Tease Tea's COO, Amanda Baker, shares her journey leading a business, with the focus on making wellness accessible for everyone, at an affordable price.
"True entrepreneurs are problem solvers. That is what they do, that is their fuel for life."
In this month's episode, Tease Tea's COO Amanda Baker shares her journey leading a business, with the focus on making wellness accessible for everyone, at an affordable price.
We also talk about how her passion for social impact has influenced her businesses and helped her make a difference in the lives of other women.
Tease Tea is a certified b corp that offers the world's first fully biodegradable function tea blend collection. Baker also talks about Tease Tea's sister organization, Founder's Fund. The Canadian digital program supports women providing access to funding and mentorship.
Amanda's one policy or procedure she thinks every company, B Corp or not, should have: she believes in policies that benefits the business and the employee as human: financial literacy courses for the staff.
Get in touch with Amanda Baker on LinkedIn.
To contact Peter on LinkedIn from KarmaDharma Creative Marketing Agency
To contact Jeremy on LinkedIn from DeepNet IT Consulting
If you want to be featured on the show, or you know someone who should, feel free to contact us podcast@karmadharma.ca
Jeremy Stayton: Welcome to the Awakened Organization. I’m Jeremy.
Peter Georgariou: And I’m Peter.
Jeremy Stayton: And we have the honour to meet with awesome business owners who are striving to live in a way that is more sustainable, equitable, and just. Peter, who are we meeting with today?
Peter Georgariou: Amanda Baker, COO of Tease Tea, teasetea.com, as well as the Founders Fund, supporting women entrepreneurs, which is a not-for-profit arm of Tease Tea; separate organizations but sister organizations. We have an amazing conversation about all sorts of things, how social environmental solutions can sometimes be the most efficient, all sorts of functional blends about their teas and how they can increase your wellness, you know, and how B Corp Certification is the ultimate test or litmus test, covering all aspects of your business.
Jeremy Stayton: Covered Amanda’s origin story and we also –
Peter Georgariou: Yeah.
Jeremy Stayton: – found out a bit about Founders Fund and some of the awesome work that they’re doing. Some of the ambitious goals and the reforming of their company. And even coming from the world of – of TV and social media, so ...
Peter Georgariou: Yeah. And I think, lastly, you definitely want to tune in, you find the origin story of Jeremy’s obsession with Kim Kardashian throughout the whole podcast –
Jeremy Stayton: [Cross-talking 00:01:25] –
Peter Georgariou: Yeah. Perfect.
Jeremy Stayton: So let’s start just like a landing where we’re at. So maybe a high and a low from your week. Amanda, you’re in Miami, there’s got to be something to that and some international business travel and all that. So just a high and a low, we can all arrive, and then we can just start chatting.
Amanda Baker: Yeah. So Miami was kind of a last minute trip because there were $200 round-trip tickets direct from Ottawa. So I’m not technically here for business. I am here with Sheena, our founder and CEO, and we are talking a lot of business but it was just kind of a spur of the moment thing. So I guess that’s a high for me to be able to just me like, “Hey, Miami. Never been there. Seems kind of fun.”
A low, oh, I hate this, but supply chain is always a low for me because it’s so complicated, especially when you’re doing it responsibly and ethically and Christmas is technically tomorrow if you work in a product-based ecommerce company. So I’d say dealing with supply chain has been my low for the week. How about you guys?
Peter Georgariou: Jeremy.
Jeremy Stayton: Yeah, high for me is first weekend in probably three weekends where I have not been sick. I got some COVID or toddleritis. I got small kids and they just lick the bottom of shoes sometimes for fun. Like, just, “No, I’m going to get whatever you get.” So yeah, so the high is feeling good. Low, it is – I got a like 48-hour bad case of the Mondays. I was talking to you earlier about that but just, oh, man, it started off rough yesterday and it’s been rough until today, so –
Peter Georgariou: What’s up with people, anyway? Seriously.
Jeremy Stayton: People. More people more people problems. I don’t know. People.
Peter Georgariou: For myself, high, yeah, yesterday we – so we’re a marketing agency over here in Ottawa. Amanda, so we landed our biggest contract yesterday out of the blue –
Amanda Baker: Well done.
Peter Georgariou: – for a little boutique spot here who’s pretending to know what we’re doing. So that was cool and we got a really nice email. I have to tell you this from the CEO, it’s a form for international trade training, so it helps people go out and take their Canadian businesses internationally. And she writes us to say like, “You had such lovely references. I hope we’re on the reference list one day.” And I said, “That’s so nice. We haven’t even worked together but I hope you’re on the reference list, too.”
Low, I’m feeling my first case of old maness. I have tendonitis in my knee from over training and I have a race in six weeks and it’s – I was, yeah, low key first-world depressed. And then I saw for physio this morning who says I’m not totally falling to shit. And so, now my spirits are back and my first world problems are addresses, so I’m feeling better.
Amanda Baker: Good. I mean, six weeks is still some time for you to correct –
Peter Georgariou: Yeah.
Amanda Baker: – if you needed to, though, right? I don’t know. I don’t know –
Peter Georgariou: It’s a 13-hour event, so I got to get this thing down pat, yeah.
Amanda Baker: Yeah.
Peter Georgariou: Yeah.
Jeremy Stayton: And then read David Goggins book and realize that you could run on a broken leg for 24 hours –
Peter Georgariou: Yeah, I got it, dude. I will show up with a broken – like I will – so there’s this other guy I run into this old like Obi-Wan Kenobi of marathon running and he’s like, “You just need to get to the finish line.” He’s like, “You need to stop the bullshit. Stop the madness.” Like do you remember that lady Powder? Anyways, she had like the buzz cut of like super blond hair, she’s like, “Stop the insanity.” And he’s just like, “Shut up. Get your shit together and get to the starting line.” I said, “All right. Fine.”
Amanda Baker: I mean, sometimes you need that.
Peter Georgariou: Totally.
Amanda Baker: Like sometimes you need like –
Peter Georgariou: I needed that in that moment.
Amanda Baker: Yeah, the Kim Kardashians of the world just tell people to get up and work, you know?
Peter Georgariou: Got to do it.
Amanda Baker: Yeah.
Peter Georgariou: Got to go.
Amanda Baker: That caused such a – such a wave in the women’s entrepreneurship space. People were so pissed about that Kim Kardashian thing but it was really interesting. Anyway, but tough love is necessary I think sometimes, and sometimes it’s –
Peter Georgariou: Yeah. There was a very –
Jeremy Stayton: So there’s probably a tea for that tendonitis, Peter. And –
Amanda Baker: Oh, there is.
Jeremy Stayton: – we just happen to be talking to Amanda.
Peter Georgariou: Anti-inflammatory?
Amanda Baker: Yeah, Turmeric Tonic. I can send some your way.
Peter Georgariou: Do it. I’m in. Where do I order? Should I just go online? No, I got to support the business, I can take –
Amanda Baker: I’ll just send it to you. I’ll send it to you.
Peter Georgariou: All right. Deal. Well, I’ll send you the email for –
Amanda Baker: Turmeric Tonic is like –
Peter Georgariou: – Mud Water.
Amanda Baker: Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.
Peter Georgariou: OK. Deal. So, Amanda, we do want to talk about Tease, but we wanted to start with you and learn a bit about what got you into this crazy journey of doing good and saving the world while building a strong business. And we sort of LinkedIn stalked you, low key, and so maybe you’ve been on this saving the world journey a little bit. So maybe you can tell us what in your life brought you to wanting to do more than just make money and be the next Kim Kardashian?
Amanda Baker: Oh, yeah, wow, I didn’t know you were going to like throw me all the way back to like teenage Amanda days. I had to like take a second to be, “wow, that one.” I think that what really got me interested in the idea of business for good was way before there was even words for it. I got interested in food security. I initially wanted to be a chef when I was a kid, you know, as a lot of kids do.
Peter Georgariou: Nice.
Amanda Baker: It’s like a very romantic trade to like look up to. And so, I went to culinary school at George Brown in Toronto and I was so interested in the way that food travelled across the world and the power and influence that was involved in food and the inequalities in food. I think that the thing that I learned that really got me was that world hunger is not actually a food issue; it’s a distribution issue and it’s a distribution of power issue. And that just hit me so hard that I became so invested in business and the way that it intersects with equality.
And so, I started going down that path, and I was looking at a lot of community food centres as something that I potentially want to be in for my career. And I was looking at a lot of charities and I was looking at all these things and I was talking to people working at charities and doing some really incredible work but they were all so fucking miserable, and they were all burnt out, and they were trying to do really incredible things with like no resources and they weren’t able to take care of themselves.
And I was just like, shit, like is this really what it is? if you do good you have to sacrifice yourself? Like is this what – is this what the cost you pay is for doing good? And so, I spent years, like, I was a pastry chef and I worked at – actually, I worked at David’s Tea, I was one of the first employees at David’s Tea. But I was doing all these things in the food industry where there was always some kind of either social justice or equality work involved. So when I was a pastry chef I was a vegan pastry chef. And at David’s Tea I was really interested in the ethical teas coming from different parts of the world.
And so, I kind of pursued this in a lot of different ways but I was really disheartened because I thought at the end of my career or when I get to that point where I feel successful in my career I’m probably going to feel like shit as a human being because I’m going to be so depleted. So I was just kind of like swimming in those waters being like, I’m going towards this thing but it doesn’t really feel like it’s going to be long-term sustainable if I want to be a happy person and also make an impact.
Anyway, so a chance volunteer opportunity brought me to Public Inc. Public Inc. is a social impact marketing agency and I learned about them when I was volunteering for this campaign that they were doing called, “Vote for a party.” They were trying to increase voter registration for people like 18 to 35 or something. So the idea was they were standing outside of polls and being like, “Hey, if you vote we’ll give you this token for a beer that you can get at this local brewery like next door.” So it’s pretty much like, “If you vote, we’re going to give you beer.”
And I liked that concept, too, because it was very scrappy and fun but also got a ton of impact. And so I started talking to Public Inc. and I was pretty much like, “Whatever job you have, I want it. Like I’ll clean the floors. Like I don’t care.” So I landed at Public after a couple months after talking to them and they have a very general like office role. They were a start-up at the time, so it was kind of like, “I don’t know, can you figure out filing systems? And can you figure out like how to set up the internet?” Like it was very general and I was just happy to be there because it was the first time in my life that I was introduced to profit and purpose as a collaborative thing.
The way that Philip Haid, the CEO of Public describes it as profit and purpose actually work together. The more profit you have the more purpose or impact you can have and the more purpose or impact you have the more profit you can have. Because it should be part of your marketing, for sure. Like you should make money if you’re doing good, and you should do good if you’re making money. So this idea was like revolutionary for me. Like it changed my entire way of looking at the way and it changed my way of looking at my everyday purchases in life. Like as a consumer it changed, and it changed like the optimism I had for the future of my career because I was like, wow, this is something.
And that was before people were saying social impact and social – all this stuff. Social responsibility wasn’t a thing. Like this was way before all of that. Like every single client that came through Public Inc. store we had to educate them about what social impact was and why it was valuable and why we weren’t just like hippies high fiving in a room with a ping pong table.
You know, so it was – at the time it was very new and fresh and that was really exciting for me.
Peter Georgariou: That’s awesome. It’s funny how we arrive at these things like these pivotal moments. Jeremy, what about you? What was yours? Did you have –
Jeremy Stayton: I like that origin story, Amanda. It is kind of – well, it’s kind of two. Like one was in the teen years and so I went like – it sounds a little bit like kind of Amanda’s a little bit more activism and activist oriented of like, man, this shit is broken, I want to make it better, but not really finding the avenue or the vehicle. And then it was the green BMA program that I did in the early 2000s that really started to like open my eyes to different organizations like Mondragon in Spain, that was like a - they’re a – largest co-op in the world. Something like 20 billion in revenue and nobody ever thinks of a co-op, you know, one worker one vote with 100,000 employees being that big.
So I was just like there’s another model. It’s not all Microsoft or [Monte Santa? 00:12:36] or whatever. And so, similar to Amanda is like this – oh, wait there’s a whole other option that exists that doesn’t just have to treat people in the environment like shit in order to make money. And so, that was just kind of what inspired me. And Mondragon was the one that really, really kind of changed my perception that there’s alternative business structures, too, that exist. And so, that’s kind of why we’re on the path to employee ownership and yeah.
And I just love the stories – the success stories along the way and one of the first ones was Interface Flooring, Interface Flooring. They’re a rug manufacturer, like, Midwest US and they did like airport carpets and the CEO had some revelation [unintelligible 00:13:27] and like revelation of all the carpet that was going to landfill. Because none of it is reusable and he committed to being a net-zero company. This was like 80s, 90s kind of a thing. And in the 90s achieved this net-zero or it might have even been early 2000s, but achieve this net zero with carpeting of like being able to completely stirp it apart, take it part, and recycle, re-use, whatever, all the components and all of the flooring it had a huge impact. So supply chain and just environmental degradation and damage.
Because that was one of the early just examples of like, “Oh, it’s a remake the way we make things.” And the book Cradle to Cradle, William McDonough, it’s the idea it’s sort of something going from cradle to crave, which is most products, is you make it and then you throw it away. Cradle to cradle is that you make it and then it returns to this stream from which it came from. So if it’s organic compounds it’s compostable. Tease. Or if it’s technological steam then it’s reusable. So copper, wire, metal, plastics, all this stuff can be reused and just to not build things in such a way that they cannot be deconstructed and re-used and there’s a whole certification on cradle to cradle. It’s just a different way of designing things.
And even the business parks where the waste output of one building is the input for the next. So it might be hot water or steam or some other grain –
Peter Georgariou: That’s so cool.
Jeremy Stayton: – you know, out of a brewery or something and it’s in the ingesting for the biofuel of the building next door. And then they start – you know, and that, like these ego industrial parks. I’ll get off –
Amanda Baker: I love that. And I love a lot of times I’m seeing that the solutions to social and environmental issues are actually the most efficient financially as well.
Jeremy Stayton: Mm-hmm.
Amanda Baker: And that’s where I get really stoked when I’m like this is a win on both fronts. You can’t always do it, it’s like a fine balance and technology needs to catch up and some things like that. But when you can do that it’s just like, God, damn, that’s just like chef’s kiss for business, you know? It’s like win, win, win all around. And that should be the goal and I think that it’s interesting the way that we’re starting to shift to see leaders and business as leaders for society in so many ways because I think that true entrepreneurs are problem solvers. Like that’s what they do. That’s their fuel for life. So if you have a problem with an environmental thing, give it to somebody who is an entrepreneur. They’re going to figure it out. So I think that it’s beautiful that we’re using those types of minds and applying them to like some big world situations.
Jeremy Stayton: Not to demean any of our non-profit friends, because they absolutely provide a valuable and huge safety net to the world, but I love market-based solutions because they – that efficiency piece is just baked in. It’s just problem-solving and efficiency and the competition aspect means that it really needs to be good and needs to be valuable or it’s not going to have a market. And that just – some of the solutions that come out of market based social entrepreneurship solutions are like mind-blowing amazing ideas that, yeah, took some real ingenuity to come up with.
Amanda Baker: Yeah. And if you’re burned out working in a charity because you’re under resourced and you’re working like 90 hours a week or something you’re probably not going to have the brain capacity to come up with those solutions, right? And not to say everybody working in non-profits or charities is – are burnt out, just I interviewed a lot of people when I was going into that and there was some real consistent patters.
Jeremy Stayton: Well, the research shows that all of their upper level management from executive rep, executive director on down are under paid I think by 40 or 50 percent, if not more, to the private sector. And there is that complex of the – you feel bad for taking money to try it because that could be going back to the recipients of said funds. And so, there was this guilt accompanied with this work which is this whole battle around admin costs for charities which is a totally different topic which pisses me off.
But anyways, because we work with a lot of charities as well and trying to help them get out of their own way often times is not easy. And so, I like the market as a forcing function for creativity and innovation. You’re not getting grants and subsidies to make this happen, right? You got to provide value to somebody out there –
Peter Georgariou: Yeah –
Amanda Baker: – who wants to give you a buck to do it, right?
Jeremy Stayton: So we’re on a small digression here, Amanda, I apologize.
Amanda Baker: Yeah, sorry, I got very excited.
Jeremy Stayton: I’m excited, too. So funny enough, these interviews go all over the place so we definitely wanted to hear your story. But clearly getting into these systematic conversations or where bigger change is going to happen. So I have a question for you. You said when social and environments are sometimes the most efficient solutions, has that manifested itself for Tease? Are there any –
Amanda Baker: Definitely. Definitely. It definitely has. So it’s so interesting when we – so this past yea we completely re-made our business. Sheena has been running Tease for the last eight years. So the company has undergone a lot of different eras, I want to call it, because they were all really valuable and we built on them but we’ve kind of gone back to our roots, so to speaks. In September we re-launched and we really were focusing on functional blends versus just tea bases because that’s how Sheena actually got into blending teas is she was introduced to tea after working in hospitality and she really needed things that were going to do more than what coffee could. So that’s when she started blending these functional blends.
But with that she wanted to be able to do something that what a little bit more innovative than what she has seen in the space. A lot of tea companies, like tea bags, are made out of plastic or bleached cotton, which a lot of people don’t know which is really interesting to me that people are feeling like, “Oh what do you mean by other tea bags aren’t biodegradable?” But it’s not the most cost efficient to build a tea bag like that all the time. Where it does become a little bit more cost efficient, not directly for us but in general, is this stuff is backyard compostable. You can throw it in an organics bin and it’s not going into – it’s not contributing to the waste of a city.
So really when we think about infrastructure that’s where the savings are for a biodegradable product. Although, our cost of goods are higher and a lot of that has to do – we’re still a small company –
Jeremy Stayton: Yeah.
Amanda Baker: – so we still don’t have the buying power that hopefully we will in a couple years. But it was important for us and it’s interesting because that’s why people come to us for that differentiator, for that, you know, we’re being so conscious about the way that we’re building these products that that, in itself, makes us money. You know, part of our marketing is just telling people what we do and how we do it. And there are other traditional tea companies that can’t keep up with that, so they don’t have that differentiator in a market that, let’s be honest, I think everybody has heard of tea. Like show me a person on the planet that has not heard of tea, right?
So that’s also where although the product is costing us more it’s actually a huge differentiator in our marketing and a huge value add that we’re seeing people come to us specifically for.
Jeremy Stayton: Yeah, the other stock based companies it’s harder to pivot when you have shareholder pressure to hit in the numbers. So to go and to increase the cost of your tea bag or whatever, as much as they’re trying to greenwash or social wash their activities as much as they can, not all of them, but some, makes it hard for them to compete because they’re there to drive shareholder value at all cost, right?
Amanda Baker: Exactly. And that’s how greenwashing does happen, right?
Jeremy Stayton: Yeah.
Amanda Baker: Because they’ve got pressure from people to make money so if they go do something that’s like – you know, if they’re going to say, “The contents of our tea bags are biodegradable,” because what they mean is like tea leaves are biodegradable, they could say that, I’m sure, and not get caught for a long time. And maybe some consumers would be like, “The contents of their bags are biodegradable. That’s great for the planet.” But what they don’t realize is the tea bag itself is toxic.
Jeremy Stayton: I have a question on tea then.
Amanda Baker: Yeah.
Jeremy Stayton: I haven’t seen your packaging but I get – well, I get loose leaf now so it’s different, but in the packs, the packs are actually like this aluminum foil with the tea bag you pull out of so that’s also not recyclable, from what I understand.
Amanda Baker: Well, ours are biodegradable. That shiny foil pack that we have is actually a plant-based fiber. So it’s made from –
Jeremy Stayton: All right.
Amanda Baker: – [cross-talking 00:22:26]. Which is really –
Jeremy Stayton: Can you [eat it? 00:22:24] –
Amanda Baker: – exciting because it doesn’t look like it. Like it looks like a foil pack, but if you touch them – when you get your Turmeric Tonic you’ll see. Like when you squish it, it’s got like this crinkly kind of effect and you can tell that it’s not quite the same as a regular foil [cross-talking 00:22:38] –
Jeremy Stayton: Peter, we’ll do a special unboxing and you can eat the whole –
Amanda Baker: Yeah.
Jeremy Stayton: – tea bag wrapper.
Peter Georgariou: My daughter’s would be so psyched if I was here on camera –
Jeremy Stayton: Don’t even open it. Just eat the whole things.
Peter Georgariou: No, I’m kidding. I would never –
Jeremy Stayton: Get the full benefit.
Amanda Baker: Yeah, just ingest it directly. Yeah.
Jeremy Stayton: Like peanuts with shells. I love it.
Amanda Baker: [Bruise optional? 00:22:57].
Jeremy Stayton: Can you tell us a bit about Tease and what brought you to Tease?
Amanda Baker: Yeah, so tea, the world of tea has already been really interesting to me. Mainly because of the way it travels across the world. So this is going back to the food security thing with me a little bit because tea has a really interesting political history. It’s been used as currency. It’s been like – wars have been started about tea. There’s really – there’s tea specific to so many different cultures and growing regions. It’s just something that I think unifies us and also defines and sometimes separates us. So I’ve always been interested in the world of tea.
I started working at David’s Tea when I was like 20 years like way back when David’s Tea was just the one spot on Queen Street and it was actually in a Le Chateau. So that’s how small it was.
Jeremy Stayton: Wow.
Amanda Baker: It was like a project kind of thing. Yeah, it wasn’t a permanent spot of its own, it was like in a corner of Le Chateau. But I started to learn about tea there and learn about the different types of tea and the different health benefits of tea and how to brew things properly because different kinds of tea require different temperatures of water and things like that.
Jeremy Stayton: Yeah.
Amanda Baker: And so, I got so interested in tea and when I left David’s Tea I actually then managed a restaurant that was tea themed. So I kind of continued my tea knowledge there and then after that point I thought that tea was just kind of like an interest and a hobby of mine but I was still very like – still very in and I was always blending my own stuff and I was very curious when there was like a new tea shop in town.
So then about two years ago Sheena was actually looking for somebody to launch Founders Fund and Founders Fun is our sister organization at Tease that funds and mentors women in business. So it’s a big part of what we do for social impact. And Sheena was looking for somebody to help launch Founders Fund and I initially signed on for that because I was like social impact, helping women. I had already been doing this kind of peer circle. I had a very small business and there was other women in Toronto that were a similar energy to me and I was facilitating a monthly peer circle where I bring in speakers and we’d all learn together and we’d all, kind of, you know, we’d vent, we’d celebrate, we would talk all things business.
And so, it was kind of like Founders Fun on a mini scale. So when I saw that Sheena was looking for somebody to do Founders Fun and she had these big visions for it I was like, “Hell, yeah, sign me up.” So pretty much Sheena and I didn’t know each other before that. Didn’t know each other before I got brough on to Founders Fund. And then we started working together and we just realized that we were so values aligned and worked in a really similar way that like less than a year after our – I was at Founders Fund like maybe seven or eight months in she was like, “Listen, I want you to run both companies,” and I said no. I said, “Absolutely not. Like I’m swamped as is. This is too much. Like I can’t possible do both.”
And then she said, “OK. I understand. Like it’s a lot. Like that’s fine.” And then, you know, two days later, “Well, what if you ran both companies?” And I was like, “We already had this conversation.” The thing about Sheena is, you know, I think she’s –
Jeremy Stayton: She’s relentless.
Amanda Baker: – relentless. She’s really great with being relentless. But she’s also very persuasive. She’s very compelling. And so, eventually, I was like, “Fine. I’ll do it. I’ll run the two. Like we’ll see how it goes.” And I’ve just been so in love with it ever since. Like we’ve got to rebuild the company together and we’ve got to – I mean, we certified for benefit corporation shortly before I joined the team, actually. I certified us but I was a contractor at that time and that also I think really solidified our working relationship and also the value I saw in Tease as a company. Because Sheena was kind of accidentally socially and environmentally conscious and had kind of built Tease around her own values when I went to certify us for a Benefit Corporation status it was – I’m not going to say it’s easy because that process is incredibly grueling.
Jeremy Stayton: Yeah.
Amanda Baker: Like so hard I really – I’m very pro certification but anti-certification process because it’s so inaccessible. That’s another topic for another day, maybe.
Jeremy Stayton: We’ll talk.
Amanda Baker: But Sheena was just so on board with every reccomendation I had and she already had like a bunch of policies and ways of doing things that were like light years beyond what a traditional business would’ve been doing. So that really solidified what I wanted to build with Tease and where I saw Sheena and my working relationship going to. And it’s been really great ever since. Like I mentioned, we launched everything last September, so not even a year yet with fully biodegradable. We believe we’re the first fully biodegradable blend collection in the world. We have not seen it anywhere else. Somebody is welcome to like show me another brand but we keep looking and it doesn’t seem like anybody else has been able to do it.
We invested so much time and energy making sure that every aspect of it was intentional. Even like down to the way that the packaging’s design like every blend has a quote from somebody in the Founders Fund community. And it’s –
Jeremy Stayton: Awesome.
Amanda Baker: – typically it’s like related to the blend, too. So we were trying to hit all angles from social, environmental, and then also just like community support. So yeah, it’s been a journey.
Jeremy Stayton: You guys are rockstars.
Amanda Baker: We try. I mean, some days we feel really cool, other days not so much. Other days it’s like aMonday and Tuesday, right, Jeremy?
Jeremy Stayton: It’s always a Monday. So wait, how did you run two businesses after not wanting to run two – like how did that actually work out?
Amanda Baker: Like logistically?
Jeremy Stayton: Yeah. So you were swamped with one –
Peter Georgariou: Sustainably. Sustainably.
Jeremy Stayton: Yeah, sustainably. So we were just talking very kindly about how non-profits tend to overwork and underpay their people [laughter] how did you –
Amanda Baker: Yeah.
Jeremy Stayton: – pull of that?
Amanda Baker: It was rough for a while. I really had to figure out the balance and we did end up bringing a contractor onto Founders Fund to help support me, which was great, because I had already been building Founders Fund so I already had the processes and stuff in place. We started building the team as Tease, too. It really wasn’t – it wasn’t as bad as it sounds. I knew that it was going to be a period of time where I was going to be running the show on both sides. And, of course, with Sheena’s insight and support but it was just rough for a couple months while I was figuring it out. And really like getting my brain around like going from a company that was product based and had direct customers to a company that was community based and had kind of more servicing needs for that community, you know? So it was two completely different skill sets.
But now that I know both companies so well and that I've really built out this iteration of Tease alongside Sheena and built up Founders Fund, I see where they intersect and where they support each other like so easily. We do this thing around after Black Friday there’s Giving Monday. Do you guys know about this?
Jeremy Stayton: Yeah.
Amanda Baker: I feel like it’s still – OK. So Giving Monday, it’s when typically companies who have made a tone of money at Black Friday do like a Giving Monday campaign and – well, it’s true, but it’s – I’m good with it, so long as the money is going to the right spot.
Jeremy Stayton: One hundred percent.
Amanda Baker: They typically – they donate or they support an organization that is for social or environmental good. So what we do on our Giving Monday is we actually like ask our Founders Fund community because Founders Fund is very scrappy and very not sanitized business. It’s very like honest people centric business. So we go to our Founders Fund community and we’re like, listen, like what do you need? What physical items would make your life easier for your business whether it’s like a office chair, a new computer, a meal plan delivery, like if you haven’t had a chance to eat. Because like let’s be honest people run businesses and if you’re not good as a person you’re not going to be able to run your business.
So we asked them what they need and then we get a ton of submissions every year and then at Tease that’s what our Giving Monday is about and we always – you know, we do our best to top it up and really hype it up and get as much money as possible. And we just go and we ship these items to the women that have submitted what they need. And I love that. And I think that the spirit of both companies is really alive in that example of partnership. Because it’s just so direct. Like the impact is just so immediate. Like it’s two days later a business owner opens her front door and there’s an office chair there, you know? And it’s just like, “Here you go. No strings attached. Here you go. Enjoy.”
Peter Georgariou: Sweet.
Amanda Baker: So that was the advantage of me being so involved with both I think. A couple rough months though, maybe.
Peter Georgariou: We won’t tell anybody.
Amanda Baker: Yeah.
Peter Georgariou: We won’t tell Sheena.
Amanda Baker: She knows.
Peter Georgariou: She might’ve been there.
Amanda Baker: Yeah.
Peter Georgariou: So Jeremy’s certified B Corp with DeepNet and we have just finished our application process and are about to submit.
Amanda Baker: Congrats.
Peter Georgariou: Yeah. Thank you. That in of itself, to your point, has been a journey. That’s a lot of frigging questions in one spot and a lot of supporting documents to put together.
Amanda Baker: Mm-hmm.
Peter Georgariou: Why was it important to you/ Tease to get certified? You guys are already do-gooders.
Amanda Baker: Yeah. So this is a question I get a lot because I talk a lot about B Corp and I consult for B Corps, as well. So B Corp is important to be because it’s – embeds every part of the business. There’s a lot of certifications that are very singular in what they look at and how they evaluate. For me. B Corp is the only thing that is looking at every single aspect of your business. If you guys remember there’s like a question about what kind of cleaning products you use in your office. So I love that example because it’s just like the type of stuff you never think about.
I had certified a few companies before I certified Tease. Public Inc., the marketing agency I work for, that was like one of my first tasks because people were like, “We don’t know what to do with this thing but we want it. Can you figure it out?” So that’s really how I became a master of B Corp is like it was just like thrown on my desk week two at Public. But I love it. And I love it because it also – it helps you build out your internal processes so that you can scale in a socially and environmentally responsible way.
I certify a lot of smaller companies and I tell them like, “I’m going to give you processes that you’re going to have to grow into.” Like you might not think that you need a parental leave policy because you’ve got like one employee and it’s like your husband or something. But you will need that eventually if you’re going to get where you want to go. So I love that about B Corp is like it really helps inform the way that you’re building your structure as well.
But that’s kind of the sneaky thing about the – the impact assessment is they don’t tell you that you can actually use it to inform your policy making and your processes, they’re kind of like, “Do you have this?” And so, people read that and go, “Oh, shoot, I don’t have that. I don’t have enough employees to have a policy like that in place. I guess I don’t get those points.” And it’s like, no, build the processes, build the policies. What’s that movie like build it and he will come?
Peter Georgariou: They will come.
Amanda Baker: Yeah.
Peter Georgariou: Field of Dreams.
Jeremy Stayton: Field of Dreams.
Amanda Baker: Yeah. Yeah. That’s exactly what it is. It’s like you got to build it first and I think that the team and the success and all that will come. But I feel like that’s like a sneaky thing about the B impact assessment is it’s not positioned as like, “Here’s a tool to help you build your internal processes,” and your supplier relations and all that depending on your industry. It’s just kind of like a “Do you have this? Yes or no.”
Jeremy Stayton: Yeah, the one on the assessment they got me was, “Who are your top 20 percent suppliers, vendors that you buy stuff from? And are they private owned? Publicly owned? BIPOC minority owned? Like who are they?” And I was like, “I don’t know.” I came up with this list. I was like, holy crap we spend a lot of money with Amazon. We spend a lot of money with whoever. And it was like, is this a private company? Is this a public? And so it was like all this research about the people that we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars with every year. It was like, oh, yeah, where we spend out money matters.
Amanda Baker: Yeah.
Jeremy Stayton: And then they just ask the question of like, “Who are they? And here’s the things we want to know about them.” And that was it and it was just like, oh, time to audit all of our vendors and replace them with purpose-driven companies. Done.
Amanda Baker: Yeah. Isn’t that great, though? Because now you feel good about that. It’s like a blind spot you didn’t know you had and now you can address it and feel good. It’s kind of like I call it a physical for your company because it’s so invasive –
Jeremy Stayton: Yeah. Totally.
Amanda Baker: – and intimate and it can be really embarrassing too when you’re like, “I’ve never heard of a whistle blower policy.” Like a lot of people say that to me when I’m like, “Here is what a whistleblower policy is and this is how you do it.” They’re’ like, “I have never even – should I know that? Am I bad like owner for not knowing that?” But yeah it’s intense.
Jeremy Stayton: I don’t know –
Peter Georgariou: I would say 30 percent of the shit I didn’t know of. Like I was reading on this stuff, I’m like people actually put that in place? That’s a lot of work. The whole thing I was like, “This is a lot of work.” But –
Jeremy Stayton: A lot of work.
Peter Georgariou: – we built a team member guide after it and we implemented stuff and the thing that hit me as a – you know, we started KaramaDharma five years ago now is trans... and we’re 11 full-time with contracts and stuff. How transparent are you about your numbers and your profits and your impact statements and all this? And I was like immediately we started that following week we shared all of our numbers. Here’s what it looks like. What was funny is, first of all, I was scared shitless, but secondly I was like everybody is like, wow, I’m so excited to understand how this all works.
Peter Georgariou: Yeah –
Jeremy Stayton: And what we’re doing with their money. Wow, entrepreneurship isn’t that great.[Laughs]
Peter Georgariou: Yeah.
Amanda Baker: How are we – how are we still OK?
Peter Georgariou: Last year we lost seven grand. How do we still have jobs? Yeah.
Amanda Baker: Yeah.
Jeremy Stayton: Where did that come from, Peter?
Peter Georgariou: [Cross-talking 00:37:19].
Jeremy Stayton: Oh yeah, you lost it. OK. Thanks.
Peter Georgariou: Yeah.
Jeremy Stayton: Thank you for that. No, I’m – I’m semi kidding but not.
Peter Georgariou: Totally.
Amanda Baker: Yeah, no, I totally get it because at Public I was trying to rally to get salary disclosure so that everybody knew what everybody else made so that we could ensure that everybody was being paid properly. Because if you’re, you know, example, a woman and your peer is a man and you have similar expertise and experience. Like you want to be able to check that to make sure that you’re not getting paid less because that happens. But anyways, like, that was too much and too scary and I totally get that, but I think that level of radical transparency is going to become more and more normal –
Jeremy Stayton: I agree.
Amanda Baker: – with the future of work.
Jeremy Stayton: Yeah, I agree.
Amanda Baker: And like the pandemic has done some very horrible things but some very cool shit in terms of –
Jeremy Stayton: A hundred percent.
Amanda Baker: – the way that we work and the way that businesses, too. I was shocked when like that Elon Musk thing that came out. He’s like everybody must be –
Jeremy Stayton: Go to work.
Amanda Baker: Yeah, and I’m like you are a technology company and like the biggest collector of data like in the history of the world. Like you don’t know how to measure your team’s outputs? Like I was so confused at that.
Jeremy Stayton: Right? Yeah. [Cross-talking 00:38:33]
Amanda Baker: If somebody on my team doesn’t do their job I know because it affects the company. So it’s like why is – why is it a problem for people to work remotely if you’re able to measure their value in a role? Anyway, I think I side tracked –
Jeremy Stayton: That was a bit strange. Especially as he’s like going to buy Twitter, you’re like you’re bringing them back old school like from the 20s. “Come back to the factory.”
Amanda Baker: Yeah.
Jeremy Stayton: It was a bit weird.
Amanda Baker: Super weird. I just don’t understand the logic of it.
Jeremy Stayton: Yeah, that’s a whole other podcast to that. We can get into that analysis.
Amanda Baker: Yeah.
Jeremy Stayton: That would be fun.
Peter Georgariou: That would be [laughs] –
Amanda Baker: [Recurring? 00:39:06] guest.
Peter Georgariou: You’re welcome any time. I think we should –
Jeremy Stayton: Elon Musk painted that picture behind Peter, actually.
Amanda Baker: That poor picture gets so much hate. I think it’s beautiful –
Peter Georgariou: It does.
Amanda Baker: – it’s like sunshine.
Peter Georgariou: [Cross-talking 00:39:18] –
Amanda Baker: It’s like flowers. It’s botanical so I love it because it suits teas.
Jeremy Stayton: Everybody in my office, so, being now recently turned 48 and most of – not most, six out of the 11 people seem to be born before ’94 and ’95 like to – that’s like my grandmother’s painting. That’s like so pretty. Thank God it’s not in my office. And I’m like you can go somewhere and I like it.
Amanda Baker: [Unintelligible 00:39:47] gesture.
Jeremy Stayton: Yes, very subtle. So what – talk to us a bit about Tease. What’s the big dream for Tease? Is there like a big hairy audacious goal you guys got set out for yourself?
Amanda Baker: Yeah. I think the big non-measurable goal for Tease –
Peter Georgariou: Yeah.
Amanda Baker: – is that wellness and innovative wellness, like using adaptogens and like certain herbs will become accessible for everybody. Will become comfortable for everybody so that people can really be in charge of their own wellness and not rely on – and not rely on crazy pills that are going to cost you 80 bucks a month or wahtever if you get a subscription because they’re going to be a 110 if you don’t and all these things. So that’s really the big goal is like to make wellness and modern wellness accessible for everybody.
On like the business goal side I really want to see Tease everywhere. Like I just want to – I want to a product that is biodegradable, that puts people’s wellness first, that is at an accessible price point in the wellness category. I want that to be widely available to everybody no matter where you are. Because I think that when we think about wellness and the products that are available we think about big cities. We think about sexy cities like Miami and people taking care of their health there but we don’t often think about people living in more rural areas not taking care of their health.
And I think that as people start to diversify where they are living, another result of the pandemic –
Jeremy Stayton: Yeah.
Amanda Baker: – and another result of remote work, I think that we’re going to see a lot more need for more modern support in all areas, but especially wellness because that is becoming more and more of a concern for people and more of a focus.
Jeremy Stayton: As people are cracking out at the speed of life left, right, and centre. It’s like an epidemic to watch people just cracking under the pressure of speed and expectation out of life. Sorry, this is a total digression but I’m just watching it with a 15-year-old and 12-year-old girls at my house and the pressure of an unopened snap and then I’m like, wow, that’s a thing. So you guys don’t talk, you just exchange photos of each other. Yeah. And he didn’t open that random photo of the side of your head? No. And then like the [eye tears? 00:42:18] and I’m like – and then I expand that into just like adults. And I’m like, wow, we joked about Keeping up With the Joneses but it is like taking up this massive friggen tole on people’s mental health.
So I’m down with you on the wellness, but I think at times it seems like an epidemic onto it’s own, you know?
Amanda Baker: You’re totally right and it’s interesting because I think that with all this obsession about social media and all going so fast and burning ourselves out we looked to like really bizarre wellness trends sometimes. Like things – like a lot of pills and stuff. You know, a lot of supplements –
Jeremy Stayton: Oh yeah, for sure.
Amanda Baker: – are very expensive and come in pill format but that’s not the most comfortable or easier way to take a supplement. And sometimes not like the best actually to absorb those nutrients.
Jeremy Stayton: You don’t absorb it into the blood stream. Yeah.
Amanda Baker: Yeah, a lot of times like water soluble tea is actually the way to go. And it’s also just like a comfortable format and it’s – there’s nothing scary about it. You know how to –
Jeremy Stayton: And everybody needs to drink more water.
Amanda Baker: – everybody knows how to –
Jeremy Stayton: I mean, come on.
Amanda Baker: Yes. Yeah. But I mean, swap water out for some herbal concoctions maybe –
Jeremy Stayton: That’s what I’m saying, everybody needs to drink more liquid. Don’t need more Cokes.
Amanda Baker: Yeah.
Peter Georgariou: Doesn’t it count if it’s tea? It’s still drinking water, no?
Amanda Baker: It –
Jeremy Stayton: Yeah, as long as it’s [cross-talking 00:43:32] –
Amanda Baker: It depends what kind of tea. Because I feel like –
Peter Georgariou: For real?
Amanda Baker: Yeah, I feel like if it’s got caffeine in it or something like that it might not –
Peter Georgariou: Diuretic?
Amanda Baker: – be exactly the same thing but most of our blends are actually caffeine free because most of our blends are there for the functionality of it, right? But we do have some caffeine blends if –
Peter Georgariou: Can you share just a little bit –
Amanda Baker: – I’ll make some tea reccomendations later.
Peter Georgariou: Can you share just a little bit about Founders Fund and the kind of vision goal there? So we just covered Tease –
Amanda Baker: Yeah.
Peter Georgariou: – I would love to hear the sister side.
Amanda Baker: Yeah, so I’ll tell you a little bit of the origin story about Founders Fund, because I think that it makes the most sense in that context. Sheena, when she was building Tease she really didn’t have access to a lot of resources at all. Sheena and I have very similar backgrounds where we didn’t go to business school, we weren’t from families that went to business school or engaged in politics or finance in a big way like we were very – we lovingly call ourselves like white trash families.
So we came from like very working class and so Sheena found that when she did get to a stage where she was opening her business she didn’t have access to a lot of resources, including people to ask advice from, finances, how to do things. And so, she was kind of just waiting around in this big pool of like opportunity and possibility but she didn’t know which way to go. And luckily, Sheena is an exceptional human and learns very quickly, so she was able to figure it out after many, many challenges.
But once she got to a certain point where Tease was a stable business, she was making profit, she was feeling good about it, she was reflecting on her journey and she was like, “You know what, it shouldn’t be this hard. Like it should not be this hard. I shouldn’t have had to like go through all the things that I did just to get financing and just go get advice. Like we shouldn’t be holding these secrets in, we should be sharing them with community.
So Founders Fund really came out of a desire to share knowledge, to share accessible funding. And when I say “accessible funding” I mean easy to apply to. I mean like non-equity, no payback, like, literally, “Here’s your money an do what you need to do with it.” So that’s really where the spirit of Founders Fund came from and with that we’ve – now we have mentors that people can book on the website. Like completely open for anybody to just go and book a mentor based on the mentor’s profile.
Our funding, which we will be announcing, our funding finalist very shortly. Our funding is really easy and accessible. It takes you under 30 minutes to apply to. It’s not this huge government grant thing that takes like four hours and like a piece of your sole. We also have support classes while you’re applying for the really short 30-minute funding we’re like let us do a support class so you can ask this question and we can give you advice.
We’re just trying to support women because women is really – that’s where we saw the biggest disparity – disparity and business. We’re trying to support it to be easier for women to be exceptional in business.And without a lot of the bullshit that we’ve seen from traditional business supports, because a lot of it really inaccessible. A lot of it is really laxed diversity of all sorts. And a lot of it is just very sanitized. Like if you’ve ever been to like a business networking function you know that feeling where you’re not really humans you’re just kind of like –
Peter Georgariou: The worst.
Amanda Baker: – playing a role. That’s not Founders Fund at all. Like every time we bring somebody into the Founders Fund community to do a session or we have quarterly conferences that are virtual to make them accessible, any time we do anything like that I’m like come as a human, don’t come just as a businessowner. Like if you are most comfortable in your pajamas, show up like that. It’s OK if you curse, like, whatever is you is what we want. We don’t want like this sanitized pantsuit wearing like person, you know?
So that’s I think part of the magic of Founders Fund too, aside from like funding and mentorship and community is like we do it in a way that we’re here for humans, not just the business part.
Peter Georgariou: That’s amazing. And there’s a theme that’s emerging here. We talked to – a couple episodes ago we talked to Mike over at Delfi and leading change and similar kind of their purpose driven for-profit and then their mentorship program, which is around emerging leaders, and it seems to be – mentorship just continues to seem to come up as being the thing that’s been lacking. And similarly like [unintelligible 00:48:04] you know, similar to you, Amanda, is like this moment of like, “Oh, there’s another way.” It’s like where are those mentors that show the other way as opposed to media and TV and whatever that’s showing the way which is not the narrative that I was able to embrace.
So I’m super excited that you guys are engaged in mentorship, entrepreneurship with women, that’s great. We had another podcast guest, [Carolina? 00:48:32] who’s all about helping other women entrepreneurs. So it seems that there are people that are rising to fill the need, which is very heartening.
And my last question for you is just what are you seeing in terms of sustainability writ large, like the overall meaning? B Corp just surpassed 5,000 member like what do you see in this macro scale of like, you know, is something good coming?
Amanda Baker: I think something good is coming and I actually think that you hit on it when you were talking about the cradle to cradle thing. I think we’re going to see a lot of closed-loop supply chains. A lot of things like going back into the earth or going back into being manufactured into other items. I think that we’re going to – I know for sure we’re going to see companies that are not doing that are going to loose money. If you are not –
Peter Georgariou: Yeah.
Amanda Baker: – a social or environmentally focused company in 2022 you’re time is limited. You’re on your death bed.
Peter Georgariou: Oh, a new kind of closed loop. I love it. Buying from other eco friendly vendors, right?
Amanda Baker: Yeah.
Peter Georgariou: Other B Corps. So we’re saying like closing the cradle to cradle within the – right? So not only –
Amanda Baker: Yeah.
Peter Georgariou: - on the product supply chain side but also just in the how your dollar is spent. The circular economy side.
Amanda Baker: For sure. And you saw that when you were – you said you were getting all your suppliers –
Jeremy Stayton: Yeah.
Amanda Baker: – and it took you so long to really realize like, wow, this is like a – this is a big issue. Yeah. The more we look at that I think the more that we just – we continue to look at life and business holistically. I think that we’re going to see a lot of strides in the quality of human connection, human life, the planet, everything. Like it’s all connected.
Peter Georgariou: So is Tease every going to have a coffee product?
Amanda Baker: Oh, oh my God, I would kind of love that in a way. I’m not sure what it would look like. It would definitely be like some botanical infused –
Peter Georgariou: Mud Water.
Amanda Baker: Yeah, it might be like a Mud Water situation. Maybe. There’s a couple coffee companies doing some really great stuff, though. Like Four Sigmatic and stuff doing like mushroom-based coffees and they’re pretty ethically sound when you look at their supply chain. So, you know –
Jeremy Stayton: Do you have any psilocybin mixes? Is that coming down the pipeline?
Amanda Baker: You know what, give me that Mud Water document –
Jeremy Stayton: [Cross-talking 00:50:47] –
Amanda Baker: – and maybe I’ll make an exception. Yeah.
Peter Georgariou: Yeah, so I thought Four Sigmatic was sourcing a lot from China.
Amanda Baker: Were they?
Peter Georgariou: I thought so.
Amanda Baker: Oh, no.
Jeremy Stayton: Bastards. Bastards.
Amanda Baker: You know, I could be wrong because there was one mushroom –
Jeremy Stayton: [Unintelligible 00:51:02] –
Amanda Baker: – coffee company that was really good and I remember they had all of their supply chain mapped out on their website and they had a lot of verifying tools for it and I was really impressed. And so, you know, if somebody is already doing something incredible in a space like I don’t really see a need to like move into –
Jeremy Stayton: Steal their thunder.
Amanda Baker: – that space.
Peter Georgariou: Yeah.
Jeremy Stayton: Well, the folks over at –
Amanda Baker: Yeah, if somebody is already doing exactly what I would do.
Jeremy Stayton: – Salt Spring Coffee Company are legit sustainability do-gooders and would potentially have –
Peter Georgariou: OG B Corps, too.
Jeremy Stayton: – a great partnership opportunity to –
Amanda Baker: Oh my God. That would be so cool.
Jeremy Stayton: That would be a fun co-lab because they’re just –
Amanda Baker: Should I just have like a bundle or something that was like a coffee and like tea blend bundle I would be so into that.
Jeremy Stayton: Or you could source from them and –
Peter Georgariou: They’re out in BC?
Jeremy Stayton: – not have to deal with all the supply chain stuff and they could –
Amanda Baker: Yeah.
Jeremy Stayton: – and you know that – I think they’re going for 150 points B Corp score. Like they’re –
Amanda Baker: Nice. Wow. That’s really high.
Jeremy Stayton: – they’re the first B Corp in Canada. I mean, they’re like OGs of sustainability –
Peter Georgariou: Yeah.
Jeremy Stayton: – coffee. Twenty-six years doing it. That would be a great –
Amanda Baker: Wow. I love that.
Jeremy Stayton: That’s what I mean, there’s like the cradle to cradle idea to get somebody like that that you’re like, OK, the best practices, the best product, and then you guys are quite a bit further along on the marketing path, so it –
Amanda Baker: I love that.
Jeremy Stayton: – could be a fun –
Amanda Baker: They’re like the Patagonia of coffee.
Jeremy Stayton: Yeah. Exactly.
Peter Georgariou: Oh my God. Jeremy’s favourite expression. The Patagonia of something. He’s –
Jeremy Stayton: [Cross-talking 00:52:20] –
Amanda Baker: [Cross-talking] is it, yeah? I do say that about a lot of things, as well. It’s just such a good story. Like Patagonia is so –
Peter Georgariou: It is a good story.
Amanda Baker: Yeah, it’s good stuff.
Peter Georgariou: Well, it’s the case study that makes it possible, right?
Amanda Baker: Totally. And it makes it like economically compelling, too. Because they’ve got such a long history, right?
Jeremy Stayton: Yeah.
Peter Georgariou: I just wish their shit was appealing look-wise.
Amanda Baker: OK. Like ethically?
Peter Georgariou: Yeah, it’s just ugly. Like –
Amanda Baker: It suits their demographic, though.
Peter Georgariou: – I don’t want to shop at Lululemon. I really want to support their mission. I need like a B Corp that does athleisure that doesn’t make me look like I just came out of the forest after a six-month hibernation. That’s what I want.
Amanda Baker: Yeah, that’s fair. Yeah. I don’t know of one. I know of a really incredible –
Peter Georgariou: I do.
Amanda Baker: – women’s wear athletic stuff, but –
Peter Georgariou: Do you?
Jeremy Stayton: Ten Tree.
Amanda Baker: – they’re not B Corp certified – they’re called Girlfriend Collective. So they, yeah, it’s women’s wear. They do have like – obviously women’s wear can be worn by anybody. But yeah they’re pretty sleek, really great colours. They kind of have a Lululemon vibe for their style of their clothing but definitely not a Lululemon vibe for their values. They’re pretty cool. Yeah. They’re pretty cool. It’s like –
Jeremy Stayton: Ten Tree.
Peter Georgariou: Like allowed saying that their products are not for big sized women? Plus sized women?
Amanda Baker: Yeah, they don’t do that. Yeah, no, they’re very size inclusive. That Chip Wilson stuff was so funny. Like that was funny –
Peter Georgariou: That was just so not funny.
Amanda Baker: – like so detrimental. Yeah. Funny in a way that it’s just like what is this guy doing?
Peter Georgariou: What the F? What the F? Jeremy, what was your brand?
Jeremy Stayton: Ten Tree. Ten Tree.
Peter Georgariou: Is it with the nice –
Jeremy Stayton: I know them, but do they – my thing is with the fabric. I just don’t want cotton that I’m going to soak with nasty sweat.
Peter Georgariou: They make awesome products and they’re an awesome company based in Canada, Vancouver.
Jeremy Stayton: All right.
Peter Georgariou: They’re doing amazing – so they plant 10 trees for every product you buy and they were using some third party like tree thing – I was on a B Corp call with them and they were using some third party kind of like tree planting verification something. You know, you’re planting trees in Uganda, you’re planting trees in the Amazon, you’re planning trees wherever. And the visibility and the data into it was poor. They built their own. They used blockchain technology to build their own tree mapping planting software which is amazing. It’s this whole separate – so that’s their non-profit mission, right? So that’s their sister org now is this other thing that just creates true transparency into tree planting initiatives, period, and it was to support their own business. Anyway –
Amanda Baker: That’s cool.
Peter Georgariou: – very cool company.
Amanda Baker: I love that because I also think like they could make a lot of money with that, too, as they should.
Peter Georgariou: Totally.
Amanda Baker: It’s an easy thing for other companies who don’t –
Peter Georgariou: And again, a market-based solution to a thing that just doesn’t exist that they can be their own largest customer to fund it and then eventually it will be a product that is valuable to others. So –
Amanda Baker: Yeah.
Jeremy Stayton: Love it. As we’re winding up here, Amanda, I got two final questions for you. Well, probably more than that but I’ll stick to the two for time. One is, not everybody is a B Corp, sadly, but our policies, as we mentioned earlier, that going through are applicable to anybody, B Corp or not, is there any one policy that you guys have or applying that you just think bar none we could share it in the show notes and say, “You should have this in your team member guide or be abided by this one.”
Amanda Baker: That’s hard because I really think that policies –
Jeremy Stayton: You can pick two if you want.
Amanda Baker: – are dependant on the personality and values of the company, too. Because there’s a lot of great B Corp stuff that we don’t do just because it’s not where our priorities are or we –
Jeremy Stayton: What’s your favourite?
Amanda Baker: – [cross-talking 00:55:50] afford it?
Jeremy Stayton: What’s your favourite?
Amanda Baker: OK. My favourite one is where you have an education program for your staff that’s not directly related to the work but that can support the work. So something that we do because financial literacy for women was such a big part of Sheena’s journey and why we built Founders Fund is we have financially – financial literacy training for our entire staff once a year that we do together, they obviously come in on like work time and do it and obviously get paid for doing it. But I really love that because I think that it speaks to how much we value our staff as humans and not just workers. But also it’s just such an important gap, like women’s financial literacy is a big issue and we’re happy to have a way to address it and address it in a community setting, too, where we’re not just Googling what an NFT is and like learning about cryptocurrency.
Jeremy Stayton: So training for everyone –
Amanda Baker: Yes. Definitely.
Jeremy Stayton: – women but for sure all employees there’s – I love that policy. I love it.
Peter Georgariou: I’m still wondering back to the NFT thing how people are paying money for a NBA highlight that’s like on YouTube. That’s still fucking with my brain.
Amanda Baker: I don’t get it, actually.
Peter Georgariou: I don’t get it.
Amanda Baker: I don’t know. I got to do some –
Peter Georgariou: It’s so strange. I don’t want to – I don’t think so. Is there anything exciting, Tease, Founders Fund, or anything that you guys have on the go that you would like to get out into the world.
Amanda Baker: Oh, well, Founders Fund is coming up to our live pitch event. So we have five finalists that are going to be pitching and going home with some funding. So that’s very exciting happening at Founders Fund and always kind of the highlight of the year for us.
Peter Georgariou: Nice.
Amanda Baker: Something happening at Tease. Oh, I don’t think I can say the thing that’s happening at Tease. I think they’re still confidential. We have some really incredible partnerships that we’re very excited that are going to be coming in towards the end of the year, beginning of next year. We have some really values-aligned people are going to be involved –
Peter Georgariou: Kim Kardashian.
Amanda Baker: – with these products. No, it is not Kim Kardashian but it’s maybe somebody that’s a little bit more Tease-like. But yeah, we’re pretty excited about where that’s going and –
Peter Georgariou: You’re going to set him off on random guessing here Amanda. It’s going to make it awkward.
Jeremy Stayton: No, I was just – I’m hoping that we recorded you talking about Kim Kardashian early and so it’s not just –
Amanda Baker: So it doesn’t seem like it’s your thing?
Jeremy Stayton: An obsession with Kim Kardashian.
Amanda Baker: Why are you so obsessed with Kim Kardashian? [Laughter] But yeah, so we have some big partnerships coming up that we’re really excited about that are going to be, business-wise, very big and exiting and a new territory for us as a company.
Peter Georgariou: Are you guys in the stores or not? Fully online?
Amanda Baker: We are. Yeah, we are. So we’re in the Bay and Indigo online and then we have – I think we’re up to 300 retailers across North America, independent retailers.
Peter Georgariou: OK.
Amanda Baker: That was a really intentional expansion for us in the last year actually because we weren’t in a lot of retail spots prior to the launch, the re-launch of the company.
Peter Georgariou: It’s great for brand awareness and distribution. Congrats.
Amanda Baker: And we’re just trying to get into more hands. Yeah, we just want more people to try it and honestly just think about their health.
Peter Georgariou: Before we head out did you have any questions for us before we go?
Amanda Baker: I want to know what you guys think is the most exciting or important B Corp policy. Like what’s the one that really hit it for you guys?
Peter Georgariou: Well I talked about the financial transparency thing earlier. I think I also really liked having social environmental goals, declare it for the organization, but embed it into employs performance reviews. So I just found it very interesting that we talk about it and we set up a social justice committee and a green committee but that’s the shit that often, not always, falls off because you get busy and we still feel like a start up five years in and like everybody gets busy but when you have it baked in to, hey, at the end of the year, if this is a good year or bad year will partially depend on if you made a difference in this world through this company I think it’s good to put it on paper. It’s kind of like, I don’t know, you can be with someone and I get marriage isn’t for everybody but it’s a little bit different when you get a signed piece of paper. Not for me.
Amanda Baker: Yeah I love that.
Jeremy Stayton: Yeah for me it was our sustainable purchasing policy. So it came out of that. My like ah hah, I was like oh crap. So we actually put a sustainable purchasing policy in place and then through that created a whole program so we – one we plant trees to offset our employee’s IT footprints or our customer’s ID footprints but out of the purchasing side came an e waste initiative. So we found the responsible e waste handlers across all of North America and then wherever our clients are in North America we will responsibly make sure that their e waste doesn’t go in the land fills overseas kind of a thing and that it’s handled the right way and certified as such.
And so that all came out of that. Doesn’t fit for most businesses and industries but it fit really well for us. And so it was an impact place for us. I was excited about.
Peter Georgariou: And wasn’t B Corp – I don’t know if it was B Corp related, but we also launched our unlimited personal time off and if you need time, take time. It’s such a philosophical shift to treat people like adults saying, “Hey, I’ll trust you and you’ll trust us and maybe we don’t need to legislate the fact that you have to work the system to use that extra sick day or take the extra vaca day. You need time, take time. You need to go to the doctor, go to the doctor. You need to take care, go take care of your kid.” Without all this worry about, “I don’t have time left. I can’t...”
It’s amazing if we treat people like human beings and adults. Maybe it could pay back I don’t know. It’s like I’m going out on a limb here but it might pay back.
Amanda Baker: I love that. Yeah.
Peter Georgariou: We’ll see. OK. So, Amanda, thank you for your time and do come visit when you’re in Ottawa. I will send you the Mud Water stuff. And when, yeah, we’re down the road so we should grab some tea. There’s a David’s Tea near here but we won’t go there. We’ll just celebrate with yours. I drink tea on the daily so I’m super down. I hope you have like – I’m going to go check out if you have some jasmine variation.
Amanda Baker: We don’t, but I have a personal stash.
Peter Georgariou: That sounds very illegal but everything is legal here in Canada now. So we’re good. So thank you for your time. Amazing work with Founders Fund and Tease. So inspiration. My dream is now to get on Ellen somehow to follow in your footsteps. Yeah, thank you for your time.
Amanda Baker: Thank you. It’s been fun.