S2E10: Exploring Sustainable Entrepreneurship with Kumar Vijayendra

Seth Waters (Co-Host): Hi, everybody. Welcome to the Purposeful Prosperity Podcast. I'm Seth Waters and I'm here with Jack Smith. And you know, Jack, Jack is an entrepreneur, founder, investor, and world-changer. Jack, excited to be with you today.

Jack Smith (Host): I'm excited too, Seth.

Seth Waters (Co-Host): Today, we have a great conversation with Kumar Vijayendra. And I'm excited about this, Jack.

Jack Smith (Host): Absolutely. No, he's all about sustainable entrepreneurship. I'm really excited to explore this with him.

Seth Waters (Co-Host): Yeah, one of the things that Kumar talked about was his definition of sustainability. And we don't want to give it away, but he talked about how it's built around four P’s, and one of those is the planet. Jack, how important is it for purposeful leaders to consider their impact on the planet as they're doing business?

Jack Smith (Host): Well, I mean, in the definition of sustainability is, can we maintain it for future generations? Without a planet, there are no future generations. So now we are looking extraterrestrially as well, but right now we have one place to live and we're not taking good care of our environment or the world that has taken care of us today. And so the more as purposeful leaders that we understand, not just our impact for people, when we talk about community, that's the places that they live. That's the ground that their homes are built upon. It's the air that they breathe and the water that they drink. And if we as leaders aren't taking all of that into account with every move that we make, there's a lot of unintended consequences, not to mention the intended consequences of the bad actors. So it's important for us as leaders to really make sure that we're not only doing what makes money, but what makes the world a better place.

Seth Waters (Co-Host): Yeah, that's really good. Well, with that being said, let's jump right into our conversation with Kumar.

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Jack Smith (Host): Well, hi, everybody. Welcome to Purposeful Prosperity. I'm your host, Jack Smith, and I'm excited today to have Kumar Vijayendra from Footsteps LLC. You are a purveyor of sustainability. Can you tell our audience a little bit about Footsteps LLC and who Kumar is?

Kumar Vijayendra (Guest): Sure. Yes. Footsteps LLC is a last-mile delivery company here in Hollister, California. We partner with Amazon and a couple other entities to deliver your and my packages. That's my main business. I am also an author and that's the context of this conversation here. I've published my debut book recently, it is called The Sustainable Entrepreneur.

Jack Smith (Host): I love that title, Kumar, the sustainable entrepreneur. Congratulations.

Kumar Vijayendra (Guest): And that's what we're going to talk about. I speak at a couple of business-related conferences and I also serve on the board of directors of our food bank and the downtown business association in my city.

Jack Smith (Host): I love it. Well, you know, this is Purposeful Prosperity, where we take all the prosperity and turn it into purpose and to change the communities that we're a part of. And you have in your book, Sustainable Entrepreneur, you talk about the four P's of sustainability, right? Can you tell me a little bit about those?

Kumar Vijayendra (Guest): Sure. You know, it's like right digging right into the meat of it. So the four P's is a very easy to remember, very simplistic, yet very powerful framework, which I recommend all of us as small business owners want to embrace. So the four P's stand for people, planet, profit, and purpose. So what I recommend in the book is that all small business owners, all of us want to have the four P's as our North Star.

Jack Smith (Host): Right.

Kumar Vijayendra (Guest): So any important business decision, any important strategic decision we're making, we want to evaluate the consequence of that decision on each of these four P's. Is it making my people's lives better? My employees, my customers, my consumers? Is it- how is the impact on the planet? Is it aligned with my purpose? And am I still getting profitable? Am I still making profit with this decision? All of those, these are like the four legs of a table. All of them have to be there.

Jack Smith (Host): Were you in the boardroom when I started Purposeful Prosperity? Because that's like right off of our script, Kumar. I love it. So how has the concept of sustainability evolved for businesses as you've grown and coached companies?

Kumar Vijayendra (Guest): You know, this question is very interesting. For businesses, the evolution of the concept has gone in sync with the evolution in people's consciousness about sustainability, and the evolution in global polity, the international polity about that. So all of these three things have gone together. And I'll not get in the whole academia, the whole meat of it right now. But then I'll talk about a couple watersheds, really important things. On the international polity, even one of the most important thing that happened was in 1983, the United Nations formed a commission under Mrs. Bruntland, who was the then PM of, ex-PM of Norway. She presented a report. The report was called Our Common Future. And that report, for the first time, defined sustainability with the utmost clarity. It said sustainability is meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of the future generations to do so. Very simple, very powerful. That was a watershed. Then at the global quality level, more clarity came and UN has its sustainable development goals. All of these impacts were happening on the global quality as a reflection of the change in people consciousness about sustainability. And now coming to your question specifically, business, it sort of mirrored this growth in both of these dimensions, although with a little lag.

So earlier, during the Industrial Revolution time, 18th century, business was all about, you know, let's make profit. People were being considered almost as cogs in the machine, environment was not considered. We had our fallouts. But then as time evolved, then the first dimension of it, then businesses started thinking about philanthropy as sustainability. They thought that, you know, if I just donate to a little, donate to a museum nearby, you know, I'm sort of serving my purpose to the society. Then the whole concept of business ethics came in and business ethics in the broader sense of social justice, economic justice, environmental justice. And that was sort of, again, a very important watershed here. Then, you know, Gen Z, Gen Y, Gen Z, the things happening in international polity, now we are at a stage where businesses, large businesses, especially, they are embracing sustainability. Every single year, almost all big businesses, they publish a sustainability report. There are certain gaps when it comes to the implementation in small businesses, and that's what we're going to talk about here. But that's been the evolution of it.

Jack Smith (Host): That's awesome. And you've played a large role in that. I mean, obviously, we as humans have evolved through that journey as well. Why do you feel it's essential for businesses to participate in this in order to improve the planet?

Kumar Vijayendra (Guest): You know what? Before getting into that, I'll say one thing. Number one, everyone who's done business or who is doing business today, you are in the business because you wanted to do something more than just yourself, something bigger than just meeting your immediate needs. You had a calling. Essentially, that is what inspired any entrepreneur to become one, to actually take on that path, because that path is not easy. So the first call to action essentially is you started this off to meet a goal much bigger than yourself, and there can be nothing better. But then I'm going to get in the profitability and the logical discussion of this. I wrote a paper in, I wrote an article in the Forbes, where I presented the five-factor model, essentially saying why you want to get in sustainability, which is a question here.

Number one, consumers. Green consumerism, Gen Z, there is so much of research saying that, especially the younger generations and almost everyone this age, we want to have, we essentially prefer companies and organizations which are sustainable. So consumers are changing their preferences at a very fast pace. If you do not, you'll perish. Second is collaboration. There are a lot of organ- especially, you know, if you are a small business supporting other big business or making a certain part for them, a lot of those big businesses, a lot of those, they want their suppliers, they want the places where they source from to be sustainable. Competition, if you don't embrace it and your competition is embracing it, you're losing it. There are a lot of incentives, et cetera, available. We are having, you know, internationally, nationally, your own city, your own, the nonprofits in your city, they have it. That's yet another reason. And if you're a startup looking to get your, looking to maybe sell your business or looking at business valuation, again, there are a lot of venture capitalists, a lot of organizations which are mainly going for organizations which are sustainable. So these are five factors and all these five factors apply to almost small businesses. But if I can capture all of that in one single sentence, it'll be: you want to do it for your own survival and for your own success, and for legacy.

Jack Smith (Host): Absolutely, because we have to impact the generations that come if we're going to make a big difference in the world. That's awesome. Speaking of making big differences in the world, you launched a government program with the BRPGRA, right? Can you tell me a little bit about that and kind of how it helps government serve their constituents?

Kumar Vijayendra (Guest): Sure. Yes. So that program was in India. I was working, I was managing a consulting organization, which was working for one of the poorest and the least developed states in India. As it happens, people's interactions with the government had a couple things missing. One of them was transparency. Another was accountability in terms of how much time can I get this resolved in. I was already managing a program which ensured faster and timely delivery of services, but we realized that there is a huge gap in people getting their complaints, their problems resolved with the government. This essentially was called for a paradigm shift from people to the people essentially becoming consumers, you know, and the way you treat them, the way you would treat your consumers. So we launched a program. It was an arduous, long process. It took around one and a half, two years from getting the legislation done to getting the software code written and everything else to getting the institutions built up for that. That program essentially transformed how people's complaints were resolved with the government.

Jack Smith (Host): That's awesome.

Kumar Vijayendra (Guest): Every single day, even today, almost 1,000 people file their complaints and get it resolved. Our success rate then was over 95% in getting things resolved within the required time. And then, of course, things would have improved a lot, but I'm not there anymore. But I'm really proud that I was associated and I kind of led that project.

Jack Smith (Host): I love it. That's, I mean, changing the way governments serve their constituents, that's a global challenge. We have the same challenges all over the world. So as a government contractor here in the U S, that one really resonates with me. As much as things change, they stay the same from country to country.

Kumar Vijayendra (Guest): Yeah.

Jack Smith (Host): Well, I really appreciate your time and I'm excited about your book. Is there anything that you didn't get a chance to tell our listeners about sustainability or maybe how they can support your efforts?

Kumar Vijayendra (Guest): So this is a good call to action question. So a couple of things, you know. I invite, encourage, and want to inspire every single person who's on your podcast today. They could be business owners or they could be, you know, working for someone. It doesn't matter. Wherever you are, in whatever capacity you are, you want to go ahead and embrace the four P’s as we talked about in your life. This is a shared vision that all of us have. All of us have this intrinsic human desire, intrinsic human wish to impact the lives of people around us. We get limited by who we consider ourselves responsible for. So if I think that, okay, you know what, I'm limited to just my family, I'll be working to make their lives better. If I think it is the planet, I'll be working to make the planet better. If I think it is just my consumers, I'll be working to make their lives better. So essentially, I invite wherever you are, whoever you are, to actually go ahead and start embracing it today. So go ahead and shop from people who are organizations who are on this path. Talk about it. If you're a writer, write about it. If you're a speaker, speak about it. All of us need that. All of us need a common action on this. If you want to connect with me, my website is iamkumarv.com. And of course, they're on LinkedIn, Instagram. My book is available on Amazon, it's called The Sustainable Entrepreneur. Here we talk about it. And please feel free to shoot an email if you want to chat about it more.

Jack Smith (Host): I love it. We talk a lot about here at Purposeful Prosperity about making a glocal impact, right? Impacting the globe at a local level. And what you just described and how we can implement the four P's locally or globally, that's exactly what we try to embody. I so appreciate you. I can't wait to read the book. Thank you so much for sharing your time and expertise, Kumar.

Kumar Vijayendra (Guest): Thank you, Jack.

Jack Smith (Host): Thank you guys for tuning in to Purposeful Prosperity. Tune in next week where we'll bring you another amazing entrepreneur doing world-changing things. Until then, please like, follow, and share, and keep doing good in the world. Thanks for listening.