Bonus Episode: Why We Made the Show

We made this podcast for all of us: consumers, business leaders and investors who are trying  to encourage, create and grow better, more sustainable businesses. And hopefully to inspire all leaders with the ways they might make their own organizations better and more successful.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I am ty, I'm the I'm the host of the show.
And let me start off by stating maybe the blindingly obvious.
We live in some pretty weird times. We are more
politically polarized than ever before, the gap between haves and
have nots has never been wider, And there are some
crazy statistics about young people today. Sixty of millennials, for instance,

(00:24):
say they no longer believe in capitalism. That worries me.
I think it should worry you too. So what's going
on here? Well, I think people are calling bullshit. All
the data I see suggests that people, especially young people,
are just losing faith in our system. They are demanding

(00:45):
transparency from companies because they want to know who they
can trust. They want to do business with companies and
institutions that align with their values, and they're becoming increasingly
activist about this. So, unlike previous generations, they actually expect
companies today to be purpose led, to be actively helping

(01:05):
to solve some of the big problems we've faced today,
things like income inequality, things like lack of equitable access
to a meaningful or dignified life, things like climate change.
As a result, we see more and more companies publicly
taking a stand on social and environmental issues, and then
crucially backing those words up with real action. But what

(01:30):
happens when companies start making promises that they stand for
some higher purpose but don't actually follow through with action,
or worse, say they stand for one thing and do
the opposite. Well, as we learned in season one, in
one case, you get the attack on the US capital.
The events of that day were shocking enough, but what

(01:52):
was particularly shocking to me was the growing realization of
the role that Facebook played in getting us to a
place where this was even possible. Facebook says its purpose
is to bring all of us together, and here it
was helping to create the conditions to pull us even
further apart. I decided in that moment that I had
to take a look at as many purpose led companies

(02:15):
as I could to see how many of them might
be purpose washing, to figure out how wide the gap
was between word indeed and why those gaps exist. What
I discovered led to the creation of this podcast. In
the first half of each episode, we do our best
to fairly lay out the facts of the case with

(02:35):
some expert help, and then if necessary, we call bullshit.
But and this is super important. We truly believe that
bullshit is a treatable condition. The cure is positive action.
So in the second half of the show, we bring
in an expert or experts to ideate about the concrete
actions the organization would have to take to start closing

(02:57):
the gap between word indeed and move forward with integrity.
We're also featuring companies who are trying to get it right,
speaking with their CEOs about the challenges and rewards of
running a company that has a true purpose. Hopefully these
episodes will provide some positive and inspiring examples that we
can learn from as we all try to figure out

(03:19):
how to create a more sustainable and equitable form of capitalism.
I really hope you like the show.