Season 4, Episode 128 : Duncan Parker

Will Richardson 00:02
Duncan, welcome to the Green Element Podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. Duncan, you're from Ethical Goods? Can you tell us a bit about your business and who you are, please?

Duncan Parker 00:13
Thanks, Will, that's very kind. I'm Duncan, as you say, from Ethical Goods. So an introduction to me by education and most of my career, I was a humanitarian aid worker, working for large international NGOs around the world. But with a prime focus on long-term economic development and recovery. I started Ethical Goods 11 years ago, really as a response to what I could see happening in the third sector, which was more competition for finding money to do good with. And we started Ethical Goods really with the plant Plan A was to create a cause marketing agency to help businesses sell more and do good through aligning themselves with great charities that were doing good out in the world.

Will Richardson 01:07
Brilliant, and we've got someone in common that we both work with. And that's Matt from RedBox, are you? I guess I should have asked you this beforehand. But I was just thinking about it, it's always good to, would you be allowed to talk about what it is that you've done for those guys?

Duncan Parker 01:25
I'm pretty certain Matt wouldn't mind. They talk about it a lot. So I think that gives me permission.

Will Richardson 01:32
Brilliant. I'm now going to read in my face, going on no!, Have I just put my foot in it? But I haven't. So that's good.

Duncan Parker 01:39
I don't think so. No, no. It's a really great example of what we do, say... Yeah, so just a tiny bit of background to make the story makes sense, I suppose is that when we first started the business 11 years ago, what we were trying to do is help products that were for sale have some kind of ethical aspect to them so that our very first product was a bottle of water that when you bought it, there was a charitable donation mechanism that enabled clean water to be provided elsewhere in the world through a wonderful charity. So, on a bottle of water 10 pence would disappear and provide clean water elsewhere. That's what we started doing. But off the back of that, when we were when we started to do more of those programmes, charities would say to us, well, what can you tell us about the business. And we haven't really thought that through in terms of having done due diligence other than trying to convince businesses that this was the right thing to do. So the first few deals that we did, we spent an inordinate amount of time doing due diligence on the business, on its supply chain, on the directors, on its footprint, on its values, all of those things that make up a good business. And it took a few months and a few times of doing that, to really realise that actually, there was a huge amount of value in that report that we were producing for the business then as well as for the charity. So that's kind of the backdrop of how we got into this. And I was introduced to Matt through a mutual contact, we've done a piece of work for a large holiday company, and the marketing director of that holiday company had gone freelance and did some work for Matt at Redbox. And when they were working together and saying, you know, how do we differentiate ourselves in the marketplace, very kindly that this ex marketing director of the holiday company said you should speak to Duncan of Ethical Goods, he always has good ideas around this kind of thing. And so our conversation started, and through exploration, we realised that the biggest challenge they faced was they were starting to lose B2B tenders that they would have previously expected to win. And they were losing them because they weren't speaking, if I can use the CSR phrase, the Corporate Social Responsibility language well enough in their tenders. So they were losing out on social impact, on purpose, on green measurements, on product lines, on understanding their product lines and the supply chain within it. And so we help them just think through a) what their purpose was as an organisation and what they really believed in as individuals and then b) trying to get their, their ship in order. So much so that they decided to go down a B Corp journey to really differentiate themselves in their own marketplace.

Will Richardson 04:44
Brilliant, brilliant. And I think that absolutely describes exactly what it is that you guys do. And so going on from that. What would you say your overall purpose is?

Duncan Parker 04:59
So, I think the thing that binds me, my investors, my staff, and then my customers together is, and I'm always careful in how I say this because I don't want to sound like a raging capitalist because I'm not. But it's just a belief that business can be a huge force for good. And let me try and take that.

Will Richardson 05:21
I don't think that sounds capitalist, that's exactly how I feel. So don't, yeah, don't.

Duncan Parker 05:26
That's good. Well, if you like, my investors say that they dragged me over to the dark side because he fits. In my introduction, I explained that the first kind of 15 years of my career, I worked within NGOs, and had the huge privilege of being welcomed into communities around the world in the furthest flung places, the some of the poorest places, trying to help people have basic human necessities, either post-disaster or long term poverty issues, and we were trying to amend that. But what I found through doing that is whilst there's a huge privilege in being able to give those things in a philanthropic way, actually, often what you were doing was just coping with the consequences of poverty. And what I became very interested in was, how do you defeat poverty sustainably. And out of that came a real realisation that what most people who live in poverty, one is a chance to be self-sufficient. And so business opportunities, enterprise, entrepreneurialism, the chance to earn your own living, and have those dreams and aspirations of just basic things like being able to send your kids to school or clothe your children, or very fundamentally, at the minute in the news, feed your children is the most people, you know, 99% of people that I've met along the way wanted to do that. So I really started to believe in the power of business and enterprise to do good. As well as just not do no harm actually be a massive force for good in society.

Will Richardson 07:10
Brilliant, brilliant. And so what would you say your business superpower is?

Duncan Parker 07:17
Okay, so my instant reaction is my team, I've always believed in hiring people that are way better than me. And that's not particularly hard. But they, it feels a bit twee to say that. So let me take it a tiny bit further. It is my staff, but it's, it's the staffs' inherent passion and belief in what we do. So the kind of tests that we give people when we're hiring isn't, please tell us how brilliant you are. Please tell us your strengths and weaknesses, please show us your CV. We hire more for their belief in what we're doing for their aptitude. And I think that that's our superpower, that when you meet someone with an Ethical Good, you will know that you've met someone that really is passionate about what we're doing. And so we take that superpower a bit further in that we're really careful about what contracts we take on, we don't do things just to get paid just to make sure that we can meet the wage bill, we only do things that we really care about. And that's not to say, we've always done that in the 11 years, we're in the fortunate position now that we can do that. And, you know, it's not that we regret doing the ones that were less what we were interested in, they often did pay the bill and got us to where we are now. And there's a moment in your business cycle where you have to hustle, I think, when you're a startup, but now we take things that we really care about. So when people hire us, we become card-carrying email taging badge-wearing massive Ambassador fanboys and girls have your business or your charity. So so the engagement becomes hugely part of what we live in brief. So that sounds very tweet sounds very pious. But if I can't speak about my clients business for an hour without saying, then I think I'm probably not the person who should be employed by them.

Will Richardson 09:20
Okay, brilliant. Yeah, that sounds, that sounds great. And so, how do you engage your staff, suppliers, and customers with your mission and purpose?

Duncan Parker 09:31
That's good. So I think the way we do it is through relationships. So they're probably different, that is different in each of those categories of suppliers, staff and customers. So with staff, we don't hire anyone based on I suppose the usual please send me an application and we'll have one interview and we'll make a decision. Quite a lot of my team have come through other relationships. So we've known each other, or I know someone that knows them, and they come by referral. And then we get to spend time getting to know one another. We will do the normal compare and contrast with if there's a call for applications. But it very much comes down to relationships. And really, as I said before, understanding that they, they really dig what we're doing. So that so that's where staff come in. And then there's, you know, a strong orientation, and everybody gets involved in everything right at the beginning. So we don't just give people the kind of sideline jobs to do and let them prove themselves, they, we expose them quite quickly to everything we're doing. And I found that to be really useful. I don't know if you've experienced this, Will. But we've been hiring people straight out of uni, recently, initially as interns, and then and then taking them on board and the value they bring to our business in a strange world at the minute where we're not working physically together. So they're not learning what you would think would be the good things that someone with experience might pass on, what they're actually doing is staying true to their own education and training and belief system. And bringing this whole new way of thinking and new thought processes and new skills. Without kind of being indoctrinated into business, as usual, they suddenly just adopted this, you business for transformation idea that they've come with, from the university training go, I want to change the world, and they don't get, I suppose, tarnished by kind of someone like me, who's been around the block a few times, they just bring this huge enthusiasm, and they're still doing it, you know, 18 months later, two years later. So so I think that Sorry, that was a long-winded way of saying exposure and just letting people run riot on and bring, bring their skills to bear. With with suppliers. Again, it's about relationships, we want to work with people that have like-minded values and purpose. So we try and develop those relationships, understand them kick the tires a bit. I believe in the power of a cup of coffee, I believe in the power of going through a beer at the end of the day, and just building a friendship and being in the same space. And then that really rings true for our customers. So we don't have an office, we don't have I mean, we all work from our home offices. And we use a business club, a co-working space, I suppose where we pile in together, but 80% of the time, in normal times, not in COVID times. We work out of our customer's offices, and we spend time with them. And actually, we put that in our contract with them that, you know, if we're going to succeed, we need to be incorporated into the team, we need a desk space, we need to be there even if it's you know, just working not there for meetings just being in the culture and the atmosphere of our client. That's something we really believe in.

Will Richardson 13:07
That makes a lot of sense. And I think that's such a pertinent thing to do. I think it really does help that relationship, doesn't it? Because you're around then when they and it can be that you overhear something that's relatable and you just go oh, what's that? Do you mind? Sorry? I just overheard that. Do you mind if I just ask about this, please? And they go, oh, yeah. Did you know? Oh, wow. And it's something that you would not have known about? But absolutely massively need to know about. Yeah.

Duncan Parker 13:39
And I mean, water cooler moments, isn't it? That's what we're all missing out on at the minute. But in normal times, I think there's something really powerful about that. And just building. There's something inherently powerful about relationships about knowing people's names, sharing a cup of tea, you know, or making a cup of tea together or having lunch together, or just as you say, you know, who was Moses hearing stuff that helps you just build an understanding of the culture of an organisation? Because one of the things we really believe is that, you know, what, once you understand your purpose, and what your social environmental focus is, it permeates all levels of the organisation. It's not just the marketing stream. You know, it's everything it should be in every decision. It should be, how you sell yourself how you operate with each other internally, it should be about obviously, what products you're going to buy, what tools you're going to buy, how you're going to speak to your customers, which office space you're going to use all of those things that really matter within an organisation.

Will Richardson 14:47
And when it comes to running an ethical and sustainable business, what would you say has been your biggest struggle so far? Can you tell us a bit about how you've overcome it?

Duncan Parker 14:55
That's a great question, Will. Okay. There's, I just have a picture, I've got a picture, you can't see it cuz it's their, long-winded answer and so sorry again, it's a bit of a story. My mom's family comes from. The background to this story is the Bramley apple tree. Okay, so that's it's kind of a, somewhere along the line, our family were involved in the creation of the Bramley apple. And so apples and apple trees have always a picture in my mind. And we've, we've, we've got on there, which I can see. And an apple tree can't pretend to be an orange tree or lime tree or a magnolia tree. It's an apple tree. You could stick magnolias on it, you could stick oranges on it, but very quickly, they tarnish and it would look fake, and it would look rotten, and it wouldn't work. So, in order to run an ethical business, I'll come to the point now. It's either authentically who you are, or it's not. So you can't just invite someone like us in and say, yeah, we'll fix this for you. And we'll be your ethical advisors. And we'll pop in once a week and we'll help you write your CSR programme for your website, we'll help you discover your purpose. And yeah, send over that tender that you do. And we'll write the, you know, the fluffy ethical bit for you. If people see-through, your suppliers will see through it, your customers will see through it, your staff will definitely see through it, people won't live and breathe it and you won't look like you won't be the ethical company that you want to be. And my point is with the apple tree analogy, and just so you know, my, my investors do call me Captain analogy sometimes. So apologies for that. It's my dad's a preacher. So that might be where it comes from, I think I think that's, you know, probably picked it up along the way. You know, you have to be that apple tree, you have to you know, you have to live and breathe, it has to permeate everything, you have to really believe in it. As an organisation, let's go back to Matt and Redbox. The first time I met them, they weren't you know, they were just struggling. They wanted to be this more ethical organisation, they were a wonderful, beautiful set of human beings wanting to do good in the world through their business, they didn't want to be, you know, a scar on the planet, they wanted to help. They were already doing it. They were, you know, they're engaged with a charity that they all felt very passionately about. They were engaged in their local community, they had a range of products that were the ones they were most proud of that they kind of had the green element to it. They were planting trees for every meeting that they did, you know, none of that was stuff we brought it, they were doing all of that they just hadn't put it together in a way that really expressed who they were. And they were struggling to talk about it in an authentic and succinct way. So so that's where we held them. So, to answer your question, the biggest struggle is if you don't have stakeholders in your organisation, who authentically believe in what you're doing, and I've been really blessed that through serendipity, my initial and current investors never put me under that pressure to be anything other than what we were. We've never been in a position where we had to take suppliers or staff that didn't express who and what we were. And in the main 90% plus of our customers, we've had the privilege of selecting people that were and co selecting mutually accepting each other. So I think it comes from that you have to make sure your stakeholders support what you're doing. Otherwise, that's the struggle. That's where I see struggles is when there are other pressures, and I don't have those pressures. I'm very fortunate not to have those pressures.

Will Richardson 19:21
And if you could offer one piece of advice for our listeners, which could help them with their purpose, what would that be?

Duncan Parker 19:26
I think it's surrounding yourself with people that encouraged you. I've had, you know, we've taken commissions where we've had to work with the existing people that were there who might be more negative about what we're trying to achieve. Maybe old school. Been there too long or long in the tooth or just nonbelievers of the power of purpose, both socially and environmentally. And just focused on the bottom line, the financial bottom line. And, my biggest piece of advice is to surround you with people that say, more often than not, yes, you can. I deserve this such power in saying yes, I can always find people that will tell me you can't do it, you'll always find those people, they're really easy to find actually, incredibly easy to find. So surround yourself with good people with the right purpose in my that will say, Yes, you can. Because this huge power in Yes. Particularly in business, particularly in innovation, particularly in striving to be better, to be bigger, to be more impactful, to be the change that you want to see in your business or in your life, surround yourself with people who say, God, man, I believe in you.

Will Richardson 21:03
So, going on to your organisation and carbon footprint saying, Have you carbon footprinted your organisation? And have you all would you say it as a benefit?

Duncan Parker 21:16
Actually, we haven't. So I'm embarrassed to say I think partly because we, the nature of what we do is very much non-travel related. We do very little travel anyway. So it's never been one-way thing we've got, we really want to reduce the use of our cars or flights or whatever it may be. It's, we were centred in and around London. So public transport tends to be our mode of travel, most of our customers tend to be in around London. We, as I say, I think the only business equipment we have is our laptops, and phones. We work from home, we've always had a paperless environment. So we've never done it, but I think we probably still should. And your question. I saw your questions as a in preparation. I thought, That's embarrassing. We really ought to do that. Because we do, you know, we preach it. And we go out and point people to people like you that can help them do that. And we all say we took we learned from what Redbox we're doing and we joined in the plant a tree idea. So any meeting we have, and we've continued it even in the virtual world that we thought was the right thing to do. Even though you're not travelling to me and I'm not travelling to you we still plant a tree for every meeting we do. So actually, we should do it because I think it would be in the positive and regenerative rather than neutral or negative. So I think we probably ought to do that. So.

Will Richardson 22:55
It's funny. It's not it's actually not the reason why we ask it. But it's funny, I used to not want to ask that question, if I'm being completely honest, because I didn't want to put someone on the spot. Like what I've just done with you. We've gone up No, we haven't. And I really didn't want that to happen. And I would have felt mortified. But, I didn't this time. And I'm, I just think reflecting on why I didn't because obviously something has changed. And we were talking about this prior to the podcast about the monumental change that has happened and asked, coming up to 12 months now. Yeah. And I think that's I actually think that's it. I think that because I feel more comfortable with who we are. And this is gonna say an awful lot about me, actually. I because I've been doing this for coming up to 20 years, I was probably seen as a bit of a charlatan. When I first started doing it's all kind of wacky person, that's carbon footprinting organisations and I would get questions. I would be a bit embarrassed when you had dinner parties with people because they asked you what you did. And they'd be like, really? Okay, that's very worthwhile, isn't it? And then moving on. I know you would be put down and yeah, I and so I think that has probably always sat with me, and therefore I didn't ever want to make other people feel that way. But obviously, something has changed where I actually didn't feel guilty asking. So that's pretty interesting. I just, don't know, I think it's don't know. It's fine.

Duncan Parker 24:55
I'm not embarrassed. I'm slightly embarrassed, but not really bad. You know where we come from as, well as an individual where I come from, where we come from, as a business, it is probably an, you know, more from a social impact point of view. My expertise is not in kind of environmental sustainability measuring any of those things I, you know, we point people to people like you, when that's an issue for an organisation is not what we go in and often will point out, they might need to do it if we think that their footprint is challenging, or, particularly when that you know, they're being scored on it. Redbox is a really good example, you know, they went in a tender for large, well known University, you're part of the scoring system massively changed in the last few years, where you know, the social impact of your organisation, the environmental impact of your organisation used to be a couple of percent of the score, it's now a quarter of the score, you know, and that's brilliant, you know, the world is changing the world is waking up to a) the fact that it's a good thing to do. But b) it's the right thing to do. But most importantly, c) we're in dire straits, the world needs, heroes, it needs hero businesses, it needs hero individuals, you know, you need, it's so easy, you can just rattle off the challenges that the world is facing. You know, it's difficult to watch the news at the minute, particularly before bed, and then go to sleep really easily. You know, the world needs, both environmental and social heroes. And I think businesses because we don't have a better option from a sustainability point of view, a well-run business, a successful business, that seeks to also be significant, from a social-environmental point of view, is what the world needs. And, I'm hugely passionate about that. So so it comes, you know, from our point of view, it's probably the reason we haven't thought about it too much is that I don't think our footprint massive anyway. And we are always, I come from a social point of view, but the biggest threat to social justice, social impact currently around the world is the environment. So you know, we need to, we need to get our house in order as well.

Will Richardson 27:28
Brilliant. Brilliant. And can you tell us a bit about how, like where we can connect with you and where we can find out more?

Duncan Parker 27:34
Sure. So you know, very easily Google Ethical Good, you'll find us. We're currently doing quite well on our beam, top of the charts on that when you Google that but it's we you can find us there you can find everything that we do. We have a number of aspects to the business. One is the one we've been talking about helping businesses really differentiate themselves in the marketplace by finding their purpose and doing good, we offer a free consultation, where very quickly will give you a clear idea of your how you might score in different verticals around your business. From a social, ethical and, and environmental point of view. That's a free consultation, we like to do that because we think it helps us understand whether we want to work with you or not. And B helps you understand whether you want to work with us. Then if on that scoring and on our recommendations, you decide to engage us then our process is very clear after that, and it becomes very relational. It's about people. And we send in brilliant people to come and help you develop your, your business. The other aspects of our business are for charity leaders. So we'll come and help charities understand what corporates are looking for, and how they might engage with corporates. So there's a consultation process there. And then finally, we do engage in impact investing. So we help businesses get ready for investment. And that's another aspect of what we do. But we also help investors find great businesses that they might want to put their money into, both here in the UK, social and environmental impact businesses, but then also overseas, throughout the world we have through a network that we belong to have access to some really wonderful, impactful businesses that are really changing the world, both across both the social and environmental matrix. So come and find us. We'd love to speak to you.

Will Richardson 29:38
Brilliant. Brilliant. Thanks, Duncan, thank you very much for today. And it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the podcast.

Duncan Parker 29:44
Brilliant, thanks, Will. I really appreciate the invite.