Entrepreneurs for Impact (EFI) Podcast: Transcripts
#74:
Software for corporations speeding to sustainability leadership — Mike Hanrahan (Co-founder) and Alyssa Rade (CSO) of Sustain Life
Chris Wedding:
A two for one, if you will, today with Entrepreneurs for Impact. We have two guests, Mike Hanrahan, Co-founder, Board Member, Interim CEO for Sustain.Life and Alyssa Rade, Chief Sustainability Officer, coming to us from the Northeast, just outside New York City and inside Brooklyn. So, a little ways away from quite a little Chapel Hill. Hey, Mike, Alyssa, great to have you on the podcast.
Mike Hanrahan:
Hey, Chris. Yeah, thanks so much for having us on. Excited to be here.
Alyssa Rade:
Yeah. Absolute pleasure.
Chris Wedding:
I'm still smiling because before pressing record, we said, well, what possible notifications could disrupt our podcast? Mike had one of the best ones yet, which is, if someone rings your doorbell, Mike, I think you said Google Home will say something very loud like, “Mike,” yeah.
Mike Hanrahan:
Yeah, it'll say, “Hey, someone you know is at the front door,” or, “Someone you don't recognize is at the front door.” They are the two options.
Chris Wedding:
Oh, my gosh.
Mike Hanrahan:
Yeah, not fun during a meeting. Certainly, [crosstalk – 00:02:22] recording a podcast.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, I'm partly scared by it knowing who you know, but anyway, if it happens, maybe it will occur at the same time as Alyssa's dog barking and we'll be keeping it real during COVID on the podcast. Just to start us off with, Sustain.Life, give us a summary in a couple sentences. How about that?
Alyssa Rade:
Sure. I'm having to take this one. So, we're an environmental management and carbon accounting SaaS tool and we help companies really launch and manage sustainability programs all the way from the ground up, building towards ambitious goals like net zero. We do that across three primary pillars of measure, manage and report.
And so, that's how we typically describe our whole offering, but really helping businesses operationalize sustainability, launch those programs and build them all the way up towards net zero to really reach the climate goals that we know we need to get to as a planet.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, but wait, Alyssa, I thought that was so easy. Why do they need help?
03:24
Alyssa Rade:
Exactly.
Chris Wedding:
Ha-ha-ha. Cool, so now the listeners know what's coming, but then we're going to rewind and we're going to try to tell them something they need to hear. That question is, what is a mistake that you all see many CEOs making perhaps that you're trying to avoid? What comes to mind there?
Mike Hanrahan:
Yeah, if I'm allowed to talk about two different mistakes, I'll say there's one tactical mistake that I see a lot of CEOs making. Probably one strategic mistake that I see pretty regularly and one I think we work hard to avoid. On the tactical front, I think a lot of people don't empower the people they work with. They don't give them the latitude to do what they were hired to do. They can often micromanage, not necessarily with bad intentions or in a negative way, but sometimes that's the dynamic that plays out because people are trying to set up a new startup. It's their baby, they want things done sometimes their way.
And so, by not empowering people, by not getting the leverage out of everyone that's in the company, I think that can be a real break on success and on moving forward and on doing what you need to do. That's something I see is very common and it takes two forms, I would say. Sometimes if people are in a company together, their peers, they'll often operate as a unit, as a committee and it's not so much an empowerment thing, but it stops getting leverage from everyone in the company. There needs to be more of a divide and conquer mindset. Then the other dynamic is where you've got a boss maybe, or a founder, or a CEO hiring some people and just applying too much oversight to what they're doing.
So, I think that's a tactical mistake that I see, not just CEOs, frankly, but you'll often get it right across the business. And so, if you want to get the most out of your people, and hopefully you've hired great people and they're good at their job, you got to give them the latitude to make mistakes, operate stuff down and you'll have a stronger company for it.
On the strategic side, a big mistake and it's something that's hard to do, frankly, and I still find myself sometimes making the same mistake, but it's about managing failures. Things never go according to plan and how you react to that and how you deal with that and how you maybe sometimes try and predict that, I think is instrumental to how you move forward as a company.
One that I think is very common is linked to this sunken cost fallacy where a co-founder has invested a lot of time, energy, mental energy, bandwidth in an idea, in a strategy. Sometimes if it's not working out, they can be either blind to that fact because they've spent a lot of time trying to convince investors, customers, the partners, maybe themselves. They maybe drunk their own Kool-Aid and they haven't taken that step back, be objective, look at something from a 30,000-foot level and be intellectually honest with themselves and say, “Is this really working? Is what we're doing here really the right thing that we should be doing?”
And so, I think finding time to do that as a CEO is difficult. It can be a difficult conversation with your management team or with yourself, but I think it's something that CEOs need to do regularly. There are so many stories out there of startups that just grind to a halt very, very suddenly and people hear on a Friday morning, they're out of a job or whatever. This is something cost value -- Say they’ve invested all this time, money, energy, they don't want to maybe admit that something is not going the way it should. So, that's a strategic mistake and as I said, one, we try and guard against ourselves.
06:53
We do a very rigorous exercise once a month to say, “Hey, are we doing the right thing here? Are things going as well as they should? Are we making excuses for things that are maybe not going as well as they should?” And so, trying to be rigorous about that and being honest with yourself and being transparent with the company as well in terms of how things are going, that's a mistake we see a lot and I think sometimes leads to failure and bad outcomes.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, those make a lot of sense. How about picking up on the last one, can either of you pick an example of that mistake or others in you-all’s roles with Sustain.Life or other ventures to make it tangible for listeners? Yeah.
Mike Hanrahan:
Yeah, I will absolutely talk to this because I've had many failed ventures in my past and so I feel I've learned a lot as I've made my journey. I spent a lot of time in London trying to build various startups with a very good friend of mine. The big mistake we made time and time again over there and a mistake that I never really fully appreciated until I moved to the US was just not capitalizing the business properly.
We had businesses in the insurance space, in the recruitment space, in the technology space, in the golf space, and we would work at them really hard, invest a lot of time and energy and mindshare for maybe 12 or 14 months. They weren't getting the traction maybe they should and we would always convince ourselves that the problem was the idea. In fact, in hindsight, the problem was we didn't have enough money to invest in making the idea a reality.
And so, this mistake of not getting funding and it can come from different places -- I think for me and my co-founder back in London, there was a bit of an Irish mindset of not wanting to borrow money or take money from others or being nervous about being in-hoc to someone or whatever it is. That was the mindset we had back then. As we maybe matured a little bit in London, then we were like, “Well, we don't want to give up any ownership of our business, that would be a huge mistake.” Never really internalize the fact that it's better to own 20% of something worth 10 million than something worth nothing.
And so, being comfortable taking on funding in whatever form, whether it's VC or debt or however you manage to do it, I think is important because the days of setting up a successful business out of your bedroom and it being an instant hit, I feel like those opportunities are gone for the most part. I'm sure there'll be some that will prove me wrong in the future, but you need a certain amount of capital these days to be credible. There are table stake things you need to do around security and sales and content and all those various areas. So, having the appropriate amount of capital to give yourself a chance and stay in the game is crucial, I think, to success and a mistake I have made many times, but hopefully we'll not do so again.
Chris Wedding:
There you go. That's awesome. I'll summarize those and we're going to pop back into your business of Sustain.Life and what makes you all unique. So, empower your team, avoid micromanaging despite your best intentions. Watch out for the sunk cost fallacy. Yeah, lots of time or money invested in a certain path or approach or partner or whatnot, but maybe it's the wrong one. So, find ways to be a little more candid in reviewing what's working, what's not working at a team and then be properly capitalized. And if you're not, you may have a good idea, but cannot properly execute. Okay, let's go back to Sustain.Life. Let's get into the details here. So, what makes you all unique from the competition?
10:26
Alyssa Rade:
We can be honest about this. There's a fair amount of noise in the climate tech and especially the carbon management space. There's a lot of players, but when we think of what really differentiates us, we categorize it in a couple of different buckets. The first one is our comprehensiveness. A lot of the players, when you really start to dig into the specific service offerings, they actually have a pretty narrow focus.
So, you've got like your offset providers that are really all about pushing a carbon neutral agenda without any operational change or management support to bring those emissions and your environmental impact down. Or you'll have your reporting SaaS tools that are really good at taking your data and slicing and dicing it and putting it in the right format for reporting or disclosures, but again, without any actual measurement or management insight.
And so, when we think about our product, we really see ourselves as the only player that's taking that truly holistic approach to the measure, manage and report and really helping businesses understand how to strategize their business, strategize sustainability from the ground up and take the data.
Tell them what to collect, how to actually measure these things and then use that data for two purposes. Third-party disclosures, sure, absolutely important, like third-party aligned reporting disclosures as well as actual operational insights of business decisions and changes that you might want to make based off of this information.
Another big distinguishing characteristic about us is actually who we're going after. So, you've got a lot of exciting SaaS products that are really targeting like an enterprise level client. They're going after these really big fish. Whereas we're focused more on the mid-market players. When we think of the climate crisis, like 90% of businesses in the US are mid-market companies and that's who you need. That's what you need in order to actually make the change that we need on a global scale to bring our emissions numbers down.
So, that's who we're going after. We're going after the companies that don't have the resources, financial or capital or capita to hire their own in-house teams or to hire the consulting firm to do this work for them. We want a tool that we want to upskill their existing workforce and make sustainability accessible to them, make climate action accessible to them so that you don't have to have someone with 10 years’ experience who went and studied these things. There's not even enough of that talent.
I think there was a stat that was published on LinkedIn recently, I think, that says like, the demand for folks with climate expertise and background, the demand is growing by 8% a year and the talent pool is only growing by 6% a year. So, we're really there to fill that gap and give even those with the experience and the expertise the tools, to be able to scale that expertise and to be able to measure these things and manage these things at scale.
13:12
Then the last one that I will mention is that we're a SaaS tool. I say that like we're a real deal SaaS tool. I think some of the other players in this space are kind of a SaaS tool, but they're really supported by these very large consulting teams. That makes them both expensive to actually work with, with like heavier integration periods and it just makes their business difficult to scale. And so, we're super serious about being a scalable SaaS product.
I mean, we've got Mike here, we're founded by technologists. That is the core backbone of our product is, how can we make a software product that scales all of this ability so that it's accessible to companies at large?
Chris Wedding:
Listeners can't see what I see, but Alyssa is almost levitating right now with energy about what makes them unique. On the who you-all’s core customer, you said it's not the say Fortune 500 household logo necessarily. It's this mid-market and I think it's an interesting take away for listeners where it's pretty tempting to be like, “Let's chase the logos everyone knows about as our customers.” But the less sexy customer base could be way more interesting. I mean, 90%, I think of businesses, you said, are mid-market or smaller. Boy, that's a lot of businesses to serve that are also pretty well-resourced, right?
Alyssa Rade:
Yeah. I mean, they need the help. A little bit of my origin story of how I came over to Sustain, my background is in corporate ESG and sustainability. I've always been in the climate space, my academic studies, and I've been working in corporate ESG. Then when I learned about Sustain, it was like, okay. I've always wanted to work in the belly of the beast, so I went to grad school in New York. What causes all the emissions in New York? It's buildings, so I went to work in a built environment. Yep, and so that's how I spent most of my career in real estate and the built environment.
That’s actually a space that has a pretty sophisticated and mature roadmap to sustainability and climate action. Not to say that everybody's doing it, buildings clearly have a lot of progress to make, but there's a roadmap there. You have leaders in that space. You have large owners of real estate that are setting the tone for that industry of what to do.
And so, when I thought about Sustain and it's like, “Okay, here's this software platform that's going to leverage the experience and expertise of climate experts from the private sector, and make that available to businesses that have traditionally been barred from engaging in climate action and sustainability.” They literally don't know where to start. It's daunting. It's intimidating. There's this whole alphabet suit of acronyms with emissions and greenhouse gases and CO2e and reporting disclosures and GRI. I mean, it's so much, total. They can't see you, but brain explosion. It is.
And so, the opportunity to distill that and make that accessible and allow companies to engage in that, to me was just, I mean, incredible. That's what our whole mission is about. I'm clearly fired up about it.
Chris Wedding:
Well, going back to Mike, your earlier points about empowering team members, I think you've already empowered Alyssa sufficiently. A lot of rocket fuel there.
16:28
Mike Hanrahan:
Absolutely there is, yeah. It's very easy to empower Alyssa, I'll tell you.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah. So, another thread I'm hearing for those listening is like, all right, so there are companies that have SaaS at their core, to different degrees, let's say. Your point is, SaaS could mean SaaS is the core or it could mean it's the onboarding, it's the hook that then flows through to higher-end consulting. I get it. Pure SaaS, generally cheaper, certainly higher margin, more scalable, reach more folks, more businesses that need it.
I think for those I would say those are two interesting approaches. Maybe you want to build a lead with SaaS, follow with consulting, but if you want higher margin, more scalability, you want to focus more on, of course, just a pure SaaS. I wonder if you could tell a story of a customer, and you don't need to name names, or you can if they want you to, a story of a customer and then what the transformation looked or is looking like.
Alyssa Rade:
That's a good one. I know Mike's going to want me to take this one, so I better rack my brains for a good compelling case study here. I mean, we've got a lot. We've got folks that understand what emission scopes are. “Okay, I want to compile my Scope 1, 2, 3, but don't understand how to strategize. Like, well, where do I start? What's the most material to me? What's the most important to me? Don't understand where should I be focusing and what can I do to actually pull these levers?” That’s a really clear tie in the platform is that measurement's really important. You can't manage what you don't measure, Peter Drucker.
Chris Wedding:
I've heard that before, yeah.
Alyssa Rade:
[Crosstalk – 00:18:09] exactly, but the whole point of measuring is because you want to manage it and so measuring for measurement’s sake just isn't going to be that valuable. I'm thinking of one customer, I'll leave them nameless, but just thinking about them. They have these measurements and they're like, “Okay, we can collect this data and now what do I do?” Working with our platform to understand, okay, so these are actually strategies. I understand where I want to focus, I get it. Our business travel is a huge emitting category for us. That’s where a lot of our environmental impact comes from.
Working with our platform, a key piece of it is we have all of these recommendations, really step-by-step guidance of, how do you pursue these different sustainability initiatives? And so, working through the platform to understand like, “Oh, this is how I could actually reduce our business travel. These are steps I can take. These are initiatives I could pursue. These are the stakeholders I'd have to work with. This is how I implement this at my organization. This is how I track this. This is where I get the data.” It’s all integrated in.
So, giving them not only the dashboard to like, “Here, put your numbers in and we're going to compute all of your business activities, and we'll translate that to an emissions output,” but also the strategy of, “And this is how you make that change at your business. These are the questions to ask, this is how to pressure test this. This is how to strategize and come up with the right approach that works for you,” because it's not prescriptive. It's not going to be the same policy or the same approach for everybody, but it's about approaching it from that kind of a thoughtful perspective so that you can arrive at the right exact steps for you as a business.
19:44
Mike Hanrahan:
I would say, not talking about a specific customer, but I think there's an overarching theme that we're seeing, Chris, as we talk to all of our customers. Almost all of our customers come to us are new to the area of sustainability. As I said, we're targeting big market, but about a third of our customers are public companies. They come to the platform not quite knowing what to do and I think maybe more importantly, not really understanding the scale of effort required to be truly sustainable.
I think some of our customers come in, or maybe a lot of them, with an analog, with other special projects they may have done in the company. “This is how the company reacted to COVID. This is the DEI program we rolled out. Now we need to do something about sustainability.” A theme we're seeing a lot is that there's a really new appreciation for how complex, how difficult, how much it really touches every single part of your business.
When you're getting into it and really trying to be truly sustainable, it can be a little daunting, frankly. There's a lot to it. There's a lot that needs to get measured. There's a lot that needs to change in the business if you ultimately want to get there. And so, the team we see is, as Alyssa said, let's help them get started with this, but let's understand that they're on a journey. Year one for them might be, let's just do some culture building things internally. Let's run a bike to work program. Let's maybe provide some green credits to our employees so that they can do something. Let's obviously start measuring our carbon emissions maybe at an estimated level. I think it's taking them on a journey, understanding the breadth and scope and if you want to be net zero, it could take you 10 to 15 years to get there as a company.
The theme we're seeing is, they come in, it's a new space for them. There's a fairly big education period. There's going to be a big socialization period within the company. I think you need to get everyone bought in to be successful and so just taking them on a very guided way, in a handheld way on that journey, understanding it's going to be a long journey. As they get more sophisticated on their sustainability journey, our platform obviously will get more sophisticated and grow with them and help them get there. That’s the theme that we're pretty consistently seeing on the platform.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, so customizing, it's not one size fits all. Your software can make it personalized to companies, so that's helpful for sure. The prioritizing, I totally get that. It is overwhelming to understand how many acronyms there are in sustainability, and then what's most important to your business, not just what's the most important to any business.
I think, Alyssa, when you talked about what to measure, I think about the phrase, something like, just because you can doesn't mean you should. Oh, we can measure this data, but yeah, Alyssa's like, “Yeah, but you shouldn't because it's not material to your financial outcomes or to your stakeholders,” which I think is a good filter for, I think listeners to ask themselves too. In lots of context I can, but should I? Right?
Alyssa Rade:
Exactly.
22:44
Chris Wedding:
Then your story takes me back many years, 15 years, when I was in private equity helping us figure out what sustainability meant. We were issuing these sustainability reports, and the CEO really cared about it. Me and a few others cared about it, but boy, the peanut butter and jelly of that sandwich right there was very thick. You know what I'm saying? If there were tools like this to reduce complexity into simple actions, I can imagine it would have made it much easier for me. Yeah. I get that.
You talked about this as a journey, so maybe without disclosing your entire confidential roadmap to anyone listening, how would you describe Sustain’s set of problems that you solve today versus the problems you plan to be solving for the same or different customers? Is that a fair or unfair question? Maybe that's mean, I don't know.
Mike Hanrahan:
Yeah, I think that's a fair question. I'll take a stab at that, Alyssa, and then maybe you can follow up with some maybe more concrete things. In the first instance, what we're trying to solve for customers right now is what Alyssa described earlier, how do we get basic measurement in place? How do we help them manage? How do we help them do some reporting?
We've gone very broad with our feature set just because that's what our customers are looking for right now. They're new to sustainability. They want to touch on everything. They're not going to spend 100,000 on four or five different platforms, which is what you need to do if you're in the enterprise space. You need a surveying platform and you need a supplier management platform. You need a carbon accounting platform and maybe two or three other places. You need a consultant, of course.
And so, we're trying to make sure we cover all the bases for these companies who are new to sustainability, who want to invest in it, but they don't want to invest maybe a million dollars or half a million dollars in it. They maybe want to invest 20, 30, 40,000 and start understanding where they are relative to their peers, relative to the industry and start formulating some goals and plans.
Our initial feature set is really to play into that, to make sure that we've got really deep, excellent carbon accounting and environmental management. That's really important and that's table stakes. As Alyssa said, there's a lot of noise in that area and given the technical background of our team, we wanted to make sure that we were world class in that aspect. But we layer onto that a lot of different program management action content to help companies start that journey, as we said, and help them go on that journey. Then we layer onto that a lot of tooling.
So, one of the ones that we're excited about is Scope 3 management, which is a really hard, tricky, thorny area, but we have tools in there so that you can start engaging with your downstream emissions and start trying to understand them, survey them. Think about where those big emissions are coming from, what are the intensity factors of the different products, et cetera, so various tools like that, but that's what we're about right now.
I think probably we're making a plug for how API focused we are. So, we're truly industry agnostic right now and we're very committed to being number one in this space and to scaling. We recognize a big part of that as being able to support all the different data sources that are going to be needed by all of our customers to be able to calculate and manage their emissions. There's a plethora of different sources from accounting, how many accounting systems are out there and you're looking at all the utility systems and utility providers and IoT devices, tachographs and trucks measuring emissions or mileage or whatever. So, there's hundreds of different data sources that will be needed to calculate emissions across the client base that we have and is growing obviously.
26:24
Being API first and making sure we provide tools so our clients can do those types of integrations and they can automate this data collection as much as possible, that's really key to us. We recognize that we can't as a company hope to do all those integrations ourselves. We'll do some of the key ones around utilities and accounting systems, but there's going to be hundreds of other systems that our customers need to integrate with.
And so, providing APIs that their development and engineering teams can use to open permissions is really, really important to us. That's something that underpins a lot of where we've gone broad on the product set. As we go forward down the line, Alyssa, I'll let you maybe talk a little bit to what’s on our product roadmap.
Alyssa Rade:
Yeah, I think big picture, everything Mike said about the technology and the APIs and scalability, but we want to be number one. We're really focusing on being a climate action tool and sustainability means different things to different companies. Climate action is right now probably like the biggest voice in the room about sustainability, but there's other things in there. There's health and wellness. There's all different sorts of stuff and so when we think about expanding, part of that might be expanding beyond the climate focus of E to a more broad environmental to include those other things.
Then even beyond that, we do get a fair amount of inbound asking for comprehensive ESG tools. Right now, we're very clear, we're pretty heavily weighed on the E. We do have some support for the S and G because there's some overlap there. If you're getting into your supply chain, you're hitting on that S and we certainly have tons of stuff for that. So, thinking about serving a broader ESG, both in the data management as well as on the content side and helping build those programs and that same perspective of operationalizing the full ES and G for an organization.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah. Maybe as we're talking about the future, we're recording this and it's April, what is it, 27th? I lose track of time. Recently we had the SEC's proposed rule, of course, pretty historic, we think. Can you just say a few words about, what do you think is going to actually be finalized? How much of a game changer is this for reporting entities, et cetera?
Alyssa Rade:
Yes. It's a pretty big deal. This is the most aggressive sweeping update to disclosure that we've seen in a really long time. I'm engaged in tons of conversation on this with folks and it's a lot. When I think of what’s likely going to happen, we know what our two-party system does to one another. Right now, this law, just for the listeners who don't know, it is saying companies have to disclose their Scope 1 and 2 emissions, which are emissions related to energy consumption. Either that you're combusting yourself in your operational boundary, or that you're buying, like electricity or steam that's created somewhere else, but you're consuming it.
29:16
And so, you have to do that and then for some organizations, you'll have to also report Scope 3 and that's the big bad beast in the room. That's this very nebulous category of everything that happens, other than energy that supports your business, but things that your employees are doing and that your customers are doing and your suppliers are doing. I mean, everybody throughout your value chain. There's like 15 different categories of Scope 3.
When I think about this proposed rule, I'm of course, thrilled that it's included in its first iteration or proposal, the Scope 3, but when I really think about the United States, what do I think is going to happen? I think that it will likely be negotiated and it's hard to imagine that we're going to go from having zero mandated climate and emissions disclosures to having Scopes 1, 2, and 3 included.
It’s a safe bet that we'll have one and two. I'm not so confident in the Scope 3, but that being said, this is just the first proposed rule. This is where we're going. The US, we're behind if anything in doing this. You've got New Zealand, you've got Japan, you've got UK. Everybody's got their disclosure rules that they're putting forth because the investment community is basically begging for it. This is not going away, so I think even if Scope 3 doesn't make it into the final rule, I think it's only a matter of time and that if you're the kind company that likes to play offense instead of defense, that it's something you're going to want to start doing regardless.
Mike Hanrahan:
One thing I would just add into that is, we're seeing, Chris, in the space that the private sector itself is actually starting to drive some requirements in this space. You look at a company like Walmart and about 70% of Fortune 500 companies have some sort of net zero claim, but Walmart have the Project Gigaton, for example, that's their effort to remove a gigaton of carbon from the atmosphere. Necessarily that obviously is going to impact their Scope 3.
Walmart are going to go to Pepsi and Coke and say, “Hey, you got to decarbonize. You got to report, you got to understand your emission status.” Pepsi and Coke will go to their suppliers and it will percolate down through the supply chain without regulation, frankly, just given the power in the market that a lot of these Fortune 500 companies have now.
I think it's absolutely incumbent governments and regulators to also accelerate that move, but I think we'll see the private sector starting to drive a lot of that change without the regulation. So, I think a lot of calls here to be optimistic that we're going to get there very, very quickly.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, it's like, if we think about the point of the SEC originally, seven, eight years ago, it's providing investors information that could be material to them making an investment decision. As we three would agree, increasingly the data suggests that climate related information is material to many businesses. So, if it is, we'll disclose it. Now, clearly, it's effort and cost to disclose it. Certainly, some of the bigger concerns are, “Oh, damn, if we disclose it, what's going to happen to our market cap,” and blah, blah, blah.
32:20
As listeners know, we like to get into the business, but also, oh, wait a second, people run businesses. So, how about if you could tell us one or two pieces of advice you'd give your younger self to be more productive, higher impact, happier, et cetera, in this career of changing the world?
Mike Hanrahan:
Yeah, I'm happy to go with that. There's one I think I feel really passionate about and I've known that when I was younger and that's, don't tolerate working with toxic people. Maybe I used the word toxic a little bit strongly there, but we all spend so much time at work. It's very destabilizing and unsettling if you're working in an environment where there's an individual in there who, for whatever reason, maybe again, not mal-intentioned or necessarily a bad person, but for whatever reason, creates an unpleasant environment to work in.
When I look back over my career, there's at least two or three instances where I wish that I had removed myself from a situation or maybe managed someone out of a company more effectively because they were creating a knock-on effect that was really bad for the culture, really bad for the happiness of the team. No matter how much you enjoy your job and what you're doing and the domain you're working in and everything else, the highest correlation for job satisfaction is going to be your relationship with your coworkers.
And so, I wish I'd been stronger in beliefs around just being, I suppose, confident enough to leave a job and say, “You know what? I don't want to deal with this anymore. I'm not enjoying that.” That’s one that I would tell everyone to keep in mind and act on. If something feels wrong, then just nip it in the bud as soon as you can.
The other one, which I touched on earlier, but recognize that there's going to be failures and that things are not always going to go your way throughout your career. Even if you're a CEO or you're working in a job or whatever you're doing, things don't necessarily always go well. I think just being okay with that, understanding it happens to absolutely everyone. Don't let it knock your confidence. Don't suffer from imposter syndrome because you messed up or you did something wrong or your idea failed or whatever.
We all learn from that. It happens to absolutely everyone all the time. I don't care how good a CEO you are. If you're Elon Musk or Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, they've all had missteps along the way and everyone does it and just be okay with that. That's just human nature. That's just how we all roll and no one's perfect. There's no magic individual out there who's just the perfect employee, gets everything right all the time or whatever. We all make mistakes and just be cool with that and don't let it upset you. That’s something else again, I think I wish I had known when I was starting in my career.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, for sure. I think on the first one, it's also known as the no asshole rule, I believe. And the second one is like, yeah, it took me a while to realize this, but it's like, oh, well, it is normal as an entrepreneur at least that 90 plus percent of the things you try don't work. Whether it's chasing investors, chasing customers, chasing partners, getting the right talent, whatever. Versus saying, “Man, I am F'ing up a lot.” It's like, no. Over 10% success is pretty good, just keep the [crosstalk – 00:35:34]. Alyssa, thoughts for you?
35:37
Alyssa Rade:
Yeah, probably not something that this audience needs to hear, but likely something that resonates is like, respect the conventions, but don't let them stifle you. You're an entrepreneur, you're clearly coming to market with a business that is a fresh idea and while it's important to obviously understand the market and understand if this is like a legacy industry or whatever it is you're breaking into, you want to understand the parameters and the rules and how it's all worked historically, but the whole point is you're bringing something new. And so, understand that previous structure, but don't let that constrain you. I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but I'm going to go for it.
Chris Wedding:
Go for it.
Alyssa Rade:
I'll say have the gall. I was going to [crosstalk – 00:36:19] I'll say have the gall to try it. Go for it and then similarly going off what Mike said, if it fails, it fails, but I don't think anybody is trying to start a business to do what's been done before.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, it's almost like if you have a certain inclination, rather than thinking it's a bug like in software speak, maybe it's a feature. You’re destined to do something that some folks would call a bug, or sometimes my kids, when I do something that's very type A, but in the household, they're like, “Daddy, you're different than the others,” and they're very much being sarcastic about it. Anyway, own that difference, let's say.
How about habits or routines, morning, evening, daytime, whatever, monthly, quarterly, that keep you sane and focused?
Mike Hanrahan:
I've got a couple of quick ones here, Chris, that I'm happy to share and maybe people have heard them before, but I am very OCD about making sure I have an empty inbox. My inbox is my task list. I will not sleep at night unless I have gone through that and pretty much executed anything I can execute on. Anything I need to read, I'll flag it for later, but not letting things build up and just being rigorous about getting them out of the way. I think that really frees up your mind to think about other things and things and things are not weighing on you. Just don't procrastinate about little tasks that need to get done. That's the first one.
The second one, just my personal life and while I'm the antithesis of an athlete, I do wear a WHOOP on my wrist at all times and I have done so for over a year now. I use it almost exclusively to track my sleep and I have found it to be incredibly interesting, informative. It's changed how I think about my sleep. It's very noticeable, very clearly, if I have maybe a couple of beers in the evening, how that impacts my sleep and whatever.
I think sleep is the foundation for good health, for so much, for being effective at work, for being a good dad and a good husband and everything else. If you don't have a good night's sleep, you're starting from a very bad place and I think just being mindful of the importance of sleep, for me, as I said, I wear the WHOOP, I find that to be a great tool. There are loads of them out there, Oura and a few others, I believe they're also equally good, so I couldn't recommend that more. I'm a bit of a data geek, of course, it has to be said, so maybe I'm attracted to it for that reason, but that's a little life hack that I recommend to anyone.
38:45
Chris Wedding:
I like both those. Although on the first one, the no email, the zero-inbox approach, I think that the 50,000 emails in my inbox might give you a bit of a trepidation. Different approach to life.
Mike Hanrahan:
Imagine the satisfaction, Chris, when you get through them. It'll be worth it.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah. One of my Christmas presents was the Oura ring, similar purpose to track health and such. I was at my annual physical exam over lunch and she was like, “Oh, well, how's your sleep these days?” And I was like, “Oh, it's delightful.” And she's like, “Well, that's not something I hear all the time.” I was like, “I'm measuring it. I now can back it up with data.” Alyssa, how about you?
Alyssa Rade:
Well, I'll preface this by saying that I am a new mom this year. I have an 11-month-old baby, so I don't know about this delightful sleep that you guys are talking about.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, sorry. I retract my statement. Yeah.
Alyssa Rade:
I'll say, my routines have likely fallen by the wayside, but on a professional level, I guess I'm actually a bit of the opposite of Mike in yet another way in that at the end of my workday, I write a to-do list. I write down all the things I didn't get to, everything that I can wake up and start the day, super focused and just having that hit list. It’s okay that I didn't finish it that previous day. I just want to know like, all right, let's make sure nothing falls through the cracks. Let's have it ready to go and tee off the next day. That's something that works for me.
Then on a personal level, I've worked my entire professional career in New York City and we are not particularly known for our work-life balance. So, it is a struggle for me, but I would say the most important thing for me is getting outside. I'm a real Vitamin D, rechargeable battery. I need a little bit of fresh air and sunshine just to wake me up, that and about 300 milligrams of caffeine and I'm good to go.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah. Alyssa, the forest bather, you heard it here first. What did I write down? The whole writing your to-do list before you go to bed, I think it was Thomas Edison or someone like this is like, “Never waste the opportunity to write down an idea for your subconscious to work on while you're sleeping before bed.” I was like, “Well, that sounds like a pretty damn good idea.” I don't think I'd do it, but maybe you've reminded me to do that. Yeah.
Alyssa Rade:
If I don’t write it down, it’s like it never existed. There’s just too much going back and forth in my mind. I'm old school. When I say write it down, I mean, pen, paper, write it down, not a digital note, a physical scribe.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, I poked in our 16-year-old's bedroom last night and luckily, he was doing his homework and watching a TED Talk on anti-matter. Check. Okay, good job. Then he was writing something on like a document with his cursor and I was like, “Wait, is that how you write these days?” He's like, “No, I just couldn't find a pencil and paper.” I was like, “Oh, God, I'm so worried. I'm so [inaudible – 00:41:56] you that now you just use a cursor to write.” All right, how about five minutes, let's go with two or three recommendations on books, tools, et cetera, that you think the audience would find useful.
42:10
Mike Hanrahan:
Yeah. I'm happy to start with this one. Let me give you some context to this one first, Chris. One of the things that bugs me, frankly, about humanity and I know it's part of our nature, but it's dogma and how wedded we get to irrational ideas. You see it in religion and in politics and sports teams and whatever else it is. So, I understand fully it's all part of who we are and I think it's marginal, I can imagine a world where we were all maybe just three to 4% less dogmatic. We could live as close to a utopia as maybe we could create here and it could be rational discourse and everything, and people would change their minds. People would understand when they're being biased and all the rest of it.
And so, that's my dream for maybe where humanity will evolve in a few thousand years, but that takes me back to my book recommendation, which is Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. He does such a wonderful, rigorous explanation for how we think and why we think. He has all sorts of little tests and tricks and whatnot in the book to highlight, expose, and generally show us all the flaws in the way we actually think about things.
I would recommend everyone to read that. I wish it was on the school syllabus globally, because I think if we just educated ourselves a little bit more about how we think, then we're more aware and then we can maybe recognize when we're being too dogmatic about an idea and then maybe things would change. That's my great hope, but as a book, I think that's unbeatable probably in terms of the list of books that I would recommend.
Podcasts, I love How I Built This. I love the style that you have here, Chris, for that. I'm sure you're familiar with How I Built This.
Chris Wedding:
Totally.
Mike Hanrahan:
If you're an entrepreneur, there's so much fun, interesting, exciting stuff, great personal stories, really, really interesting backstories about all the famous companies that are out there. I also love that podcast.
Chris Wedding:
I agree. Yes. How I Built This and Thinking Fast and Slow, yeah, agreed. Let's talk about you.
Alyssa Rade:
I'm definitely more of a book person than podcasts I must admit, but for books, I would say Shoe Dog, which is the autobiography of Phil Knight, the Founder and CEO of Nike. Just really informative and interesting retrospective on the foundation of that company. It’s a real bootstrap to glory type story and so seeing that for all the founders in the audience, I definitely recommend that read. It’s also interesting, frankly, to read it now from my perspective through the lens of ESG and labor practices, being able to connect with that story, given things that we know happened over the course of that company, that's definitely a big recommendation.
44:53
Then I would say, maybe slightly less related, but I think probably my favorite book of all time is Sapiens. It's by an Israeli author. I think his last name is Harari. Yeah, it's probably my favorite book and it's really cool. It basically reviews human evolution through the framework of three critical revolutions that fundamentally changed the course of society and really made us distinct from primates. That’s the cognitive revolution, the agricultural revolution, and the scientific revolution. He's a great storyteller, but really interesting hybrid of history, sociology, genetics. And so, anyone who likes that kind of exploratory, a little bit of philosophical, but based in science thinking, it's beefy so set aside some time, but it's definitely worthwhile.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah.
Mike Hanrahan:
A good compliment to that one, Alyssa, is Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, which is probably my number two book. If you read those, I think, together you'll get a really good perspective on humanity and where we are.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, I love the second one. I have not read Sapiens yet, but it sounds like a good two or three-week Audible read, perhaps. Let's close out with maybe shout out requests, et cetera, for listeners. Mike, you want to go?
Mike Hanrahan:
Yeah, sure. I would have a request to listeners and that is really to, again, in the context of climate, and I do think climate is an existential threat to us and it's certainly something we should all be very concerned with, my request is, do the things in your personal life. They might seem trivial and they might seem like, well, what difference can I make? But if everyone does their little part, I think that will help start moving the needle.
I think the biggest thing that everyone can do is vote, whether it's a town election. We had people in our local town, someone who was trying to pass a law to make sure no new gas lines were plugged into new-built houses, which is a very reasonable step on the journey towards decarbonization. Find your local politician that will do that, obviously at the stage and the federal level. Equally, try and vote for the party who recognizes that climate change is a problem and it's going to help us get there.
So, voting is probably the biggest thing you can do, but do other things in your life as well. It does all that help and it might feel like it doesn't or wouldn't and it's not my problem, the tragedy of the comments or what have you, but I think it can make a difference. And so, that would be my request to your listeners.
Chris Wedding:
Well, and just before we save the best for last, wink, wink, Alyssa, our individual actions, at some point they educate or influence those who actually control much bigger decisions at a government, whatever, policy, corporate level or investment level for that matter.
Mike Hanrahan:
Yeah, I think they do . They’re culture builders. If you start recycling as a family and you start maybe trying to turn off the lights a little earlier or use the gas fire less or whatever, they're little things, but they start germinating that mindshare in your kids and in yourself. You'll start to become more aware of your environment and hence forward climate change and all the rest of it. So, it's the start of hopefully, a boulder rolling down a hill or whatever, a stone. Maybe, what is it? A snowball gathering into a bigger snowboard, what have you.
48:08
Chris Wedding:
There you go.
Mike Hanrahan:
So, it all makes an impact.
Chris Wedding:
Well, Alyssa, I was going to say ladies first and I was like, no, how about we say the best for last? So, no pressure.
Alyssa Rade:
I'll take it. I think with the voting, Mike captured that pretty perfectly. I don't think there's a more powerful thing you can do, honestly, as an individual, but I guess I would just add to that a little bit of like, don't let the man get you down. There's a lot of doom and gloom in climate, it's a problem. We're in trouble, but don’t let that get you down. Don't let that stop you. That should invigorate you. That should energize you to try to work towards the solution and not be part of the problem. Be thoughtful.
We talk about individual actions and sure, you not using straws isn't going to change climate change, but if consumers stop demanding straws, guess what? They're not going to make them anymore. Recognize the market impact and market force of your decisions as an individual, but also as an individual business and then collective businesses and markets. That's what I got.
Chris Wedding:
Boom, drop the mic. Yeah, I mean, right on. Like this podcast was originally called Torch, as in like, let's tell positive stories and be a light in the darkness. Then I got some marketing advice from a friend and she's like, “Well, if you're a Ford Motor Company, maybe you should have like three brands under your tiny little umbrella. But since you're not, how about you just all call it Entrepreneurs for Impact?” I was like, “Well, that sounds a whole lot simpler. Damn.”
Anyway, hey, Mike, Alyssa, great to chat and tell you-all’s story. Sustain.Life, is this the website? Remind everyone of the website.
Mike Hanrahan:
It is Sustain.Life. Yep. That's it. Very simply.
Chris Wedding:
Beautiful. All right. Hey, we're rooting for you-all’s success.
Mike Hanrahan:
Thank you, Chris.
Alyssa Rade:
Thank you.
Mike Hanrahan:
[inaudible – 00:50:00].
Chris Wedding:
Thank you so much for listening. Seriously, the world needs you, and I know your time is super valuable. If you want more content like this, please subscribe to our weekly newsletter at entrepreneursforimpact.com. If you liked this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I read every single one, I promise. These reviews are the number one way to draw more attention to the world-changing climate CEOs and investors that I am lucky enough to be interviewing on the show. And each month I pick one listener review for a one-on-one brainstorming call with me. Who knows what can come of those?
50:48
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