Hello. Hello, hello.
Chris Simmance
Everybody. How you doing, Tom? How you doing, Dave?
Good. Yeah, really good. Thanks, Chris. Nice to be here.
Chris Simmance
I can see you’ve both done your hair and Dave, you’ve you’ve definitely put a little bit of a shine on today, Tom. You’re looking looking as as as, as as good as ever with your your moose in there. How’s things going, guys? Are you? You ready to rock’n’roll? Talk about sustainability and all sorts of things.
Dave Betts
Well I am. Yeah, I think I think.
Chris Simmance
I think I think Tom’s Tom’s frozen in time. He’s he’s, he’s he’s put himself in a in a in a in a freeze there. We’ll we’ll carry on without him and see what happens. Dave, how’s things? Down in sunny Cape Town today. Is it sunny?
Dave Betts
It is today, yeah, this is my first winter in Cape Town and they. Told me that you. Know it’s bad in Cape Town, but coming from England, our banking. Here, right little right.
Chris Simmance
Exactly. Well, I mean, exactly, exactly I think.
Dave Betts
Yeah, it’s, it’s. Bad, Chris. It’s bad. Yeah, I mean. Horizontal rain bad, you know, and it’s so today it’s glorious. So thank the Lord for that, you know.
Chris Simmance
It’s, I mean, at least you. I mean, you’ve got the you’ve at least you got some real natural beauty over there. I’ve been I’ve been following the the life of bets. Your your son and daughter-in-law on on TikTok recently. Quite a lot of bloody, lovely sights that they’ve been enjoying over there as well, which is pretty wonderful.
Dave Betts
Nice, nice plug, Chris. Thanks for that. Well, you know.
Chris Simmance
It’s. What’s that? At life of bets. Or something or other on on on.
Dave Betts
It is, yeah, Instagram Instagramming thing, yeah.
Chris Simmance
And everything, if you ever, ever as an agency owner dream. Disappearing off in the world and getting a camper van and and and and enjoying life. Well then you know there is a a really a really good resource to watch all of that stuff and that certainly makes me want to do it. Whenever I’ve had a long day in the office.
Dave Betts
Exactly. And then I get the phone call, which is the behind camera view. Of this whole thing. So. I’ll do it. I’ll do it. You. Know all, all tell. Story one day when they’re when. They’ve stopped doing that, I think. But no, it’s great they, they. They make me jealous they have. To like get all these photos of the like.
Chris Simmance
There we go. We’ve got Tom back. Everyone. We missed you, Tom.
Dave Betts
I mean, yes. I I had a.
Tom Wilford
Yeah, my Internet just grasped at a.
Dave Betts
Panic there for a minute. Well. I’m gonna have to answer all the.
Tom Wilford
Very convenient time, so apologies about that.
Chris Simmance
It happens. It happens. You’re in the you’re in beautiful Portugal, which is obviously the right place to be when it comes to comes to the weather. We were just. Chatting rubbish about the weather for a moment while. We were waiting for you. What? What? What made? What made you move? Down to to Portugal, Tom was it. That nomad visa.
Tom Wilford
Yeah, it’s not the Internet for. Sure, but no, it’s there it. It’s the. Yeah. No, it it’s. A nice community of people. And yeah, the nomad visa is very popular. So yeah, lots of people with businesses doing exciting things, particularly instability. And yeah, it’s a. It’s a lovely country as well, but I I still come back to England when I can.
Chris Simmance
Nice. So we’re here to talk about making and building an ethical and sustainable agency, and I can’t think of two. The people, first of all, Tom, give yourself a little intro around what you and future proof do, but Dave beyond being an agency advisor for the OG Centre and in your own private practise, you you’ve got a a very long history. Should we say in a from a positive perspective of actually doing this stuff. And making and really affecting change so. Tom, do you wanna roll off with a little intro of who you guys are? And what you guys do?
Tom Wilford
Sure. So yeah, firstly, thanks for having us. So, yeah, I’m Tom. I basically I run a a company called Future proof and what we do is we help businesses of all sizes with sustainability. So being able to measure what you do from carbon. To your people. Through to putting in place new things that. Make you a better citizen. To the planet. So be it. Reducing your emissions or achieving specific. So it’s a bit like accountancy software, but it’s for sustainability. So we we offer that to all types of businesses.
Chris Simmance
And and one of the things that you do that that we partner with you in particular is the the B coping process because it’s, I mean I started trying to look at it, look at it yonks ago and yeah, my head exploded and I stopped and then happened upon happened upon happened upon you guys. Dave, tell us all about yourself. This is. I think your second or third grabber now. With me. So, anyone, anyone who hasn’t? Yet paid before. This is your this is. Your chance.
Dave Betts
Hello again. And why didn’t you? Watch the other ones, that’s. The question. So my name’s Dave. I’m good friends. With Chris. So yeah, what does it start? I started a. Sustainability company in 20. Then called Energy Drive based here in South Africa where we actively put energy saving equipment into large and steel and mining companies throughout the world and we grew it into a. Into a global. Business dual. I’ll use my brag sheet to date we’ve saved. 1.21 billion litres of water, 920 million kilogrammes of CO2 saved 870. 4 gigawatts of. Power this year. Which? Is equivalent of taking 21,000 homes off the grid every single day, so those. That’s my brag. From the work with Energy Drive, I then retired.
Tom Wilford
That’s not a lot.
Chris Simmance
Isn’t you think nothing to be proud? Of their day, I switched the light to failure.
Dave Betts
That thing at all? I know well. Well done. You then started just. Started a company. Called the climate change, which focus on helping companies. At least ask the right questions about how they’re gonna achieve their big targets. The biggest thing in my experience is people set these huge targets. Usually to please their shareholders or to to greenwash some document. But the actual implementation is very poor and and so we set up a. Company called the Climate Change to help. Them have the right conversations and then my spare time. I’m an OG coach and I also am a business and life coach as well.
Chris Simmance
In your spare time and you’re semi retired as well and that’s all that spare time gone with all of the time that you spend on webinars doing cool things like this.
Dave Betts
I am indeed.
Chris Simmance
So if if you. Guys are cool. Let’s let’s jump. Straight into it I think cause then. I think there’s. The where do you start question is quite important because you can’t kind of build anything ethical or sustainable unless you sort of build it in at the core. And what in your minds is there like?
Dave Betts
What what would be?
Chris Simmance
The first thing you’d look to to understand whether an agency itself is ethical. Or. Or even sustainable, should we say.
Tom Wilford
Yeah, so so. I think the. First thing where wherever you are is. I think you know every company we talk to, they always think there may be. A little further. Ahead and it’s it’s not not a bad. Thing at all. But I think that there always the step one is just understanding what you have. And you don’t have, so by that it’s just simply.
Speaker
We just.
Tom Wilford
Doing a little pulse check of OK, if we look at sustainability. So if you kind of break it down. Into things for the environment, things for social. So things for your team and the community and how you work with suppliers and then kind of the more ethical stuff around your policies that you have from the governance side, what do you have and what do? You not have as a. Company, just from a very policy basic side like how you run. That can always give you a little nice score sheet of OK, we do this. We don’t do this. We do this. We want to do that. We don’t want to do that cetera and that’s normally quite a good. Sense check for any company to be like. OK, this is this is where we are.
Chris Simmance
And and and. Dave, I know that it’s quite a big thing in you sort of from a a personal point of view, you you, you’re you’ve you’ve got a a, a very big heart, but you’ve also got a a big drive around like making things done ethically done right and and and obviously building energy drive you’ve you’ve you’ve created this this industrial level of sustainability. The degree. And what would you say? You know, what’s the? You, you you said those numbers earlier. And they’re pretty profound. What? What? What’s? The big environmental impact of of some of the the things that that you’ve managed to do in, in, in energy drive that are are much lesser for obvious reasons in an from an agency perspective they can kind of take some.
Dave Betts
Yeah, I think I think the first question you ask when it talks about ethics and sustainability. Is what’s your worldview? Because I think everything comes from values and beliefs and everything will must flow out of how you see the world. Some people. To see the world as a way of sustaining your own lifestyle and you know, I’ll just do what I wanna do to they see them me centric or the OR you see your company in isolation. I think we. Can even have this conversation until you first see that you are a citizen of the world and you are part of the solution rather than it must serve you so you. Know it starts there, right? And I I think then then you can start to answer a lot of questions, not just how do I reduce. Rather than, how do I, you know, become greener, but how do I make a difference to people? And how do I? How do I make better decisions and how do I have transparency and how do I have robust conversations and you know, all of that stems from? What do I? Where do I see myself in the world and what is my role in this? World, I think. That’s the beginning point. I was a driver for energy. Drive. It really wasn’t just to reduce carbon that. Almost became a byproduct. It was. How do I how do? I reduce the electrical load on the system so more. People could be plugged. Into the power that was a start. You know? And so yeah, I think. Sustainability and ethics are hand in hand. They they go together. 1 feeds, feeds the other. So my my point is, everything starts on worldview, so you know, I’ll be my first question. Talking to any CEO or board explain to me. Me, the way you see yourself positioned in this world and then from there I’ll see. You know, I love this quote, the proof of desire. Is in pursuit. Don’t tell me you desire something unless I see you pursue it. And that’s the big thing when it comes to sustainability, people spouse, a lot of desire, but but demonstrate very little pursuit.
Chris Simmance
Yeah, and and and and it’s that sort of. Worldview piece that that that’s quite important to get right with an entire team in an agency because everyone’s very different. We all come from different places. We’ve all got different experiences. We’ve had different ways of working, different things have happened to us in professional life and personal life, things. But one of the things that that. I think go. Outside of all of this, is is if you have a team which are aligned to the same sort of value set from a. Professional point of view. Obviously everyone has different sets of values, but there’s a a core set of values that are that everyone can align with. That makes it a little bit more easy I guess to to make sure that that world view that you’re talking about from a. Ethics point of view from a sustainability point of view, is similar enough, shall we say so, that it isn’t an uphill battle to get to. To start, sort of implementing sustainable and ethical practises into an agency. Now, sustainability, ethics kind of go hand in hand on the ethical side, there’s also the unethical ways of doing business. We’re not gonna touch that sort of stuff today, but from an ethical point of view, we’re looking at, you know, the impact on the work we do from a sustainability point of view that also there’s there’s a couple of factors there, isn’t it? There’s the, the financial sustainability of an organisation. We’re that’s cash flow that we did that webinar that was a lot of fun, but there’s the other side as well. It’s the the physical impact and the sustainability at scale of a of a. Of a machine and an industry. Which uses an awful lot of resources. The the the. The the sustainability of I got asked this the other day and I and I genuinely had to sort of sit down and have a little think about this and I’d love to know what what your thoughts would be is how do you as an agency owner and most agencies are sort of between 5 and 15 staff and this is an international kind of part of the bell curve there. How how would you balance growth with sustainability when you know that the, the, the, the long term success is making money? What do you what do you reckon, Dave?
Dave Betts
That’s a question for Tom, I’m sure, Tom. Should answer that one first.
Chris Simmance
Go on some.
Tom Wilford
So yeah, no, it’s a. There is no right answer. I think that’s the way I think. It’s very dependent. I think throughout this whole question though, sits this idea of this, which is new to businesses of this triple bottom line, which is kind of what you’re explaining of. You’ve got profit, which is what businesses need to survive. People, what you do for people and then planet. And it’s not a case of choosing one or the other. It’s really a case of just balancing them. So look, if you, if you can’t make money and you can’t have profit, you can’t do good stuff for the planet and you can’t do good. Stuff for people. It’s very hard to. Yeah. So ultimately you need to try and find ways that yes, you can make profit, but you don’t do it at such a big expense that you are tearing apart the planet. Or you are? Really creating a hostile environment for your team, for example, so. It’s just a case of balancing and knowing that when you make decisions, are we thinking about the impact this makes for the team, for our, the community, for future people that want to work here, for our customers? Are we really doing? The right thing here? If so, then great. You know, we can still do it. If not, then maybe something we want to consider. Is there another version of that answer? But that we could be doing instead? And it’s the same thing for the environment as well. And I think it’s really not a case of just answering one of the pieces, but just thinking about how they all work together. Yeah. And that normally tends to to really help agency owners around arcade. Maybe there is a way to do it, but I just need to be. Be evaluating the whole time of of, of of these three.
Chris Simmance
Yeah, I’ll.
Dave Betts
I’ll I like I like you to. Jump in there I think. On top of that. So Harvard University last year produced the stats at 73% of customers now asked. The green question of. Of people think that they’re buying. Alright, so I mean, just that alone, if you’re. Looking for this down the line. Well, my money is going to come from people that are consciously making decisions to use an agency that’s got green credentials. So you know, right there ties finance and sustainability hand in hand. If we don’t become green, there is going. To be a. Direct impact on our bottom line and so our strategy has to fall in line. With that, those are the. It’s the stats, you know, I don’t the the day of just the cheapest agency wins is gone. You know the. The new generation is ethical, sustainable green, switched on making good decisions.
Chris Simmance
And and and there’s and and this kind of brings us to another point here is that it’s easy to say all of this. Like we’re just saying words and and we’re not actively doing anything at this very moment. I know that there’s a lot that you do, Tom to to help kind of keep that consciousness in place when you’ve got clients that you guys are working with. And I’m pretty. Sure that if. You didn’t just put in infrastructure into an organisation to to save electricity bills and there was a an education piece to quite a lot of this as well. But it is so easy to say we’re green, we’re sustainable. We’ve got a badge and all that sort of stuff, but it’s very hard to do. I don’t know if you guys have ever watched a.
Speaker
Oh yeah.
Chris Simmance
A TV show that’s called The Good Place. Have you heard of that? It’s a it’s a sitcom, essentially. The the last episode, the last part of the last episode of the last season, there’s there’s essentially a a, A a conversation that is had around no matter what you do, there’s a there’s a, there’s an impact somewhere. So you kind of have to balance the doing the least bad at every single step now. For example, every single agency needs to have machines, computers, and all of those computers are using them. Earth minerals. They are arguably and probably not a good time to have a conversation about this, but arguably not that well resourced or fairly resourced ethically. Resources and they are. They’re it’s very easy to say. We’ve got our big cop badge. And we cycle to work and things like that. But at the same time, we’ve all got iPhones and we’ve all got electric cars that are running off of coal-fired power station generated electricity and the. I think one of the things that is really important, I guess it it’s it’s a bit like what you said there Dave is the the consciousness thing comes over time because it’s coming upstream from the customer at the end as well as downstream. From large, large monetary organisations that are setting agendas and things like that and and in the middle is the agency there and and and like there’s there’s lots of stuff and agency can do that isn’t just ticking boxes. You don’t need a brand new laptop for every member of staff that comes in you don’t need. The best everythings every single time and throw a bunch of stuff in. Bin, but there’s some, there’s some. Strategies that you guys. Would would would. Consider that would make it easier to have that kind of conscious decision making in an agency so fast. It just feels like you need a bit of a. It’s like a mental process to go through a bit, bit like a repetitive set of questions you ask yourself. Every time.
Dave Betts
I’ll I’ll throw in a couple of. Examples real world examples. So. So, so in my experience. You have to equate an action to. An outcome or a consequence. So let’s take an air con, for instance, so. A lot of people. In in summer, when they’re air come at 17 and in winter run it at 25 right both are in the extremes of their temperate. Now if you can tie a temperature to a cost and you can show them for every degree that you change an air con up or down the material effect. It has on cost. You then start to change behaviour because everything about sustainability, about behaviour change, right? So in the big scale of things, what we do in energy. This every time they they’ve made a dial setting which would have been megawatts. It sent a text message to them. Showing them exactly what that would. Mean over the next month in pounds and Pence. And so that drought.
Speaker
Oh, wow, so it’s.
Chris Simmance
A bit like a smart people, but big business.
Dave Betts
Right. So so there was this, there was this feedback loop and that’s what changed the behaviour because they couldn’t see kilowatts. They could certainly fill pounds and pence and so. And that text message went to their their immediate boss, who would then come back and say well. Why did we? Make that change so in an agency. Scale that down. Down to asking how much fuel did we all? Use and we. Could have done car sharing and put that. Down to a a figure. How much? If we ran our air cons at 19 or 20, would that actually save and then consequently it’s not just saving money, it’s saving CO2 and all the rest of. The emissions that. Go with that right so. That’s those are some practical working. To tie an action to a consequence and that way you get A and and have a feedback loop and it creates behaviour change that single handedly. The best way of doing that Tom.
Tom Wilford
Yeah, and I I completely agree, Dave and I, I think as well to later on to it, it’s it’s also setting a goal for that behaviour change to get to. So one thing we see is like take team engagement for example, anything to do with, you know, missions. A lot of it is to do with as well like as they’ve said, it’s how the, how the company operates, how your employees operate, the decisions they make. And we found. That with businesses who really communicate it and actually talk to their team about look, This is why we’re doing it. This is where we are right now. This is what we want to get to. These are things that we can do. These these are the behaviour changes. We can all make when people start to realise. That OK, we’re trying. To get here and. This is why that when someone doesn’t understand the why, that tends to just be the reason. Why someone does want to do something? Yeah, so it’s. Really important to really talk to people about this. Just at a human level because it’s it is very confusing. So getting the team involved and just selling a target that you as a company can all get behind that tends. To be a really big win that we see, which from a lot of companies I don’t think do they tend to sometimes treat it as a you know they they look at it as a little black box exercise where they just do it in secret and really it’s a whole it’s a. Whole people initiative and.
Chris Simmance
It’s the same kind of thing in in all. Parts of an agency really because? It’s a people business, people. Buying from people, people delivering people to people. Etcetera. And and quite often the majority of the problems that come from people, businesses are not just expectation management, but actually understanding the impact of intangible small little things that, that that notch up over time. So you know leaving that light on all the time or turning the AC up or down to. Extremes and things like that. That that’s intangible. When you press a button because a button is click done. Whereas the the knock on impact that feedback loop is a pretty decent way of getting that through. But. Why the feedback loop is necessary is really, really important and the understanding of why from everyone’s point of view usually is a is a decent way towards sort of affecting that kind of that thought process you’ll take. You’ll take that thinking home with you if that makes sense.
Dave Betts
Yeah, it is. And if I can? Jump in there as well. Yeah, I I think. We’ve used the phrase. Entrepreneurship, rather than entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship, which is getting people together and creating a safe place for them to throw ideas, you know, so we’ve we facilitate a lot of conversations in companies and we we say to them, OK, let’s firstly connect them to the why why do we need sustainability? And then let’s just. Create a safe place where you can. Have all the crazy ideas that you. Think might make a difference. Of the 100 that go on the board. 10 might work, but because it’s coming from the employees themselves, are not forced down from somewhere else. But they’re being innovative in their thinking. It suddenly builds that sense of ownership, which is really what is the behaviour change that drives this organisation, right? And then you can be competitive for. That you can compete one department with the other or one area with the other. And who’s got the? Best ideas? You make it fun. You can gamify it. All of these great ideas are in there and it’s. Little differences it you know it’s the 1% rule. You know the 1% rule over a / a whole year is what games that game this thing, the sense that we buy a piece of something, some technology and we put it in it changes the world, changes our whole view. Isn’t true. It just doesn’t stack up. It is lots and lots. Of the Littles I I I get passionate about. It that yes, but you? Know it’s lots and lots of the little. That makes a. Difference in these companies it.
Chris Simmance
It it is. It’s the same in every part of these in, in an agency, in most businesses, it’s the it’s, it’s the pennies that make the pounds that you know all that sort of stuff. And it’s it’s. Very much the same in terms of the impact and the impact of turning off one light right now or the impact of not leaving a laptop on standby for an entire weekend. The office is small, but the impact over the course of a. Year or? Or several years is is high and and and it’s hard to kind of relate that without having some kind of tangible understanding of why it’s important and how much impact that can make. But you’ve got, let’s say you’ve got. The why you’re saying we’re? An ethical agency, or we’re a sustainable agency and you’ve got the, the, the, the rubber stamps and all the pieces of paper. That kind of get you to A to a point where you can kind of put it on emails and in pitch decks and things like that. There’s it’s really hard at that point to kind of prove that you’re doing it for real. It’s very easy for me right now to say we’re a sustainable agency acceleration business, but I’ve gotta be able to prove it somehow, and it’s not, it’s it. You’ve gotta have stakeholders that engage in the reporting and the governance of that. You’ve also got to have some kind of methodologies right in order to properly like measure. How do I know what the impact of a light bulb being on for X amount of time is going to be and how do I measure that in a in a in a proper way that? Isn’t overwhelming because we’ve got a lot of other stuff to measure, so I know. I know Tom, a lot of the a lot. I I I did fish around the the you know, the the back end of the B Corp stuff that you guys have got and there’s an awful lot of Ways and Means to measure this stuff. How how would you? How how? Do you normally kind of. Balance the we have to run a business, but we also need to make sure we’re actually proving that we can do what we’re doing.
Tom Wilford
Yeah, man, it’s true. And and the measurement side is always what really puts people off because it is kind of a bit spreadsheet. Heavy at first. I I think it’s. The the the difficult thing. First would saying that is it it, it looks at everything. So it does really look at everything in the business, including your finances. So it is kind of a pretty comprehensive thing. I think the business is trying to understand it. It’s just picking them, things that matter to you, going back to base point, it’s like, why are you doing this? You know what’s important to you? And then picking the things that really are you as a business and agency, what what, what really matters to you if it’s people, it’s look. Your your team satisfaction is looking at what you do for the community, how much time you spend doing each each each quarter. For example, try and chunk all these different measurements that you can do into the three categories of ES&G for environment. Social governance tends to be quite easy to look at. It like that, and don’t over complicate it. Just try and pick the key metrics that you think you want to be tracking. That’s a really good first step. You know, most businesses aren’t doing that. You then have the big softwares that do lots, lots more and there’s hundreds of different maps you can track. In all honestly. Just focus on the core ones and just start to add in what you think is important to you. And just try and keep it all in one sheet. Look at it at what one spreadsheet? Look at it every quarter. Update it. Have a viewpoint on it that normally tends to again, I think remove some of the the fear of the whole process. If you just try and keep it really simple at first, we just we like the phrase kiss. Just keep it simple. Stupid, because I think it’s. It’s needed in this industry. Sometimes. So maybe start there and then you can start to develop it in time.
Chris Simmance
Yeah, so don’t, don’t go for the whole whole in one go because it’s just too much. It’s, it’s it’s kind of like most things, isn’t it in that sense that, you know, if you try and do everything in one go from zero, you’ll find very quickly that it’s overwhelming and then you’ll do zero forever. And so, you know, I. I I guess, yeah. You work out what the core numbers. How and how to measure those first and add over time and things like that? Dave, when you when you were. Running energy drive and and and I suspect this probably overlaps into into outside of energy Drive in terms of the way your. Brain works and and how how we. Do you how would you? Be sort of considering like opening this up in terms of internal reporting and things like that for the businesses that that we’re working with you, where were they doing things as well as the reporting that you were able to produce because obviously, you know if they’re pressing a button and then they get a a text message with a for the feedback loop, there must be stuff that’s meaningful to them that’s connected.
Dave Betts
Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. That’s the answer. But yeah. So reporting reporting became a huge part of our business and we didn’t realise that when we first started. I mean we. Were we were collecting data on our machines. That we’re putting in. Because we wanted to to see. How well they were performing. And then the client. Started and said Ohh. Could we have a a view of this data? We’d like to to see and capture it and maybe use it in our reporting. So we we started developing this whole data back end and and tracking the data. And more and more, we realise the importance of good data. I mean. But it’s not just data. It’s something someone that’s looking at the data and making good decisions about what they’re seeing, you know, is wanting to track that they don’t have all the optics there, but if you’re not translating that into behaviour change, then the data is basically. Meaningless. So if you’re gonna. Report it at least, then put something robust in place that’s gonna look at that data and hold the board to account for what the data is saying. So my point really, when it comes to reporting. Is greenwashing will kill your reputation very quickly, so if you just reporting because. Ultimately, you want to find a couple more clients down the road. You are going to get found out. If you are reporting with with some robust defence to it and someone outside looking at it and challenging you as a board. And holding your board to account and you can demonstrate with transparency that that process is happening and then your data reporting has meaning and I suspect the clients that take that seriously are the ones that ultimately that will still be in business five years down the road. So. So that’s that’s kind of my answer on that.
Chris Simmance
And I and I guess I always have the mindset that if I if I would feel uncomfortable defending a position, I’m probably in the wrong position. So you know if you’ve got the wrong numbers or you’re measuring the wrong thing or you’re not that sure about what you’re looking at, then I. Guess it’s a. Lot harder to you know, to, to, to. Have confidence in your own. Governance, no matter how much time and energy you put in. So having something which has meaning, less numbers, more simple numbers that have more meaning and and that. Have value like actual tangible. Why behind it and things it will affect the change but it will also mean that you’re a lot more confident. Saying this is what we do. This is how we do it. Here’s the numbers behind. It ask me anything.
Dave Betts
Yep, yeah, it it. It has to stand up. Chris it you know and that’s. The thing about the whole ESG thing? Now is it can’t just be. A buzz. You know, buzz word. Or a nice tagline, it has to. Stand up to scrutiny and. I think you have to have. I would say an outsider on your border in your, in your committee that can give that outside perspective and challenge that in my view.
Chris Simmance
And and I’m, I’m guessing to A to a certain point. Tom, I’m, you know, not to not to put words in your mouth, but maybe you can answer with some real words in a minute. Are there any times where you’ve had agencies or businesses come to you and they have literally just wanted to use the support and the services of future proof literally just to tick a box? And not to necessarily make a real change in the world.
Tom Wilford
Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Chris Simmance
OK, I feel like it’s.
Tom Wilford
Yeah, you do get you do get that and you can you can tell very quickly cause it becomes around when will we do this. When do we get that? Will it help with this? It’s less around. You know, why do you wanna do it? In the first place. But it’s it’s never for us. It’s never. I mean, like the the biggest kind of. Problem businesses in the world, the ones that need to send those the most right. Like I mean people squandered down at all these kind of big oil and gas companies understandably, but really they need the most help so no business shouldn’t have any help. It’s just a. Case of reframing and getting the the business to understand what they need to do and why. So with every conversation we have, it’s always going back to OK. Why are you doing this? Do you understand that? You know, going back to Facebook again, if you don’t do that, if you don’t cover it, then yes, it becomes a road to green washing. So from our side, we just mitigate that really early. We just help businesses understand. The real reasons. Yeah, that tends to work because I think it’s when you don’t have that understanding, yes, then it can come across. As you’re doing it for the.
Chris Simmance
And conversely, Dave, I’m sure that you’ve, when you were running energy drive, you had businesses which only came to you for the financial impact of the work that you could do. But through the work that you were doing probably affected that mindset. Change the opposite way round. Would that? Would that be fair to say?
Dave Betts
Definitely, definitely. So yeah, people would approach us cause they needed to make electrical energy saving cause of their budget. Yeah, but they then, conversely, saw the effects that it had in terms of cause of the reporting. Wow, actually we’re doing something for the, for the environment, their stakeholders or shareholders suddenly got wind of that. And now the. Next phase two or phase three actually was motivated. Because of an environmental factor and. The you know, the offshoot of that is. Ohh. And we also save some money as well. So the two, the two work together, you know, to me, I don’t care what your launch point is, whether it’s a financial one or save the planet. Both of them will converge, but yeah, just use whatever that launch point is. You know if you want an agree or you want to save money, both of them will ultimately help. You get towards where you want to go.
Chris Simmance
Yeah, absolutely. And and it kind of brings me on to this point here around like it’s not just cash and smiles that you get from from having an ethical approach to running an agency or any business in that matter. But there are. There are some. Tangible benefits to to doing things the right way. You. Know you can. You keep your talent, you get better, more likely to hire better people who are conscious of these things will be more likely to want to apply to a business in that sense. Similarly with clients, they’ll trust you more because there’s a big trust factor in this as much as there is. A. A consciousness that you’ve proven that you’ve done something. Good. And that you’re maintaining that. And then there’s the natural hopeful positive impact, I guess, of actually doing this this properly. What are some of the the? The key benefits that that some of your clients have seen Tom over the course of all of all of the years that you’ve been running future proof.
Tom Wilford
Yeah. So you’ve mentioned you know, a lot of the benefits there. I think so some real examples are when it comes to pitching for agencies and nowadays every single business will, say, show us what you do for FG, what what are your crepes, what do you have in place? So if you, if you look at the certification like any business of ours that has B Corp. They normally do, they just kind of fly through that, right, because becomes kind of a bit of a shortcut to say you’ve got a lot of those things in place from a pitching side. It just helps you and it it, you know, presuming the other side of of. Of your pictures, is is, is. All good. You you know, you’re probably gonna win the work. I think if you look at a recruitment side, what the nice things we see and that we hear from companies is. How much employees really like when companies are really transparent about this from what they’re doing. So you hear, you know, people coming in candidates saying, you know what, what are you doing for carbon? Right. And I’ll say that in in the first interview and five years ago, that would be unprecedented. Now it’s really normal. And from a recruitment.
Chris Simmance
Is it weird? Five years.
Tom Wilford
Device it massively helps.
Chris Simmance
Ago, someone doing that, wouldn’t it?
Tom Wilford
Yeah, you’d be called a green hugger. A A tree hugger. But nowadays it’s. Ohh green hugger. All green hugger. Yeah, it’s great. New one. So I I think there’s things like that where it becomes way more real and it just creates a lot more community internally and that that hugely helps with retention from. What we hear from from customs.
Chris Simmance
And and I think that the second you start using it in the right way for the right motivations they they knock on benefits just happen to be the case. So you know to go back to the people that come into this from a a perspective of you know this will make me some cash early on or those those benefits will come. So think about it in the in the positive sense to the to the actual real world positive impacts. And the other thing. Things like cheaper, quicker staff hiring, longer retention for staff and the same with uh, with clients winning better pitches, being able to confidently answer a question in the pitch around what you do for the environment or what you do around the SG, there’s the inclusivity aspects of all of this as well and quite a lot of those things are. Net positive benefits in general and and I think you know when I I don’t know about you guys, but when I’m walking down the street, sometimes there’s there’s kids who’ve had McDonald’s and dropped their rubbish on the side of the road and things like that. You pick it up and you put it in the bin next to you. I feel pretty good. Do that now. If you extrapolate that into an entire agency and everyone’s doing a little bit of good here, they’re a little bit at a time that 1% a day kind of thing, you feel pretty good and it it’s a nice sense of sort of collective well-being beyond just, you know, having a, having a good day in the office and getting your your end of year bonus and things like that, right? So just to sort of round this all off, I’ve got I I wanna see you know there any kind of tips where you’d start where you’re thinking should go, what’s the what? What’s one of the few? One of the tips that you’d give to anyone kind of knocking on your door today, Dave? I mean, it’s a long way from from London a long way. In the UK, but let’s say someone’s. Made the effort.
Dave Betts
Yeah. Yeah, they. They did come and knock on my door. From London I. Would certainly ask a lot. Of questions. First question, first question is everything starts from with why? You know it’s gonna be. Why? Why do you wanna do this? What’s your worldview? You know. And secondly, you know, so then I’ll be saying, OK, let’s start with the small. Let’s not start with the big do you have an air con turn it, turn it down if you have lights, turn them off. You know, if you if you got. More people in two cars carpool. You know, just do the very basics first and. And the give back to your point is you’ll. You’ll feel better about what you. Doing and as you feel better about your doing so you’ll have more courage to do. More and as you do more. You’ll feel better and the. Lovely loop that we can. We can then do and. So that will be my tip. Start where you think you can and start where it’s obvious. You know those are. The obvious things and then see how it builds up from there, but everything starts from. Right, don’t. Don’t just have desire unless you’re. Going to follow through pursuit.
Chris Simmance
Yeah, absolutely. And what about you, Tom? What’s, what’s one beyond? Obviously giving you a call and and trying to sign up to future proof?
Tom Wilford
No, I think there’s lots of things that I think, yeah, just to add on to that, like the board on for it. You the first? Yeah, definitely some why we always run lunch and learns. The goal is that you could do this. Kindly yourself, just have someone who’s just going through the basics of of what is sustainability like. It’s actually it’s quite crazy how how, how much people don’t know about it. So really just going through what things mean and just helping everyone understand and get. To a base level as a as a comp. Then I would try and create some team, right? You’ve got to make time for people to be able to have this in their JD, spend a couple of hours a. Week on this. The biggest thing we was here is, oh, you know, we’ve got so much other work and with agencies, it’s so popular, so really making this billable work, I would say is a recommendation. Baking it into jobs. Descriptions then identify your quick wins. All the things you can do that are quote unquote easier to do and aren’t expensive. Tackle those first and then celebrate every win you. Know do the easier stuff. Then you’ll get into the harder stuff. But you must celebrate the wins. If you don’t, then it will feel like this laborious exercise, and it can be quite enjoyable. Well, it’s actually. It is enjoyable but.
Dave Betts
It is. Yeah, we love it.
Chris Simmance
I I I do I I completely. Agree with both of you. My my tip to any of the agencies that are thinking about having this as a as a mainstay in their business. The benefits are obvious not just to the world, not just to you individually, but to your teams, to your clients, to everyone. If you don’t know. Where to start? Or you do you know beyond the the easy wins and things like that? And Tom, future proof is there and you can find them via. Well, future proof or through the coping section on the the OMG. Dave, always conscious of the why Matt, top OMG advisor? So give a give Dave a shout if you need to have a if you wanna have a conversation about any of these things the the reality is it has to start with with you picking up the phone to a certain degree. So if you want to make these sorts of changes, you need to speak to your team. Your team needs to be behind it. If you see resistance in your team. You need to work out what that might well be, and sometimes it is just change. Other times you might not have people who really believe these. Things, and if they don’t believe in it, then that’s where these feedback loops. That’s where this education, that’s where showing not just where, where the money goes, but why it’s important can can make a real change. And it you know. Everyone wants to to, to feel good as well. So go pick up some rubbish after the. After this, this listening to this webinar guys. Dave, thanks so much for coming on and it’s been wonderful to speak to you again, Dave. It’s been wonderful to see you, Tom, and have a great afternoon everybody and. We’ll see you soon. Cheers guys.
Tom Wilford
Thank you.