Season 4, Episode 125 : Kevin Wilhelm

Will Richardson 00:04
Kevin, thank you so much for joining the Green Element Podcast today. You are Kevin Wilhelm from Sustainable Business and you are the CEO of that said business. And thank you so much for coming on.

Kevin Wilhelm 00:18
Thanks so much for having me.

Will Richardson 00:22
I'll tell you what, why don't we start off by helping our listeners understand who you are, and what Sustainable Business does.

Kevin Wilhelm 00:34
Sure, so my firm Sustainable Business Consulting, we've worked with about 195 companies across about 37 different industries, and mostly with global brands, but also with smaller regional and medium-sized companies, to help them realise the business value of better social environmental practices, and to find ways to not only find cost savings, through those actions, but really ways to enhance their brand to communicate to their employees and their stakeholders about their actions and to really kind of help push the needle towards the bigger kind of environmental and social challenges we have, but through the lens of business, as opposed to the government or the NGO sector. And one of the things that one of the reasons why I wrote the book that we're going to be talking about, well, you know, we're in a such a divisive time, it seems like especially in the United States, but you know, around the globe, you've got people kind of going into their own tribes, and their own, you know, silos, you know, not only through who they follow on social media, but even who they associate with as friends and want to hang out with the type of conversation that I had. And I really felt like, if we're going to solve the huge environmental, social public health challenges, we needed a kind of a guidebook and so that's what really, you know, got me into writing the book, how to talk to the other side. You know, it's about finding common ground in a time of Coronavirus, economic recession, and climate change. And I really felt like when the Coronavirus hit here in February of 2020, that I just I knew that all of the underlying divisiveness that was out there that this is you know, solving the public health crisis and the economic recession was gonna come was gonna get politicised. And people were gonna just fall into their camps and start shouting at one another. And I wanted to find a way to give people a guidebook a playbook for how to talk to people again, and but not just, you know, talk politely, but actually solve issues. And throughout the book, you know, we have eight chapters where we really get into using sustainability. And you know, many of the things that, you know, you talked about in the Green Element Podcast to find those win-win scenarios for say, Republicans and Democrats to cross the rural-urban divide to break down the barrier between business environmentalists to find ways that you can get people who are climate deniers and climate advocates in the same room to find solutions. And so that's really what the book is about was giving people not only the language and the tools, but showing them the hope and aspiration for kind of a better way through for either side of those arguments.

Will Richardson 03:32
Okay, yeah, that makes sense. It's funny, you mentioned climate deniers. I immediately thought the world is flat when you said that because it's actually really hard to find scientists that would agree that the climate isn't changing. But the world could be flat. I think. It is on my map book, anyway.

Kevin Wilhelm 03:59
It's kind of like assuming that England's gonna do okay, in the World Cup. It could happen.

Will Richardson 04:05
Brilliant, I love it! Yes. I'm not a big football fan, but I know that, yeah, that will probably annoy quite a lot of people, but it's true. It's so true. I watch and go, really? I don't know why you're so excited about this. I'm going to keep quiet. I'm actually going to piss off an awful lot of our listeners. Anyway. So, what I mean, what's your background? How come you ended up in this area?

Kevin Wilhelm 04:33
Well, it's interesting you know, I don't have what you would call a traditional kind of sustainable business background because I think people, your age and my age, I mean, this like, business didn't exist this like field. And so I was very much a you know, a traditional business person that you know, we do a lot of consulting work with organisations on ways to find you know, cost savings and financial improvement, competitive advantage or strategic advantage against some of the competitors. And a lot of the times that walk around an organisation, kind of the stuff I was, you know, taught as a young kid, by my parents or school or, you know, it would pop out at me and I'd be like, well, they're lights that are left on, there's ways that could be neat, you know, that can be avoided, hey, that's, that's somebody who's wasted time and energy. And once I started combining it with the dollar signs, I found that, um, you know, I just told him about money, that there was, you know, people would listen, if you said, Hey, I could save you money or making money, if there was no ideology to it, because you could help somebody within the organisation. And then when I moved out to Seattle, you know, I really was in a spot where, you know, I was, I wanted to, you know, to do the sustainability consulting, but didn't really feel like, you know, I kind of felt like, I was a pretender, because I hadn't really done it. And I went around town and talked to about 62 different other organisations and said, somebody needs to be the, you know, the adviser to businesses on how they can address climate change, and how they can actually make money by doing it. And everyone to a tee was, like, that's a great idea. Somebody needs to do that. And then I was like, darn it, I guess I got to start a firm and do it myself. And, so we did, and we've been at it for close to 15 years now. And have been, you know, really successful, working with organisations across the spectrum from people who think climate change is a hoax and, and even that, you know, the Coronavirus is a hoax, we still can make.

Will Richardson 06:39
Yeah, that's unbelievable, isn't it?

Kevin Wilhelm 06:42
I mean, it is. It's really hard to sit in that conversation and just, you know, devoid of reality. And one of the things that, again, one of the reasons for writing this book was, you know, I was curious to understand how people really thought, you know, on those sides, I mean, everybody on the kind of left and kind of in the green movement knows how we think, but hardly anybody knows how the other side thought. And so we ran a number of interviews and focus groups and surveys. And really, what it came down to, was that the people on the other side, when you when they stripped out the noise and the ideology, they're good people, you know, everyone's pretty much a good people that have the shared same aspirations, you know, you want a healthy family, you want a solid job, you want to be able to retire, you want your kids to get a good education, you know, and, and, you know, you want your sports teams to win, you know, and so, when you start at that level, you know, you have, you know, you have common ground, and you have that, that reasoning. And what I was trying to understand was how to how do people on either side of an issue, get to these extremes. And what I found is that, you know, just like, and I'll just use it a case here in the united states that the way that same Republican voters who voted for President Trump in 2020 are feeling devastated right now and hurt is exactly how democrats felt four years ago, they felt like their world had been absolutely destroyed when he was elected. And, you know, so realising that the feelings and the anxiety and the fear is the thing now why the fear is there is different. And so the book really, you know, on how to talk to their side really gives you the techniques for kind of peeling back the onion. And what I found was like a climate denier, or someone who, who is really against, you know, the Coronavirus restrictions, or says it's a hoax, when you pull them out of the screaming talking points, and you just start talking to them, and lower your voice. It's really about listening. And everyone's got a personal story as to why they fear. And when it comes down to it, I found that most people were saying that they say COVID-19 is a hoax, or that they were never going to wear a mask. What it really meant was they were worried about their business failing, or they were worried about something that happened to a friend or a family member because of a government restriction. And that's really what it was about, and you needed to sell out and spend time with climate change. You know, my most ardent climate denier clients, and I would say, there's any client and I'll just use a company, you know, you got people across the spectrum. But say the organisation wants to move forward, but maybe a CEO or CFO or somebody like that is a denier. When I start asking them and things about well, do you think there's a risk to your business from extreme weather? Do you think that, you know, you need to be embracing millennials and what they care about not only as customers but as employees, they'll say, Oh, yeah, I know, I've got to do this. But and then they tell you, they say well, if we admit to this al gore is gonna make a tonne of money and I just hate the guy or, you know, if I open this, it's just another can of worms and then I'm gonna have to do 10 other things and where's it gonna stop? And so you realise that once you kind of peel back A few layers. And I think one of the issues is that people aren't willing to listen, they want to tell everyone wants to kind of convince the other side and you can't convince the other side, you can't convince a Buddhist to become a Hindu or a Muslim to become Jewish, you know, they're just on their side. But what you can do is you can find common ground by listening. And usually what I tell people is, it's like, it's painful for the first two or three minutes while they scream and yell and tell you all the reasons that you know, your side is destroying the world. But then when you once they get that out, it's kind of like a child with a temper tantrum, you've got to let the temper tantrum burn out. And then you can have reason. And what we're all trying to do is we're all trying to reason with the person who's having the temper tantrum, and that doesn't work. We've learned that when you know, kids are at age four or five, and it's no different. It's just that both sides are having the temper tantrum right now.

Will Richardson 10:52
Yeah, it's, I was having a conversation with one of my best mates who is from and lives in Missouri. And quite a, you know, Trump, Trump Central, and I would say, he reckons most of his friends probably voted Trump. And he didn't. But he was saying to me, what was annoying was, he wasn't able to say anything. Because it before he even opened his mouth, he was being told, everything he said was rubbish. So it goes with exactly what you're saying. There's no listening. And I think that's a really important point that you're making, and you've made through that.

Kevin Wilhelm 11:35
And to your point, well, on that example. You know, and I find this even sometimes mean, you know, I find myself very much a kind of a centre, middle person, you know, I'm obviously, with a company like Sustainable Business Consulting, I aligned more way more on the progressive side, but my personality is very much more in that middle ground of, you know, finding, you know, solutions and being practical and, and try not to be too extreme. And I've been in conversations on the left and on the right, where I feel incredibly uncomfortable, because I know, I'm being attacked, and I feel like well, that's exactly where I need to be, and I need to sit with that uncomfortableness. But you're right. It's that people, if you were to say, you know, your friend were to say, well, I voted for Biden, he's, he knows he's going to be like, either ostracised or yelled at or trying to convince. And what he really needs is, you know, to not just put politics to the side and the ideology, decide and say, Okay, well, you're still my friend, and we'd like to drink beer. Let's talk about, you know, whether it's race issues in committee quality, health care, whatever it is, engage on the issues and engage on something that's not controversial to start. And that opens the conversation to bigger things. Like I always say, you know, you know, I may, I may show up at, you know, my kids soccer game or, you know, an event with, you know, people I don't know, I don't dive into really divisive issues, you don't start talking about abortion, or immigration or gun rights or something like that. You're like, Where are you from? You know, what do you like to do? What are your hobbies, you know, what you know, and so that the first part of the book, how to talk, the other side is really about what we call the four commonalities. And it's, you know, just like anything, when you have a conversation, you know, you start with, you know, where are you from, and everybody's from somewhere. So that's level setting, because whether where you're from, or I'm from, it's not better or worse, it's just different. And everyone can reminisce about growing up, and everybody has something that they like, when they grew up, you know, and you can talk about, you can talk about shared experiences, and travel, and hobbies and sports, you know, and by doing that, you build kind of the camaraderie to then have the conversation. But I think right now, everyone's so hyper, you know, anxious and fearful and angry on both sides, that they want to get to those issues right away. And I say, you can't do that. It's like anything. You know, I tell people, it's like, when you're trying to think back to your 20s, when you're trying to date somebody, you don't go up to them at a party, you're like, here's everything about me, and every reason why you should like, Man, I'm the right person, you know, first you gotta like, Listen, find out what they're interested in, see, if you have a match, and then you can get into the deeper things. You don't start that way. But we're all like, so busy and stressed out that we just kind of allowed that to happen.

Will Richardson 14:32
And have you found that with the research that you did for your book? Has it helped? Has it helped you? Is it helped you full stop? And has it helped your business as well?

Kevin Wilhelm 14:46
Yeah, it definitely has with both. And, you know, it's funny because I didn't write it for my business. I wrote it more, you know, and my, my co-author, Natalie Hoffman, you know, we wrote it kind of helps save society. You know, it was, it's kind of like, you know, we started writing this in February, we put it out in May, we would have never thought you would have the, you know, the racial, you know, issues that popped up in June, you never would have thought that government forced us when we invaded into our cities, you know, things that seemed crazy. We certainly thought that Coronavirus is going to be over in like four or five months, and we'll figure it out. And but we wrote it because we were like, there is such device of decision needs to be a path forward. And I think it's helped me understand where other people's anxieties are, and to be more empathetic. And from our business, I think what we've been able to do is teach other people, you know, how to be more empathetic, and in ways that for their businesses, so for our business, it enables us to go to our clients and say, well, you know, how to get to your current customers, but there's this whole other base of customers that aren't going to you. So let's use some of those seen listening strategies and find out how your products or your services can help those people, you know, meet their needs. And, and, you know, find the value in what you're doing. And so it has helped our business. You know, it certainly wasn't written with that purpose, but those same skill sets. And so what I've been trying to do is get it out there and teach it and, you know, tell people as much as possible, rather than just saying, buy this book, it's, hey, this book is a great resource, but here are a lot of strategies and techniques that can really help you.

Will Richardson 16:29
Okay, and talking, if we could start to explore your business and what your business does, and what kind of work, what kind of work you do. Sure, because sustainability is a broad, broad, broad church.

Kevin Wilhelm 16:47
Right. Yeah, yeah, we basically have to be able to talk about anything about everything. And then every industry, you know, we kind of have five key service areas, we help organisations do we call kind of a sustainability assessment. So kind of think about it from the triple bottom line, or look at their environmental, their social, and their kind of financial governance issues. And we can, that includes doing a greenhouse gas inventory or carbon footprint, but also kind of doing that social assessment, you know, what are you doing on diversity, equity inclusion, what are you doing, to take care of your employees and engage in your communities? And, you know, are your government governance practices aligned, you know, only for financial, are they also supporting these environmental and social initiatives that you say that you're trying to do. So we help organisations kind of first assess where they are. And then the really fun part is then developing the strategy and the vision for where they want to go developing their implementation plans for how they actually put it together with concrete steps, practical steps, and accountability. We help them then communicate it. So whether it's their own kind of sustainability or CSR reports or pages, or even to their external frameworks, a lot of people are getting a lot of organisations are getting pressure from investors and customers to fill out. You know, CDP ISS glri ecovadis, is, you know, MSCI all of these different, you know, alphabet soup, names of reporting frameworks that are coming to them. So if we start with, okay, you're eventually going to have to go and report to these, let's go back and assess where you are, so that we can get you on the scale, help you find ways to improve, but that align with your business value as well not just go green, because it's the right thing to do. But if you're going to, you know, embrace kind of that green element, what, in what ways would you do it first that is going to save you money or, you know, move the needle quickly. So that then you can, you know, build upon that?

Will Richardson 18:46
And what, because we are trying to explore and understand ways that we can help businesses, it's great to be able to talk to an expert in what it is that you do. And like, what sort of things do you have? And this is, I'm trying to word it in a way because if I'm thinking because we do something similar, I'm thinking of a way that what I wouldn't get annoyed with, if someone asked me a question. What sort of things do you do to advise? It's like, well, where do I start? But I guess, if we look at, I don't know that company that you were talking about, that this is these are these customers that you wouldn't necessarily have? What sort of not arguments but what sort of things would you advise them to do in order to change and move into that strategy?

Kevin Wilhelm 19:46
Well, a lot of it, you know, and I'm sure you know this Will, like a lot of organisations just want to, like, start doing stuff right now. And, you know, it's like, hey, we've got a directive from our board or we're really excited about this. Let's do a footprint, let's start doing some stuff to you know, improve diversity, equity inclusion and you know, start working on ways that we can address climate change. And you need to do that we tell him kind of First off, it's like anything, we all need to get on the scale on January 1, and go, God, I ate too much over the holidays. So let's get back. So the first thing you need to do is you need to do that assessment, you know, and kind of get your greenhouse gas inventory, you gotta have a baseline, so you know where you're coming from. So you know, okay, these are the areas that I really need to work on. But we also then want organisations to do that stakeholder engagement and materiality, exercise it, you know, we'll do where they, you know, so often organisations just like, there's such a rush to get something done, that they skipped the step of asking their customers, their employees, their suppliers, or vendors or investors, what do you care about? And so it's just like we talked about in the book, it's like, everyone's like, Well, let me tell you what we think is great, as opposed to going, What do you want, and what's most important to you, and by finding out what your stakeholders care about, and what's most material to your organisation, then you can align the activities, you know, better and smarter and more efficiently with, you know, that can deliver that, you know, business value to an organisation. You know, I'll give an example. For five years, we worked with a pretty large financial institution, that we did the greenhouse gas inventory, and then help them set their sustainability strategy and their CSR report, and we just kept saying, you need to do this materiality, assessment, and stakeholder engagement, you got to find out do customer what, what issues in the environment or on social justice, do they really care about? Because you're doing a bunch of stuff but do they care about what you're currently doing? Or they expect it? Or do they even know about it. And what we found was, you know, they, they didn't jump to that until five years down the line, and they probably spent, you know, half a million dollars on this kind of thing. And the reality was, when we did the survey, only one employee had ever read their CSR report, and it was on year five, none of them, none of their customers had read it. A lot of the things that they weren't doing on the environment, customers assumed they were doing on the environment because they had seen some pretty graphics on the page. And then a lot of the social stuff, they just, they just expected it as a norm. And so things that they were hyping as norms, they were like, well, to us, that's just kind of table stakes. So don't talk about that, but we really want to see is x y, z. And so we, you know, use this as a cautionary example, with our clients of saying, let's first find out, you know, what you need to do, and again, it gets to that point of, you know, everyone's so much of a rush. And I would say government organisations are the worst at this because, you know, politician, they want to, they want to do something now, and they don't, they don't want to spend a year listening to, you know, the, the poor neighbourhoods that they never talked to, because they just want to deliver something to them. And then they but to enable it to have that long term success, you have to do those listening sessions first. And because what I found what we in our organisations have found, by doing those listening sessions, first, what you find out is, these are going to be your barriers. And these will be your opportunities to overcome those barriers to success. By understanding those and building them in your strategy at the front end, then when you roll something out, you have a greater chance of success plus you've you've engaged your stakeholders, and you've created a whole bunch of allies who want to see you succeed and do that work. So by skipping that, that step, yes, you can go faster to something, but you're probably going to run into a wall in year two or three on something, and then have to restart as opposed to you know, taking that kind of longer-term view right at the front. We advise organisations like we do, here, a bunch of low hanging fruit, positive things you can do right away. Let's be thinking about the long term at the same time, because when an organisation embarks on this type of thing, they're not doing it for six months or a year, they know they need to commit to it for three 510 15 years. And so if you throw that to them and say, well, you're going to do this for 15 years, how many starts and stops? Do you want to do 432? Or just want to nip it in the bud on the beginning and they'll answer it? No, let's nip it in the bud. And that changes the discussion.

Will Richardson 24:20
That's such good advice. Brilliant, such good advice. And looking at your organisation, what sort of environmental management do you do? How do you you know, do carbon footprint your organisation for example?

Kevin Wilhelm 24:36
Oh, yeah. No, you mean our own company? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. We, we, we do a greenhouse gas inventory. Every year we do kind of our own environmental assessment using B Corp, which is kind of the most, you know, difficult, kind of environmental, social, and governance rating organisation. It's a really difficult thing and you know, I'm sure you've been in the same boat where even though we're in the field, you know, I knew I needed to do it, but it just was so time-consuming. That, you know, if we eventually, you know, hired an individual to help us do it internally, it took us, you know, like six months to do it. But once we've done it and committed to it, you know, now it's, it's, it's always been in our values. But now it's not only in our values and our policies. And so we've been carbon neutral since 2006, we've actually been carbon-negative since 2018. Meaning that we made sure that we're, you know, planning, you know, more about taking care of more offsets and what we're putting out into the environment. But more importantly, one of the things we started tracking was, you know, we're like, what can our firm do in Seattle, Washington on such a giant issue, like climate change, and we thought we can lead. And we can move the needle with companies that are 1000s of times larger than us. And so what we've been able to do is that in an average year, we're helping organisations remove about a million times or more of our own emissions that we're putting into the environment. And so, yes, we track our stuff. Yes, we're carbon neutral. Yes, we now have all renewable energy, of course, COVID. Now everyone's working from home, and our business travel has stopped, which were two of our bigger emissions. But from a social side, we had to really look at ourselves and say, even though we're, you know, 80% women in our office, and two of the three owners are women, and, you know, we're, you know, probably diversity wise, where, you know, split 5050, we just kind of felt, what else can we be doing? where, you know, from a social justice perspective, from an equity and inclusion perspective, what can we do with our purchasing policies, our hiring policies, our partners, our subcontractors, and those type of just taking that hard assessment of ourselves as forced us to be better on it. But it's also been a great experience, because we know that when we're advising clients, we know, they're gonna have to go through that exact same, like, really difficult process. And so by feeling the pain of what it is and how hard it is, then we don't just go in and loosey-goosey, you know, make recommendations we go in, and we tell them what it's really going to be like, and if they're really want to commit to it, you know, this is this is going to be the benefit, but there's going to be some pain to kind of work your way through to get there.

Will Richardson 27:25
foot in. That's really brilliant, great, great to hear what you're doing and how you're doing it. And so what if we were to ask you for one piece of advice for our listeners to take away today? What would you like them to do?

Kevin Wilhelm 27:45
I think it, you know, it would be what do you care about? Kind of, you know, as an individual or a business? What do you care about most? And to think about, like, what is the thing you care about most in the world, whether it's your kids saving the planet, you know, taking care of animals, whatever it might be? And then say, Where is the greatest point of leverage that I can come into? So if you're within an organisation, and you want to tackle climate change, where would be the biggest point of leverage within the organisation? Is that the CFO is that, you know, marketing directors at the CEO, who do I need to talk to, to make that change? And I think that, for so many people, it actually, you know, these issues seem like such big unsolvable intractable problems. But, you know, within an organisation, everyone's made of people, and the people that are making decisions are very much like you and I, and, you know, so if you want to make efforts towards diversity, equity inclusion, you not only need to talk to that, you know, diversity officer, but you need to talk to maybe somebody, you know, well, how can you get to somebody at the board or the executive level to you know, the point of leverage where they can really commit to it and put the resources behind it and bring the whole organisation around and figure out what is my you know, what is my inroad? Was that person care about? And how can I help them with what they care about most align with the issue I care about most and find that common ground and if you can learn to do that with a say within your organisation, you can do it on any problem.

Will Richardson 29:22
Brilliant, brilliant. Thank you. And I mean, where can we find more information about you and your organisation?

Kevin Wilhelm 29:30
Great, well, about our organisation, you can find it at www.sustainablebizconsulting.com. So sustainable biz consulting.com. I have a personal website because I'm contractually obligated for my publisher. So you can reach me at Kevin-wilhelm.com. And you can find the book how to talk to the other side on Amazon. You can either put in my name, Kevin Wilhelm, or just how to talk to the other side. And I will say that do Scroll down because there are some books in there that it's like how to talk the other side, which is about how to talk to people in the afterlife and craziness and all that kind of stuff and you'll see mine, you know, probably three or four down from the top.

Will Richardson 30:11
Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you for today and thanks for being on.

Kevin Wilhelm 30:15
Thanks so much for having me well, and to all your listeners in green element keeps signing up and review, review and get positive reviews to green element. This is a great podcast for them.

Will Richardson 30:24
Thank you. Thank you so much, Kevin.