Keartland & Co’s B Corp™ journey
From when I first set up the business in 2021, I’ve had a clear ambition and vision for the long-term impact I want Keartland & Co to have. And I’ve developed a strategy for how to deliver that impact. Having this long-term vision and strategy means I’ve had an eye on the impact I want the business to have right from the start. It’s been embedded from the very beginning. It’s being integrated into the work I do with clients as well as the governance and operational processes of the business.
Taking this approach and working in line with this vision over the last two years resulted in Keartland & Co becoming a certified B Corporation® on 25th August 2023, an achievement I’m incredibly proud of. In this blog, I’ll give you some insight into the journey over the last two years.
Preparing for B Corp™
I’d been familiar with B Corp since it first came to the UK. At the time I was working within the charity sector, exploring how the sector could respond to being disrupted by the growing number of businesses publicly stating their commitment to ‘doing good’.
When I set up Keartland & Co in August 2021, I knew that the vision and principles of B Corp were similar to mine. So it made sense to start getting to know the movement better. I went along to several webinars where people spoke about what it was like to work in a B Corp and their journey to certification. I started building relationships with people leading B Corps and following them on LinkedIn so I could learn from them.
I also looked at published B Impact Assessments for certified businesses to start familiarising myself with the assessment questions (e.g. you can find a link to innocent’s on their page in the B Corp Directory).
Starting the B Impact Assessment
It was August 2022 when I actually sat down to fill in the B Impact Asssessment for Keartland & Co. I put aside a whole day and worked through the assessment. I filled it in to reflect both the current position of the business and things which could be put in place or documented relatively easily. Wherever I’d need to do something to achieve the answer I’d ticked, I wrote this down in a spreadsheet – this was the beginning of my Better Business Action Plan.
My initial score came in just shy of the magic 80 businesses have to achieve to certify. But I was struggling to see what I could do to get it higher, especially with no employees and so no access to points from the workers section of the report.
It turned out that I hadn’t reflected Keartland & Co’s impact business model in the assessment; and being a service-based business with no employees, this would be crucial to Keartland & Co achieving B Corp certification. Once that was in there, I was comfortably over 80 points and it was time to start implementing the Better Business Action plan.
I was ready to submit my assessment on 21st December 2022 – a momentous milestone and one I was proud to achieve before shutting down my laptop for Christmas.
Better Business Action Plan
I still had quite a bit of documentation I needed to pull together at that point but I’d been warned that I’d be sitting in ‘the queue’ for several months and so I had time to get everything ready. When I came back to work in January 2023, I was strict with myself about putting aside a time block of two hours every week to chip away at the outstanding actions on my Better Business Action Plan.
Verification
The next significant moment when I heard from B Lab was when I entered the Verification Queue – time to prepare for the Verification stage. I was asked to pull together and upload various bits of documentation. And I was assigned a Verification Analyst who would work with me through this part of the process.
After a few more checks from B Lab, I was asked to set up my review call. 26th June was the big day!
When it came to it, the call was definitely shorter and less like an interview than I’d been expecting. I was asked to talk about Keartland & Co, what the business does, who it works with and the impact it hopes to have. Why had I applied for B Corp certification and how would it benefit the business? Then we talked through several elements of the assessment. The call took about 30 mins and I remember feeling a bit dazed afterwards. I’d been told that they didn’t see any issues and that the business would likely be certified in about 5 weeks.
More waiting! I put a bottle of bubbly (Noughty) in the fridge ready.
Certification
In the end that bottle of bubbly stayed in the fridge for two months. After a month or so of waiting, there was some more back-and-forth on my impact business model. And then it all happened very quickly – everything was ticked off, I was sent a contract to sign and then after 12 months of working and waiting I received this email:
“We are thrilled to share that Keartland & Co Limited is now a Certified B Corporation!”
25th August 2023. I was on holiday at the time and it all felt a bit surreal. It’s still sinking in if I’m honest.
I’m thrilled to be part of this global community of businesses who are working collectively to deliver economic systems change.
What have I learnt?
Certification definitely gives a business more credibility – Keartland & Co has only been certified for a month and already that is clear.
I was meeting a lot of the elements that contributed towards Keartland & Co’s B Impact Assessment score already (e.g. volunteering, purchasing from female-owned businesses) and so my actions were more around documentation than actual changes to what I was doing – for other businesses (and for Keartland & Co going forward) this won’t always be the case.
My experience of writing policies and other operational documents was invaluable – if I hadn’t had this then I think I would have benefited from help from someone who did.
When you put the figures in the B Impact Assessment make sure you have a clear audit trail of where these figures came from for when you’re asked questions about them or need to report on them.
Time blocking (my ‘two hours per week’) was crucial in chipping away at what needed to get done.
As a (currently) solopreneur, certification has created clear space between me as an individual and the business – something I’ve found can be hard to achieve in a service-based business.
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