How to Practice Meaningful Stakeholder Management

with Nathan Havey, Dr. Rhoda Deon, and Scott Peeples

Every business has to care about its shareholders, but today, there's more at stake than the value of a business share. The people with a stake in a company — its stakeholders — encompass more than just those who've invested money into it. That means your employees, customers, and suppliers too. Now is the time to step back and do some stakeholder management.*

In this episode, Nathan Havey, Dr. Rhoda Deon, and Scott Peeples join us to share their insights on stakeholder management and introduce the Stakeholder Score. They share what makes up the Stakeholder Score and how it acts as a starting point rather than a checklist for businesses.

Change doesn't need to be big right away. It just needs to start.

If you want to learn why stakeholder management is the path to better business, listen in on this conversation.

*kw: stakeholder management meta: Stakeholder management isn't just a buzzword. It's the route to better business and better profits too.

Here are three reasons why you should listen to this episode:

  1. Discover the 6 pillars of the Stakeholder Score.

  2. Understand how the Stakeholder Score can help improve your stakeholder management.

  3. Realize the importance of starting, no matter how small.

Resources

●     10 Things You Should Know About Stakeholder Capitalism

●      Beyond Zero

●      Kiss the Ground

●      Stakeholder Business

●      Connect with Nathan: LinkedIn I Twitter.

●      Connect with Rhoda: LinkedIn I Email (rhoda@rhodadeon.com)

●      Connect with Scott: LinkedIn I Twitter

●      Connect with Angela: Angela Wallace Impact Agency | Scale Conscious

About our Guests

Nathan Havey is the co-founder of Stakeholder Business and the Thrive Consulting Group. He is also the writer and filmmaker of Beyond Zero, a film that helps business leaders visualize a business beyond profits and help solve humanity’s most pressing problems. You can connect with Nathan on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Dr. Rhoda Deon is a spiritual life coach, musician, and learning consultant with a Ph.D. in educational mathematics. She is passionate about creating solutions that maximize efficiency and minimizes frustration. She is currently a freelancer and has worked on curriculum development and supporting small businesses. You can connect with her on LinkedIn and by email at rhoda@rhodadeon.com

Scott Peeples co-founded Citizen's Farmer, Kindred Lane, Peerfit, and the Contribution Community. He is passionate about supporting healthy growth among emerging social entrepreneurs. Connect with Scott on LinkedIn and Twitter.  

Episode Highlights

[02:02] Introducing our Guests

● Nathan Havey is the co-founder of Stakeholder Business, writer and director of Beyond Zero, and worked in conscious capitalism for around a decade.

● Dr. Rhoda is a spiritual life coach and wrote the companion curriculum of Beyond Zero.

● Scott co-founded the stakeholder score, The Citizen's Farmer, and Kindred Lane.

[04:36] What is the Stakeholder Score?

● The business world has frameworks for being a positive impact like Benefit Corporations, Conscious Capitalism, ESG, and CSR.

● However, Scott and his team sought a simpler framework. Instead of creating a measurable checklist, they made 6 intentions or areas of performance.

● The Stakeholder Score is an open-source framework for stakeholder management. To this day, they are still open to participation and feedback.

[07:35] What Makes Up the Stakeholder Score

[07:53] Scott: “Being good is always contextual..the main metaphor we [use] is vital signs, this [stakeholder score] is really…taking the pulse of the health of your stakeholder relationships.”

● The six aspects of the stakeholder score are collaborative relationships, helping people thrive, inclusion and equity, financial prosperity, environmental prosperity, and company purpose.

● Scott encourages companies to broaden their focus beyond shareholders and realize their impact on stakeholders.

● Certifications like BCorp are great initiatives. However, the more you try to make things explicit, you may miss certain nuances that vary based on the industry.

● The Stakeholder Score seeks to be the starting point for a company’s stakeholder management rather than the perfect assessment.

● A panel of judges does not evaluate the stakeholder awards. Instead, each company is judged by its stakeholders.

[14:22] Learn about Stakeholder Management

● There are several resources for stakeholder management, such as the film Beyond Zero and the podcast series 10 Things You Should Know about Stakeholder Capitalism.

● Beyond Zero also has 12 resources designed for undergraduate and graduate use in college classes.

● Being a force of good in the world doesn’t have to be non-profit. You can do good and still be profitable.

[16:03] Rhoda: “When we think about being conscious in business, we think about giving back, and then we immediately default to non-profit sorts of metaphors. The beautiful thing about conscious capitalism is it's saying, ‘No, you can do all the good things and be profitable.’”

[17:40] What Should Businesses Aim For?

● Scientists believe that there’s a tipping point where the earth will heat up by itself without human intervention. At that point, global warming will be practically irreversible.

● We must cut our current greenhouse gases by half before 2030, and become net zero by 2050 to prevent this tipping point.

● Cutting down emissions isn't just about setting a goal. It's also about understanding why our carbon emissions are the way they are in the first place.

● Equitable and inclusionary economies and value chains are essential to reach our goal.

[22:15] Rhoda: “We can't achieve one of these pillars without the other. If we get climate justice but we don't achieve economic dignity and prosperity for all, then we will be imbalanced. And so the way forward is all of it together, and that's a really powerful idea…the hope is greater than the fear.”

[22:47] Changing How We Think

● Changing the world for good doesn’t have to be rooted in a scarcity mindset.

● For example, regenerative farming's principles of reducing pesticides and herbicides cultivate the soil and improve the local ecosystem.

● Changing businesses isn't just about the system; it's also about the people.

● In the episode, Rhoda shares how she uses a card game to engage people about stakeholder management and capitalism without the discomfort of political discussion.

[24:29] Nathan: “We are trying to cultivate an ecosystem around our businesses that will make us more resilient, that will make us stronger, will help us to grow bigger than we've ever been able to grow, but in a healthy [and] sustainable [way].”

[26:46] What To Do Today

● You can take a self-assessment of your stakeholder score on the website.

● Remember that things are moving. The movement needs more people and businesses to support change.

● The most important is starting. Don’t think about making big changes immediately.

[28:59] Rhoda: “You don't have to make big changes in order to see big results…when we think about conscious business, conscious capitalism, stakeholder theory, stakeholder business, it can seem overwhelming and daunting to get started. But what's most important is getting started, because every small step that we take is incremental change towards [something] larger.”


Ange Wallace: Hey there. Welcome to Scale Conscious. I'm your host Ange Wallace. In my second podcast series, I'm inviting visionary leaders to give us guidance to create conscious companies and build a regenerative future for all. In this episode, I'm joined by Nathan Havey, Dr. Rhoda Deon, and Scott Peeples.

Nathan works with world-class companies as CEO of Stakeholder Business, and he's the writer and director of the award-winning documentary Beyond Zero, which tells the climate journey of Interface under the leadership of Ray Anderson.

Dr. Rhoda Deon is a spiritual life coach, musician and learning consultant with a PhD in educational mathematics. Last but certainly not least, Scott Peeples is co-founder of Kindred Lane, an agency focused on leadership, team building and impact, and Citizen Farmer, a nonprofit focused on regenerative agriculture.

They join me to share about the new and innovative Stakeholder Score and the Stakeholder Choice Awards. This new initiative is helping define stakeholder capitalism for an entire generation of businesses committed to a socially and environmentally sustainable economy. I'm excited to speak to them about why this matters now more than ever, and how these methods and education models are designed to engage companies against an urgent timeline.

Let's get started.

I am so excited to be joined today by three amazing people that I have the pleasure of knowing and working with in conscious capitalism. I'm joined by Nathan, Rhoda and Scott. They are going to dive in with me. They’re gonna talk about Stakeholder Score and Stakeholder Awards, 100 Months to Change, and all sorts of other amazing initiatives that they're working on to help businesses build a better world, to measure and celebrate their success around stakeholder capitalism.

So let's dive in. I'm gonna pass it over to Nathan to get us started on one minute round robin intros with four people on the microphone. It's gonna be a lot of sharing, but let's go with Nathan. Hi, Nathan.

Nathan Havey: Well thanks Ange and thanks very much for having all of us here. My name is Nathan Havey. I am the co-founder of Stakeholder Business and I've been working in the conscious capitalism and broader conscious business movement for about a decade now.

I've been a consultant for a long time. I wrote and ran the consultant certification program for Conscious Capitalism Inc. and I'm also a passionate storyteller and I've done a podcast series myself: “10 Things You Should Know About Stakeholder Capitalism” which is a fun one. If you haven't heard it, it's great.

I was also the writer and director of the award-winning film Beyond Zero. We'll get into more on all that a little bit later.

Ange: Yes, and I had the honor of attending the opening night for Beyond Zero here in Toronto, where I am based and that's how this all started — how you're here on the podcast — because you very wonderfully helped train me in one of the original cohorts for the Conscious Capitalism Consulting Training Program, which is a mouthful, but thank you.

So happy to have you, Nathan. Rhoda, do you wanna also share a brief intro?

Dr. Rhoda Deon: Sure I can go next. I am Dr. Rhoda Deon. I am a spiritual life coach, healer, musician, and learning consultant. I suffer from long-term exposure to mathematics. That's what my Ph.D. is in. I am the creator of the companion curriculum that goes with Beyond Zero, the film that Nathan produced and directed.

Ange: Amazing. Thank you, Rhoda. And Scott, do you wanna round us out?

Scott: Sure, yeah. Thank you for having us Ange. So my name's Scott Peeples. I am one of the co-founders of the Stakeholder Score. I started a company called Pure Fit back in 2010, which we ended up selling in two parts, both to Peloton and to Fit On and have just been kind of a chronic entrepreneur and starting different projects.

I've started the Citizen Farmer's Academy with Darren Joffe, Kindred Lane with Elaine Dinos. Just always looking for ways of fanning the flame of helping people be their best selves or helping build businesses that make the world a better place.

Ange: Well, it's amazing to have you all, let's get into it.

I know time is of the essence when there's so many storytellers amongst us. So talk to me a little bit about Stakeholder Score. Nathan, I don't know if you wanna get us started on that. What is this initiative really? What, where, why was it birthed? How did you bring it to the world, and why does it matter?

Nathan: For sure. Well, let me give a little bit of backstory on that and then Scott, I'll have you jump in with “where we are today”, if that's okay. A few years ago, I forget how many four maybe now. Scott and I and four or five other people got together in Denver, Colorado, and we were kind of struggling with this issue between benefit corporations and conscious capitalism, ESG and CSR and all of these different frameworks for what it is that that conscious business really is, you know?

Was there some way that we could kind of distill it all into one easy-to-understand framework that could really help company leaders to get their arms around all of it? Because we had recognized in stories like Interface, the company's an extremely high performer in terms of environment, but where are they on diversity, equity and inclusion?

They've barely begun. You've got other companies that are just standup, incredible companies on culture, but they're not doing anything for equity, financial equity and shrinking the gap between the obscenely rich and the very poor. So what would it take really for a company to be truly conscious?

Scott and I both believed that maybe it wasn't a list of 200 things like the Benefit Corporation assessment. Maybe it could be even simpler than the sustainable development goals. It's 17 different categories there with hundreds of subpoints between them all together.

We met with these people and we debated for two days. What was truly essential? What really do we need companies to do if they are going to become the force for good? That, I think, we hope they can be. What we came up with is just six items. They're not objectively measurable boxes to tick.

They're more intentions. They are areas of performance that we think create an expanded scorecard for business success in the 21st century. We have since subjected these six areas to the criticism and feedback and input of scores. More people from all around the conscious business movement and to date they have held.

We hold this lightly. It is an open sourced framework. We are eager for more participation and more feedback and more ideas. But that is where the Stakeholder Score comes from. Scott, let me hand it to you to say what those six things are and where the Stakeholder Score is today.

Scott: The six areas, one of the metaphors we really like to use to kind of explain this. Nathan mentioned this isn't trying to be universal explicit, objective assessment that's going to grade and evaluate every single part of what it means to be a good company, because frankly, that's impossible — being good is always contextual.

But the main metaphor we use is “vital signs”. This is really about taking the pulse of the health of your stakeholder relationships. The six areas that can help us do that are: evaluating collaborative relationships, helping people thrive, inclusion and equity, financial prosperity, environmental prosperity, and company purpose.

Just broadly speaking, looking at these different values that get you a sense of: Are you really taking care of this stakeholder? How well are you reflecting the broader context of who you impact as a company and who could impact you as a company? It's all about broadening our focus from just this narrow shareholder obsession to realizing that there's a lot more parties who could be helped by what your business does and who also could help you.

Ange: I love this overview. Thank you both. I know in my experience working especially in startups and early growth companies that look to scale — Scott, I think you have sort of a similar entrepreneurial background there.

The inherent dynamic tension and the challenges of measuring, mitigating, or pivoting and then celebrating progress, the delta that's created across many of the approaches that exist today. Nathan, you named out Benefit Corporation, SDGs. What have been some of the inherent challenges for businesses from measuring this progress and communicating it through that the Stakeholder Awards really help solve? Whoever wants to jump in?

Scott: There's so many great initiatives in this space and the B Corps. The B certification is phenomenal. I love that it exists. However, it's also a pretty big ordeal to go through.

Ange: That's the word — ordeal.

Scott: Right

Ange: It's expensive, it's hard

Scott: It's expensive, it's hard. Inevitably the more specific you get on things, the more you're going to exclude edge cases and you're going to miss nuances and subtlety that maybe vary by industry, maybe vary by size, location. There's just so many pieces that the more you try to make it explicit and universally, the more you're gonna lose the effectiveness.

We've wrestled with that, frankly, with the Stakeholder Score. Because we've debated at times, do we need to make different versions of the assessment for different stakeholders? Do we need to have different versions by industry? And we've kept coming back to that vital signs metaphor to say, “no, this is about giving people a starting point” kind of a common sense.

We put our heads together and say, all right, these are the things, this is where we know we need to be. This assessment isn't gonna be perfect, but it's gonna be the start of something deeper. A lot of times what we're looking for to come out from doing an assessment with a company is just better questions.

What questions can they go then and answer, through other assessments, through focus groups, through other surveys. We just want to get alignment with more companies and more leaders on what really matters, giving us a simple way of starting to do that work together.

Nathan: I think just to add a couple things on that Ange. I will echo what Scott said about the value of the B Lab assessment and the Benefit Corporation assessment.

It's great and there are many companies that do it from a mentality that is still very old world business thinking where it's boxes to tick. Yes, it can be an ordeal. But even because you've been certified as a Benefit Corporation doesn't necessarily mean that you are a conscious business.

There's a hedge fund that specializes in investing in Benefit Corporations, and they're starting to see that doesn't necessarily mean you have a world class higher purpose

Ange: Right.

Nathan: It doesn't necessarily mean that you're performing on the areas of the Stakeholder Score.

It's a great thing for people to do, but it's not the be all, end all — nor is the Stakeholder Score, by the way.

Ange: Exactly.

Nathan: But then you have other takes like conscious capitalism where they're very lofty in their rhetoric and they're very short in their advice on implementation. We have a bit of a failing where the Stakeholder Score has some value to offer in the conscious capitalism world where we're really pointing towards these objective areas of performance to ask: “If you are conscious and you're not performing in one of these areas, what's going on there?”

It really does point companies towards this holistic definition of performance that we think is really effective. Then where this comes to the awards, the awards are very much about, it's not a third party panel of judges that is going to be evaluating you on this or verifying. Your own stakeholders are the ones that give you the ratings.

So that's the way the Stakeholder Score survey is done. It’s actually a survey of a company's own stakeholders because we believe they really are the ones that are the authority at the end of the day. The awards are given by a company's own stakeholders based on their aggregate scores.

The focus of the awards is not to aggrandize or to say they're best in the world. No, it's actually to help us find these best practices to help us find the great stories that can inspire the rest of the business world. To follow the lead of the true innovators that are out there. That's what the awards are for.

Ange: Absolutely. I love so much of what you said. Having worked with many brands and businesses that are doing great work, but they haven't met the metrics of an external assessment like B Lab. But they're doing so many great things that are worthy of review and sharing and a wider storytelling exercise that the awards would give them an opportunity to.

The other thing is, who better to ask to comment on the subjectiveness of some of these metrics in a business, whether they're making the world a better place for all their people that work for them, than the people who experience it themselves, right? It makes so much sense to me to crack open a space where stakeholders have a say in the story of the best businesses in the world. I love it so much.

I wanna move into the education and engagement around these topics. Rhoda, I'm especially curious to hear from you about, what approach you're taking to deliver meaningful experiences around stakeholder management, in and around Stakeholder Score. We're gonna probably talk about 100 Months to Change, but what are some of the methods that you're taking to really embed this in businesses that wanna tackle it?

Rhoda: Thanks for asking, Ange.

Ange: You're ever so welcome

Rhoda: In the world of education, we are doing a handful of things. There are some media resources, the film Beyond Zero, that tells a story of Interface that is one resource that's consumable, as well as the 10 Things You Should Know About Stakeholder Capitalism that Nathan mentioned in his introduction.

The other things that are going on in the world of education are with the film Beyond Zero. I'm the creator of the companion curriculum that goes with that film. Those are a set of 12 resources that are designed for undergraduate and graduate use in the college classroom.

It is a resource that a professor can go to. They can show the film in their class and then they can pick something out and say, “Okay, we're gonna do this activity to reflect more on the story of Interface and dig deeper into what this looks like as a business practice. How can you do that going forward?”

The beauty of this is that by starting in the college classroom, we're changing the people who are trained up in doing business by offering them a different possibility and a new way to think about doing business.

Oftentimes when we think about being conscious in business, we think about giving back, and then we immediately default to non-profit, sorts of metaphors.The beautiful thing about conscious capitalism is it's saying no, you can do all the good things and be profitable.

They don't have to be separate from each other. Including that in business curriculum is a way to start shaping that narrative for our future business leaders.

Ange: Absolutely. And Rhoda, you've literally just described my early career, went down to the, to the D. Because I wish I had this educational intervention when I was at university, getting my undergrad, first generation university graduate.

My parents were just happy I was there. They didn't care what I was studying, but because I had this deep desire to make a difference, I fell into the charitable world. Which lots of upsides and benefits to working in the not-for-profit space. As Scott has just mentioned with his Citizen Farmer initiative.

There's a lot of beautiful things there. But I had this misguided perception that business was bad. I didn't wanna go into the corporate space. I didn't wanna go into the entrepreneurial space because I thought if I go there, I won't get to make a difference and I'll be compromising all my values.

Imagine the joy of discovering conscious capitalism, that there is another way, there is another path. Being able to pivot in my own professional life, to believe that better business is possible. Not only possible, but necessary. We're not gonna get to the world we need without all of these companies joining us on the journey and leading the charge.

So on that note, what is the vision, y'all? What is the big picture we're striving towards? I know there's urgency. We're working towards 2030. Why does this need to happen and happen quick and soon and deep and wide in the business world? If we're gonna get to the future that we need, who wants to kick us off?

Nathan: Well, maybe I can just share a couple of the things that I learned while working on Beyond Zero to frame this up a little bit. Not to spend too much time on this, but the the climate science is increasingly clear that if we don't get to about one half of current greenhouse gas emissions, if we don't cut them in half by 2030.

We may find ourselves in a place where we won't be able to make much progress beyond that. At some point scientists believe that there's a tipping point where the earth will begin to just heat itself without our help. What we really need to do is, is not hit that.

This decade is the decade that we have got to make sufficient progress to be able to complete the work by 2050 of getting back to a sustainable level of carbon inters atmosphere. That's what the Paris Accord is all about.

Most companies that do have a net zero pledge, it goes out to 2050 and that's not good enough without a milestone by the end of this decade to help to get the whole world to a 50% reduction.

That's what is really critical. But there's a dynamic here that's really important that Paul Hawken — unfortunately it's on the cutting room floor, though. I hope that it gets revived in a future curriculum asset that Rhoda and I will create for Beyond Zero — but he made the point that, if a big part of what we need to do is cutting emissions, certainly. But we also have to make sure that we are able to get in line with the natural carbon sinks that the Earth has.

We cycle carbon back into the world. Nature does this just on its own gigatons a year. Halting deforestation is one of the big things that we can do to help to buy more time. But if you look at what's driving deforestation, we need to get down to the level of the individual farmer that's living on the edge of the Amazon.

And have to understand why is it that they are choosing to cut down more trees. The choice that many of them are facing is cut down an acre of trees so that they can put food on their table next week and the week after that. If we faced that same choice, I think all of us would make the choice to cut down the trees.

Ange: That's right.

Nathan: The reason that's the choice that they face is because of the way that international commodity pricing systems work, that are largely vestiges of colonialism that are designed to funnel profits out of areas like that and up to the titans of industry that are at the top of those value chains.

We have to pay attention, not just to the ecological impacts of this stuff, but also the socioeconomic impacts of these models. In this way, equitable and inclusionary economies and value chains are an absolute critical piece of the climate puzzle.

You can't actually get where we need to get by looking at climate alone. It actually is all part of the same hole. That's sort of where the wisdom of the Stakeholder Score can really be seen is that all of these things are actually part of a larger system. We have to do it all at the same time because doing any one of the things will not work because it's affected by all the others.

I hope that that was somewhat clear.

Ange: Yes, it was. You were singing my song. I was like, yes.

Nathan: Perfect. Major progress on all of those fronts this decade. It's not like it's a doomsday clock. I want people to really understand that there's so much opportunity for businesses to be what they can be for all of us as professionals to discover and use our deepest, most powerful gifts, the reasons we're here on the earth right now.

Right? There's nothing to be scared of here except that we have to blossom. We have to become what we were supposed to be. If we do that, then there's plenty of time, and we will make the progress that we need to make.

Ange: Yes, I love this idea that we can't achieve — it has to be in balance — we can't achieve one of these pillars without the other.

If we get climate justice but we don't achieve economic dignity and prosperity for all, then we will be imbalanced. The way forward is all of it together, and that's a really powerful idea.

What I love most about that is how in that idea, the hope is greater than the fear, the purpose is greater than the despair. That's the driving energy for sure.

Scott: Absolutely. The uniting element for all of this is as people, this is about mindset. This is about shifting the way we operate as humanity.

I've been looking a lot at the comparison between conventional farming and regenerative farming. I think it's a really nice metaphor again for what we're talking about here. If you look at a film like Kiss the Ground or something where you see the history of where conventional farming is extracting and overusing the land until you had this dust bowl in the Great Plains.

It feels like something is happening similar to that, with just our humanity. We've been turned into a dust bowl through this process of extraction. What we're gonna get back to is this process of enriching the soil.

A lot of the work I'm doing with Citizen Farmer with Kindred Lane, even with a Stakeholder Score, is really centered around getting human beings out of that scarcity mindset, out of that fear state. To where you can operate and see these possibilities beyond that fight or flight response.

Part of what the Stakeholder Score thrives on is just looking at the ecosystem. It's funny, with regenerative farming, one of the principles is that the way you get to cut back on pesticides and get to cut back on herbicides and overwatering, is actually by cultivating the biology of the soil itself.

The ecosystem that lives underneath the soil is what makes plants resistant, is what gives sort of the opportunity for our crops to really thrive and our forest to really thrive, frankly.

There's a very similar concept with the Stakeholder Score. We are trying to cultivate an ecosystem around our businesses that will make us more resilient, that will make us stronger, will help us to grow bigger than we've ever been able to grow, but in a healthy, sustainable way.

But I think keeping that focus on the people behind these systems is really gonna be key. Cause we can't just change the systems. We've gotta work on the hearts that are running the systems.

Ange: What else would you like people to know about Stakeholder Scores, Stakeholder Awards, 100 Months To Change, or any of your other initiatives?

Rhoda: I wanted to share about the game that Jeremy Deru and I are co-designing. It's a different type of educational approach because that is a game, it's a card game that uses levity and prompts to help people have humorous discussions about their business practices in their organizational culture.

It's a way for people to engage with the theories and ideas of stakeholder capitalism about their own company, but in a way that the pressure and the politics are not at the forefront of the conversation.

Nathan: And Rhoda, how can people get that game?

Rhoda: So that game they would need to reach out to Jeremy or I. My email is rhoda@rhodadeon.com.

The other way to do that is to be a part of 100 Minutes to Change, which is a global coalition of people who are trying to do what they can to make the world a world that works for everyone by 2030. Participating in that coalition would definitely have you in the process for when the game actually gets released and would be available to the public.

Ange: I love gamification of these ideas. Because when you look at some of the barriers to change, just even engaging emotionally and intellectually sometimes prevents people from getting started. Helping crack that open and give us all a chance to do that together in a safe space with some guidelines. I just love that so much.

Everyone go and sign up, email, Rhoda, get an influx of emails. Get ready for this game. What else can you share about Stakeholder Score awards or other initiatives before we close out our podcast?

Scott: If anybody's interested in learning more about the Stakeholder Score, there's actually a self-assessment on the website.

You can go and take the actual assessment yourself from the perspective a of a single stakeholder. That'll be a chance to see all the questions, to see how it flows through the six areas. It's a great way to get your feet with how it works.

Nathan: The thing I have all seen and learned over the past few years is that the transformation we need is both well underwent.

Ange: That's right. That's right.

Nathan: It is happening out there. Right. It's not a foregone conclusion that it's gonna get where it needs to get by the end of the decade yet. It’s really is something where it's an all hands on deck moment for people to come and do their part.

As I said before, what their part looks like is unique to them. It's probably the fullest expression of what they would like to be doing in their career.

Sometimes it takes some courage to step out of something that isn't quite the right fit into the unknown of what could be better. But that's what all of us need to do now and I just wanna observe that today as we're recording this, there are 2,500 days left in the decade.

Ange: Wow.

Nathan: That is both plenty of time and it's just enough.

Ange: All right.

Nathan: As people hearing this, I hope that if they're feeling that call to adventure, then maybe there's something more that's out there for them. What there is for them to do is to heed that call.

Ange: Absolutely. I love that. On that note, I always hold one last space. One last moment for a final wisdom. Rhoda, I deeply admire your background and all of your practices that I wanted to keep this last space open for you.

If you could leave everyone who hears this podcast episode with one final truth as they count down the 2,500 days to 2030, what would you wanna leave us with?

Rhoda: I would wanna leave people with the wisdom that, you don't have to make big changes in order to see big results. When we think about conscious business, conscious capitalism, stakeholder theory, stakeholder business, it can seem overwhelming and daunting to get started.

What's most important is getting started, because every small step that we take is incremental change towards a larger outcome. Just get started. Get started because it's gonna have big results. It's started.

Ange: You can start small and contribute to the large change that's gonna happen in aggregate. Together we go together. I love that.

Rhoda: Yes. And starting small is contributing to the large change. Like if that's right, if 7 billion people. Do a small thing that's 7 billion small things.That's no small amount, Which is huge.

Ange: Absolutely huge. I love that. That's a powerful note to end on. So in closing, I just wanna deeply thank you Nathan, Rhoda, Scott, for taking the time for joining us as storytellers, agents of change. You're doing the work creating methods and approaches. For so many people to start doing the work and getting us where we need to go. I'm so excited you were able to share these resources and this opportunity on the podcast.

I can't wait to share it out. I'm really excited to see the impact this has over the next 2,500 days. There it is. Thank you all.

Scott: Thank you Ange.

Nathan: Thanks for having us, Ange. Thank you for all the work you're doing too.

Ange: Yeah. This is what it takes. It's sharing, caring, and actually doing it, getting into it, getting started. So thank you so much.

Thanks for listening to Scale Conscious. I'm your host, Ange. This show is produced by Lead Podcasting. Special thanks to the Angela Wallace Impact Agency team. Discover more about our work with CPG startups@scaleconscious.com. And if you like what you heard, be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player.

 

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Leadership Values for a Better Tomorrow

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Breaking Down the Barriers for Every Businesswoman