Brianna LePiane

Francesca Rinaldo (00:00.838)
Hello, hello and welcome to Marketing for What Matters. I’m your host today, Fran, and this is episode seven, I believe, of Marketing for What Matters with our guest, Brianna LePiane. Did I say that right? Okay, I’m gonna say that again just to make sure.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (00:15.877)
You got it.

Francesca Rinaldo (00:19.334)
We’re here with our guest Brianna LePiane. She is the founder of Sustainable Product Sales, a consultant firm that helps their clients and businesses build sustainable product strategies and also create long -term sustainable business growth within their business. So Brianna, thank you so much for being here today. I just wanted to kick us off by hearing a little bit more about you and your journey before you

founded a Sustainable Product Sales because reading on your website, I felt very kindred with the sentiment as a young person of feeling sort of overwhelmed by where the world is, wanting to make a change, but also not wanting to blow up the institutions that currently exist or knowing that we probably can’t. And that’s something that’s really just inspiring to me. And I’d love to hear more about.

your journey and how that mindset ultimately brought you to the work that you do now.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:19.333)
Mm hmm. Yeah. so it started back when I was serving tables. so I graduated from university. I had a degree in Latin American studies and that was a fancy way of saying I speak Spanish basically. And, I was feeling a little adrift, like just, you know, making ends meet, not really knowing where I wanted to go or what I want to do with this. And then two opportunities came across.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:36.23)
Mm -hmm. Bien.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:48.741)
my field of vision that changed things. One was that I engaged in a volunteer program through a friend of mine to translate for Indigenous youth in the province of British Columbia. They wanted to do an exchange with Guatemalan youth. And I absolutely put my hand up and I was like, heck yes, I want in on this. And it was kind of in that the Guatemalan youth were here. There was, I think 14 of them that did a visit here.

Francesca Rinaldo (02:09.414)
Mm -hmm.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (02:17.637)
touring around different regions. And that was like, I kind of got this bug in my ear that was like, I am so privileged. And I don’t want to waste my privilege on things that do not matter and don’t move the needle on things. And I don’t feel connected to, like if I can find a way to drive forward work like this or something similar, how do I do that? And there wasn’t at that time, we’re talking like, 2008, nine.

Francesca Rinaldo (02:25.666)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (02:47.237)
And sustainable business wasn’t really a thing then, but the bug was in my ear of like, okay, something needs to change within me so I can be more in alignment with the work that I want to do. And then I got a job being a national ambassador for a hotel chain here in Canada, and they had a CSR program. And at that time corporate social responsibility was a file folder on a desk. It wasn’t a job, it wasn’t a department. And they were some of the first people leading it. And I was like, kind of this like,

Francesca Rinaldo (03:10.434)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (03:16.229)
ambassador for this program and I traveled across Canada to visit different hotels and engage in different local regional programs that they had on the ground helping their local communities. And I was like, well, this is amazing. And I didn’t love being in front of a camera, which may come out through this recording. I was like, I’m a doer. Like I want to get it. Yeah, like what’s behind all of this and how is this really working?

Francesca Rinaldo (03:19.014)
Wow, wow.

Francesca Rinaldo (03:34.726)
Can’t tell so far. Yeah, you’re like, get me behind it.

Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (03:44.357)
And so those two experiences were formative in like, you know, young sort of 20 something year old Brianna mind that was like, something needs to change out here. And then I went to business school because my theory was I wanted to get into the belly of the beast. I was like, how does this work? And something in business felt really broken to me. Like what is going on out here people? And for me,

Francesca Rinaldo (03:58.438)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (04:03.142)
Yes.

Yeah. Are you demons?

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (04:08.901)
Yeah, well, and they’re not like they’re not. It’s just largely unchecked greed, which is like coming from a place of like need and suffering. You know what I mean? It was like, like there’s a lot of healing to do. But also if I can convince people to spend a few more dollars here rather than there, knowing what going here will do for those people involved. Let me try that. And so from there, that’s when I got into compostable packaging. After that, that’s when I got into, you know, working with Fairware and looking at.

Francesca Rinaldo (04:19.814)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (04:38.149)
supply chain and ethical sourcing and reusable materials. You know what I mean? It just started cascading in about four or five year chunks of time. And so that’s why I’ve been in it for a minute. It’s taken me 10 years to kind of get here as an active participant in this, maybe longer, but it was like, it didn’t exist, right? The ladder hadn’t been built for me to climb. So it was like, okay, I guess I gotta build it, was kind of the vibe.

Francesca Rinaldo (04:54.374)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (05:02.214)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. Okay, so, so when like, you, you’re recognizing this need, right? You’re recognizing this sort of ignorance of information, or just lack of desire or whatever.

When was the moment that you realized, okay, the best way for me to step into this conversation is to be a leader in this conversation and start sustainable product sales and actually be able to be sort of driving the change and decision makers that businesses are making?

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (05:40.485)
I don’t know if I have yet. So I’ll be totally honest. Like, I think there’s a like, I’m in that stage where I know with context, I’m like, geez, I just thought a lot of what I know was kind of out there already or people were aware. And the more I have conversations with folks, because, you know, the echo chamber that I’m in is quite sustainability focused. I’m always learning. I’m always like coming up against the edge of my knowledge base. And so,

Francesca Rinaldo (06:04.71)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (06:09.829)
I like, you know, I’m in that mode and I’m sure there’s a lot of folks out there that feel that way of like, I still need to know more to be a leader in. Right. And that, like, if you’re a business coach out there, you want to coach me through this. Hello to you. Like, help me out. Cause like, like it’s a thing, right? So I think I’m always learning, but I do think when I started to just talk to more, okay. So COVID, right. So COVID shut down a lot of what was happening.

Francesca Rinaldo (06:15.75)
Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (06:22.374)
Yeah, right. Making a call out.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (06:38.021)
in conventional business. And that’s when I think a lot of us had a bit of a like a wake up moment of like, what am I doing? And I recalibrated at that time, I was an account manager at Fairware . And it kind of became clear to me that I needed to do more like urgently. Like, I need to do more than sell organic cotton tote bags. Like immediately, I need to have as many people as I can start talking about this, start building this, getting out there, creating good sales strategies. Like at the end of the day, I’m a salesperson. Like that’s what I’m

Francesca Rinaldo (06:53.574)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (06:58.214)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (07:07.813)
cut for. So like I help them with the sales part, which is also people hate hate sales. So it’s a delight for me to work with them on like, you don’t hate sales, you just have bad experiences or negative connotations about what this means. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be in business and have a product that you want to sell. You are in sales, right? So that’s when I started to put the pieces together of like sales and sustainable products and the gap between them. And a lot of people that do really good work in sustainability.

Francesca Rinaldo (07:20.71)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (07:25.03)
Right, right, right.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (07:36.325)
are like environmentalists and scientists, not salespeople, right? Nor should they be. So like pairing up with those people and being like, okay, I’m here to learn from you and help you like get this to market and grow your market share. And now I’m kind of pivoting away from the startup culture and the community there and going with folks that are established in small business to be like, you’re here, you’re a necessary part of the economy, you wanna make change, you know, like let’s talk about it, let’s figure something out.

Francesca Rinaldo (07:38.822)
Yeah. Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (08:04.102)
Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, that reminds me, I think it’s on your LinkedIn, but it says like bridge builder or something. And I feel like the work that you’re talking about really like speaks to that, that you’re, you’re creating these crucial connections that just don’t exist yet because people don’t know that they’re even a possibility. But, you know, on that note, I want to ask you, because I do, you know, I know we’ve talked about this in our initial conversation too, but I,

just what you were speaking to, how often people have this negative reaction towards sales or this negative sentiment about it, that it’s just about making money and sucking resources out of people and competing with people. But obviously, that’s not the whole story, right? And those are just maybe the worst people or like, of course, there’s bad examples in every…

in every group set. But I’m just I’m curious about like that journey of sort of reconciliation, because from talking to you, you know, it sounds like you were quite an altruistic young person, as was I. And I feel like we probably share similar sentiments. And so, yeah, like how how have you reconciled that beast of like, this is just where we are. And this is what

make society turn and how do you communicate that to people or get them to kind of reconcile with it as well and still feel like they’re being authentic in their brand?

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (09:29.189)
Mm. Yeah, I love this stuff. Like my overall vision is like, I want to create solutions that are so good and so integrated. You’re part of it, whether you are consenting to it or not. Like that’s where I’m headed, right? That’s where I’m headed. And so I, that helps me a lot because I don’t care if people don’t have time to talk about sustainability. There’s a million things I can talk about that are more like product focused or benefit focused. Like they’ll help you make you money. Like whatever. Like,

Francesca Rinaldo (09:41.766)
Yes, right, yeah. Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (09:58.981)
I can use that sustainability angle or not. And the trouble seems to be people get really lost in the weeds with it. And so the beautiful tension is how do you make it accessible, true and honest, super deep and thorough, but not bombard people with it. So that’s a sustainability in sales kind of thing. But then the sales on its own, Fran, it’s like.

Francesca Rinaldo (10:18.406)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (10:25.957)
It’s like a healing, okay? Like it’s like a healing because sales has no barrier to entry as a job, right? No barrier to entry. And it does tend to attract people that are financially motivated. Let me be super clear. There is nothing wrong with being financially motivated. It does not make you bad. It does not make you greedy. There’s no negative thing inherent in being financially motivated.

Francesca Rinaldo (10:36.454)
Yeah. Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (10:53.222)
Yes.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (10:55.333)
Right? Just because you can speak numbers and you’re driven by them and you want to like do right by your family or like whatever the thing is. Like it gets evil when you want to take things from other people to feed yourself with it. Like if you’re not generating, if you’re not generative in it and you are actively like taking from other in a way that’s malicious or isn’t clear or whatever, that’s when we run into hot water. So the trick with these folks is to clean that up until just like help them redefine what sales means for them and.

Francesca Rinaldo (11:07.494)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (11:24.198)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (11:24.709)
create a sustainable sales practice. So like, if you are an introvert, bless your heart. Like, I get it. I got you. Like, don’t worry. Like, there’s still a way for you to be an entrepreneur, sell your product or service, and then not feel like completely like blown out on your bandwidth for the day. It’s about like, you know, then you got to pair up with some really clever marketing folks that can help bring.

people in and then you can start to feel warmed up to the conversation by seeing those connections being like, wow, this person really gets what I’m trying to do. I’m excited to speak with them. Your sales meetings might be like two or three half hour chunks instead of like an hour long presentation of you talking 100 % of the time, which is like a sales faux pas. Don’t be that sales guy. Like you want to ask questions, leave it open, create a dialogue, right? And then do restorative practice. Like don’t…

book yourself back to back to back all day. If you’re an introvert, like chill, breathe it out, like reconnect, sit with a book for five minutes. You know what I mean? Like if you’re doing it well, you shouldn’t have to like push your push on the accelerator so intensely that you’re just like completely like just slammed because what that does is it actually you lose the energy behind your own project. Right. And so,

Francesca Rinaldo (12:20.166)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (12:40.357)
that means that you have a pricing issue, which I would be delighted to help you with. Right? Cause if you’re not pricing so that you’re working 20 hours a day and like you have no time to like sleep or eat or no money, it’s like, okay, we got to back this up and look at the business model. So that is like a benefit of getting like me as a sales consultant, also with this like business brand that’s like, whoa, is this working? Actually, let’s take a look. And there’s so much bad pricing out there. Like I can’t even tell you, like if you are…

Francesca Rinaldo (12:44.294)
She’s like, she’s like what?

Francesca Rinaldo (12:54.278)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (13:07.909)
someone who is doing direct to consumer sales and you have a website and you’re selling, I don’t know, handmade soap or whatever. Like you want to go four times your cogs minimum and include your labor because you need to leave some margin in there for distributors to make some money too. So don’t start with 20 % and think that you’re good. Like it’s comebacks to the pricing and the like entire orientation of your business. So that was a very long -winded way to say, I love being like a little bit of the like dark horse in the sales community. You know, it thrills me.

Francesca Rinaldo (13:23.686)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (13:34.15)
Yeah, yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (13:37.573)
It thrills me.

Francesca Rinaldo (13:37.798)
Yeah. And I so appreciate that sentiment of like meeting people where they’re at, because I think that is often missing just in our broader sustainability conversations. You know, it’s always about like, telling people why what they’re doing is wrong, and why they shouldn’t be doing it, rather than being like, okay, where are you as a human being right now? What’s straining you? What resources do you have? You know, what headspace do you even have? And how can we still make change in that space? And

I don’t know. Yeah, like I just love that because I feel like that speaks to the way that we can actually change and progress as human beings. Right. And I so appreciate like the holistic perspective you have about like, where are you as a person right now? Like, you know, regardless of your business, regardless of the world, like, are you good? Are you stable? Are you caring for yourself so that you can even be making these decisions and work effectively? But…

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (14:34.373)
Yeah. Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (14:35.846)
you know, to, to, I know, I definitely want to talk about definitions with you. And while we were talking, I mean, like, I, I know, I love, no, I love that stuff. Because I think it’s so, it’s so important. And even me as an uninformed consumer have seen the way that these buzzwords get thrown around, you know, like, I saw you mentioning zero waste. And I’m like, I always was like, is zero waste real?

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (14:43.237)
You saw my list, eh? Sorry.

Francesca Rinaldo (15:02.342)
I you know, is it real? Can it be real? I’d love for it to be real. But anyway, first, I’d love to just ask you like, what what does sustainability mean to you? Because I think often when we hear that, we think of environmental things or, you know, using resources properly. But I feel like what you’re speaking to when you talk about your sustainability strategy is like sustaining your like health and mindset and your

holistic being and like sustaining of sort of these like human traits of ourselves. And I think about that a lot about like, what does it mean to sustain humans in the sustainability conversation? And like, yes, we want to.

you know, save the world, but like, what about the people who, you know, is, I guess I like think of something, it’s like, let’s get rid of all, I don’t know, like, landfills or something, you know, but it’s like, now there’s communities of people who live next to those landfills and like,

are those people being considered in these decisions? Is it just being slapped up as like a universal good? But I know that was a really long answer to that. But yeah, I just would love to hear like, what does sustainability mean to you in a global way, in a broad way?

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (16:19.141)
Yeah, so I think it’s really important, clear and succinct. And I love the way that you frame the question of like to you and in your view. And I will answer that. I just think it’s important for your listeners to know there is a definition. And I am really tired of people like not participating things because it’s hard to define. Like get over it, start something. Do you know what I mean? Like I’ve had it with like the red herring of like, no, it’s hard to like talk about. Like I don’t care. Like.

Francesca Rinaldo (16:33.798)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (16:38.502)
Yeah. Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (16:46.918)
Yeah, just try, just try. Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (16:47.365)
Go get it, like go learn, just try, right? So sustainability means taking this action, I can do this action forever without compromising the future generation’s ability to take the same action. Okay, like that’s like just what it is. Like it’s not, and lots of people use this definition and that’s not just me, it’s like all over all kinds of things you can, you know, whatever, find some resources for that, but that’s what it is. In my practice,

Francesca Rinaldo (17:03.526)
Mm -hmm.

Francesca Rinaldo (17:10.374)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (17:16.869)
and I kind of think of like my consulting as a practice, if you will, you are included in that future generation. And there will be times where you have to pedal to the metal and you’ve got to do 18 hours a day. And you got it. You know, I mean, if you’re an entrepreneur, you know, I’m talking about, like, there are those times now, it depends on how you’re cut. Usually an entrepreneur. And I’ve been struggling with this myself. Like I have to like literally put down in my agenda and in my journals and like on sticky notes, like.

Francesca Rinaldo (17:24.614)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (17:45.509)
This is your time to rest, honey. Like, this, right? Because if you don’t have, if you’re like, if you are okay for a minute and you don’t have like a bunch of stuff lined up, to like breathe it in and use that time for visioning, thinking, staring into blank space, meditating, whatever, swimming, like, I don’t care. Like just do whatever it is you got to do to integrate some rest into your personal practice with entrepreneurship.

Francesca Rinaldo (17:48.166)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (18:13.573)
Sustaining also means like grounding, like what grounds you in your work and being sure that everything that you’re doing comes back to that touchstone. Because one of the biggest challenges with entrepreneurs is that they’re like, everything is a shiny object. We’re going this way and that way. Like there’s so much change we want to do. There’s so much stuff we want to do. But the problem is that it was like the fastest recipe for burnout is like doing a million things at once and not finishing a single thing and not being grounded in your intention and your purpose. And.

Francesca Rinaldo (18:37.51)
See you then.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (18:42.149)
This is the biggest catch that I have to figure out for myself, Fran was like, okay, what am I naturally gifted at? What am I good at? And it’s okay that things can be easy sometimes. Not everything’s going to be easy, but like it is okay to do the lightest lift and call it a day. I had a rule for myself for about a year where my task list was like prioritized.

Francesca Rinaldo (18:56.806)
Mm -hmm.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (19:10.341)
in such a way that if I only did one thing, that it would be the most important thing. And so each day I would feel like something was moving forward because part of what I was hitting a wall with was just like the overwhelm of so many things to do, right? And when you’re a solopreneur, that’s like, you’re the one doing it all. And like, is it with, right? Or like, is it your natural skillset? Like you, I appreciate you taking a look at my website, but holy sh –

Francesca Rinaldo (19:24.518)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (19:29.318)
Yeah, no one did ask for advice.

Francesca Rinaldo (19:35.494)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (19:40.293)
like that. Not a marketer, not a marketer. No, that’s you. I’m sales, right? So it’s like, even the technology stuff, it’s like so many great tools out there. I love my tools. I love integrating systems and making it all work and flow. But like, I often have help for that because like, there’s people that are just better at it. So like, rest, natural skill set, staying within intention, like revisiting that.

Francesca Rinaldo (19:42.118)
That was scary. That was hard to do.

Francesca Rinaldo (20:00.358)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (20:06.565)
is all part of like, so this is sustaining you, so you can keep doing your business, your sustainable product business, your social impact business, whatever it is. So I think that’s really, it’s really important. And it also helps you show up in sales conversations better. Because if you’re like, if you’re rested and you’re good, you can hold space for others. And there are so many sales I’ve closed in my life on the basis of like, just simply hearing people about.

Francesca Rinaldo (20:28.262)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (20:34.277)
their problems and where they’re at and really listening for the change that they want and then going away and doing the work and then I present that to them of like, I really heard you when you said this and they like just off the top of them feeling heard of like, I really needed a win with my boss. Thank you so much for this. And I’m like, dude, like put your name on it. I don’t even care. Like take it. It’s yours. Right? Like that. Then you’re giving away stuff that, and you don’t feel like you’re fighting over your resources or you know what I mean? It’s just like a different approach.

Francesca Rinaldo (20:53.478)
Yeah. Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (21:00.518)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. And I mean, just talking to you, I feel like you’re, you’re such a humanist. And it always is, you know, sort of like it makes me feel like reverent for humanity in a way when I feel like I see these through lines of like, the people who are making the most change and are most successful and, or at least most speak to what I think matters.

are people who, regardless of what industry they’re in, have a deep curiosity to understand people and to understand what motivates and drives them and why they are doing the things that they do. And it’s just so interesting how that piece of your humanity, ultimately, like you’re saying, makes you just be able to be a much more effective leader to people. And I don’t know. Yeah, I’m just like, that’s amazing. I love it.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (21:51.493)
Sales can be fun.

Francesca Rinaldo (21:53.83)
Yeah, right. so I wanna I really want to keep talking about about definitions. But I also want to move on to actually some of like the specific work that you do. I think we, you know, have already talked about it in sort of a broader scope. But I’d love to just hear more about, like, what is your process when you first are setting up with a new client? I know you have like a very specific step based.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (22:05.669)
Mm.

Francesca Rinaldo (22:21.83)
process that you follow, but like you’re meeting someone for the first time, like what’s going through your head and what are you thinking and what questions are you trying to answer?

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (22:30.181)
Yeah, so that’s, thank you for that question. I do have a four step process, that came about sort of organically after I had been through it a few times. And then I was just trying to create some framework around, this is where like sales folks, you know, like we need a system. If you meet really naturally gifted salespeople, they are great at building connections and terrible at reporting. You’re not going to get.

Francesca Rinaldo (22:50.566)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (22:58.662)
Hahaha.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (22:59.845)
both, which is why you need a system or a good sales manager, preferably both, to help those naturally gifted people corral their efforts and like have tasks so that they don’t have to remember everything. You know what I mean? So it’s like, this is my own exercise with me of trying to figure out what makes this work. Off the top, I’m listening for why people do what they do. And a lot of that good training, like,

Francesca Rinaldo (23:04.614)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (23:24.389)
Yes, it comes out a lot in startup communities when they’re pitching about their story or their journey I think that’s true for small business as well And I think bigger businesses are now realizing like the whole purpose -led Movement in bigger business is about that. It’s like revisiting your why In my four -step process starting with the first step there is an internal and an external to everything right? So internally as your business stuff is going on

Externally, you’re communicating something, right? So I think that’s important to delineate because people kind of think it’s all about the external. And if you do that, your operations will fall apart. And I’m big on operations. We haven’t actually talked about that very much yet, but I am partnered with a few people that are operations experts because I’m deeply passionate that it has to work well and that you need to have a healthy, like healthy operations to have healthy sales. Like those things go hand in hand. Right. So.

Francesca Rinaldo (24:12.518)
Mm -hmm.

Francesca Rinaldo (24:19.142)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (24:20.901)
the starting with the why and then what we do then is we start to get client centric. And this is where a lot of like the sort of more scientific minded people really struggle. and you know, it’s, it’s a little bit like, well, they should just know and it solves a problem and like, they kind of assume that they’ve built something awesome that solves something it should sell itself. And it’s like, well, client centricity is kind of rooted in like, I like.

Fran, if I’m trying to sell you something, like I am asking for your time. I’m asking for the privilege of information about how you work. And I’m requesting that you trust me with your problems in the first place before we’ve even started talking about product, right? And so it’s an honoring of like, I am actually taking a resource of yours, which is your time and your trust. And to just like sit with that and be like,

Francesca Rinaldo (24:54.534)
Mm -hmm.

for real.

Francesca Rinaldo (25:07.27)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (25:14.47)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (25:17.701)
Listen, would you be okay with somebody just like barging in through your door and just started like yammering off why their product is amazing? Like probably not. Right. So just think with the empathy that is natural in that about how you want to approach these folks and who are these folks. And that’s kind of baked into the why and leading into client centricity is like, who are they? How do they think? You know, and like, that’s a, in a consumer way, I’m more business to business, which is like,

Francesca Rinaldo (25:24.998)
Yeah, yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (25:46.597)
How does this business work? Where are they feeling friction? Where are their budgets tight? Where are their problems? What are they struggling with? Who are the right buyers? What is their budget? What might that look like? And that really high up in the funnel is just looking at how big a company is, where they are, and what they sell. It’s what you can filter for. That’s pretty much it. And then as you go down the funnel, then you start to add layers of, OK, they have a impact report.

Francesca Rinaldo (25:48.646)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (26:05.318)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (26:13.541)
Okay, they have a partnership with a nonprofit. Okay, we’re starting to get signals here. There’s value alignment. So once that starts happening, that helps you with client centricity because the job is put yourself aside, put yourself aside and start thinking like, how can I help these folks really? And then from there it’s do the work. So now that we’re like in this dialogue with folks, who else is like that? How do we create a framework for doing outreach to the tune of like,

Francesca Rinaldo (26:30.182)
Mm -hmm.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (26:43.109)
whatever, 50, 100 leads a week. Like, how are we doing this? Like, where are we? Are those the right people in the room? How are we tracking this? What are the systems behind this that are getting this organized? What does our follow -up look like? You know, and like making sure that you know, like, hey, if I’m doing 100 this week, well, you have to do follow -up. Everything falls apart in follow -up, right? So that means…

Francesca Rinaldo (27:03.782)
Yeah. Yes, my gosh, yes.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (27:06.533)
You’re doing a hundred next week and all of the follow -ups. So like, are you prepared and do you have it calendarized? Like all that stuff about doing the work, internal and external, right? Like, and then following up and making sure you deliver super well is like obviously part of the thing. Staying on track is the last step. So like those tools and those people that can hold your feet to the fire of like, you said you’re going to do a hundred this week. How did it go? Right. And like, what did you learn?

Francesca Rinaldo (27:09.574)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (27:21.542)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (27:32.038)
Mm -hmm.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (27:34.405)
And what does the follow -up look like? What are the marketing and sales assets that are ready to go that speak to this person’s problem? What is the next step? And like, from there, you can start to refine and be like, okay, well, of the hundred people, like, you know, 20 of them I have meetings with, but only two of them are vaguely interested. Like, well, okay, well, who are they? Who do they work for? What is their role? Like, what is the entry points? And then you refine. And that’s like more of a new product sort of layout, but it works.

Francesca Rinaldo (27:42.374)
Mm -hmm.

Francesca Rinaldo (27:55.686)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (28:03.845)
just as well for established products as well. Like just like it’s just a bit of tweaking about those internal and externals and like staying organized is really kind of the biggest the biggest thing.

Francesca Rinaldo (28:13.446)
Yeah, yeah. my gosh. I mean, you talking about the follow up, we’re currently working on some scripts right now for some some follow up that we’re doing with the client. And it’s just like, how are we going to manage this? I don’t know. Maybe we need to talk to you. Seriously. But I’m curious, though, you know, to bring us back to definitions, because I’m obsessed with them as you are. How you know, we’ve talked a lot about how, like,

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (28:30.469)
I’m sorry.

Francesca Rinaldo (28:41.926)
their definitions are very important and they’re often used in these sort of like, you know, catchy, like not meaningless way. Like it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. And I’m curious though how that changes in like the B2B landscape versus direct to consumer. Like do you find that consumers are more…

I guess naive or like people can get away with more or less naive or you know, like, is it, do the words matter more in B2B? I’m just, I’m curious because I imagine that in B2B marketing, you wouldn’t necessarily be like, you know, like a commercial of someone stepping into a cool lake and being like, you know, the sort of like ethos imagery that we often do the consumer.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (29:30.053)
I’m sorry. Yeah, the like palm with the like plant coming out of it with the dirt like yeah, yeah, I know. I know what you’re talking about. Okay, so let me let me reframe a little bit. The most when you become super like intelligent about what you’re doing and you are wise about it, you can be succinct and clear.

Francesca Rinaldo (29:36.582)
Yes!

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (29:46.79)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (29:59.59)
Mm -hmm.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (29:59.781)
If you’re throwing jargon at everybody, that’s like, for me, I’m like, whoa, you have so much to learn about coming into clarity about your knowledge, about what you’re doing. So just because you were succinct and speaking at a grade three level doesn’t make you stupid. In fact, it’s honoring all the work you’ve done to get there. Right. And if you can’t explain what you do to your mother, we got a problem, you know? So like,

Francesca Rinaldo (30:04.742)
immediate.

Francesca Rinaldo (30:15.654)
and

Francesca Rinaldo (30:24.902)
Yeah, yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (30:26.853)
And I, I practice this. I literally, my aunt was over a couple months ago and I was like, she’s like, what do you do? And I was like, I’m glad you asked. And I was like, I help businesses with sustainable products, sell them. You know what I mean? Like, just like really get it clear and then save that passion, save that insight for the next opportunity to dive in deeper with someone, save it for content.

Francesca Rinaldo (30:33.598)
Yeah, perfect timing!

Francesca Rinaldo (30:43.91)
Sustainably. Yeah, yes.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (30:55.365)
Save it for everything you want to keyword on your website, throw it in blogs. I get as complicated as you want in the deeper dive. Right? So like coming out clear and succinct actually honors the intelligence of all the work that you’ve done. Okay. So like, I don’t like, and the other thing I want to say, especially about consumers, people are not stupid. Okay. Like they’re not, I like, they might be hurt. They might be lost. They might be confused. They might be angry, but we are living in the information age. People, they are not stupid.

Francesca Rinaldo (30:58.118)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (31:15.878)
Mm -hmm.

Francesca Rinaldo (31:24.614)
Yeah, you’re right. You’re so right.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (31:24.997)
treat consumers or your buyers as if they’re stupid, because it just will make something emotional happen in that space. And that’s a you problem. I’m bringing that in. So like cool your jets about speaking down to people and just remember like you are bringing people on an educational journey when you’re selling a sustainable product. Okay. Like that’s like why I do what I do.

Francesca Rinaldo (31:30.63)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (31:48.549)
Like these are not conventional products. These are going against the grain. They’re making a change. They’re doing something different and it requires a bit of education to really get it. Right. And so I think there’s that. I also think emotional intelligence is massive in this space and needs to be discussed more. I don’t really know. Like, yeah, just like holding that and just remembering that people make emotional decisions typically. Like they do. Right. So just remembering that. Yeah, exactly.

Francesca Rinaldo (31:48.55)
Mm -hmm.

Francesca Rinaldo (32:11.494)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Always, almost exclusively, I think.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (32:18.053)
Exactly. So I think, a direct to consumer business is like, bless your hearts. Like that is hard. Okay. That is hard. Like I look for a couple of key buyers that I really get on with and that get what I’m trying to do. And like, that’s my community. And you know what I mean? So it’s like, to just say that on mass at its scale is like, it’s, it’s really difficult. There are some jargon, like this industry, like the sustainability industry, if you can call it that, which I don’t like.

Francesca Rinaldo (32:36.006)
Mm -hmm.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (32:47.557)
It kind of is, but it’s also kind of not like sustainability is more like a framework that can be applied to just about any industry or business. Right. But I affiliate with the sustainability industry because we’re a bunch of nerds out here trying to solve problems and we typically get together and talk about it. So there is a community of us. If you want to call it an industry or not, it’s up to you. but like the deep nerds out here, like we’re trying to figure out how to speak to people in a way that like communicates It’s a complex problem.

Francesca Rinaldo (33:00.814)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (33:16.101)
These are complex issues and everybody wants a silver bullet or a simple solution to complex issues. I’m telling you, it’s not going to happen. It’s not going to happen. We need everyone firing on all cylinders for every solution they want to approach all at the same time. And your solution and your problem that you’re trying to approach is no bigger or better or different or deserves more than somebody else’s. Like we need to think more collaboratively about this and a little less competitively about this. Right? So like open it up.

Francesca Rinaldo (33:23.11)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (33:38.118)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (33:42.597)
in whatever you’re doing. So like say your piece, but then also like pause, listen and ask for like what other people are doing because it will make you better at what you do. If you know upstream, if I’m upstream, my God, jargon. You’re like, what about the jargon? I’m like, here’s a bunch of jargon. But like, you know, if, well like there’s like these issues around like, you know, the material supply, right?

Francesca Rinaldo (34:00.038)
Dream for us. No, I’m kidding. You don’t have to do that.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (34:09.157)
People are on that supply chain. The supply chain is a reference to a bunch of materials and logistics, but mostly people that are bringing you products to your door. So if I know that upstream, my recycled polyester or RPET for short is coming from someplace I don’t know where, and I don’t have any transparency about those people being treated well, well now I’m engaged with social issues, not just material issues. So like,

Francesca Rinaldo (34:15.11)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (34:34.469)
What I’m trying to get at is the jargon is trying to articulate complexities and complexities are inherent in what we’re trying to solve. And yet get into some coaching, get into those feedback conversations about like, how do I make this succinct and how do I make sure I’m clear? And how do I stay open and listening for what I’m not accounting for? And like even the stuff about how do I choose a framework or certification or whatever, like,

with experts on that. Don’t try to figure it out or you’ll waste a lifetime of all this jargon that we’ve created a sea of jargon to match a sea of problems. So just cut through it a little bit with some experts, talk to people, and just try to, you know what I mean, just keep your head above water a little bit. If you feel, you know that feeling where you’re like, I’m becoming overwhelmed.

Francesca Rinaldo (35:22.534)
Yes, yes, yes, totally. You’re like, wait. Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (35:26.789)
Yeah, that’s when to pause and like, just kind of come back home to like, what am I trying to solve here? And is there somebody who can help me navigate this?

Francesca Rinaldo (35:35.75)
Yeah, yeah, I just you know, I just want to say I love that point you made. I mean, everything you just said, there’s so many things I want to address. But I love the point you made about that like simple is not bad. And I feel like, yeah, people want things to be flashy or catchy or new or but it’s like, sometimes we need to just even know what we’re talking about at all. And like, that’s where

Simple comes in and you’re right. Like so many of these conversations have just become so convoluted and it’s like like I’m like what does sustainability mean? I know now, you know, but I I would didn’t know that definition surprisingly I feel like I’ve read tried to read definitions of sustainability, but But yeah, I mean that just that really speaks to me of of just like we’re over complicating things and that’s why people are losing the message not because they don’t care or they don’t want to know but because they don’t even know what you’re saying

but so on that point, I’m curious if you could speak to, you know, like, I think you were saying, seeing like seeing a lot of jargon, right, that to you is maybe a red flag or something that you’re like, Hmm, why are they doing that? what else is is maybe a red flag or something that you see often happening in the industry that you’re like, that’s not sustainable, or that’s a lie, you know, or, you know, things, things like that.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (36:27.365)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (36:57.381)
let me start with what is good. So just, let’s just start there and then I’ll work my way backwards. Just say what the damn thing is. Yeah. Like just say what it is and what it does. Like we don’t need to dress it up with like, like natural. It’s like craft paper color doesn’t fool anybody anymore. Okay. Like I have seen like lottery detergents that are in craft looking containers, but it’s just plastic on the inside. I’m like, what, what are you?

Francesca Rinaldo (37:01.126)
Yeah, that’s great. Yeah, start with what’s good.

Francesca Rinaldo (37:14.246)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (37:18.47)
Yeah. Yes.

Francesca Rinaldo (37:26.79)
Yeah, yeah, literally.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (37:27.493)
Right? So it’s like, I mean, sure, like do the thing if you’re going to do the thing, but it’s like, it’s not really like just say what it is and do that well. And like, I don’t mean like in the sustainability mindset. I mean, if you’re making like a biodegradable detergent, just make sure it works super well. Like it cleans the thing. Right. And focus on that and bake in sustainability into your values, into the corporate values of what you’re doing.

Francesca Rinaldo (37:43.91)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (37:53.029)
Don’t lead with it. I would recommend not leading with it because you’re going to lose buyers right off the top. You’re not going to be able to charge more, even though there’s a bunch of research out there that says you will. That’s just what people say. Okay. Like in my opinion, maybe we can find some research to back this up. I don’t know, but like in my opinion, when it comes down to transaction time, they may not do what they said they were going to do anyway. So make it work really, really well. Don’t like, yeah, just like say what it is, do it well. And then,

Francesca Rinaldo (38:16.262)
Mm -hmm.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (38:23.109)
these like, I guess these like, red flags are like, yeah, like just terminology that doesn’t have, any data behind it or certification behind it. So like 100 % natural, like that means it came from the planet. You know what else came from the planet? Everything. Right? Like, I know what you’re trying to say, but, and I don’t, I don’t like have a lot of.

Francesca Rinaldo (38:42.342)
Yeah. Yeah, literally.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (38:52.933)
As much as I joke about it, I don’t have a lot of like anger or frustration. There’s tons of people out there that are like fuming about all this and they, I want them, my gosh, like can those people come at me so that we can have like a forum for those folks so like we have like a little community of whistleblowers that are just taking care of all this. Cause like, I don’t have the energy, but a lot of people do. But like, I would say like, well, bless. But that’s like, we need that energy to call out stuff like that where there is no.

Francesca Rinaldo (39:10.47)
Yeah, talk to the organic farmers.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (39:21.989)
like data, there’s no certification. And I would also like pay attention to like, what is the biggest lever? Like, let me give you an example. Plastics, just conventional plastics love a life cycle analysis. A life cycle analysis or LCA for short is an effort, an academic effort to measure like the actual life cycle of what a product is, where it came from, how much energy it took to make, where it goes, like all this.

stuff involved with the product. So there’s these LCAs out there that aren’t standardized yet, I don’t think, but we’ll have to check that. But like they’re out there, but plastics love an LCA because they kill at making really good, efficient use of energy. So their carbon footprint is low, but the everlasting -ness of plastic is not being evaluated in that to the degree that it needs to in order to make buyers aware.

Francesca Rinaldo (39:48.71)
Mm -hmm.

Francesca Rinaldo (39:55.558)
to add for how much.

Francesca Rinaldo (40:07.75)
Mm -hmm.

Francesca Rinaldo (40:11.774)
Wow.

Francesca Rinaldo (40:18.118)
I see.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (40:18.277)
this is an issue. So like plastics industry loves an LCA. Super efficient.

Francesca Rinaldo (40:22.438)
So is that just pre -production analysis then? Like it’s not including like, this is how this is gonna impact the environment for 10 years or anything like that.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (40:33.413)
well, part of it is we still didn’t even know the end of plastics cause there isn’t one, but I, from what I’ve seen and I’ve only seen a couple really in depth was like, it just kind of stopped at the end of it gets into users hands. That’s not to say all LCA’s are built like that. And some of them do try to account for the end of life, but still the energy required to recycle plastic will still like, you know what I mean? It just like kind of it feeds its own tail.

Francesca Rinaldo (40:36.742)
Yeah, exactly right. It’s conjecture. It’s still conjecture, either way.

Francesca Rinaldo (40:50.246)
Mm.

Francesca Rinaldo (41:00.998)
Yeah, they’re still using it to signal that it’s a sustainable product or something or that it

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (41:06.069)
Well, exactly. So if we are not paying attention to the biggest impact, both negative and positive about things, we can lose sight of what’s actually important here. And so that makes this whole conundrum of these products like impossible to standardize, period. And so we need to stop looking for a way where we can just have like a five star review on Yelp for this product and just be like, okay, get it. Cause it’s five stars. It’s like, this is complex, right? And to…

Francesca Rinaldo (41:33.83)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (41:34.949)
understand what the biggest issues are with those ubiquitous products around us is one of the first things that we’re doing. And it’s existing now, right? Like this is why we’re talking about carbon footprinting. Like this is one of the biggest issues we have to deal with. And we are getting somewhere with how we think about that, how we standardize that, you know, scope three emissions are becoming a thing, which is like very exciting and very game changing for a lot of businesses. So it’s like, we just, yeah, so.

Francesca Rinaldo (42:00.166)
Can you tell us what that is?

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (42:04.741)
something that I’m probably will footnote with there are better experts than I to speak to this scope. The scope one and two has to do with like your operations and like basically things like your employees coming to work. Like that’s like scope one and two carbon emissions are like what, you know, like what you’re doing in house and like, you know, what’s just outside of that scope and scope three is essentially like what happens outside, like.

Francesca Rinaldo (42:10.79)
Of course.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (42:34.149)
when your products are sold outside of your supply chain. And so like, this is why, yeah. So like, look up what’s going on in California, friend. And like, for the sake of this podcast, like, I probably won’t go on too much about it, but Scope 3 Emissions, basically, if you’re a billion dollar company in California, you have to start accounting for your Scope 3 Emissions, which means what are your suppliers doing? What are your suppliers doing that are making the products come to you and get to you?

Francesca Rinaldo (42:37.734)
Like they’re in the world.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (43:04.101)
Right? So this is starting to shift the needle for what needs to be accounted for, which is terrific. And the responsibility, which is desperately needed. Having said that, big, big companies and like, I wouldn’t, don’t put this in the podcast because I don’t want Amazon to do anything mean to me, but like.

Francesca Rinaldo (43:11.334)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (43:26.438)
off the record.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (43:27.781)
But like Amazon is a great example because they’re just putting the work of figuring out scope three emissions onto all of their suppliers. They’re not going to do much of that. They’re just going to be like, you have to figure it out and then you tell us. But the point is everybody’s scope one and two is somebody else’s scope three. You see? So if we start taking it in -house for like what our scope one is, what our scope two is, then we can start reporting to our people that buy our products what their scope three is. Does that make sense?

Francesca Rinaldo (43:54.438)
Yes, no, no, totally, totally. It does. And it’s, it’s crazy, though, because like me, you know, as a consumer, I would just think, and I see those reports, of course, all that stuff would be included, right? Like, you would implicitly assume that if they’re telling you this is how the sausage is made, it includes slaughtering the pig, too, you know, but it’s, yeah, and, and I mean, of course, they who will not be named are passing off that, that

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (44:05.221)
Hmm.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (44:15.461)
No.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (44:20.645)
Yes.

Francesca Rinaldo (44:23.462)
burden onto their suppliers so that I mean and that you know like I’m curious if you can just speak to that because that’s something that really frustrates me because I studied environmental science in school and I did economics as well and we learned a lot about like carbon offset taxes and you know like

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (44:26.661)
Yes.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (44:36.901)
Hmm.

Francesca Rinaldo (44:44.71)
things like that. And my teacher was very, he very much believed in the American economy, which I’m still dubious about at times. But he was like, you know, this system is amazing. It’s gonna help save the world. People just need to adopt it. They just need to companies need to be able to track their

know, purchase and and whatever release their carbon and anyway, to me, it just all sounded like it just all seemed like a bunch of like, signaling like I’m like, okay, this company emits x amount over they purchase a credit so that they don’t get in trouble, but they still emitted it. It’s like, it’s not like the the harm wasn’t done. It’s just bureaucratically, it wasn’t done. And I feel like I see that a lot with these sort of sustainability initiatives, where like the end goal is more about an ability to make like,

like, yeah, like a bureaucratic assurance as opposed to like, actually about what the problem is, you know, and that’s why I just, I, you know, I don’t know, and maybe, maybe that’s misguided or miss, I’m overstating the perception, you know.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (45:50.381)
a fabulous organization called Blockchain for Climate change, blockchain for climate action. I can’t, sorry, I can’t remember the name. We’ll have to edit that and make it correct. But that, this organization is part of like, is part of a systems change that is needed to get more nuanced. I think what’s missing here is nuanced and,

Francesca Rinaldo (46:03.59)
I was there. Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (46:19.653)
transparency and accountability, right? And so there are, so big companies can often afford to have their carbon footprint measured, right? Smaller companies cannot, but smaller companies are what feed big companies along their supply chain. They’re often suppliers to big companies, right? And so I am starting to see, and I have to dig this up and send this to you independently and after this, but I saw this fabulous recording where some of these folks were talking about,

Francesca Rinaldo (46:28.934)
Mm -hmm.

Francesca Rinaldo (46:37.157)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (46:48.741)
They are a big company. They recognize the barrier for smaller companies to measure. And they’re actually sponsoring like a consultant to come out and do that measurement for these smaller companies. That is taking responsibility. That is where I’m at. Like, that’s what I want to see. And so I think for me, it’s easy to say because of like what I pay attention to, what I’m reading, what I’m looking at about like making kind of a good story of this because I am seeing.

better practices show up amidst the chaos. And right now I feel like the mainstream is just getting used to what the chaos is, but there is more nuance emerging about how we’re gonna do this. We now agree that we’re gonna do this is now like how we’re gonna do this. And so some of these larger companies, and I’m hearing this and I don’t know if it’s lip service yet or not because it can be, but some of these large organizations are like,

Yeah, we want to know how to do things better. Like, you know, like the runaround is seemingly up. Like in some respects with some major organizations, the runaround is drying up and starting to come home to because regulation change is coming, we do need to understand where carbon emissions are. And that means we need this data. And if we can’t get this data, there’s only so long we can take giving the runaround and not being able to get this data. At some point, they’re going to have to.

Francesca Rinaldo (47:44.23)
Yeah. Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (48:09.51)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (48:11.525)
foot the bill to get the data or whatever. So I think I understand what you’re saying about carbon offsets, but I also think like.

Being careful about how we channel our efforts, our energy, and our anger is important. And I just don’t know if it’s that useful of a channeling of our energy and our efforts and our anger because, you know, if they bought a tree off of Nicaragua so they could emit in China, it’s like, well, you know, like, sure, shut it down, but like, don’t go blue in the face about it. Like, they don’t know what they’re doing either. Like, sorry, maybe that’s not a thing to say.

Francesca Rinaldo (48:30.246)
Mm -hmm.

Francesca Rinaldo (48:47.078)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (48:52.645)
But like, I think we’re all, let me rephrase that. We’re all learning and growing. It’s a journey. That’s better. Right?

Francesca Rinaldo (48:52.87)
No!

Francesca Rinaldo (48:57.638)
Yes, yes, yes. Yes, no, but that’s that that’s I mean, I appreciate that. That’s true. That’s important to remember. Like, yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (49:08.325)
And if you know a better way, if you know a better way, tell them, right? What’s the worst that can happen? They ignore you. They’re already ignoring you. They don’t know how you feel, right? Best case, they employ you for a position. So you tell them how they can be better. And I want more of that energy to come up in our business community, right? Where it’s like, yeah, like kick and scream and shout or whatever, but do it in a way that’s like direct, right? So like enough with the indirect, just like shame and blame game where we’re dragging people through social media mud to just like…

Francesca Rinaldo (49:11.302)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Francesca Rinaldo (49:16.134)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (49:32.166)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (49:34.213)
whatever click bait. I don’t know. Like, I don’t know why people do it. To be honest with you, it’s like, doesn’t actually do much, but what is more productive is to have direct conversations. Like find a few people in that organization and say, Hey, look, I’m noticing. I do not see any responsibility for all that you’re emitting I, I want to evolve your business because let me, let me take the biggest example that I can think of here, but like energy, energy organizations, okay. Like oil and gas and like coal, like

Francesca Rinaldo (49:39.75)
Cause they’re sad.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (50:04.453)
These folks are used to, they’re in energy. They gotta make energy, okay? Like they must evolve because fossil fuels are limited straight up. So if you’re in energy, it behooves you to find a new way to make energy that you can actually sustain. It’s just business people, like do the business, figure out the business. So like, if that is like, if you’re just like, no, we’re going to just run this into the ground. It’s like, okay, well it’s still going to end.

Francesca Rinaldo (50:14.47)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (50:34.565)
You know what I mean? So it’s like, I can’t wait for these like transitions to happen where we have like new generations coming up and taking leadership and management roles where it’s just like, you better believe these folks are not interested in doing things the way that they’ve been done before for better or for worse. Cause we’re seeing a little bit of an underbelly and backlash to stuff, which is like kind of expected and unfortunate. But like the point is if we know a better way to do it, direct conversations, provide solutions, become a consultant, come at them.

Francesca Rinaldo (50:49.862)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (51:03.589)
Just like come at them. Be like, I want to help. Like this is not going well. I can see, you know, I can see you still emitting like a ton. And like, I really would like it if we were part of the solution here and collaborated on a degrowth strategy, which, degrowth. Let me, people really have a hard time with this. Degrowth is going to happen whether we like it or not. Okay. Like that’s what a recession is. It’s like, we’re not growing endlessly. Like it’s just not logical for the planet or for even in the economy. So it’s like,

Francesca Rinaldo (51:26.502)
huh, yes.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (51:33.125)
A degrowth strategy is like, how else can we engage with our customers in a way that is more sustainable and we can still build trust, sell products. They just aren’t this like, you know, crazy growth for days thing. It’s like, what else can we be doing as more creative that nourishes our business and maybe the planet. So degrowth will start to become a thing. Circular economy, I’m sure you’ve heard of.

Francesca Rinaldo (51:53.126)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (51:57.797)
is a thing now and will continue to be a thing. Circular economy, by the way, is the continuum of where we started with Zero Waste. So all the same academics, all the same people, same businesses, because I was there like 10 years ago in the room when we’re like, Zero Waste, it didn’t catch on. And now it’s called circular economy, right? So the Ella MacArthur Foundation kind of, right?

Francesca Rinaldo (52:08.998)
Yeah.

Yay.

Okay, okay, that makes sense. I think zero is too hard of a number to me. Zero, that’s really hard.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (52:20.165)
Well, it’s and we just keep need to keep this is it. This is the thing about being kind of in this community is like you kind of try something and it throws a bunch of stuff out there and it doesn’t land and you’re like, okay, back to the drawing board, like the same concepts, similar concepts, but like new wording, more clear, more like, you know what I mean? So it’s like, I think that that is a fun one to name is just like that that waste community and what they’ve been through.

Francesca Rinaldo (52:35.334)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (52:48.102)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (52:48.933)
to get to where they are is like kind of a cool thing. I think it’s something to watch.

Francesca Rinaldo (52:53.894)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I feel like really just talking with you is making me realize that I want to follow these people who are in this conversation more because I think there is a lot more happening that…

you know, your average consumer obviously is not going to be attuned to and it’s easy to sort of, I think, I mean, I just I so appreciate just how optimistic and action oriented you are, because I do feel like sometimes I get caught up in the doom and gloom and I’m just like, I’m mad at these people and they stink, you know, and it’s like, but we can still work within that space and we’re no better than those people if we’re just

crying about how much they suck, right? Give me one second, I need to close the door. My damn dogs have been driving me crazy. I hope you haven’t heard them. But okay, good, great. But anyway, I want to keep talking about these broader topics with you, but I know we don’t have too much time. So I do want to give you a chance to sort of speak to our audience and maybe speak to any…

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (53:38.469)
Sure.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (53:46.117)
No, not though.

Francesca Rinaldo (54:02.598)
small businesses or just companies in general that are maybe curious about sustainability, maybe a little bit scared about it, but wanting to, you know, wanting to foray or wanting to maybe put some action and intention behind it. Like where, where would you tell them to start or what do you think is the best action or first step to take?

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (54:23.525)
Yeah, I love that. So my approach is to look at the most money you spend and the most money you make. So if it’s a particular skew or service that makes you a lot of like, you know, the 80 -20 rule kind of thing, or like something that’s like, okay, most of our revenue comes from this activity. Take a look at that activity and consider how it goes out the door, the packaging, the logistics, what people do with it when they get it.

really sit with that, like watch how that happens. Like if you can do something in packaging that’s like, maybe it’s not composable packaging, but it’s multi -use. Like I think whole bunches of packaging is missed opportunity really, not just for messaging, but like, can you turn your packaging into like a phone stand or something like that that keeps people using everything about your product, keep it in their hands, keep it in their lives longer. And when they’re done with it, what do they do with it? And then you are the person in the business that goes,

I’m going to take responsibility for that too and say, this is what we’re recommending. You know, this is how to gift it forward. We have a take back program. We have a lending library, you know, it’s curbside recyclable, like, you know, whatever the thing is. but like really sit with the downstream of who your customer is. And then once you’ve done all of that and been like, gosh, this is too much. Relax. Hang on. There’s more. Then you look upstream. I’m like, how did this get to you? Who’s involved with that? Do you know them?

Do you know them by name? Like if your supply chain just dried up tomorrow, cause like a, you know, whatever, something happened, you’re like, there’s a disaster on the coast of blotty blot. And now the shipping container didn’t leave. Would you have any recourse whatsoever? Would you just like, I’m out of business. Like, like what is happening up there? And that’s when you start to get excited about like what emissions are involved in your scope three too. It’s like, what’s happening? How did it get to you? What is it made of? Who was involved? And how can you as a business take responsibility for all of that?

And I think North Americans in particular, the onus is on us. We are sucking up way more resources than we need than anybody else. That’s just like what’s happening. So like, and we are business led and we’re very corporate and capitalist. And so it’s up to business to start looking at taking responsibility there. So look up and downstream at your biggest sellers and what you spend the most money on to kind of follow the money a little bit and then kind of decide and like,

Francesca Rinaldo (56:27.974)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (56:46.213)
Take it to your team, engage your team. Sustainability is one of those things that’s gonna keep employees with you longer. It’s like one of those weird advantages that you didn’t know was gonna happen. But if you start opening it up with your team, creating like, I don’t know, just at least a dialogue, if not a subcommittee about like, what are we gonna do about this? Bring other ideas to the table.

And then engage with partnerships and experts. Like don’t try to figure this out on your own. Like if you are someone who makes soap, you make soap. You’re not a sustainability expert. Like go talk to folks that are in the field that are trying to do some stuff and like just really open it up and you don’t have to market it by the way. Like you could do a lot of sustainability stuff underneath the hood of the car that is your company or whatever you want to phrase that. Maybe if that’s a bad metaphor, but like keep it in house of like what you’re doing with sustainability.

Francesca Rinaldo (57:15.302)
Yes, yes.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (57:36.773)
and really kind of work it out. And then don’t even have your marketers engage with it yet. Until you’re ready, until you’re comfortable, and then treat it like a science, you’re gonna get criticized, which is hilarious to me because conventional businesses don’t get criticized for most of the stuff they do. The minute you say you’re sustainable, you get a lot of criticism. Treat it like a science, take that criticism, and start to decide, okay, is this gonna help us? Can we work with that? Is this just a bunch of mumbo jumbo garbage that doesn’t have anything to do with us and somebody’s just angry?

then you start to really work with it. And it is harder. Like social impact and sustainable impact businesses, it’s harder to do it, right? So like conventional businesses, like I hear you, okay, like good for you. Can you do it with one hand tied behind your back? Cause that’s what we’re dealing with out here. Like that’s what it is. So, you know, I think that’s kind of the biggest tip I have is like following the money. And yeah, and partnering and partnering, you know, don’t go it alone.

Francesca Rinaldo (58:22.758)
Yes.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (58:34.149)
Don’t go it alone. And this community will take care of you. We’re all really generous with our time and our thoughts and our expertise, probably to a fault. So get involved.

Francesca Rinaldo (58:50.054)
Yeah, I love that. Let me, something’s going on with my dogs. I need to go check on them really quick, but I will be right back. I am so sorry, but thank you. That was amazing. And when I come back, I just want to follow up on what you just said there. So sit tight.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (58:59.653)
That’s okay, go on.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (59:04.485)
Sure. Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (59:50.278)
I’m so sorry, my dog had gotten her paw stuck in a hanging leash and was screaming her head off. I’m happy you couldn’t hear that, but anyway. So she’s okay, she’s a vocal girl. She’s part Jack Russell. But, so, you know, sorry, are you ready? Are you ready to jump back in? I know I just gave you a pause. Okay, great, okay, great. So.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:00:00.421)
Poor thing.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:00:12.645)
Yes, go ahead. Yeah, yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:00:17.318)
You know, I really appreciate what you’re talking about with collaboration and knowing like your strengths. I feel like, you know, you’ve said that as a big through line and that really resonates with me as well. And, you know, talking about collaboration and I guess I’m curious about, you know, do you have people that you’ve collaborated with that you would recommend or like where would they, you know, you say, talk to a scientist, like where would you recommend someone find these people or maybe their consultants who

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:00:46.245)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:00:47.272)
are willing to engage in this collaborative work as well.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:00:51.044)
Yeah, I mean, I think there’s so many folks that are, and it’s interesting because very few people call themselves experts in something, right? And I think that’s kind of like a bit of a challenge in our industry is like, because there’s so much to know and it’s always changing. We’re all kind of a little bit hesitant to be like, I’m an expert in something, but like just folks that are like being active in your industry.

that have a sustainability angle, like that’s a good place to start. I work with somebody who is, his name is Noah Labinaz and he runs a consulting firm called Common Better. And he is bringing together academics and business to have more dialogue and build better bridges. I think, you know, I worked with him on a couple of projects, he’s fabulous. So Common Better and myself, like we’re, you know, connectors in that way.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:01:47.462)
Hmm.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:01:48.101)
And then looking into like, like if you’re doing impact tracking or measurement, Catherine Griffin at Impactable X is doing fabulous work and she’s working really hard to make her product like really accessible. So she has this software that’s, you know, she can work with all kinds of businesses doing impact tracking. She’s fabulous. I’m going to have all this up on my website soon, like all the partners that I’ve engaged with over time.

But yeah, I would just start interviewing folks like in in kind of your backyard and then from there like find a nonprofit that really resonates for you. Like if you I’m using some companies and as an example, I don’t know why it’s on my mind so much. But so like as an example, like if you have if you’re working with like a knot, if you’re doing soap stuff, like there’s even people like down here locally in Vancouver that do like soap making with like

Francesca Rinaldo (01:02:21.382)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:02:44.581)
you know, people on the downtown East side who have barriers to conventional employment. And it’s like, partner with them. You know what I mean? Like give them your soap ends, like get to know them. Like if you can do nothing on the product side, but you’re, you’re a service business, get social with it. Like go partner with somebody that’s doing great work that is related to what you do. And then just like, hang out with them, talk to them about what they’re up to. Like talk to the executive director.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:02:49.626)
Yeah, yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:03:11.045)
There’s so, so, so much like grocery stores and food people. Like there’s this organization called Food Stash. They’re a fabulous charity. I was on the board for years. And now we have like a whole community of food rescue organizations that work together in Vancouver. And like that model should be in every city. Like we should not have food waste. Like half of our food that we make is wasted. What? And the…

Francesca Rinaldo (01:03:27.366)
Yes.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:03:31.206)
Yeah, I think it’s more I think it’s like 60 % or something insane. I used to work in in food insecurity as well. So I know it was I mean, going to those grocery stores to get the pickups was I mean, it’s it’s just it’s it’s so it’s it’s I can’t even

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:03:35.301)
my gosh, right?

Mmm, so you know. Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:03:48.133)
It’s so disheartening. It’s crazy. Yeah. Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:03:53.03)
I mean, I’m at a walk towards it’s sobering. It’s shocking. And I think I was like, everybody needs to go and like work at a grocery store for a day and see what, you know, what’s happening with that supply chain and where those yeah, sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you but.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:04:04.645)
what it’s all about. I agree. Yeah. Yeah, no, but that like in your industry, there’s going to be somebody picking up garbage in your industry. There’s somebody picking up waste and trying to sell it and trying to be social with it. And they have a hard time making ends meet. And they are, you know what I mean? Like they have like two employees or something like in every single industry, there’s a bunch of nonprofits that are solving real problems. Social impact is real. Like

Francesca Rinaldo (01:04:13.958)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:04:22.246)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:04:29.158)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:04:31.685)
social impact investing by the way is real. Like there’s a whole movement happening about how to better fund nonprofits and charities so they can be players in our economy, not just the picker uppers of our problems. So like get involved socially and environmentally with those kinds of impact charities that really resonate with your mission. And then just take it from there. Like there’s no, there’s no like, like.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:04:40.966)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:04:58.789)
structured thing of like, you have to do this to be a sustainable business. It depends on your business and it depends on what’s available to you and where your natural inclinations are, who’s in your community and like, yeah, just get curious, I guess.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:05:12.454)
Yes. I love that. Get curious. well, my gosh, I mean, I know we have to wrap up, but it has been it has really been such an amazing conversation conversation with you Brianna, I really feel super inspired. And I mean, your energy for this work and your passion are truly infectious. Like I feel that passion. And it’s really, I don’t know, it’s just given me a lot to think about about where I’m putting my time and energy because yeah, I want to

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:05:40.837)
you

Francesca Rinaldo (01:05:42.438)
want to bitch, but I also want to make change. You know, and sometimes it’s easier to do the former than the latter. And and yeah, I mean, I think that’s where we often do get lost when we forget our power as individuals and as a collective. so there was one other thing I just I wanted to ask you, you know, I feel like you’ve you’ve spoken to this somewhat, but about about

sustainability really having, businesses having a holistic approach to it, not doing it because they want to be able to advertise it or because they want kudos or something, but because it is truly a value and tenant that they have in their business. And I’m just wondering if you could…

speak to what I guess just what your advice is to to people in general young people all around who are wanting to get involved in the sustainability conversation or you know wanting to figure out where they can make the best impact. I feel like you’ve you know spoken a lot about that about knowing your your skills and knowing where to make your best impact and I’m curious if you have any advice about how to how to go about that exactly.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:06:56.389)
thank you for that question. I’ve been hearing this more and more and it kind of breaks my heart. Like there’s a bunch of folks out there, young folks that are really talented and passionate that feel like getting involved on a work level has barriers. And so if you’re feeling that way, like there are a number of places you can go to open that up. Work on Climate or WOCL is a website and a Slack channel that’s all about.

finding technical people work on climate issues. And they’re like, I don’t know, 20 ,000 people in there. Like it’s not small. In BC, we have like another Slack channel that’s run by this fabulous organization called Scale Collaborative. And we’re like, you know, it’s a collective of people that are sustainability professionals. We wanna post events there. We wanna help people get involved. We wanna hire people from there. You know what I mean? Like there’s…

There’s a couple of slack groups that I think are great if you want to work in this space. And it’s, I think on like where to put your time and energy. Just find your clear passion, like your niche. Like if you are someone who’s like, where are the butterflies? And you’re really into butterflies, be, as Queen Bey would say, like be about it, like be about it.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:08:15.206)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:08:22.213)
about it and just like be proud and loud about it. And then like letting that energy be what restores you because anger, like listen, there’s a time and place where anger. What I’ve learned about anger is like for me personally, I need to like burn off or expel the physicality of it. And then I can get into the clarity that anger is trying to deliver. Work with the physicality first.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:08:23.046)
Yes.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:08:46.886)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:08:49.605)
because then you can come in strong rather than hot. It’s different. Because if you come in hot, you burn people, right? If you come in strong, they’ll listen and they’ll be like, wow, there’s passion here, right? So there’s a difference. And anger can be really easily misdirected, including to yourself. Be careful about how you talk to yourself. Be kind to yourself, be compassionate for what you’re feeling and all that pain about what’s going on. Like this hurts, man. This hurts. I get it.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:08:54.63)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:09:06.886)
Mm -hmm.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:09:15.846)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:09:19.749)
come at it from a place of like, and I am here. I am here and I have something that I have to offer. Let me, let me be intentional about what that is. And let me share my passion with people who get it, who can help be a sounding board so I can feel refilled and restored rather than just like yelling at people in one direction. It’s just like, find your community with it. Get help, get in community, get passionate. It’s okay to be angry.

And like, you know what, like I’m a millennial, right? Like I’m, I’m very much a millennial and it’s like, I, I, I’m doing the best. I get it. And like, if we haven’t like turn this ship, like, I think this is like a huge vessel. You can’t just like crank it one way and be like, everything’s changing. It’s like, you have to turn the vessel. And if we haven’t turned the vessel enough by the time I’m like, whatever 50 and coming into those years of like, that’s when like upper, upper management stuff will happen. Like,

Francesca Rinaldo (01:09:55.718)
Mm -hmm.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:10:06.982)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:10:18.374)
Wow.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:10:18.661)
If we haven’t figured that out by then, I will burn it down with you. You know what I mean? Like this is not, it does not deserve to survive then. And companies fail all the time. Industries, entire industries will die overnight. It happens all the time. We need to stop protecting those industries that refuse to change. Okay. Like, and I’m with that. I am with that. I also like to work in the belly of the beast and at scale. So like I’m dealing with materials by the like, whatever, thousands of pounds and tons and whatever. It’s like, that’s where I…

Francesca Rinaldo (01:10:21.35)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:10:32.806)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:10:42.438)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:10:48.389)
can affect change, so I’m going to absolutely try. I don’t really care that much about like some one -off company that’s like managed to like upcycle a t -shirt one time. It’s like, that’s cute. And there’s marketing value to that, but like, can you do it at scale? That’s where impact lives, right? So anyway, all that to say, passion and anger are like, it’s two sides of the coin. Just like don’t live in anger so much because it’s too much, man. Like channel it.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:10:57.238)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:11:02.182)
Yes.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:11:10.47)
Yes.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:11:17.126)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:11:17.957)
Channel it, get clear with it. It’s okay to be angry, it’s okay to be upset. You know, just find your peers, find those people that fill your cup. And if you don’t have one, get at me. I’m here for you.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:11:28.198)
Yeah. yeah. I mean, I really, I’m really just I know I already said it, but I’m just struck by by what a humanist you are and how I feel like it’s so it’s just so reassuring to hear someone like you in these, you know, in these spaces that I like, you know, like you just said, thinking about what how do we maintain the operations to move 10 ,000 pounds of product or whatever?

but how do we also treat people like human beings while we’re doing that? And how do we also understand and listen to people and are compassionate as well? And I feel like it’s so, it’s just affirming to see someone doing both of those things, you know, because yeah, we can’t throw industry away. We’re not gonna go and live in huts and we’re not gonna stop like.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:11:59.045)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:12:18.534)
driving our cars and we’re not you know, I mean, as much as I wish we could, sometimes I do idolize like an agrarian economy and living much simpler more simply. But anyway, we can’t, we have to work with an industry too. And it’s just it feels good to know that people are doing that and care about that and care about humanity and not in a way that’s shaming people. And yeah, I’m enough of the shame. We’ve had too much shame.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:12:21.733)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:12:35.717)
Yeah, they are.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:12:44.101)
It’s not doing anything, you guys.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:12:45.19)
It’s not doing anything. It’s making us hate ourselves. It’s terrible. Yeah, well, I know I’ve taken a good amount of your time. But again, I mean, I really just cannot say thank you enough. This has been such an enjoyable conversation. I want to talk to you for three hours. And I want to ask you to define every word, every, you know, buzzword that exists. But I know we do have to go. So truly, my last question, I just want to know if there was anything that you wanted to share.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:12:50.757)
Totally.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:13:06.477)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:13:14.277)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:13:15.206)
or any last piece of information or advice or just something off the heart that you wanted to say before you finished, before we wrap.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:13:22.149)
Yeah, thank you. I will shamelessly plug some projects that I’m working on. Right? So there’s three ways that I work right now. And if you are starting something or you have a product that you want to figure out how to activate that, I create plans with folks like that in that position. And it helps you ramp up into being a really great like,

Francesca Rinaldo (01:13:30.726)
Yes!

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:13:51.877)
founder led sales person or getting to a point where you can hire a sales person. So like there’s ways that I help startups. That’s like, I make the plans and I, and I can help with the structure. and then there’s also, I work in a sales agency and that is a bit like just we’re dealing with volume. And so you have to have a lot of established sales to kind of get into that agency level with me, but like, like first step is to kind of like,

Francesca Rinaldo (01:13:56.934)
Mm -hmm.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:14:19.589)
get you off the ground. And that’s stuff I do one -on -one consulting. The agency is a different model, but we are looking for those sustainable brands that are in the BC market, that want to grow in the BC market. So if that’s you, come talk to me. We’re looking to set up for 2025 with bringing on a new sustainable brand into the agency. And then, sorry, Matt, my business partner. And then third is one of the clients I’m working with is called Plastics for Change.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:14:42.63)
I’m going to go.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:14:49.349)
or Fabrics for Change, there’s two names to describe the same organization. They make t -shirts out of recycled plastic and they have the most transparency I’ve ever seen behind their recycled plastic and they create beautiful social infrastructure in India where a lot of plastic waste is happening and create value for plastic waste by creating material and now they have products like t -shirts and other merchandise. So if you’re a company who uses merchandise,

please come to me. I would love for these products to get in people’s hands. They’re the number one seller of Arpet in India and they’re not here in North America yet. So be the first, like be the first. They’re fabulous. They do things with brands like you can track the impact. They also do packaging. So like they work with Garnier, Body Shop, those kinds of companies, but you can actually track on the bottle level what social impact your purchase is happening from the plastic, which is like…

Francesca Rinaldo (01:15:48.262)
Wow.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:15:48.901)
bananas. So Plastics for Change. I want to plug them because they’re lovely and they’re my guys. So yeah, if you need merchandise, come to me. If you need a sales strategy, come to me. If you’re a sustainable product company that wants to do more sales in BC, yeah, also want to hear from you.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:16:05.958)
I love that. And I also really appreciate it, you know, just to mention, I saw on your website, how you have accessibility options for people who might not be able to maybe are, you know, like you said, a startup, maybe a little bit low on cash right now. And so I really appreciate that. I think that’s such a great thing that you’ve offered up some or shown people ways that they can still access your services in a way that is comfortable and feasible for them. So.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:16:32.069)
It actually will help you with investment. So if you’re looking for investment and you have a sales strategy in your pitch deck, like I can help you build that so then you can get there, right? Then you can get there. So yeah, I mean, I love it. I love a good startup, but it’s, that’s where I do structure, but I like, there’s not quite enough there for me to really get in there and be a doer, but I am happy to help with some structure and set up and systems with it.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:16:46.502)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:16:54.662)
Yeah, yeah. Amazing. Well, thank you again. I’d love to do our little tree planting segment if you’re up for it before we head off. So as you guys know, we are partnering with One Tree Planted and for every guest that we have on our podcast, we’re going to sponsor them to plant a tree in a location of their choice. So Brianna, do you want to share with us what tree you’ve decided to?

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:17:02.981)
Yeah!

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:17:07.141)
Sure.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:17:24.07)
to choose.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:17:26.981)
Yeah, so I love that you all are doing this. Thank you for my tree. What a gift. And I’m really big on Latin America as a place where reforestation is super powerful in part because I used to work with an organization called Taking Root. It’s a Canadian organization that does tree planting in Nicaragua. But what I learned is I really want to trust the experts on this. So I want…

folks to like, the folks that are in that region to make the decision about where this tree needs to go. That’s the now thing that needs to happen. So I’m going to leave it open and just simply pick the region if that’s possible.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:18:08.454)
Yes, I think no, I think that that’s that’s perfect. And I feel like it’s very in line with your on let me stop this screen sharing. I don’t think I did that right. But I feel like it’s that is so in line with your entire ethos, which is like, let me find the person who knows best and let them make the decision because I don’t know best about everything.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:18:18.309)
I’m gonna go.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:18:32.358)
But I mean, that’s, you know, we forget to do that. We forget to seek help and we forget that to collaborate and.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:18:38.597)
Yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:18:38.854)
pleasure. I know I’ve said that a million times, but I’ve really I’ve just so enjoyed talking to you have so enjoyed your spirit and your intelligence and your, you know, just the information that you’ve had you’ve had. I mean, you you are just this dearth of information. And and I love I love people like that. I love being able to draw, you know, you remind me I’m like, I need to find the experts and talk to them.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:19:04.613)
Yeah, yeah. Well, you’re really engaging and I really appreciate being here. I thank you so much for this platform. Like I know I said, I’m like a little bit behind the scenes and what have you, but it does feel really nice to share more broadly information that I can. And yeah, I’m also on the journey. So, you know, it’s humbling to hear words come out of my mouth and then I’m like, okay, like, hopefully that’s still the case. Like,

Francesca Rinaldo (01:19:14.534)
I’m going to go to bed.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:19:28.806)
Yeah, yeah.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:19:33.606)
Yeah.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:19:33.765)
So yeah, thank you for the opportunity. Really, really thank you.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:19:37.798)
of course, of course, we so appreciate you. So I guess this is goodbye.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:19:46.981)
Take care.

Francesca Rinaldo (01:19:47.526)
wait. Let me let me fix that. Let’s say bye, but then I want to talk to you after really quick. So we’ll say bye just for the video. Well, thank you so much again. You take care of Brianna and we will talk soon. Bye bye.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:19:51.445)
Yeah, sure. Okay.

Brianna (Sustainable Product Sales) (01:19:59.461)
Thanks Fran! Take care, bye bye!