Sustainability Storytelling: Marketing B2B Manufacturers ft. Jeff White and Carman Pirie (Kula Partners)

This is such a fun episode of The Resilience Report – almost like you are a fly on the wall at a dinner party with myself and our next two guests chatting all things sustainability marketing, B2B messaging with a double-click into the manufacturing space, website accessibility and much more. The world of environmental impact is a delicate one, an area that requires an incredible amount of nuance when it comes to storytelling. So, who better to join us than two experts in the field of digital marketing and sales: Carman Pirie and Jeff White, co-founders of Kula Partners, an agency built to help leading manufacturers digitally transform marketing and sales to deliver more leads, close more prospects, and grow their competitive edge.

Over his nearly three decades in marketing and communications, Carman’s career has taken him from the halls of Canada’s Parliament to various client-side and agency-side marketing leadership roles. Along the way, he has advised Fortune 100 clients, governments, and non-profit organizations.

At Kula Partners, Carman serves as lead marketing and sales counsel to the firm’s diverse range of North American manufacturing clients. His unique insights and distaste for the ordinary have earned him a Gold Award for Media Innovation from Marketing Magazine and Kula Partners—Canada’s first Platinum HubSpot agency—has been recognized as a top lead generator among HubSpot partners.

Jeff is a User Experience (UX) and usability expert, having begun building sites for the web over 25 years ago. He leads the design and development practice at Kula Partners. A number of years ago, Jeff returned to NSCAD University as a sessional professor, bringing his understanding of web standards to a new generation of design students.

A passionate advocate for usability and an open web that is accessible to everyone, Jeff frequently speaks on web design, usability, accessibility, marketing and sales at events such as HubSpot’s Inbound conference. 

Carman and Jeff are also the co-hosts of the The Kula Ring, a weekly podcast that focuses on talking technology, marketing and sales with some of the most interesting minds in manufacturing marketing. I actually had the opportunity to chat with them on The Kula Ring, sharing a bit more about my day to day work, how I got into the cleantech space, as well as what I see on the horizon for marketers in the environmental space.

Enjoy this episode, and if you want to hear an extension of our conversation where the tables are turned and Jeff and Carman interview me, be sure to check out our episode over on The Kula Ring podcast!

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[Host: Lauren Scott] Welcome to The Resilience Report Jeff and Carmen; you're actually our very first duo guests on the show, so welcome to today’s episode. 

[Guest: Jeff White] Jeff Yeah, it's wonderful to be here. 

[Guest: Carman Pirie] It really takes two of us to try to keep up Lauren, that's the secret.

Two brains, one actual functioning human. 

Well, I'm glad those two brains have joined us today. So, to start things off, would each of you mind providing a little bit of background and how you got to founding Kula Partners? So kind of your respective journeys to coming together as one. 

I’ll let Jeff, go first. 

Yeah, yeah, we go way back about, uh, 20 years now. Founded a design agency that was primarily focused on building accessible sites for the web and began doing a lot of work in the social media space and that kind of thing. That's actually Carmen and I met through Twitter in like the very early days of Twitter, kind of like 2007, 2008, and realized we had some complimentary skills. He was working at a larger advertising agency, and I was doing web builds for the strategic campaigns that he was bringing to his clients. And after a time, we realized that we worked pretty well together. So, in 2009, decided to join forces and launched the agency called Kula Partners. You want to add some of that, Carmen?

Well, I don't have much to add to that. But did you want to talk anything about how you got there before then or maybe Lauren doesn't care. I just, that was part of the question. 

I would love to hear all about the journey.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that side is pretty interesting, you know, personally, I went to design school in the '90s when the web was just becoming a thing. In my last couple of years there, I really started deep diving on interactive and interface design and all of that kind of stuff. And really found a passion for that. So, you know, began building websites, what, 1994, was I think when I built my first one. Netscape was still in beta back then. So it's always just kind of been a passion of mine and really kind of love the nature and, you know, the web's a very different place today than it was, you know, 25, 20, 15 years ago. But it's still a pretty spectacular thing to be able to work with and to bring people together as a result of the platforms you get to build. 

Yeah. And look, I don't have any real arguments with Jeff about how Kula Partners came to be. I think that's a nice, clean description of it. How did I end up into that conversation originally or how did I get there from university or what have you? I'd say interesting maybe to this podcast, Lauren, would be, I'm a business grad, but I majored in natural resource and environmental economics. So it was back in the day when there was only something like two or 300 published articles on the planet about emissions trading. I'm very much dating myself now. So I've always been interested in that kind of intersection of business and environment and whatnot. And frankly thought marketing and the way it was taught to the university was kind of boring and foolish. And then started selling television advertising in my last year of university, and that kind of got me into marketing in a different way. And then oddly, I ended up being a chief of staff to a member of parliament here in Canada right out of school and shifted into politics, which is frankly all about marketing and sales. And then I ran in an election and lost, but nothing gives you great ground game quite like having to go door-to-door and try to market and sell yourself one door at a time. So that was pretty cool. And then after a bit of a stint in the electric utility space and whatnot, I ended up back in marketing as a director of marketing for a contract furniture company. And then came into the agency space. So it's been a really bizarre winding road to get here. And I think Jeff covered the, from then on through Kula, I think pretty well. 

To lay the groundwork a little bit for our clients, could you help us understand without necessarily naming names what kind of clients you do have with Kula Partners?

Yeah, we're specifically an agency that focuses on B2B manufacturers, usually ones that sell things to other manufacturers. And we kind of work within a couple of different spheres. Somewhere we work with billion-dollar-plus manufacturers where we do a very small subset of their overall marketing mix. And then others where we're much more full-service in that mid-market range kind of things. So a lot of them are industrials. We have a number of packaging clients, some contract manufacturing companies.

And global industrial automation brands. Yeah, we list them all on our website if you all want to go check it out, rather than trying to drop their names here. 

And then over these last 20 years - pulling it through with The Resilience Report - have you seen the themes of either environmental design or sustainable impact be woven increasingly into your customers' messaging or even into their overall business practices? Has this been an evolution over the past 20 years? I would love to know kind of what that trajectory has looked like.

Yeah, I'm happy to jump in on that. I think the evolution, I would say, is it seemed to be a lot more picky and choosy of which industries or what sectors were really interested in and talking about it and how advanced they were in talking about it. So I mentioned, very early on, I worked in the contract office furniture space. Well, the sustainability conversation in terms of the built environment, LEED certification of office buildings, things of that sort, that's been around for quite a long time. I mean, I remember more than 20 years ago, we're selling office chairs that were fully recyclable and on and on. But then, like, frankly, some of our flexible packaging clients, they've been talking about sustainability for maybe five, eight years in a meaningful way. And both of the cases that I'm thinking of, they were like the only ones in their space doing so. So it seems like now it's more universal, but I think people are still at different phases along that path of just kind of recognizing that there's a problem, and maybe they're a part of it, to actually being a bit more sophisticated in terms of how they think about it and talk about it.

I think, too, part of the problem for a lot of those folks who are thinking about the sustainability message, they're thinking about the environmental footprint of their product and what they create and who they sell to, only really becomes a thing for their customers when it becomes a thing for their customers' customers. 

Absolutely. 

So when somebody comes to you and says, if you don't have sustainable packaging, we're no longer going to buy your stuff, all of a sudden, they start going to their suppliers of packaging and saying, you guys have that sustainable stuff, right? Like, it's going to be recyclable, right? And now it's all about that.

Yeah, but up until then, the fact that it's 20% more costly is a deal-breaker until that customer's customer starts demanding it. Yeah. So I think you're quite right, Jeff. It does kind of depend on that push-pull of, you know, and we mentioned the built environment. I mean, a lot of that marketing messaging is kind of served into the architect and design community. Well, you know, they're pretty lefty by general sensibility. It's certainly, you know, environmental consideration is very much front and center in their world. So in order to sell into that world, well, I mean, think of Interface Carpet. How old is that story, right? 

 Yeah. Well, it is interesting. So when you're mentioning the worlds of kind of coexisting of telling that message of sustainability and what companies are doing and advertising, certainly the theme or the concern of greenwashing comes up. Is this something that you're able or need to support your customers? Do they ever come to you with questions around greenwashing considerations? And if so, do you go anywhere to consider, for example, what are the regulations in a Canadian landscape, or is the B2B market maybe a little bit more sheltered from these conversations, at least for right now?

I would say most customers are really afraid of going near it if they feel like they're going to be greenwashing anything. So the ones that are comfortable talking about it, they have either, you know, their spec line item detail about their product that they know meets international standards for sustainability, etc., or they are maybe a member of an industry sustainability council where their overall practices are audited and things of that sort. So they have some things that they can kind of lean on and support their claims. I find that, we, I don't think I've ever had a client come to me and say, here's a really kind of sneaky greenwashing message. Can I get away with this? More like it's been more the opposite. It's more like, you know, we start peeling back the stories about what they're actually doing that they're not telling, and we kind of say, guys, like, we can talk about this, like the fact that you reduced your electrical consumption in your factory by 40% because of the addition of wind power. This is something we can actually talk about. Like, why aren't we mentioning it?

There's so many that are, you know, as the customer's customer thing starts to come into play, they realize that their, you know, our clients' customers are able to incorporate those sustainability components in their overall supply chain green messaging, which, of course, is part of it. You know, it's not just what comes out of your own factory, but it's about what is coming into that factory beforehand, you know, on a supply chain basis. That is pretty important. One of the things I think is pretty interesting about it, and Carmen kind of alluded to this a bit around this idea that, you know, they're stating the spec and the letter of the quality of the product or what have you, as opposed to kind of leading with that message, you know, x% reduction in overall greenhouse gas or whatever, instead of leading with that, what they're leading with typically, because I think, especially in the packaging space, there are concerns that recyclable alternatives are not necessarily as high quality and are going to reflect more poorly on the end product because of that. You know, they have clarity issues or feel issues or printing concerns. So, they're focusing more on like how have they optimized that product in order to achieve or even outpace the competitive products that were not recyclable. You know, how can they meet the same level of standard, how can they create something that is as good quality in that space. And so that is often the messaging that they're touting and then trying to show that it can be had, you know, that pricing conversation frequently comes into it as well. You know, this can't be 40% more expensive just to meet the needs of Walmart, you know. So, yeah. 

Or actually in that case, maybe it can be.

Yeah, certain large end customers can carry a lot of weight! You do mention this idea of messaging, then. So what role do you think marketing and communications professionals have in terms of sustainability and the value of storytelling as we do transition towards more environmental or socially sound solutions?

Well, I mean, they are the chief storyteller, after all, right? So I guess the role becomes one more of making sure that that story has some validation to it and some proof points associated with it. And I mean, yeah, you started earlier about asking about, do different regulations or how people may, and that's, I guess, that's one way to stay on the right side of the conversation is just to go by the letter of the law. I think most marketing communication professionals are pretty okay with leaning in further than that and making sure they're - let the legal team decide if things are meeting the letter of the law. How are you doing in terms of meeting the spirit of your commitments and the spirit of your corporate values and those that you're wanting to hang your hat on publicly with your investors and stakeholders, etc. And I think, in most cases, that will be a higher bar to be holding yourself to than the regulatory bar. And I think that's the role of marketing communications. I don't envy it necessarily. It's not an easy one. I think sometimes you're having, you can sound like you're having very nuanced, almost non-businessy conversations with CFOs that are, what does this have to do with making us more money anyway? But, you know, I'd like to think in the environmental space, we're getting beyond that kind of two and, you know, back and forth, but maybe not.

And like Kula Partners. I definitely work with a lot of clients in the United States, and certainly the topic of sustainability is but there are many other topics that can be polarizing and I would even politicize (picking on the US, but this could be anywhere). How do you advise your customers from a marketing perspective when they are having to go near a topic that can be a little polarizing? Do you adjust your messaging and approach based on that, or do you almost lean into it? What does that look like from a marketing lens?

I think that's a hard question to answer in some ways. I feel like because I'm a bit of a political animal, as we mentioned before, so I think it's really hard for me to turn that part of my brain off. I'm not saying oh that makes me better at seeing the potential politicization of something than everybody else. It's not that, I just think almost maybe naturally adjust the messaging or how I think about those things a little bit.

I think a lot of the time too, you know, we try because especially when you're in a really competitive space as many of our customers are, you know simply making the same green claims as everybody else is not going to help you differentiate your brand or your product or anything. So, you know, oftentimes what we're trying to do is help our clients use that as a leverage point to get to something different, you know, to have different stories and tell a different story that is backed up by the green claims but is more about leading with something that is innovative or different or otherwise kind of unique.

Whether we think about all the things that can kind of get swept up into a politicized conversation, and my goodness north of the Border here in Canada, we as susceptible to it these days as they are South of the Border. We used to maybe be able to slap ourselves on the back and think we were higher and mightier than the man of late. I'm not so sure. And one thing I have found, whether it's talking about bringing back good heart, you know, good paying American manufacturing jobs or you know that type of narrative all of those, whether we're talking about that or sustainability messaging or what have you, one thing I've noticed consistently across the B2B manufacturing landscape is that they're having the conversation at the adult table, and they really view the political conversation as happening at the kids table, if you will. On this recording, this on the American Thanksgiving weekend, I think it's appropriate analogy. You know, they really do view, but I remember when all that conversation was going on about bringing back America manufacturing jobs and then everybody we were talking to that is really knowledgeable in the space, labor force economists based in Washington DC, directors of human resources for multi-billion dollar manufacturers, and they're like, "Yeah, those jobs aren't coming back the way the politicians are talking about. That's not the way things even get made now." But they have to, in some way, tolerate that narrative happens while still pushing forward with the real conversation. I'm not that sure that's that dissimilar than what happens when there's a politicization around climate change or whatever. The businesses themselves know we need to keep pushing forward on what we're doing here. We can't get distracted by that. 

Yeah, and that reshoring or nearshoring thing, especially as it relates to the manufacturing thing, certainly has a sustainability message, but it also has an inherent political message. You know, looking to get things out of China and bring more of that supply chain back to North America or even, you know, India, you know, it's closer than China and a different type of partner than maybe the Chinese are seen as. But, you know, that kind of thing, like Carmen said, it's not about bringing back a bunch of blue-collar jobs, even though that's what the politicians are talking about. It's more about, you know, stabilizing supply chains, cutting down on shipping costs. You know, that has a sustainability component, but it's, you know, it's probably talked about more from the supply chain perspective.

Certainly, as we're all becoming more international in our business practices, I'm sure some of the lines are being blurred, but do you see a difference at all in terms of marketing messaging from geography to geography? Like even within Canada, are there different approaches on marketing messaging, or is it, are we all kind of becoming slightly homogenized because we do have access to content from around the world? 

I mean, an awful lot of, I really can't think of a client that I’ve worked with as of late that's really customizing their messaging on a per Canadian region basis back.

Other than Quebec!

Because often even Canada seen as a rounding error to the United States for many of the or just kind of an add-on for better or worse. But I do think that we do notice a difference in that messaging between Europe and the US. There's no question about that. The more it's included, the more it's an of course, you know, it's not as politicized in Europe. It's much more assumed. I think there's certainly those differences. I think we can, in Canada, it does tend to probably follow the political lines if anybody is a, you know, it's not, I don't want to, you know, good friends out in BC tend to be maybe a little bit more lefty on these issues, whereas you, you may not want to beat that drum a whole lot in Alberta. I don't know, some good environmentalists in Alberta, though I don't want to get on the bad side of them.

There certainly are. Okay, so maybe some nuances.

We see nuances between North America and Europe, but I don't think it just, you know, gets any really much more nuanced than that. 

I do think it makes, you know, just to, you know, toot our own horn a little bit, we do get an awful lot of interest from European companies who see Canada as the gateway drug to the US, and our knowledge and understanding of the American manufacturing market is attractive to a lot of, you know, German and Dutch and Finnish companies that we've worked with over the years that have come to us to help them kind of create a beachhead into North America just because we, we sort of, we can walk the, we can talk the talk a bit more and they sort of feel like they don't necessarily have that edge. 

And beyond your experience that you're bringing in obviously from Kula Partners, you've also had the opportunity to speak with a number of different experts throughout the years because you also host a podcast called The Kula Ring. Would you mind sharing a little bit about how the idea came about, developing a podcast because this was a little while ago too and maybe it was less mainstream for us all to have a podcast. So, I would love to hear how that came about and how that's evolved over the years.

Yeah, I mean when we, you know, as we were really narrowing the focus of the firm to work exclusively with manufacturers. It's been a number of number of years ago now, you know, we just frankly the conversation around B2B marketing seemed to not really include manufacturers at all. It was mostly B2B SAS, frankly dominating the conversation, and we just, you know, Jeff and I were talking, they're like, really nobody's telling the stories of manufacturing marketers. And frankly, you know, industrial, when people talk about industrial marketers, they almost immediately assume that that means backwards, do they even have a website yet? You know, there's almost a bit of a pejorative tone to it when and we were, you know, we're working with encountering all these marketers in the manufacturing space that were doing amazing things, doing great work, frankly outpacing their B2C counterparts who are always the big shiny objects in marketing, and we just want to tell the stories of these people, it's shine a light on it and we thought the more we could do that selfishly the more we would learn, because we can we can interview 52 really smart people a year with a weekly podcast and it's a really great excuse to have a conversation. So that's what brought it about.

And you've had I believe somewhere over 250 episodes at this point. We were talking earlier as to whether you've seen the sustainability message be woven increasingly into your customers' messaging and what about your guests on the podcast? Is this a theme or a topic that does come up from time to time, and is that increasingly so?

It definitely does come up. I would say it's been more of late, wouldn't you say Jeff?

It certainly feels way that could just be the guest that we've had on, yeah, because we do tend to, you know, recruit through, you know, different industry categories so sometimes we get a bit of a run of things but had some really interesting kind of sustainability and green stories on recently, a number of them in the packaging space but also some others too just thinking about things from a very different perspective. 

Yeah, and, you know, I would say at the start of we're doing our podcast it would be sustainability as one thing, now there's it's also ESG more broadly being talked about so and I think sustainability initiatives are getting more specific in nature, so we're getting further away from talking about you know warm and fuzzy commitments to more specific things that we're actually doing.

And through all of that are you seeing any specific opportunities or risks arising if we have other listeners who are tuning in who are maybe B2B marketers is there anything that you're seeing as common themes that maybe they should go look into or anything that they should avoid based on what you've heard from your guests?

Well, we had a very smart guest on the podcast recently talking about some evolving standards in the US that were coming.

Yes, there will be a nice little podcast swap coming up so you will be able to check me out on The Kula Ring as well! But other than that guest I did hear a couple of people on previous episodes who were maybe talking a little bit about it sounds like that they are having an increasing role to maybe counter some arguments for some of the solutions that they were having. I think there was one packaging person who was on and said that there was a little bit of resistance towards for example plastic packaging, but he was saying then at the same time for if you take an industry like the food industry certain packaging actually helps make it more shelf-stable so that it was really nuanced actually quite a detailed conversation that he had on.

Yeah, I guess I mean I don't know if I would say that a common theme it certainly isn't packaging but you know it's a pretty specific category but it does I think point to a risk is I think a lot of manufacturers when they are starting to talk about their sustainability initiatives and commitments you know they do tend to be fairly multifaceted in nature. There are supply chain initiatives, there's product design initiatives there like all even employee commuting and parking or whatever. It's a big thing. And then they often work in categories that get pointed at as being like just the problem. And packaging is a really great example of that: it's really easy to show a trash heap / landfill with plastic bags and whatnot blowing across the camera. And plastic is bad. And the really good example of that is the discussion about the plastic in the oceans and the documentaries that have been done about that it's a very easy story to tell as to why that's bad. The story to that you're telling about what you're doing to get better, the story that you tell about, look, it's actually better for the environment for us to ship plastic versus heavy glass and that the total environmental impact if we were to actually remove plastic from this supply chain would that we would actually be hurting the planet. Those are, to your point, very nuanced conversations. There's a lot, and I just feel it's a real risk because anytime you have a nuanced message against a simple one, the simple one has a good chance of winning, right? 

But we are seeing people in that space standing up for themselves a little more and being willing to say “You know what? We are working on this, and this is what we're doing and we know it's complicated to talk about it. We're going to tell you anyway and by the way we're also lobbying congressman and members of parliament or what have you in order to make them understand this as well so that these kind of symbolic single use plastic bag bands (or something like) they're purely symbolic.” But that the agenda isn't just purely controlled by that. So, I've been surprised at some of that because frankly I would have said a couple of years ago, I don't know that people would have been willing to stick their neck out and have that conversation. 

I think to not do so potentially is fatal. 

I remember talking to one packaging company and I asked them (a massive, massive American packaging company) and asked them what they were doing from a sustainability perspective because there was no talk about it at all on the website and they're like yeah we're letting other people fight that battle. We're doing a bunch of stuff. They were happy to tell me what they were doing, but we're not we're not fighting that battle we're focused over here. So, I guess when I contrast that to seeing people more often sticking their neck out it's kind of interesting. 

It's challenging too because oftentimes, if you're advertising, you have such a tiny little window of text or visuals or whatever you can include, and it's a more nuanced conversation. I mean, when I was listening to that very episode on your show, at first, my brain went oh you know “I don't agree with this person”. But then, as the individual is speaking, it is absolutely necessary to have that long form conversation because I could definitely see both sides of it and understand that it is way more nuanced than just that visual story. There's actually a very calculated, more environmental impact methodology that you could also look at so I love that you have the podcast because I think it does require that long form conversation for topics that are so complex.

I mean you just think about like the frozen food category and how that intersects with food waste and the fact that we need more food to feed the people on this planet. And how much it costs to ship food and it starts to show the complexity of the issue. 

Absolutely, and are the two of you, it could be with the podcast or the agency, working on any projects in particular right now that you're really excited about that you can share publicly? 

Yes and no. I'm really excited about it. The ones I'm really excited about, the NDAs are pretty strict. Like I don't know, and we tend not to be out in front of our clients. We let our clients be in front of us. 

That is fair. And as a marketer, I can appreciate that. 

There's also a really political way to play that, Carmen.

Every once in a while, having the ex-political hack on staff helps, you know.

Well actually, to that very point, you do have a political background. I'd be very curious just to begin with: how did that background lend to your role in marketing? Because you were mentioning before that basically every good politician is good at sales and marketing. I would love to know how that has translated over, and then specifically maybe we can see how would that translates over in terms of talking about a sensitive topic like sustainability and ESG.

I'll try to answer at least part of that. All of politics is marketing and you're marketing to—we all hate it as marketers, right, especially agency-side people when they ask a new client, "Who are we trying to sell to?" and they say “everybody”.

And the only objection is price.

And our target market is everybody. And like, no, it can't possibly be. But oddly enough, everybody got kind of over 18 and even a little younger than that because they influence the parents, you know, kind of is your who you're selling to. So it's a kind of a raw kind of version of marketing and sales in some way. And of course, I'm from this really small part of Canada called New Brunswick, which nobody's really ever heard about but they've driven through maybe and it gets made fun of a lot in Canada, and nobody in the US certainly knows about it. But I happen to love it there. Politics in rural New Brunswick, especially when I was doing it, was a bit of a blood sport and it was a bit of that time between old school and new school where there still wasn't like it still wasn't an internet game, it still wasn't digital. It was a bit more about the road signs on the e sides of the road and the doors you knock on and the families you convince to support you. So I just thought there was always just been a rawness of that marketing and sales exposure that I've always found a lot of parallels to over the years.

I don't know how that really translates into marketing of environmental or sustainability topics or sensitivities. I will say when you are in that space, you do find yourself having to have sensitive conversations with people who aren't interested in having a particularly nuanced dialogue. I can think of, at the time, the one that was really heavy when I ran because I ran in an election in 1999 at the young age of 23 and lost by 200 and some odd votes. 

Oh wow. Oh wow, what an experience though.

Yeah, so the conversation then a lot was around immigration, and I'm in a very rural part of New Brunswick, and the conversation, if you wanted to go around saying immigrants are coming and stealing our jobs, there was all kinds of interest in that message. Like anybody would have believed that. It would have been the easy message for me to sell. So when somebody's taking a task on a topic that sensitive and you have to kind of actually trying to have an intelligent conversation back to them and talk about the nuances of it and how Canada doesn't actually let anybody into the country that isn't almost pretty much decently wealthy before they show up, that's been a bit different now with some of the refugee flows as of late. That wasn't the case back in the day, right? That's again, it was a nuanced conversation you're trying to have in an environment that's more suited to more simplified discussions. So, I think that's helped. It's probably made me think about those differences a little bit more. I don't know if it's giving me a playbook that I could communicate on this podcast that people could lean on, however.

Well, I definitely think that nuance is so key and just taking a step back and kind of calmly reflecting as well is such an important part of it and hearing both sides. In continuing on the theme of sustainability, I learned a lot more about one piece I think of sustainability I hadn't thought of was which maybe more on the social side, which was accessibility of websites. So, I also sat on the board of directors for Sierra Club Canada for six years, and we were working with a developer who was helping us think of all the environmental and social considerations of our website, and they highlighted the impact of making the website more accessible and making it more, I guess, socially conscious as a platform. So, Jeff, this is an area that you have a background in as well. Could you speak a little bit more to that concept? Because it was completely new to me, but now that I've had a bit of exposure to it, it absolutely makes sense that we do want to make websites more accessible.

Absolutely, and this is a particular area of focus of mine. It's been that way for a really long time. As you mentioned, there are, depending on where you are, if you're in Ontario in Canada, there's the Ontarians with Disabilities Act, the OADA. There is something called Section 508 in the US and a number of other pieces of legislation that actually require any web platform or digital communication platform, so it could be an app or things like that that interacts with the public, must be accessible to everyone, basically, no matter how they choose to access it.

So, you know, most of us who have good sight and good hearing and good mobility and dexterity are able to browse with a computer or a touchpad or things like that and access these platforms. But if you're blind, for example, you might actually use a screen reader that speaks to you, but you have to be able to navigate that, and you might do so with a keyboard, you might do so with a braille reader, you might do so with your iPhone, actually, has all kinds of really interesting assisted technology built in.

And in order to access that, in order for those disabled people, which depending on where you're talking about could be anywhere between 13 and 25% of the population. So, you know, if you're thinking about our clients' customers, there's most definitely, you know, at least 10 to 20% of the people they're dealing with have some form of disability impacting their ability to access the web. So if you don't code in a certain way and you don't consider these things as you're putting something together, then you potentially create a massive roadblock for people.

And that may, you know, that may be as simple as not being able to listen to this podcast. But if you are deaf, maybe you can read the transcript instead, which is why you provide transcripts. It's why we provide transcripts, you know, different alternatives of media depending on how people are going to access things. So this sort of idea of universal access, like, you know, having a ramp into your restaurant and accessible wide doors so that wheelchairs can get through to go to the bathroom and things like that, those are all part of the same concept.

But the guidelines for this, and we really focus on ensuring that all of the platforms that we build and the people that we advise are implementing the WCAG guidelines. And we're in version 2.2 now. It's something that is kind of argued over by a committee through designers and developers and communication professionals around the world, and these standards are implemented that way.

And I became particularly interested in this. I have a daughter who's 20 or going to be 20. Actually, this company was founded a week after she was born. I got laid off and decided I didn't want to work for anybody else. But she, when she was little, she had a ton of ear issues, and it got to the point where she had, I believe, nine surgeries on her ears in about three years. And it was pretty clear that she was going to completely lose the hearing in one ear and potentially lose part of her hearing in another ear. And it just really crystallized for me the importance of ensuring that the things that we create for people are actually available to anybody, no matter how they consume them, no matter what they're going to face personally, that we shouldn't stand in their way of helping them understand products or helping them utilize the web or access services and things like that.

And I will say, thankfully, there was one later surgery that we realized that she wouldn't actually lose her hearing, which was quite wonderful. Now she just pretends she can't hear me. But yeah, it really, you know, kind of experiencing that firsthand and sort of seeing the things that could stand in their way really cements why this is a super important thing to make sure everything's accessible to everybody.

We actually have quite a few of our listeners who are entrepreneurs. So would that be a first place for them to go check out? Would be those guides if they want to—if they've just created, I think a lot of people have their own WordPress websites, that sort of thing. And if they're just trying to become more aware of what they can do, would that be the best starting point?

I think that they may find that a little opaque. But if you do Google kind of an accessibility checker or something like that, you can usually run your website URL through and they'll tell you where some of the problems might lie. And then a lot of the WordPress templates have this baked in now. It's a much more common thing than it was 10 years ago. And certainly, you know, WordPress is starting from a very good place when it comes to having accessible sites. But usually, those online systems will test it and tell you where the problem areas might be. And then you can bring that to your web partner and have them implement them

And if it's for entrepreneurs that maybe are doing that with a web partner, it'll at least, like, you know, the most offensive things that might be taking place that you might need to fix. You know, quite often, it's just simply like, you know, people aren't putting alt text on images correctly or they—you know, like kind of easy fixes or there's just something they've done foolishly around contrast because their eyes are fine, they don't think that it's a contrast issue, but it may fail accessibility guidelines, so they often are just easier fix. I think for those types of listeners that are thinking, what's going on, maybe I should be concerned about that. 

And then, you know, on the other side of it is if you have, you know, corporate listeners that are listening in on this, I would just say, like, don't dismiss it. It's, it's like there's not one darn company out there that would get in an argument with you about having an accessible entrance to their main office or disabled parking spots or what have you. They wouldn't even think twice of it. But then the minute you talk to them about spending an extra $10,000 on the website because it should be accessible to everybody, they start to balk. And Jeff has done— kind of late in podcast to bring this up – but we own a second agency called What We Make. It says service design for governments and public sector. And that's where I mean, of course, if you're designing digital services to be deployed to a citizen population, accessibility is even more critical.

And some of the accessibility testing that Jeff has led in that space, I really wish people could see it and see what other people have to experience. And then they wouldn't be complaining about the extra money on a website to make it accessible, that's for sure. 

Oh, and to see the joy when somebody using one of those devices is just, "This is exactly how it's supposed to work. I can get everywhere. I understand where I am. It all makes sense." You know, the same kind of thing that we all experience generally when we access the web. You know, it's not always there. 

A weird part of social media, it's easier to, you know, be an arsehole to somebody on social media or what have you because it's nameless, faceless, and you can just rage tweet or whatever or rage post. I don't know. Anyway, you know, probably the same thing. I think it's not like these people are bad people. It's just that it's, they don't have to see the impact of their decision as much. 

Well, often it's coming from a place of ignorance. It's not necessarily they're choosing to block people out, they just don't even know it's a thing.

Absolutely, absolutely. And you know, often you hear in the corporate world that you call your website your front door to your business. That's why I love that analogy that you had of the ramp, the entrance ramp because it—you know, if you don't have that entrance ramp, the front door of your business, you're absolutely right that you're going to be (and it's a business decision too) you're going to be limiting yourself from this whole other customer base. It's fascinating. I feel like we could do a whole other podcast on that topic alone.

Maybe one very selfish question as a relatively new podcaster, what advice would the two of you have to have that longevity in the space? What has kept you guys coming back week after week with over 250 episodes at this point?

I would say pick a format that works for you. So, and there are some things about Jeff and I's personality that, as we thought about the format of the show, so as an example, it's not really in our nature to do a lot of advanced prep. Like if you as we started down the road, like if we have to draft questions for five hours before every podcast, we're going to do three episodes and we're going to shut it down because we're going to be, you know, there's something else to do, there's something else that needs to get done, and we don't have time to do that right now. The format of our show and the way we streamline guests in the process, do discovery calls, understand what makes them tick, and then turn that into a show has been kind of built around / it's a form that we've built that works for us and has enabled pretty rapid content production. That's not going to be the same format for everybody; it's not going to work the same for everybody. So, I say find a format that works for your particular personality and lean into it. It's probably the best thing from a longevity perspective. 

Yeah, you can make it easy, put easy in air quotes. Maybe this should be one of the video clips. It makes it repeatable. To that point too, the heaviest lift for doing anything like this is recruitment of guests. There are all kinds of people out there who will find you on LinkedIn once they hear you have a podcast and offer to help build your guest list. You really do need have some sort of strategy to do that. Rich Caldwell, he’s our podcast producer at Kula. He’s also our guest recruiter; I believe that's how we found you, and he is phenomenal at filling our pipeline full of wonderful and talented people for us to chat with and have this very easy experience for us. We used to do that work ourselves, both in person (that was insane) and virtually kind of recruiting. We were able to hone that process, just like how we honed how we produce the podcast, and teach Rich and some other people over the years how to do that. Ensure that we're constantly having a good roster of people to speak with. Otherwise, if you have an interview style podcast, you live and die by a good quantity of guests or good quality.

If our listeners want to check out the podcast and Kula Partners, where would the best places for them to go?

That would be www.kulapartners.com and /thekularing. If you want to get directly to the podcast, but it's also the first nav item. 

Well, thank you both so much for joining. We do like to end every episode with the same question, which is what do you think it will take for businesses and leaders to be resilient going forward?

Wads of cash.

That probably helps!

It's weird because, like, the minute you start blending these things, you could easily sound like a conspiracy theorist. I don't want to get there. But you say about uncertain times. And, of course, part of what you're saying there, you know, there's the climate change component to that is obviously massive. And then the political environment that seems to be just unfolding almost regardless of jurisdiction. I mean, easy for Canadians up here to make fun of our American friends. But, man, it's not just there, as we talked about before. And I kind of wonder how much longer we can ignore it. Like I feel like in some ways, businesses and leaders have been able, as I mentioned before, like, okay, we're at the adult table, we're at the kid table. But, you know, once all the food ends up on your lap, I'm not sure it matters. Like somebody needs to deal with it. So, I guess I would just say I think maybe what we need, what they're going to need for resilience is maybe an openness to reimagining how they engage with the world and how broad their engagement in the world is. It's a really broad answer.

I love that. I love that. And cash. 

So, yeah, hopefully, the cash comes out of that, you know, from having that perspective. But, you know, I think to that point, an awful lot of us could do well with listening more and asking questions and not assuming we have the answers. You know, really being considerate of the things we hear and then processing that and trying to understand how to leverage what you've learned. There's no question, you know, better off with the input of others. 

Well, thank you for leading with that curiosity with your podcast, and certainly with your clients. And thank you for joining us today on The Resilience Report. Really been fun speaking with both of you. So, thank you.

Lauren, I hope we haven't ruined your experience for bringing two guests on to the show at once. And it's been wonderful to join you. 

Yeah, first and last double guest, you know.
 
 

We'll see, we'll see. Time will tell!