Between the Interviews - 10% Check in! (10 interviews down & 90 to go)

Written By Andrea Masterson

10 down & 90 to go! I’ve gone back through the first 10 to pull out some themes & ideas that stuck out to me. This is not scientific nor a controlled study. I did not ask everyone the exact same questions, so something that came up with one person may be true for all the others, but we just didn’t cover it. So take this with a grain of salt that these are simply observations. There were so many themes that have risen to surface already and some thought-provoking differences that have come up so far. In this episode, I recap what has come up so far.

Thank you so much to everyone that has subscribed through the Patreon. These subscriptions are what fund the project and keep it going. There are many different tiers available, starting at $1 and $2/month and each tier gets you access to extras. For example, $2/month Listener Tier gets early access to Interviews on Thursdays (audio & video); $3/month Member Tier adds on weekly Between the Interviews Series on Mondays; VIP Tier has merch. I do my best to give back to those joining, so check the show notes for the link to the Patreon. 

I truly do want to hear from you, so please message me on Instagram, on the Patreon, leave a review, or email me your thoughts and suggestions. I really am listening and have been working on pulling in leaders from locations near where I know people are following from and from industries that are of interest to you all. Send me your thoughts and I’ll do the research here. 

Finally, if you’re interested in working together to build better community, check out the business website www.capitalism-for-good.com. Whether you’re interested in starting or expanding a community give back initiative with your company, want to plan a volunteer day, are looking for a charity partner that fits your values, or perhaps talk about some eduction around the value of community partnerships, I would love to help. I’d be happy to get on a phone call to see how CFG can help you with your community goals. 

Transcript

Hey folks, this is the Between the Interviews show, where I'll provide some context, background reflections, and recommendations associated with the Capitalism for Good philosophy. While the interviews are obviously focused on highlighting businesses and their leaders through talking about their experiences and philosophies, the Between the Interviews shows will be mostly me connecting the dots, providing some additional insight, spotlighting the things that I'm listening to, reading, and watching in order to learn more, as well as some of the why behind where I am choosing to put my dollar. These Between the Interviews shows will be sprinkled in Between the Interviews, and will be posted on the main feed, but will also be posted weekly on the Patreon in video form.

So if that's your jam, head there. There's a link in the description. Alright folks, we have 10 down, 90 to go.

We are 10% of the way through. So I've gone back through the first 10 interviews, so that I could pull out some themes, some ideas that stuck out to me. This is in no way a scientific nor controlled study.

I did not ask everyone the same exact questions. So something that might have come up for one person may be true for all the others, but we just didn't cover it because we have so many other things to cover. So just take this with a grain of salt that these are simply some observations, but there are a number of things that really stuck out to me as I went through these and read the transcripts and re-listened to them and went through all of my notes.

I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of things that really came up and came out of them. It made me really excited as we go forward, interview some more folks and get kind of a broader range of leaders on the Capitalism for Good roster. So, let's just start with a general recap of who we've had.

So top 10, first 10 are Shannon Masterson. She was an occupational therapist, a non-profit founder, and I think I called her an accessibility and inclusion champion because she's kind of growing and expanding all over the place. Then we had Andrew Bolton.

He was the CEO of Tech Rescue. He was the one who, I can't remember if he said it in the interview if I found it somewhere in kind of the research forum, but he said something like don't let tech issues be the reason why you call your grandma or something like that. He had this beautiful story about helping his grandma with some tech issues and like there's got to be a better way to do this.

So let's get some human to human contact in there. And then after that we had Greg Moore. He was the president of Charlie Hustle.

That is an apparel company based in Kansas City. That really is a champion of like everyone that lives there in town. They have the community tees, communities I think it's called, initiative where they were they're partnering once month or something like that with a charity or a local place, local stores and then they would sell a t-shirt that is related to whatever that initiative is and give the money to the whatever that partner is for the time.

As long as just like as well as just like partnering with everyone in the city and like truly had a was like a staple in the city. Next we had Veronica Hernandez. She is the general manager of the Modesto Nuts, which is a men's minor league baseball team.

So we talked to her about what it was like to be a female GM in what is perceived to be a male dominated industry. She had the really beautiful analogy about the birds and comparing that to like a well oiled machine of a team. She was really a joy to to really talk to and had so many little nuggets of wisdom.

And then we talked to Emma Grose and she was co-founder and CEO of two sustainable brands, Mable and HayStraws. Mable is the one that makes the bamboo toothbrushes, sustainable cotton swabs, floss, and then HayStraws did compostable bamboo straws, cutlery, all sorts of things, really really passionate about giving back to the the environment and the folks around them, tons of partnerships, opportunities, and also just a really strong female CEO that I mean, I could say this about every single person, they were a joy to talk to. They were so wise.

There was so much that they were sharing. I, they, to have these folks as the first 10 really like paved the way. They're the leaders of Capitalism for Good in a lot of ways.

And it, yeah, really fantastic. Next was Keith Bradley. He was the co-owner of a store called Bait in KC where all of the things that are sold within each of those brick and mortar plus online stores are all things truly made in Kansas City by Kansas City artists, creators, manufacturers, vendors.

They've got to step back at the airport. He was also branching out into like the food and cocktail space kind of really all over the place. I think they had just purchased a bookstore, Rainy Day Books in Kansas City, so really all over the place.

Then we had Kyle Parsons. He is the founder of Indosole. That is the recycled footwear brand, so taking tires and repurposing them into sandals.

Also on the horizon in the process of creating the first upcycled yoga mat, is I believe the way he described it. And truly passionate about really taking things that had been discarded, taking waste and repurposing that into something that is fashionable, comfortable, and really cool for people to purchase and wear. So, check out Indosole.

And then we had Marissa Gencarelli. She is the co-founder of Yoli Tortilleria, also based in Kansas City. You can tell that I started where I kind of started, and with the folks that had been jumping out to me, the ones that I knew vetted had really good reputations, had already kind of seen and then watching them grow since they started.

And so Marissa was another one of those. She has expanded that tortilla well beyond just tortillas. They are sold in restaurants.

Yoli has a restaurant in the Kansas City Current, and that's the women's soccer team in that stadium. There's also a brick and mortar spot. She's in grocery stores.

She's in Whole Foods. They also are online. And again, someone who is taking her experience and her culture and her heritage and really like injecting that into her business and her food.

And like once again, I'm saying it again for everyone else, just a role model for us all and just so, so cool, so wonderful. Love talking to her. God, I just loved all of these people because next on my list is Lindsey McCoy.

She is the founder and CEO of Plain Products. She's the one who has a business with her sister, making shampoo and body products sustainable. I mean, that closed loop model is so cool.

That was the one where you buy, for example, a shampoo or one of their products. You use it, you order your replacement, buy it at the store or whatever that is, and in the box that they ship you the new product, you wash out and put the old bottle, send it back to them, they clean it and repurpose it so that it's truly reusing the bottles. And she also had a really interesting take on scaling it, on working with her sister.

And the realization that you can use business for good. I have been using her line about using businesses to solve problems a lot recently. So thank you, Lindsay.

I try to give you credit every time that I say that and that I put that out there. But that was really a nugget that stuck out to me. And I just am preaching what you're doing.

It's so amazing. And then number 10 was Whitney Wagner, once again, co-founder of Refill Emporium. They are a refill store in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan.

Really kind of a subject matter expert in that zero waste refill store field. And again, so many lessons learned, so much experience, so many things that she was sharing, and so many things that I could relate to, and I'm sure that the other folks will. So I've got a pretty well-rounded first 10, I would say.

And I have been thinking a lot about and talking to folks and scheduling who is next. And so I am really excited about that. You should know that from the background, from where I sit, I listen and I pay attention and I watch where people are listening from.

I pay attention to where people are located if they're reading the blog or interacting with me on social media or those kinds of things and looking to see what cities you live in so that I can pull in leaders that are close to where you are. I'm also listening to the feedback that I've gotten from folks, so the things that they're really interested in and the fields that they want to take. I've heard a lot of requests on sustainable swaps of household items.

I think we'll get into someone within the entertainment industry and potentially some some politic conversations. We'll get into some other different sides of sustainability, some more economic conversations, probably some restaurants. We'll kind of be covering, hopefully, the whole gamut.

I'm targeting some true educators, so folks who are really being leaders in that they're teaching and informing the next generation, or folks who are making swaps in lifestyle changes, career changes, professional development changes, those kinds of lifelong learners that are facilitating that kind of education along the way. So a lot of really exciting things on the horizon. I hope that that will balance out where we've been so far.

So it's just kind of a breakdown of fields in the top 10. We've had one person from Tech, that was Andrew, one OT slash nonprofit founder, that was Shannon, three sustainable brands, Emma Kyle, and Lindsay, one from Sports Management, that was Veronica, one from the food industry, Marissa, one zero waste refillery store, Whitney, and then two locally based stores, Greg and Keith. Again, lots of overlap in these things.

I think that we could talk inclusion and accessibility also with the stuff that Andrew does. I put Whitney in the zero waste store, but she also is manufacturing products, could go into sustainable brands. Veronica also tied in with the community aspect, has some crossover with nonprofits, so does Kyle with the things that he's doing with the Sungai Watch.

While I put them in these buckets, I don't think that their experience really pins them only in those buckets. So I was very, very excited about kind of seeing that wide range of backgrounds in all of these folks. Another thing that really stuck out to me, which wasn't anything that I purposefully did, although I will say that there's probably an unconscious bias, just because I myself am a female in business.

But there were four men and six women in this top ten. First ten, not meaning to say that they're going to be better than all the others, but they do kind of hold a special place in my heart, in my brain here. But that ratio of 60% women to 40% men really stuck out to me, especially as I've been doing some digging and some research in just leadership in general.

And I will post some of these things within the show notes. But they're from the Harvard Business School. I found an article that they quoted a catalyst report where within the S&P's top 500 companies in 2023, only 8.2% of the CEO positions in those companies were held by women.

Which is interesting because the women that really stuck out, or the leaders that really stuck out to me and filled in those slots for the first 10, obviously are female heavy and that's not really representative of what the world really looks like out in the world. Another statistic that I saw pretty much all over the place went back to 2018, that the male to female ratio of CEOs was 19 to one. So that again puts it around that 9%.

So we might be making, I mean, according to those two stats, we've gone down a little bit. I imagine that it's hovering somewhere in that same area. So I am trying to make a appointed effort to lift up those underrepresented leaders.

And while those two stats look at males versus females, I think we can also get into immigrant backgrounds. We can probably also get into age. We can probably also get into kind of poverty levels or income levels as well.

Probably education levels. So I think there is more to explore and more to dig in there. And I am doing my best to pull in a wide range of folks.

So again, just kind of trying to be transparent there that I recognize that the ratio of leaders that we've had so far in our first 10 are not are not lining up with what the population ratio is right now. And that's going to be a little bit of a flexible I imagine journey. I hope that that that changes.

One thing that Lindsey pointed out when we when I spoke to her was she made a comparison which again, recognized that this is a sweeping generalization here. But a comparison to men vs. women leading companies and while her comparison that men often lead these companies that have these big giant profit margins and often make a lot of money and employ a lot of people that often the companies that are run by women are the ones that are truly solving problems.

And while I don't have any statistics on that and it might be true in some ways, I don't want it to be the norm nor the future. Part of the underlying belief of this Capitalism for Good project is that we can all make a positive impact and we can all use businesses to solve problems whether we are a customer of specific businesses or we are leaders or employees of specific businesses. One of my kind of mantras that I've been saying quite often to folks is you don't need to be the smartest person in the room, you don't need to be the richest person in the room, you don't need to be the loudest voice in the room.

We can all make a difference and we can all make an impact and that that is part of the the point and the message here. So at the same time these underrepresented leaders like the women that I've interviewed have all been exceptional in the way that they've approached their role and I think regardless of our backgrounds, of our demographics, of any of those things, we all have things that we can learn from them and I want it to be a little bit more about the message than trying to put people in boxes, although I get that that's kind of hypocritical because they just broke down the fields into boxes. So again, take it with a grain of salt that I think it's an interesting lens to view this, but it's not the only way to look at things and if we can kind of get into some of those differences, I think that there'll be a little bit of a through line of that here and that, you know, there we can look at things in all different kinds of ways and depending on which lens you look at something, it can be a little bit different and it can be a little bit more complicated and both a positive and negative about a company can be true at the same time.

So if we can think back to the interviews with Veronica and Kyle specifically, I think they organically had a great example and that Veronica was talking about her love of making and how that really inspired her passion and her drive and her interest in sports marketing and then Kyle specifically talked about how potentially Nike might be too busy making Air Jordans to use sustainable materials and I think that that is a really important example because both of those things can be true. Nike can both be a company that folks can look up to and want to emulate and a kind of a goal and an inspiration and there can also be areas in which there there is more work to do. I'm gonna pull it back to Lindsay again who really was talking about how Plaine Products and herself was looking you know we're just talking about progress not perfection here like we're trying to make a difference we're not saying that we're the end all be all there so I think that that was kind of an interesting an interesting look at things and also goes back to my idea that the world is gray it's not just black and white there's so many different variables that go into all of these different things there are also so many experiences that were very different and wide-ranging just in these first ten if we think of kind of how folks got to their current role while I don't ask them the exact same questions they do try to start generally with like what's your experience in your background and how did that get you to where you are now and whatever that role is and some folks had held multiple different jobs some folks like Shannon still currently hold multiple different jobs or Whitney was in this transition phase and Emma was still working her other jobs Marissa still worked her other job for I think she said four years or something like that but then on the other side of the house her co-founder her husband quit his job pretty early on to focus so there are all these different ways to to look at it and Veronica made these big sacrifices to take unpaid internship positions so she could get herself in in the door of where she wanted to be.

So there are all of these different ways that folks have have approached things. Same with funding. Emma talks about her co-founders going after Venture Capital and Kyle also had some of those people investing within the company.

And then you've got Lindsay and Whitney who were really just doing it on their own and making sure that the scaling was going with their income so they didn't have those outside influences that maybe other people had. That's not to say that one way is necessarily better than the other way. We're all different.

Our goals are different. Our businesses are different. The environment is different.

But that is an example of how folks have approached those things in different kind of ways. And another part of it in just going along with different folks are different is the personalities of these leaders have been totally, totally different and all valuable. And I think that that is something that is a big example of not every leader being made the same.

And once again, you don't have to fit into these like cookie cutter types of things in order to be successful at what you do. They've all got these varied backgrounds as well that brings, it probably informs their personalities and informs their leadership style. They're all growing.

They're all changing. I don't think any of the leaders that we spoke to were fully in the same field that they started in. Even Kyle and Whitney, who were probably the closest to their backgrounds, I believe they both had worked in retail and had sales backgrounds, which kind of informs them to have a retail location or be in sales in their position, you know, selling their products in their company and getting customers in the door.

But those positions are still different from where they were now. There were also different perspectives on scaling and all of those different things. So just so many takeaways and so many things that really jumped out to me.

There are also so many similarities in things that are already coming through as far as these trends of things that again just kind of naturally and organically came up in these conversations. So one of them is obvious probably by the name of this project, the Capitalism for Good Project in the theme of building better community through the ways in which we make and spend our dollars. And so all of these companies that are behind these leaders that I spoke to are ones that had existing give back programs or underlying themes where they're giving back to their community.

Although, I will say that their approaches were different. So if we're going to talk about Greg, Emma, and Marissa, they had more of the traditional community give back programs where they're giving donations, they're giving dollars, or they're giving time in kind of partnership with their business model. And then there are folks like Shannon, Andrew, Keith, Veronica, Kyle, Lindsey, and Whitney who I would say the things that we talked about were a little bit more of filling a need within their community with their business or it was their culture that is really giving back to their community or their approach to partnerships was really how they were filling in that building better community needs.

Again, we think back to Veronica and she was talking about meeting with charity partners and before they even talk about, okay, signage and costs and all of these things. She was like, well, tell me about your goals. Like, what are you trying to accomplish?

Like, let me help you while you're helping us and like, let's try to find something that's going to be mutually beneficial here. And obviously Made in KCKyle, lifting up local owners by, those are the vendors there. And their approach, especially early on, was to once again meet with those potential vendors and talk about their goals and talk about the things that they wanted to get out of their company.

Andrew’s was specifically, we don't want there to just be a robot in a chat. But the purpose of the company is to have a real person walk you through for that population that wants a real person to walk you through your tech issues. And that's truly like using your community, using your internal community to fill a need within your external community.

Shannon, by starting a non-profit specifically to advocate for inclusion and accessibility, whether it was through an IDP, she's also going through a little bit of a transition and it has naturally expanded, doing some universal design consulting work, doing some speaking engagements, so all of those different types of things. And then we've got Kyle and Lindsay and Whitney literally taking waste and energy and sustainability and using that as a platform for what their business is doing. So all sorts of different kinds of approaches there, which I think is a good example and a good reminder to us all about just finding what fits best with your business model and with your skills and with your values.

And it doesn't all have to look the same. It doesn't all have to fit this same formula. But if we approach things from the lens of like, how can I help out these other people within my community and do some really cool things, like the way that all of our leaders have done before?

I also think that another similarity that was a little bit of a through line, while some of them we explicitly talked about, others I think it was a little bit less of an explicitly stated takeaway. But we did talk about all of their different leadership philosophies, and most of them brought up ideas about, you know, being understanding, being growth minded beyond just the short term goals and positions, not only just of themselves, but also of their employees. Whitney and Veronica specifically talked about this.

Veronica, I think, called them non-needy questions, where she's just asking folks out in the field about what's going on. And Whitney talked about it a little bit from like a mentorship perspective. And she's selling her business, like being an aid and a mentor and a guide and a resource to the next owner so that there can be this transition that is best for the company and for the community, regardless of who is at the top of the org chart there.

And there was a lot of like relationship building focus. A lot of people focused on kind of what's going on. I think Lindsay was the one who was also talking about, you know, why would I be so hard on myself if I wouldn't fire someone else for making a mistake?

Or Emma talking about how she wants to focus on the things that are going really well. Like, maybe there's a dip in sales, but maybe someone else's subscriptions are going up. Maybe someone else had a cool idea that they can take and replicate and really focusing on the positives.

And Greg talked about how he really approaches things with like love and trust and understanding. And like, I hired you to do your job, so I trust you to do your job. And if you screw up and we have to have a conversation about it, like he wanted to hear more of like, all right, well, what did you learn and what's going to happen?

Like, how are you going to change things in the future? And then, all right, now go do it. And I think that those those types of people first approaches, again, whether or not it was something that was explicitly stated or something that's just naturally built into their personalities really stuck out as someone who is being stewards of their their internal communities.

And it seems to be working for all of them, all of these businesses that we talked to, even the ones who are experiencing challenges were thriving. And, you know, I don't know if every single leader would say that they're thriving because that's sometimes the way that that we look at our own lives and our own experiences, that sometimes it's a little bit easier when you get some distance to see that. But they're all doing such cool things.

And I, yeah, I can't speak highly enough of them. All right, so some more common things that really stuck out to me. One was how many people, as they were talking about their experiences and how their journey...

I keep saying that. It's so cheesy to be like, what was your journey like? But that is what I'm asking people.

It's like, how what has that been like from whenever you see it starting to where you are now? So I guess that question naturally leads people to talk about their upbringings and their family and their heritage. But I was surprised at how many people really talked about how much that informed them.

Hindsight makes total sense, but Andrew telling that story about his grandma, Greg talking about looking up to his parents, Marissa talking about her grandmother and her mother paving the way for her as an entrepreneur and an educator, Whitney talking about her hippie mom, Lindsey talking about her dad being an entrepreneur. There are all these different things that really shape these folks from kind of the ground up, which is one of those things that sparked me to be like, all right, we need to pull in some educators here because a lot of these things that are shaping these leaders that we're talking to start so much before they're actually working. And so I love to kind of talk to the people who are like crafting the brains of these future leaders.

Another thing that came up so often was listening to your customers and listening to the people around you. I think just like listening in general is probably a theme, but if we talk about listening to your customers, Lindsay and Whitney specifically talked about this. I think that that is key.

And you know, you got to know the people that you're selling to no matter what your business is. And I think that act, that approach will naturally tie you into your community. If you're already listening to your customers, you already know what they want.

You're not trying to influence and tell them. You're giving them what they're already asking for. So I imagine that that makes your job as a business leader easier, because you're just giving people what they want.

I think Whitney's phrase was, see a need, fill a need. You know, give people what they want. Give people what they're asking for.

Also, when it comes to just listening, Kyle and Shannon specifically both talked about finding your people and finding that community, and really using that to help you move forward and continue to make a positive impact. I think another part of that listening piece is also asking for help. You don't know what you don't know.

And Shannon talked about how it's not a weakness. And when we talk to Veronica, she told a story and she goes, Oh, I just heard this the other day. There's this like life long learner thread that really seemed to be underneath every single one of these leaders stories, which is probably partially why that they have pursued all of these different things and they've got all these different ventures and we ask them what they're doing in the future and it might be totally different.

I think being curious and being interested in what is going on, what how the world is changing, being adaptable, I think is really, really serving these folks well. I think there's also a part if I'm going to take that lifelong learner mentality to be a through line into just the humility and being humble when it comes to having all the answers. Greg specifically said, I don't have all of the answers and he was talking about being very like open and upfront and honest about that and just, I don't, I don't know.

Maybe we'll figure it out together. And Lindsay specifically talked about like that being a theme of her 40s is embracing imperfection. And I think that those are things that we can just even as humans give ourselves some grace and don't be so, this is also me talking to myself, giving myself a pep talk here.

Like, don't be so caught up in being perfect and doing perfect and being the best that you can as someone who's naturally a little maybe a lot competitive. I get a little caught up in like the things that we could do and be better. Again, I'm going to quote Veronica here when we were talking about events and mistakes that are made and she very frankly said, It's not all going to be perfect, but if we're all naturally going to be striving to improve on something, like you got to have something to improve on.

And that that's just a part of the game. And I had this like very gracious and cool perspective when I asked her about like the volatility of the market and the tariffs and all these things and she was just like, that's the job of an entrepreneur. That's the job of a leader or a CEO is to to deal with it.

You know, if it's not one thing, it's going to be something else. And that's just a part of the job. And that mentality to just embrace it when things don't go as you planned.

And it seems to also have really served everyone. Almost everyone talked about something that either didn't turn out as planned, and if not, gave specific examples of when they messed up, when they learned a lesson the hard way. And if, you know, Kyle talking about like the ways that they cut the tires to begin with and that it was kind of wobbly on the things that they're doing.

And like, just, you know, it's okay to make a mistake and that's fine. Or, let's see, talking about like bottles resting and being like, all right, so we gotta do something else now. Like, it's fine to make a mistake.

It's fine to learn from a mistake, but you just, that's a part of growth. You gotta learn something, you gotta grow and improve upon it. And I think that that is just, again, something that I think about often when I am reflecting or even being hard on myself when I am making mistakes, you know?

Having these, the words of these leaders echo in my head has been so, such a growth opportunity. Was on the phone with someone who, fingers crossed, you all will hear from soon. And we talked about how I feel like I am in college right now.

I feel like I'm getting a master's degree in leadership from all these folks because I'm just soaking up so much information from all of these different types of people. And obviously, it's not traditional education. It's not anything formal.

I'm not turning in homework or anything like that. But it I'm taking so many valuable lessons and like in real time, applying them to my life. So if you are as well, let me know.

I want to hear about it. There were also some specific shout outs that I thought were really cool. And I don't think that they're...

I don't know if the timing... I don't think the timing worked out to where they pulled out, you know, their copying off of one another, but maybe they did. Regardless, I think it's important to shout it out.

But they're repeated shout outs to Patagonia. I think Kyle and Greg specifically talked about how Patagonia does things that seem like a death wish. Like, don't buy that jacket.

Or, I think Greg's words were that Patagonia does things that a CFO would never advise you to do. And, you know, that is kind of cool. That's a...

If we're going to manifest things here, I would love to talk to the CFO of Patagonia. I'd love to talk about how they have been able to capitalize on that mentality and that business model and be so successful and so stable for so many years. Like, that's truly, truly admirable.

Obviously, with all the Kansas City shoutouts here and with me being a ballistic millennial woman here, but I don't think that I prompted any. Maybe I did. I should probably go back and like, fact check that.

But Taylor Swift was a huge shoutout, Taylor Swift. Kansas City Current was called out a couple of times. Aaron Andrews and Carissa from Calm Down Podcast were called out.

So Travis Kelce was called out a few times at a few different places. You know, there's some really cool things in the sports and entertainment industry and the way in which those folks operate that are truly making a difference, pushing the envelope and building up communities, really supporting Kansas City as a brand as well. And I thought that those were kind of just some some cool things that we're all looking at some of the same folks as kind of our our North Stars and our role models in that way.

And they seem like great people that are that really have something to to share and offer. And that is, I imagine, speaking to their success and their longevity. And then to go into like shout outs from there, that I ask at the end of every interview for the the leaders, the guests, to shout out another leader or business that they see out there in the world that is doing things the right way.

And every single one of them gave multiple and or a broad range of people, because it seemed difficult for them to kind of narrow down to to just one. And so I think that that that is also indicative of lifting up the community. If you can have the humility to say, like, I'm looking at someone else.

It's not just me. It's a different turn on competition. You know, sometimes if you see someone out there that's really killing it in your fields, like, you want to chase that.

You want to be like them. You want to be better than them. It's like two quarterbacks trying to like beat each other.

You want to be stronger, faster, better, more skilled, more precise in what you're doing. And I think that that that is a really cool thing. And I love the positive spin on it of like, I see you.

I see you out there doing what you're doing. And like, that's cool. I'm coming for you.

But I'm coming for you in the best way. Another thing that really just stood out to me in general is the natural inclusive mentality. And this goes back to what I think just leads into those soft skills of leaders who are really building these strong, stable companies, and companies that people want to work for, obviously, yes, want to buy their products, but also want to work for.

Like, that's a big part of capitalism, is creating these businesses that run these machines, that keep things going. You're putting a paycheck, and you're putting benefits into the pocket and the household of folks that live in your community, whether it's your geographically local community, or your online community, or your demographic community, or your interest community, like, you're really helping your internal community by like paying them well and, you know, paying attention to their time. Lindsay talked about, and Marissa talked about, the flexibility to be able to work around these people in recognizing that they have other lives and things going on and being able to like give them back their thing.

Like, okay, if you're going to come in, you're going to work hard, and you do these great things, then like, you gotta literally, you know, live your life. And that, that mentality was really cool. And Greg, you know, very specifically talking about like the Casey Hart is for everybody when I was asking him like, tell me about like the, the impact on business or the calculus when you are in the middle of the country and you've got some people who have opposing views and then you have a pride campaign or you donate money and you have a t-shirt campaign after a shooting and does that lead into gun violence and does that create controversy?

And he just kind of very maturely and very just frankly said like, the Casey Hart is for everybody. If you live here and we like, this is for you. And just that, that's such an equal mentality, obviously Shannon with her like inclusivity and like that, that is the purpose of what she's doing with her non-profit is to to really like bring up there's a seat for everyone at the table.

Here's a chair. And I, you know, Marissa talked about that also of like making sure that they're, you know, if she is here and she's gonna have a table and like she needs to pull up a chair for other folks and like I just I think that that is really really admirable and I'm proud to have those conversations with people who have such a natural inclination to see people for what they are, to value people for what they are, and to incorporate that into their business models and their philosophies and almost everything that they do. I think that that's a really cool thing that I'm really proud to shine a spotlight on.

I'm also really proud of the spotlight on sustainable manufacturing and things like supply and demand and how that fits into business models. Emma and Kyle both talked about the difficulties in finding a manufacturer that could support a startup or a non-traditional manufacturing method. Both needed to be manufactured outside of the US., and even Kyle in Bali had a hard time with an order that was less than a million dollars. And so I think that that also gives us, the potential customers, an actionable goal, an actionable takeaway of part of that manufacturing issue is supply and demand. And if there's increased demand to show the need, the manufacturers will have an easier time changing their practices, incorporating more of those sustainable initiatives, and building up those skill sets because there's a need for it.

So then that manufacturer can give jobs to the people that are working in the factories and those people are broadening their skill set. Like, there is a ripple effect there that I think is a really cool takeaway. Another thing that I found was really cool was the way in which they are leaning on different versions of marketing and advertising and utilizing affiliate programs.

Emma, Lindsey, Kyle, Greg was talking about they are using athletes and notable locals to be able to partner together and really building that trust in a human to human, one to one ratio. That's a trend that I thought was very cool and interesting. Would love to talk to some other folks about how they're utilizing community in that way versus some of these traditional, I'm thinking like Mad Men, 1950s, 1960s types of advertising, or maybe even more recently like the Detroiters.

I just finished that show. Types of advertising mentality is like your commercials, your billboards, your signage, your all of those types of things versus getting into some of these like affiliate and influencer programs where they've got a person who's utilizing your product and then talking to it about the people within their community and using that like word of mouth, let your reputation precede you type of philosophy. Maybe that's not a new thing.

Maybe that's something that's always been going on. But I thought that that was an interesting trend and an interesting focus that was coming up when I'm kind of digging into these companies and these places. I think the last thing is just a general takeaway of the things that I'm hearing and that I'm seeing from these first 10 are generally just find your passion, use your skills.

That going back to Whitney is find a need, fill a need. There's something out there where Lindsey is like, use your business to solve a problem. I think that there are all of these different ways that we can use the skills that we each have, the talents that we each have to truly do something that is good and that is impactful in a positive way.

Just so much, so much positivity. Again, I'm just gonna say a good jillion more times that like, I have loved every second of this so far. I have been talking nonstop about it.

It has been a long time since I've been really fired up in such a positive way and felt like I have my own purpose. And again, getting my brain to work again and being this, you know, learning and growing and changing it, you know, I'm incorporating a lot of these things that I'm hearing and that I'm learning in real time on a daily basis. And I think that it's super valuable in the connections that are happening.

And I'm already like spotting like, all right, there's a gap here and someone else's subject matter expertise here. Let me connect to these folks here. Like there, I think that there's a lot of like really, really cool things that are coming out of it.

And I am just stoked for the next 90. If all goes according to plan, if we follow the schedule that it's been mapped out, if we can keep this momentum going, then the 100th interview will be out in April of 2027. Who knows what's gonna happen between now and almost two years from now, which is wild.

But, and that seems so incredibly far away. But the fact that there are 10 down, and we're 10% down already, and I feel like I just started this. I just started asking people about it.

Just started kind of getting my feet under me. It's amazing, you know? I just, I gotta stop saying that it's cool and that I'm excited.

And that I just want to take a minute then to say thank you so much. Thank you so much to every single leader who has taken the time to meet with me. What I'm asking from these folks is to block off an entire hour to talk to me, and a good amount of them have spent so much more than that.

You know, obviously, Shannon, my sister, listens to me yap about this stuff incessantly, because she is in my personal life, and Andrew Bolton, I think, spent like two hours, two and a half hours, like, fully talking to me. That was amazing. Whitney, I had a phone call with her before we actually did the interview.

I talked to her for like 45 minutes or a half an hour or something like that before. It just is so, it's been so great and I am immensely thankful and grateful for these folks to take the time to really dig into this stuff with me and to be willing to share it with the general public and to not really gatekeep their experiences and their knowledge, but in fact be very proud and excited to share it with everyone else and to shine a spotlight on the things that they're doing. I recognize that there are some people who are uncomfortable talking a little bit about the things that they're doing and the successes that they've had.

When I was talking to Kyle about what is his title, because so many of these founders are also CEO or executive director or president or whatever, and he was like, you can just say founder. And I was like, we can talk about your other things. Like this is, this is, we can put things like founders fine.

Like I, I just, I, I'm gonna say it again. It's just so cool. Also on the other side, thank you so much to every single person that's listened, every single person that has told someone else about it, that has shared an episode, that has sent a blog post to someone else to read, that shares on social media, that responds back to me, that, that engages and lets me know what they think and what they're hearing.

Thank you so much to everyone who has subscribed through the Patreon. These subscriptions are what fund the project and keep it going. There are so many different tiers available starting at $1 and $2 a month, and each tier gets you access to different kinds of things.

So, for example, the $2 a month listener tier gets you access to interviews on Thursday. So early access to the audio and video versions of interviews that are out every Thursday, typically in the evening time. Your $3 a month member tier adds on these weekly Between the Interviews Series on Mondays.

That's what gave a little sneak peek. There are some early examples of those Between the Interviews that were posted on the main feed, so that folks could kind of get a lay of the land and what's behind the motivation for this project. Those reflection episodes are still going every Monday, and the folks in that member tier are still have access to those things.

The VIP tier has access to merch. I really do my best to give back to those that are joining, so check the show notes for the link to the Patreon. There's a lot there.

If you're interested in any of the behind the scenes of like how this project gets made from the back end, like if you are someone who is interested in starting anything that looks similar to this, whatever your topic is, like I am really open just like I'm asking these folks that I'm interviewing about like the mistakes that they made, I do my best to be very open about the mistakes and the lessons learned that I made, plus the resources that really helped me, the people that I'm looking up to, like yeah, why not share my experience there? So that's all available there. And just in general, I truly want to hear from you, so please, please message me on Instagram, message me on the Patreon, leave me a review that tells me what you think of it, email me your thoughts and your suggestions, including the things that you don't like.

I got tough skin people, you can tell me the things that I need to improve upon. I am very open about early days, early stage, that this entire project and almost everything that goes into it is brand spanking new to me. And I am learning, you know, not just from these leaders that I'm interviewing, but I'm learning about the technical side of things.

I'm learning about social media I'm learning about advertising, like I'm learning about all of these types of things, and I am happy to share what I have learned as well. And so I want your feedback, I want the things that I'm not talking about, that you want to hear about, that is within this Capitalism for Good space. So reach out to me, I want to hear from you.

I truly do. Some of your thoughts, and I'll do your research. Like I said, I really am listening and kind of creeping to see where people are coming from, where you're located, what your interests are.

And so if there's an industry or an interest of yours that I haven't hit on, that you are really interested in, like some of your thoughts, if you have a question that is related to this Capitalism for Good project, I'll do the research here. So send them on over. I'm already doing it.

I might as well do something that fits what you're asking for and what you're looking for. Finally, my last little plug and shout out here is if you are interested in working together to build better community, check out the business website for CFG. It's at capitalismforgood.com.

It's also linked down in the show notes. Whether you are interested in starting or expanding a community give back initiative with your company, if you want to plan a volunteer day and you don't want someone that's already your full-time employee taking away from their normal job to do it, if you're looking for a charity partner within a specific space or that aligns cleanly with your company values and your philosophy, or if you want to perhaps talk about some education around the value of community partnerships and what that can add to your business if done well and done efficiently and effectively, I would love to help. So I'd be happy to get on a phone call, see how CFG can help you with your community goals.

I just, once again, would love to hear from you if you've got thoughts, needs, questions, interests anywhere within that space. I truly believe that we are stronger when we work together and that we can truly make a really impactful, positive future if we just put all our brains and our skills together and leverage those things to build better community. So all right, that's enough.

Let's go leave this place better than we found it.

Andrea Masterson
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Whitney Wagner, Co-Founder of Refill Emporium (Interview 10/100)