Never forget the mission of the business

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Just about every time I paddle, I’m reminded that Mother Nature has a plastics problem. It also encourages me to never forget the mission of the business.

With spring in the air, I went out for a paddle a couple of days ago in my surf ski. Because it’s more stable than my other boats, I actually had a chance to look around while paddling and to enjoy the scenery rather than worrying about falling in the lake. Everywhere that I looked were wildlife protecting their new nests.

Then suddenly, I hit something on the side of the boat and then again on my rudder. My first thought was that I hit a hidden tree branch. However, upon on closer inspection I saw something black floating in the water. What was that?

I made a u-turn and found what looked like a broken mud guard for a car. It was covered in a silky brown slime that stained my boat as I picked it up and stowed in near my feet. From there, my eyes were suddenly tuned into all the other rubbish that was lying in the water.

Rather than getting in the solid workout I had planned, I decided to spend the next half hour picking up those pieces that I could reach from my boat. It didn’t take long before my foot well was full of plastic rubbish.

Collecting plastic rubbish while paddling helps me to never forget the mission of the business

This year, I’ve offered to organise the Clean-up of Lake Burley Griffin again. I did this last year for the first time, and we pulled 78+ bags of rubbish out of our local iconic lake in about 3 hours. There are some government hurdles to get through first, but I’m aiming for 30 November right now.

Someone asked me why I was still trying to organise the event when I have so much on my plate at the moment. My answer? For one, it’s always easier the second time you do something, but this is also the reason why I started my company in the first place.

While doing a local clean-up effort may only help the waterways and wildlife for a day, it’s one way to help me to never forget the mission of the business.

How to make decisions as an entrepreneur

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One of the best and yet most challenging things about starting a business is the freedom to create your own world from scratch. There are simply too many choices:

What kind of business? What should I name it? What kinds of products or services? Should I have employees? How will I fund it? Online or retail?

You can waste a lot of time trying to prioritise and make decisions even on the simplest things. So, how do you make decisions as an entrepreneur?

For example, for this company I had 260 logo designs to choose from. How would I decide which one?

Potential logo designs

Personally, the hardest decision for me so far was choosing which business to start in the first place. I’ve been writing down business ideas in my journals since 1998, and I’d already had three businesses earlier in my career.

When I decided to start The Refoundry, I had considered the circular economy industry for a while. However, it took months of intense, solid research to decide on the company and narrow it down to the products we currently have in the design for manufacturing (DFM) phase.

Now, even though I’ve already made that decision, I’m still tempted by other opportunities that come to me. The only thing that keeps me on track is the company’s mission – to help Mother Nature by making great products out of recycled product.

What about this other great idea to be made of recycled timber? NO!
How about this app that will go well with your first product line? NO!
We can make it cheaper if we use virgin plastic instead? NO!

While it might not help my decision about a logo, notice how much easier it was to make strategic decisions once I settled on the mission for the company?

So, if you ever have so much entrepreneurial freedom that you’re struggling to make big decisions, try establishing one important rule like a mission statement. You’ll see how restricting your freedom of decision will suddenly make it much easier.

Making my career change official

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While I legally started this business in April and was working on the idea before then, it was only today that I finally told most of my connections. Why did I wait so long? I guess – like other people, I was scared of failing in front of everyone.

I still am, but I rather live with failures than the regret of never trying.

I started to realise that I was missing out on opportunities by keeping my business a secret from my greater community. And I can also see other benefits in sharing my journey. For one, someone other than myself is holding me accountable now. 😉

Here’s the video that I posted earlier today about changing careers and starting this company. It will hopefully give you some insight about why I would choose to take such risks at this stage of my career.

What exactly is a social enterprise?

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According to Social Traders, an organisation in Australia that certifies these types of entities – social enterprises are:

“Businesses that trade to intentionally tackle social problems, improve communities, provide people access to employment and training, or help the environment.”

I think the OR in that definition is pretty important because I feel like the general population is confused.

When I started my company The Refoundry, I made it purpose driven specifically to help mother nature. However, when I tell people that it’s a social enterprise, many believe that means I should be also be creating jobs for disadvantaged workers, donating all profits to other causes and attending every environmental forum in town.

It’s like someone telling an organic farmer that they must give away their profits to farming charities in other countries.

The farmer’s mission is to farm organically, just like my company’s mission is to make products out of recycled plastic. That’s it. Anything else is bonus.

This one decision alone already disadvantages my business because it costs significantly more to manufacture products in Australia than in places like China – especially with recycled plastic rather than virgin materials. However, it means that the local plastics here have a place to go after their first useful life rather than into the tip or waterways. And this is exactly why I started the business.

Today, even I had to remind myself of my company’s mission as I spoke to a company that does outsourced work from the Philippines. While my manufacturing will be done in Australia as part of the social mission to use Australian recycled plastics, it doesn’t necessarily mean that my customer service team needs to reside here too.

After all, if the consumer won’t buy my products because they are way too expensive, then my business will fail,. Then, there goes all the good I could have done for the environment too.

What happens if there is a raw material shortage?

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I learned an interesting fact yesterday when I was speaking to a potential manufacturer of my plastic products. We were talking about the preferred material.

I told him how the mission of the company required the main ingredient to be recycled plastic, and that I was thinking HDPE would be the right type for Product #3. Because I need that particular product in a white colour, he said that there was only limited supplies of that kind of recycled plastic – the kind that comes from milk bottles.

The funny thing is that used milk bottles are everywhere. The only reason why there might be a local shortage of recycled plastic pellets used in the manufacturing process is because there hasn’t been enough of a demand for those companies to make it. Therefore, tonnes of milk bottles are landing in the landfills every year instead of being recycled.

This is precisely the problem that I wanted to tackle when I started this company – to create a demand for recycled plastic here in Australia. Wouldn’t it be great if my products were so popular that they had to recycle more used milk bottles to meet my needs?

Cost of moulds vs creating more waste

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Realised this morning that I can’t take the cheaper mould option for one of my products because I’ll likely create too many extra parts the customer won’t need – resulting in more waste in the process. This is obviously against the mission of the company.

Closed out Microsoft 365 ticket. Good enough for the moment. The help desk guy refunded me for accidentally adding another user. We can’t seem to fix the final issue, and I don’t have the patience to work on it any longer.

Business #4 – Why Purpose Matters

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I was chatting with my 17 year old cat-sitter yesterday. While telling her about my new business, she asked me two important questions that made me think out loud.  They were (modified for clarity):

  1. Was this new business my career going forward, or just a side hustle or temporary thing?
  2. How is this business different than the other three I’ve had before?

I’m sure others have had similar questions when they hear my story – especially if they know that I’ve never made it to five years in previous jobs and businesses.

However, I do feel that this business is very different from previous ones, and I thought it might be useful for you to know my answers in case it helps with your own dreams and future plans.

My answer to Question #1:

Yes, I do see my new business as something I can do for the rest of my career.  When I looked at other job opportunities, I realised that if I said yes, none of them would keep me interested for more than five years again (if that). Then I would be looking for another job and possibly industry again when I’ll be in my 50s and its even harder.

Because I don’t want to go through another job search any time soon, I’ve spent months trying to figure out what I really wanted to do for work.  As I’ve done so many interesting things already, I had a huge list of what I didn’t want to do – a starting point.  Then it was a matter of finding the tugs on my heart and interests, and then finding matches to a market need or opportunity.

My answer to Question #2:

The difference between this business and my previous ones is that I think my “Why” is much bigger.  Previous business were more about what I wanted – mostly wanting to be my own boss.

My new business is about trying to solve problems in two areas of my own passions regarding plastic waste and pets.  I think this makes all the difference in the world. That’s because when you are starting a business, things often don’t work out the way you plan.  And because cashflow is so tight, you can’t just throw money at a problem to make it go away.  Instead, you have to find the mental fortitude to creatively solve challenges to keep moving forward.

Now that my “Why” is beyond my own needs, I have a bigger reason to make this business successful rather than just taking another job that pays the bills.  Furthermore, I’ve burned a lot of bridges behind me by using my savings to fund this venture.  I have no choice now, but to go full throttle.