Love Business with Alan Wick

Satish Kumar is an activist and speaker. He has been a Jain monk, nuclear disarmament advocate and pacifist. 

Founder and Director of Programmes of the Schumacher College international centre for ecological studies, and Editor Emeritus of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine, Satish’s most notable accomplishment is the 8,000-mile peace walk he completed with his companion, E.P. Menon. It took them two and a half years, and included the capitals of the world's earliest nuclear-armed countries.

A teacher once taught him that wars stem from fear, while peace begins with trust. Embracing this idea, they set off without any money, trusting in themselves and in others to get by. 

There was an extra poignancy to my meeting Satish, as he worked for many years with my beloved late father-in-law, Martin Polden OBE, the co-founder with Diana Schumacher OBE of the Environmental Law Foundation (ELF).

It was truly an honour spending an hour with Satish, being reminded of what truly matters in this world, and how we can all be inspired to live - with love, and with purpose.

Overview:

In our uplifting conversation, Satish:

• Describes his early years as a Jain monk, before joining a Ghandian ashram.
• Talks about his long walk for peace, journeying from India to Moscow, Paris, London and Washington, and then from Tokyo to Hiroshima.
• Explains how he then settled in England and became editor of Resurgence magazine, authoring 10 books during his 40 years’ editorship.
• Expands on the inspiration behind his 8,000 mile walk for peace, and some of their amazing experiences along the way, including meeting Martin Luther King.
• Recalls how the symbolism of ‘pausing and reflecting over tea, instead of pressing the nuclear button’ became a theme of his peace walk.
• Enthuses about promoting an ‘education of heart and hands’, engaging both hemispheres of the brain, which is why he founded the Schumacher College in Devon.
• Discusses the history and the work of ELF, of which King Charles is the president, and Client Earth, one of the organisations that followed it.
• Delights in the B-Corp movement and shares Alan’s goal to ‘bring love into business’ and to consider the importance of the planet more.
• Shares his thoughts about what he would like to see businesses doing in order to drive positive change for the planet.
• Looks to the future, continuing with his purpose of being an activist in the service of humanity and the planet.
• Passes on a key message to the entrepreneur-focused listenership of this podcast.

How satisfying would it be to make a positive difference to people’s health and build a successful business? That’s the position Katherine Swift found herself in, when her mum was diagnosed with breast cancer and she felt an urge to help.

Katherine’s quest led her to support ground-breaking research that highlighted the benefits of antioxidants in our diets. Green tea is renowned for its healing properties due to its abundance of antioxidants and organic matcha green tea was the perfect fit.

And so OMGTea was born. A specialist matcha company with a very big heart, a percentage of OMGTea’s profits have been pledged to The Healthy Life Foundation, a charity founded by Katherine that funds research into age-related diseases.

I found my conversation with Katherine fascinating and uplifting, hearing how she built her business across continents, driven by her passion to improve health.

Overview

In our conversation, Katherine:

• Explains what matcha is all about; its history, its health benefits and the production process.
• Talks through her brand name and the Japanese origin of the word ‘matcha’.
• Details OMGTea’s business to business and business to consumer routes to market.
• Elaborates on the product range of teas and accessories.
• Discusses the personnel involved in running the business, and resources they outsource.
• Focuses on the impact of exchange rates between the Yen and the Pound, import duties and Brexit.
• Expands on OMGTea’s origin story.
• Stresses that doing something she believes in means more than financial gain.
• Explores the process of acquiring funds in the early days, and how she handled one product’s failure.
• Outlines her goals for OMGTea over the next three to five years.
• Compares her brand to key competitors, and her experience on Dragon’s Den.
• Shares key learnings from her time in business.

Beesou is an all-natural, bitter honey aperitif blended from ethically-sourced British honey and natural botanicals. As Mark enthuses, Beesou is a drink with a purpose. Their mission is to save bees by raising awareness about how important they are to the planet.

Did you know that, if bees were to become extinct, humans would only survive for four years!

Proud to be B-Corp certified, Beesou reflects a dedication to environmental and social responsibility and actively supporting bee conservation. They also give 10% of all profits to their partner charity, ‘Bees for Development’.

With no artificial colours, Beesou’s beautiful yellow hue is naturally extracted from safflower. 

Mark and his Co-Founder, best friend Andre, went on quite the quest developing Beesou. 

I really enjoyed talking with Mark about the experiences he’s had whilst creating and building this successful boutique brand.

Overview

In our conversation, Mark:

• Describes how Beesou came to be and why they chose to focus on one product.
• Talks about how and why their distribution channels have evolved, from premium bars to online, direct to consumer sales.
• Explains interesting branding issues involving bees, Manchester and London
• Lists some of the ways Beesou lives and breathes its strong ethical stance regarding bees, championing their survival.
• Opens up about his career background and what sparked the move to go into business.
• Discusses the experimental process that led to the final product.
• Goes into detail about funding, investment and expansion.
• Observes the fact that the product’s quality is the essential key to its success, no matter how positive customers are about the company’s ethical practices.
• Shines a light on the B-Corp process and how integral it was to the company’s goals.
• Expands on the product’s manufacturing process and where the ingredients are sourced.
• Sets out his dreams for Beesou to be considered a ‘must have’ product in bars across the UK, and his goals for the business.
• Shares lessons learned since starting the business.

‘Wave maker’, Nick Hounsfield, is the Founder of The Wave, an inland slice of the ocean he’s created to provide a world first: a health and wellbeing focused surfing destination in Bristol. He secured £30m investment to develop and deliver the project as a Triple Bottom Line business - People, Planet and Profit. It’s also B Corp certified.

Nick has over 30 years’ experience in healthcare, science, conservation and education. He has also founded One Blue World, to channel his passion for advancing the BlueHealth movement. Through One Blue World he explores the cognitive, emotional, psychological, social and physical wellness benefits of water, waves and nature. 

Working with a network of interdisciplinary experts, partners, and supporters who share this vision, they provide critical ‘blue’ thinking for projects, developments and organisations.

It was a breath of fresh air and incredibly inspirational talking to Nick about what he has achieved, and how. 

Overview:

In our conversation, Nick

• Explains what The Wave is all about – a lake in Bristol as big as three or four Olympic-sized swimming pools.
• Describes the logistics behind creating waves, and how The Wave has been designed to be suitable for all ages and skill levels.
• Expands on how surfers use the lake – one hour of surfing time equates to four or five hours in the ocean.
• Talks through The Wave’s business model.
• Outlines the cash flow challenges of running a seasonal business.
• Details how they’ve made efforts to widen their demographic and ensure that everyone feels comfortable.
• Delves into where it all began and how he raised the eye-watering £30m set-up costs.
• Focuses on the importance of laying the right foundations and building strong connections when structuring the business.
• Discusses planning permission issues they faced.
• Enthuses about the day ‘the tap was finally turned on’.
• Shares his thoughts about possible expansion and being driven by the concept of ‘Blue Health’.
• Passes on to new entrepreneurs his most fundamental key learning.

Clive Grinyer delivers interactive, engaging, life-changing service design courses for an extensive breadth of business and public sector organisations.

Their executive education courses allow organisations to refresh, replenish and retain their people and extend their capabilities to create effective solutions to answer the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.

Clive has been described as a passionate advocate for the transformational potential of design for over three decades, with today’s focus on the value of digital product design and on design’s value in leading customer experience in the UK being attributed largely due to his innovative work.

He is also a director of Project Love, a research project into how design can foster love, and co-founder of the not for profit Designing for Love. His book titled ‘Redesigning Thinking’ will be published in Spring 2025.

I really enjoyed our inspiring and energising conversation.

Overview:

In our conversation, Clive

• Explains being a designer working in multiple disciplines of design but now primarily considers himself a service designer.
• Tells us about ‘Project Love’, the result of an exciting brief from the Fetzer Institute, that has a 500-year mission to do good.
• Describes working with Mark Vernon, a philosopher, writer and psychotherapist interested in the meaning of love across different cultures.
• Delves into different forms of love, like neighbourhoods and communities.
• Highlights the importance of spirituality.
• Enthuses about the charity he founded, 'Design For Love', raising money to fund design projects like ‘story benches’.
• Expands on the meaning of ‘service design’ and how he discovered it.
• Talks about the concept of ‘process mapping’ and how invaluable trying out a customer’s journey can be.
• Opens up about how the energy that Project Love has can be applied to branding.
• Reflects on what he would have done differently with the benefit of hindsight.
• Shares his learnings.

It’s one thing to find your ideal partner and fall in love. It’s quite another to stay in love and maintain a healthy and fulfilling relationship. With her background studying and teaching human behavioural biology at Stanford, Ali Maggioncalda has always been fascinated by the impact that communication – or the lack of – has on couples.

She has been on a mission to provide a way for couples to really know each other, and to keep their relationship burning bright. And so the Lovewick app was born, its apt name representing how the wick of a candle facilitates the flame.

The app goes beyond the match, helping couples to nurture their relationship using fun and evidence-based tech including a question card game, community-generated date ideas, research-based tips and more. The Lovewick app is available on iOS and Android - try it with your partner today!

I really enjoyed learning from Ali how the app encourages couples to meaningfully connect offline through new conversations and experiences, helping them to cultivate a continued understanding and appreciation of each other.

Overview:

In our conversation, Ali

• Explains what Lovewick is all about, and how the concept was born.
• Describes the typical user of the app and the huge impact TikTok had on exposure and audience growth.
• Talks about the app’s business model, and difficult decisions that had to be made around monetisation.
• Opens up about the meaning behind the name, and her background before starting Lovewick.
• Discusses the irony of tech being the solution for improving ‘real life’ interaction.
• Delves into the transition from working for others to going it alone.
• Focuses on the issues that come with managing funding when you’re starting out, including getting backing.
• Reflects on decisions made during the business’s first two years, around hiring people and doing market research.
• Expands on TikTok’s impact, and how the dynamics have shifted to Instagram.
• Shares aspirations for Lovewick’s future over the next five years.
• Shares her learnings in business so far, stressing that no matter how big your team grows you should never personally stop talking to your product users.

Raissa de Haas and her twin sister, Joyce, are the Co-Founders of Double Dutch Drinks, bringing personality and flavour to the soft drink mixers category with style and sustainability.

Born and raised in the Netherlands, the birthplace of gin, whilst they were partying at uni they found that most mixers lacked the vibrancy of the spirits they were paired with, and so they developed their now signature flavours – Cucumber & Watermelon and Pomegranate & Basil.

Their joint Entrepreneurship Masters’ thesis came top of the year and eventually became their business plan, winning seed money to bring their idea to life. And so, Double Dutch Drinks was born.

Raissa and Joyce also wanted to do business the ‘right’ way, which is why they’re proudly carbon neutral and Certified B-Corp, championing their unwavering commitment to social and environmental responsibility. AND they’ve set up a Female Bartender Scholarship Scheme to support women in their aspiring bartender and mixologist careers.

Overview:

It was fantastic talking with Raissa about their business. In our conversation, she:

• Explains what the Double Dutch Drinks’ business is all about and how it came to be.
• Describes how the partnership with her twin sister works, and the wider structure of the company.
• Highlights the competition they face in the mixers marketplace, and how they focus their brand and marketing.
• Gives an insight into the early days of the business, how they gained traction, and why winning awards has been so pivotal to the business.
• Talks about routes to market, networking, exporting and expansion.
• Enthuses about the importance of R&D and the reasoning behind the various flavours they’ve chosen.
• Reflects on what they could have done differently.
• Goes into detail about getting B-Corp certification.
• Expands on funding and the equity split of the business.
• Shares some lessons learned from her time in business so far, including thinking longer term when you’re hiring. 

Judah Armani deploys design as a conversation across some of the most challenging circumstances where design is often absent.

He has pioneered new ways in which design can be used to transform the lives and education of those serving prison sentences.

How? One way is by establishing the uplifting and incredibly impactful InHouse Records, a fully functioning record label operating in seven UK and three USA prisons.

It focuses on ‘what’s strong, not what’s wrong’, championing a social innovation design approach inspired by Judah’s life experience, as well as his Royal College of Art service design training and background.

I loved hearing about the benefits of this programme, and how it provides hope and motivation to its learners. Graduates of the InHouse programme have a re-offending rate of less than 1%.

Overview:

In our inspiring conversation, Judah: 

• Explains what being an educator means to him.
  • Highlights the abundance of global opportunities in his young and niche field.
  • Talks about the nature of design and its various disciplines; systems are designed too, not just art.
  • Discusses the ways that community and society can improve systems in micro ways.
  • Describes how Inhouse Records works with prisoners and improves their skills.
  • Focuses on the importance of collaborating with people who have different ideas, to create something special.
  • Debates the idea of creating an environment where you can design trust.
  • Talks about his first book, 'Society Driven Design', and his plans for a second.
  • Focuses on how he balances a busy life with finding time for reflection and avoiding distractions.
  • Observes how you can only change the conditions for change, not create the change itself.
• Shares his plans for the future, and his learnings about how people can incorporate his ideas about the interpretation of design into their lives.

Ravinol Chambers is an award-winning film director and video producer. He founded Be Inspired Films to bring great ideas to life and tell stories that matter, for purpose-driven organisations across the globe.

Be Inspired Films was a founding B Corp member back in 2015 and their passion to make a positive difference, while staying sustainable and true to their core values, shines through in everything they do.

Working across video, animation, podcasting and events, they help their clients create powerful digital assets designed to solve the world's biggest problems.

Believing that harnessing the power of story can make the impossible possible, Be Inspired Films magnifies impact and delivers stories with clarity and confidence, in a compelling way that can truly change the world.

Ravinol has lived a colourful life of extraordinary experiences and it was a delight getting to know him.

Overview:

In our fascinating interview, Ravinol:

• Explains what Be Inspired Films is all about and the range of clients they work with.
• Describes the experience of live streaming TEDxLondon talks.
• Highlights how Be Inspired’s films are used in various ways for nonprofits and for profit-making businesses.
• Shares his backstory, expanding on his various career choices and spending his twenties living as a monk.
• Talks about how he became a filmmaker and how the Be Inspired business structure evolved.
• Delves into the challenges of building a B Corp company culture, where there are more freelancers involved than employees.
• Stresses the importance of hiring people with different personality types, and effective recruitment methods.
• Ruminates on the ‘chicken and egg’ dilemma of not being sure when it’s the right time to grow your team.
• Discusses the ways an entrepreneur can react to uncontrollable situations.

Kresse is a multi-award winning environmental entrepreneur and Young Global Leader, with a background in venture capital and extensive start-up experience.

After first meeting with the London Fire Brigade in 2005, Kresse launched Elvis & Kresse with her co-founder and partner, James ‘Elvis’ Henrit, rescuing raw materials like decommissioned fire hoses and transforming them into luxury lifestyle accessories.

They are B Corp certified, and believe that the future of luxury is sustainable, ethical, reclaimed, open, generous and kind.

Today, their highly skilled craftspeople make beautifully designed accessories and homeware from 15 different reclaimed materials. Elvis & Kresse donates 50% of its fire-hose range profits to The Fire Fighters Charity, and 50% of profits from the Fire & Hide Collection goes to Barefoot College International.

Going behind the scenes of Kresse’s business journey was as inspiring as it was educational.

Overview:

In our revelatory interview, Kresse:

·    Explains what the business is all about, and how they rescue and transform materials into luxury fashion accessories.

·    Runs through their regenerative agriculture enterprise and their plans to produce wine there.

·    Discusses Elvis & Kresse’s revenue streams, and how roughly 85% comes from D2C (Direct to Consumer) sales.

·    Details the evolution of their manufacturing process and production sites.

·    Expresses her concern about the future of the UK’s craft industries.

·    Highlights the growth of the trend of the ‘conscious consumer’ and its positive effect on their business.

·    Talks through their marketing strategy; the importance of telling a true and honest story to customers and the value of authenticity in an increasingly ‘post-truth’ world.

·    Shares Elvis & Kresse’s origin story and, before that, her biodegradable packaging business.

·    Reflects on the fact that a business is destined to fail if the timing isn’t right.

·    Recalls the experimentation stage of trying to work with the materials, and how the product lines increased.

·    Stresses how widening the brand’s impact through collaboration is very important for the business’s future, believing that climate change and bio diverse loss are the most important problems our world is facing.

·    Describes her and her co-founder’s roles and how their skills are complementary.

·    Reveals her most important learnings, including getting started without a perfect business plan and being motivated more by the greater good than financial gain.