This episode covers the story of Ieva Vaitkevičiūtė, the founder and CEO of Mindletic, a mental gym for emotional balance with the purpose to promote emotional hygiene and motivate ongoing self-care. Mindletic is a 2nd place winner of The Global Hack which gathered over 15 000 participants from 100+ countries, winner at Futurepreneurs 2020 pre-accelerator and has been recognised by global media including Forbes, NHK WORLD-JAPAN, World Economic Forum, Delfi to name a few. We had a wonderful conversation, covering starting a business in pandemic times, mental health, working with purpose, impact investing, and more. Check out a few highlights from the episode: 1. What it means to be a social business. As a social business, Mindletic aims to be financially sustainable just like any other startup. However, instead of KPIs like revenue growth being the main focus, the team tracks the impact on emotional balance - hours spent tackling emotional health, satisfaction rates using the app, decrease in employee turnover and sick leave. Financial sustainability and social impact together to make a business that can thrive and really have a positive social benefit at the same time. 2. Startups should solve real pains. Mindletic was created to solve a real-life problem that was accelerated by COVID-19 - growing distance between leaders and employees working remotely, patterns in decreased productivity, burnout, and increased employee turnover, which led to increased costs for hiring and onboarding. Identifying a real pain and the audiences affected by it is the key step when starting a company. 3. Take one step at a time. For Ieva, getting started on the entrepreneur’s journey was as simple as connecting with people who are interested in solving the same pain - emotional disbalance. Mindletic was a collaborative effort between entrepreneurs, psychologists, designers, HR people, and leaders. Another important aspect was approaching investors after already securing revenue streams to show the potential for financial sustainability. The main advice for entrepreneurs is not to think too far away and be overwhelmed by the size of the problem at hand, but to take it one step at a time. 4. Impact investors are your partners. Impact investors usually have specific interests, like climate change or mental health and would work together with the founders towards a solution, supporting with connections and experience. While ROI and other standard metrics are important, they also look at impact metrics and help you stay focused on the bigger vision. 5. Happiness is not a goal. We have so many emotions that chasing happiness is impossible and a sure way to set ourselves up for disappointment. Instead, Mindletic invites people to identify their emotional balance zone, and seek to stay within that zone while consistently expanding it. 6. Emotional balance is crucial for the climate too. When we are emotionally balanced, we make more mindful decisions, we are more aware of our feelings, and we don’t seek short-term comfort in buying things, or eating excessively, which have a direct impact on the environment through consumerism, and food waste. Episode references: Mindletic - a mental gym for emotional balance with the purpose to promote emotional hygiene and motivate ongoing self-care. Book recommendation: "Nonviolent Communication" by Marshall B. Rosenberg Credits: Intro-outro song "Sparks" by Ian Preece

In this episode, we welcome Gihan A.M Hyde, the founder of Communique - a startup that specialises in communicating strategies focused on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG). Gihan is an ESG communicator who has led campaigns in some of the world’s largest organisations including Barclays, HSBC, M&S, bp, and The Riyadh Metro Project. These campaigns have positively impacted over 150,000 employees, 200,000 customers, and have attracted over £300m in investment deals. Here are some highlights from this episode: Everyone should care about ESG: It’s enough to take a look at data to understand why. 84% of global investors and Asset Owners are looking into ESG when deciding to invest. (Alpha). Millennials and Gen Z will comprise the largest share of the workforce, representing more than 70% of the global working age population by 2030. To them ESG is key when choosing which organisation they want to work for. Customers are increasingly leaning towards brands that are people and planet friendly. The COVID-19 pandemic allowed us to sit down and reflect on our purpose and impact as human beings, and it became crucial for companies to think about their impact too. Startups should report on ESG too: There are several reasons why startups want to report on their ESG - either they are purposeful at their core, so it comes natural to them to be transparent and accountable, or they are forced by their investors, customers, and regulators. Regardless, reporting on ESG is inevitable and startups that will not factor in ESG will not survive in the long term. Keep things simple in your ESG communications: The role of communicators is to simplify the technicalities of the different frameworks in order to make them understandable. With so many concepts and terms out there - ESG, SDGs, B Corp, it’s important to explain them in a language that people can understand so they can take action. Positive storytelling is everything: When it comes to such a technical topic as people and the planet, storytelling has to be at the core of all communications. Most importantly, storytelling has to be framed positively, due to our innate wiring as human beings to forget bad memories and remember the good ones. We like to be involved and feel like we are contributing as human beings. As a communicator, tell your audience what you want them to do, empower them and give them a reward for having an impact. Ask questions to avoid greenwashing: Greenwashing is very tricky for a communicator, because their job is to tell a story that is truthful and transparent. Without technical knowledge, communicators have to ask questions and understand the data in order to tell the right story. Episode references: Communique - a startup that specialises in communicating strategies focused on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG).  Ecologi - an environmental organisation that enables each of us to play a bigger role in the fight against climate change and ecological restoration.  Blinkist - a premium book summary service helping you digest the key insights of books in 15 minutes.  Book recommendation: “Humankind: A Hopeful History” by Rutger Bregma Credits:  Intro-outro song "Sparks" by Ian Preece

Welcome back to the Triple Top Line Podcast, where you can learn how your business can create a positive impact on People, Planet, and Profit from the most brilliant minds in the startup and sustainability worlds. We kick off the 2022 season with an insightful episode, where our guest Erica Neve shares how global sustainability challenges, can be tackled through behaviour change and inner transformation. Erica is a learning strategist and a product designer passionate about helping businesses and individuals transform with a human-centric approach. Through a mixture of creative design thinking and establishing what motivates humans, she creates transformational learning programmes to address the climate emergency and sustainability. At Subak Accelerator, she helps climate nonprofits to scale their impact through data, policy and behavior change. Erica is also a trustee for AimHi, the education-to-action hub of climate and nature educators. We covered many awesome things: 1. Behaviour change and how gang leaders are not that different from C-suite executives when it comes to peer support in individual and group transformation. 2. Subak Accelerator, the world's first accelerator and data cooperative for climate nonprofits aiming to scale their impact across the climate community through sharing climate data, learning to be entrepreneurial and investment-ready, and driving policy change. 3. Normalizing climate education for businesses through the “50 Minutes For Future” pilot project. The initiative focuses on peer-led climate learning in organisations, the shared sense of purpose and progress, and tapping into the sense of community as an important motivator for climate action. 4. Climate anxiety and feeling powerless in the wake of the climate emergency. The way to overcome it is by normalizing conversations, uncertainty, and climate education. By making climate conversations a part of everyday business, we can acknowledge that we’re all in the same boat and can better support each other on this journey. 5. Goal setting vs. intention setting. How we can move from a goal-oriented mindset, which is more about individual success towards intention setting, which is about being empathetic and in service of others. 6. Working with purpose and how companies are moving towards tapping into people’s inner motivations. We drew the example of Your Juno, a promising fintech startup creating an informative community focused on financial literacy for women and non-binary individuals. Nowadays, talents are finding it more rewarding to work for an organisation that is having an impact and seeing their role as contributing more than just the bottom line. Episode references: Subak Accelerator - the world's first climate not-for-profit impact accelerator. Learn more: https://climatesubak.org/ AimHi Earth - is the education-to-action hub inspiring and empowering environmental changemakers. Learn more: https://www.aimhi.earth/ Your Juno - The most accessible, understandable and engaging financial education platform for women and non-binary people. Learn more: https://www.yourjuno.co/ Credits: Intro-outro song "Sparks" by Ian Preece

In this first episode, we share the story behind Katalista Ventures and our work with startups, the Triple Top Line philosophy, and examples of startups making a positive impact on people, planet, and profit. We’ll talk more about removing the stigma around sustainability and using positive narratives to drive sustainable transformations. How to become a Triple Top Line startup? We developed the Triple Top Line assessment to get you started on this journey. Take the assessment with your team already today 👉  https://www.katalistaventures.com/triple-top-line Credits  Intro song "Sparks" by Ian Preece.