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From Purpose to Profit – a conversation with author Erin Craske
10 Plays7 days ago
Erin Craske has built more than forty product brands for large FMCG companies including, L'Oréal, Reckitt Benckiser, British American Tobacco, SSL International, Mars, P&G, and Walgreen Boots Alliance. Yet Erin describes herself as someone who does not fit into the corporate machine.
In this episode of the Abeceder podcast The Independent Minds, Erin and host Michael Millward discuss why businesses that prioritise profit over purpose often don’t do as well as companies that have a clearly defined purpose.
Erin uses her own experience to explain how having a clear purpose for each of the brands she worked on contributed to the success of that brand.
Find out more about both Michael Millward, and Jonathan Baum at Abeceder.co.uk
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Transcript
Introduction to The Independent Minds Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencastr. Hello and welcome to The Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abyssaida and people who think outside the box about how work works, with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
Zencastr Benefits and Offer Code
00:00:24
Speaker
I am your host, Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasida. As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, The Independent Minds is made on Zencastr.
00:00:36
Speaker
Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform on which you can make your podcast in one place and then post it to the major platforms like Spotify, Apple and Google.
00:00:49
Speaker
It really does make making content so easy. If you would like to try podcasting using Zencastr, visit zencastr.com forward slash pricing and use my offer code, Abysida.
00:01:04
Speaker
All the details are in the description.
Introducing Erin Kraske
00:01:08
Speaker
Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencastr is for making podcasts, we should make one. One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to.
00:01:21
Speaker
Very importantly, in this episode of The Independent Minds, we won't be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think.
00:01:32
Speaker
Today, my guest Independent Mind, who was introduced to me by the team at Matchmaker.fm, is Erin Kraske, the creator of From Purpose to Profit.
00:01:45
Speaker
Erin is based in Cheshire, somewhere I visited a long time ago.
The Ultimate Travel Club Mention
00:01:50
Speaker
When I go back, I will be sure to book my travel with the Ultimate Travel Club. The Ultimate Travel Club is where I get trade prices on flights and hotels, etc.
00:02:03
Speaker
You will find a link and membership discount code in the description. Now, hello Erin. Hello Michael. are you doing today?
Erin Kraske's Award-Winning Book
00:02:12
Speaker
Very well, you know, the sun is shining.
00:02:14
Speaker
doesn't happen very often, so I'm enjoying, you know, looking at it. I understand that you have more to enjoy today than simply the sun shining. Oh, yeah. What is it that you're celebrating today, Erin?
00:02:27
Speaker
Well, I haven't celebrated yet, but I'm kind of a little bit pleased. My book won two awards, one in the category of entrepreneur entrepreneurship and small business books, and the second one for the interior design.
00:02:43
Speaker
So congratulations. Thank you. It's um two de two quite different categories there. So we'll find out more about From Purpose to Profit in a moment. But tell us a little bit about Erin, please.
00:03:01
Speaker
Oh, that is a very good question.
Business Coaching and Leadership
00:03:05
Speaker
Oh, so what would I say about Erin? I guess if I start labeling myself. a that I'm a business and leadership success coach, that Erin works with ethical and positive impact driven businesses.
00:03:19
Speaker
but She focuses on profitability strategy and leadership. um She works on systemic issues. She doesn't work on symptoms ah because she offers transformational coaching with aim of making the life leadership and creation business of my clients effortless.
00:03:41
Speaker
This is what she does. Right. Now, you're quite statistically rare as well, because my understanding is that you've been identified as having three different personality types, not three different personalities.
00:03:57
Speaker
Let's make that clear. It's just you able to manage three different personality types, which is then enables you to do more in situations and all this sort of stuff. is ah You've learned how to manage that to build an advantage. so you tell us a bit about that, please?
00:04:15
Speaker
Oh, you know what? To start with, I don't believe that I manage anything because I'm just that I am and I accept myself. The most important word here is acceptance. It's not about managing. Ah, good point. as just enjoying what you were a given, seeing the positives, you know, in who you are and accepting something that you don't like.
00:04:38
Speaker
Well, in fairness, there's nothing that I don't like, so it makes it easier. ah But in reality, yeah, it's just a matter of realizing that you are different like everybody else. Nobody is worse, nobody is better, everybody is different.
00:04:51
Speaker
And accepting yourself for who you are, that's, I guess, the recipe.
Corporate Culture and Innovation Challenges
00:04:56
Speaker
Yes, that acceptance is one of those very important things.
00:05:02
Speaker
We often talk, I think, about wanting other people to accept us, but sometimes we have to remember to accept ourselves as well. You know what? There's a trick.
00:05:13
Speaker
There's something that people I don't believe they realize that when you accept yourself, the right people will accept you. up is I'm insisting on the right people.
00:05:24
Speaker
um Not everybody, obviously. But altogether, it will be so much easier for you to build relationships. um So it's a massive benefit relationships.
00:05:37
Speaker
being and in harmony with yourself. ye When you understand the type of person you are, there's something that happens which attracts people who will complement the person that you are as well.
00:05:50
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's not a conventional sort of approach, is it? this It's almost like the personal acceptance, the they not being anything that you don't like.
00:06:03
Speaker
One of the things that is is is unusual and sort like not difficult to understand, but is worthy of some some comment is that you've described yourself as almost like a ah corporate misfit. You don't fit into the corporate world in the conventional way, but you've been very successful in the corporate world.
00:06:26
Speaker
You've built more than 40 top-notch FMCG brands, and yet you don't fit into your corporate misfit. You don't fit the corporate role model, the corporate You don't fit the corporate cookie cutter.
00:06:44
Speaker
Yes, you know, actually I guess for a very simple reason, and may it may sound horrible, but I believe that the biggest difference why it didn't fit in, well, there were a few others, but one of the main ones that I cared about,
00:07:01
Speaker
And something, when I'm looking back at those times, I realized that not many people actually care. And the worst thing, it's not actually even required from you. I cared about my consumers. I cared about my teams. And I cared about my brands.
00:07:18
Speaker
Because I wanted to see the company successful or my brand successful, put it this way. And I wanted to see them successful because it helped my self-respect.
00:07:32
Speaker
I was considered myself to be a professional and as a professional, you know, I wanted to bring professional results to the business, but very often it's not what's required.
00:07:43
Speaker
What's required. It's more conformity. It's about doing what you are told. It's about caring about shareholders more than, you know, you would care about your consumers and many other things. Um,
00:08:01
Speaker
So that's why ah I wasn't fitting in because I wanted to do better than the boundaries I was in. Yeah, I can see what you mean about the corporate world is very much focused on those monthly, quarterly figures and the value of the business in terms of shareholder value rather than very often the value to the community, the value to the consumers, the value to the employees.
00:08:32
Speaker
It's very much driven by shareholder value, and that's seen as the way the way to success? You know, it's sometimes it was even worse. So I understand when they focus on numbers, um there's, I guess, nothing wrong with it, apart from it really affects your mental health and creates a disengaging culture.
00:08:54
Speaker
But okay, you know, everybody's different. But what I also witnessed, that sometimes, if you even if you offer something, that would improve business, but it goes against the authority, you will be forgiven if you don't deliver, but you do what you're told.
00:09:18
Speaker
And you will be punished if you want to do better, or even if you did better, but you didn't listen to the authority. So that is kind of totally sick and twisted to me.
00:09:28
Speaker
Numbers are fine, but accepting mistakes, not improving, simply because you're not supposed to disagree or challenge, I believe this is just wrong.
00:09:39
Speaker
Because you put the whole business in geography for the sake of pleasing somebody. Yes, I can see what you mean. It's almost, you follow the rules, even though the rules can mean that you're doing something that some people might consider to be wrong or incorrect.
00:10:00
Speaker
but you're following the rules. If you break the rules, regardless of the level of success that you achieve, you will be criticized. And if you follow the rules and yeah follow the rules and don't achieve what you're supposed to you will be criticized.
00:10:19
Speaker
There seem to be more opportunities to be criticized than opportunities to be successful. I guess it depends. If you want to blend in, then very often you will be successful irrelevant of your level of talent. I don't like the word talent. Irrelevant of your level of contribution to the business.
00:10:38
Speaker
Irrelevant of your level of engagement and motivation. Because in some cultures, it's just not required. Because again, what is required is to do as you're taught and accepted. And often these people, politically correct people, they will be promoted.
00:10:56
Speaker
Yes, but I think by politically correct people, you don't mean that in a woke type of sense. It's the people who fit in, who play the corporate game, yes will play the office politics, the corporate politics, rather than the actual contribution that they're making.
00:11:15
Speaker
I have experience of this, of being told, you're doing a great job, you're contributing a vast amount. And then seeing someone else being promoted, even though they delivered less, their contribution was lower, but they were making sure that the chief executive knew that they had the same hobby.
00:11:38
Speaker
There was more banter and
00:11:45
Speaker
building of the relationship with the chief executive to get the promotion rather than building contributing to the business to build the reputation with the people of the business, which then meant that those people were supportive of me as a contributor rather than yeah the the political games player.
00:12:03
Speaker
It's very interesting. Exactly. Yeah. yeah Interesting. And people will be surrounding themselves with people they feel comfortable with because a certain moment of time, they don't want to be challenged because being challenged means losing their face.
Purpose-Driven Business Profitability
00:12:17
Speaker
So as the more insecure the leader is, the more controlling and politically game playing, whatever culture,
00:12:30
Speaker
will become as just a direct consequence. Yes, weak leaders have political type organizations. Exactly. Which brings us on to your book, yeah From Purpose to Profit, because what we've been describing is where profit takes over from purpose.
00:12:50
Speaker
And yet what you're saying, what you're describing is that if you have a purpose, you are going to create profit as a result of having a purpose. So tell us some more about from purpose to profit.
00:13:07
Speaker
Well, yeah, it just, you know, also there's often opposite. And people believe that if we're purposeful business, we're not entitled to be rewarded financially.
00:13:18
Speaker
which I don't believe is correct. um And there's also people that think that it's either purpose or profit and how you can combine both. I also don't understand why would you consider both to be different entities? ah Profit is the consequence of running your business in a proper manner.
00:13:38
Speaker
And it it actually involves more things than just profit. It involves having a foundation. It involves having strategy.
00:13:48
Speaker
taking care of your team, um having proper leadership skills, having implementation are fixed, and having growth mindset. So purpose is not as such as a driver of profitability because, again, by itself, it can't do it because we can screw even the most purposeful business if we don't know how to run it.
00:14:14
Speaker
So purpose is here more as a metadata, more as a building reputation of your brand. It's about building motivation. It's about building resilience of yourself. It's about reducing stress levels.
00:14:26
Speaker
It's about engaging and hiring the right people. So our purpose is a kind of a softer touch. It helps in so many different fronts, you know, and this way it's not either or, it just, it is part of it.
00:14:42
Speaker
It's your philosophy together with your values. You can't say it's either values so yeah you can't say either but values or profit, but at be if you have both. The book was born because I was having many conversations with different companies of different levels across different industries. And I was, at some point, I started seeing the pattern, pattern of what they're doing wrong.
00:15:07
Speaker
And in the book is just the list of all mistakes that businesses do wrong. And You know, just analyzing these mistakes, also looking at information on the internet when they were talking about, you know, why business failed and what's behind it.
00:15:22
Speaker
of The first thing that came to mind that actually around 80% of these mistakes are marketing and brand driven because marketing and brand, these two departments drive the profitability of the company.
00:15:38
Speaker
So basically it is your brand contribution that is your profitability. So it's one thing. And another thing that also came to mind, that if you look at the numbers, when people say that 50% of businesses fail within the first three to five years in operation, and then 20 additional 5%, you know, fail within seven years in operation, what also came to mind that the first three to five years is something that is called strategic planning period.
00:16:11
Speaker
So, which means... that most businesses from what I gathered and what I learned from research and just from my experience and analytical data, that businesses fail because they have no strategy.
00:16:27
Speaker
as As simple as that. And there's so many confirmations about it. You will see everybody's talking about how-tos, everybody's talking about best practices, everybody's talking about immediate top-line innovations, and it's all tactical activities.
00:16:44
Speaker
And nobody talks about strategy for whatever reason. You it's not important. And this is how the book was born, because I wanted to help good businesses. I wanted to help businesses that do good, that want to improve our environment, our planet, our society, you know, and I wanted them to succeed.
00:17:05
Speaker
And this is how I just shared everything that I learned over 20 years in multinationals about strategy in a very easy to read and
Strategic Planning and Brand Alignment
00:17:15
Speaker
understand language. yes So help they may find it useful. Yes.
00:17:19
Speaker
And it is when you talk about purpose and strategy and the end result of the combination of purpose and strategy being profit, I can see the logic of that.
00:17:30
Speaker
It's so many people start a business with an idea, with a little bit of a plan, which gets them to a certain point. But unless you've got the strategy for developing your brand, evolving your market and delivering on the promise of your brand, because a brand is a promise, it's an expectation, or you use your brand to build an expectation of what the consumer will receive,
00:17:59
Speaker
as a result of engaging and purchasing your brand. Many people, like you say, don't actually get to the point where they're developing the strategy for maximizing the value of their brand and therefore their organization.
00:18:21
Speaker
Yeah. And you know what strategy is not only about brand, although obviously, you know, that is my bread and butter. And I totally love it, again, because brands drive businesses because this is what people buy.
00:18:34
Speaker
problem. But what what im what I'm thinking is like the brand, people buy into the brand and what it says but because of what it they believe it says about them and their association with the values of the brand. Yeah. Yeah.
00:18:50
Speaker
And we could talk sports brands, for example, or soaps or aftershaves. There is an association or an image which builds up around the brand, and it can be any type of organization with any type of brand.
00:19:06
Speaker
and that almost determines where your price point is going to be. It determines who your customer is likely to be and how you have to work with your customer to evolve your brand so you build new customers as well as retaining the existing customers.
00:19:25
Speaker
But I'm thinking about organizations like Body Shop, like Lush, like Tesla, all sorts of brands that want to change the world and had a purpose values and things that you can actually hang your hat on so to speak in terms of i know what that organization stands for i know what they're doing in order to bring what they stand for to life If an organization gets it gets its brand right and the brand is a description of the purpose of the organization, it becomes easier for people to buy into that brand, which leads to more profits.
00:20:09
Speaker
But it's also important to have a strategy for the development of the brand. Yeah. And another thing to add to what you've just said, absolutely rightly, that strategy It is about brands, but another thing is that strategy is about managing your resources and planning your resources.
00:20:30
Speaker
And very often businesses appear to be in situation where they have no money left or they have ah hiring, you know, that is wrong time or whatever happens. So any time of resources or they change, they pivot the wrong time.
00:20:46
Speaker
So all the things will be reflected in the strategy. So actually, you prepare yourself better to whatever may come, and you will know how you may need to react if something doesn't go right.
00:21:01
Speaker
Yes. You know, that is another benefit of strategy that people forget about. Yes, you're planning for the best, but you have a strategy for what to do if something doesn't go so well.
00:21:14
Speaker
And it's doesn im I'm an HR professional, so I'm listening to you. You're a marketing person. And what you're actually telling me, I think, as an HR person, is that When I'm thinking about hiring, when I'm thinking about employee development, performance management, all of the various different ah HR activities, one of the things I should be thinking about is how does my activity as an HR professional live up to the values and purpose of the brand? Yes. Okay.
00:21:49
Speaker
There's actually, again, very very interesting conversation I had a couple of days ago with a consultant, and he was hired by his client to work with a team.
00:22:01
Speaker
So I guess the task was how to improve productivity, morale, engagement, so something like that. And I immediately, you know, heard this word, how to, I asked him, did your client ask you to investigate why there was no engagement, morale, and productivity in the first place.
00:22:25
Speaker
And the answer was no. So I believe that, you know, when we talk about culture and teams, the first thing that we need to ask, why? If something is not going right, why?
00:22:38
Speaker
Because if you try to cover it up with how-tos, such as trainings or benefits or something, when why isn't sorted, I don't believe it's going to help. And my understanding that usually it costs all these perks quite a lot to the company.
00:22:54
Speaker
Yes. Look at why. Probably you won't even need to have these perks or whatever you offer because people just going to be enjoying being part of your company.
00:23:05
Speaker
Yeah. We have to understand the challenge that we're trying to address, the problem we're trying to solve before we try to implement the solution. And what you're saying is too many people get to the point where they believe they understand what the issue is and they look for a solution before they've actually identified and analyzed the root cause of the problem.
00:23:27
Speaker
Yeah, I believe that altogether our society is very much driven by symptoms and symptoms are everywhere in everywhere. Yes. ah Yeah, and we are very keen to address symptoms instead of looking for the root cause.
00:23:43
Speaker
And I believe this is an issue because one symptom going to breed another one going to breed another one and becomes like a perpetual circle of always fixing something because the root cause is still there.
00:23:55
Speaker
It didn't disappear. And I believe it's just costly. And this is why, you know, for me, strategy is actually the root cause of business and the performance because all businesses do, they do best practices. They try to fix it on top.
00:24:11
Speaker
Just go one level down. create a strategy and see how many problems gonna, you know, sort themselves out.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:24:19
Speaker
Yes, I totally get what you're saying.
00:24:22
Speaker
The strategy helps you to look beyond the symptoms to find the real challenge, the real problem, and then create a strategy for red addressing the causes of the problem rather than the symptoms of the problem.
00:24:37
Speaker
And that yeah enables you to have an organization that is moving from purpose to profit. Erin, thank you very much. That has been a very interesting conversation.
00:24:51
Speaker
ah really appreciate your time today. Thank you. Thank you very much, Michael, for inviting me. Thank you. My pleasure.
00:24:59
Speaker
I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasida, and I have been having a conversation with the independent mind, Erin Kraske, creator of From Purpose to Profit.
00:25:12
Speaker
You can find out more details about both of us at abbasida.co.uk. There is a link in the description. Also in the description, you'll find offers on software and travel and connections to sites where you can purchase from purpose to profit. The description really is well worth reading.
00:25:35
Speaker
I must remember to thank the team at matchmaker.fm for introducing me to Erin. If you are a podcaster looking for interesting guests, or if like Erin, you have something very interesting to say, matchmaker.fm is where matches of great hosts and great guests are made.
00:25:56
Speaker
There is a link to matchmaker.fm and an offer code in the description. If you are listening to the independent minds on your smartphone, you may like to know that 3.0 has the UK's fastest 5G network with unlimited data.
00:26:09
Speaker
So listening on 3.0 means you can wave goodbye to buffering. There is a link in the description that will take you to more information about business and personal telecom solutions from 3.0 and the special offers available when you quote my referral code.
00:26:23
Speaker
That it is a description that is well worth reading. I'm sure you will have enjoyed this episode of The Independent Minds, so please give it a like and download it so that you can listen anytime, anywhere.
00:26:34
Speaker
To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think.
00:26:47
Speaker
Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye.