“I think it’s brilliant, and it’s righteous. And it’s amazing,” said Debra Brown, Executive Director of Good Business Colorado on the most recent episode of our Table26 Podcast, after hearing our president, Adam Feuerstein, had just shared his plans for electricians to earn $243,000 a year.
“We have financial modeling and understanding of these projects to show that it’s absolutely viable. In fact, it’s not even a challenge for the people that come [a “stacked” electrical apprenticeship] and ultimately are then educated to the point where they’re monitoring and managing and analyzing the data from these power systems that we will pay those people $243,000 a year,” he said.
Good Business Colorado boasts 287 members, who, says Debra, have long believed in the power of the ‘triple bottom line’: being a good environmental steward, taking care of your employees, and being a good contributor to the community — giving back more than you’re extracting.
That aptly describes ClayDean’s approach to doing well by doing good. “With what is happening in new energy, there really is an opportunity of moving from an old, outdated model to this renewable energy sector business model where companies put their people and the planet on par with profits,” Adam said.
“Our businesses have been on the frontline of it forever, since before it was a thing,” Debra added. “I think it’s just this inherent principle that transcends party politics, that when you take care of people, people will take care of you. That’s really the bottom line.”
The Triple-Bottom Line
The “triple bottom line” was coined by sustainability consultant John Elkington in 1994, to describe a business’s commitment to social and environmental concerns, giving those facets of the business the same priority as profit.
The triple bottom line aims to measure the financial, social, and environmental performance of a company over time.
The triple bottom line consists of three elements:
- People: measures social responsibility a firm has to its employees, community, and customers
- Planet: measures environmental responsibility
- Profit: measured as a corporate P&L
Organizations like Good Business Colorado and ClayDean Electric believe that if a firm looks only at profit, ignoring people and planet, it is not fully accounting for its impact nor on the cost of doing business. Here’s how each organization is hitting its own triple-bottom-line:
People
At ClayDean, the focus on people starts with an expansive view on hiring, followed by nurturing and support to make each person succeed. To that end, ClayDean has developed a network of “community partners” who provide a range of services that help apprentices and journeymen have all the tools and opportunities they need to do their jobs well.
ClayDean thinks people should be able to live to work, not work to live. “I have had to hear about a living wage for years. I have a real problem with a living wage. It’s not a living wage. Not in my town. I suppose there are some places you can live on $17 an hour. You sure as hell can’t do it in Denver,” said Adam on the show.
In the triple bottom line business model, a company ties societal benefits a company creates for the wider community. Good Business Colorado subscribes to this approach, too, with its advocacy work around fair wages, paid family leave, and equity.
“Since the inception of [Good Business Colorado], our members have been working on access to a statewide plan. paid family and medical leave program,” she said. “A lot of our business owners desperately want to be able to provide paid family medical leave for their employees.”
Good Business Colorado has been working diligently on this year’s ballot Colorado Families First Initiative. It will create a statewide Insurance Fund designed to bring premiums down for individuals and small businesses.
Planet
Companies that care about the planet will win in the end. These organizations work to reduce their ecological footprint as much as possible — by reducing waste, investing in renewable energy, managing natural resources more efficiently, improving logistics, and such.
Adam’s newest business venture, Sonder Energy Partners, is the “planet” piece of the equation in new energy for ClayDean Electric.
Infrastructure development, economic growth, and environmental responsibility are not a zero-sum game.
“There’s a good, really solid, business-minded reason for new energy solutions to existing infrastructure,” said Adam. “One of the problems with new energy that we face is reliability. While here in Colorado, Xcel Energy provides reliable power, that is not the case in other parts of the U.S. and certainly not around the world.”
“With new energy, we are essentially decentralizing the utility, the supply of energy, to local generation, meaning per building. Somebody’s got to maintain those power systems. That’s a big deal. And that’s something that we have to step up and deliver.”
Profit
Of course, in many cases, profit is the ultimate measuring stick It’s proof that a business can do right by its people, community, and the planet … as well as its shareholders.
As Adam is often heard saying around the ClayDean office, “It’s not just about making money … it’s also about making sure that other people can change their life, they can change the world around them.”
Learn More
Listen to the Rage Against the Machine episode, with Debra Brown as our guest. If you want to learn more about Good Business Colorado, the Colorado Families First initiative or you would like to become a member of GBC, follow these links:
https://www.coloradofamiliesfirst.org/
https://goodbusinesscolorado.org/pfml283
If you’d like to hear or learn more from Sonder Energy Partners, check out the site: