Tim Jones joins Purposely Podcast to share his story as well as his passion for ‘business for Good’ and helping people to find their purpose.
Tim is founder of The Grow Good Guy, as New Zealand’s first qualified B Corp consultant and he has helped more than 50 companies from around the world successfully navigate the B Corp Impact Assessment, and is working with new businesses every month to take them through the process.
So how would you describe a B Corp?
‘Put simply it is a company that prioritises purpose, positive social and environmental impact along with making a profit. Companies certification as a B Corp (short for Certified B Corporation), which is the term used for any for-profit entity that is certified by the non-profit B Lab, is voluntarily meeting higher standards of transparency, accountability and performance.
What does that include?
‘So ideally, you want to be sourcing and purchasing locally and from independent suppliers, where possible. It also looks at your approach to diversity and inclusion as well as your community contribution. So are you volunteering within a community? Are you are you making any donations to charity? What’s your impact on the environment, essentially inputs and outputs. So depending on if you're a manufacturing company, you would have slightly different questions to say a service based company. Essentially, it's looking at your energy usage, your production, your carbon emissions. The last pillar or last section is your customer model which is basically what is it that you're making and who you're selling i.e. do you have things like guarantees and warranties in place, but also if you can demonstrate that you're making some positive contribution to your customer base or if you're serving an underserved population.’
Do companies always approach the certification in the right way?
‘Some of the bigger companies have this vision of the sending someone off to tick the boxes, either a sustainability manager or a brand manager or marketing manager, who will go and do the assessment in isolation. However, that’s not going to be enough and it's got to be with the owners or the directors of the business, it's got to be at the core of the purpose of the business’
Tim is full of energy and is a great communicator as you will hear. As well as guiding clients to gain their B Corp certification, he delivers consults trains and coaches individuals and organisations. His aim is to help them achieve meaningful goals in life and work, by tapping into the potential of their purpose fuelled performance.
We haven't met in person but have read a description of you that caught my attention, it said that you have the thinking ability of Russell Brand, the energy of Tony Robbins and the humour of Greg Davies - who is the real Tim Jones?
‘That's a great question. I think the version of me now is not who I've always been. I went to a strict private school in England where there wasn't really much realm for artistic creation. It went along the lines of yes sir, no sir. You were basically told what to do. I spent 10 years in a sales role and time in the British Army. I'm not a complete introvert and I would probably an ambivert, which is when you're comfortable with silence and your own energy, but equally, you don't mind being in an extravert position where you might have to talk or you might be surrounded by people.’
I would like to talk about purpose and identity, this is something you have really focused on?
‘I think it's massive and think this is one of the big contributors to the general modern mental health malaise, I think, it is at the core of it. Purpose is something that is not mentioned, when we talk about mental health crisis. This lack of meaning that a lot of us get through the work that we do. However, a big part of that purpose journey is identity, who are you? And there's a couple of good expressions on that one. This is a bit of a tongue twister and I can't remember who coined it but it's basically, ‘I am not who I think I am. I am not who I think you think I am. I am what you think, I think I am’.
‘You need to know who you are today and why you’re that person. To do that you need to go back and work out what has led you to be who you are today. Self-exploration is the journey that we all need to go on find our purpose. Who am I? Why am I who I am, and what has led me to be who I am today. Working out who you are and what has constructed you is massive. Most people don't want to do that because it's hard and you must go and fight some demons and you must go and challenge everything that you hold to be true, you need to go and challenge and not many people want to do that.’
So, there's, I think that's a big part of it, the other part of it of identity. So again, in front of me here, I have a big Welsh dragon flag, because, you know, I'm a Jones, let's face it, and, you know, as far as Welsh is you can get.’
What is your daily discipline? How do you get stuff done?
‘I love getting out for a walk in the morning, take the dog for a walk, listen to a podcast, that just gets my brain flowing and my body moving, some vitamin D gets a look at some nice views that are here in Christchurch. Depending on the schedule I'll drop my daughter at school. So, I typically don't book any meetings before 10am. That is when I try and hit my day. I am a strong believer that when you have a deep sense of purpose, it's easy to get stuff done and the risk is you just want to keep doing so much stuff that you stopped and you just kind of keep going. So, I find generally getting stuff done pretty good. I use high energy dance music on my little speaker next to me just to get that repetitive kind of rhythmic music going in the background. The challenge I have for me is there are so many things that I want to do. There are so many little projects that I want to do. It just comes down to prioritising what I that I can do today. That's where I'm still I'm still working on that one.’