Purpose-Driven Companies and Finding Purpose

Welcome to building better developers, the developer podcast, where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season of interviews. We are into a new interview. We're going to be speaking with Katherine McCourt this time around and we're going to talk about purpose driven companies and how to put a little bit more or maybe a lot more into your job, into your company than simply being there, than simply doing work. Her motto is live in fearless evolution, also known as life. And I think you'll see from this conversation that that's part of what she's looking for is ways to continually evolve professionally and organizationally and I guess personally as well. But I don't want to get too far into it or too far down a digression. We'll go ahead and get started here and let's allow Katherine to introduce herself. We're talking with Katherine McCourt of Fearless Future, a fearless future podcast, and we're going to spend some time talking about getting a little deeper into our why and how to find that, how to find some purpose and how to do more than just work, but actually find something that we want to do. As we've often talked about, with our side hustle and even with our career is mapping it not necessarily to what others think should be done or what is the, in the quotes, the norm, but instead to really craft our own personal roadmap and goals and find the things that we enjoy doing. And even though, yeah, there's always going to be stuff in work that we don't really, you know, we're not thrilled about, but to make it so that at least on a given day, hopefully, you know, at least 51% of what we've done is more what we'd like to do over what we would rather avoid. And a lot of her discussions have been along these same lines. So I wanted to have her on and see where maybe she can offer us a little bit different insight. Now, I'm not terribly awesome about doing introductions, particularly in this sense. So I'm going to pass this on to you, Catherine, let you give us, I gave you sort of a high level, but if you can give us a little more of a background on yourself and what you're doing. Yeah, awesome. Thanks for having me on the show, Rob. I guess, I mean, to start off, like you said, I'm a coach and I do transformational coaching, both personal and professional. But I also do business coaching with with businesses that are looking predominantly for purpose driven sales and business development strategies. And I this all aligns with my purpose throughout my life. I've sort of looked at all the things that I've been passionate about, things that really drove me in motivation and tried to figure out like, what does this all mean? And, you know, how is this part of my purpose? And taking a look at all the things that you're passionate about, but really drilling down on what are the common denominators in these these scenarios and how do they relate to maybe an impact or a mission I want to make in life? And so it's it's a purpose is a real simple topic, but it's also a very intricate one when you dive down to really sorting it out. So along my journey, I've been in sales and business development throughout my whole career, working for a variety of industries. And then in my last company, they were a very purpose driven business, which really spoke to my values and my beliefs. And I felt really, I guess, confident, you know, standing behind a brand that had such deep ethos in sustainability and helping to protect the planet. So with all that alignment, it really spoke to what I felt was my purpose. But all along, I've also wanted to coach others in how to have more intention and find purpose in their life. But also, you know, if they want to drive this through a career or if they want to take this into a business of their own, I really looked at like, how could I do that as a coach? And naturally, it sort of started people coming to me and saying, hey, you know, you've done such great work with these brands that you've worked with in the past. We'd love to know what you do. What's special about this purpose driven piece and how do you connect it in my business? So that's kind of how it all happened for me. And then in 2020, lo and behold, where most people, I think, have pivoted or made a decision to take a look at their life and maybe their business and figure out, you know, how can we do things differently, which is what I did. And I finally succumbed to realizing that being a coach and helping others to lead with purpose, to prosper was really important to me and time for me to take step into it full time. Now, as a coach, because you found your initial purpose, I guess we'll say, because you were, you know, you found a company that you that all of your goals lined up very well with with their purpose driven, you know, statement or their goals. Do you does that? Do those does that earlier, I guess, set of purposes still translate into coaching and how you coach and maybe who you coach? Or is it one of the things where it's it's almost like a, you know, it's like a almost like a wall between the two. There's the things that you have that that drive you. And then looking at what you did, you can you can step away and say, OK, let's talk to this business or this individual and look at what their purposes are. So I wouldn't say that being a coach specifically is my purpose. So that's where it starts getting intricate. Right. Is being a coach isn't necessarily my purpose, but it's a way that I express my purpose. So what I've discovered over the years is my purpose is helping others live with more intention, to put it simply. So, you know, when when we live in a world where things just come at us and society sometimes puts pressures on us to do certain things or live a certain way or or even build a business a certain way, you know, is that authentically sitting right with you? And so my purpose is really helping people to understand what their real intention is from an authentic place of who they are. And so coaching is a way that I can express that. And then with the coaching for businesses, there's a lot of businesses out there that either are purpose driven, so they really understand the impact they want to make in the world and what they are driving. And there's a lot of other businesses that don't and they're in business and they might be very successful. So it's not to say that they can't be successful without being purpose driven, but purpose driven. I mean, there are studies out there that show that about, I would say, 30 percent more growth in businesses that are purpose driven and very clear on what that is. So if I can help purpose driven businesses continue to expand their opportunity, but also help businesses that don't maybe know where to start with, what their purpose is or how to mold that into their message, then that's something that I help them do as well. So is it I guess is there sort of two phases? One is figure out what your purpose is. And then once you're there is, I guess, success, I guess, isn't guaranteed, even though it's apparently much more likely. Right. Let's figure out how to take your purpose and align your business so that you are pushing forward into that into that purpose, leaning into that purpose, as opposed to maybe floundering or something like that. Yes, 100 percent. So especially with entrepreneurs and if you're a sole like I have a program all for sole like S.O.L.E. So you're a sole business owner. You're looking to expand your business or even just start it. You know, maybe there is a purpose and a reason why you started it. Does that align with your purpose? And if so, great. How do we combine and align this message and make sure that everything you're doing in your business really speaks volumes to that purpose that you're trying to drive or that impact that you're trying to drive, whether it's in your community, your world or the world, I should say, really determines or really is up to you how you want to express it. But when I said before about like coaching, not necessarily being my purpose, although I think it's part of it. Once you find purpose or your impact that you want to make in the world or a community, it's about how do you want to express it? So a lot of times I tell people like, don't just look for this. Don't think that, you know, you start one way of expressing your purpose and that's how you're always going to do it. There is many different ways that you can reach different audiences that you can reach even further into your current audience with messages or mission on what it is that you're trying to develop and do. So do you see it as being like businesses do annual reviews, quarterly reviews, things like that, and sort of adjust for all of their other stuff that, you know, products and close the books for the year for accounting purposes and that. Do you also see that purpose is something that should be a part of that sort of regular review, adjust, and I guess even there's sort of their growth roadmap. Yes, I do. I believe it was Forbes did a or no, sorry, it was Salesforce that did a study in the last couple of years and they found that 79% of business leaders actually agree that purpose leads to success and gives them a competitive advantage. But only half of their employees that came out in the study, this was probably about 6,000 companies that they did a review on or so. But what came out was that half of their employees didn't really understand what their purpose was. So when you consider that a business works really hard to figure out what their impact is going to be in the world or what they're trying to drive from their business, if you're people on the ground and the customer facing individuals and the people who are, you know, managing your teams, if they don't fully understand what you're trying to drive from a bigger picture in your business, then it's very difficult to maybe hone in on those reviews of like, oh, why did something not work the way we expected it to? So I think it's really important for sure in those, you know, whether they're quarterly or annual reviews is to really discuss and make purpose if that's part of your business, right? If it's part of your business model, then how do you make sure that that is amplified and, you know, at top of mind with your leaders and pretty much throughout the organization? Now, do you see as how do you see purpose relating to particularly for purpose driven organizations, companies? How do you see that tying into mission and vision? I'll give you a really simple example. And it's actually part of an article that I'm going to release in the next while here. If you take something as simple as a company that sells pens, people are like, what's really the purpose in a pen, right? Or, okay, they're selling these pens or making money. But it could be as far as maybe their purpose is to sell the pens and use a portion of their proceeds to go towards making sure that every child in a certain community has school supplies. Or like maybe it's about helping underprivileged families make sure that their kids have school supplies. Maybe that pen company also contributes a part of their proceeds to scholarships. So to ensure that certain communities have access to scholarships. So does that help simplify? So the pen is the pen has a purpose to the customer. So there is there are different levels of purpose. So the company has a purpose. The brand can have a purpose. The product can have a purpose. And customers have purpose. So that pen delivers purpose to the customer because they need to write with something. But on the flip side, the company as a whole wants to make an impact by helping underprivileged families access to give them access to school supplies or scholarships, let's say. So that would be the bigger picture in the company purpose versus the purpose of the pen for the customer. That makes sense. It's a means to an end at that point. It's, hey, we want to do this thing. We want to supply to people who need school supplies. What's a method we can use to get it? Hey, we can sell pens and we can use that. And I guess you do see that. I feel like you're seeing it more in the last few years, maybe several years, where you will see organizations explicitly will say, hey, we take X amount of our profits or X amount of every sale. And it goes to why charity, whatever that happens to be. And there's even some sites out there that are built around that kind of stuff is tracking who gives to what kinds of charities. So if you want to like Amazon's got a big part of it, they've got a whole back end that's related to that. So if you want to give to like, I don't know, the animal shelters or environmental needs or law enforcement, just pick some general kind of thing. Is there ways to get to that so that you can not only, which is on the other side, I guess it's the shopping and investing side of being purpose driven. But definitely as an organization, you would want to be, you want to make sure that's first and foremost as well. So the people that are not only are you promoting that, but it's the people that want to promote that or help you along can then get ahold of you and contact you for it. Mm hmm. And from like, I mean, just for the sake of your audience, when you think about developers and developing, let's say a software, the software's purpose might be to make ease in the workforce for certain industries or make life more automated in a certain industry or business. And so they create this, this software that has that purpose, but there might be a bigger purpose to, you know, the industry that they're targeting. Maybe this company that's building this software or one of your entrepreneurs that are building the software has a really deep tie to some, some, I guess, I don't know, it could be. Well, sustainability or something. So they create a software that delivers something specifically for the sustainability industry. So that again is like tying in some of that purpose, whether it's their personal purpose or the purpose that they want their company to have, but their software is also delivering a purpose, which is helping automate something for these businesses. That's true. There's always that, I guess it goes back a little bit almost to the, the pin analogy there is that you can, you can have a, it's sort of micro versus macro. Yes. Purpose. You know, I can build software to, and I guess even when you think about it from a specific your purpose, if your purpose is to let's say something like we have to help farmers, then you may, maybe you write software that is its purpose is to what it does is it helps farmers, you know, raise cattle or sell, bring stuff to market. Or you may also have somewhere you have, you could sell to, I don't know, small businesses, customer relation management applications, but utilize the funds or the revenue from that to donate to, or to help farmers. So you can sort of do it on, on a couple of different levels there is as far as figuring out how do you drive, how do you do things that contribute towards that purpose that you've decided on? And sometimes it's not even taking your, your company revenue and applying it to the purpose. Like you described, yes, that's usually what most companies do is they take a percentage of their, their earnings and they put it towards something that they want to stand behind, something that aligns with their values or their philosophies. But a lot of businesses create products that already do that. So products, when you think about organic products or products that are sustainable or biodegradable that protect the earth, they, these companies may not put a, put a percentage of their proceeds towards these types of charities or nonprofits or, you know, protecting the planet because the product that they're building already does that. So there's also that different level too of like, do you want to start a business where your product is actually serving the full purpose that you envision or are you wanting to build something that you know helps a certain industry or a certain group of clients, but that product helps build proceeds to go towards the bigger vision, the bigger purpose. So there's kind of two, two sides that you can, you can look at. Yeah. Yeah. It's one of those that like many of these problems or many of the things that I guess we face is there are different approaches to, to solving it. There's different, different levels of, of effort and contribution and focus even on, on your purpose or I guess the, the steps that you see as being able to fulfill that purpose, which actually sort of goes into, one of the things you talk about is, is personal versus professional purpose. How do you, how do you see those two, I guess, comparing and contrasting or working together or maybe even in some cases, working against each other? Yeah. So a good example would be individuals who join a company because they feel that that company aligns with maybe part of their purpose, maybe their values. You know, they want to stand behind a company that's doing things that they can feel proud about talking about. But when they get into the role that they apply for or that they're occupying, they start realizing that they're maybe being burnt out. They're not feeling fully fulfilled. They don't feel they're making a big impact. So then that's really when a lot of my coaching comes into place is figuring out how do you find purpose within your role. So you talked before about, you know, this macro level and micro level. Well, that exists for the individual too. So you may join a company because on the macro level, this organization speaks to the things that you are passionate about. But on the micro level, if you're in that company and you're doing a job that is not fulfilling you and draining you more than fueling you, that's where real work starts to, or there's a need for some real work to start to be done around, okay, you join this because you felt it aligned with your purpose, but what is it that you're missing? And usually it comes down to what I state as your sole purpose. So when I coach around purpose for individuals, I look at their passions, I look at the purpose behind it, and then I look at their sole purpose. And sole purpose to me is everyone's DNA. We're all born with a soul, and we all have certain ways that we just naturally are. And it's been instilled in us from the day we were born. And it's the way that we receive and the way that we export. So what I mean by that is when you're in a job, how you receive information and how you output what you're supposed to contribute to the business can be delivered in several ways, but you do it uniquely the way that's unique to you. And so figuring out what works for you around what gives you energy when you're working, what motivates you, what makes you feel alive when you're at work, those are the things we want to start tapping into. And that's really part of that sole purpose. It's just who you naturally are. When you're in the zone, I call it the flow. When you're in flow, you're really truly living your sole purpose because things are just naturally happening for you, but in a way that's inspiring and motivating to you as well. So sometimes you get in these jobs where you start doing the work. And although you love being behind the mission of the company, the job itself is maybe taxing you for some reason. So it's about how do we figure out how to make that job work better for you, first and foremost. And if we absolutely can't, then maybe it's time to look at some new direction. Wow. There's a couple of things that I guess, first one I want to ask, question I want to ask you that is in the organizations you've dealt with, have you gone with a mix of, I guess, commercial versus nonprofits? And if you have, have you seen essentially the same struggles with purpose and staff working towards a purpose, or do you see where there's maybe a little bit of different challenge? And I'm saying that mostly because you figure usually nonprofits are they're sort of purpose first, usually they're leading with that. That's part of that nonprofit side. Yeah, I have to admit that I haven't worked with nonprofit per se. So, but I do understand what you're saying. Certainly nonprofits, like you say, they really are there to either solve something or, you know, produce opportunity for a certain cause, or heal a cause maybe, or not heal a cause, but be a cause for heal for certain things. And yes, there's certain things that people do in those nonprofits that may or may not sit well with them in terms of their role. So even, you know, whether they're private or public companies, the truth is like, how can you make an impact in your role is really what you want to consider. So whether you're working for a nonprofit or whether you're working for a private or public organization, take it down to the micro level and think, great, okay, we're, I'm working for this organization because of this cause. I believe in it. I want to stand behind it, but what's the impact that I can make in my role? And sometimes it is about figuring out first that sole, well, it is figuring out that sole purpose piece first. So how do you work? And then how do you lend those strengths to the role that you're currently in to make the impact that you want to make? So it sort of touched on a little bit. Now, how do you, when you are, you go into either an organ with an organization or individuals, or I guess even individuals within an organization, how do you, what is the approach that you take to help them find the purpose? Is there sort of a, some sort of an assessment or is it more like an interview driven approach or cause I mean, and I guess is it something that there's a little bit of a template to it or is it more individualized? How does that, how do you sort of step into that, that role? Yeah. Well, I actually have a free guide on my website if anyone wants to check it out. And it's how to create a purpose driven business. And it's, it's honestly just three steps that are kind of the most important steps for someone to really understand. And it's great for budding entrepreneurs. So anyone that's just starting out, it's, it's all around getting clear first, because if you're, if you're not clear on what purpose you want to drive through your business, then there's no point in trying to plan and work on everything else, because that purpose is what's going to drive what you need to do to target the segments that you want to target or partner with the businesses that you want to partner with. So getting really clear on that one piece is purpose and how you do that is, you know, I guess the best place to start is to just ask, why did you want to start this business? Why do you think it's important? Maybe someone says I wanted to start it because I want to help this type of client. Great. Why do you want to help them? So it's really drilling down as to get to as clear a point as we can about, okay, if you can describe to me in one sentence, what it is that your purpose driven business does, then you've got it. And now how do we build on that and build the roadblock or the roadmap, sorry, or the blueprint to start generating what it is that you want to generate or expanding and expressing that purpose to the communities you want to reach. That's good. And that's, yeah, I think that's a lot of times what we come back to. And a lot of times look at not only successful organizations, but successful teams and even individuals, it does come back to that. Why? Why are you doing it? And if you can align what you're doing with what your personal why is, you have a granular or grandiose it happens to be, then it's just going to make things just a little bit, a little bit easier at least, because then you feel like you're doing something for a reason and not just busy work or spinning your wheels or anything of that nature. Yeah, I'll give you two things I like to share. One, I say this often, which is when you think about big brands who, maybe not even big brands, but any brand really, if they've been in business for a while and they feel they've done all the right things to stay current and stay with the future, addressed all the trends, but some things are just not working and equaling what it is that they thought that they were going to receive as an outcome. They usually go back and say, oh, okay, who are we in the very beginning? Especially during recession times. I mean, this is a time when we're all hearing the word recession coming up and businesses kind of go, okay, well, we've done all these things that the world told us to do or social media told us to do, but we're not seeing the results. Who are we? Why did we start this business? Who were we when we really put this together? Or maybe they opened a new channel and it was like, what did we really want to drive when we opened that new channel? So it always goes back, they usually go back to like, okay, the foundational piece of why they started anything or why they had the vision to expand their business a certain way. So that's really important to consider. Brands do it all the time and I think, especially entrepreneurs, the lucky part about being an entrepreneur, a budding entrepreneur, I guess, is that you have the flexibility that larger organizations don't. So you're at a place where you can pivot quite easily without fully disrupting maybe what you've built to date versus a brand that has created loyalty over decades and they make a certain shift and things can really impact their business in a different way. But if you're clear on that, why did we start this business in the first place? Then that's a pretty good place to always start from again. That's a really good point. I can't count how many times I've heard that a company either, you know, they lost their way or they're going back to their first principles or you'll see sometimes they'll sell off portions of, especially a business that grows very big, they'll sell portions off and say, hey, this is really not what we wanted to do. So, and it's profitable and everything else. I said, well, let's just go spin that off because it may not be compatible with whatever their primary, you know, they had their primary purpose and these things were sort of drawing them away or, you know, not allowing them to give enough attention to their primary or sometimes they almost like compete. Anything about that, you know, obviously it gets hard if you're, you know, Philip Morris or one of these companies that owns everything, you know, they're in every area, there's places where you say, okay, if we really want to do that, then we can't have a purpose because we're going to get into areas that are going to be, you know, are essentially going to conflict, especially these days when you look at industries that are almost, you know, diametrically opposed to each other as far as what their purpose is. And so you know, sometimes you may have to shrink to grow at that point is to be able to cut some of those things out and say, Hey, this is, this is taking me away from where I really want to be. It's like, the second thing that I wanted to share was, you know, one time being in an organization and the brand was just very excited because somebody had brought up in marketing that we could get our stuff on a radio show or like, we didn't have to pay advertising for this little blurb that we could do with a radio show. And everyone was so excited because they were like, this is the best radio show in this like area of Canada or whatever. And it was like, well, wait a minute, guys, like, who is their audience? Does it actually align with who we're trying to target? Because yes, every business thinks like, well, everybody could use my product. And sure, maybe that could be true. But when you have a deeper connection with your customers, there is a reason for them to continue to stay with you and be loyal to you. And you give them a reason, or you give them a result, something that, you know, makes an impact in their life or creates a transformation in their life that is a no brainer for them to stay with you versus just everyone knowing about your brand. So I caution a lot of times, you know, organizations that are just like, well, every brand is doing this, we need to do this. And it's like, okay, well, I'm not saying no, that this isn't what you should be doing. But do you really understand why you're doing it? That's the bigger picture. Are you going to spend money on this and hope to get, you know, maybe your sales will be bumped up this month or this quarter, but then no one will buy again, because that connection is gone, and they'll find another brand that truly connects with them. So why are you really, really wanting to maybe advertise in this, this media or whatever, be really, I mean, this is why we have marketing experts, they know this stuff inside and out. But there are a lot of entrepreneurs and people starting out that get an influx of information of what they should be doing, rather than really taking the time to consider if it's really right for the target market that they really want to to reach. And we will go ahead and pause there. I'm not gonna lie, this was a difficult one to find a good stopping point, it just really flowed well. And I apologize if it's a little bit of jumping right back in where we started when we get into the next interview, or the next episode, because next episode is going to come back, we're going to continue talking with Catherine. And this will wrap it up with her, we'll do part two, wrap up her interview, and then we'll go continue on because yes, we have plenty more out there. But until then, go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Nor podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts, we are there. And remember, just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success. Hi, this is Rob from Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Nor podcast. We're excited to be on Alexa now. You can enable us by simply saying, Alexa, enable Building Better Developers. And we will be there ready for you every time you want to listen to your now favorite podcast. Whether we are your favorite podcast or not, we would love to hear from you. So please leave a review on Amazon.