The EcoSend Podcast

S7E1 Audio
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[00:00:00] James Gill: Hi there. Welcome to another episode of the Eend podcast. I'm thrilled to be back. I'm your host James. And for those of you new to the show, the eend Podcast is a weekly show where we talk to inspiring leaders, founders, people in the world of marketing as well, who are doing good in the world. Today I am thrilled to be joined by.

[00:00:35] Steven Collin said, Steven is the CEO of Green Perks. Before diving into what is sustainability tech, Steven spent 12 years in the recruitment industry helping startups and scale ups build their senior leadership teams. Now, Steven is on a mission to help companies boost employee engagement while promoting sustainability.

[00:00:57] So Steven, it is a pleasure to have you on the show. I'm very excited to dig in today. How are you doing? I'm good. Good. As

[00:01:04] Steven Collins: I said, just awesome. Just getting back into a swing of things after a really busy week.

[00:01:08] James Gill: Yeah. Yeah. I very relatable. Very relatable. Steven, maybe it'd be great to hear maybe in your own words, so what is Green Perks and tell us all about Green Perks.

[00:01:18] Yeah. So the way

[00:01:20] Steven Collins: that I describe Green Perks is as a sustainability platform that is designed to help businesses and their employees engage more actively with the environment. Make micro changes that can then hopefully lead to bigger behavioral changes and empower both the businesses and their employees to, to do more and to do that bit.

[00:01:41] James Gill: So through your platform, you're encouraging a lot of people, like many people, not just one or two, but like hopefully thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, ultimately millions of people per perhaps that to make small changes that will add up. Is that right?

[00:01:55] Steven Collins: Yeah.

[00:01:56] For me it was about. Facilitating change and making change easier and more accessible to everybody. Yeah, and when I started the journey and I know we've spoken about the Genesis story before you and I privately, but we'll likely come onto that in a bit. But when I started the journey.

[00:02:15] It was more about me going, okay, I need to make changes in my own life and discover how much research and how difficult it would be, and then going, okay, absolutely. It doesn't make a huge amount of difference what I do unless we can encourage everybody to do it. And maybe if people hadn't had that call to action that I hadn't.

[00:02:31] So how do we build a platform that engages people in making small micro changes that then can hopefully turn into larger, bigger impacts as a group?

[00:02:42] James Gill: Amazing. Yeah, no, this is a recurring topic we've had on the show of people realizing that. They can actually have a big impact. And the consequence of one person setting out on a mission like this can actually help influence positive change for many people.

[00:02:57] And that in turn adds up in a big way. I'm excited to unpack that a little bit more with you, Steven, but I guess one of the things I always like to ask people on the show is, why are you doing this? How did you get into this? What's your journey been to. Caring so much about the planet and sustainability and ultimately running green perk.

[00:03:16] Steven Collins: So I we'll go back to lockdown. I know most stories. Yeah. If

[00:03:20] James Gill: we must.

[00:03:21] Steven Collins: People have got a bit more time on the hand. Yeah. Really the journey began in lockdown and it feels quite crass to say that we had a. A relatively easy lockdown at the time. My background, as I mentioned was recruitment and more specifically executive search recruitment during that period, and that was within food and agriculture.

[00:03:42] Obviously during a global pandemic, there's not many places safer to be than food and agriculture. Lots of money was being invested, lots of businesses were growing, which then facilitated lots of recruitment and I worked the whole way through. I see two days beforehand, we'd got back from two weeks in the Caribbean as a kind of a couple.

[00:04:02] And then two days after lockdown we found out that we were expecting our first daughter.

[00:04:07] James Gill: Oh wow.

[00:04:10] Steven Collins: So it's also her blame for this as well. But so

[00:04:12] James Gill: inconsiderate,

[00:04:14] Steven Collins: it was almost this just run of chaos is, okay, we're back from holiday, the world is shut down. Yeah. And now we're got to figure out what, how to get all the baby stuff in and get our lives ready for Lily.

[00:04:25] I'm now three and a bit year old. Wow.

[00:04:29] James Gill: That's incredible.

[00:04:30] Steven Collins: My partner's a nurse. And so obviously it was a chaotic time for her as well. Yes, she was a she is a community nurse that specializes in end of life care, palliative care. But because they didn't know of the impacts that Covid would have on obviously pregnant women and unborn babies, she was triaging from home.

[00:04:48] And so we sat at home, we walked the dog and we watched documentaries. And one of the ones that was particularly impactful on this journey was, I dunno if you remember the David Attenborough one. That launched on Netflix during that period that charted, yeah. How the world had changed during his lifetime, what the next 90 years would look like if we didn't make significant changes.

[00:05:09] James Gill: Sure. And

[00:05:09] Steven Collins: as a relatively emotional man at the best of times, and expectant father, I was like, wow, that's the world that my unborn child is gonna inherit from me. I need to do something probably a very similar time to where I watch CPI as well.

[00:05:25] James Gill: Yeah.

[00:05:25] Steven Collins: And so started to try and make all these micro changes in my own life.

[00:05:29] I,

[00:05:29] James Gill: yeah, I was gonna say, you didn't go easy on the on the documentary watching there, Steven, oh, no. Too many. Some people watch daytime tv, but you chose to go deep.

[00:05:38] Steven Collins: Yeah. Way too many and way too heavy documentaries. Blackfish the lot, but yeah. Yeah. So I started to buy more sustainably.

[00:05:50] I changed my toilet rolled, who gives a crap? Started buying from small and places like this we've obviously tons of research on what's better and where better to buy from. At the time probably had a largely unnecessary leap. Sporty car looked at getting rid of that and getting something that's a little bit more sustainable and started to look at these changes and it really dawned on me that I'm doing all this and this is making an impact, but unless we're able to make larger impact or smaller impacts on larger scale, shall I say, then really we're not gonna be able to fix the problem and drive larger behavioral change in society for.

[00:06:26] Everybody who's got bigger concerns and has not bigger concerns, but has got different concerns, right? So they're,

[00:06:33] James Gill: yeah.

[00:06:33] Steven Collins: Maybe pressures from work or pressures from home, and is there the capacity and space to think about shopping more sustainably in everyday life. And from there, green Perks was born.

[00:06:43] It's how we can facilitate the biggest change. Or amongst the largest number of people, let's build something that works for businesses and it works for their employees as well. And that was the genesis story of Green Perks.

[00:06:56] James Gill: That's amazing. And gosh, what what an inspiration to hear that, because a lot, obviously lockdown was a tough time for a lot of people and it was to turn it into something positive from especially such difficult to watch programs and documentaries like that, that must have taken some sheer willpower there. Steven I think it was more time, just time on my hunt. Just, it was not all family quizzes yeah. Okay. Yeah. Anything but another quiz?

[00:07:29] No, that, that's incredible to hear that, that yeah, the origin story there. And in terms of now then with Green Perks, I dunno how much it's evolved since day one, but what, it'd be great to hear a little bit more about how Green Perks works and how it works both for say an employer, because I know there's quite a few.

[00:07:48] Founders and people that list this podcast who are leading a team, and then also as an employee, like how does it influence your behavior as a team member?

[00:07:57] Steven Collins: Perfect. So if I start with the employer, so yeah. Yeah. The way that we wanted to impact for the employee was obviously businesses are under pressure at the moment in terms of their ESG goals.

[00:08:09] We want to build something that would facilitate that with the minimum business impact, but having the maximum impacts. For the environment. And so the way that we do that is we built the platform to be a subscription model. Yeah. We charge per month per employee, and we take 50% of that subscription cost and we credit it to an environmental impact project in your business's name that's been vetted by us and chosen by you as a business.

[00:08:37] So for example, do tree planting. We can do carbon offset, we can do direct air capture, we can do biochar, we can see we can do ocean plastic removal as you and I were talking about before.

[00:08:48] James Gill: Yeah. Before we

[00:08:49] Steven Collins: started recording. And so then you as a business, we'll be having that tangible impact, taking plastic out of the ocean as an example.

[00:08:57] And we talked about a customer advisor who's just taken out nine tons. Yeah. Or committed to take up nine tons over the next 12 months. And as part of that they're able to really deliver a platform that facilitates behavioral change in their employees as well. So it's a win-win for the businesses employee engagement meets environmental engagement with a simple

[00:09:19] James Gill: subscription.

[00:09:21] Yeah. That's amazing. So that makes a lot of sense. What a, yeah, what a great thing to be on a team that is part of that and and as a team leader or an employer. I think that sounds fantastic. And then in, in terms of the employees how do they get engaged or do they get choice over where those funds go?

[00:09:41] Or like how does it influence the employee behavior as well?

[00:09:44] Steven Collins: So there's a number of different ways that it influences the employee. So first off, during the signup process for the employees. They will go through a carbon footprint calculator. Oh,

[00:09:55] James Gill: so to understand your personal impact.

[00:09:58] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:09:58] Steven Collins: So it helps them to understand that personal impact is broken down into categories, so you can see where you impact more heavily than and then and less heavily. As part of that, then it'll put you into a leaderboard so you can see how you rank against your peers in the business.

[00:10:13] You don't have to share your information. So you can appear as member 52, or you can appear as Okay. Yeah. Tell you, but obviously if you are bottom of the leaderboard, all of a sudden you might want to make a consideration for your environmental impact anyway. Yeah. I'm more likely to give my name away if I'm at the top,

[00:10:30] James Gill: Of course.

[00:10:31] Steven Collins: And then there's also rewards for being at the top. You get certificates, you get badges for your LinkedIn and all kinds of stuff like that.

[00:10:37] That we're doing at the moment. And then in its very essence, it's an employee benefits platform. And so then the platform has hundreds and hundreds of discounts on ethical and sustainable products.

[00:10:49] Again. Oh, from suppliers, vetted buyers. So the examples I gave are discounts on toilet roll from who gives a crap. Products from cleaning products from small at a discount. We work with Beer 52 and one of the offers of Beer 52 is a free crate of beers worth, I think it's 30 pounds for the cost of postage of seven pounds.

[00:11:12] So it's a really good offer. So there's lots of ways that we are trying to facilitate people shopping from more sustainable or ethical businesses at a discount, saving them money. But then we go one step further than that. Obviously you buy your beer from Beer 52, we make a commission on that transaction.

[00:11:32] We take 50% of that commission and credit it to the Impact project chosen by the employer, but in your individual name. So as an employee, you'll be able to see I've saved X money by shopping on green perks. That has translated into an environmental impact of X amount of plastic being removed from the ocean or X amount of trees planted, which then actually moves you up and down the leaderboard based on your purchasing habits.

[00:11:59] Yeah. Saving alongside that, then we also have. Some carbon literacy stuff, environmental literacy newsletters, stuff like that going out. We help businesses engage with community projects where you can book to go and spend a day cleaning litter or on the beach or planting trees in the, on the core and coast or whatever you choose.

[00:12:22] So we're helping businesses engage passively and proactively with the environment.

[00:12:26] James Gill: Yeah.

[00:12:27] Steven Collins: And then as a final piece. As part of that subscription that the employers are making, you can choose to gift that and we'll use plastic removal as the example you can choose to keep that for your business.

[00:12:41] So you can say, as a business, we've taken nine tons of plastic out of the ocean over the past 12 months. Or you can break that down and give that to your in your employees. As either rewards on a monthly basis or as part of their onboarding is great work for Green Perks, and as part of working for Green Perks, we will take out a ton of plastic a month in your name for the environment.

[00:13:04] So there's a ton of ways that we're trying to facilitate those micro changes.

[00:13:09] James Gill: Yeah. There's so much to unpack there, Steven. That's such a fantastic summary though. And far more expansive and a bigger surface area than I actually, I realized, and for a start perhaps the pitch could just be, I.

[00:13:21] Save the environment, get free beer, and then who knows how that would go down like that most of the time, to be fair. Yeah. You had me at free beer. But that's fantastic. And I think just at a high level there though it's such an interesting thing and I've had this conversation with quite a few people over the years of everyone almost everyone feels somewhat motivated.

[00:13:41] To do something to help on the climate and environmental impact. So many people feel very enthusiastic and when you talk to someone and ask them if they care about the planet, often you hear a yes. Yeah, of course they do. Yeah. But I think there's often so much friction and so much uncertainty about how to actually take action.

[00:14:01] Whether you're doing the right thing, where do you even start? And a platform like this when I think there's so many aspects where as an employee being onboarded into a company, it's almost like it's kind of part of that process, which makes it much easier kind of. Access point to start doing some good and then to know that you've vetted these suppliers and providers and have been, approved these products and offerings, I think is another big step to reassure people.

[00:14:33] But then also I think the the sort of stuff around the day, like a litter picking day, things like that. I know for us as a team, wanting to do that is one thing, but actually doing it is a whole other area. And so to reduce that friction make that easier is I think a hugely, it's a hugely important part of the whole process.

[00:14:53] So yeah. Kudos on making that easier for everyone.

[00:14:58] Steven Collins: So it's been, it is been, there's been a couple of moments that have been transformative, for me. As the founder and my CTO, Matt probably is constantly on edge with when I'll come up with a new idea. I think he there, there's a couple of moments.

[00:15:15] So one of them was I read a book called Alchemy. I dunno if you've read it, but it's about kind of excellence in marketing and branding and,

[00:15:24] James Gill: I've not read it yet.

[00:15:26] Steven Collins: There you go.

[00:15:26] James Gill: But but thank you for the reminder, Steven. Now tell me all,

[00:15:29] Steven Collins: it's excellent. It's excellent. But there's a moment on, there's a moment in the book where we move on to doing good and he's actually he's talking about tax and he's saying people would be prepared to pay actually more tax.

[00:15:44] If you gave them the option to choose where they want that money to go. And so for example, would you pay an extra 1% in tax if you could choose where that 1% landed and the NHS, et cetera. And as part of that conversation, he was saying that if you take climate change as an example, and he said climate change, the, it's consistently delivered by scientists.

[00:16:10] The problem is that it would be very differently received by people if it was delivered by marketeers. And that really struck a chord with me. And then I was on a call with UK for good. Yes. Yeah. And we were talking about different ways that we can make an impact. And one of the things that we said is that, and at the time we, we didn't offer the plastic, we didn't offer the kind of direct air capture and things like that.

[00:16:36] And one of the things that we said was, okay, we can basically offset our way. Out of this problem, it needs to be behavioral change.

[00:16:42] James Gill: And

[00:16:42] Steven Collins: that really resonated with me 'cause it was long before we'd launched a product it long before we were really a business. It was just an idea at that point.

[00:16:50] But it really set me on a journey of, okay, let's find as many different ways that we can facilitate these micro changes and maybe behaviors more simplistic and easier and more beneficial. Quite frankly for people who are. Under pressure. Maybe that car's broke, maybe they've had a row at home in the morning.

[00:17:11] Maybe they've got two kids that constantly hang off them and pop their heads into meetings, if you can imagine that. But and so it's how we can facilitate change and make it easier when life is already quite hard.

[00:17:27] James Gill: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:17:28] Steven Collins: And that's what we're about, really,

[00:17:31] James Gill: that, that really resonates so strongly.

[00:17:35] On, on my side as well, Steven. 'cause I, I remember a while ago being at an event and there was this sort of high level topic of nature doesn't have a marketing budget. And and that's very much related to what you were saying there around the, the climate side of things is often delivered by scientists, and whereas you look at so many huge brands that are perhaps not doing as much as they could for the environment that are extremely sophisticated and effective with their marketing efforts and yeah to level up the playing field a little bit feels like a, something we, hopefully more and more of us can contribute to.

[00:18:12] It's excellent. Yeah. Very cool to hear. I know that there were a couple of other topics you were keen to discuss, Steven, so I was, you mentioned your co-founder there obviously this is a journey that is involving multiple people and anyone building a business knows how hard it could be to form a team and bring people along with your cause.

[00:18:31] So yeah, tell me all about how you work with your co-founder. Maybe how you, how that. That came to be lovely to hear that story.

[00:18:39] Steven Collins: So it was an incredibly fortuitous meeting, I would say. He and I played football or still do play football in the same seven aside league on a Monday. I. Oh, brilliant.

[00:18:49] And we'd been on, we'd been on opposite teams for the whole time. I'd known him and we'd passed and it was like, all right, mate and such he probably kicked me a few times on the football pitch, which now I'm sure he wishes he could do now. But but we I had the idea, I was talking to the idea, talking about the idea to a friend of mine who played on the same team as him.

[00:19:12] You went, oh, you should speak to, you should speak to Matt. Matt works in investment. I don't, I can't. I have the idea, but I have no capability to build it. I'm not a software engineer. I don't have that ability. So I need to raise funds to be able to build this. And di so met with Matt, he was like, great, I want in.

[00:19:31] I'm really interested. I think it's a really good idea. How about I'll just build it for you. And I said I thought you worked in, in, in investment. And he was like, no, I'm Chief Technology Officer of a, an online retail business that had a 30% market share in the uk. In their center.

[00:19:50] And so I was like this is an incredibly fortuitous meeting. And from there to strength really. And he's been a, an enormous asset in terms of what we've been able to do. And I promised I'll give him a shout out because we'd be nowhere near where we are now without. His his incredible kind of technical capability if nothing else.

[00:20:09] And it's really good because I think it's a really interesting point because we are so contrasting as people into, in terms of our personalities, in terms of our skill sets, but they actually offset each other really nicely. I always say that I'm the accelerator of a car and needs to brake.

[00:20:30] Without, it doesn't go anywhere or it crashes into the, a wall. But,

[00:20:34] James Gill: Yeah.

[00:20:35] Steven Collins: I'm constantly at a hundred mile an hour and he's constantly going, hold on. Let's check the boxes as we go. So it's, yeah, a really nice really nice balance for us as well.

[00:20:44] James Gill: That's, I just hope you got a steering wheel as well, Steven.

[00:20:46] That's all. A couple of seats as well, which is nice. Lovely, lovely. No, that's that is definitely so relatable. That a lot in founding teams. It's a, sometimes a real challenge when both the co-founder it's very difficult I think, doing this alone. Absolutely. And I think, a lot of people really struggle with that.

[00:21:09] I think a lot of people underestimate how. Lonely it can be when trying to build a business and those highs and lows and trying to manage that. So going through it with someone who's equally on the journey with you is a huge asset. And then, yeah I think also that is something that I. I know a lot of people struggle with when they, they find someone to work with it like that overlap, even if it's like a 10% or 20% overlap of the Venn diagram of the interest and skillset sometimes is where 90% of the the pain can come from of the relationship.

[00:21:43] No, I think we're maybe at 5% overlap, which is really nice. There we go. Ideal. You can't ask for better than that, really, can you? Amazing. No that's really great to hear. What a fantastic, setup. You've got it. It also, it really, I've, from what I've seen in the platform, like the quality of the software and the, that's definitely the bit where I geek out a lot.

[00:22:05] And it's a really well, constructed platform. It feels very trustworthy, reassuring, and I think all of that quality of the experience is a, another really important part of the. The whole thing here. Where in a related way to the marketing budget of nature, there's, for a long time I guess, there's been a lot of charities trying to do things to encourage you, but like to have really well-made websites and products and software that are doing something about this, I think is also a huge part of the solution.

[00:22:37] So it's yeah, really cool.

[00:22:39] Steven Collins: I can take very little credit for that. That's gotta go to that, the quality of the software. Well done that. But in terms of the, in terms of the overall. The overall picture of what we're trying to build is, for us, it was important that when people looked to us they saw exactly that because we understand that particularly when you see the news of kind of some of the bad press that carbon offset gets in particular Sure.

[00:23:03] It's been planted in a quarry or it's Yeah. In infertile soil or whatever that may be. And so we wanted to dispel a lot of that by, when you look at green perks and you look at what we're doing, you go, actually, these guys know what they're doing. They're making a difference. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:23:20] Those guys really know what they're doing and they're really have done their due diligence. For example the facility that we use for carbon offset, because of course it is a product that we use is UK based. We've been to the site ourselves, we've walked the field, we've vetted it in real time.

[00:23:35] We've made sure that it hits both the kind of global standard and the Woodland carbon code approved standard. So we've done all of the work and not just for that particular site. I'm using that as an example. But all of the platforms that we work with. To facilitate the impact, we've made sure that we've done the maximum possible due diligence to be able to really put our names to it as well.

[00:23:56] James Gill: Yeah, no, it's incredibly important and touched on another point, we probably don't have enough time to unpack fully, but just around that trust is, I think, more important than ever, isn't it? With regards to. Anything climate related. There's been so much distrust, I think caused by many, especially of those bigger companies trying to persuade everyone that they're perfect.

[00:24:20] And actually, I. They're far from it. And yeah. So Steven, you've definitely earned my trust on this episode. I sure many of our listeners as well. I, I know just before we, we wrap up, I know you wanted to share a little bit of advice you were given. I always love this section because it's always great I get to sit here and learn from our wonderful guests.

[00:24:40] Yeah, Steven do share if you. If you want. Yeah.

[00:24:43] Steven Collins: Yeah. So I had to rack my brains for this one and when I saw the question, I was like what can, what wisdom can I impart on people that they and man I don't consider myself to be that wise. So I started to think about really in you too Humbled.

[00:24:57] James Gill: Too humbled.

[00:24:58] Steven Collins: One of the things that really harks back to my younger years, really, probably early teenage years and something my, my, my uncle and my dad used to say about me all the time. And I won't use the exact, won't use the exact comment that they used, but they, like I used to try and run before I could walk, shall we say.

[00:25:17] And they used to preach to me consistently about fundamentals and about getting the fundamentals right and building blocks and the hierarchy of needs and all of these different things, right? And as part of my, as part of my journey now into kind of my thirties. That's been a huge part of my life, both personally and professionally is, okay, let's get the building blocks in place.

[00:25:41] Let's make sure that we're doing the fundamentals right. Let's make sure that we're going step by step. And so that would be my advice to anybody looking to, to build a business is small, incremental. Progress. Make sure you look back and reward yourself on the journey that you've taken.

[00:25:56] And for me, I can be very guilty of that sometimes is only looking ahead and not taking that kind of time to turn back and look and go. Actually, I. If you think of the journey and go, great, I've got a really good idea, but I need someone to build it. Okay, I found a person to build it. Now we need people to sell it to, oh wait we've built it and now we're selling it to people.

[00:26:16] And it's a real product that's in the real world and having a real impact. And so

[00:26:19] James Gill: yeah,

[00:26:19] Steven Collins: being able to turn around and look at where you've come from and that journey and know that you've put the fundamental building blocks in place to get to that is, is really important for people to do.

[00:26:30] James Gill: What a wonderful way to wrap up, Steven. Thank you for that. That and yeah, absolutely. No, you've I hope you're very proud of what you've already created, and I know this is both. Incredible journey you've already been on, but also in some ways still just the start of, I, I'm sure we're gonna be seeing a lot more of Green Parks very soon.

[00:26:52] And I'm excited for the future. So thank you so much for sharing your story today. Steven, it's been a real honor.

[00:26:59] Steven Collins: I appreciate that and thank you very much for having me on and obviously welcoming me. Me feel comfortable, although I wish I would've shut the blinds before we started.

[00:27:07] Look at

[00:27:08] James Gill: that. Yeah. Look at that. Sunshine you got. We can't complain.

[00:27:15] Thank you Steven. And also if anyone wants to check out more we'll put in the show notes links to, yeah, Steven on LinkedIn, but also green Perks itself, the website, and it is@greenperks.io, I believe. Yes. Yeah. Yeah so please do go check that out. If you are running a business and you are curious, like I'm sure it'd be, I'm sure Steven would.

[00:27:33] Welcome. You have open arms to to check out the platform. Yeah. Thank you again, Steven. It's been a pleasure today.

[00:27:38] Steven Collins: My pleasure. Thank you very much, James. Thank you.

[00:27:41] James Gill: And thank you for listening or watching today, everyone. If you've enjoyed today's show. You know what to do, please do give it a thumbs up or a five stars or and or share it with friends, colleagues, whoever might find it interesting.

[00:27:57] It's always such a pleasure to see stories like Stephen. Be spread further and further afield. Please do help with that if you can. And thank you for listening and watching, and we'll catch you next time.