Meet the Mancunian - Talking climate friendly businesses with Hannah Cox

Meet the Mancunian-5.12-Hannah Cox – transcript

Intro

Welcome to the fifth season of the Meet the Mancunian podcast, social impact stories from Manchester. I'm Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe, your friendly host. It's a privilege and a pleasure for me to interview some of the most inspiring people working in Manchester's social impact sector and feature them on this podcast.

My guests are leaders and worker bees associated as employees, trustees, and volunteers with social enterprises, non-profits, and community groups. They share their life stories and passions with you, dear listener. My aim through this podcast is to inspire you and share a bit of good news.

My guests tackle serious concerns in Manchester but many of these are also universal themes resonating in many parts of the globe. All my guests talk about the power of collaboration and how together we are stronger. They, of course, expand on their pride in Manchester and Mancunians as well.

I hope you enjoy listening to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or Google, or any of your favourite podcasting platforms. You can also listen to the podcast episodes and read the transcripts on my website www.meetthemancunian.co.uk.

If you are a new listener, you can log on to www.meetthemancunian.co.uk to listen to the first four seasons of the podcast and read more about my podcasting story. If you are a returning listener, welcome back. Thank you for your support.

Welcome to the twelfth episode of the Meet the Mancunian podcast, season five. This is the season finale. The Meet the Mancunian podcast will take a short break over July and August and return with a whole new season of inspiring guests on Tuesday, 5 September 2023.

Looking to help purpose-led businesses thrive? We hear from Hannah Cox, Founder, Better Not Stop Better and Business Network in this episode.

Episode 12

[00:00:00] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I'm delighted to introduce my guest, Hannah Cox, founder, Better Not Stop and Better Business Network. Thanks so much, Hannah, for taking the time today.

[00:00:11] Hannah Cox: Thanks so much for having me, Deepa.

[00:00:13] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: So first, tell us about how you found your passion for purpose- led businesses. Where did that come from?

[00:00:19] Hannah Cox: I've always been really interested in charitable work and social impact work and sustainability outside of my professional life. And then when I hit my early thirties, I went on a big trip with my partner around the world. We travelled from the UK to Bhutan over land. And we went through all these amazing different countries, and I interviewed lots of people asking them what made them happy.

And for most people the answer was, having purposeful work and having really good relationships, whether that was with their friends or with their family. And after I came back from that trip in 2018, I just thought that's what I want to do with my work, I don't need this to be separate anymore. I want my passion to be my work, my work to be my passion. I made the decision then to focus on things that were purpose- led.

[00:01:11] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: That's amazing and that trip sounds fascinating. If there's time, I'd love to hear more about it. And I love that people chose happiness and also being purpose-led, and that's something that I'm personally also very committed to. Committed to social impact, whether it be the podcast or my professional life, and like you, not in my thirties, but a little later on, decided that I don't want to just be doing volunteering on the side. Everything I do needs to have social impact, community impact, and be meaningful.

So tell us about Better Not Stop and Better Business Network. How did you get involved and what does it do?

[00:01:51] Hannah Cox: Well, my original idea for Better Not Stop, was social impact food travel experiences for entrepreneurs. Because I met so many amazing people as I travelled -loads of incredible business people and really based on their culture and their city and their kind of environment, they were coming up with different solutions to challenges.

And I thought, wow, what a great opportunity there is to connect all these entrepreneurs together and they can share. Their experiences and actually potentially people from different cultures, different backgrounds will help come up with different solutions. I thought that's a great business to start.

I didn't consider that there was about to be a global pandemic. I launched, spent about a yar on the business plan working on it in the background while I was running another business. Launched it in September 2019. Spent about a month in Korea working on building up the Asian side of the office.

And then obviously Covid happened. I needed to pivot, and I still knew I wanted to work with purpose-led businesses. A lot of business owners I knew in Manchester was suffering from the effects of Covid, wondering what to do to make their businesses more sustainable. I had been looking at becoming a B Corp certified business, so I thought, well, I've got some time to focus on that in my company.

Now, had friends who wanted to do that too. I offered to help them and it kind of went from there. It was real, a values-led approach. I offered a lot of pro bono support to other business owners, and off the back of that it turned into its own kind of business and organisation.

And as part of that, I noticed that I wanted to be networking and connecting with other business owners that felt the same as me, and I couldn't find a business network out there that aligned with my values. So it started as a side project, but now is its kind of an own business in itself, but still sits within the Better Not Stop banner of a membership organisation that business owners can join to be signposted towards ways they can be purpose driven and impactful as well.

[00:03:53] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you for sharing that. And just because we have listeners from 49 countries now, can you tell us a little bit about what B Corp corporations are and how that allies with better purpose-led businesses?

[00:04:06] Hannah Cox: Of course. So B Corp, the ideas of B Corp started in the States back in 2006 and it came to the UK quite a few years ago now, but it's really gained traction in the last few years. I think when I started helping businesses become B Corp in the UK, they're around 400. Bearing in mind there's nearly 6 million businesses in the UK.

And even now there's around 1400 B Corps in the UK. But again, when you're looking at how many businesses there are in the UK, it's still a very, very small amount. Essentially, it's a certification a business can get regardless of its industry or sector. So as long as it's a for-profit company, it's a certification a business can go for.

And it looks at five different aspects of that business, how it governs itself, how it looks after its community, how it looks after its customers, how it looks after the environment, and how it looks after its workers and businesses need to essentially pass an assessment to become a B Corp. And they also have to make in the UK, a legal change to their business to say they work in the interest of the stakeholders, not just the shareholders.

There’s businesses all around the world, which are B Corp. Ones most people listening to the podcast would've heard of are Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, Patagonia and Innocent drinks. So there's lots very well-known consumer brands that are B Corp, but it's really popular within small businesses starting out. Small businesses starting out, wanting to build their businesses on this kind of framework of profit being the fuel to grow your business, but not particularly the destination of where you need to be going.

[00:05:44] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thanks so much for sharing that and that's really interesting. Especially like that commitment to stakeholders and then taking the entire stakeholder approach.

What are the challenges you've faced in this journey of setting up Better Not Stop and the Better Business network? I'm sure there have been many, not just the global pandemic itself.

[00:06:05] Hannah Cox: I think with every business there's always a challenge of finance and starting a business on your own. Do you seek investment? Can you even get a loan? I was quite lucky they have something called the Business Growth Hub in Manchester, so I'd managed to get a start-up loan.

But I had to be the personal guarantor for that. So finance has been difficult. Finding my community was difficult and actually growing the network has been a really great part of growing the business as well, but I think the hardest part has been talking to quite traditional business owners who still don't quite understand purpose-led business or why you would make business decisions that might not be the most financially commercially viable for the business, but you are doing because you know it's the right thing to do.

So that's been challenging, because we are built in a society where businesses exist to make money. So to try and explain that businesses actually can make money and do good at the same time. Challenging that concept with traditional business owners and business leaders has been interesting.

But I enjoy that. Like you said when you were saying, you had this kind of awakening about how you wanted to do business and I thought actually I want to show that you can be a for profit company, and you can make money and you can do good at the same time. And they shouldn't be separate.

They should be things that work together because that's what we need right now. We need those things to work together for us to have a successful future.

[00:07:36] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you for sharing that, and I always ask the challenges question so that others can learn from your experiences and how you've managed to successfully navigate that.

Can you tell us a little bit about what impact you made so far? How long has it been since you started?

[00:07:53] Hannah Cox: So I would say so I would say we properly started in 2021. 2020 was definitely a year where I was trying to find my feet, figure out what services I could offer. Did a lot of pro bono work. I'm not from a rich family. I didn't have a pile of savings to sit back on. I actually worked as a chef in a pub during that time, doing 40 hours a week, and the rest of the time I worked on my business. So I have the privilege of, I didn't have kids to look after during the pandemic. But it certainly wasn't a particularly kind of easy journey, restarting the business.

Since we started the company, I've helped nearly 50 businesses through different stages of how can they have a bigger impact. And that's kind of one-to-one as a service-based business, I've done workshops helping hundreds of other business owners either learn how to be B Corp, we put other sustainable practices in their business.

We have hundreds of members in the Better Business network. We put on a summit in partnership with Manchester Met Uni back in January where we had 350 plus business owners come together talking about how do we create a better future for people in the planet.

So at this stage, actually even speaking to you now, the impact we've had as a company, because it's not just me.There's other people that work with me now, I'm very lucky to say is thousands of people, which feels crazy to even say, but it's been just sheer dogged hard work and determinedness to make that happen. If you'd said to me three years ago that's the impact I would've had, I would've been very surprised.

But it's definitely taken a village to do this. I wouldn't have been able to do any of this without the support of my partners, without the support of business owners that I know just being there, at the end of the phone, at the end of a WhatsApp when you've had a rough day. But the impact we've had, I think definitely In Manchester has been quite big.

We've started to build a community of businesses together now who are actually realising, actually we are not these siloed people on our own who feel like this. There's a lot of us who want to put purpose at the heart of what we do as a business, and if we can all work together, we are going to be able to help each other grow even more.

I find the impact is best when you give without expecting anything in return because then people are it almost feels like you put that energy out and that's the energy that you get back.

[00:10:15] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Oh totally. The universe is listening, and it sounds like in two years you've had a lot of impact and that's amazing. Kudos to you and your team. It's really great.

[00:10:26] Hannah Cox: Thank you so much.

[00:10:28] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: How can interested people reach out to you and learn more? Website, social media, anything else? Your Better Business network.

[00:10:36] Hannah Cox: I'm really, I would say, prolific on LinkedIn mostly because that's pretty much all I use - LinkedIn and a little bit of Twitter. Going back to what you were saying earlier about challenges, I think for me personally, one of the biggest challenges has been trying to do things differently when my gut is telling me that when actually every other piece of advice I'm getting is contrary to that. And, one of those things was, oh, you need to have Facebook, you need to have Instagram. You need to be posting on social media like this. That just didn't work for me. I found it very distracting. I found it very stressful.

So how people can get hold of me is, is LinkedIn and Twitter, because for me, that's got my professional head on. And I also have a newsletter as well. We have one through Better Not Stop, and also one through the Better Business Network where people can keep up to date with, with what we're up to.

[00:11:26] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: And you want to mention the website as well?

[00:11:28] Hannah Cox: Oh yeah. It's just better not stop.com or it's the Betterbusiness.network are the two websites.

[00:11:35] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thanks so much for sharing that, and I think you're very right to kind of pick your platforms, rather than try to spread yourself thin, to focus in on a couple and make them your own and make them authentic. I think listening to your gut works in this case.

What advice would you have for people looking to start something similar in other parts of the world? You talked about the original idea being, to connect entrepreneur communities together, and I'm sure there's still legs to that, but if people are listening and they want to start something similar, what would you suggest?

[00:12:09] Hannah Cox: I would say go for it. We call ourselves a sustainable impact and behavioural change agency. So aside from the membership organisation, essentially what we do as a business is we go into other businesses and help them implement systems and processes, which are going to help them have more of a positive impact, whether that's internally or to their customers or to the widest community.

I think when I started, I wasn't sure whether there was a market for it. I was lucky enough to be able to market research and test that, go to people, offer my services for free, get some honest feedback about what people thought, get some testimonials. But I would say definitely you need to go out there and you obviously need to do your research, see what competition there is out there, but we all have a U S P because no one is going to do business exactly the same way we are.

Even if I opened my emails and Google Drive to you Deepa, you'd send your emails in a different way. You'd speak to different people in a different way. So I think we all just need to think when we're starting a business, if there's other people doing similar things, all that means is you're not the only person who thinks this is a good idea.

So that's, I always see that as a positive thing. I guess the advice I would give is listen to the business advice, but also go with your gut. I mean, there's been many times I've taken business advice and it's just not felt quite right. And then, you know, two or three months later, I've just thought I should have just listened to my gut there.

I should have said no to that, or I should have said yes to that. So definitely, my biggest piece of advice would be, totally go for it. But whenever you're having to make those big decisions and those big thoughts, you don't need to apply to that email straight away. You can sleep on those decisions.

And sometimes if you are, if your gut is telling you something, even if you're not sure why, trust it, because it's usually right.

[00:14:01] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I like that very much. Especially the two which stood out for me was sleeping on those decisions because, sometimes spontaneity is good, but sometimes it's also good to just let it all play out in your subconscious mind probably when you're doing something else.

My best thinking is when I'm walking my dogs, I'm most creative at that time. I have no idea why, but it really works for me. And also the bit about trusting your gut and it's good to listen to other people's experiences, but they may not quite fit with your preferred ways of working.

An opportunity now for you to talk about anything I haven't asked you about. Anything coming up in the next few months you want to talk about?

[00:14:45] Hannah Cox: We are doing some really fun stuff actually the next few months. We're doing a lot of work with behavioural change at music festivals. So we are looking at how do we get audiences together and looking at collective action and what they can do rather than just as an individual. I mean, what I'm doing as a prime example of that with the network, I know my personal individual impact is quite small.

It's the reason I've decided to work with businesses. Because every time I work with a business, I'm suddenly impacting more than just even that one person I'm working with. It's all their customers, their clients, their employees. There's quite a good ripple effect there. I would say just if anybody is interested in that sort of stuff reach out to me if you've got any books you'd recommend or businesses you think are doing exciting stuff in that space when it comes to behavioural change or regeneration.

Donor economics is something we are looking at in our business. Introducing workshops, we introduced carbon literacy workshops in the last year, which have been really popular. We now offer those for free to our Better Business network members.

I would say if you're UK based, please check the network out, see if it's something that might fit with you. If you're not UK based but you think it might be something that would work where you are, where you live and where you're based and you'd like to discuss that, let me know. Because we do have members from around the world just in the singulars rather than in the hundreds.

But anyone that's purpose driven business owners, I always love to stay connected and see what other people are doing. So it'd be brilliant to hear from you on LinkedIn or on Twitter.

[00:16:18] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thanks so much for sharing. That sounds really exciting. Behaviour change is something I got exposed to quite recently. Although I think I've done a few behaviour change campaigns in my in my communications career, but without knowing I was doing behaviour change, but the science of it and how it works was something I got exposed to in my recent public sector assignment.

I'm now going to ask you the signature questions I ask all my guests. And the first one is, can you describe the Mancunian spirit in a word or a phrase?

[00:16:52] Hannah Cox: Oh God, that's so hard. Also, you're asking a southerner this, and I've lived here for 12 years and I'm always told I will never be a Mancunian. So Mancunian in a word or a phrase? My experience has, I don't want to say friendly because I feel like that almost underplays the atmosphere up here.

I would say revolutionary. That's how I would describe, the energy of Manchester is revolutionary. The suffragette movement, the Industrial Revolution. So many incredible political revolutions happened in Manchester, and that's why I'm so excited about doing the work that I do here because I really think social impact and purpose driven business, I mean, this is the place to do it because Manchester is such an incredible city for being open to new ideas and innovation..

[00:17:48] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I love that very much - the first time I'm hearing that. Obviously, I know about all the revolutions and the suffragette moment, but the first person to use that word of phrase, so very unique.

Can you share a Mancunian who inspires you and tell us why? It could be somebody in the past or somebody living now.

[00:18:06] Hannah Cox: Oh, that's good. That's a good one. I'll go with someone living now. Someone who's really inspired me at the moment is a guy called Michael Taylor. He runs a podcast called Northern Spin, actually. I  really enjoy the podcast. I've never thought I was a politics person. Maybe I'm working class, so I didn't really fit with my vibe.

But him and Chris McGuire, who he runs the podcast with, they've introduced me to not just politics, but northern politics and actually having a bit more understanding about the difference between local authorities and councils and what's happening in Westminster and devolution and I find their podcast makes politics accessible for all.

And it's from two people who've been in business and politics who are very long time in their careers. So for them to be able to bring out a podcast which is accessible to everybody and also is funny and enjoyable to listen to one class is themselves as conservative with a small C.

It's a very exciting to listen to them, challenge each other and the views and opinions. So, Michael Taylor would, I met him on a Fresh Walks run by another inspirational Mancunian called Michael DePalo. And ever since I met him, he's been friendly, kind, always open to sharing knowledge and an all-round nice guy, but also just creating some really incredible. I don’t know whether you call podcast art, but you know, art or whatever you want to call podcasts. And I think that's just such a lovely quality for people to have, to be creators. So I'd go for Michael Taylor.

[00:19:42] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you. I'm going to check out the podcast. I haven't heard about it, and I could definitely do with a little bit more of knowledge about the local political scene as a new Mancunian and a new UK resident.

What's the most important life lesson you've learned so far?

[00:20:00] Hannah Cox: Well, my business name actually. My mom and dad divorced when I was quite young and I only really became close to my dad just after I finished uni, but unfortunately, he retired at 60 and then died a few months later. He got cancer and died very quickly.

And he'd spent his whole life working for the same company and he had all these dreams of when I retire, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. And one of the things, I think I was lucky, I guess, in the fact he didn't die suddenly., I had a chance to have some final conversations with him, and one of the things I did ask him was, do you have any regrets? Is there any advice you'd give me?

And he said, don't stop, don't settle for a life that you are not happy with. So, the name Better Not Stop, came from something my dad said to me, you know, 12 years ago. And I had it as a blog. I then used to run little events in Manchester and then I see it as karma. Just this waves of energy.

It just came about in 2019 that suddenly it had legs, it had an idea, it became a business. But Better Not Stop does stand for this idea that we have the power and the responsibility to live really purposeful lives. So, I would say that would be my advice to anybody out there that don't let people think you don't have the power to change your life.

Because if I could, then I think, there's a lot of power people have within them to make changes.

[00:21:33] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: That's an amazing life lesson. I was smiling because I could see your dog popped its head in and then, yawned at me and went away like, okay, you're not doing anything very interesting. If I didn't have a podcast on Meet the Mancunian, I would have a podcast on dogs. It's something I want to do at some point. I love dogs. I have two of my own as well.

If you could have one superpower, what would it be?

[00:22:01] Hannah Cox: That's a really hard one actually. I've been asked this before and every time I think I've come up with a really good answer and then every time afterwards I immediately regret my answer. So, if I could have a superpower, mine would be to suck the carbon out of carbon capture there. I could solve the climate crisis.

There we go. I mean, what better superpower than solving the climate crisis? I'm sure the billionaires would come up with something else was to be terrified about. But yes, some way in which I could solve the climate crisis would be a pretty good superpower to have.

I think beyond that, being invisible so I could be nosy.

[00:22:38] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Okay, great ones. I hope you can solve the climate crisis. That will be wonderful. And yes, being invisible could have its moments. Definitely.

Hannah, thank you so much for talking to me and my listeners. It's been a real pleasure to learn about, you know, all the amazing work you're doing with purpose-led businesses.

[00:22:56] Hannah Cox: Thank you. I appreciate it.

Outro

Hannah, Thank you for talking to me and my listeners. I really enjoyed learning about helping purpose-led businesses serve their communities.

I hope you enjoyed it. And it motivates you to follow your own dreams and passions. Please do consider visiting the website, www.meetthemancunian.co.UK to leave me some feedback or suggestions on what causes resonated with you or ones that you would like to see featured here. I really welcome listener feedback and will do my best to incorporate your suggestions in future episodes.

The Meet the Mancunian podcast will take a short break over July and August and return with a whole new season of inspiring guests on Tuesday, 5 September 2023. I wish you a lovely summer.

You can follow the podcast on social media as @Meet the Mancunian on Instagram or Facebook or as @MancunianPod on Twitter. It would be lovely if you can share or leave a comment. Please do also consider introducing this podcast to a friend or a family member.

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Thank you so much.