it costs less than $1,000 to use this online service. So again, she's helping to address a social problem, which is around the affordability of legal services. Yeah. And, look, it won't suit everyone. But for the for a large portion of people it does, so they'll be saving a lot of money out of their estate, which is good for them and good for their kids.
13:03
Yeah, that is.
13:06
Yeah, I
Phil 13:07
love that. Yeah, no, that's
Roy Barker 13:08
a great example. Just thinking outside the box and figuring out a way to well, not only to generate a little revenue for herself, but also solve a client problem for her, you know, people that she was having to turn away. So that's definitely a win win.
Phil 13:23
That's right. And it's scalable, because it's online. So within Australia, because law is different from country to country, but that is scalable, so she can end up this can be a profit generator for her as it grows things. So again, it's not a not a philanthropic donation. And maybe a final final example, just to, to change tune a little bit. Yeah, I love this one. Because I, I did this case study for a pig farm. And one of the biggest costs in a pig farm is was for this farmer was the cost of grain that they'll feed into their pigs. Exactly. And in the time, grain costs were going up in in Australia, and that this was a challenge for them. So what they ended up doing was partnering with a range of food manufacturers that at the end of a food run, they'd always have leftover food. So it was costing those food manufacturers about $300 a ton to take that green waste and dump it into the to what they found was that for about $75 a tongue so far, far cheaper rate, they could transport it to this pig farm and the pigs would get the food and and so the farmer was happy because they had free seed. The food manufacturer was happy because it cost them far less. And I think the pigs were pretty happy because they were getting things like leftover ice cream. Right.
Roy Barker 14:49
Right. Exactly.
Phil 14:52
Pasta ice cream are issues so it was a win win all around.
Roy Barker 14:56
Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that because I had Both had two different sets of sides of my family that were in the propane business. And to be honest, that's how they got into, you know, back in the day, I guess this was back in the late 30s, early 40s. It was a waste product. And they just the refineries just couldn't get rid of it. So these guys figured out a way to go pick it up, haul it off, and, you know, turn it into a very usable and profitable business. So sometimes it's about just kind of keeping our eyes open and not getting stuck in that same rut, look around at these different things that we can do to, you know, not only help others, but help ourselves in the into.
Phil 15:37
Yeah, and I love that example. Because it's you've given example, there is someone creating a new new market or a new product brand needed exactly in a way that's saving a byproduct that might be wasted. So that's a new product and market opportunity. And so there's those opportunities, and there's the ones which are around, I guess, being more productive or cutting costs. In the case of the big farm that was really about cutting costs. So there's many different ways you can find these types of opportunities, although I have to say every business is slightly different. So there's, there's no guaranteed formula, a formula you can put on a plate. Yeah, say this is how you do it. But there's a process you can go through the wind those opportunities for you.
Roy Barker 16:18
Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask you. So, you know, Monday morning, you get a Phil gets a call from Roy saying, Hey, you know, I'd really like to find a way to, you know, time or time our business in with more with purpose, you know, so I know everybody's gonna be a little different, but kind of say, what are the general steps that you would go through with with your clients?
Phil 16:41
Yeah, so there's two two angles here. Really, one is about? As you mentioned, how do we embed purpose in our business as a, you know, to hardcoded in our DNA, and then there's the secondary part, which is finding the initiatives or strategies like the ones we just spoken to? So let me go through the first one, so can actually become a very purposeful business. It's, there's a key transformation that has to take place, if it hasn't already taken place. And I call this the the transformation from activities to outcomes. Yes. So yeah, activities to outcomes means you're not thinking about your businesses say, making cars, which is an activity, you're thinking about your business is, say sustainable transport solutions, branches more about an outcome. So you're thinking about, how is my business benefiting society? More so than what activity do I do to make money? Right? Of course, you still got to make money. But what I've found is if you get that purpose piece, right, if you really and truly understand what the benefit is you're providing to society, the bottom line often takes care of itself. Because you tend to find really, really good new ideas and new ways of adding value to your customers that you might not have thought of before. So yeah, the process is really to get that mindset piece right now, if we're dealing with a very small business with with one, you know, a couple of employees, that's not much of a challenge, they're either get it or they don't. But when you start dealing with bigger businesses, and you've got line managers and people running parts of a plant, for example, then sometimes it's an exercise to work with the people in the business to ensure everyone's on that on that same level, then the next thing to focus on is really, what is their what is their purpose, we want to come up with a purpose statement, and one that we truly believe in and want to deliver on not something we just want to ride on a bit of paper, and wave around in the wind if once a year. So So that's the second thing. And so there's a little bit of an art to creating a purpose statement. And and the third part then is to say, Well, what statements not enough, you've actually then got to help everyone in the business understand what it means for them. Brad, what are you giving them license to do? Or maybe license not to do? And how is it going to help you? So so that's the I guess, embedding purpose into business? And to answer the second part to come up with specific ideas and strategies. It's really about putting in very simple terms, it's, if you wrote down, even so you just write down what are the 10 biggest challenges I'm facing today in my business? And then you've created a second list to say, Well, what are the challenges I'm seeing around me in my community or my industry, you take those two lists, and you'd with a bit of working through it, you'd see that okay, maybe this one marries up with that one over here, I can see a connection between one or two. You're not going to use all of them, you're not going to solve all of them, but you will start to see a pattern and some opportunities will emerge. Yeah. And now I work across a lot of industries. So it's sometimes the you kind of sort of know where to look for in certain industries for these challenges, but in some times they they come out of unusual places. So that's, that's interesting.
Roy Barker 19:57
Yeah, and you know, when we When we look at solving it that way, it's, I guess it's a little bit more business related. But if somebody came to you wanted more, you know, to, I guess, veer a little bit out of their lane, what the business was to try to solve a, you know, help solve for social problems somehow interweave those is, does that become more complex? Or is have you found, it's easy to kind of weave those fabrics together.
Phil 20:29
So the challenges, you can't necessarily take a social problem that you want to solve and say, I'm going to do that in a profitable way that you might be able to find a way to do that. But it just may not work. Because that unless solving that problem is going to help reduce costs for your business support adds your bottom line, then it's, you know, we're not in this space. It doesn't mean you can't help that problem through your philanthropic or volunteering agenda or something else. You so it's a little bit confronting decided someone you can't go into this with preconceived ideas about what the solution is, yeah, we've got to find all the possible options on the table for you. And then we'll you know, we'll work through it and prioritize which ones are the best, right and which ones? Yeah.
Roy Barker 21:14
So how hard is it to? You know, like, for me, if we sat down and figured this out, it'd be pretty easy to implement that as, as the company gets larger and larger. What are some of the implementation challenges that you have seen in order to have my vision or my ideals kind of filtered down and I, you know, listening to you speak, I can only imagine that if we get our employees involved in this on the ground in on the ground floor, the good ideas probably trickle up to the, you know, not down but trickle up.
Phil 21:48
Yeah, that's right. They need to go both ways. And I think the big change for a lot of businesses is that you're moving away from a decision. If we think about giving and philanthropy and volunteering, it's, you know, who who signs off the cheque and says, we're going to give this much to a charity that is normally, you know, the the owner or the CEO, or the managing director of the business. There might be some input from staff, but it's viewed as something that's outside of their normal day to day activities. So what we're talking about here is, when we're conducting profit with purpose, it's actually bringing it into the core of our business, right, which means, you know, when I talked about when you talked about the propane idea, or when I talked about the lady helping divorces, and people through that process, it's going to impact everyone in the business. So it's not just about one person that it is about marketing, it's about sales, it's about operations. It's, it's about, you know, human resources, or it could be around around a whole range of things. So what you find is everyone is sort of involved in this, like they wouldn't be with any normal business case, or any plan that follow from a business case. Right. So I think that's that's the key piece of advice. You will be introducing this honor, I guess, in a business's usual way. So in some ways that makes it easier, because you just might be implementing something within your existing policies and procedures. It's just a slightly different thing you're doing.
Roy Barker 23:16
Yeah. Yeah, sometimes, you know, as I'm just like, thinking of things as waste, you know, what, if we think about a factory, and we have a waste product, it's like, sometimes, we've been so used to throwing it away, or paying to get it hauled off for years that maybe the, you know, involving the workforce to the point of having these conversations, somebody could, you know, have that good idea, like, Hey, we could either, you know, repurpose this this waste, or at least, you know, give it to somebody else that could use it to a profitable way, I guess, or reduce their costs, kind of like the kind of like the pig farmer.
Phil 23:58
Yeah, there's, there's a really good example to begin from the US which now I think I've got the company name right here, I think it was interface carpets or interface tiles. Forgive me if I've got the name slightly wrong, but it was headed up by a guy called Ken I think was Ray Anderson, who's now deceased. Unfortunately, however, he kept driving this idea of Well, for starters, he realized that why, why do you lay carpet in a hole roll, when you know someone spilled something on part of it, you just want to be able to replace a small bit. So he initially drove this idea towards carpet tiles, so you could just replace the tiles. But then he further had this idea that he could do that on a zero waste and zero emissions basis. And this was back in the 80s. Now, one of the secrets to his success, he eventually conquered that challenge. So on the one hand, he was able to drive his staff by setting this amazing challenge that they really were inspired by and wanted to help achieve. And on the other hand, he was able to commute Because this was a public company, right? He was able to communicate this in a way to the board and to the stock market that they understood this was a commercial imperative. And he was always connecting it with dollars and cents in the process. So he was really nicely able to speak to those two, I guess, groups of stakeholders, in a way they understood and came along for the ride. Right? That's powerful.
Roy Barker 25:24
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, well, we can solve problems for arc and, you know, for our consumer eventually, and then drive some to the bottom line. That is definitely a win win for everyone.
Phil 25:37
Yeah, and his so one of the benefits of that is he that the company became so advanced in their, in their industry that when others realized, or that's the way we that's the way the future, you know, took them a long time to catch up to so that company ends up with a good period of sustained competitive advantage there.
Roy Barker 25:55
Right. Yeah, you know, the good thing about I think reaching out and connecting with professionals, like yourself in this field is that, you know, like me, I wouldn't even have a clue where to start. But the good thing is, you know, with a little bit of direction, I'm sure that you know, the ideas can start flying. And, you know, eventually, like you said, you can kind of marry some marry some opportunities on both sides of that equation together to make it you know, where it's a home run.
Phil 26:25
Yeah, I'll tell you tell you where the real nice sweet spot is, because I do a lot of speaking engagements. And sometimes people will contract me to come in and run a bit of a hole of room workshop. And what I find is that it's the next session, and it only needs to be often 90 minutes, or two hours, maybe at most, when people are buying into the idea, they're still a little bit unsure where they go next round, how do I start unpacking this, but it often takes only about 90 minutes. And that's great in the virtual world we're in today, because we can easily do this. Yeah, just that 90 minutes can really, I guess, get them a long way down the path. And we all know about the 8020 rule, I can get 80% of the way they are in a very short space of time. And that's the most exciting part of the process, I find, and then people can come out of it, that sort of session with the next steps and knowing what to do from there.
Roy Barker 27:17
And I'm sure that some have to press harder than others, but I was gonna ask you about that success rate. So you think that 8020 rule applies also to, you know, people that would reach out to you and be able to come to you that, you know, probably the good 75 to 80%, you'll be able to find that that intersection where they can have purpose that does the bottom line?
Phil 27:42
That's right. Well, the great thing is I'm I sit outside their business, so I can't do it for them, it's really up to them to execute and implement. And so the other great thing is they know their business, I don't. So I'm a little I'm a little bit like a purpose guide or purpose coach who can help them navigate their way through this, but at the end of the day, they've got to do the work. Like you know, with that hand holding, it gives people the confidence that they know they're on the right track, and they're not wasting time. And if it hurts their bottom line, they know it's a good investment, and they're going to come out ahead out the other end. So yeah, look, I love it. But I don't pretend when I started consulting, you know, I left the corporate world and thought I'll be a consultant. I thought as a consultant had to solve everyone's problem immediately. But I soon figured, no, that's I can't do that. I'm really, you know, you're there to guide people towards help them find their solutions and help them put into practice. Exactly.
Roy Barker 28:37
Excuse me. Yeah, exactly. Well, Phil, I certainly do appreciate you taking time out of your day to you know, come on and talk to us about the you know, connecting profit with purpose. And before I let you go a couple things. Number one is, so what is a tool that you use in your daily life, that it could be in professional, your personal life, but something that you do could be a habit that adds a lot of value to your day?
Phil 29:06
Well, I'm going to fall back on my hobby here of trail running, okay, so I'm not going professional going personal. And I it's important, because every day exercise, although I do it at the crack of dawn, and I find it's just great, whether it's walking or running, you come back to the desk, and you feel fantastic for the rest of the day. Right. But there is an app that goes with that. And I use Strava which is a way of just recording how far you've gone and how fast right and look at it just helps in giving giving you some benchmarking and understanding where you're at and, and I there's actually communities that build around that. So you end up connecting with other people you know who are runners, and you can see what everyone's doing and it actually creates a really nice community buzz around that hobby.
Roy Barker 29:53
That's cool. Yeah, you know it. We talked about this quite a lot. This is even a getting out. For me taking a you know, 15 minute walk, it just clears my head so much. So, you know, getting that start of the day getting the after you've exercised that. There's nothing like it. It's a big To me it's the biggest pain especially if you've got to,
Phil 30:17
especially you'll, I think resonate with this, especially if you've got a crazy dog that keeps you awake at night because they sleep on your legs. Yeah, yeah,
Roy Barker 30:25
we did a discussion about that getting all tangled, it was kind of like this morning, I, you know that we're taping this on the weekend, I thought, I'm gonna sleep in this morning. But you know, one of these, one of these animals was about 530. This morning, they they got really restless. So I've had a long day already. But we couldn't make it with good Mikey without them. That's for sure.
30:48
So it's right.
Roy Barker 30:50
Also, tell us a little bit about connecting profit with the purpose. Is that available on Amazon? And we'll be sure to put all this in the show notes as well. But how can somebody get it.
Phil 31:01
So that's the book there, you can probably see behind me as well. So it's available on all the major online retailers. So you can buy it as an E book format, or order a hardcopy, and yet through Amazon and all the main players. So that's the best way to go about it. And what it does, apart from, I guess, makes the case for all this, the section three gives you a how to helps you step through the process that we talked about and helps you on your journey. So I'm not here to tell you this is a great idea. And then leave you alone, wonderful people through the process as much as possible. And then someone who got really hands on and do something in person, that's great. But I think we don't talk about this enough. It's something that's a little bit hard to crack and sometimes hard for people to get their head around. So I'm very held to person and I like to like to help people get on their way.
Roy Barker 31:49
Well, awesome. We'll pick up the book and read through it, get excited about it, and then give Phil a call. And so the other thing is tell us, you know who what is your client look like? What can you do to help them through this journey? And then again, how can they reach out and get a hold of you?
Phil 32:07
Yes, so clients hire me for two main reasons. Or maybe three, but two main one is they they're looking often, though, I guess small businesses that might have typically, you know, 10 to 100 staff. Or sometimes more will be looking to actually really embed their purpose, understand what it is and get all the people on board with the same thing. So they can then move forward and start discovering opportunities. There's a range of other businesses that are really just want to go straight into what's the strategy, what's the initiative, the new thing we can do, and we can tackle it that way. And there's actually a third type of business and this was one that came on quite a bit last year for me was the company that was doing a range of activities, but not really understanding they were having a huge positive social impact, but they actually didn't see it. They were doing so many things, but they saw their social impact as this little bit of giving. Now we're doing over on the side that actually they were buying millions of dollars of produce from organic farmers and so that there was more impact in that side of their business. And it was helping them understand, you know, a that that was the case that be okay, how could you potentially support that community of growers you're dealing with there to help them do their job better, that will help you get better qualities and yields of crops and so on. So they came very much from the social impact angle. And so finally, I also work with a lot of nonprofits and charities, because instead of going around and just asking for money from companies, they can often zero in on what's going to really be of benefit for the company. So becomes a true partnership conversation, not a just can we have some funding conversation. And that's, that's quite empowering as well.
Roy Barker 33:53
Yeah. And I imagine for them, you know, one thing you mentioned earlier, I think that's important is, you know, moving from that activity, thinking about the activities to thinking about outcomes. Really, you know, that's a that's a good idea for everybody to think about that. Yeah. All right, Phil. Well, thank you so much, again, for taking time out of your busy day. We certainly do appreciate it. And that's gonna do it for another episode of the business of business podcast. Of course, you can find us at Well, I'm sorry for I get all crazy enough on that. Did you give us your contact information, your website?
Phil 34:29
My website is philpreston.com.au definitely find me there. Okay. Yeah,
Roy Barker 34:34
good. Good. Yeah. Now I'll include that in the show notes as well, but just in case somebody wants to reach out and get a hold of you. So that's going to do it for another episode of the business of business podcast. We do appreciate you listening. Of course, you can find us at www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com we're on all the major social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and this will go up live on YouTube as well. The video And we're not on all the major podcast platforms so be sure and share if we're not on a platform that you use regularly please reach out I'd be glad to get decided. Until next time, take care of yourself and please take care of each other.
www.philpreston.com.au