Hi, I'm Jesse Hirsh, and welcome to Metaviews, recorded live in front of an automated audience with some goats, too, who are running to their seats because they're kind of late.

And today we've got Brittany Hanson, maybe talking about the merits of marketing, sustainability, and truth be told, Brittany, I'm much more into alliteration, so I had the opportunity of doing the two M's together. It's more sustainability and marketing individually, I suspect that we may get into.

Although the way I tend to do this show as a spontaneous conversation is I like to create themes or pillars that we can weave through as I learn more about your ideas and work. And we sort of discuss some of the topics that come up. But we start every Metaviews episode with the news.

And partly it's because Metaviews publishes a daily newsletter.

And today we were actually talking about how the AI industry is really valuing people who are neurodivergent, that they have a particular skill set that the AI world is finding very valuable when it comes to dealing with data sets and mitigating bias. But, Brittany, our primary goal in our news segment is to turn to our guest on an intuitive level and say, what are you watching?

What are you paying attention to? And this could be personal news, this could be industry news, this could be tech news, this could be world news.

But it's really under the guise of what should our audience be paying attention to in terms of something that has caught your attention or at least your focus?

You know, I will tell you that neurodivergence is near and dear to my heart. I have two sons who are both autistic. And so we know about the value of that different kind of thinking.

But the thing that I wanted to talk about today that sort of would guide us towards the rest of our conversation is the news about how many companies got in trouble with their really extravagant marketing, specifically poppy soda, sending out these incredible vending machines for the super bowl parties, and just how wasteful and what a bad flavor it's left in the mouths of so many people.

It's a great example because, you know, it speaks to the kind of responsibility element, that if you're going to run a campaign, you got to remember to do the pickup after that.

It isn't just about the rush to get the content, the rush to get the concept, to get it out to the people, but to then think about the cleanup afterwards. Not just physical, but reputational when it comes to these types of risks. That's a phenomenal example.

And to your point, does tease into where we're going to go with our conversation.

Our second segment of every Meta views and I got to press that button again because I need the video to play through is called wtf or what's the Future?

And this is because we are a future centric podcast and we similarly like to tap into our guests intuition and sort of ask what's on your event horizon? What are you paying attention to? Under the guise that there's nothing inevitable.

Provided you are paying attention, I'm definitely paying attention. I would say two things are coming in the future and one you've already talked a lot about so I won't stay on it too long, which is AI in everything.

And really the second piece that I would talk about is Individualized Experiences as Marketing. Mass marketing is going the way of all the earth. Nobody's interested in hearing what you have to say to everyone.

They want to hear what you have to say to them as an individual.

Well, and I could ask a follow up.

I mean, I think to your point, attention seems to be pretty scarce these days and increasingly I feel that we are developing the ability to tune out stuff even when it's right in front of us. Like I feel with outdoor advertising it has to be really interesting and really relevant if I'm gonna even see it.

Cause I've almost developed this sense of oh, I'm just gonna tune out and I've got headphones on and I'm doing my thing. While I agree with your assertion that we are moving to a more individualized how difficult will it be to still capture people's attention?

Because it strikes me there's still a signal to noise part there that not everyone's going to get that not perhaps all brands are going to be capable of. So I'm curious to hear you kind of elaborate on the nuances that may come from such a paradigm.

Yeah, absolutely. So you're not wrong. Some statistics say we're hit with upwards of 10,000 ads a day.

You have to be good at tuning things out or your brain would be in overdrive all the time. And most of those ads you don't even care about. They don't even affect you.

Like, you probably do not need a lot of female products, but chances are really good you've seen some ads for them lately, right? So what is happening to the consumer in general is that we're like, I don't need any of this stuff. And actually we get kind of ticked off about it.

When you are doom scrolling through Instagram and your favorite influencer comes up and you find out that that reel is actually a sponsored reel for Sugar Be Apples. You scroll past it, you don't watch the whole thing. It's annoying.

So industries have to learn to speak to customers in the moments they actually care about your product, which is typically when they're engaging with it, when they're hearing about it from somebody else. Oh, I forgot that. The hand signal.

No, I love that. I love when guests have that. It brings such a dynamic effect. Please continue.

Okay. Or like when they're hearing about it from someone else. So when I pick up a product at a store, that's when I want to know about that product.

I do not want to know about that product when it's two in the morning and I'm doing scrolling. That will require brands to look at analytics differently.

It will require them to truly connect with their customers and truly know who their customers are. Wide net marketing doesn't work anymore. You, it's fly fishing now.

Well, and you said something else which, which I think is worth teasing out, which is when a creator and an influencer is doing paid content. My expectations as their audience, as one of their followers is I need their a game. Like they can't mail it in just because it's paid content.

And I feel that that's also true with this notion of individualized advertising, that it isn't just about the right timing, it isn't just about the right product. I still want to be entertained. Like I still have high expectations of what I'm looking, of how I filter out the commercial messages I'm seeing.

That's where I still want to laugh. I still want some emotional connection to it rather than just the informational side.

I feel that that's a false dichotomy that often happens in marketing campaigns where they think it's either transactional or it's brand when you kind of need a little bit of both. You made a brilliant point about a new approach to analytics and a new way of thinking about that data.

I'm curious to have you expand on how the emot emotional side of marketing also plays a key role there.

Absolutely. And just to give you a little bit of my background, I started in psychology. I love psychology. But I found it was really, really dark for me.

And so I then made the transition over to marketing where emotions are thought about in a different way. It's about how to excite someone, how to truly connect with someone. Because the majority of your purchases are emotional.

And then you justify them with whatever information backs it up. Right. So you're right that we have to be able to engage with people emotionally.

We do that by making creative decisions that are directed by analytics but not governed by analytics. So we learn about our clientele or consumers who we're trying to connect with and then we creatively try to meet them where they're at.

So knowing that your customer is a 45 year old woman who makes approximately $90,000 a year and you know, has two children is one thing. Now you need to go to the work to understand how she wants to be spoken to and what she will connect with.

Yeah, as well as, as well as context. Because you know, the false advertising I run into a lot is I have near zero interest in sports 95% of the time.

And then there are rare moments where I'm hyper focused and a, they miss me in those moments when they should be marketing to me. And then because of that intense activity, I give they over market for months after. And it's not only wasted ad spend, it irritates me.

Right.

Because I'm just like, no, you're not understanding me, you're not getting me. We'll come back to this in the marketing piece because I want to get into sustainability because I'm also anticipating.

I want to talk about emotions and startups because I think that's an area where you could have a lot of insights that most people kind of ignore. So that does, on a segue level, bring us into our feature conversation. This is our turkey prez coming home to rooster.

Sustainability is a very powerful word, but also subjective. A lot of people have a different approach, a different notion of sustainability. I certainly think it's multilayered.

It inherently has different applications depending upon the area you're bringing it to. Brittany, I would love just to center us or ground us. What's your approach to sustainability? How do you conceive of it?

More importantly, how do you communicate it? Because in our context of marketing, in our context of this conversation, I think, you know, that's the real, the crux of it.

Yeah, it absolutely is. And you're right, sustainability is multifaceted and we tend to think of it as either you're brown or you're green.

I just had this conversation with someone last night that is absolutely not true. It's a spectrum.

Most of us are somewhere in between and many of us are trying to make little improvement because it's not possible for most of us to restructure our entire lives tomorrow. My concept of sustainability is that when you really look at sustainability, it's about being kind to yourself, to others on the planet.

If I really want to be kind to myself, I have to think about what's going to happen tomorrow. If I really care about other people, I'll make decisions based on that. And if I really care about our planet, I will make decisions based on that.

Sustainability is really difficult to talk about in many senses, but I'm glad we're talking about it because it's something I talk about a lot because it gives a bad rap as being political. Some of the movements behind sustainability are political. Sustainability in and of itself is not political. It is an ethical dilemma.

It is a moral thing where we have to decide where we stand on the issues that undoubtedly exist and what we're going to do about them.

And to your point, because it's ethical and moral, that means it's distinct from politics in that politics is going to debate or differ on what to do about it. But to your point, its ethical and moral imperative exists regardless of what political debates are happening.

In the sense that the weather becomes more volatile regardless of what we think of it.

Right. There's more microplastics in the ocean. Whether or not you're a Republican or Democrat or Libertarian or Green Party. There's just cold hard facts.

Right. So we get to decide individually what we're going to do about it. Businesses get to decide what they're going to do about it.

Where consumers end up in a hard spot and where storytelling and marketing ends up in a hard spot is that so many businesses end up doing what we're calling greenwashing.

Yeah.

Where they tell a really great story about what they're doing. And in reality, all they're doing is buying carbon credits to offset the damage that they're doing.

I want to double down on that because I think that on the one hand, people are getting hip to the concept, but I don't think they fully understand the consequences.

And this is where I suspect you might that I feel that the organizations, the businesses that engage in greenwashing are embracing a kind of liability that they may feel they're getting short term benefits from jumping on a bandwagon, but they're not actually really understanding how sustainability can help their bottom line, how sustainability can help their long term strategy, that is sustainability, that is bottom line. Can you unpack that for us so that we can understand why those superficial approaches are actually not in the fiduciary duty of these organizations?

Yes, let's discuss that. So for the top reason that doesn't work for you is because you create a fan base based on people who actually believe in what you're preaching.

And then when they find out you're not doing that, they're get. They're pissed now. Right? Like they're mad at you. This is where you get corporate boycotting.

The other piece of that is if you really take the time to look at the projected roi, when you make strategic, sustainable decisions, there's actually ROI there. It's why companies like Costco can change their.

The way they package their rotisserie chickens and save themselves millions of dollars and the environment at the same time.

There is a way for both things to be true, that you can be sustainable and be doing the right thing for the right reasons and also saving money or making money as you do it.

And since you put the psychology card on the table, I have to acknowledge, and I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this, that that does require a kind of creative thinking, that in order to reconcile the kind of ethical and moral imperative with the profit imperative. Right.

The sustainable business imperative, it does kind of require a kind of unconventional thinking or a kind of original thinking, because you are trying to take two different tracks and at least synchronize them, if not have them kind of going. Give us some advice on that. How do you wrestle with that?

What is the kind of psychological approach or the cognitive approach that both incentivizes entrepreneurs, that incentivizes people who are in a budgetary authority who have purchasing decision to be thinking about how to align these two and to your point and my affirmation, prosper as a result, especially in times of climate uncertainty?

Yeah, I think so much of that is around the mindset of entrepreneurs. So what's happening inside of sustainability is largely innovative right now, which is why big corporations aren't doing it.

Because at that level it's expensive to do it, and it requires a level of creativity that a bloated company cannot execute. Entrepreneurs are extremely well positioned to take these kinds of initiatives and change them.

And the easiest way for entrepreneurs to take that and to really run with it is to say, how badly do I want to be a hero? Everybody wants to be a hero. Right. And how badly do I want to be successful? Successful. Oh, well, I definitely want to be successful. Cool.

The way to do that is through sustainable initiatives. Right now. You get to be a hero and you get to be successful. And then. And you're successful.

A, because you get to tell the story to millions of people who resonate with what you're doing, but B, because you'll save money. You want to do less printed things and, and speak through QR codes and digital messaging. Great. That's what we want anyway.

And it's going to save you so much money on printing. You want to make your packaging contain 20% less plastic. Great. Like you'll make so much more money even just on shipping.

Costco saves millions of dollars on the way they ship their containers because they went, they went that direction. So it's about the mindset of how can I creatively meet my needs. We're wired to do that as humans anyway.

Although to your point, it does kind of require a psychological shift to see those opportunities.

And I want to use something else you said to pivot us to talk about startups in that I think for larger enterprises there is not just a kind of inertia, but a kind of sunken capital that makes it harder for them to do new things, makes it harder for them to embrace stuff.

And that's often why startups have more of a freedom, more of a privilege to kind of from the ground up, embrace these types of sustainable practices. Kind of focus on building sustainability into their brand and into their storytelling.

I'd love for you to comment on that dynamic because we've sort of talked about entrepreneurs already. But let's get into kind of startup culture and we'll start with more of the positive before we get with some of the challenges.

But to what extent do you see startup culture as a potential hotbed of sustainability and innovation? Around sustainability?

100%. That's where it happens. Because you're small enough, you can make pivots. You don't have to re educate 7,000 people that work underneath you.

You're building your mentality, you're building the direction you're going to go and you are light enough to move and change as necessary. If I work at a huge corporation, it's going to take nine months for a new initiative to move out. I do work at what is essentially a startup.

I'm making changes tomorrow. If I find out that there's a better brand of straw we could be using, I'm bringing that into the office tomorrow.

I don't have to okay that with anybody else. I just move on it. That's why startups are the right place for this kind of innovation.

And also you attract the kinds of minds that are excited about change, that are excited to do something where you can change the world, that are like, yeah, how could we do this differently? Way less interested in the day to day maintenance of things and more interested in the new and exciting.

Well, and to your other point, you have the opportunity to build the culture from the ground up rather than try to change a culture of thousands of people in an enterprise where why they chose to work at that organization may be completely different than the new vision or the new goals that come with embracing sustainability.

Now, part of why I wanted to talk to you today in terms of looking at the issues and stories you talk about is I've spent maybe the last couple of decades in the larger startup milieu, mostly on the mentor side and mostly on the entrepreneur in residence or expert in residence.

And on the one hand, and I want to talk about this in a moment, part of that was around storytelling, that most of the startups that I've encountered really don't value marketing enough. They don't value storytelling enough, even though that is so central to their success.

Because you spend enough time in the StarW, you're seeing 99% of the failures and not necessarily the successes.

But the other side is just how male dominated the culture is and how that translates into a kind of grind culture, a really unhealthy culture in which on the point of sustainability, it's not sustainable. Like these are young guys who don't have any health issues and they can do this grind and a. We want more inclusive startups.

We want people from all aspects of life to have the opportunity of entrepreneurship. Not just those who can burn the candle at both ends for weeks on end.

But at the same time, it visibly alienated a lot of the women I knew who I felt would make great entrepreneurs who had great ideas.

So I would love to hear some of your experience as someone who clearly came at startup culture with your own sense of self, with your own sense of integrity, rather than feeling you had to conform to some of the myths and some of the toxic culture out there.

You know, I will give you a caveat at the beginning of this, which is to say that there have been times where I bought into toxic culture and figured out I was doing it the wrong way. And especially in tech startups, there is a. It's very male dominated. I started off feeling like that's not a problem for me.

I'm really comfortable in male dominated areas. I'm an oldest daughter. I hung out with dudes through my whole, whole high school. I love sports, I'm a member of a car club, I do Brazilian jiu jitsu.

Very comfortable, comfortable around men. It's not a problem for me. That doesn't mean that when you step into business that everything Works the same inside tech startups.

Female startups receive less than 2% of the funding that happens. My co founder and I bootstrapped this company for the first long time.

And it's because the way that women see things is a little more holistic and emotional, which is not a bad thing, but it's not the way that investors are used to seeing things.

And so there, there was a massive mindset that we had to go through their massive shift where we had to realize that we did not represent the vast majority of what people were seeing. And we had finally a mentor who told us, you have to stop trying to be what you're not and lean into what you are.

Right on.

There needs to be a spot for everybody at the table. You represent a different spot at the table. Lean into that, be that.

And there's so much power in that as, as we really got comfortable with that, like as you talk about tech and marketing, to say we do need actually a more well rounded view of things. Women in the United States make something like 67 or 60, 67% of the purchasing decisions. But we don't talk to them, we don't build for them.

So we brought something very new and very unique that as we've leaned into it, we've gotten more and more excited about. Is it easy? No. But that's why it means something. If it was easy, somebody else already would have done it.

Well, and I alluded to this earlier and I kind of want you to elaborate on the role of emotion in startups because I think it is both a little bit self evident but entirely neglected.

Because on the one hand, we all assume that you need a certain degree of confidence, you need a certain degree of courage to be successful as a startup.

But on the flip side, from the marketing perspective, when I think of the startups that as a consumer I want to have a relationship with or that I want to take a risk with, because when it's a tech startup, who knows if they're going to be around tomorrow? It's because I have an emotional incentive to do so.

It's to your point, it's the same with almost all purchasing decisions, that we're primarily motivated by the emotions. We find information to justify it after the fact.

And I just feel if I reflect on the startups that I have loved, literally, or the startups that make me have hope or excitement for the future, these are emotional reactions.

And in my experience in the startup world, none of these guys were thinking about emotions and none of them were thinking about, were Designing the emotional experience they wanted their investors or their customers or their supporters to have.

So I would love, given your intersection of knowledge and expertise, I'd love for you to kind of elaborate on this and speculate on a why we're not seeing this and balance whether you think we should.

So, yes, the storytelling is incredibly important. It's absolutely something we should be seeing.

The reason that we don't see more of it is because when you go to people like angel investors, oftentimes what they will tell you and what advisors will tell you is take the emotion out of it. I want the cold, hard numbers. Good ideas die every single day. I need to know numerically why yours is going to work.

And I know that's because when we started, we started very altruistically. We were like, you can't make the best decisions if you don't have the best information.

So we want to deliver a platform where people can receive the best information from the companies that they're working with and they can receive it automatically in the top 20 languages spoken in the United States. And we went to angel investors and I said, that's a really nice idea and it's really beautiful. We don't care. Where's the roi?

We did that for several years before we realized that our altruistic beliefs and our emotions behind it and the fact that everybody deserves access to great information wasn't going to fly in a world of investment. We had to find a way to market the roi.

But let me push back on that a little.

Yeah.

Because I think numbers are emotional and I think there are certain people, especially people who have a lot of wealth, that numbers make them feel good. And so what they were asking you was, these aren't the emotions we're looking for.

We want you to play to our emotions, which because so many people have disappointed us, we are forcing them to do so numerically. But we want your numbers to make us feel good. So it is still emotional.

They're just emotionally illiterate, so they don't know that that's what they want, but that's what they want. They want to feel good about their money anyway. I'm digressing.

No, no, that's a perfect choice. Because actually, on a psychological level, you're right. Right.

It's like you didn't make me feel good in the way I wanted, and I expect to be pleased in the way that I wanted. So you're absolutely right. And it's really about learning to market to the emotions to our point of earlier. Right.

Knowing your audience and learning, learning how to do that has been a little bit of a trip for us because when you speak to individuals, they're like, oh my gosh, of course that's what we need. Of course everyone who doesn't speak English should have that same access to really great information as I do. Right.

But when you approach a company, the company's emotions, the company's cultures, a venture capitalist thoughts and emotions are very different than your average consumer. And it's about learning to talk to them in those meaningful ways.

Now, gratefully, we've come in contact with really great people who've coached us through some of those things and who helped us understand some of those things in a. In a way that still felt true to who we are, because we want to be authentic about what we're doing.

But you do have to learn to share your story in a way that's meaningful for people. And it's hard.

Well, and, and you know, let me ask for a bit of nuance there. To what extent is that story constantly evolving? Because to your point, you're.

You're learning how to better read the room, you're learning how to adapt to their needs. And where I've seen a lot of failures in startups is their story is too rigid and they're not able.

Like, they keep thinking that people don't understand their story. And it's not, it's the people's fault that they don't understand it, not theirs, the storytellers.

So to what extent do you feel that it is an ever evolving process, that every time you tell the story, maybe it changes a little because you're learning something or you're connecting with someone new.

Yeah. I think there's a real truth to what you're saying. And I might add. So when we first started, we must have changed our website. I don't. Even. Forever.

Many times. Right. And it's. The story stays the same. The method in which you tell it is what differs. Right.

Because there are some facts about our story that don't pertain at all to a specific group of people and another group of people that absolutely want to know that story. So it's, it's not that the story changes, the facts stay the same.

If you want to be true to yourself and you don't want to be like a greenwasher, a gender washer, you know, whatever.

Whatever thing is coming, but the ones that you share and the ones that you focus on do change because you have to know who you're speaking to for Instance, when I speak to other women, I'm way more likely to talk to them about the hardships of being a working mom with special needs children. When I talk to a board, one of our board members, I'm probably only. They'll say, how's life? It's complicated right now. But like, let's.

Let's talk ROI first. Let's talk about if I am helping to train our sales team or I'm writing a sales book.

I'm helping them to understand through a playbook what's most important to their client and tell the same authenticity story in a way that that client can relate to. Because the connections aren't made with just cold, hard facts. To your point, they're made through emotion.

Well, and the flip side of that, that I'm sort of hearing you reference as a through line in our conversation is substance. Right. That, you know, and on the kind of cultural level, this is sort of the keeping it real line.

But on the business level, it's, you know, what are the numbers? What's the roi? Right? Like, you know, don't just give me the sizzle, give me the steak.

So to bring us back to where we started in terms of the future of marketing and the future of, you know, commercial messaging, how do we accomplish that balance between, you know, targeting the individual when they need to be targeted, but giving them that substance, which earlier I alluded to in my own form is I want to be entertained, right? So, you know, give me, like, really good grade A content. But to our investor guy, it might be, give me the timely market information. Give me the.

So how do you see that level of sophistication, that level of accuracy when I. We're not seeing it yet. Right.

The false positives still seem to be a little uncanny for the average user, but I still agree with you that we are on a trajectory. How do we get there, I guess is the question I'm fumbling to ask.

No, you're doing great. I would say it's the old adage of location, location, location. When I watch the Super Bowl, I expect to see some really awesome commercials.

And I love it and I want to engage with it. That's fun. When I'm scrolling through my feed, I'm not thrilled to see your content. When I engage with your product, I want to know all the details.

I want to know that your beans came from a sustainably sourced farm and that it's an old family recipe from 300 years ago that your grandmother brought with her. I do want to know those things at that point. So the way to deliver that information is when I'm in that moment when, when my customer is.

And this is what our platform does. Right.

I'm a little biased to have a dynamic QR code on that that engages with my customer in a meaningful way and says, I see that you're engaging with our product. Here's the things that you need to know to make a purchase.

Here's information you could share if you're interested in doing so, and here's how you reorder if you're interested in doing so. And I can deliver that content in a way that's true to my brand. Whether I'm trying to make you laugh, which is a really effective marketing tool.

Right.

Or I'm trying to connect to you emotionally so that, you know, when I say that your eggs are cage free, that that actually doesn't mean that There was a 4 inch pad of grass outside a chicken coop and your chicken never saw the light of day. Right.

Let me get you to double down on that because I think that's a really interesting example of the technology that you're offering in terms of the food traceability. Because, you know, food traceability is something we've heard a lot about for a while.

I think the more that consumers recognize it as an option, the more that they will use it.

I really see it as a positive contribution to both our food system, but also potentially people's health in terms of thinking about what they consume. Take a moment to go on a kind of deep dive and explain to us how it could come together. What are the pieces that need to come into place?

I appreciate the idea that for the consumer, it's the QR code, Right. Where they're able to kind of connect digitally to the product when they're there in the store.

But what kind of back end has to be in place to your point, about a platform for that to be substantive, meaningful, so that it's not greenwashing, so that it's not, you know, some of the other superficial approaches to food that we've seen.

Yeah. So we work on the back end too. And it's really just about connecting and about understanding what the consumer cares about through the supply chain.

So when, for instance, if I'm working at a farm and then it passes to a wholesale grower, Right. That whole.

Or a wholesale buyer, that wholesale buyer needs to understand all the certifications I have and they need to understand my story so that they know it fits. Right. For them, Trader Joe's isn't Going to be buying from Nestle. Right?

So I need to explain why my cocoa is the best cocoa that they could be buying. That goes to the wholesale buyer who then has the appropriate information to give to distributors, and then distributors get to educate consumers.

It's about transparency the whole way through.

Because to your earlier point, and here I will self identify myself as a weirdo and an outlier and not necessarily representative of the consumer whole. I fantasize of a day where I go into the grocery store. You know, I'm looking at my produce, I scan the QR code and it says, it's Farmer John.

He's in Vermont. His dog is named Fluffy. Press here to tell him that you enjoyed it.

Like, I would love for that level of specificity, granularity, and most importantly, social media interaction. So I can be like, thanks, man. Thanks for the food, or for. Or thanks moment.

You know, like, whoever it is, that is a fantasy for me and I would love to see that happen because I think that would make a huge.

Difference, like a genie right now, because that's what we're doing. So, like, we work with a company called Zaka Hummus and they own Zenner Farms up in northern Idaho.

You scan their hummus and it will explain to you all the things I just told you about. Our beans are different than other people. Here's why. Here's pictures of the farm so that you can believe us and understand what we're doing.

Here's the cool new stuff that, that we're doing. And you know what? Here's our dog. I have, I even. I built one for fun for my husband and I are Mike. We would talk about this earlier.

Micro homesteaders. We call our house Quail Hollow Homestead because we raise quail and bees and all kinds of little things.

I made an app so when people buy birds from me that they can see what else came from our property, who I am, how their birds were treated, what they ate.

Because I, I get our food from a very specific person, all of those things, so that, you know, what you're bringing into your home is the best decision for you.

I mean, we're, we're, we're a little off track, but again, I think this is firmly.

I didn't mean to call you.

No, no, no, I like this. I'm taking us further and I'm claiming this under the guise of sustainability because I think that is what we're talking about.

And my dog is about to start yelling at the dogs who are outside. How do we get more farmers? How do we get more producers on side with this because that is where I've seen some resistance.

And it's not necessarily, I would say, a rational resistance. It's more the if it ain't broke, don't fix it resistance that they don't understand.

What I see is the value add that you can go beyond the commodity market to start actually charging more of a premium because your story allows you to do that. Again, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on how we get more people embracing this kind of connectivity.

Yes, and it's a really good point. There is some of the if it's not broke, we don't need to fix it. There's also an overwhelm of how am I supposed to do this?

And does it really increase my bottom line? It's hard for farmers right now when you're growing what is essentially a commodity.

And your only competitive edge, in your view, and this is what we have to help people understand, is to drop the price by $0.10 so you're less expensive than the potato grower next to you. Investing in something that even if it's cheap, even if it's $10,000 a year. Right. That's $10,000 a year off your bottom line. How do you justify that?

And people say they care, but do they really? Right. And the truth is increasingly, yes, Millennials and gen zers are. We're a cause based people. I'm an elder millennial. I'm a cause based person.

I'm more likely to buy a pair of socks that cost me a few dollars extra if I know that it gets a pair gets donated to someone who's homeless. Right. I am definitely more likely to buy your strawberries if they were locally grown. I want those stories.

Yeah.

What we, what we have to create as a, as a society is a people who are empathetic towards farmers and understand their plight. Be who people who understand, as we talked about earlier, the, the realm of brown to green.

We think I can only market myself as green if my entire operation is solar powered. And I only grow crops that require no water in the middle of the desert. Nope. No. Are you making steps Consumers want to hear about that.

Well, and that's, you know, perfection as the enemy of progress.

Absolutely it is. And it sounds so scary to many farmers. Like, people are gonna judge me. It's like, I have really bad news for you. They're judging you anyway.

I know. I have that argument with people all the time. It's like, you're getting my dogs judge me.

I didn't feed them in time and they're like, you're gonna get judged. Just be yourself and do what you think is best. The other piece I kind of want to end on here is something we've been having a really good chat about.

The value of communication, the value of storytelling, and why it is important not just to do the right thing, but to tell other people that you're doing the right thing. To what extent do you think that sustainability is.

I think where we share a similar affinity is to us, sustainability is part of how we make our decisions, how we make our purchasing decisions.

We see it as a positive when we're looking at marketing materials, but how do we encourage more people to recognize that there is a kind of infectious energy to sustainability that to your point about cause based marketing, I think leads to prosperity. I think leads to kind of long term success and stability. So on a meta view, how do we communicate that?

How do we kind of spread that message, especially not just in the business context, but in the people who are afraid, who don't have the confidence or the certainty that we have that this is not only the right path, it's a prosperous path. How do we do a better job of communicating that?

So the first, the first piece is really hyper transparency in that share the things that you're doing that are right, but also, and this is a real challenge for people, don't be afraid to share the things that, you know, you still need to improve on. Businesses really hurt themselves when they make it sound like they're doing something perfectly. You know, I.

If you reduce your emissions by 20, that's fantastic. Tell me about it.

If, as an, as an individual, if you remember to turn off the water while you brushed your teeth today, great, like, good job you made. You took a step towards transparency.

And the more that we share those things, the safer it is for other people to share them and then for us to realize we're not alone. I have talked to so many people who said it's not going to make any difference if I take a reusable bag to the grocery store.

Millions of cigarette butts are going to the ocean every day. I make no difference. You do if you tell somebody about it and it changes their attitude.

You're right that tomorrow people will not stop throwing their garbage in rivers in third world countries. They don't know what else to do. But what I'm doing can make a difference.

It makes a difference to my kids, it makes a difference to the person who sees me do it. And we have a conversation about it and maybe it changes something for that.

That's how differences are made in large part is teeny tiny pivots that eventually change whole viewpoints.

Well, and, you know, as I was preparing for our conversation today and I was thinking about my experience in the startup world and then I was thinking about where I live now in that I spent most of my life in the city and I'm now living in. In a rural area. Most of the entrepreneurs in this area are women. Most of the small businesses that people are running are run by women.

And to your point, they display vulnerability far more readily than a lot of the startups I know started by men. And it is a huge source of strength. Right.

They talk about their challenges, they talk about their setbacks, and it really rallies the community to them. It really engenders a kind of emotional connection to their business, which gives them the strength to last, which gives them a loyal customer base.

And I wish in business people embraced vulnerability, especially as part of. As they tell the stories, because I think that addresses trust. Right.

And trust is something that isn't often there when it comes to people in the marketplace. And I think the companies, the brands that are willing to be vulnerable tend to be the brands that are trusted, that developed trusted relationships.

Yeah. And nothing takes shame out of a conversation quite like being able to fess up to a conversation. It's secrecy creates shame.

Yeah.

Admitting you're not doing things perfectly makes people love you. It's authentic.

Yeah. And I think life's too short for shame myself. We should be happy being who we are, Brittany.

We end every Metaviews episode by asking our guest if they have any shout outs that they would like to give. And, you know, we.

We've had some instances in the past where the guests gave a lot of shout outs, so we're trying to limit these to one or two because we are trying to wrap up. But is there anyone that you think our audience should be following, should be paying attention to, reading, listening, Living dead, fictional, real.

You know, this is an opportunity for gratitude or for just paying it forward in terms of anyone you'd like to give a shout out to.

Oh, man. Narrowing this down is a little bit difficult. Anybody you should be listening to? If you are in the food industry, look up Eddie Stableford.

He's in the uk. He does some really phenomenal work around food and branding. And someone you should be a book you should read is the Omnivores Dilemma.

If you're at all interested in sustainability or branding and marketing and how it's done. Read the Omnivores Dilemma. It'll blow your mind.

Right on, right on. Two excellent recommendations and where can our audience learn more about you and connect with you?

Brittany yeah, please reach out to me on LinkedIn. That's probably the easiest way to find me.

And especially if you're a business that's interested in having these kinds of conversations, reach out to me on LinkedIn and we'll get you hooked up and see how we can help you. But don't be afraid to take the.

First step right on. The first step of many steps. Because I think while it is important to take the first step, it's a marathon, not a sprint.

So just keep taking those steps. Metaviews can be found on all the socials, on YouTube, on all the podcast networks. Thank you, Brittany. That has been a fantastic conversation.

I didn't have a chance to look at my calendar to see what our next episode is, but it'll probably be soon. But it may not be as fantastic as this one was.

I always like to moderate the expectations of my audience that when we have a great episode, the next one may not be. It's the law of averages. But thanks again. We'll be here soon.

Harriet my One of my dogs has been patiently sitting beside me waiting for lunch, and now that I've said the word, I have to follow through on my commitment. So thanks again. I will see you all soon.