Peter Handy started his first business while in college. After graduation, he worked for a big bank on Wall Street. Then he and his wife decided to leave the big city to raise their family in Portland, Maine. That’s where Peter discovered a new way of doing business.
He bought Bristol Seafood and made it his mission to encourage more Americans to eat seafood as their primary protein. But Peter wanted to deepen his commitment to owning a business that did good in the world, so he led Bristol Seafood through the process of becoming a certified B Corporation.
If you haven’t heard of the B Corp, you’re not alone – they are rare. In fact, only about 6,700 of them exist in the entire world. Certified B Corps must meet extremely high standards to show they benefit both society and the environment. The B Corp stands in stark contrast to typical corporations that often put shareholder benefit at the top of their priority list.
If you’re wondering about profitability, Peter says becoming a B Corp has actually strengthened his company’s bottom line. Doing good for people and the planet, and making money at the same time…what a concept!
Resources from the episode:
- Get to know more about Bristol Seafood here.
- Read about Bristol Seafood and their B Corp certification at this link.
- Pete Handy talks about the benefits of collaboration and systems thinking – and how they can benefit companies operating in a specific region – in this interview with SeafoodSource.
- Connect with Paul Handy on LinkedIn.
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Transcript
The following transcript is not certified. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. The information contained within this document is for general information purposes only.
Speakers: Peter Handy and Mark Wright
PETER HANDY 00:01
You know, we all can think of a list of ways to make money, right? And we all can make a list of ways to do good. And so, what we’ve decided to do as a company is to find those good things that we can do that will result in profitability, and to relentlessly optimize that intersection and to take the cashflow that is generated as a result put back into our business to enable us to do even more good and make even more impact.
MARK WRIGHT 00:35
This is the BEATS WORKING Show. We are on a mission to redeem work. The word, the place, and the way. I’m your host, Mark Wright. Join us at winning the game of work. Welcome to BEATS WORKING. I’m Mark Wright on the show today. Have you ever thought about why businesses exist? I mean, back in the old days, it’s pretty clear that humans saw the value of specialization. There were people and families who got really good at things like baking bread and brewing beer and building boats, and they could do it better and cheaper than their neighbors. But as companies came into existence in later corporations, the mission wasn’t just about delivering something to a customer. Business owners saw that making money had its advantages that actually gave value to the entity itself, and that could be sold for multiples of their annual profit. What I’m getting at is that companies today exist for a number of reasons, but can doing good be their first priority? Our guest today says the answer is yes. His name is Peter Handy and he’s the owner of Bristol Seafood in Portland, Maine. Bristol is what’s called a certified B corporation. It’s a type of business that meets really high standards that show it’s good for people and the environment, and it’s not easy to become a B Corp. Only 6,500 exist in the world, but Peter says he can’t think of a business that wouldn’t benefit from becoming a B Corp. And Peter says he’s not sacrificing profits to do it. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Peter Handy. Peter Handy, welcome to the BEATS WORKING Podcast. It’s good to have you here.
PETER HANDY 02:28
Thanks Mark.
MARK WRIGHT 02:30
So, Peter, one thing I like to ask people at the beginning of these interviews is give me a little backstory on your work history. So as a kid, did you have, did you have jobs as a kid, Peter?
PETER HANDY 02:40
My first job was at the Woodside Bakery. No, no, the little store. Little store was quarter mile up the road from the Woodside Bakery and I, I bus tables. Um, and I prepped ice cream and washed dishes and it’s kind of a little neighborhood restaurant, and then the Woodside Bakery after that, where I did the same thing.
MARK WRIGHT 03:01
And which town? Where? Where was this town?
PETER HANDY 03:02
In Woodside, California.
MARK WRIGHT 03:04
Okay. So, you’re a California kid now. You’re back in Portland, Maine. So, Peter, I want to, uh, jump right into, um, you went to one of the best business schools in the country, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and I looked up on your, on your, uh, LinkedIn profile while you were there. You founded or co-founded a shipping and storage company that catered to college students called Box My Dorm. I’d love to know how you got the idea to, to, to co-found that. Sounds like you had the business bug pretty early on.
PETER HANDY 03:36
Yeah, it’s, um, it’s an interesting story. So, I, when, when I was at Penn, uh, at the end of my freshman year, I lived 3000 miles away. So, I had to find somewhere to put my stuff, and so, I rented a U-Haul truck, and there was this self-storage place nearby where you got the first month for a dollar, and I think it was like 60 or 70 bucks a month after that, and so I emailed a bunch of my friends and I was like, hey guys, I’m, I’ve got this truck putting my stuff in it, putting it in the storage place, and we can all go back and get it at the end of the summer when we get back on campus and we’ll split it. So, we did all this work, unpacked everything, got a bunch of parking tickets, loaded up the thing, unloaded it over there. Signed all the paperwork and then we went out to have some dinner and figure out what the split was gonna be. And I think it cost each of us like 30 bucks, and we looked at it and said, my gosh, we more people wish they could have done this. Right? I, we did. We had more people that were interested in it that would fit. And so, we decided to make it into a business, and so we launched it the next year, uh, at Penn and at Penn State, and we realized, um, you know, if we got the process right and so it fit well with moving companies, uh, it was something that we could scale, and so, we got it up to 26 schools and oh eight when I, when I left.
MARK WRIGHT 05:05
That’s amazing. And just as, as college kids, you, you sort of figured this out on, on the fly, or did you have any mentorship in terms of how you structure the business and all that stuff?
PETER HANDY 05:16
Uh, structure. I don’t think we got any much mentorship. We kind of just put our shoulders into it and got it done. Um, but kind of thinking about it as a business, um, we did get some support from the school. Um, you know, one of my partners, Joe, is phenomenal programmer, so we helped build a lot of the backend to make it work, but we, we just kind of figured it out.
MARK WRIGHT 05:37
Was it, was it lucrative? Did you guys make money?
PETER HANDY 05:39
Yeah. Business worked. Yeah, business worked. We, we helped a lot of people and, and business made money.
MARK WRIGHT 05:44
What was the biggest lesson, Peter, that you learned from that business venture?
PETER HANDY 05:48
When your customer is only, he can only be a customer three or four times, uh, it’s really challenging to grow revenue in a recurring way, right? And so, if you think about folks graduating from college every year, you know, a quarter of your customers are firing you, not by choice, but just because they don’t need it anymore, and, uh, I learned a lot about, um, you know, the, the, what that does to pressure a business in terms of what I suspend on sales and marketing and customer acquisition with that level of kind of, uh, you know, that that’s the lowest churn rate you can have is 25%.
MARK WRIGHT 06:28
That’s interesting. So, when you graduated, you went to work for one of the big banks on Wall Street. Was, was that a calling Peter or was that something that you just thought, you know, that hey, this is part of the business plan for, for me career plan that uh, I’ll go get some great experience working for a big bank and then see where it goes from there?
PETER HANDY 06:46
Yeah, I mean, I am highly influenced by the people around me. I think we all are, but like I really noticed that about myself and all my friends were going to banks or to consulting shops. The people I met in school are the smartest people I’d ever met before, right? And I’m kind of looking around going, well, if all these smart people are doing this thing, like surely, it’s a great idea, and, and I learned a huge amount. I mean, these companies have phenomenal onboarding programs. It’s a great kind of in between with college, cuz like in college you show up, you have new student orientation and everyone’s kind of in the same boat. For me, joining a gigantic company was a little bit like that, where I think I started with 115 other people and you get your onboarding packet and you sit at the round table and have the lunch and watch the presentation, and so, it was a wonderful way to make friends to kind of transition into the professional world.
MARK WRIGHT 07:46
Yeah, that’s, that’s kind of rarefied air. You know, when you, you go to Wharton, you end up on Wall Street, the, the, the people at that level, um, that’s a pretty powerful network, isn’t it?
PETER HANDY 07:56
It’s, it’s a really neat group of people. Um, definitely folks, uh, a lot of my closest friends are folks I met in school and keep in touch with and have a lot of respect for.
MARK WRIGHT 08:07
So, what was that like, the work experience, Peter, and what did you learn working for a big Wall Street bank? Um, what, what was the big takeaway for you professionally?
PETER HANDY 08:15
Um, it was a, there was so much opportunity to learn new things because of whether it’s the training libraries they have online. Whether it’s once the, you know, people who were much more highly compensated than me and had their own Bloomberg terminal. You know, like once they left at 4 or 3 when the market was closed, I could go on the Bloomberg terminal and learn all sorts of stuff, and Bloomberg has this thing called Bloomberg University. I spent hours on that learning about all these different asset classes and data and tools. Um, I learned a lot about process. I, I think, it’s, it’s amazing in a company that size, when you do something, whether it’s fill, says, submit a new account form, or, uh, make a trade, all the things that happen on the back end of that, which in a company that sizes it seems invisible, right? You, you’re never really get to touch all that process but the company’s ability to do that in a reliable and consistent way every time is, is really, you kind of set a standard for me that I hope to bring to other places where I show up.
MARK WRIGHT 09:33
Yeah. They have to have their processes dialed in when you’re dealing with multiple millions of dollars. Right Yeah. So, at what point, Peter, did you decide to leave the big city? How did you end up in Maine?
PETER HANDY 09:45
Yeah. So, I, um, one, one of the interesting things about when I started in financial services was it was May of oh eight, right? And the gigantic financial crisis. So, for people who’d been there for 10 or 20 years, this was kind of un, unheard of levels of volatility and kind of stress and anxiety, and for me it was just Tuesday cause like I didn’t have any other context, right? Um, for me, I was junior enough. I knew, uh, it was less likely that my job would be at risk, and so I got to do all sorts of things that really felt entrepreneurial inside the business. Um, what made me decide to make a change was kind of as I moved through, uh, different parts of that business, um, in different roles. You know, I missed being in a small business, right? At the beginning, all the, the training, the meeting people, the development, the kind of opportunities I, I, I believe were, couldn’t be matched in a small business environment but like, once I consumed a lot of that, um, I started to miss the small business side, right? Being closer to people, understanding how something works, being able to walk up to a problem, right? Not like wondering if it’s in some other building or, gosh, I wonder what they’re doing in Cincinnati. Like, you know, get up from my desk and walk 30 feet and like, there’s the group of people that are building this thing, right? And I, uh, I really missed that. Um, I also, uh, it was important to my wife and I, uh, to grow up, raise our kids in a place where we felt really good about the environment, right? There’s this, um, modern portfolio theory, if you want to geek out in finance for a second, but if you look at a portfolio of, you know, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, hedge funds, all that, and you jam it all together, the theory is that 80% of that portfolio’s return is based on the beta exposure, like what markets did you choose to be in? It’s not based on how well the manager of those individual assets does, right? And like in a weird way, I kind of think about that as raising my kids, right? And so if, if the beta is the kids they talk to when they’re at the bus stop, and the neighbor who sees them when they’re out getting the mail and the teacher who’s helping ’em do their country project and the soccer coach who’s coaching them at halftime, you know, all that time far exceeds the amount of time and influence that my wife and I will ever have. Our kids, right? And so, for us, you know, she has four aunts that live in Maine. Uh, we think it’s a fabulous place, and we kind of said, you know, we want to do the small business thing and we wanna be in a place where, you know, if we had to just drop our kids out there and come back and get ’em when they were 18 and hope for the best, like, where would that place be? And, and for us, that was Maine.
MARK WRIGHT 13:07
So, did you have a job at, at, uh, Bristol Seafood before you moved, or did you get the job after?
PETER HANDY 13:12
No, so we, we bought the business in 2014. Uh, and I, we moved here January 6th of 14. That was my first day at work.
MARK WRIGHT 13:22
Wow. I didn’t realize that. So, you bought the business in 2014? So, you’re in Portland, Maine, you’re at a seafood company. Tell me more about, uh, the products that you guys have and, and what was the business like when you took it over?
PETER HANDY 13:38
Yeah, so Bristol’s now it’s 30 year old company. It started in ‘92. Uh, we’re on the Portland Fish Pier, which is one of the really interesting things about the place is in a lot of areas. Um, seafood processing is kind of relegated into the not-so-nice area of town, but Portland, Maine, um, really values and protects its working waterfront, and so, the area we are is zoned only for marine use, and, you know, I can walk a quarter mile and be at award-winning restaurants, you know, gorgeous hotels, right? So, it’s, it’s a really unique geography to be able to have a fish processing plant in the midst of a thriving downtown environment. It’s one of the things I love about it. Um, what, what the, the way the business started is Bristol was a spin out of, uh, Volvo automobile, as weird as that sounds, right? So, Volvo owned Abba. Abba had fish processing plants around the world, and when they, when Volvo decided they didn’t want to be in the fish business anymore and started spinning off those assets, the CFO of Abba started Bristol by buying this plant. Right.
MARK WRIGHT 14:53
That’s interesting, and so the company was handling, you know, fresh fish, haddock and cod and halibut from Canada and New England, and what, what I would say is what’s been important to me in being here is really focusing in our products on the things that we do really well in structuring the business, and going to market in a way that really improves the lives of our customers, of our workers. We want to be good partners to our suppliers, um, and we want to make sure we’re honoring the environment in our community, and so, uh, we’ve, we’ve been, you know, building the business with that in mind. Um, the, the products we sell and kinda the way I think about product development is in some way influenced by, um, uh, Starbucks. So, back when I started Box My Dorm, one of the ways we did that to have working capital, they were handing out those credit cards to everyone, right? Lead, lead up to the financial crisis. I got a credit card with $35,000 limit. No job, no assets, you’re nothing, right? And I get this thing with a 0% interest rate for 18 months and I say, this is perfect, and so I write myself a check cause they mail you those checks, right? Write myself a check for 35 grand, put it in my account, and we use that to help buy cardboard boxes and rent trucks and all that kinda stuff. What I didn’t know at the time was I was gonna get a bill. That month, right? That was like 0% for 18 months. Like, I’ll see you in 18 months, right? Then I got like the $700 monthly payment. Like, oh, I didn’t, I didn’t know this was coming, rght? And so, four blocks down from my apartment at, at in Philly, I, there’s Starbucks. It’s one of the busiest Starbucks in the United States, and so, I could work there. I could open the store at four 30 in the morning and still get to class on time. I got to eat all the sandwiches that were gonna get thrown away. So, it was like a college paradise but on the product side, what it, what I noticed is there’s like the hardcore espresso coffee drinkers, black coffee drinkers, right? But there’s a lot of frappuccino people, right? And what I started geeking out about Starbucks and reading more about it and what really when that store count and revenue started to move is when they started to have products that help bring more people into the coffee category, and the, the frappuccino changed everything, right? They didn’t get away from their core business of, you know, espresso and dark roast coffee, but they added on things to kind of meet the customer where they were at. And so, for us, I mean we have kind of very much purest products like, um, scallops that we import from Japan that are immaculate, kind of a scallop lovers scallop, but we also have things that, you know, we sell my fish dish and trays that have, uh, chef crafted compound butters and marinades because we, we don’t wanna get away from kind of that absolute pure direct access to premium seafood but we also know that some people like don’t know how to go from not eating seafood to eating that, and so how do we bridge our product line in a way that is going to help grow the number of consumers that choose to eat fish?
MARK WRIGHT 18:30
That’s interesting that you brought up Starbucks. Uh, Howard Behar, former president of Starbucks I’ve gotten to know over the years, and he’s actually coming on the podcast in a few weeks. Um, well
PETER HANDY 18:41
Tell him my partner number was 1-2-6-9-8-8-0. It was an awesome college job. I learned a lot, and, uh, thank you.
MARK WRIGHT 18:50
Well, I’ll be sure to tell him, Peter, um, the story that he tells of the frappuccino, there was a district manager in Southern California who called him up and said, Howard, there’s this coffee company competitor that’s making this kind of coffee milkshake thing. It’s mostly ice and people are just clamoring for this, and so he flew down and uh, they went and they tasted it and he goes, man, this is good, and it was, again, mostly ice. The profit margin was, was, uh, super high. Um, there was a huge debate within Starbucks when Howard came back to Seattle and said, hey, we need to start doing this. The, the district manager down in California decided to go buy the equipment and start making these drinks to perfect, and she called Howard and said, I think I’ve perfected this. You need to come back down here, and he was a little bit miffed that she kind of went out, went rogue. Long story short, there was another huge fight in, in the boardroom, and Howard Schultz said, okay, I’m gonna give you guys like, I think it was 90, 90 days. Uh, I want you to track the numbers. You can sell this for 90 days and, and we’ll see where it goes today. It’s a multi-billion-dollar stream of revenue, and it’s a great example though, Peter, as you’re saying that when you pay attention to the market and you start to structure your product lines based on what people are interested in, what they want, it’s, it’s just the sky’s the limit, right?
PETER HANDY 20:10
Yeah. And it, you know what I, what I learned from that, um, is a lot of times people will have a product or an event, and when they don’t get the engagement they’re looking for, they say, oh, we have to educate the consumer. Like they, they clearly don’t understand how wonderful we are. If, if we just tell them, then they’ll stop being so ignorant, and of course they’ll buy the product, and I just think it’s like an inherently arrogant way of looking at product F and, and for us, it’s, we don’t want to educate the consumer. We want to be educated by the consumer, right? Like, tell us what you would want in order to have this be a product that you’d love, and then how do we take all that feedback and build something? You know, when, when people, someone has a meeting and they say, oh my gosh, no one ever comes to this meeting that I hold. I’m, I’m not the guy who’s gonna go gather everyone up and say, hey, you have to go to this meeting. You’re gonna be in trouble. I’m gonna look at the person who’s meeting it is and say, why don’t you run better meetings that people want to go to? Right? And I, I think there’s something to that.
MARK WRIGHT 21:17
Yeah. Um, before we get too much further, I think we should bring up the fact that, uh, your company is now a certified B corporation, and I, I knew nothing about this whole process until, uh, I first had a conversation with you a few weeks ago. Um, for people who don’t know anything about what it is to be a certified B corporation, and I think you just announced it in January of this year, um, tell just the average person who knows nothing about it, what, what this certification is.
PETER HANDY 21:47
Yeah. So, the, the gist of it is, um, it’s, it’s our expression that we believe the best way to run a business profitably over the long haul is to look after our employees, our customers, our suppliers, our community in the environment, and that if we overemphasize any of those things, um, it’ll get us out of balance and we won’t be able to grow as fast as we otherwise would or make the impact. Um, said another way, you know, we all can think of a list of ways to make money, right? And we all can make a list of ways to do good, right? And so, what we’ve decided to do as a company is to find those good things that we can do. That will result in profitability and to relentlessly optimize that intersection and to take the cashflow that is generated as a result to put back into our business, to enable us to do even more good and make even more impact.
MARK WRIGHT 22:56
And so, this literally is a formal commitment. There’s, there’s an entity that oversees and audits and certifies. So, if I’m hearing you right, it’s, it’s business for the sake of success when it comes to workers, customers, vendors, communities, and the environment. So, sort of a, a holistic approach to, if we’re gonna be successful, we have to be good in all of these areas.
PETER HANDY 23:23
Right. It, it’s not, um, I, I just refined it. It’s that, that’s one way of saying it. What I, the way I would say it is we’re going to be successful because, we’re being successful in these other areas, that that is our definition of success, right? And, um, you know, we, we, we wanna win and succeed, but in a highly specific way, and so the, the, besides the kind of belief system, the two parts that tie in here on the legal side and on the certification side is we, we changed our corporate structure to be a benefit corporation, and what that means is that instead of our, uh, board of directors being accountable as fiduciaries to shareholders and making sure we don’t break the law, they are now fiduciaries for those five stakeholder groups that I shared with you in addition to being fiduciaries for our shareholders, and then on the certification side, we, um, have been audited by B Lab, which is the certification body, and they, we, we answered a number of questions on this B impact assessment and they went through and vetted our responses and made sure we had enough points to be able to earn that certification.
MARK WRIGHT 24:40
I looked on B Lab’s website and it looks like at this point there are about 6,500 companies in the world that have been certified as, as B Corps. Um, that, that’s shocking considering the number of businesses that exist in the world. I mean, 6,500 out of how many millions and millions of companies there are. Um, let me back up a little bit, Peter, and just ask, when did this idea, first, you know, when did you first start, you know, thinking about this and, and why you wanted to go down that road. Was there a, was there a moment or was it an evolution?
PETER HANDY 25:19
Um, I’d say four or five years ago, people started saying, hey, the way you’re talking about your business, you should think about being a B Corp, and I said, well, what’s the B Corp? Like? What, what’s that mean? And people would, you know, throw different books at me, which, uh, candidly, I, I didn’t have time to read. So my assumption was, I was like, all right, this seems like some sort of weird corporate structure thing. Um, sounds like a waste of time. Like, I’m just gonna keep doing what we do. Um, then I, uh, someone, actually, it’s somewhat, it was the same book. It’s, it’s called Accountable. I, I’d had like six or seven people send it to me, so it’s on my shelf, like looking, it looks like I sell this book cause I had so many of them, right. You know, I’m like, I’m like, all right, like the world’s telling me something. I should probably actually read this thing, and then I learned that the guy wrote it like lives two miles away and I was like, friends with some friends that I have,and anyway, so read it started becoming more interested in it and it, it took, um, I probably spent a year just walking around thinking about it. I talked to my leadership team about it, uh, and asked them what they thought, asked them to read some things. We, we listened to this great podcast called Big Time Small Business, which gives 10 really good examples. Um, actually, sorry, that one, that podcast was, uh, about stakeholder capitalism. They have 10 different examples that they go through. That’s what really resonated with me because I started to see there these 10 businesses, were all doing it in a very different way, right? It’s not one thing. There are all sorts of different avenues to try and make an impact, and knowing that, um, B Corp would give us a framework to think about how we wanted to leave our mark, right? But it wasn’t prescriptive and precisely how we did it. Um, it seemed like a really interesting way to decentralize and kind of democratize our decision making around. What we want to do from an impact perspective, um, and the, the fact that we can get a certification and, and be vetted by a third party is really powerful for us because I can look at people we’re hiring or people we’re buying from or people we’re selling to and tell them like, li listen, this is how we’re different. This is how you should expect us to show up for you. These are the things we believe, and by the way, like it’s been vetted and confirmed that like what I’m telling you is actually real. And so tho, those are the reasons why we decided to, to make the plunge.
MARK WRIGHT 28:10
What was the process like Peter, of getting certified?
PETER HANDY 28:15
Mm-hmm. So, it starts with this B impact assessment. Anybody can do it. Go onto B Lab’s website, and this, uh, it, it’s a, to say it’s an online survey is an understatement, right? But it’s looks like an online survey, right? Here’s a question, pick four different answers, but each time you pick something, it kind of unlocks these gigantic wormholes of more questions, right? So, I, I’m a guy who usually, you know, the thing says, oh, it’ll be, you know, 30 minutes to fill out this online thing, and I like whip through it. I’m done in 10, right? This thing said it would take, I dunno, three, four hours. Somebody told me it was like hours. I mean, I must have spent 20, 30 hours in a lot of these questions. It was, it was humbling. So, it was like, I don’t know the answer to this question about this business.
MARK WRIGHT 29:08
Like, like give me, give me an example Peter, of like, what, what were some of the questions on that initial survey?
PETER HANDY 29:13
Oh, it asked us what percentage of our suppliers are within 75 miles of our building. No idea. Never really thought about it. It asked, asked us what the trends have been in our electrical usage over the last few years, and then it asked, said, I knew, I was like, okay, we’re using a little more power. Like I got that, and it was like, how about amount of power per unit of product you’re producing? It’s like,
MARK WRIGHT 29:46
Oh, my goodness.
PETER HANDY 29:48
Never really thought about that. I, I couldn’t tell you. Same thing for water. I asked us what we do when, um, you know, like a cell phone dies, company cell phone dies. Like how do we dispose of it? I dunno. I have no idea, right? So just all these things that. Yeah, if someone asks a question and you hear it and you don’t think it’s important and you don’t know the answer, like it doesn’t really bother you but if you read a hundred questions that you read ’em all and you’re like, oh gosh, this is like really important thing, and I have no idea. It’s very humbling.
MARK WRIGHT 30:19
So, once you get through that initial survey, then then kind of take me through the process, what happened next?
PETER HANDY 30:24
Fill out the survey, and that was all with me. Kind of like, I wasn’t guessing, but I was putting my best guess on these lots and lots of questions. Uh, and I realized I needed help. So, I, uh, found a way to export it to Excel and I put a name of a different person on our leadership team next to every question that kind of made sense for it to belong to them, and I said, hey guys, like these are the answers I put down. I think they’re true for some of them. I really took a shot in the dark, but can you go through, and like update it to what you think, like put the real thing in there and so they no more than me. Right? So, they made it more accurate, but there’s still a bunch that they didn’t know. And so, at, at the end of this you to, in order to get certified, you have to have more than 80 points. And so, we did not have more than 80 points, and so, we had to decide, you know, there’s million ways to get better. We had to decide what made sense to us, and so, as a team, we said, all right, these, these are the things we’re going to do in order to make sure we can get above that threshold. We’ve worked with groups like the University of New Hampshire. They have a, the Impact clinic, and so they sent us students in two different summers that we worked with. We’ve had interns come in and help us, but it’s, it’s very much been a whole company lift. Um, in terms of getting this up and running and deciding how it is we want to do this and how we wanna show up.
MARK WRIGHT 32:03
What would you say Peter is the biggest sort of aha in terms of we were doing business this way then, but this process of getting certified as a B Corp made us really show up better here.
PETER HANDY 32:19
I I what it, where I feel it the most is there have been times in yeah, in business, in like work a job in anything where you’re going like, do I want to do the right thing or do I want to make money? Right? Like, this is clearly the thing you’re supposed to do, but this would be more profitable,and you know, more often than not, you choose the right thing, but you always have this friction of like, like I keep doing this thing. I wonder if it’s. Like that, that friction in that decision making process is hard, and when a whole group of people in a whole company are making that decision, you know, hundreds of times a day, it, it, um, it’s tricky. And so, the, the shift in thinking for me with B Corp is that it’s not an either or. It really is an and is how do we always do the right thing? In a way that’s gonna drive our profitability and drive our growth, and I know if we’re leaving our customer better off, we’re leaving our suppliers better off, we’re leaving our team members better off. I know that business is going to be successful, right? And so, it’s, it’s just taken all that, um, all that friction and decision making out, and it’s made it much more of an optimization thing of, all right, here’s 10 ways we can make our team members lives better. What are the ways that are best and most aligned with making sure we’re taking care of all of our stakeholders?
MARK WRIGHT 34:07
That’s really interesting that you say that, Peter. I think a lot of us in our careers without, you know, in the absence of a system, like that where everyone is invested and there’s a very clear filter of this is who we are as as an organization. If you don’t have that overall structure, I’ve seen so many examples over the years. Oh, corporate’s telling us to do this, and then the local managers have to figure out a way to do something that really screws the employees or the customers or something, and it’s, it’s like one person against the system, and then they have to have workarounds to try to do the right thing and still satisfy their corporate bosses, and it’s just a completely different mindset that in, in, in, in your system, that filter has been set and everybody knows that’s who we are and it’s okay to do this if maybe we’re not gonna make as much money, but we’re still gonna make money but it’s the right thing to do.
PETER HANDY 35:08
It um, it’s clarity is really, really nice.
MARK WRIGHT 35:14
So, I would love to know more about, I’ve always been fascinated, companies that are really, uh, heavy on manual labor, like, you know, people cleaning seafood, people, you know, uh, fileting fish and things like that. Um, how do you build community within the company. How do you build that sense of pride? Those are really hard jobs. Um, what do you do as a business owner to, to invest those folks, you know, on the front lines of a business like that?
PETER HANDY 35:47
It’s actually a lot easier. I mean, you’ve met lawyers, right? And like, it’s not like they’re all like in the thick of it, thickest thieves, all great friends going out, like all the guys from the law firm moved together. And like, I’m sure you might have had this experience walking into a bar with, uh, like a military group and seeing how tight they are. Yeah, infantry I’m not military, right? But doesn’t look like a pleasant, easy job, right? That’s hard work. And the truth is like hard work brings people together, right? And so when it comes to comradery and when it comes to, you know, having each other’s back, uh, I think, um, we’ve got it easier here than any place I’ve ever worked other than this. I think, um, what we have to keep in mind is, uh, we don’t want the work to be any harder than it needs to be. Something I shared with my team is that, you know, you, you would think that the people’s favorite day at work would be at work a day where there isn’t a lot of work or like an easy day, and the truth is people get bored and they don’t like it. They’re like, oh my gosh, he’s taking forever. Nothing to do. There’s no orders, right? Like, oh, I gotta find something to do and it kills ’em, right? The days people love are the days when there’s a lot of hard work to be done, but they have the tools they need, they have the plan in place. The machines don’t break, you know, and all the, all the conditions to attack that work are just right people love that, right? And you can understand why? You know, people want to know they’ve done great work and done a great job and they’ve, and they’ve delivered, and you know, we have to be really intentional about how we do that, and we want to be able to pay people more money, and the way we can pay people more money in a, in a financially sound way is by putting them in a position to create more value, right? And we can do that through training, we can do that through automation equipment. We can do that through really thoughtful process. We can do it by being proactive, but for us to have the kind of wages we have, we have to put our people in a position to provide outsized value, and turns out people love that, right? So, it, it creates a really nice virtuous cycle.
MARK WRIGHT 38:22
And you told me that the living wage is, is actually part of the B Corp certification process, right? Yeah. Tell me more, Peter, about the suppliers that you have. It seems like there might be kind of a network reach effect when a company decides to become a B Corp than, I guess by extension, your suppliers have to meet certain standards too, right?
PETER HANDY 38:45
Yeah, our, our suppliers have to meet certain standards, uh, absolutely right? What they supply us and how they supply us, um, matters a lot. I, I would say that, um, another part of it is the supplier business relationship, right? I’m I, my goal is not to get every last cent out of our suppliers and kind of ring them to death, right? I want to find ways that we can work together to reduce cost of ownership for all of us, right? I want to find a way that they understand what my challenges are and can deliver a product in a way that solves them, right? And so, what I, what I usually tell new vendors is we are lovers, not fighters, right? If we have to fight with you. This isn’t gonna work. We want, we want to trust you and we wanna love you. We want to tell you what’s going on and what our needs are and what we’d like to pay, and we wanna work together to find a way to make that work. Um, and when we have that partnership, really good stuff happens because we grow faster than we otherwise could. As a result, they grow faster than they otherwise could, and were able to deliver products that, um, we couldn’t without their, uh, without their expertise.
MARK WRIGHT 39:57
That’s really interesting that you say that. I know I met the, uh, the produce buyer for, we have a chain out here in Washington called PCC Markets.
PETER HANDY 40:06
Oh yeah. They’re customer version.
MARK WRIGHT 40:08
Oh yeah. Okay. Well, you know them and, uh, their head, their head produce buyer told me that they value farmers. They really value farmers and they’ve had farmers come to them and say, man, we had a really tough season. We didn’t get enough rain. Uh, we’ve, our, our crops yield is down and I’m not making money this year, and, and they have actually gone to that farmer and say, okay, instead of X, we’re gonna pay. X plus 50 cents a unit so that you can actually make money this season. We value you to that degree, and that really opened my eyes. I thought, I thought, man, it must just be a cutthroat, you know, relationship of, you know, farmers tries to get the most money, but they, they recognize, and it sounds like you do too, that the supplier, if you just open up your coat and say, hey, I’ve got no secrets. This is the reality of my business right now, that you kind of take care of each other.
PETER HANDY 41:02
There’s a, uh, Mark Twain quote, I think it was Mark Twain. He says the best way to know if you can trust someone is to trust them. Right? And of course, like sometimes it’s not gonna work, right? We’ve, we’ve had suppliers burn us before that that’s a thing, and that happens, but the, the opportunity you have to work with somebody, when you come at it in an open and transparent and trusting way, people tend to show up for you the way you show up for them. You know, and that’s true for our suppliers. It’s, it’s also true for customers. It’s true for the people that work here, and that’s, that’s the kind of company that, uh, we’re trying to be.
MARK WRIGHT 41:44
Peter, do you think this is part of a growing movement in this country? Because there is such an ingrained sentiment of shareholder benefit, it seems like no one talks about business and, and profitability without shareholder benefit being like the thing that everyone focuses on. Um, and, and that, that kills me. I mean, it, it just kills me that, that so many businesses think only about that, and they end up just gutting their business of good people who I’ll eat.
PETER HANDY 42:16
The, the interesting part about this for me is if all I was trying to do is have the business make the most money for shareholders, and that was like truly like over 10, 20, 30 years, like how big a pile of cash can we build? I wouldn’t do anything different because I think that the way we’re going to market is gonna generate outsized profitability now. It’s not why we’re doing it, right? But I mean, when you talk about kind of the stereotypical shareholder optimization decisions, right? Those things generally maximize short term, maybe medium term, but when you’re optimizing short term, you’re selling the long term to get it right and the long term’s worth way more than what happens right now, right? And so, I, I don’t think there’s a conflict between wanting to generate the most returns and going to market in a way that looks after everybody. I think that that’s, that’s precisely what we’re trying to do.
MARK WRIGHT 43:33
Peter, what advice would you have for a business owner who might be listening who may want to consider becoming a, a, a B Corp certified?
PETER HANDY 43:40
I don’t know how great of advice I’ve got. I think the, something that has been really freeing for me in this business has been really bringing my team in to know what I’m sweating over, what I’m worried about, where I see opportunities, so we can all kind of hold onto that stuff together and think through it together. Um, B Corp is a nice format for that. We run our business on the entrepreneurial operating systems, a whole other thing. That’s a nice framework for it. Um, but it, it’s, I I think a lot of people, very much myself included, uh, have like held on to too much of the stuff and the work can get heavy, right? And, um, it’s actually really freeing and fun and more effective when everyone gets a chance to go after it together.
MARK WRIGHT 44:47
So, you’re saying there’s more, more safety in this kind of a system as opposed to, hey, I’m the head of this department and if I don’t, if I don’t meet my goals and hit my budget, I’m gonna be in big trouble. A lot of fear right in that system.
PETER HANDY 45:00
Yeah. It’s fear, it’s stressful. It’s less effective. Like, like this is supposed to be fun. Like it’s not supposed to hurt, right? And like, watch out for the people that like the more it hurts, the better they feel. Cause like you just, you just don’t wanna live like that.
MARK WRIGHT 45:23
So, Peter Handy is going on the record. That business should be fun. That’s awesome. I’m trying to think of how to wrap things up Peter. It, uh, I’m just super inspired by what you’re doing as a business leader and it just, uh, it seems like this kind of idea could, could go far in a lot of different industries. I mean, do you think, do you think every industry could do this or do you think some industries are, are more, are more well suited than others?
PETER HANDY 45:51
Um, I’m sure there are examples of ones that can’t, uh, I can’t think of ’em. Um, my, my, what would be really cool is like, let, let’s pretend I’m right and when you treat everyone well, you actually can have an opportunity to generate superior returns, right? We know that capital flows to the best opportunities and so what if capital started flowing that way more reliably? Right? And what if, um, when people were raising money or doing IPOs or acquiring other businesses, part of that secret sauce was how they stitch all this together, and if, if there really is widespread agreement and alignment that this is a formula for generating outsized returns, what if valuations started to reflect that? And you started to see that reward system shift. So instead of optimizing near-term kind of societally, we started making choices and behaving in ways that optimized a collective view of what’s important to us in the long term, and you can think about how, uh, how much would be different if we did that? And so, I, I really hope this is contagious.
MARK WRIGHT 47:21
Okay. One final thought and then we’ll wrap things up. Peter, your industry, probably more than a lot of industries, has to be super conscious of sustainability, right? Because if, if the seafood runs, the fish runs and the shellfish runs and whatever else, if they go away, Peter Handy doesn’t have a business anymore. So how does this idea of being B Corp certified play into the idea of sustainability?
PETER HANDY 47:48
Uh, we don’t sell anything that’s not sustainable and, um, you know, fisheries management in the United States is, is actually really well done, right? It’s really well done. The, the biggest impact that this business is gonna have on a sustainability standpoint is by having people eat fish a little more often than they normally do, and having that displace consumption they do of beef. Right? Because there are lots of questions about whether or not kind of seafood overall as a protein source is sustainable, and the answer is mostly yes. There’s some no, but it’s mostly yes. If you look at beef production, we don’t as frequently ask, is that sustainable? Right? And the answer to that question is mostly no, right? There are some people doing it in a super sustainable way. You find them on YouTube and there’s documentaries on Netflix like they exist, but on average that thing ain’t sustainable, right? And so the, the difference we’re gonna make is by bringing the consumer seafood. Where they are happy to shift more of their consumption to that in a way from more carbon intensive proteins. That’s, that’s the way that we’re gonna move the needle.
MARK WRIGHT 49:18
Well, Peter, this has been super fun. Thank you for showing us there. It’s not an either or in business. It’s, it’s an and. Um, it’s been,
PETER HANDY 49:26
thanks a lot, mark.
MARK WRIGHT 49:27
Super inspirational.
PETER HANDY 49:29
Thank you.
MARK WRIGHT 49:30
I’m Mark Wright. Thanks for listening to BEATS WORKING, part of the WORKP2P family. New episodes drop every Monday, and if you’ve enjoyed the conversation, subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. Special thanks to show producer and web editor Tomar Medford. In the coming weeks, you’ll hear from our Contributors Corner and Sidekick Sessions. Join us next week for another episode of BEATS WORKING. Where we are winning the game of work.
