03/29/2022
My entire life I said I never wanted to start a business. There’s so much headache – licenses, certifications, insurance, liability, employment laws, taxes, and so on and so on. Three years ago, almost to the day, I decided not only was I comfortable with these “headaches”, but I had also learned quite a bit about mitigating and managing them. Working with friends towards purposeful shared goals became my idea of fun. My passion was becoming clear: helping business owners prevent and solve headaches to achieve their goals. While I don’t have a technical skillset, like an engineer or developer, I can critically solve problems with limited resources.
When I decided I did in fact really want to start a business, Laurel suggested we meet with David Ferran. During our first lunch meeting at Farmer’s Table in Little Italy - in one of the many serendipitous events along the way - Dave told us he was launching an incubator for entrepreneurs and invited Laurel and me as the first business into Torrey Project. It was in Torrey Project we learned the tenets of stakeholder capitalism – a commitment to doing business in the best interest of all stakeholders. I knew there was a certain way I wanted to run my business that aligned with my values and interests, I just didn’t know there was a name for it – stakeholder capitalism.
As with most things these days, talking the talk is one thing, but what about walking the walk? When a company says it’s sustainable and uses eco-friendly materials, what does that even mean? To quote Will Ferrell in Blades of Glory: No one knows what it means, but it’s provocative.
Without spending hours upon hours of research, how do you vet businesses and products to hold them accountable to what they say? Cue Certified Benefit Corporations.
Torrey Project introduced us to the world of B Corps – a third-party certification. B Corp Certification is a designation that a business is meeting high standards of verified performance, accountability, and transparency on factors from employee benefits and charitable giving to supply chain practices and input materials. In order to achieve certification, a company must:
•Demonstrate high social and environmental performance by achieving a B Impact Assessment score of 80 or above and passing our risk review.
•Make a legal commitment by changing their corporate governance structure to be accountable to all stakeholders, not just shareholders, and achieve benefit corporation status if available in their jurisdiction.
•Exhibit transparency by allowing information about their performance measured against B Lab’s standards to be publicly available on their B Corp profile on B Lab’s website.
We set B Corp Certification as a goal early in the formation of A STELLAR CO (April 2019). I’m ELATED to announce that after submitting the application in October 2020, and spending the last six months working closely with B Labs on documentation requirements, policy development, and transparency – A STELLAR CO is officially an official B Corp.
Thanks to all who supported A STELLAR CO along the way and continue to do so – if you have questions about becoming a B Corp, I’m happy to provide insight on my experience.
