How Social Traders is taking social enterprise mainstream

On this episode of The CMO Show we chat with Tara Anderson, CEO at Social Traders, Australia’s certifier of social enterprises helping organisations build social enterprise into their supply chains. 

We dig into what it means to be a social enterprise, why marketers are an extremely valuable piece of that puzzle, and the power we have as individuals to instigate and advocate for positive change in the places we work. 

At some point in your career you’ve probably had one of those existential moments where you’ve asked yourself, “does what I’m doing really matter?” 

You’re not alone. Post-COVID, many Australians are reconsidering their career choices and seeking more meaningful, purpose-driven work. 

There’s a growing emphasis on careers that contribute positively to society, like social enterprises and non-profits. But those aren’t the only avenues to a purpose-led career and today’s guest says marketers are well-placed to make it happen.

“I've never asked for permission. I've just decided where I want to go and done it,” says Tara Anderson, CEO at Social Traders. 

“I've always said the social enterprise sector lacks the marketing ability and nous that it needs to really grow itself. Marketers are the storytellers that make this work.”

Social Traders is Australia’s certifier of social enterprises and does great work helping state governments and some of Australia’s biggest brands to build social enterprise into their supply chains. 

It’s an organisation with a clear agenda and tremendous clarity in their message, which is being heard by social impact leaders in all areas of business. 

“Businesses buy stuff every single day. So, all we're saying to businesses is, ‘When you buy that stuff, buy it from a social enterprise’.” 

“In doing that, you're getting the goods and services you need, at good quality and at a good price point, and you're buying social and environmental impact in the same transaction.” 

Fire up this episode of The CMO Show to hear more about Social Traders, social enterprise, and the power we have as individuals to instigate and advocate for positive change in the places we work. 

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Credits

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The CMO Show production team 

Producers – Rian Newman & Pamela Obeid

Audio Engineers – Ed Cheng & Daniel Marr  

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Transcript:

Hello, Mark Jones here and you’re listening to The CMO Show, a podcast produced by ImpactInstitute made for and made by marketing professionals.  

 
 I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that at some point in your career you’ve arrived at one of those existential moments where you’ve asked yourself: does what I’m doing really matter?  

 
 If that’s you then know you’re not alone. Post-COVID, many Australians are reconsidering their career choices and seeking more meaningful, purpose-driven work.  

 There’s a growing emphasis on careers that contribute positively to society – things like social enterprises and non-profits - but those aren’t the only avenues to a purpose-led career. 

 On today’s show, we hear from a brand helping impact minded professionals power positive change across all kinds of organisations.  

****   

 Welcome to another episode of The CMO Show, I’m Mark Jones and my guest today is Tara Anderson, CEO at Social Traders.  

 Now, if you’re unfamiliar with Social Traders I suggest you Google them immediately.  

 
 They’re Australia’s certifier of social enterprises and do great work helping state governments and some of Australia’s biggest brands to build social enterprise into their supply chains.    
 Tara and I had a really great conversation. We dig into what it means to be a social enterprise, why marketers are an extremely valuable piece of that puzzle, and the power we have as individuals to instigate and advocate for positive change in the places we work.  

 Let’s dive in.   

****

Mark Jones  

Tara, great to see you. Thanks for coming on the show. 

 

Tara Anderson 

My pleasure. Thanks for having me. 

 

Mark Jones  

Now, part of your story is the marketing comms to CEO journey with a little bit of executive director in the mix there, and it's one that some people in our profession manage to do well and other people maybe not so well. Not judging here, but quite clearly you're doing it well. And one of the first questions has to be, just tell us about what that was like. What's the journey been like for you? Are you now CEO of an organisation, living out the dream, or has this sort of thing just happened? 

 

Tara Anderson  

All by magic, of course. No. It's been a bit of a journey. But for me, the CEO role is really closely aligned to the marketing profession and what you learn in the marketing skillset coming from that background is really relevant to the role of CEO. You're bringing through skills, particularly working in a sector like social enterprise, like the wider for-purpose sector where the concepts are tricky to communicate, the concepts are often unknown. There's a real need for marketing, for advocacy, for storytelling in order to build the work and in order to engage new audiences, in order to do what we do. So, the marketing skillset's hugely relevant, which makes the work of the CEO role really fun and that background's something I can draw on all the time to help grow it and scale it, which is what I'm really passionate about. 

 

Mark Jones  

What was it about the marketing comms role that you loved when you were doing it? 

 

Tara Anderson 

The ability to grow the audience reach and to engage new people. And particularly, as I said, in the for-purpose world, there is such an exciting story to tell here. The social enterprise model is really cool and it's just not known. So, being able to have the toolkit to know how to do audience segmentation work, to understand motivations, to be able to tap into values, to craft a story and message around that, to engage with the hearts and the minds, or the heart or the mind, depending on the persona that you're talking to, in order to share that message and to engage them and to spread the word about what we do and get more people inside the tent. It's really exciting stuff. 

 

Mark Jones  

Yeah. Like you say, when you have a passion for the story that you're telling and you've got the tools and you can actually make things go, I got to agree, that's got to be the fun stuff. What about Social Traders then? Get us up to speed on what it is because I have a suspicion that quite a few of our listeners have no idea. 

 

Tara Anderson 

Hence, the need for marketing. Absolutely. So, Social Traders were set up 15 years ago, we just had our 15-year anniversary, with the intention of growing the social enterprise sector. And we did that in a range of different ways over the years, capacity-building services, acceleration incubators, lots of branding, marketing and advocacy. And then we switched into focus on social procurement back in 2018, and that's when we asked social enterprises, "We're doing a lot, what do you really need to grow?" And they said, "Access to markets, access to contracts, access to customers." So that's our focus now. 

 

So, we do three things. We are Australia's certifier of social enterprises, and that's checking that they're a genuine social enterprise. Because there's not a legal structure for social enterprise, it can be anything and operates all across the economy. We check that they are genuine in what they're actually doing and that purpose is embedded in their model. We then work with business and government. So, we've got 140 business and government members around the country. We've got three state governments and some of Australia's biggest brands, ANZ, and PwC, and EY, and loads of major construction companies, Australia Post, all sorts of businesses like this that we're working to help them build social enterprise into their supply chain. 

 

So, it's actually a win-win on both sides here. So, it's about getting social enterprises work and contracts, but also, helping big business and helping government to increase their impact, increase their purpose, increase what they do to make the world a better place. So, it's a really lovely intermediary space. 

 

Mark Jones  

I agree. What is a social enterprise though? And I guess, this is a technical question. 

 

Tara Anderson  

Great question.  

 

It's a business like any other business, but it exists specifically to make the world a better place, and that means three things. So, it has purpose embedded as its reason for existence. So, it exists for creating social benefit or creating environmental benefit, and that's in its governance and its governing documents. Secondly, it is a business, not a charity, so it runs on its own business activity as opposed to grants and donations in the majority. And then, thirdly, and this is the important part, it reinvests the majority of its effort and resource back into purpose. So, everything that it does is recycling the value that it creates into delivering the social and environmental outcomes, rather than lining the pockets of shareholders or heading out for private benefit. 

 

Mark Jones  

And is there a percentage profit and/or revenue that gets reinvested as part of being certified? Because I know that that's a common question is, "Well, what percentage needs to go back into the community or our investments in order to be a social enterprise?" 

 

Tara Anderson  

Yeah. At least half. So, 50% or more. That's what we say. 

 

Mark Jones  

And what's been your experience working with organisations on that journey? How hard is it? 

 

Tara Anderson 

To become a social enterprise or- 

 

Mark Jones  

Yeah, how hard is it? Are you finding they're already there? They're, "Well, we're already doing well more than 50%," or is it the opposite? It's like, "How do we retool our organisations?" Is it possible to generalise or is it just too diverse? 

 

Tara Anderson  

For the ones that set up a social enterprise originally as their intention, they're doing this naturally. Their reason for existence for social environmental benefit is genuine, so they naturally want to reinvest as much as they can, 50% and more, back into that purpose. The interesting space we see, and where there's opportunity for growth in the sector, is we call them transitioning businesses. So, those that were set up as a traditional business originally and have now made the decision that they'd like to build purpose in and perhaps they want to become a social enterprise. And for those businesses, we have some really interesting conversations about what does that look like in practise, what does that mean in reality and how do you do that? And those are the ones that have to re-engineer the way the business operates and re-engineer their values, re-engineer how they think about what they do. And that's where it's trickier in those situations. 

 

Mark Jones 

I reckon it would be. And I think the business jargon would be that they go through a transformation process, both digital, social, cultural, organisational, their client... Everything. What percentage of social enterprises would you say that are currently certified come from that background? 

 

Tara Anderson  

Very few at the moment, but this, for me, is the big opportunity. We see more at the moment there's two directions into the sector. One is businesses transitioning to the model to build in purpose. The other is charities transitioning into the model to build in business because social enterprise sits in the middle of those two things. It's both charity mindset and business acumen together in one model. 

 

Mark Jones  

I reckon a couple of people just had a bit of a mind blow excitement moment there were like, "Whoa, you can actually blend these two things together?" Of course, that's the point. But I wonder about organisations that don't go on the journey but know that they can support social enterprises through procurement as part of their broader approach. And you mentioned the banks, right? They're not going to become a social enterprise overnight or possibly ever, but social procurement is now becoming a big focus. So, tell me about how you work with organisations like that. 

 

Tara Anderson 

So, we're seeing social procurement become, as you said, much more of an interest for these bigger businesses, partly because there's government policy around it strongly in Victoria, in other states, we hope federally soon. But for whatever reason that they're choo sing to engage in social procurement, whether it's policy or their own intention as part of their ESG or CSR work, social procurement is a simple and effective way for them to build purpose into their business without doing anything differently. This is why it's so cool. Businesses buy stuff every single day. So, all we're saying to business is, "When you buy that stuff, buy it from a social enterprise. And in doing that, you're getting the goods and services that you need at good quality and good price point, and you're buying social and environmental impact in the same transaction. So, just by doing what you do as a business, buying things, you can now tell a story, coming back to marketing, about the purpose that your business is helping to deliver in the wider community." 

 

Mark Jones  

And then, maybe part of that story, whether you're on the B Corp journey or your own ESG journey, you can talk about the percentage of your procurement that is from social enterprise, for example. You can talk about partnerships, you can talk about how you investing in this sector and all those sorts of things. Is that becoming a more common part of the story? 

 

Tara Anderson  

Yeah, absolutely. And the great thing about working with social enterprise is you can tell the story right down to the individual people that are impacted. So, when you work with a social enterprise, there's different types of people they support. It might be people with disabilities, it might be ex-offenders, it might be migrants and refugees, women fleeing domestic violence, all sorts of different people that need a hand up to get into the labour market or access supports. Those people then work directly with the businesses that we work with as our members. And then, you're able to tell that story of an individual person who... It's genuinely life-changing moments that are being created by social enterprises enabled by the corporates that buy from them. So, it's a beautiful synergy that's created and everyone gets to share in that story and share in that excitement of doing great work. Just by turning up and getting paid in your day job, you get to create impact for people that really need it. 

 

Mark Jones  

Yeah. And this is no secret to anyone, but the post-COVID universe has been, "How can I make a difference?" The number of CMOs in particular that I've had conversations with on this podcast, but also, just in life, who have woken up one morning and gone, "You know what? I need to work for a charity or a not-for-profit or something. I've got to do something #meaningful," but how do you do that? So, I think this is a really interesting part of that story. Why do you think it is still not as well-understood as an approach to business perhaps as you would imagine? But we also know that this is not, from a mass market level, really not all that well-known yet. What are the reasons you think that are holding it back? And I'm not pointing the finger at you guys, but it's that broader awareness of this being a business model. 

 

Tara Anderson  

I think it's just a stage of development thing as much as anything else. So, if you look at the history of market economies around the world, they're much older than this sector is than the purpose sector is, and that social procurement is, so it's a newer concept. So, we're still trying to tell the story of how it works. It's an emerging sector, it's still developing and growing. So, just naturally it's not as well-known yet. And part of it is that business hasn't had the same push that it's getting now to start to think about some of these issues. So, traditionally, business was set up to make profit for business owners, shareholders. It hasn't had to think about its wider contribution to the community as much as it is now, whether that's from government policy pushing it to think that way, or its customers, its employees, its investors now too starting to ask questions. 

 

So, as we see more of that happen, it opens the conversation, it opens the door for us to come in and knock on it and say, "Here's a solution to that problem you are now puzzling yourself over. How am I going to respond to this need from the market?" "Well, here's an answer that you could look to." And we're seeing it grow at 55% on average every year at the moment in what business is spending with social enterprise. So, the take-up is huge, the growth trajectory looks really exciting. We're just at the start of that journey. 

 

*** 

 

Mark Jones  

How do you judge the success of Social Traders? 

 

Tara Anderson  

Yeah, great question. We, at the moment, measure procurement spend as the ultimate measure of success. So, how much money can we get business and government to spend with social enterprise? And we track that from every member that we have, how much are they spending, which social enterprise are they spending it on? And then, ultimately, we pull that through to impact. So, we can then translate spend from business and government into number of jobs created for people that wouldn't otherwise have access to them, training hours for those people, investment into community goods and services, tonnes of waste diverted from landfill, and donations to charitable causes. Those are our five impact metrics that we then add up in our theory of change to ultimately working towards a fairer more equitable Australia. 

 

Mark Jones  

Now you're talking my language, or even some social impact measurement land here with theory of change and social impact measurement. Some of my favourite things. One of the reasons I ask about this is what strikes me about your story both as a professional and also at Social Traders is that you're in the business of changing hearts and minds. You mentioned that. But you're also in the thought leadership business. So, you are educating business leaders and organisations of all types about a different way of seeing the world. What have you learned so far in your journey that's really allowed you to get that cut through, that's allowed you to differentiate what you guys do?  

 

Tara Anderson  

I think a couple of things. So, it's always with this stuff, the two things that have to work in tandem is the channel and the message, and you've got to get both right, else you lose. So, if you put something somewhere where someone can see it, but it's the wrong message, you don't win. Vice versa, if you've got the right message somewhere no one can see it, then you're also losing. So, in terms of the channel with stuff like this, adult humans learn through experience. It's experiential that really taps their brain. So, what we found works there is working with networks where we can access the markets that we're trying to reach in places where they're already hanging out. So, via business networks, chambers of commerce around Australia, that kind of thing. 

 

The speaking and the talking, and then the bringing along, the story of the impact with us to influence those people. So, getting into the message part of it. Being able to tell the story of a real human that's been impacted by the work and what that's meant for their life and how it's helped them change and create better opportunity for themselves. Pulling it right down from, yes, we need the head, we need the stats and we need the figures and we need the why you should do this business case piece, but ultimately, we're humans, we've got to connect to our humanity. And when you tell that story in a way that people can resonate with, ideally straight from the mouths of the people that are being impacted, that's where we win. 

And that's where you see the lights go on and that's where people go, "I want to do this." So, being able to pull it right down. I'm always reminding myself that we're all human at the end of the day, whether we're talking to government, whether we're talking to a chief procurement officer, whatever it might be, if we can connect with our humanity, with us as people, regardless of whether we're wearing a suit and sitting in a business, we're still able to hear that message better than we would if we're just talking numbers. 

 

Mark Jones  

So, again, back to storytelling, being able to have those authentic stories. What if you haven't got some of those bits and pieces, either somebody who can fairly and accurately and authentically represent your brand and story or some other part of the puzzle? 

 

Tara Anderson  

Yeah, I mean you've got to work with what you have. I think every business has a reason for being though and a why. And that's what I would come back to when you're trying to communicate some of this stuff. Because when you unpack the why, there's always something in there that's going to connect with people and connect with your audiences. And it's the matching piece that matters here. So, you need to understand your audience values and motivations on that human level, understanding who you're talking to. And then, matching what you've got in terms of your content into that mindset and into that value set. If you can talk to hearts rather than minds, it's always going to be a better chance of getting cut through. 

 

Mark Jones  

Just quickly on some data. You recently released the Pace 23 report. This is a report that you put out every year at Social Traders, and it talks about the economic and social impact contributions of social enterprises. You actually just touched on that in terms of this is what you guys keep a track of. Are there some top-level findings from there that you think would really interest and inspire people on potentially what might be their social enterprise journey? 

 

Tara Anderson  

Yeah, it's a growing sector is the exciting thing to say. So, we've got 118 certified social enterprises. They contribute $2.2 billion to the economy every year. That's a pretty significant number. But more importantly, more interestingly is that nearly a third of that, 690 million, is reinvested into delivering impact into their social or environmental purpose. So, there's the proof point that shows these are businesses that create their own revenue. And then, they take a chunk of that and put it directly towards social and environmental benefit for communities. So, that's a lovely stat to show what's possible in the model and how it's done. 

 

And the other thing that they do, they employ 31,000 people, but 45% of those are people that would otherwise be shut out of work. So, they're supporting some of the most marginalised people to find jobs that might not otherwise be able to find jobs. And we're seeing year-on-year, 78% of social enterprises are increasing their spend on impact, on creating those jobs, on delivering social services to communities, on donating to charitable causes, supporting environmental issues. So, the growth is there, the impact is there, and this is why I keep saying about the sector, it's a bit of a best-kept secret. 

 

Mark Jones  

I know. 

 

Tara Anderson  

We need to get this out there more because it's super cool. 

Mark Jones 

What does it take from a leadership point of view to keep that up? And from that, I mean the energy, the passion. And I think it's a very real question because the path of least resistance is what's most often chosen in business from my experience at a B2B level. If it's your career that's at risk by a certain decision politically, internally, or it requires more procurement hoops to jump through, or I've got to spend extra time educating these uneducated peers of mine. You know what I mean? It creates work. So, just realistically... Well, firstly, what's your reaction to that? But then, how should you approach that? 

 

Tara Anderson

I think there's two ways to come at it from, because yes, initially building in social enterprise into your supply chain, you have to think about it slightly differently and sometimes you have to change the way that you do some things. So, what works really well is the top down approach from one perspective. So, when leadership and management buy into this, ideally write it into strategy, whether it's overall business strategy or a CSR, ESG strategy. And then, even better, set some targets around that, around how much they'd like to start to do with social enterprise. That obviously drives behaviour change through the business. But more often what we see is the other way around where we have a champion within the business who's decided this is a good idea and is going to advocate for it. 

So, these are the change agents, these are the intrapreneurs. And I have excellent conversations with these people that they say, "Look, the business wasn't necessarily interested initially, but I just went and did it anyway and I created a case study out of it. I went and just tried a social enterprise supplier, it was brilliant. And then, what I did was I took that and I told the story to other people and I said, 'Look, because we bought from them, check out this impact we were able to create.' And then, people pay attention and went, 'Oh, that's interesting.'" Sometimes they do it behind the scenes where they'll just a coffee that's bought into a meeting will just happen to be a new supply, which happens to be a social enterprise. 

And then, after the meeting you can say, "Do you know where we got that from? Look at the impact we're creating." And that builds the engagement. And then, over time you get that buy-in and it starts to get embedded. And then, people realise that A, it's worth the effort, and B, when you work with a social enterprise and you've got a partnership, they're going to innovate with you. So, we've had wonderful examples of corporates that have worked with a social enterprise and then been able to say to them, "We need this new product." And the social enterprise might say, "Well, we don't yet do that, but we can and we will." And then, they work together on a project to actually create, sometimes, whole new service and product lines within the social enterprise to meet the need of the business. And that's where cool stuff happens. 

Mark Jones

As a leader, you've very clearly got your head around the levers that you need to pull and where the opportunities are. And you've, also reflectively, I'm just sort of hearing this appetite for more and what can be done. I think there's probably some interesting lessons that you've learned along the way for people who are looking and listening and reflecting on where you are at right now, what are those lessons that you've really learned the most, that have allowed you to stay focused, to keep moving forward even when it's hard, all that stuff? What's Tara's model of making this thing go? 

 

Tara Anderson

I think being focused is the most important thing because it's so easy in this space to get excited about everything and chase all of the rabbits down all of the holes. So, we've worked really hard as a business to pull ourselves back. We've got seven objectives, and that's it. We only focus on those things. That's what we're working to achieve this year. And we always say, pick what's going to have the most impact next. Not what's everything we could do, but what's the best next step that we can take that's going to have the greatest impact on achieving our goals? So, we really try and focus... Because we're a small team still, and we can't do everything. So, putting stuff down and saying no to good ideas is a big part of what we do all the time. And then- 

 

Mark Jones

My visionary brain is hurting because that's the hard bit, saying no to good ideas. Anyway, keep going. 

 

Tara Anderson

Yeah, absolutely. But to get to the vision that we hope for, we have to take the right steps that have the biggest impact in the right order because otherwise, we distract ourselves and we burn ourselves out as well. 

 

Mark Jones

Couldn't agree more. 

 

Tara Anderson

Yeah, and the passion to keep going, that's, in some ways, the easiest part because the people that we're surrounded by are the ones that believe as much as we do that this is the future of the economy, that this is a great way to do business. And drawing strength from that and hearing the stories from our team within Social Traders, who are an exceptional bunch of talented and passionate individuals. I draw strength from them every day. But also, the wider community that we're working with, our business members, the governments that are engaging and all of our amazing social enterprises that are doing what they do every day. Often, people that have experienced huge hardship themselves in their lives that have now turned that around to start their own business and help others in similar situations. Incredibly inspiring. So, the passion and drive is there. It's careful not to overuse it is the trick, I think, because it's easy to do too much and to burn out. So, that's a constant battle for me in particular on a personal level. 

 

Mark Jones

You just had a holiday you told me. 

 

Tara Anderson

Yeah, right. Exactly. 

 

Mark Jones

Well done. 

 

Tara Anderson

I plan that in now and make sure that I take the breaks and take the time, because you can't be as effective as you want to be if you're not allowing yourself to recover from the drive. 

 

Mark Jones

That's awesome. I think there's so much opportunity when you put it in that context. And I wonder just again a bit more broadly, but the role of marketers in the social economy for social enterprise, you're quite clearly living it out in terms of the ability to combine strategic thinking with that marketing and storytelling nous. So, that's a pretty awesome combination. What would your advice be for people saying, "You know what? I think I probably could do more. I can see myself reflected..." What would you say to those people? 

 

Tara Anderson

To get involved more in the purpose space or... 

 

Mark Jones

Yeah, just from a career point of view. 

 

Tara Anderson

I mean, I've never asked for permission. I've just decided where I want to go, and done it. So, often when I've come into organisations, I've seen an opportunity to do something more or learn something else. It usually involves a piece of market research of some sort to get voice of customer into the organisation and say, "Look what we could do. This is what the market's telling us. Here's how we could respond." And then, using that as an opportunity to start an internal conversation to spark new activity from there. Marketers have huge connection to the customer. That's a really powerful asset, that is something that the rest of the business should be listening to and learning from. So, listening to that and harnessing that and using that to help others engage and to drive decisions about what activities should be done is a really powerful tool. 

And marketers are the storytellers that make this work. One of the things I've always said is the social enterprise sector lacks the marketing ability and nous that it needs to really grow itself. So, a lot of the work that I've been doing with others in the space is thinking about how do we speak as one? So, that repetition and consistency, the voice of the sector and coming together, collaboration is a big part of that, to share the messages, so we're saying the same things at the same time. So, I would encourage marketers in the space to talk to each other and to learn from each other as well. It's something I've always done in every sector I've worked in, is to start with going and finding who are the others that are working on the same cause, purpose, spaces I am/ how do we be greater than the sum of our parts? Let's talk. 

 

Mark Jones

Yeah. And when we talk about knowing our customer, I think about it, and I'm sort of transposing this into your world, which is know your tribe. So, you've got the social enterprise tribe, but you've also got within that, what I would describe as social impact leaders. These are people who've got a particular vision for a people group, a community, maybe a particular issue. And that's just driving them relentlessly forward in any cause, right? And I think being able to say, "Let's do this together. Let's share the energy. Let's get to know each other at a slightly deeper level than maybe we tend to think about things in marketing." It seems to me you're very much living that out, and that would be an approach I'm sure that you would echo, right? 

 

Tara Anderson

Absolutely. And this is the thing in this sector is that when any of us has a win with converting a heart or a mind into this cause, that benefits all of us. So, I talk about this as a mosaic. We need every single piece of the puzzle fitting next to the right other piece of the puzzle next to it in order to create this future world that we're all working towards. None of us can do this on our own, and especially when we're trying to change the value set that underpins the economy in order to encourage more businesses to do this work, that's something that's going to take every single one of us that cares about this to work together to achieve it. 

 

Mark Jones

Yeah, I got to say, we live in interesting times. We're recording this after The Voice referendum, and I don't want to go down that rabbit hole, speaking of rabbit holes. But what I would say is one of the things that I'm encouraged about and that I believe in is a universal thing in Australia, is that we do ultimately care for one another and we are a nation that cares for the other. And so, I'm kind of holding onto that as sort of one of the things that will keep us moving in the right direction. 

 

Tara Anderson

Absolutely. And our team was just talking about that this week. To say there was lots of things that were really challenging about The Voice referendum for many people. What's great in it is that solidarity between those coming together to see that they're not alone in this. Social Enterprise World Forum in Amsterdam was another moment where you connect, again, to see there's hundreds of thousands of other people around me fighting for the same cause, working towards the same solutions, the same outcome. And that's where we draw strength and passion to keep us going and push us forward. 

Mark Jones

Love it. Tara, thank you so much for being my guest on the show. I reckon we could probably keep talking about this for a while, so why don't we come back again another time? And no doubt at Social Impact Summit next year as well. But until then, thank you so much for, as I said, being my guest on The CMO Show today. 

 

Tara Anderson

Pleasure. Thanks so much for having me and great to chat. 

 ***

How was that? Isn’t Tara great? 

There’s a lot I’m taking away from that conversation, including that fantastic term ‘Intrapreneurs’ - can’t wait to use that one out in the wild.  

What I really love is the clarity of the Social Traders agenda and message.  

As Tara says, businesses buy stuff every single day, so why not buy it from a social enterprise.  

It’s a great organisation and one we’re proud to partner with for our Social Impact Summit. I’d encourage you to go and check them out.  

That’s it for now, we’ll see you next time on The CMO Show.  

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