FOREWORD

Ryan Honeyman is a champion for a better way to do business. Let’s be honest. Sustainability consultants don’t get on magazine covers. They don’t usually get to do keynotes at big conferences. The job of a sustainability consultant is to make other people look good. Kind of like a point guard in basketball.

As partners and investors in AND 1—a basketball footwear and apparel company that made a name for itself with trash talk T-shirts, baggy shorts, cool shoes, and “No he didn’t!” streetball videos in the decade-plus from 1993 to 2005—we know point guards. Some point guards are famous in their own right, but the vast majority exist to make it easier for others to perform at a high level.

Ryan Honeyman is a point guard for sustainability. And although he may not help you win the adulation of the crowds, with The B Corp Handbook Ryan has made it easier for you to earn the admiration of your kids and your grandkids.

How do we know this to be true? It’s simple: Your kids and your grandkids will demand more from work than a paycheck. They will demand a purpose. They will demand more from business than products that are made cheap, fast, and disposable. They will demand products and services that create a positive impact in the world.

As you’ll read in this book, according to Goldman Sachs, this is already true among millennials, who comprise about 50 percent of the world’s workforce. Yes, you read that correctly: 50 percent. Millennials want a job that offers them an opportunity to create meaning, not just make money. And those millennials are also your customers and, soon, your investors.

So this book is not for everybody. It’s only for those business leaders who want to attract and retain the best talent. It’s only for those marketing professionals who want to turn their customers into evangelists. It’s only for those CEOs who want to attract the kind of capital that will let them build a great business for the long term. It’s only for business school students and young entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs who want an easy-to-use tool kit to help them seize a big market opportunity and to bring their whole selves to work every day.

We are witnessing one of the most important cultural shifts of our time. We are in the midst of the evolution of capitalism from a century focused on maximizing short-term shareholder value to one focused on maximizing long-term shared value.

According to the largest public pension fund in the United States, CalPERS, which has $265 billion in assets under management, the companies that will create the most long-term shareholder value will be those that effectively manage their financial capital, their physical capital, and their human capital for the long term. That’s investor-speak for the triple bottom line: people, planet, and profit. The B Corp Handbook will help you do that.

Business leaders are the rock stars of our time. But the rock stars of the next generation will be different from the rock stars of today. These rock stars will build companies that are both high growth and high impact. These rock stars will make money and make a difference—at the same time. The B Corp Handbook will help you do that.

Like the B Corp movement itself, The B Corp Handbook doesn’t tell you what you need to do to be a better business. It helps to make certain that you’re asking the right questions, which only you can answer: Does our business serve a higher purpose? Where are the opportunities unique to our business? What practices can we implement that would create a business that is better for our workers, better for our community, better for the environment, and better for our bottom line?

Every winning team is blessed with a player that makes everyone else better. In the game of business, especially as it will need to be played to win in the years to come, Ryan Honeyman is that kind of player.

Ryan has helped a wide variety of businesses (including natural foods companies, cleaning companies, hybrid auto repair garages, and even a funeral home) go through the B Corp certification process, and he’s helped some of the larger B Corps, such as Ben & Jerry’s and Klean Kanteen, improve the social and environmental performance of their supply chains.

When Ryan heard that B Lab had said “Not yet” to a request to write a book about the B Corp movement, Ryan took it upon himself to write The B Corp Handbook. And like a true champion, Ryan recognized that the light needed to shine on others. So throughout this book you’ll get to hear from a number of B Corp CEOs and marketing, human resources, and sustainability executives, in their own words, about how they’re using their businesses as a force for good and why they became B Corps.

The three of us—college friends and business partners for the past twenty years—left our first careers as an entrepreneur, an operator, and an investor and decided that the highest and best use of our talents was to work together to help others use the power of business as a force for good. After years in conversation with hundreds of business leaders, we cofounded a nonprofit called B Lab that is the organizing force behind the B Corp movement.

In a relatively short time, B Lab has certified more than one thousand companies, and those Certified B Corps have worked together to pass laws in more than twenty-five U.S. states to support a better way to do business. They have also worked together to develop and promote standards for measuring, benchmarking, and improving a company’s impact, standards which are being used by more than fifteen thousand businesses from thirty countries and more than one hundred global investment funds and institutional investors, from the Inter-American Development Bank, JPMorgan, Prudential, and UBS to leading community banks, credit unions, and impact investors.

That’s the real power of this book—it gives you tools and tips to join these fifteen thousand businesses. Maybe you’ll be inspired to become a Certified B Corp and be recognized as a leader, maybe you won’t. But we hope that you’ll be inspired to use your business as a force for good and that this book will help you take the next steps on that journey.

We have been privileged to watch a community form around a simple idea: to redefine success in business. We are firm believers in the African proverb that says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go further, go together.”

Use this book. Find the wisdom in the experiences of the B Corps that speaks to you, and join us.

Let’s go further together.

Jay Coen Gilbert, Bart Houlahan, and Andrew Kassoy Cofounders, B Lab