Intro/Outro (00:02):

Welcome to Logistics with Purpose presented by Vector Global Logistics. In partnership with Supply chain. Now we spotlight and celebrate organizations who are dedicated to creating a positive impact. Join us for this behind the scenes glimpse of the origin stories change, making progress and future plans of organizations who are actively making a difference. Our goal isn’t just to entertain you, but to inspire you to go out and change the world. And now here’s today’s episode of Logistics With Purpose.

Enrique Alvarez (00:35):

I’m your host and Enrique Alvarez and managing director of Vector Global Logistics. And of course today we have an amazing guest. But before we introduce our guest, I also have a really, really interesting, this is the first time that I’m doing this with a really good friend of mine, Paul Courtney. How are you doing today? Paul

Paul Courtney (00:53):

Malique. I’m doing great. A little bit jet lag. Just got back from Vietnam, so maybe I’ve had better days, but I’m super excited to be here and I think this is my first podcast ever. So go easy on me.

Enrique Alvarez (01:06):

Well, no, I think this is all going to be, we’re highlighting our good guest today. And before we go into that, I’ll let you pull, introduce our guest, Paul Courtney, of course, president at Courtney Agencies, a B Corp certified customs broker and freight forwarding company. Paul, I don’t know if you want to share something or quick anecdote as of how we met and also a little bit more about you and your company.

Paul Courtney (01:29):

Yeah, no thanks Enrique. Yeah, I think we originally met at a B Corp conference in Vancouver and then, I mean, I remember Enrique, he was the master networker. I remember you there here chatting everybody up and it’s like, hey, I got to meet that guy. And then I guess in the springtime or last year sometime I was back east and I dropped in on Enrique in his office in Atlanta and we went out for lunch and we had sushi. I remember that. I remember we both play soccer. So we’re both like old soccer players that continue to try to do that. Anyway,

Enrique Alvarez (02:04):

Looking forward for the World Cup. That’s right. Any predictions, Paul, who do you think is going to win the World Cup? And we’ll air this show right after the World Cup when you’re

Paul Courtney (02:11):

Right. I dunno. Team Canada.

Enrique Alvarez (02:16):

Canada. Alright, Canada. Alright, that would be interesting. Be odd for sure. But go ahead. Without further ado, let’s introduce our great guest of today.

Paul Courtney (02:25):

Great. Yeah, well first of all, I guess I would say that when our company was embedding a social purpose and going through the B Corp process, Rob’s name came up a lot. And I have to admit, I’ve never actually met Rob, but my wife is a friend of Rob and his wife Jacqueline, and Rob’s kind of a hero of ours whether he knows it or not. So it’s my great pleasure to introduce Rob Sota, a fellow Vancouverite based CEO of social purpose and climate leading companies, Novak Delivery Solutions, coast to coast experiences and Fuse power management. Rob, thank you so much for joining the podcast. It’s

Enrique Alvarez (03:11):

A pleasure to having you here.

Rob Safrata (03:13):

Well, lemme put it this way, I always learn something when I’m speaking with others, so I am very much looking forward to today, speak to another B Corp members especially. It’s a very intentional group, very special group because of the values that we manifest, that we exhibit and it’s a great way to do business, better way to do business. So wonderful.

Enrique Alvarez (03:36):

I agree with you, totally agree with you and we’re looking forward to learning a lot from you and from you have done from your career. But before we dive into it, we’re going to start with something that’s been become a feature now, which is our quick questions. So if you can respond with whatever, the first thing that comes to your mind is I’ll ask you a set of quick questions just to get to know you better. Yes. Do you have a title for these

Rob Safrata (04:00):

Questions?

Enrique Alvarez (04:01):

If these are your

Rob Safrata (04:01):

Common questions, we very

Enrique Alvarez (04:03):

Creatively call them the speed questions. We should come up with a title and maybe we’ll do that after this interview. Alright, so first one is, what’s one thing you can’t live without

Rob Safrata (04:14):

Health?

Enrique Alvarez (04:15):

Favorite hobby?

Rob Safrata (04:16):

Well, hobbies, I’m going to comment on some of these as not so much a quick answer in that I’ve been fortunate to love what I do. So my favorite hobby is turning not every idea but some ideas into something real. What’s your favorite book? The War

Enrique Alvarez (04:34):

Of Art.

Rob Safrata (04:34):

Not The Art of War.

Enrique Alvarez (04:35):

Thank you very much. We’ll have to put the link to that book. I don’t think I’ve heard about it before. It

Rob Safrata (04:40):

Goes along with my answer about turning ideas into reality.

Paul Courtney (04:45):

Great. Well Rob, thanks for those answers. Some interesting, interesting answers for sure. Now we’d like to hear about your background. Maybe tell us a little bit about where you grew up and your childhood and that sort of thing.

Rob Safrata (04:58):

I grew up in Toronto, Canada. My father immigrated from Cze Akia. He escaped as he told me, and there may have been other reasons, but he really couldn’t abide by living in the communist regime. The Russians took over. My mother’s from a farming town north of Toronto, which and radar mentioned that is because we grew up in a city and so this squeaky clean, wet behind the ears. Kids would go up to the farm often, summer, weekends, winters and pedal and throw things and meet our extended family there. And that was really good for city kids. My parents joined a ski club in Collingwood and there are a few ski clubs there. And I at the age of nine, fell in with a group of other keen skiers and a wonderful coach at the age of 16, I made it onto the Canadian ski team, which is a very, very young age.

(05:52):

One other fellow who better known than me, much better known than me as far as skiing, we’re from the same ski club. He’s two weeks younger than me and his name’s Steve Borsky and some people listening will know what that means. Yes, he was really the most successful crazy downhill racer. I did my share of downhills, but I preferred John SLA song. So I’m the only kuck reason I mentioned that is it’s a lot of my learning from the age of really sort of 13 when it was pretty heavy duty. And then at the age of 15, 16, 9 months a year, I would be away somewhere skiing, including Latin America or New Zealand or Europe. Of course we’d always go where it was cold Canadian and I retired, I quit when I was 20, which also was young, but in the seventies in Canada and certainly in eastern Canada, the world entrepreneur was not a good thing.

(06:44):

And in Toronto anyway, eastern Canada. And so that was hard because I didn’t really know what I wanted to do except to do things to make things come to life, to do things a little bit better. And I did work in a large company for four years, a very large Canadian company in their corporate office, but it wasn’t suited for it as you can imagine. And yet I’m glad I did it because I learned what it’s like for others who work in those large companies. And now I deal with a lot of those people and I’m not frustrated by them. They’re really hardworking, brilliant people and they have a culture or a set of rules that they need to work within. And so I understand that and I think it’s important to know the difference. We’re B Corp people, so we work with a lot of people who aren’t and who it’s not their focus or their interest and that’s okay, that’s okay.

(07:30):

We need to work with those who I like to work with, those who at least are interested, curious or keen. And if you remember, I’m going to hope people will look this up, Ray Anderson, who was the owner of Interface Carpets, I’m going to forget and I met Ray Anderson a few times and if people go online and look up and him speaking, he’s really brilliant. But early on in I think certainly the nineties, he decided that he wanted to reduce the footprint of interface carpet and made a bold statement that they would be carbon neutral in the future. But I met Ray a few times and I asked him once, what do you say to the naysayers? What do you say to those people who don’t, aren’t interested, don’t believe or in fact think it’s not true? He just said, I don’t, I don’t can’t understand them right

Enrique Alvarez (08:17):

At the end,

Rob Safrata (08:17):

Can’t, I’m never going to, I’m not able to overcome their viewpoint. So I like to work with those who are interested. And I think for the purpose of this podcast that’s really important is to find your people to work well with those who you can work well with and to move things forward and hopefully infect others along the way. Do good things, do good works. And so my background has been a lot of that, been a lot of that. I’ve been involved in other companies that I’ve started. I’ve purchased 38 companies in three different industries, not 38 different industries, but a platform. And then one of them that were 24 and the rest were in a couple of others. And I just love the people that I meet through these companies or that I get to work with. And that’s one of the questions maybe I could have answered is when I wake up in the morning, I truly look forward to whom I get to work with. And isn’t that, aren’t we lucky? Aren’t we lucky? Absolutely. I will also, because I could talk forever and I shouldn’t, but I have these Robs and one of them is the great thing about being an entrepreneur is at least you get to live your own personal health.

(09:30):

You don’t have to live someone else’s.

Enrique Alvarez (09:31):

And it’s so true. We can definitely relate to that. And before we jump into your career, I know Paul has a couple questions there. Is there any specific story from your early years kind like that shape who you are now? Is it either from your dad escaping or you while training as part of this ski team? Is there something that you can remember that then said, well this is the attitude I had and that’s why I ended up as a successful entrepreneur and this is why I ended up buying all these companies. And we’ll talk a little bit more about those. Of course, down the road

Rob Safrata (10:03):

I can connect a few dots if you will. And I actually like to say that I don’t connect dots, I collect a lot of dots and when I collect enough of them, everyone is obvious to everyone what the picture is. So I’m very curious. But my father was very entrepreneurial and so that helps at the dinner table and I just thought that’s what people did. Quite frankly, I didn’t know what it was like to work in a big company. I never aspired to it. I thought, okay, that’s interesting, but I didn’t know what I saw myself doing. But having that around me was helpful. Also, on the ski team, no one holds you back. They say, Hey, how well can you do? And every day it’s how can you be 110%? How can you be better than yesterday? How can you do more? There’s never any guideposts.

(10:47):

And that mindset has stuck with me and it served me sometimes well, sometimes not well when I try too hard and not aware of things that I really shouldn’t even be trying perhaps. But those were part of my influence. And then I can wrap it up with a bit of a story. I mean I did projects when I was young, but he just wanted to tell the story. I was 16 and Robert Redford who passed recently was in the movie The Great Gatsby, and he had an all white tuxedo and I was thinking a bit of a dandy and was going to my first formal, I thought, well, I’m going to get an all white tuxedo that I’m going to go. And I went downtown in Toronto to a formal rental place, which you don’t see 16 year olds there not many people that are older.

(11:30):

And I’m in there with my pimples and sweating and feeling out of place and nervous and I’m looking in the brochure and I don’t see an all white tuxedo. Then finally the salesman comes over, can I help you? Well, perhaps I was hoping to get an all white tuxedo. I said, he said, oh, we have them, we just haven’t done the brochure yet. Okay, great. So let’s proceed. So he measured me up, but I’m going to come back in two, three weeks to get it. And then at the end of it I said, can I speak to the manager? And he said, is something wrong? I said, no, I want to print the brochure.

(11:59):

And I did. My father, a really good friend of our family’s ran a pretty big printing business. So I just knew that I knew I could find a figure out how to do it, get some help. And I went upstairs and I asked the guy, he said, no, we haven’t put the bid out yet. And I said, well, I want to bid on it and I did it. So it’s just who would do that? I just thought that was normal. I thought that was natural. It’s an attitude I think. And to me it was filling a need. I think in many cases I just try to fill where there’s a need or That’s

Paul Courtney (12:28):

Great. That’s awesome. Awesome stories, Rob. Thanks. So your journey, talk about your education a little bit. Your journey reflects a remarkable commitment to lifelong learning from earning your BA at Western University to completing MIT’s entrepreneurial master’s program to Stanford’s technology and the future of business and most recently IMDs High Performance Leadership Program through YPO. How have these experiences shaped the way you lead your companies and prepare for the future, particularly when it comes to business innovation and sustainability? When

Rob Safrata (13:04):

I quit racing, you could do a three-year BA at Western. And for me it was like high school. I did high school, but I just kind of raced my way through it, if you will. Summer courses and whatever, lots of help from the teachers. But university, I tried one of every course and I wasn’t interested in any of them frankly. And I wasn’t good at it either. I hadn’t really learned how to study, how to test, how to do essays I hadn’t really learned. And yet there’s this phrase, this sentence from McLean’s, I’m married to a woman who’s a PhD, so A students teach B students to work for C students. And I was a BC A, B and C student. But I often wonder is are C students entrepreneurs because they don’t get hired, they don’t have an option maybe or they’re off doing other things.

(13:57):

So when I was in university, I was running a business, I actually was, and I was doing a mail order business for competition, a padded skier, which is kind of new at that time. And I’d go to the library and have four hours think, okay, I’m going to work on my history paper. And about 25 minutes into it, I was phoning my supplier, writing the brochure, redesigning something, whatever, after three and a half hours. So that was a bit of a clue as to what was going on. And yet again, I’m glad I did university because I did learn a little bit better how to think, how to research, how to communicate, that kind of thing. And I met some good friends there too. But these other courses I hope people find once a year at least something that’s not one day, but a few days or a week, something they’re eyeopening and coming back them, it’s okay, I’ve got five years of ideas or work here, which ones am I going to do?

(14:55):

So the MIT was, it’s grandly titled the Masters of Entrepreneurship, something like that. And it truly was, and it was hosted by MIT at at end Thecut house, which is an off-campus beautiful spot, but it was three years, one whole week each year the same 90 people from around the world, young entrepreneurs and the people they bring every year to speak and teach is phenomenal. Still one of my best friends is this fellow that I met there and many people have built tremendous businesses and the alumni from that, I just think it’s a gift to yourself and the people you work with as you go along to be re-upping and sticking with the few things we knew when we were in our twenties. And now I’m almost glad, I dunno what you guys, I’m going off this AI thing. I’m glad I’m not 25 or 30 right now. I had no idea. Some of our friends kids, they talk about their work and go, it’s not AI proof in five years. I don’t have a doubt they know if it is or not. AI proof.

Enrique Alvarez (15:59):

Absolutely. Well, and thank you very much for sharing that with us, Rob. I mean you found it and let companies across very different industries, which gives you a very complete set of tools. And for example, you founded no vx, redefining the sustainable delivery for more than 24 years. Then you went on and founded Coast to Coast experiences, 16 years strong in the travel and experiential sector. And now you started Fuse power management, which focuses on the EV grid space. What seems to be the common thread that connects these ventures under your leadership and purpose-driven vision?

Rob Safrata (16:33):

Well those ones, again, that’s kind of the call it the second half of my career I was doing technology things and non-tech things before then starting companies. And by the way, I didn’t start no vex nor coast to coast, I bought them. And so they already had a fair bit of momentum, which is great. And though we did grow them recently, but the common thread there is triple bottom line people plan profit. And in that order, that’s where I connected with B Corp. And again, I give credit to others. And in this case my Jacqueline my spouse partner of over 41 years now, she’s very much an environmentalist. She’s the founding chair of EcoTrust Canada, which is a US-based, very well-known US-based group. And she’s the founding chair of I bought Novak Courier. She turned to me and said, why are you buying that polluting business?

(17:26):

And it’s a local same day delivery business. And it started in actually mid eighties. I bought it in 2000 and she was right. And I quickly said, because I can clean it up and think about it, if it’s a company like that, there’s a lot I can do to clean it up by as getting our drivers out of their $3,000 beaters that they would show up with because we don’t own the vehicle and hybrids and now electrics. And we figured out how to do that. So our footprint has been reduced by over 59% as a delivery company. So we’re very, very proud of that. So that’s what the triple bottom line, the values, the social part, environmental part, and those as we know raise all boats. I have to say leadership too. And I would like to say this quickly, when I worked with this really large company in the early eighties, I always joke the day I arrived, the stock started going down and four years later, the day I left, the stock started going up.

(18:23):

But what that meant was it’s true, it was a bit of a recession in that industry is that it was a go-go company and then it wasn’t. And they didn’t know how to manage. They weren’t trained managers, getter done, wonderful growth business people. And so I really thought a lot about leadership and if you go back to you do what I say, leadership feudal alone, I own you or then fast forward command and control, which certainly my parents grew up with. And then there was inspirational leadership, that’s not the right term, but there was the rah rah sort of thing, which is good, but it doesn’t last long. And then people can look up servant leadership, which I think is a very complete well practice study written about all that kind of thing. And after I left this company, I said, leadership is important. How you run something is important.

(19:12):

So I came across servant leadership. So it makes my job a lot easier because if you work for me, I say, okay, who are you? What do, what are you good at? How can I help? And I can help because I can bring you resources or suggest things or, so that’s nice. That’s pretty good. And I recommend that to a lot of people. And then I found something and I’m not, and if you look it up, you don’t find it. I call it cause leadership. And this is my own kind of collecting the dots. There’s a fellow named Lance Ton, he’s a Canadian author and consultant now, and he wrote a book about leadership and he turned around, he said, well, who are the great leaders? What were they like? And Gandhi and Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King and Jesus. He said, okay, what did they do?

(19:59):

Well, the short answer is they represented the cause. They represented something bigger than them, something truly important and impactful. And so people flock to them. It’s obvious people. So I think a combination of servant leadership and cause leadership for Moralists that we can identify what we’re doing and what we’re all doing together is something bigger than myself. And what it does is it self-selects who shows up too. You gentlemen could talk to me about this or more I’m sure, but I did want to just connect that flow and have people think about it. And if you look at servant leadership closely enough, there is, I think it’s the fourth segment has to do with purpose and cause.

Paul Courtney (20:38):

Great. Rob. Yeah, we’ve been a customer of NOx for many years, so certainly great company. We love it. It’s awesome. And my next question, you’ve probably already actually answered most of my question, but I guess I would ask what you learned at Novak and around green logistics, things like that, how did that impact how you approached your subsequent ventures?

Rob Safrata (21:02):

And Paul, I’m going to give a few comments, but I want to turn the question back to you because you’re a rare bird in this industry.

Paul Courtney (21:09):

That’s not allowed

Rob Safrata (21:09):

As a B corp and both of you actually. And again, it’s just, I call it unanticipated benefits because I hadn’t been in the delivery industry and because pillow talk is powerful because my wife was saying, can’t you do it better? That was her question, you do it better. And then hybrids came out, I mean he needed the tool and hybrids came out in around oh three. So I thought, okay, yeah, if we could get our drivers into hybrids, that would be a lot better. We figured out how to do that. I don’t need to get into that in for this purposes of this. But then there were some unanticipated benefits. Unanticipated benefits. So we were able, this small local syn courier company was able to get the federal minister of the environment when we launched with the first 20 hybrids in her fleet. Now that in itself was incredible.

(21:56):

And so he was there for about an hour. He gave it a talk. There was a fair bit of media. I went back to the office a few hours later and there was something palpably different. We have about 18 people in the office and a hundred drivers. And the drivers aren’t typically in the office too often. And there was something palpably different and it was this, it was pride. They were proud. They weren’t a courier company anymore. They were saving the earth or they were doing something good. They had something better than and there was pride. So that’s pride. What’s that worth? Well, here’s what it’s worth. When we were hiring and drivers, we got better drivers and better resumes. Well that’s our turnover went way down. So in this industry, 35 to 40% annually is the turnover of drivers. That’s a lot of costs.

(22:43):

Finding them, interviewing them, training them, outfitting them, all that kind of thing. First few months when they’re not as sufficient sort of thing. Ours is five to 7%, not 35 to 40%, five to 7% you can monitor, you can look at what you used to spend in hiring and all that and that goes way down. But we give a lot of that money to the drivers to help them buy their hybrids and their electrics. So that’s it. So just the turnover went down better resumes, sales went up, customers are way stickier. Customers come to us where we don’t even sell them if they want to be identified with a green company, they want to do good too. So I could go on and on, but I’m going to turn it back to you gentlemen and say with the B corp, what would you say are the benefits unanticipated or other? Go ahead, Paul,

Paul Courtney (23:29):

You go first. I’m on the spot here. I definitely think there’s a better cohesion for our team. We don’t own assets per se. We don’t own trucks and airplanes and all that stuff, but we ship stuff around a lot and we want to do it better. And I think our team is committed to doing that. And I think you found is that there is a bit more of a sense of purpose amongst our people. So I would certainly agree to that. I mean I think we can always do better. I always talk to our team around even base what we do. We sit at a desk all day and we process shipments. But it’s like what you’re doing in and of itself is a good thing. You’re getting, we work on behalf of companies that fight fires as an example and just use some of the examples of what some of our customers do to just show there is a sort of base level of goodness of what we do, but we want to take it to the next level. And measuring our carbon footprint, trying to reduce it has been a little bit more challenging around reducing because a lot of carriers other than Novak, there’s still not a lot of options other than changing modes from air to ocean and doing things like that. But I do agree with you. Absolutely. I think there’s a higher level of commitment from our team, lower turnover, all that sort of stuff. Yeah,

Enrique Alvarez (24:57):

Absolutely. Well it’s been, I of course agree with what you both have said and then I’ll just add the fact that you can get better talent, and you mentioned it, Rob, it’s all about the team and the leadership of the people that you have in your company. So if you can attract better talent because it’s more purpose driven and it’s clear why we do things and that attracts better people, then you end up having a huge competitive advantage because you’ll be having better people. And of course in a service oriented industry like Paul’s and mine, it’s all about the team that you have. That’s really our strength. And so having more committed, purpose-driven, ambitious people, visionaries, I would even say people that really want to make a difference in this world will work harder to get things done. And that for me is definitely one of those additional benefits that you get from being a purpose driven company. I wanted to ask you, Rob, and maybe this is also for Paul, why the certification though? I mean, why do you think it’s important to actually go from the culture and values that it clearly you’ve been having since your dad kind of instilled those in you and your parents? Why is it important to you? Noex has been having this B Corp certification since 2013. Why the certification? Why is that important?

Rob Safrata (26:16):

Many reasons. One is truth. I think part of the frustration I think we would all agree is the greenwashing, the level of greenwashing and mistruths and claims that it’s incredible still the level of, I haven’t heard the term in a long time, maybe there’s a new one now, but it’s just ridiculous. We had at no vx, so we were ISO so long ago now. Was it 19,001 before that? Before there was B Corp, we were an ISO rated environmental rating because we wanted outside, we wanted it to be validated, to be checked. And by the way, it improved our business. So both ISO or B corp improve our business and claim to the world that someone else certifying that. So again, there’s a pride thing to it, but it’s a validation improves our business. The B Corp’s excellent because the ISO in our industry, nobody knows it. I mean if you’ve got a chemical plant or in your mining industry, people get it. But in selling the delivery, people don’t even know often what it is or maintaining B Corp, however does. And it’s great that it’s grown. And Paul, how did you come to it? Ours was kind of almost necessary.

Paul Courtney (27:29):

Yeah, we became the first customs broker to be at B Corp in the world. Nice.

Rob Safrata (27:35):

Wow,

Paul Courtney (27:36):

Congratulations. And so that was a motivating factor, but really how did we come to it? My wife Virginia and she comes from social purpose background. For me it’s a family business and certainly something that I absolutely enjoyed doing, but I really felt I wanted to do more. I wanted to do something good with this business, which is still, I think unusual in our space. But as far as the B Corp for me really gave it structure, gave it discipline about how you get there. And I just like that. I like getting points.

Enrique Alvarez (28:16):

It’s a good system. No, you’re right. It sounds somewhat simple and silly, but I think that you’re absolutely right. I mean, we didn’t really know what we were getting into before we started this journey, but once we started going through all the different steps to get the certification, I can unequivocally said that Vector is a much, much better company after going through the B Corp certification. So it’s one of those things that we didn’t think that was going to be the case. We always had this giving culture and purpose attitude towards business and we wanted to just have it certified by a third party provider. So it wouldn’t be just us bragging about how good we were, but we could actually show something to prove it. And I got to say it was very tough, took us almost two years, but when we came out of it, we became much better. We changed a lot of the processes. We actually questioned many things that we were doing and we improved a lot. So I’m looking forward to the new certification because at the end of the day, the harder and more challenging it is, the better it should be for all the members. Kind of why we signed up for it, or at least we did.

Paul Courtney (29:25):

Yeah, I think we just got re-certified. We’re also in the process of certifying our US business. I think we’re pretty close on that as well. Congratulations Paul. Yeah, thanks.

Rob Safrata (29:35):

How was the conference? How did you find the conference? I’ve actually never been to one.

Enrique Alvarez (29:40):

I failed right at home to be honest. And it’s just one of those conferences. Another one’s the Conscious Capitalism. You guys are familiar with the movement and the conference, the CEO summit it. And so when we first went to Vancouver, the only one I’ve been to, and it was the B Corp, was incredible. Kind of talking and hanging out with all these business owners that are kind of like-minded and interesting and they’re doing amazing things, feels very natural and effortless. Why haven’t you attended these conferences?

Rob Safrata (30:12):

I think partly is I used to run the companies, but more I build the companies. So our people who run it, no VX for instance, they go, they recertify, they’re always keen to add more points and all that kind of thing, but I always love

Paul Courtney (30:29):

It. So Coast to coast brings purpose and sustainability into travel and corporate experiences and again, a sector that maybe not always associated with environmental sustainability. So very curious. How did you integrate those values into the business model and how do you see sustainability reshaping the future of corporate travel and events and things like that?

Rob Safrata (30:54):

I’m glad that I think in the last 10 plus years, hotel tours, there is an attraction. People want, they pay attention to and value lower footprint experience. They’re aware of it. Even flying now, I mean think of it, when you fly, you can offset. I mean that wasn’t around until maybe 10 years ago with coast to coast, a tour bus company with about 120 tour buses, and these are the day only tour buses. They’re not the ones that go the beautiful ones that go long distance, which you need to be really solid. These are again, kind of like the local same day delivery thing. These are the best buses, always the nicest buses. And I bought that in 2009 and soon after we were able to buy a couple electric tour buses and there was only one company in the world making those. The electric buses then were all transit buses, low flow now high floor where you can put things underneath and be a little higher to see things, right?

(31:56):

But we found that they’re way too expensive. There’s so much more expensive and you’ve got to add the charging infrastructure. How was I going to change over the entire fleet? And so really within the business right away I said, okay, well we have to add walking and biking tours, that kind of thing. But we could have 120 electric buses and still don’t, by the way, I don’t own the company anymore. I sold it a year ago, but I’ve still worked with the company to electrify its, and that’s what led to Fuse. I said, I can do this for everyone. This is way bigger than our one tour bus company. So now we work with many, many large fleets. Not just tour fleets but delivery fleets, the film industry, school buses of course to electrify them. So we did what we could in how you spend your money or how you purchase what you purchase, just printing the paper, the lighting, not flying, all that sort of thing.

(32:51):

So you do all the things that we could, but the big thing was still the electric buses. And I would like to point this out, so I’ve been working on this since oh 3 0 4. I was an Al Gore trained speaker in I think oh 8, 0 9. So he trained 200 people at a time for four days in Nashville to give the Inconvenient Truth talk. And I gave 28 of those locally, but that was still 15 years ago when people were Ah, we don’t believe in it or we’re not sure. And there just weren’t the tool around. I don’t find there’s as much pushback anymore on it inside a company or generally in conversation. But so with West Coast sight seeing again when we got the two buses, even though there were only two out of 120, people were proud that we had them. They loved to use them all the time.

(33:40):

And the drivers always competed to use them to be driving them. The customers always love them. Sometimes when there’s a business part to this, it always comes out to we can’t just be people and planet and not have a profit because then we’re gone. So they have to raise each other up. I speak in terms of a business and let me show you the green and the social things I did to improve the business, raise the sales, lower the costs and reduce the risk, et cetera. So that’s how I got into Fuse. I’m going to do this for everyone. We still needed better, more electric equipment for the tour bus side. So I wasn’t successful at doing that yet with ours. And yet some of the large companies in our space to hop on off business, they are implementing electric buses. They are because the cities will put taxes, congestion or pollution taxes, so they can’t go there if we don’t have electric.

(34:35):

So they’re forced to. But we’ll talk about fusion in a moment, but in fact, having electric buses in the future will mean that it’ll change the business plan or the business model of school buses, tour buses of companies that don’t have a high duty cycle. In other words, they’re not driving too far every day and they have a regular, they know when their buses are back and this will change the business model and improve it. What I say to this, Paul, what I say to fleet owners, that’s the first thing I say. And I don’t talk to technology. I just say, would you like your EBITDA A to go up two to 4% percent?

Enrique Alvarez (35:11):

Well, who wouldn’t? Right? That seems like a very straightforward question, somewhat even tricky. But I know with the experience that you’ve had Rob in general and with all the different companies you must have had and faced and successfully overcome challenges, would you mind sharing one, maybe one challenge that taught you the most? Could be personal or professional, something that our listeners can maybe relate to or

Rob Safrata (35:35):

Well, too many.

Enrique Alvarez (35:37):

Oh, and still learning,

Rob Safrata (35:38):

I’m sure. I think related to this topic change, and I heard this on the radio on the way in that was related to advertising, that you come up with a different idea. The usual immediate is, oh, that won’t work. Why don’t we just do it the way it is? Or all the problems. There’s always the naysayers, the problems, and those are important. You have to navigate those. So learning to overcome those is what I had to learn. And so with Novak, in the early days I had religion. I was, okay, we’re going to green this company. Well, that’s oh three, I mean the president, why would you do that? Who cares? Whatever. I don’t even recycle. And a lot of the people in the business, I became aware that they viewed the change as meaning they were doing it wrong or what they were doing wasn’t right or not good enough.

(36:29):

And so they were pushing back. So how did we overcome that? Now we overcame it essentially by listening to them, but also education. So I had the advantage of kind of knowledge they didn’t have about the effects and impacts of pollution and that you could do it better and all that stuff. We had to share that with them and all of them and have a conversation so that they decided on their own to come on board. But as an owner, an owner of companies, or if you’re the leader command and control telling people to do something, they’ll do it for a while, but then they’re going to show you it didn’t work or they’ll leave. What’s that about? That was a lesson I learned and continue to employ. Maybe this is a related, I mean, were you the one that brought B Corp in and everyone else is still scratching their heads? They’re going, why?

Paul Courtney (37:16):

Yeah,

Rob Safrata (37:17):

You’ve been asked why many times.

Paul Courtney (37:18):

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it’s been an interesting journey as far as instilling it, these kind of philosophies in the company, in the people. And we kind of talked about the positive around that. There’s I think a bigger commitment from everyone. But on the other hand, not everybody comes from the same headspace, I guess. And so there’s the challenge I guess, of instilling the philosophy across the company and across as many individuals as you can I guess. But it’s been an interesting journey and on our US company now that where we’re just close to getting certified, maybe even more challenging from a people perspective, we won’t go there, but there’s more challenging politics around this perhaps south of the border. And so it’s going to be interesting

Enrique Alvarez (38:11):

For sure. Absolutely. And you’re right, I think it’s actually going to be a couple of very interesting years as this continues to develop the purpose movement B Corp, the just overall general policies that we’re seeing right now. So it’ll be interesting for sure, and I would claim that leaders like both of you are going to be needed even more. So thank you for doing this. Thank you for sharing your experiences with us and our audience. Speaking of sustainability in general, Rob, what do you see in the future? Like looking 5, 10, 20 years from now, what do you see and then what would you like to change?

Rob Safrata (38:49):

What would I like to change? I don’t see it as a choice and politically, whatever people do or messages that come and go, it is a less expensive way to do things. It is a healthier, happier way of doing things. I started talking earlier about, I still don’t know what a ton of carbon looks like, but I do carry around a portable air quality monitor because people, we have wealth, we have a lot more fires now in Canada and the smoke films down in the states as well as Canada and people, they go, whoa, my breathing. So that impacts people daily and burning fossil fuels from vehicles or in factories, air polluted air kills more people than climate change and will for a long time. And I think people are aware of that and get the direct effects of that. So I have faith that it is going to move forward and some technologies are going to make incredible differences. Let’s just assume that in five plus years, before 10 years, there will be different kinds of batteries in cars. So now they’ll be way cheaper and they’ll go twice as far. And so it’ll be like, yeah, of course I’m getting an electric car, so it’ll just happen. Technology or need or both. So what do I hope will happen? I hope that I humans will be on this earth as long as the sun is in this.

Paul Courtney (40:02):

I think that of all the businesses that you’ve purchased, Rob, how would you, for founders or executives that want to embed sustainability into their operations, where would they start or how would you counsel them?

Rob Safrata (40:20):

My answer to that is always the same, and I’m so glad now that it’s not 2003 or seven, get an audit. Have an audit of your business. It’s not expensive. You don’t have to do the much work. There’s so many groups now that will come in and pull out your data and give you a report and that’s worked so well because a business person and deal with a report and with numbers and here are the top three things to do and get after the low hanging fruit, it’s almost easy. It’s just do it, walk forward and then watch for the unanticipated benefit. Like notice some people in your business will just love it, others won’t care, but they’ll go along. They’ll typically fight it. Some people do leave, but you’re still selecting to something more enduring. So just it’s easy now, get an audit, get the information, get the numbers and have fun with it will sell us once.

(41:12):

Nova, we focus on three things. Is that what you do with B Corp? For the audits, whatever. And we focused on, of course the air pollution, the GCs, the cars, that was the big, big thing. And then it was paper and the heating in the warehouses or the gas or electric heating. And with the heating, we had about a 5,000 square foot warehouse. It was super high. I’d say an average 10 minutes an hour, somebody was in it. That’s it. And it used to be the lights were on all day and it was heated, so we got a motion sensor for the lights, we turned off the heat and we got the gaad jacket. That

Paul Courtney (41:52):

Was

Rob Safrata (41:52):

Pretty

Paul Courtney (41:53):

Easy

Rob Safrata (41:54):

There maybe a hat and some myths

Paul Courtney (41:56):

You talked about measuring, and I’ll just tell you a little story quick is that when we were measuring our footprint and when we expanded the scope, I can never remember scope 1, 2, 3, I get confused by them, but is measuring, if we’re shipping stuff around the world, it goes by ocean, it goes by rail, it goes by truck, all that sort of stuff. We found that the company we used to measure our domestic footprint didn’t understand the international part, didn’t understand the transportation as much, so we had to use a different organization to do that. So I guess it was a learning experience and

Enrique Alvarez (42:38):

Live and learn. To your point earlier, and maybe we can just come full circle back to ai, I think that this is not as hard as people might think it is, right? I mean there’s a self assessment on the B Corp website that will put the link to it. But again, as Rob mentioned, as Paul confirmed, I think the first step for everyone out there that’s listening to this conversation and want to or is inclined to think that people plan on profit is a great strategy for your own companies, then yeah, conducting that self-assessment or having a company come and give you an assessment is definitely the first step. And Rob, thank you. Thank you so much. And Paul, great sharing this with you as well.

Paul Courtney (43:18):

Yeah,

Enrique Alvarez (43:18):

It was fine. Is there any kind of parting thoughts or call of action? And I’ll ask this question for both. It’s a pleasure having you both here, Paul. Any action items for our audience? What would you like them to do?

Paul Courtney (43:31):

It was a comment I wanted to make actually about, because Rob, you had mentioned about greenwashing, right? And the B Corp processes is a way to demonstrate that that’s not what we’re about. I heard a new word and it’s fairly recent word and it’s green. I don’t know if you guys heard this word. And it’s just at the risk of going there, I would say it’s just given the political environment that a lot of companies are less willing to talk about it. They’re still doing it, they just won’t talk about it as much, which is very unfortunate. I think one of the things that we’re a small company, our footprint is small, all that kind of stuff, but we looked at it as like every little bit counts and our influence can be much bigger than our immediate impact. So a lot of it is talking about it and influencing others. And so that would be my parting comment.

Rob Safrata (44:27):

It’s a scary term right now and it’s true. I get it. Yeah. It doesn’t change how we operate and we will be operating in the states, but it’s better business. It makes changes a business model. They should make more money and be able to proceed. The only thing I would add if you’re asking for party comments is because I did sort of study it or look at it a lot is the thing that makes what the term you want to use these days anymore, but greening your business or reducing your footprint. The thing that’s the highest predictor of its success is the fact that the leadership is engaged and involved. It can start from, it’s not to start with the leadership, but it really makes it a much easier if they go, yeah, let’s go. So to you gentlemen, thank you,

Enrique Alvarez (45:10):

Thank you to both. Where could our audience reach out to you? Rob, what’s your best way of getting in touch with you?

Rob Safrata (45:16):

Well, I would invite anyone listening that has a fleet of vehicles anywhere, especially in North America to get in touch. And for me it’s letter R, Safara, sa a F as in Frank, RATA at Fuse power and would welcome anyone to reach out a number of the states as well. Have programs that are very welcoming to returning power from your electric bus trucker car to the grid, and they’ll pay handsomely for it so it can improve your EBITDA A, your earnings to the company. And as we all know, improve your marketing stance. So all kinds of things. The pride in your business and serendipity is a superpower, so hopefully somewhat get it done. What about yourself?

Paul Courtney (46:03):

How can people connect to you? My email address I think should be pretty easy to remember. So isPaul@courtney.ca.

Enrique Alvarez (46:12):

Thank you so much and to everyone listening to this very engaging conversation. If you liked talking to Rob and Paul, don’t forget to subscribe to Logistics with Purpose and I’ll see you on the next episode. Thank you so much.