The Practial Applications of Impact Accounting with Angel Lance.mp3

In the world of creative writing, there's a saying, show, don't tell. Well, something similar is happening in the impact space. It's no longer enough to just tell everybody how amazing you are, the incredible sustainability or impact outcomes that your business is having. Now, you need to show the receipts. The good news is we're fairly early in this trend, and it's not that hard to get started. But businesses who really are able to have data to tell the story of how your business is moving the needle in positive impact ways are way ahead of the curve and are gonna do better than businesses that don't. Our guest this week is Angel Lance, and she's gonna tell you how to get started, couple of tips, and she's just a real trendsetter in the world of impact accounting. So take a listen and share it with your friends.

Hi. This is Paul Dollitzer, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help you increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. I'm an indie podcaster, and it makes a huge difference if you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app. It helps more people learn how to have a positive impact through a values based business. Thanks so much.

Today, I am thrilled to introduce you to Angel Lam, and our topic is the practical applications of impact accounting. Angel is a visionary founder and CEO with an impressive track record of creating and leading successful companies that solve big problems. In over 2 decades of serial entrepreneurship, she has launched and scaled 4 self funded profitable enterprises from the ground up, demonstrating an unparalleled business acumen and commitment to living her passion for environmental stewardship. Angel, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much. Excited to be.

And we didn't even talk about your new book and being an author and all sorts of things. We're gonna get into that in the show. But before we get into all the incredible things that you've done, Angel, if somebody didn't know who you are and wanted a little bit of sense of your backstory, what's a 3 minute version of your journey as an entrepreneur?

3 minute journey. I would say if someone didn't know me and they wanted to get a sense of where I came from, they would define me in a couple of simple words, which would be straightforward, honest, scrappy, get it done. That would be it.

That sounds pretty good. And, like your career, like, where did it start? You know, now we're talking about impact accounting today. Like, did you start as an accountant? Have you always been an entrepreneur? Like, give us like, a little bit of, like, what's what were the formative years of your career? What did they look like?

Oh, so I am not for the record, I am not a scientist. I am also not an accountant. What I am though is a business lady, and where I got into the business lady world is I used to work for big corporations. And in those big corporations, we would hire a lot of consultants as big corporations do. And those big consultants, big companies, and their consultants that they employed, I felt did not really deliver a lot of value to the big companies that I worked for. And I thought it could be done differently and better and more more tangibly and more maybe honestly. So I started a company, a consulting company where I could do exactly that, where I could deliver tangible value of day 1. I could do the things I said I was gonna do, and I could have a group work with a group of people who check their ego at the door and actually roll up their sleeves to to get a job done.

Check their ego at the door and work to get things done. I like that. Sometimes that doesn't happen in business.

Sometimes. So this

concept, Angel, of impact accounting, we're gonna dive into this. I was super excited when I got this pitch, because it's something I've been hearing about. And, and I wanna say in the impact world, sometimes people use big concepts, but don't always have any sort of granular information to back it up. And and one of the things that was exciting to me about this topic is a good accountant can really help you, like, what's going on in this business and to bring that into the impact space with something that I'm super excited about. So impact accounting, what is it? Where does it start?

Well, I I mentioned I'm a business lady and business is about counting things. It's about money. It's about accounting in that regard. And impact accounting is is just a further adaptation of that, which we'll get into the specifics of it. Where it is starting, because I don't know that it is, I don't know, that it is genuinely accepted or or adopted at this point across the business community is is really in the same place that other forms of accounting has started. So maybe you've heard of GAAP, generally account general accounting. What does it stand for? General accounting?

Accounting principles. Right.

Debted accounting principles. Yeah. Well, where did that come from? Because, you know, it's a standard essentially of how all all businesses or at least businesses in the US and then there are sort of subsequent standards across the world are measured by in terms of their profit and their health and all the rest of that. Well, it where it really stemmed from or at least a a huge part of its genesis is for GAAP accounting was the crash of 29, the stock market crash. There's a lot of reasons why that happened, but one of the main reasons is that every had different standards by which they valued their business or they expressed their profits or or they interacted with investors, to talk about their value. So we needed a standard so that investors could make intelligent decisions and or employees can make intelligent decisions or even entrepreneurs can make intelligent decisions based off of something that everybody agreed to in terms of a way of doing, a way of accounting, and a way of measuring a business health. So that's that's where gap kinda comes from. And so impact accounting, what is that? Well, it's simply a defined set of principles or or standards by which we will be governing our businesses and accounting for our profits, not just in terms of financial gain, but in terms of impact to the environment and to our communities that that our product or service is servicing.

Nice. And one of the things I've seen, it's sort of the psychology of the entrepreneur, which I like. I think in general, it's a good thing. But if you think back to whether it was the, you know, crash of 29 or 2,008, like, the impulse to be optimistic and tell stories about how great things are going until they're not. That until they're not moment is not so fun as an economy in general. And I think in the impact space, we're seeing something similar. Like, there's this excitement, and we can do it, and we can take on these really big problems. But if you're an investor, you don't just wanna hear, oh, this is awesome.

We can do something. You wanna know, is it actually moving? Are we actually having impact? How is company a moving the needle compared to company b? And if all we have are these top level concepts or what could happen or where it might be in 20 years, it's really hard to know, is it having the impact you want? Is this a good investment? How does it compare to other opportunities that are in front of you? And this is one of the things why I'm personally excited to see this movement, and I wanna see us talking about it more. So that thus the invite and thus this conversation. So impact accounting came from that sense of, like, we don't wanna be getting way out over our skis and then, like, just going off a cliff, which happened in 29, happened in 2,008. What does it look like when you're trying to account for both profitability in a financial perspective? And also, are you moving in the impact perspective in terms of the goals of the business? How do you account for both of those? And is it more challenging than single bottom line accounting where all you're doing is counting dollars and cents?

Well, so to answer the last part is probably more challenging. However, it's it's required, now, and and that's important. So the question of how you do it is is the same way that you do accounting in in otherwise, which is you measure. And you need metrics in installed in your company that you govern yourself by in terms of not only your profits, but then the the outreach of those profits. And the the when I and when I interact with a business is that the first question that usually comes up is, well, why should I do this until they make me do it? Because it's gonna it's gonna cost money to somewhat revolutionize how it is that I currently run my business or I intend to run my business, and I have to learn about new metrics that that are on the business scene that didn't used to be. You know? It's not just basic arithmetic at this point. And why would I do that if no one is making me do that? Because it costs money and, therefore, it seems like a kind of a losing proposition unless you're feeling altruistic. And there's a lot of good reasons why now.

Impact accounting is is simply the mechanism by which we we we measure our impact and to the environment of our product and service and or to our communities. There's a lot of ways to measure that. There's metrics specific to your business depending on whether your product or service. But, ultimately, what you do with that accounting and where you send it and who you give it to and talk about it with is now a very wide and very business specific field. So the same reason that you might get audited financials or you might have an accountant or you might have a bookkeeper that drives your numbers so that you can articulately give them to the IRS or to your investor or to your bank or or to anybody asking for the numbers of your business. You will be doing the same with with impact numbers across all of those different areas. So I'm excited to talk about the reality of impact accounting. It's not coming.

It's here. And it's not it's not a wait until somebody makes you because they're already making you. And and I'll explain how, where, and why, and they're and they're making you at all at all areas in business from the consumer all the way through to the large corporations, all the way through

to the government. So let's talk a little bit, like, in the financial realm. I think there's some measures that if you haven't heard of them, it's time to up your game. Right? You know, there's a p and l profit and loss. You've got your assets and liabilities. Those four numbers are pretty commonly addressed in a conversation about financials and how is a business doing and what are their goals and what kind of overhead, some kind of debt are they carrying? Things like that. We have measures and there's vocabulary for that. When we start talking about impact accounting, it's a newer space and I'm not sure people are as familiar about what are some of the common metrics.

So help us get up to speed there. What would be some of the equivalents that people are measuring so we can have some, you know, apples to apples conversations about the kind of impact that any particular businesses happen?

Well, some some base level measurements, and and these kinda go across all all forms of economy now have to do with things like emissions. Scopes 1 through 3, I I think most people are familiar with those at this point, but the type of emissions, greenhouse gas emissions that your company generates or you generate while interacting with your company are on the verge of being required in terms of reporting in in certain regulations in certain states. So what what does that mean? That means you need a carbon calculator, and there are many many tools available online to get one of those, where you you have inputs and outputs. Right? So according to your industry and how it is that you operate your business. So that can give you real hard line number around your greenhouse gas emissions from a bit in a business context. Some interesting things going on and how you might use that number just from an emission standpoint itself is particularly in California. There is a there has been a law passed. It's called SB 253, and it will mandate that as of 2024, I believe, or maybe 2025.

Private companies with over a $1,000,000,000 in revenue will be compulsorily required to to report on their greenhouse gas emissions. So it's it's a calculation. It there's there's a formula, there's tools, there's that that have inputs and then outputs, and you'll begin to you'll need to measure this and and other metrics from an environmental standpoint. From social standpoint, I kinda actually that previous one sort of works for e and g in the ESG moniker, and that it is both environmentally oriented, but then it's also governance oriented. How you govern your company and its greenhouse gas emissions and then, of course, the compulsory reporting aspect of it legislation. The s side of it is what is it doing for your communities? And that, of course, is industry dependent, but you need to be able to define define your impact on your either immediate on on your biz on your community that your business impacts. So, for example, if you happen to be a big business, like, let's use a public utility. It's a very big business.

They have to now define not only things like greenhouse gas emissions and lots of environmental numbers, they also have to define when they move into new neighborhoods or they revamp neighborhoods, what that's gonna do on a financial perspective to elevate that community or to regulate that community, and what what the financial and or I'll I'll say, time impacts may be or the the communal or societal infrastructure impacts may be for for the area that they're moving into. So they have to measure that. They can measure it in lots of different ways depending on on what measurement they're going for. They can measure it in terms of things like upscaling a disadvantaged community, and providing more opportunity. They can or they can speak about it in terms of scope 3 where they're utilizing a lot of disadvantaged businesses potentially to to deploy their projects.

I love those examples, and I'll put a link to s p 253 for anybody who's interested in what's happening in that law. Also share an example in my realm. I have interviewed and am now a scout for, I interviewed the founder and the CEO of Carbon Collective, which is a wonderful retirement program, really carbon optimized. And they're doing awesome work in this impact accounting, and they're looking very through through a very fine lens at where they're investing retirement funds. Just recently announced over a $100,000,000 under management. I think it's 103,000,000 at Carbon Collective. And some folks who were like previously telling a story about how sustainable their funds were got really upset because Carbon Collective is saying, wait a second here. You know, it's great to have big tech in your portfolio.

I guess it has a good return or at least it used to, you know, but Apple or Google are not actually that friendly to the environment. Here's the numbers. And some invest you know, some retirement options got upset because Carbon Collective was showing the receipts. And, you know, Carbon Collective is doing things like investing in batteries and solar and much more carbon friendly with the numbers from an accounting perspective than some folks who were telling the story of how green they were. And I tell that story just to say, you could easily get caught in a very uncomfortable situation given where things are going with impact accounting. If you don't have good numbers and you're telling a story about how sustainable you are, how much positive impact you're having in certain communities and somebody comes along with the receipts and you don't have them, I don't want that for our listeners, which is why I'm really glad that you're here. So if somebody's saying, okay, that makes sense. And I'll put a link to carbon collective in the show notes as well.

If somebody's saying this is making sense, but I have no idea where to start. I have a bookkeeper. I have an accountant, but they like, they look at profit. They look at loss. They look at my monthly books. They're, you know, making sure that my transactions are categorized in a in a skillful way, according to gap procedure, but they don't know anything about impact accounting. What do I do? What would you say to somebody who's in that space?

Well, I would say we're all in that space to some degree. Even the even the big giant companies who we've we sort of imagine have it all figured out, They don't. Nobody does. The governments don't even have it figured out, or maybe maybe they figure it

out afterwards.

I'm not sure. But what do they do? There's a couple of different things that you can do. There's a lot of different things you could do. 1st and foremost, I'm a pragmatist, and just sit down and think about it. Right? And sit down and start capturing outside of your accounting, your your ESG footprint because it's gonna be different for each industry and each approach to that industry. So it's it's difficult for me to give you, like, a calculation. But how can you start managing your ESG footprint outside of your accounting system? You can start calculating your emissions. Are you net 0? Are you net negative? Are you what are you? You can start taking a look at your supply chain, scope 3.

How and who are you interfacing with? Who are you choosing to do business with, and why, and what are the what's their issue footprint. Right? And if you and as soon as you calculate and really begin to apply a business lens to these numbers, it becomes somewhat obvious how it is that you can put it into your accounting line item. And then you go talk to your bookkeeper and you say, ma'am, we need to, you know, capture this measurement according to this revenue base or this profit base. And then we and in some ways, the accountants are already doing that. Like, if if you have a large enough organization that you have a philanthropic arm, then they're they're you already are making that connection. Right? You're already driving profit for maybe an environmental cause or a a social cause. So the first place to start is to understand your ESG and calculate your ESG footprint.

Great. Love that. So let's do this in a moment, Angel. I know you have some real concrete examples of folks who are doing this well, and I wanna hear about that, what they're doing, and why you think it's going well, and what we can learn from them. Before we do that, I just wanna take a quick break, hear a word from our sponsor. Are you facing 1 or more important decisions in your impact business? And you'd like an experienced thought partner to develop a plan about how to proceed in the complex times we're living. But you don't feel the need for an extended coaching or consulting contract that's gonna cost you many 1,000 of dollars. You're looking for an affordable, targeted, and time efficient type of support.

Through paulzellizer.com, I offer a strategy session package. These packages are ideal for entrepreneurs who are facing 1 to 3 immediate decisions, like how to increase your positive impact, fine tune your marketing strategies to get more results for less effort, launch a new product or service successfully, or refine your pricing structure so it's both inclusive and provides you with a great quality of life. You can find out more by clicking below, and thank you so much for listening to this podcast. So welcome back, everybody. I am here with Angel Lance, and we are talking about the practical applications of impact accounting. And in the first part of the show, Angel, I think you did a great job of kinda helping us get our heads wrapped around. What is impact accounting, and why does it even matter? Let's let's get a little more nuanced. Like, you brought some examples both from industry and government.

Give us give us a couple of examples of folks you think are doing this well.

Well, I think people are doing it well in the beginning of a doing. Right? So it will certainly evolve over time. And one of the ways it's evolving is many different countries of the world have created standards by which we should be governing ourselves. I came across something I thought was extremely well put together and

found it

on the web like all things are found. It's called Sustain Life. They have a they have a document that I I can make available as well. But it really lays out the different laws and regulations, both here in the US through the SEC and then through organizations in the EU, like the corporate sustainability reporting directive and the sustainable finance disclosure regulation. These are laws and regulations that specify how it is that they would like you to metricify your business. That's not a word, but I'm gonna make it one.

It is now. You heard it here, folks.

They also have a series of laid out of frameworks and standards that are also, you know, you know, boards and groups of of international colleagues who are defining these things. And so they're the ones to watch if you are if you wanna try to be a cutting edge and maybe tackle metrics that haven't yet reached the US. I can say that the the Europe is ahead of the US in in these mandates, and and the US is is trailing, but only so slightly. Any case, with those things, I can also state that in the US here, there's a couple of different ways that impact accounting is is really driving business. Wanna start just kind of on a consumer level. Have you have you noticed that at at least in in my day to day, everything that I buy, most things that I buy have some sort of ESG signature. For example, I fly on United, you know, a fair amount, unfortunately, but I I do. And on United, when you book a ticket, it's it's got your carbon signature there.

So you you're then aware really of of what it is you're purchasing. A conscious consumerism is really on the rise in just a dramatic way. I think it's positioned to be, for to reach $1,000,000,000,000 in in expanse by 2027. So it's it's real, and it flows all the way through the economic chain. Small businesses, if you take a look at impact accounting, ways that I've seen small businesses really drive the success of impact accounting is is it gives small businesses more access to capital. So when you go for that loan from a bank or you go to maybe get series funding or the investment funding, maybe on a smaller scale or your friends and family, having impact accounting measurements to go along with your proposals puts you ahead of the rest of your competitors. I'm seeing that across multiple styles of industry, meaning that it's not specific to just the tech space or or just the agricultural space. It's it's economy wide.

I totally agree. And I just put up a blog post today. I was talking about a couple things, but the main thing is in late 2023 report came out from Crunch Base that funding for start all start ups, including impact start ups, is down 38%. At the 2023 and going into 2024, we're at that level or even slightly less. So in other words, it's just a lot less funding than there was 2022, 2021, etcetera. And things like this make a difference in a tighter, you know, funding environment, a company that is proactively able to not just say I'm an impact startup, but show right there's that old, you know, advice, show, don't tell. Don't tell me how amazingly sustainable you are. Show me how amazingly sustainable you are.

Companies that are getting ahead of things and able to actually have some of this data from early on in their journey, here's our best guess, or here's what our prototypes carbon footprint is. We think we can even get that lower as we scale and get some other technologies in. That is such a powerful story over a company that says, oh, this is gonna be so sustainable, but there's nothing to back it up. In this economy, in this funding environment, I'm seeing startups getting just that much of an edge in getting early stage funding. I don't know if that's anything you're seeing as well, Angel.

A 100%. I'm seeing it in 2 different ways. 1, kind of on a on a smaller way. You know, data is the thing that we sell now. We sell it personally on social media. Like, the the that's the we sell ourselves as products there. Right? So data is the thing, the product that we move around. And, like, in the I I love this example because farmers these days, you know, we think of farmers as producing our food.

Right? And that's fantastic. But one of the things that they need to do in this new economy is they need to produce data on that food. And that's the thing that they really sell. Right? They sell the food too, but they they sell the practices on how they achieve that production and the metrics behind that, not just their their word. So I I think that's an interesting example. But maybe in a more tangible level for medium sized businesses or small to medium sized businesses, if you're looking to be acquired by a private equity firm. Private equity firms right now are assessing, and I recognize that the economy is different for that too. Right? The the the cost of capital is high right now, and it's just it's difficult.

But, an edge for those who really take a look at their revenue generation from impact and toward impact and profit distribution toward impact. If they can calculate that and they can demonstrate that to a p private equity firm, That gives you a humongous multiplier, like, on your your actual business because private equity firms need to balance their platforms now in our economy with some level of business that has an impact lens. It doesn't have the entire. Right? There's lots of different metrics on what the level of impact investing looks like from a private equity standpoint. But I can say that if you're looking to be acquired and you're looking to scale, that these impact measurements won't hurt you. They will put you at far and above your competitors in the space.

100%. Totally agree. So some of the suggestions I've heard so far is to start to pay attention. First of all, make it a priority. Right? Like, if you're paying attention and you're looking to get better at impact accounting, you're probably gonna get better at it than if you're not paying attention and not looking to get better at it. Right? It sounds kinda like, duh, but, like, nothing changed as I used to be in community mental health. Right? I was a licensed mental health counselor. Behaviors don't change in human beings unless we say, oh, you know what? I wanna make this a priority to change it.

It sounds so obvious, but so many people would wind up in my office back in my first career. And they're like, oh, this thing's going on that I hate. And I'm like, have you thought about changing it? And they're like, no. Like, yeah, it's probably not gonna change then. Right? I mean, I said it in different words, but that's the honest truth after a 15 year career of watching human behavior very closely, and I would say the same is true for organizations. We have to make something a priority for it to actually even begin to change. And that's one of the things I'm hearing you say. Right.

And then we can start to look at what are our current accounting practices and how can we start to layer in? Doesn't mean we have to like go out and get the like fanciest, most expensive firm that has these like shiny tools, But within the structures you already have, how can you start to look at some of these issues, whether it's looking at a simple carbon calculator, whether it's starting to look at some of the social impact that you're having in the communities that you're serving and begin to articulate that and look for ways to document that. And that's where a lot of innovation in this space came from. Okay. We know what we're trying to document. We're not quite sure how to do this, but let's talk this through because if we can document it, then we get that competitive advantage that you're just talking about. And if that conversation is already happening in your company, awesome. If it's not, that's where you start. Is that fair to say?

It is, but it's it's I kinda think it's more exciting than that because

Oh, totally. Yeah.

I think it's and, like, I never I'm not an accountant. I don't think accounting is exciting, but I do in this regard because business is shifting. I've heard it likened to the tech revolution, that the impact revolution is here and that as we an economy is is is changing in in the same way that the tech revolution changed society. Impact is doing that now, and we are privileged to be at the beginning of this and at at its forefront. And I'm excited about that. I I wasn't there for the, you know, when microchips were created, but but I, I am here now and and I love the the entrepreneurial spirit of what this represents. You know? Like, we have technology now that can do amazing things that we that we can calculate things like air pollution. And and there are entrepreneurs I know who who are creating crazy cool things like like retirement calculators.

So when you retire, you can figure out and this is software. You can figure out what climate change will do to the area that you're looking to retire in and what the housing price market will look like at that point. And Redfin just now came out with something or just now, recently came out with air pollution scores for real estate purchasing. Like, so so while, yes, we maybe need to change something, I I would actually counter you and say it's changing already, and we are organically changing with it. Not only on how we calculate things, but because you already calculate I don't unless you're an accountant, I don't know that you love the process of reviewing a P and L. Like, I don't know that that's something that you dig on, but you do it because you know it's a mechanism of business. Impact accounting will simply be that. And because you're getting it from all sides as a consumer, as an entrepreneur, as a government, and all the different places, it it it's it's adoption is becoming and will become more and more organic and more and more innate.

So I think that's really a, it's a cool time to, to be in the process.

I agree. I've been in this space for 17 years now, and there's never been a more exciting moment to be in the impact space than right now. It's a complicated space, lots happening, and that's not always simple, but it's so dynamic. It's such an exciting time.

Well, imagine when, you know, the Internet was coming out and somebody's like, hey. What if we put a computer in people's houses? You know? Like, this is a far out idea.

Exactly. Yeah.

But what if we what if we're now where we are, what if we govern our world by and and I I by by thoughtfully and intentionally governing our environment and our society, which business has such an incredibly powerful and purposeful opportunity here to really to to to drive this change, which is and and it's gonna have to do it whether it wants to or not. So that's it's kind of it's kind of epically cool.

It's totally epically cool. This isn't it's along these lines, but I would feel like I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge you wrote a book that's all about business and traction and profits and making the world a better place. Not a 100% on impact accounting, but definitely on sustainability. Tell us about Seeing Green, why you wrote it, who it's for, and where people can get it. Sure.

You can get it on Amazon because you can get anything on Amazon. So that's where you get it. I wrote the book because, I I work a lot with public utilities. I work a lot with big business. And and then I also do a fair amount of work now in the agricultural world, which is new. I wrote the book because my experience was that everybody was kinda waiting for the smart people to come to tell us, like, how we manage this differently and with via capitalism. And I'm here to tell you that the smart people aren't coming. Like, we are the smart people.

So we're gonna have to figure this out and and drive it, you know, intentionally. I wanted to take somewhat daunting terms and sort of synthesize them for the regular person. And I also wanted to make create something that had a a starting place for just general conversation. So often in our country, we are divided and we are polarized. And so I I wrote this book to really talk about how, we all have a common denominator, and that's money. And if we can get behind that, then a lot of the other barriers kinda fall away, and we can really drive change to our mutual advantage if we if we just, center the conversation around around that rather than maybe some of our other differences.

I think it was Marianne Williamson who said we are the leaders we've been waiting for. And yeah. I don't know how smart I am, but I'm willing to have hard conversations, and I'm not willing to be quiet while our world goes up in fire. So I just kinda like, alright. I'm gonna have hard conversations because I don't see people having some of the conversations that I think are really important. So if you're listening and saying, I don't know how smart I am. I don't know how smart I am either. But if you're willing to have hard conversations, please just come along for the ride.

Well, I have some very smart friends, and some of them are scientists. And, like, we would get in these huge long conversations about how, you know, people don't understand the world's dying and all this horrible stuff. And we, but scientists, have been saying this for 30 years and no one's paying attention to us. And I'm like, well, maybe you're not saying it in the right way because you're right. No one is paying attention to you. So how about we say it in a way that people maybe can understand, or, can can debate. Right? And so that's really what it it what the book is about is it levelizing that conversation or level setting it. And then also really tying the consumer to the small medium business or, person to the large, you know, world changer person, which as I was writing it, I realized that we're all those things.

All of us are all those things, and I I didn't realize that until after I finished writing it. But but it's it that's its design. It's it's not my main focus. My main focus is the conversation. My main focus is to not have all the answers, but be to be willing to go and find, find what we can and and work on solutions by trying things.

So you don't 4 companies launched and scaled, written books, now coming into agriculture and the food space, like, you've done a lot, a lot. When you look ahead, what's what are some of the things that feel like there's still some energy and some excitement and I wanna get to blank?

Oh, well, I I wanna do lots of things. I will I I chose, at present, the energy industry to really focus my attention on. So I do a lot of communication with the energy industry, specifically public utilities on their road to decarbonization. I chose that one because bad industry, because I've worked in it for a long time as a consultant, doing process improvement and change management and management consultant activity, a lot of data reporting, data and stamps systems implementations. So I knew the industry well, and that kinda made me feel like I could dig in and start having these conversations. But the the main reason I I chose it is because it's one of the gross polluters of the world, and it's kind of a heavy hitter in in as a baseline factor in in this equation. So so what I am really passionate about and weirdly fixated on is trans is helping the energy industry transform to clean energy or to net on their road to net zero. That is a very complicated problem, and it touches all of our lives, not just here in the US, but worldwide.

And and so it's it's a big, hairy, audacious goal that I am tackling. Additionally, though, I I love to grow things. I love to grow things. And so my my foray into the agricultural world is to learn by doing and to not be afraid to fail at all, and to, in many cases, almost like in a Shakespearean novel to be the fool, to make the point in in the agricultural space by transitioning conventionally tilled monoculture farms to regenerative agriculture, which is multicultural no till and carbon sequestration focused farming. So, those are the things I'm very excited about. But if I had to, like, really rule the world, all I really wanna do is have regular conversations with everybody from the top of our government down to wherever down goes because this shift is here and the more people that become aware of its of of it and know their path to interact with it, the more successful it will be.

And then we have 2 buckets of listeners. And as somebody who's been doing this work for a long time, I'd love to get your suggestions to them given where we are right now in this transition that you just so eloquently described. The first bucket of listeners, we're pretty unique. We have a much higher than average of impact entrepreneurs who've reached product market fit and are now in the scaling stage. I got something that's working. I'm probably working too hard to keep it all up and afloat, but, like, it's working, and I've got a team, and we know what our thing is. And, like, we're working hard to help more people in our space, whether our space is sustainable ag or solar or, you know, gender equity or clean water. Right? So let's start there.

Somebody who's a founder or a leader in an impact organization that is up and running and they're working hard and they're really trying to go big to really help a lot of folks. And there's some unique struggles in scaling as you well know. What would you say to somebody who's in that position?

I would well, I have a 1,000,000 things to say to them, but I would start by saying, really get your metrics down. Figure out how you're walking your talk as it applies to your own business, that and measure them, report on them, calculate them, and report on them. Why? Because, a, it's gonna as you've probably already seen, you've that's gonna acquire it's gonna help you acquire much higher caliber talent than your competitors. And and that talent is gonna have a higher level of sticking stickiness, in your organization, and everybody in business right now know that that knows that that's a a particularly challenging thing. And then really define your your mission. Like, I'm sure it's already defined to some extent, but define it in terms of how you could get investment for it. Because if you wanna blow something up, you often need a capital infusion. Right? And it needs to be at scale.

And so there are there are now more opportunity than ever to go out to people with a lot of money, but that what they wanna see is not only what your mission is, but how you have quantified your progress toward that mission. And they're doing this even at a government level, which I'm very excited about. What the longevity of that impact will look like and what that measurement is. So this is not to maybe a medium or a large sized business. This is to a mega business, so super giant one. The public utility companies and and other other large businesses right now have access to, like, a $1,000,000,000,000 or more of funding through the IIJA, which is, an administrative It's a piece of legislation that came out, I think, a year and a half ago, and it's a good just tons of money. And working with the department of energy, they can't give this money away. And and you're thinking, why on earth can't they give it away? And and here's why.

Because they are looking for impact accounting measurements. They wanna know how where your money is going as you start your business or or as you start your product or you start your project, depending on the size of your business, what's happening during the facilitation of your product slash project, and then what is a calculation projection, say, a decade post your product release or your project implementation? You need to have that quantified. And if you can do that, then they will give you buckets and certificates of money.

Similar question, but to the audience of the next generation, they're young, they're hungry. They have an idea of their impact area. Maybe it's a micro business with 1 or 3 or 5 people and they're struggling, but working hard to dial it in, get it to that next level. What would you say to a founder or a leader who's in that scenario?

I would say, let me have your number because I wanna invest in you because we are a little early to my I am a little early. We are a little early in in in that revolution I talked about. But in similarly to, like, the dotcom era and, you know, there there's there's on the horizon a significant business advantage to impact driven companies. They are the ones who are will hold the capital. They are the ones who hold regulation. They are the ones who will have lobbyists. Like, they are the ones who will blow up. And, it's wonderful that we don't have to teach or train or or educate young people in this space.

It I I was watching a thing from Sir Ronald Cohen recently, and I I loved what he had to say since he's he's he's a principal driver in impact investing. He's he's he's said, human beings are not stupid. We know that we have to change course in how it is that we interact with the world, both at a environmental and a and a social level. Right? And I I love the way he put that because that's why we have have the tech revolution. Right? Human beings are not stupid. We we we invent and evolve in really miraculous ways, and we're on the edge of doing that right now. So if I was talking to somebody who's just starting their company, they're a 1 or 3 person shop, and they have a a tight vision, I'd say, remember Bill Gates. Remember Steve Jobs.

You are them right now, but you're doing it in an impact space. And so give me your number because I would like to make all those 1,000,000,000 of dollars with you.

Beautiful. And I could hang out and talk to you all day, and you're a busy human and so are our listeners. As we start to wind down, if there was something you were hoping we were gonna get to, and we haven't gotten to it yet, or there's something you wanna leave our listeners with as we start to say goodbye, what would that be?

Oh, I think we got to most everything I would, I would just, I would say to all entrepreneurs, large and small, stay the course You're on the right one.

Beautiful. Angel, thank you so much for being on the show today. The book will be in the show notes. Your website will be in the show notes, but just thank you for the good work you're doing and sharing it with our listeners.

Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

So thanks everybody for listening. And just a reminder, we're weird. Okay? I love your suggestions in terms of guests and topics. Most podcast hosts don't ask for that, but I don't know why they don't. You are awesome listeners, so tell me the stories you wanna hear. If you've got an idea for a show, go to the Aware Preneur's website and on our contact page, we have 3 simple guidelines of what we're looking for. Take a look, and if it feels like a fit, send your idea in. For now, I just want to say thank you so much for listening.

Please take really good care in these intense times. And thank you so much for all the positive impact that you're working for in our work.