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Solar Smart gives you real world stories on how solar technology is working for business and homes across Ireland today. With new episodes each month, you'll learn how it works, clever ways people are implementing it and how you can make it work financially using everything from government grants to selling your power back to the grid. Listen now and get Solar Smart.
This is the Solar Smart Podcast from solarsmart.ie with your host, Pierce.
Speaker 2:Hello, and welcome to the Solar Smart Podcast looking at solar energy from a business point of view. Today, we're joined by Laura McDermott, CEO of Collectivo, a woman led Irish consultancy helping organizations embed sustainability through business model transformation. Having founded Collectivo in 2022, Laura has built a reputation for making ESG human, accessible, and commercially relevant. She's here to talk about the intersection of design thinking and climate action and how forward thinking organizations balance growth with deep environmental and social impact. Laura, thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2:I'm really excited about our conversation today because it's an area that I don't know that much about, but I'm obviously really, really interested in. So I'm looking forward to learning so much from what we talk about. So just taking a few sort of little tidbits from the Collectivo website.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:You describe your business as focusing on design and innovation for change. What was the original spark behind founding the company back in 2022?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I actually lived over in Spain for many years and in the Spanish kind of commercial world, mandatory reporting came in around corporate sustainability back in kind of 2018, early twenty nineteen. So I was working in IE University, which is based in Madrid. And I was working with large organisations, a lot of them being in the financial services space, on designing social impact and social innovation programmes that looked at tackling through innovation and through the design of impact programmes, some of their social commitments, and their social responsibilities. So it was very much looking at how can we not only report on what our impact is in an affected community around Latin America or Europe, But how can we actually identify those communities, see who the changemakers are in those communities, and provide them with the programs and the structures to be able to amplify their change. So I think it's a very progressive way of looking at sustainability and going from a box ticking approach to looking at your impacts to then actually looking at, okay, well, how can we make things better?
Speaker 3:And when I was looking to move home in 2022, I was looking at the landscape in Ireland and recognized that we weren't as aggressive actually with corporate sustainability reporting as in Spain. And what I would say is that while I don't think reporting is necessarily the end goal, I think change should be the end goal. It's absolutely the case that when you bring in more rigorous reporting, it's a great tailwind for change. So because we weren't as strict about that here in Ireland, I saw a great opportunity for us to actually learn from other countries, learn from other practices and bring this kind of innovation approach to sustainability. Great.
Speaker 3:I do teach as well on the subjects of design innovation. So my background is in customer experience and innovation. And I would have always been focused on how can we make customer experiences more accessible and how can we really put the human experience at the center of our designs as opposed to just being led purely by a more kind of profit driven approach. And I think that those methodologies around discovering what is the problem, who are the people involved, what are their interests, frustrations, where are the friction points, and then how can we design with that in mind and design to tackle also some of those frictions. And I think that when it comes to sustainability, you ask different people and sustainability can mean a different thing to different people.
Speaker 3:And I think that is evidence of the fact that there is a very great opportunity for us to upscale and to come up with a definition of what it means for our organization. But that also means change. And coming from the education side, I appreciate that change is not always easy. If you have signed up to do a master's programme, you've already opted in to some level of change, to some level of self development, you're already kind of primed for that. Whereas when you're in an organisation and you feel as though change has been forced upon you by a regulator or by management team or whatever, and you're not necessarily open to that or if change is something that is scary, I think using design innovation methods is a really amazing way to get people on board and to be able to identify and empathize as well with people in your organization.
Speaker 2:You made a statement about how sustainability actually could mean different things to different people. Do you feel like that's why it's hard to embed sustainability across big organizations because you have to kind of start from a base understanding of what sustainability actually means? Because like you said, could be one thing to one person and something fundamentally different from somebody else.
Speaker 3:If you were to take a purely kind of compliance focus to sustainability, you might say, okay, we need to generate a report X number of times a year, or we need to respond to our clients requests or procurement requests to have a sustainability policy. And it might be seen as kind of separate to the business, but just an ask that you're being required to do, right? I think that when it comes to real integration and embedding of sustainability, you look at your business model, right? So you look at, there's a great canvas that is oftentimes used in entrepreneurship called the business model canvas, and it breaks down the different components of your business. So on the one side, it is things like your distribution channels, your key activities, your key resources, your key partnerships, then you're looking at your key market segments, you're looking at your value propositions, you're looking at your revenue, as well as your cost structures.
Speaker 3:And essentially, it maps out your business model on one page. Really great tool. I think anybody can use it. You can map out any business onto a business model canvas on a high level. But those are all things that are impacted by sustainability.
Speaker 3:Okay, if we want sustainable key activities, we need to see, okay, well, are the key activities that we're doing at the moment aligned to best practice? And are they at risk of becoming regulated? Or are there regulations coming down the road that will impact our key activities? So for example, if part of your key activities is communicating your products and services, and if you have invested in making your products and services more environmentally friendly, let's say, or you have invested in research and development to reduce the waste output, Now with the new empowering consumers for the green transition directive that's coming into effect, which is essentially anti greenwashing laws. Your key activity of communicating those changes is going to be fundamentally changed.
Speaker 3:And if you are caught greenwashing, you could be at risk of getting fines. So it's not just a case of an add on report that you do at the end of the year. It's also looking at like the processes and the departments and different things that are going into your business and how they need to change on the departmental level as well to become sustainable, because it wouldn't be sustainable for your business to continue greenwashing, you know, and to continue to get fines. So, I mean, that's a very, very simple example, but it does come down to a departmental level and it should permeate your business model if it's done and embedded correctly, as opposed to just being a report that you produce once a year to keep your stakeholders happy.
Speaker 2:Right. Greenwashing is another term that I think might be slightly misunderstood or there could be a lot of different ideas in people's heads about what exactly that means. We hear it a lot. From your perspective, what is greenwashing? And if you do it, obviously it's not a good thing because you're sort of covering up stuff, right?
Speaker 2:Why do you think companies even bother doing it?
Speaker 3:Well, I would like to think that people don't intentionally go and mislead through their communications, right? Like I don't think that people are sitting there and considering people mislead people in the most effective way possible. You know, I think oftentimes greenwashing happens because of a lack of awareness and misalignment of stakeholders and communication stakeholders in particular. So I don't think that there's bad intent that necessarily goes into all cases of greenwashing. I think that there may be slip ups or there may be gaps in awareness, right?
Speaker 3:So we actually did a webinar a couple of weeks ago with Enterprise Ireland, and we had a few different experts on the topic of greenwashing on, and we discussed this. So basically, the EU is bringing in this new directive, which has been transposed since March into national law, and then in September becomes effective. So we need to make sure that from September onwards, our communications are up to scratch. And it's basically coming down from the EU level and that the main goal is to empower consumers. So it's e c g t, it's empowering consumers for the green transition.
Speaker 3:As a consumer, it can be very difficult for us to differentiate one product from another. And when brands start using things like eco friendly, green, environmentally friendly, climate friendly, all of these kind of vague quality claims, or even the use of sustainability, broad sustainability terms like sustainable, eco conscious, responsible, you know, what does that mean? For a consumer, it would be easy to be misled by those signals and by those terms. And essentially, what the EU is trying to do is make it as legitimate as possible, And ultimately, that consumers can go into a shop or can go and look at their different energy providers and see, okay, which is the best, you know, where are the verified claims? How can I trust one brand over another?
Speaker 3:If everybody's saying that what they're doing is eco and green and environmentally friendly. So in principle, there's a good ambition behind us. I think for brands, it really is a moment to pause and reflect and say, okay, where have we gotten a little bit creative with our language? From a marketing perspective and a cons perspective, people don't have time to read huge, big paragraphs about the sustainability of something. So using short terms is a mental shortcut that we use to try to make a decision.
Speaker 3:If my values are that I want to buy a more environmentally friendly product, I'm probably going to go for the green packaged option that says green or eco or that type of thing. But it is a moment where companies are going to need to do a reflection, see what sustainability communications they have out there from their sustainability reports to the marketing and advertising and do a bit of an audit and see, okay, what can we stand over? What do we have verified evidence to support? And how are we going to continue to communicate our sustainability journey, but in a way that is aligned to best practice. Now, again, that's another example of a change, right?
Speaker 3:The sustainability applied to communications. That's what it means. It means having robust systems in place so that anything you go out and say can be backed up. Marketing departments maybe haven't been as hit as, for example, operations departments or finance departments when it comes to sustainability. But this is really a pretty important thing.
Speaker 3:And across the EU, there's countries in the EU that are finding between 46% of annual turnover if you're found to be greenwashing. So there's other European member states that are taking it really aggressively. It'll be interesting to see how the Irish market and the Irish regulators decide to enforce this. But in any case, it's something that if you are working on your sustainability journey, you need to be aware of this.
Speaker 2:All of these things coming into the business community to impact kind of cost and all this stuff, I assume there's a healthy tension between or maybe an unhealthy tension between keeping your corporate profits as high as possible and weaving some of these other sustainability and very important parts of how you should conduct yourself in business. And I'm assuming that in the sort of C suite, there's a constant conversation about how do we balance as much profit as possible with some of these other, some people might look at them and call them restrictions, right? Whereas from our perspective, obviously we want as many people to adopt solar and to be more eco friendly just in our tiny little sliver of the market where we go, okay, rather than burning fossil fuels for your energy, you can put solar panels on your roof and you can cut out some of the need to actually rely on fossil fuels for your energy, right? So that's our tiny, tiny, tiny little sliver. But for other corporations, the impact is so much bigger.
Speaker 2:And so how do those conversations happen at the C suite level? And what do you have to do to convince a company that building these practices, embedding these practices into your business model actually will deliver on a maybe longer promise to better profitability if got that embedded to your business? Or is that a conversation that's even happening?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think there's, I often like to go back to the cart and the stick, you know, so on the stick approach of sustainability and investment in ESG, there are regulations coming and impacting every sector over the next number of decades that will put you at financial risk if you are not complying with them. Okay. So whether it's the likes of the ECGT, you know, you go out with your communications and you find because you haven't been diligent in auditing the process verifying your claims that actually you're now really exposed to a great financial risk. There are other bans coming around packaging and the elimination of single use packaging by 2030 in the EU. So if you don't adapt to that, then you are at risk again, that presents a financial risk.
Speaker 3:So there is a very real financial incentive. It's not just about profitability. It's also about the financial risk associated with not being compliant. And then there's the other side, which is the carrot side. So for anybody who responds to tenders, you'll start to see that in procurement more and more, there's a weighting towards sustainability.
Speaker 3:So it's not just a criteria, it's not just a nice to have anymore. You might have 10% of your overall proposal. It's not just about costs, it's also about have you got any certifications? Can you prove that you have implemented a sustainability strategy in your organization? Are you B Corp certified?
Speaker 3:You know, there's a lot of additional points that you can get if you are invested in sustainability and if you are embedding it into your organization. So that's the kind of, you know, making yourself more attractive in tenders. There's also some large corporates are bringing in new measures now where if they need to report on the data, if you're in their supply chain, and they essentially need to be able to capture your emissions and a certain level of social criteria as well. If you proactively report those to them, you have shorter payment windows, payment terms. So they're trying to incentivize you to send that information to them and to actually start tracking it.
Speaker 3:There's also a lot of green finance options out there. There's also a lot of cost savings that you can make on an operational level. I mean, this is exactly your space, the cost savings that you get. And a lot of times, I don't know if you find it in your work as well, but there might be a level of skepticism or kind of, you know, a lot of it coming from a lack of awareness around like, oh, will it really make that much of a difference? And then I've never spoken to somebody who hasn't installed solar and not seen a great return on investment.
Speaker 3:So that's not even touching the whole kind of brand positioning and the brand power that you get from actually showing that you're taking this seriously. So there's the kind of the card and the stick, I think. And it's not just thinking about profitability, commercial profitability in the way we have historically. It's a new way of thinking about not only profits, but people on planet two. Yeah, the card and the stick, I think, can be applied to all of those measures.
Speaker 2:When we are in dialogue with small businesses, we don't really install big, huge solar systems. We've left that sandbox for other people to play in. We've decided that there's a nice small to medium size of the market where we're really suited to deliver, but often use becoming more sustainable and equate that to a company's ability to actually market themselves more attractively and sell more because consumers are starting to become a lot more demanding about who they want to do business with. So we've said, tick the box where you're green. It's like when you rock up to an IKEA store and it says, got a big poster outside saying this store is powered by solar.
Speaker 2:There's a marketing feel good factor and you will definitely attract a certain type of consumer who is really, really interested in climate action and sustainability and the things that are near and dear to their heart. And I think there's a big percentage of the population that are moving a lot more, especially in the last couple of months, just towards a greener, nicer, better feeling way of doing business and people to do business with. So I'm sure that that's also part of the carrot, if you will, that your business will be more attractive to consumers if you have sustainability embedded into the way that you do business. You've talked a lot about the EU and some of the stick parts of the side of the equation. Let's zero in a little bit more on Ireland and talk to me about some of the frustrations that you have in terms of doing business in Ireland, maybe some of the differences between doing business in this realm in Ireland versus some of your work that you continue.
Speaker 2:I think you also continue to do work in Spain. And actually your business is global. So compare and contrast a little bit about maybe what Ireland is doing right and what Ireland might not be doing so right in terms of this path to a more sustainable business model.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I think that there are actors in the Irish economy that are doing a great job. We work a lot with IMR, Irish Manufacturing Research, and they have a circular network. And those are companies that are committed to the advantage of the circular economy. They, you know, are really promoting circular innovations, waste reduction, and there are other actors out there as well that are doing great, great work. I think that while I also as a small business owner can fully appreciate the administrative burden of being told that I need to report on things like my emissions.
Speaker 3:I do think that that is necessary, you know, like the extent to reporting that small businesses should do. A definition of what would be appropriate would be great. And we do have frameworks out there like there's the voluntary VSME standards, which are associated with the CSRD, a lot of acronyms in the world of sustainability, but essentially, there are frameworks out there of how small businesses can measure their impact. There's also the likes of the B Corp standards, which are great for mapping out how you should be thinking about your impact and how you can take steps to improve your performance as well. However, on a whole, I don't think that we're doing that great, to be honest, in Ireland.
Speaker 3:I think that we should be a lot more ambitious. I think we do need to have a little bit of pressure. Have, as part of our national targets, we hope to achieve a 51% reduction in our total emissions by 2030 based on a 2018 level. Based on our existing measures, we're looking at a nine percent reduction and that's looking at the EPA. You can go on to the EPA for more detailed breakdown of that.
Speaker 3:But if we were to be super ambitious about our climate action plan, based on where we are now, the most we're looking at is the 23% reduction. So, you know, 51% is very ambitious. And the fact that based on our current performance and our current mandates on all businesses, we're looking at 9%, it's pretty grim. You know, I don't want to be the bearer of bad news. And I, you know, I really do try to take a very positive approach and a proactive and enthusiastic approach to these things.
Speaker 3:But I still think that we need to be doing a lot more. Mary Robinson, one of my favorite quotes that I use quite often is Mary Robinson has said that we need to be doing 10 times more, 10 times faster. And I think that that's pretty applicable to the Irish market. I think that there are amazing startups and new ventures and amazing pieces of research coming out from our institutions and our universities. But I do think that we need to be doing a lot more.
Speaker 3:And I think it needs to be a lot more mainstream than just the first movers or the innovators in the economy that are trying to tackle these things. So yeah, it's a very complex one and I'm just really scratching the surface. Like it's a very complex system. There's a lot of different actors. There's a lot of different levers.
Speaker 3:And I don't want to oversimplify, but I do think that we could be doing a lot more.
Speaker 2:So can you give me sort of a practical example of a business that lots of people would kind of understand how they could do better? Are there low hanging fruit opportunities that a lot of businesses could grasp fairly easily and quickly to help kind of move the needle?
Speaker 3:Look, so there's a couple of questions in there. They like examples or reference companies to look at and then the low hanging fruit. So the good news is that there are actually a huge amount of support out there. I mean, you're probably very familiar with the SEAI grants, but there's also like on a business level, looking at business model. There are so many different options out there.
Speaker 3:I mean, if you're registered with your local enterprise office, there are grants that you can get to have somebody come into your business, and it's paid by your LEO to analyze where are the gaps. And you know, if you're going to a doctor, because you felt something was a little bit off or you had a suspicion, the first thing that you do is go and get tests run. So why would you not take that first step? You don't need to take on the whole thing of this broad concept of sustainability. You know, I think starting off with doing something like a diagnostic, you can do general diagnostics on just your business and your apps and where would be a good place to start.
Speaker 3:And then if you're more focused on particular areas of your business, like for example, the green communications, there are grants out there that you can get. There's if you're an enterprise RN client, I think with LEO as well, you can also do green start. So that's a seven day voucher where you can get a consultant to come in and you can go through diagnostic or you can go through a design sprint where you analyze where your communications are. And we're doing that at the moment ahead of EMCO, the ECG, Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition. So I think the first step is diagnostic.
Speaker 3:And if you haven't done anything before and you are a member of your LEO or you are a member of Enterprise Ireland or IDE or Utheros Nagelsba, can get a lot of that stuff either for free or up to 80% in some cases of those costs offset. So I think that that's the first start. And I think it's fantastic that Enterprise Ireland is managing this fund of over €50,000,000 that businesses can tap into to be able to get a sense of where they're at. And ultimately, we won't know accurately if we are reaching our climate targets, if we don't have data. And I think the first thing to do is to actually know what is going on.
Speaker 3:So if you don't have the data to share, then we're not getting an accurate representation of what is our performance as a country when it comes to our emissions. So I think diagnostic understanding what options are relevant to your business is a really key thing. So just in terms of businesses that I think are great reference points for how we should take a strategic business model approach to sustainability, Patagonia is one that I love referring to. The book by the founder of Patagonia called Let My Go Surfing was something that really inspired me as well to get more involved in purpose driven businesses. And his whole approach was that he was really into mountain climbing and being in the outdoors and saw that a lot of materials that were used were very, yeah, very poorly crafted.
Speaker 3:They were cheap. They broke. There was also health and safety kind of concerns around them. So he wanted to create a new type of business where you had durable products that were sustainable. You know, it's like a false economy versus a sustainable product, you know, a sustainable product will sustain for longer.
Speaker 3:And his whole thing was about building, you know, sustainable products with ethical materials in ethical supply chains, treating workers well, building community and really being kind of, you know, he is, I think, and that business is the reference point for what a purpose driven, very profitable, but also a business that, you know, considers people and planet at the same level, you know, like it's not an afterthought. It is so integrated into the business vision. Tony's Chocoloney, Tony's Chocolates for those of you. Yeah, they're a great organization as well. And they're very honest and transparent in their communication about their sustainability journey.
Speaker 3:So they're, you know, say that we don't have all of the answers right, but we do these things to try to ensure that, you know, our workers in the value chain get fair and respectful conditions and remuneration throughout the value chain. We're trying to promote best practice across the industry. They're just doing a really great job. Eco Wealth is another brand. So there's a couple of retailers in Ireland that stock Eco Wealth, but they are essentially a brand that is eco design by design.
Speaker 3:So normally what happens in fashion is, you know, you brainstorm what your collection is going to be for the next season. And then from there, you go off and you look for the materials to bring that vision to life. Whereas what EcoOff does is they work and have a network of, I don't want to pick an arbitrary number, but it's like, it's a huge amount of fishermen across Spain and other parts of Europe as well to basically collect waste from the ocean. And I have a jacket. It's a really great quality jacket.
Speaker 3:But essentially what they do is they convert the plastic waste from the ocean that they've recovered into threads and they use those materials to create really durable fashion items. So clothing, textiles. So when you're buying them, I mean, you're wearing somebody said to me before, he was like, so you're basically wearing trash. And I was like, yeah, I guess you are wearing trash. Again, it's the focus on eco design and durability and having products that sustain and that, you know, are last the test of time, not fostering over consumption and waste.
Speaker 3:You're not going to necessarily copy and paste the exact business model of those organizations into your own. But there are things that we can take and be inspired by from those different organizations. We actually have a book club that we started this year in Collectivo. So every second month we are posting on our website in the blog section, different books that people are always asking, you know, what would you read? Like if I'm going on holidays, what book should I read that's not going to be too textbook y?
Speaker 3:There's a lot of books out there. So check that out. Anybody who wants to just be a bit inspired without having to read a textbook or enrol in a nine month course. Yeah, there are so many examples out there. If we go and we really have a look, I'm not sure the different sectors that will be represented in the audience that's listening to this now.
Speaker 3:But in every sector, are innovators and there are people who are really changing the norms.
Speaker 2:I completely agree. And they're tiny and they're large. I mean, there's a whole span. I'm really proud because we have a woman that worked for Solar Smart and I have known her for about fifteen years and she's a designer, clothing designer. Her name is Angela O'Donnell.
Speaker 2:And I've known her for about fifteen years and she has an Irish brand called Yahoo, which stands for you are what you wear. All And of her designs and all of her, she designs her own textiles. They're all completely sustainable. About three years ago, we needed some sales impact in Cork. She lives in Cork and I called her up and I said, would you by any chance know someone who would be interested in selling solar systems in Cork?
Speaker 2:And she called me back a day later and she goes, what would you think if I did that part time? Because my Yahoo brand hasn't quite done everything that I need it to do. She was like, what would you think if I could do it? I could only do it part time, but I need a separate income so that I can continue to fuel my brand. And I was like, you know what?
Speaker 2:I'm all over that. She's so committed to making the planet a better place. And she's young, she's in her early 40s. I think at the time she was in her late 30s. Anyway, the reason I'm so proud is because she's been with us for almost three years And this month is her last month because she's pretty much taken not everything obviously that she made from Solar Smart, but a lot of the income that she was able to generate from Solar Smart to further her brand.
Speaker 2:But she also started, while doing all of this, another business called Curtains and Co, where she makes home curtains again out of recycled and sustainable materials.
Speaker 3:Oh, wow. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so she has two businesses where she's now at a place where she can draw a full time salary from Yahoo and from Curtains and Co. And so this is her last month at Solar Smart Solar.
Speaker 3:That's what you would look good for her.
Speaker 2:Isn't that great? Isn't that great? Yeah. You should definitely look up her brand. But one of the things that she struggles with is the fact that it's way more expensive to make clothing that's sustainable than it is for pennies or for Primark.
Speaker 2:And so she's constantly trying to balance the tension between her jackets that cost a couple of €100 versus you go on to a website or Timu or whatever, one of those, and get it for next to nothing. And this sort of striving to try to find the audience that is going to be able to pay a premium for something that's sustainable has been one of her biggest challenges, which actually leads me to my next question. And you might have something that you want to just say about what I just talked about, but I thought it would be just really interesting to give her a little bit of a plug now that she's going out full time on her own. But as a female entrepreneur, which I am, which she is, and which you are, you know, what are some of the challenges that you found in trying to lead this charge in Ireland for us?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, I can imagine for something like a textiles or a circular economy based business, somewhere like Ireland, I mean, I don't think I really appreciated it until I came back from Spain. Ireland is an island. Ireland is a small island. We don't have a huge amount of infrastructure to support new technologies or new models of circular manufacturing, you know, that like a lot of our waste needs to be sent abroad.
Speaker 3:And in order expensive to get them into the country. And I think when I was living in Spain and working and seeing a lot of these circular businesses popping up, they would be able to connect very easily into Portugal, into other parts of Europe and get things sent by train. It was just easy. They could even drive over there if they needed to. Whereas in Ireland, just things by virtue of being a small island, it just makes things that bit more difficult.
Speaker 3:Now, you could also say that there is a great opportunity in that because we could be an amazing test bed for new innovations. Have a small enough population. We have a lot of other things that are working for us in our favor. One of the things as a female founder, I don't know that I necessarily because of my gender have any particular setbacks against me in the industry that I'm working in. However, I think in my particular situation, I'm working in an area of business that is relatively new in the Irish market, you know, like sustainability.
Speaker 3:It has been around for a long time. ESG as a the term has existed for decades. Now it hasn't become mainstream until recently, but it's a relatively new concept. If I was going out and doing marketing or doing tax or doing something else that was more understandable, maybe I would have other types of barriers, but I think at least awareness wouldn't be one of them. So I think that is a huge challenge is just actually boosting awareness and educating the client along the journey.
Speaker 3:I think another thing is, you know, I was away for a while. I was away for, you know, the best part of ten years and I still spend a bit of time in Spain, which is both great because I'm really tapped into a market that is much more ahead of Ireland and I can look back and have a kind of a benchmark and something to anchor against. And a lot of the professionals that I'm working with, you know, in Spain or on the continent or in Latin America as well, they're very much at the cutting edge. So it unlocks this new level of expertise in different international markets. So that's really amazing.
Speaker 3:However, being away has meant that coming home, I don't have the same network and I didn't have those years of cultivating my Irish network the same way as other people have. So I think that has been, you know, an interesting one to navigate. I am home for a number of years now. So I do think that I've been part of a number of different programs that have been really amazing for helping me to connect with other entrepreneurs, both female founders and then returning expats, I guess. So that's really great.
Speaker 3:And that's all a big part of that is thanks to Paula Fitzsimons, I think we were both on her programs in the past. So shout out to Paula. So I do think you just need to make a bit more of an effort. I mean, I don't want to say that I was the outsider, right? Like I was born and raised in Ireland, but you do kind of have a bit of an outsider perspective when you've been away for basically a decade and you're coming back and you kind of have to get to know what are the interests that are driving the Irish market?
Speaker 3:What are the constraints, the challenges, the tailwinds, the headwinds? Who's doing what? Where are the gaps? Why aren't we doing these things? So it forces you to be a lot more explicit in your thinking and that sort of stuff.
Speaker 3:So I would say that those are some challenges that I find. I am very lucky in that I have amazing people that I work with and I don't profess to know every single response to every single sustainability question. And if I did say that, I think that my own credibility would weigh dramatically because I don't think anybody knows absolutely everything. It's changing all of the time. There's a lot of very different specialist areas within environmental, social and governance spaces.
Speaker 3:So it's really great to just be surrounded by people who are really at the cutting edge. That gives me a lot of kind of steam as well and gives me a lot of drive.
Speaker 2:By the way, I agree. I'm obviously an outsider, not being from Ireland at all. But one of the things that I think really differentiates Solar Smart is my personal expectation of what customer service is. Because in America, customer service is really high on because the there's so much competition. It's one of the things that has actually been really, really interesting for me is that because I have such a high level of customer service expectation and when you're in the trades business, which is what we are, right?
Speaker 2:Roofers and electricians, we've set a completely different standard. And that's just because I've just brought a perspective from a different market and I know that it can be done. Whereas lots of other people maybe in Ireland think, oh yeah, sure. That's just the way it happens. That's just the way it is here kind of thing.
Speaker 2:I really appreciate the impact of bringing up an outside perspective into Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's funny as well, because I remember when I was working in a Spanish culture, a very Spanish environment, because of course there's, you know, multinationals there as well and all the rest. But I remember really being struck by what I thought was how slow everything moved, you know, like we would come in, a meeting started at ten and ran to eleven. And I'd be there, you know, a couple minutes before ten logged on or in the meeting, let's say we're in a physical room at that time, we were in physical meetings, a lot more than Teams. But I'd arrive a couple of minutes thirty, set myself down to that 10AM, we're ready to go with the agenda and start off. And I'd be waiting there at ten past ten, no sign of any of my colleagues.
Speaker 3:And then people start rocking in about four past ten. And I remember the feeling of like, am I breaking out in hives? Like, I feel like my nervous system is shot. Like, we're not going get through this agenda. And then, you know, we spend ten minutes talking about like our weekend and this and things were just moving at a pace that I, my type A personality was really getting agitated.
Speaker 3:And I remember, I mean, I would never, you know, show it, but I would just internally be cracking off. And I remember over the years, that was one of my very first experiences. And I actually was considering going to The US to work abroad for a few years. And I think had I gone to The US rather than gone to Spain, the type a ness of my personality probably just would have gone to the extreme. Whereas going to Spain and seeing one of my bosses at the time said, look, Laura, people don't just do their jobs because they should do their jobs and they're getting paid to do their jobs.
Speaker 3:They do the jobs because, you know, they like you and because this and that, and it's all relationship based. And I remember thinking like, okay, so in order to get things done, I just have to make sure that I, you know, really invest in these relationships. And I already enjoy having relationships with people. But when I realized that efficiency was way down on the priority level, and relationships and report was way at the top, I think it was a great learning. And that's something as well that we bring into Collectivo.
Speaker 3:Similar to yourself, if a client really wants to be efficient about something amazing, we can get the job done. And if a client is struggling with something and they need space to talk because they don't actually understand ESG, and we need to make it more accessible, we can slow down and we can understand where they're at and empathize with them and have the chats and bring them along the journey in a way where they feel comfortable. And they're not afraid to ask any questions because they see, you know, a corporate consultancy coming in. So we would have a very customer centric approach as well. On a professional services level, which obviously is different, but our counterparts might be a bit more, here's a report, and here's my billable hours, as opposed to providing the relationship as well.
Speaker 2:Brings me back to when I first got here. I worked in Manhattan for twenty years and there was aspect about everything. And I remember my very first few meetings at Oracle, the first ten minutes were about the weather or what you did over the weekend. And in New York, just that was never, ever, ever the case. It was like, Okay, 10:00, boom, boom, what are we talking about?
Speaker 2:What's the agenda? Meeting over practically by 10:15. And here in Ireland, was like we're still talking about our weekends. It took me a while to actually get used to it all. How would you define success for Colectivo?
Speaker 2:Aspirationally, what do you hope to accomplish over the next five years?
Speaker 3:I used to love just growing up as well, making five year plans for my own personal life goals. I've kind of stopped doing that, right? Like I kind of have a bigger picture of what I would like to happen, but I don't necessarily, you know, have a chronological order of how that will happen or when exactly that will happen. In five years, I would love for us to be working with even more organizations. But at the moment, organizations who they already have a level of awareness, they're already committed.
Speaker 3:They are the ones that identify it not only as ESG as a risk framework, but also as an opportunity to be a better business. And I think it's amazing inspiring to work with those organizations that are real change leaders in their space. What I would love to be doing more of is working more with organizations that are a little bit resistant at the moment, and who might be a little bit behind the curve and that need to really accelerate. Because the reality is that a lot of the biggest impacts on an environmental and social level are from the organizations that have been around for a long time. You know, smaller businesses are more agile.
Speaker 3:Startups can be sustainable by design because they can kind of just start with best practice straight away. And whereas larger organizations that have a lot of staff, that have a particular type of culture that's been around for a long time, that have products and services that have been this way for the last twenty, thirty, forty, however many years. Those are the organizations that probably create the biggest environmental impact and also social impact because of their value chains, the workers, the communities they operate, the consumers and end users that are engaging with their products. So for those organizations to actually turn the dial and to make a change, I think that the rippling impact could be so great. And I see a lot of those organizations out there that are, yes, making certain, you know, maybe they've started if they're larger, they've started with their mandatory reporting, but there's still a huge amount that they could be doing in terms of innovation.
Speaker 3:And I think that while we do work with large organizations who are ahead and who are innovators in space, I would love to work with more of the organizations that aren't ahead, that are really behind and to widen the scope a little bit more on that level. At the same time, we do love all of our innovative companies. I don't want to say that we don't want those because it's honestly very inspiring. Like there's a couple of organizations that we've been working with for a number of years. And it is like to see that growth mindset.
Speaker 3:I think a lot of it comes down to growth mindset. How open are you to change? And it's as much a culture thing as anything else, you know, like you need to update the systems, the processes, but you also need to have the people on board and people driving that change. So it is really refreshing working with organizations that at least have that openness and that growth mindset. And also, think that there would be a great opportunity to work with more traditional organizations as well.
Speaker 2:I guess the challenge would be bigger with somebody who has more inertia, right? And so there's a bigger kind of nut to crack, if you will, in terms of, and I can see why that could be something that you'd have a big appetite for. Your goals and what you want to accomplish is palpable in terms of how you present yourself and how it all comes across. So well done. I have a lot of admiration for what you're doing.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 2:I think it's really cool. And I've learned so much just from this conversation. I'm going to get onto my Leo and I think we should try to start a campaign for getting every small business to just get that diagnostic.
Speaker 3:Yeah, get the diagnostic. Mean the
Speaker 2:Diagnostic step and become more aware as a very first easy, ideally not that costly step that sounds like the government has a big fund for that. So I think there's a bit of a marketing campaign to have there. Thanks so much for sharing your journey with us and some of your ideas and your vision and some of your frustrations. It's been amazing.
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