Behind the Brand®

Jeff Adamson [00:00:08] Welcome to Behind the Brand presented by Neo. We take an inside look at the leaders behind today's most influential brands. I'm your host, Jeff Adamson. As co-founder of Neo Financial and SkipTheDishes, I'm fascinated by what it takes to build great companies. On this podcast, we'll learn from leaders that are reimagining, transforming, and innovating in the financial and retail industries across Canada. Let's get going!

Today, I’m thrilled to bring you David Luba, Co-Founder of veritree. David brings a unique blend of finance, economics, and environmentalism to the table, and he began his entrepreneurial journey in 2011 by co-founding tentree, a tree planting company that sells apparel.

In 2019, David and his tentree co-founders took things to the next level by launching veritree, a platform that enables companies to adopt sustainable practices in their business operations. Using blockchain technology, veritree ensures that the positive impact made by these businesses is genuine and well-documented. With over 15 million trees planted so far and counting, David and his team are just getting started.

David, welcome to the podcast.

Jeff [00:01:13] You're a Saskatchewanian like I am. Tell our listeners kind of how you got to where you are now.

David Luba [00:01:20] Yeah, definitely a lot of Saskatchewan pride. I see we're both wearing green for the Riders here on the call and… but I grew up in Regina, Saskatchewan, and I lived there right through until my second year of college.

It was a great place to grow up. Great community, a lot of entrepreneurial spirit. I went to the school of the University of Regina for post-secondary, so I was taking accounting and finance. Um, I was playing junior football while in college, and that brought me out to Nanaimo. So I spent a year out in Nanaimo, absolutely fell in love with the environment there, through mountain biking, through trail running, through just being outdoors.

And I was always into the outdoors, getting out as much as I could in Saskatchewan, in the summers and, and even in the winters. But Nanaimo was a whole other level. And I was thinking, “Wow, this, this is awesome!” Uh, I tore my ACL three times.

Jeff [00:02:05] Three times?

David [00:02:06] Yeah, I tore it, repaired it, came back, tore it again. And then I tried playing junior football my third year back in Saskatchewan, tore it again and at that point I was kind of in the dumps and decided to get out of the frozen tundra and go on a student exchange to Hawaii for my final year of college.

Jeff [00:02:24] Mm-hmm. What happened in Hawaii? I've heard that that was where, kind of, some of the motivation for tentree came from.

David [00:02:30] It was an incredible semester abroad. When we weren't, uh, studying, we were out on the beach or we were hiking or surfing, and really interacting with that environment. Also for that semester, I saw how much the locals cared about their land. There was a lot of really aggressive signage around, um, the island saying “Defend Hawaii” with an AK-47.

Um, we shouldn't be going on their land and degrading the forests and building resorts. You know, I've always cared about the planet, but I wasn't a huge fan of this aggressive language. And when a few of my friends came out to visit, Derek and Kalen, his brother, they had experience in tree planting.

So when they were younger, they had a carbon credit company where they planted trees and sold carbon credits. That company never materialized, they were pretty early in that space. But we were thinking about this beautiful landscape we were in. We were thinking about a lot of this negative messaging, and we figured, why don't we create some positive messaging? Why don't we create an easy way that people can help restore the planet and feel good about it?

We thought about their experience tree planting and, and this idea for tentree. So we decided to start selling t-shirts that had positive sayings on them, positive impact, creation over destruction. This shirt plants ten trees. And in the first three months of selling those shirts, we sold about $120,000 worth of t-shirts and hoodies that contributed to restoring the planet.

Jeff [00:03:55] Tell me about some of the early stories. Like what was it like putting together the first products and like heading to your first trade shows or like actually getting your first customers?

David [00:04:05] Yeah, so we initially thought we could be a DTC-only brand, and we launched a website. Day one, we did about $4,000 of sales. We were all fired up.

Jeff [00:04:13] Wow!

David [00:04:14] We were high-fiving.

Jeff [00:04:15] That’s a big first day. Was that more than what you expected?

David [00:04:17] It was, but I think half of that was probably from our parents. Day two, another big day. It was around four or five thousand.

Jeff [00:04:24] Sorry to interrupt you. How did you get so much awareness? Cuz like not everyone can just open up a website and get four grand in sales in a day. Like what did you do to like, make sure people knew about you prior to opening up and launching the website?

David [00:04:38] Yeah, so at this time Facebook was kind of in its infancy where there weren't a lot of brands on Facebook. And what we did is we actually created tentree as a person. So we started going on that account and adding people as friends. So you'd have a friend saying, “tentree added me as a friend” and uh, kind of at this stage, people were like, “Oh, I've got mutual friends with tentree, I'll accept this.” So we actually got tentree to have 5,000 friends. That was just like through our own network in Saskatchewan. And there was almost this mystery like, what's tentree? What is this? And after you accepted tentree as a friend, there was a business description there.

So what we found is by doing it this way, it was kind of different. It wasn't necessarily by design, it was just kind of like, we're like, why don't we make this an account? And the first three to four days of sales was actually everyone coming in and supporting us, that was part of that friend group. But after those first four days we had goose eggs. It was zero. It was zero again, and it continued to be zero. And that's when we realized, Our friends and friends of friends and friends of family can only support us for so long.

So we figured there's gotta be other ways we can get our brand out there. Um, so we went to local events. There was something in Saskatchewan called Summer Invasion down at Wascana Lake. If you're from Saskatchewan, you'll know what I'm talking about. It's like a wakeboard event. We set up a little booth there and we were telling people about this idea to plant 10 trees for every item. And they were buying our American apparel t-shirts. But really buying into the movement, the positivity of we can do this, we can restore our planet. It doesn't need to be negative or doom and gloom, like, we can do this.

And then we went and, uh, opened our first retail store through a wholesale account. Sorry, our first store, which was in Regina and shortly after that, the owner of the store said “You guys should go to this trade show.” So we went to our first trade show in Vancouver.

Jeff [00:06:26] It's interesting, like there's been a lot of brands I felt like that have started up and they'll have like a, a message or a mission that doesn't seem authentic. Like, it seems like they're trying to virtue-signal in a way to sell product. And I feel like that what, what really makes you guys different, and I'd love to hear kind of how you guys, because like when I talked to you, when I talked to Derek, I think it was maybe even Derek that described tentree as a tree planting company that sells clothing and not the other way around. And so like you've been able to authentically keep this as part of the brand and it seems like planting trees is more what you're about than selling clothes. Is that accurate?

David [00:07:04] And that's very accurate. And I think it really comes down to our first trade show and how things went down there. We showed up in Vancouver and before we went to the show, we packed all of our stuff up, we had plastic hangers out of our closets and the local store owner said, “You can't go to a trade show with these hangers just outta your closet. This is a trade show.”

We've never been to one not being from the industry, so we didn't know what to expect. So he actually lent us nice wooden hangers from his store to take to the show. We're like, “Okay, this is awesome.” So we loaded up all of our samples, bright green samples, pink samples. We brought our summer in spring line cuz it was in January. And we needed a few months to print our product and deliver it to stores for spring and summer.

And when we get to the show, we're looking around and we see winter jackets everywhere. And we see beanies and snowboard gear. And we show up looking like we're coming off of the beach in Cabo. And all of our signage is waves. And, and people are saying, “What do you, what are you guys doing?” We're like, “Well, we're here to talk about our brand here. We plant trees. Let us tell you about it.” And they were like, “No, like why are you selling spring and summer?”

And we were so authentically ignorant to the industry, not knowing that the buying cycles worked six months out because we're printing on blank product at the time. We didn't have a fully integrated supply chains, so we were just printing on blank products and our turnaround was like 40 days.

So people got a kick out of this and, and our booth was pretty busy cuz people would come by and, and kind of crack a joke at what we were doing and we would tell them like, why we exist as an organization. And they said, “Wow, this is cool. We love what you, what you stand for, and we wanna place an order.”

And at this point, we were asked for catalog and order forms and I looked at my business partners and I said, uh, and I looked back at the buyers and I said, “Well we'll have to email that to you.” But the reality is, we didn't have catalogs or order forms cuz we just didn't know what to expect, right? So we were there taking orders on napkins.

So to this day we joke around with retailers about not knowing anything about the apparel space and I think that really separated us coming into this space than other businesses that maybe are owned by a large conglomerate or aren't as authentic as our roots, no pun intended. So that really helped kickstart, I think our growth and, and shortly after that we were asked to go on Dragons Den, which was a great experience.

Jeff [00:09:22] I feel like a lot of people think that you need to have this deep understanding of an industry before you launch it. And like for myself, for example, I knew nothing about food delivery. Before Neo knew nothing about banking. Coming into this, like, did you guys know much about retail, clothing or did you just learn all this on the fly?

David [00:09:39] We were drinking from a fire hose and learned everything on the fly, and that's what made the adventure so much fun and incredible.

Jeff [00:09:46] What are some of the strengths that you think that you had being from Regina? Like this is not a city known for building large national, international clothing brands. No, no diss against Regina. I mean, I’m from close to Saskatoon, we’re not either. But like, what do you think [are] some of the strengths that you have coming from your upbringing that you've been able to kind of translate into success with, with tentree and now veritree?

David [00:10:09] You know, I think community. Community's huge for our brand. Whether that is the community around our internal team, which is like business communities in general. Or our community of eco-enthusiasts. Starting out of Saskatchewan, we had people hear about what we're doing and we'd get a call from the kinesiology department at U of R saying, “We wanna support you and we want all of our stuff to be tentree.” Same with the engineering department.

Those initial, first retail stores we sold in, they would say, “Hey, we have a friend in Moose Jaw who has a store.” Another person had a buddy in Lumsden. And it just kind of spread from there. Which I think we've been able to carry through to where we're at today.

Jeff [00:10:48] You guys are now based out of Vancouver. Do you see that same sense of community in, in larger centers or is that a small city thing?

David [00:10:54] I do see it. If we were starting from the ground up here, from like zero to like 10, I wouldn't say that community would be as supportive as it was in Saskatchewan. But I think once you get to a bit more of a different level, there's that community we've seen of people in Vancouver. Whether it's the Arc’teryxs or Lululemons or Herschel.

But I think what's so amazing now is the environment is so important and there's a huge community around brands finding ways to be more efficient and effective while also helping the planet, which is amazing to see. People kind of, discovering one thing and sharing that with others and then others doing the same.

So like we got rid of poly bags throughout our whole supply chain, probably sent this to about 20 different brands that are wanting to know how to do this and, and vice versa with different programs.

Jeff [00:11:43] A lot of people look at starting a company and they think they kind of need to do it on their own, but pretty much from day one you had co-founders. And specifically with Derek, still the CEO of tentree, what do you think have been some of the keys to working so well together over the years? Because how, how long has tentree been around for now?

David [00:11:58] We've technically been around for 11 years. We started with pretty much no capital. At the beginning, we started with our parents' credit cards, pretty much. And we were just kind of living at home so we didn't pay ourselves anything. So like, Derek's brother and I came up with the idea, but we knew we needed a website built. So we brought on Steven, who's a partner, who built our website at the beginning. We brought on Derek because we knew we needed somebody that has a strong understanding of finance and Derek was an investment banker at the time.

So as we started getting everyone together, we were very, very resourceful and being very resourceful, not having that capital also allowed us to like, sit back and be like, “What are we the best at and what are we the most effective and efficient at? And what are we not good at?” And I'm not gonna build a financial model, even though I went to school for accounting and finance, I A) hate it, but Derek can do it way better than I can. So why would I do that? So we were able to know what we were good and not good at, and still kind of today focus more and more on those things, right? So…

Jeff [00:12:56] I dunno if it's the number one reason why startups fail, but a significant reason is that the founders can't get along. And that ultimately leads to disruption in the business and people leave and you have a lack of leadership or can't agree on the direction. How have you guys grown closer together as you've matured the business? Do you guys find that you are able to work better with each other the longer you've been? Like, or, or are there any kind of tips to other people or advice that you'd give to people starting out companies and looking for a founding team on like, how do you actually do your best work together? How do you keep the whole, how do you keep the team together?

David [00:13:31] What we found is really important is having fun together. Whether it's every quarter or every six months, doing like a little retreat. We went to Tofino, went on like a three day kayak trip not too long ago. Went surfing, it was awesome. And if there are any challenges that are boiling up, those are like the best times to talk about it over a couple drinks or over a great outdoor activity, which is what we stand for.

Another thing that's interesting is we've actually found, as we've grown the business, we work probably less together, shoulder at the wheel.

Jeff [00:14:00] Yeah.

David [00:14:01] Some of the best times I've found in our journey was at the beginning because we were jack of all trades, we were doing everything. Whether it's shipping the orders or marketing and going to the trade show floor. Those were like the hardest, but the best times ever.

But now we're turning into more masters at individual, kind of, areas of business where we'll have less interaction on a business level with one another. Those interactions are more structured and more meaningful, but making sure we still keep those relationships going. Especially like I mentioned, coming back and having fun with one another. So, so important.

I mean, I'd say the biggest thing that we've found is making sure we can check our ego at the door. Have alligator skin, we like to say, and not be worried about hurting one another's feelings because that's how you like, eliminate issues boiling up.

Jeff [00:14:44] Mm-hmm.

David [00:14:45] So you can kind of nip them right away, if that makes sense.

Jeff [00:14:47] Totally. It's oftentimes when the things aren't getting said to one another is when it really starts to build up. Like I had a friend of mine that told me that trust and communication are inversely related, and the more you work together, the more you kind of build that trust, the less you need to be kind of like always checking in and seeing what's going on. You just kind of leave one another to own the kind of area that they're in and understand that this person's gonna do a way better job at it than you will. And the only way you can really scale is by having people who can kind of own every single different area of the business and do it better than anyone else can. But not necessarily trying to put your hands into everyone else's part of the company.

At Skip, we would have times where you kind of get exposed to your team going through incredible challenges together, but like seeing how your partners and your early teammates kind of rise to the challenge. It really kind of brings you together, like seeing them kind of go through that adversity.

When you think about tentree, and I'm gonna touch on veritree in a second here, what were some of the kind of do or die moments for the business? Like are there moments where you're like, “Hey, we're not sure how we're gonna figure this out?” Did you have any of those “Oh shit” moments?

David [00:15:51] Yeah. Yeah, we had a lot of those, those “Oh shit” moments. Just coming back to our last conversation, I was thinking about that I think is interesting to share, if I can do this over again as well with like the founding group, one thing we would've done earlier is divide those roles more.

Jeff [00:16:04] Mm-hmm.

David [00:16:05] For like the first like four years, because we were a little more inexperienced, a lot of our decision making was decision making by committee. But it wasn't until about five or six years ago, when we raised some money, and we then really defined each of our roles. If we would've done that sooner, we probably would've been a bit further on in our journey.

Jeff [00:16:23] Totally.

David [00:16:24] But yeah, I just wanted to kind of share that about the do or die moments.

Early on when we were on Dragons Den, we had a flood of orders coming. We thought it was great because we had a screen printer and we could turn stuff around in 45 days. But we didn't put any inventory controls on our website. We're like, let's see what, where things land. And what we found is we sold a lot more than we could deliver.

We were working about 18 hours a day, sleeping at the office. I remember the janitor came in in the morning and he was like yelling at us to like, make sure we locked the doors and turned the lights off. And we were like, “Hey, we were here all night just sleeping in the defective pile of clothes because we were answering emails of angry customers. We were packing and shipping.”

But you know what? One moment there that we thought would actually destroy us, helped us so much because people were like, “Wow, you're the people we saw on Dragons Den and you're emailing us yourselves.”

Jeff [00:17:16] [Laughing] Yeah.

David [00:17:17] And we would throw in extra items and we would, some of these orders we would deliver ourselves in Regina, and people were like, “Wow, you guys came to my house and delivered it.” And they were like the biggest advocates for us.

Jeff [00:17:26] Yeah.

David [00:17:27] And that was one moment where I just didn't know if we would actually be able to figure things out. After that, I think a big thing was us evolving and being able to attract the right talent to tentree in Saskatchewan. We were at this point where we needed to go to a bigger city because we, no matter how much we would pay people, it was tough getting somebody who grew up in Vancouver who's working for an Arc’teryx or a Lululemon, they're here in, in beautiful warm Vancouver. But it was really challenging retaining people and we moved out to BC and set up shop here. Then Covid hit us, and Covid was a huge challenge that again we thought, “Okay, this might be it.” At that moment, we had to make a decision. We're like, “Okay, what are we gonna do with wholesale?” Because we've got all these outstanding receivables, our suppliers were asking us to pay them. We've got people canceling orders on us. What does the future of our business look like?

We had to make a decision. Do we continue running an omnichannel business with wholesale as well as ecomm or do we completely shift and just do ecomm and become like a DTC brand only?

Jeff [00:18:31] Mm-hmm.

David [00:18:32] Cuz there's a lot of like, efficiencies and pros to that. So we came up with a strategy to do wholesale-light, [which] is what we called it. Where we focused on keeping wholesale going, but doing it very like, effectively and efficiently. Having like, a digital sales process that ran through this new platform we created that was super efficient. And you know, the way things have went with retail, we saw ecomm, when Covid came, go through the roof.

But afterwards, ecomm kind of fizzled out here. And wholesale has been the one keeping us in the game, so we made the right decision there. But that was another moment where we were like, this is challenging. Then when we thought it was all over, we're now faced with this recession or quasi-recession, like the economic times we're in right now.

Jeff [00:19:13] Mm-hmm. And so now you're focussed full-time on veritree. Tell us about how veritree came about.

David [00:19:19] We raised money about four and a half, five years ago. In the final stages of due diligence, our partner said, we need you to do a few things for us. We need you to, A, prove that you own the logo, and B, prove ten trees are being planted for every single item.

We said, all right. So we looked back and my friend drew our logo in college. We didn't pay her for it or anything. She just drew it the day after we came up with the idea. So I had to make a phone call and I was like, “Hey, I need, I need you to sign this paper here to say we go on the logo.” And I was kinda like, I don't know how she's gonna respond cuz it's been like a number of years later we've grown this business. And she was like, “Absolutely!” Check, that was done.

Then the other thing we had to do was prove the trees are being planted. This was also something our retailers would sometimes ask us, our consumers would ask us, our employees would ask us, and we'd be able to show a paper trail of donations that we've made to not-for-profits. We'd be able to show photos and videos and pictures from when we were visiting sites, but there were a few questions we couldn't get answered from our partners.

One question was, which trees are ours versus other donors? When were they planted? Who planted them? And are they surviving? We were able to get reports on the overall field of trees being planted, but we weren't able to know specifically our impact. So we communicated this with our partner and they said, “Okay. We believe in tentree, what you stand for, and what you're doing but we're gonna have to take a lot of this money that we're giving you and find a better way to be able to prove that you're really planting ten trees for every item. I mean, you are tentree, you're a tree planting company first, right? So you've gotta make sure you fulfill your promise.” So that led us to create veritree, which has evolved quite a bit, and now it's its own business, which is pretty cool.

Jeff [00:21:04] And so the technology in veritree, how does it work? Is it getting down to the individual tree level? How has that helped you guys understand exactly how many trees are being planted?

David [00:21:16] Yeah, so initially Steven, I mentioned he was the guy that we brought on right away and he co-founded and created our website. We said, “Okay, Steven, somebody can do ecomm better than you” and Steven's like, “I agree.” So Steven, we're like, you always come up with these crazy ideas, you figure this out.

So he initially was like, “Okay, I can get a couple cell phones, give 'em to our tree planters”, and this is in like remote areas so it doesn't have good internet, very remote. And you can then track your tree planting path.

Jeff [00:21:43] Like when you talk remote, are you saying remote Canada? Remote Madagascar?

David [00:21:47] Like Madagascar, yeah.

Jeff [00:21:48] Okay.

David [00:21:49] So we piloted this in Madagascar and Steven had this little box he gave them as well. Which I believe it's like a raspberry pie box, I think that's what it's called. They're collecting data from the ground. Now after that data is collected, this was early on, so it was very simple. How many trees? What are the GPS coordinates? When were they planted? Sign off. Then all the phones go to this little box and you transfer all the data to this box.

Jeff [00:22:12] Mm-hmm.

David [00:22:13] Then this box gets transported on a boat from Mahabana to Mahajanga eight hours, to then get uploaded, and then we get all these planting forms to see when, where, who was planting. Now, for our test for the veritree system, the boat capsized.

Jeff [00:22:30] Oh geez.

David [00:22:32] And uh, it was like three in the morning. We got a call from our head planter there and he says, “Steven, Steven, Steven, the boat flipped!” And Steven's like, “Oh, oh my God. Are you okay? Like you're middle of nowhere. Like in these estuaries there's alligators. It's pretty, pretty crazy.” There's stuff all over. Food, everything. He's like, “Yes, but I got the box. I kept it above water. I was holding it above my head!”

Jeff [00:22:54] [Laughing] Oh my God.

David [00:22:56] So we were able to get that first round of data, which was pretty cool. And since then we have expanded and evolved on the program now. Now we've got thousands of cell phones out in the field. We've evolved and going from being able to verify inputs, like the trees being planted to verify outcomes.

So we've evolved the way we collect data, whether that's socioeconomic data, whether that is this new little device we've created that the planters put on their belts because the phones were getting too hot and shutting off in Kenya and some of these areas. So it actually will track the time in the field when they're going down to plant the trees.

And so we've evolved this now to measure 10 different holistic outcomes of the tree planting. This is what we use to manage all of our impact at tentree to make sure what we're doing is actually having a positive impact. But now we're helping like over 300 other businesses restore the planet in a verified, measurable, impactful way.

Jeff [00:23:57] I don't wanna put you on the spot, David, but what are the 10 holistic, measurable KPIs that you guys are looking at?

David [00:24:03] Carbon is one of them. So we look at carbon and we're working actually with the University of Alberta on our carbon model cuz the carbon estimates are always changing with new data. So we measure carbon through looking at different things like biomass of trees through photogrammetry, getting like 3D renderings of the trees. We look at carbon to validate against our assumptions. Soil samples for environmental DNA of the soil. We also look at like forest density using geospatial and drone mapping. So we take this technology now and we validate it against our assumptions, which links back to the inputs, which is verifying that the restoration efforts are happening.

The next one, which I think is so critical, we're gonna hear way more about this in the next decade, is biodiversity. Are our forests bringing back animals? Like forests, increasing the different like nutrients and microorganisms in the soil and the fertility and lowering the acidity, having this real impact on biodiversity. Cuz in some areas, if you're just planting for carbon, you might plant the same tree over and over again. But that's not really doing much for the overall ecosystem and biodiversity is critical for us to really restore our planet.

So we look at carbon, biodiversity, soil health, water health, [and] food yield. So in these areas, if it's like a fishing community or if it's an agroforestry project where we're helping the locals grow their own food, we'll look at the food yield as a result of the restoration efforts that we're doing.

So that's five, they're all linked to the environment. We then use more like, qualitative questions on different things like income. How many meals are you missing now, as opposed to how many meals you missed before we employed you, and the community…

Jeff [00:25:45] Oh, for the actual tree planters.

David [00:25:46] Exactly, yeah. Cuz a big issue is if you don't have employment, if you don't have enough money or have the means to get a meal or even have that food yield I talked about, how many meals are you missing now compared to before? Which is a great metric we look at.

Jeff [00:26:02] Hmm. So you're looking at the overall wellbeing of the people that are actually planting the trees. Like, and when you say missing meals, like explain to me how that works. Like why, are they missing meals today because they don't have the right crops that were planted? Or how are you guys connected to that?

David [00:26:18] Yeah, so from an income perspective, a lot of individuals that are tree planting with us wouldn't have employment if it wasn't for our NGO partner that's providing that employment.

Jeff [00:26:27] Wow.

David [00:26:28] So now you're making money from tree planting. What's incredible as well, which links back to Neo, is because we're deploying cell phones in all these countries as well, people are actually able to open up bank accounts with M-Pesa. So they now have bank accounts. So we're giving them the ability to have a digital bank account where before individuals would have money and they could be mugged in the field and they wouldn't be able to keep that money safe. So that's incredible as well.

And now we're able to look at their means to afford more meals. And the reason we buy meals missed is it's a little more objective where you could have three meals a day or one big one, but like how many meals are you missing? And, and we're seeing our restoration efforts are not only helping the planet, but they're also helping people.

The other four impacts are culture. So like, are we positively or negatively impacting culture? Cuz we're working with local communities, we wanna make sure what we're doing is what they want and what is meaningful to them? We look at energy. So we'll like look at what is the energy source in the region. That's a leading indicator of degradation. So if you don't have a good fuel source or a solar oven or reliable energy, you might cut down the trees to use that for energy.

Those are some of our impacts there, and those all get measured through the veritree framework. And after that data's collected, it gets centralized for our business partners, sometimes across up to 10 different NGOs. A partner might have an ocean project. Or a partner might have a land project. But it all gets measured, verified the same way, and displayed virtually for businesses to celebrate their impact.

Jeff [00:28:01] And the NGOs, these are the ones who actually have the people out in the field planting the trees? Like, they're the organizations responsible for organizing the people in the field?

Jeff [00:28:08] Correct.

Jeff [00:28:09] You're taking this to a whole new level. And I remember when I first sat down and talked to you, you were talking about this stuff and I was like, you're just going, you're going so deep, like no one's gonna care about this stuff. But you're actually so much further ahead because I think you're right.

I mean, if we're planting the same tree over and over and over again. Like I've seen these videos of Brazil where it's all sugar cane and there's just like fields and fields of one crop. And then of course, like you can't have the same animals and insects and, and microbes living in that, that you'd have in rainforest, like, or a native rainforest and jungle.

So the fact that you guys are already thinking about this stuff just means that once the rest of the world wakes up to the fact that all these 10 different KPIs are important, you guys are gonna be extremely well positioned.

David [00:28:55] Yeah, absolutely. And you can't take care of the biodiversity and the carbon if you don't take care of the people.

Jeff [00:29:00] Totally.

David [00:29:01] So it all starts at the people.

Jeff [00:29:02] Yeah.

David [00:29:03] And that also comes back to companies and ESG goals. And that comes back to consumers and consumer buying habits. And it all comes down to people, right? So we're trying to give power to the people, whether it's the people leading businesses. Whether it's the people buying products. Or whether it's the people on the ground. Like our whole thing is, let's use technology to give power to the people to restore the planet.

Jeff [00:29:25] Initially this was a, you know, an investor who had asked you and wanted you to kind of verify that the trees are being planted. But is this something that every single company should be concerned about? And are you starting to see more and more companies wake up to the importance of verifying that the things that they're doing for the environment are actually being done?

David [00:29:44] I think every business should have an ESG strategy. I think every business should think about what is authentic and make sense for that business. For instance, if your business focuses and uses a lot of palm oil, you should think about your biodiversity strategy and make sure that that links back to what you're taking from the planet, cause there's a cost for everything.

If your business is maybe a heavy carbon-emitting company, maybe you should focus more on like, how do we restore a forest responsibly to sequester the most carbon? And the reason this is important is there's been so many studies showcasing that that next generation cares, whether it's the equal conscious consumer. Or maybe it's somebody that you're, that you're employing.

We've got some incredible talent at tentree and veritree that I don't believe we would be able to attract if we were just another software company. We've got people that are putting their heart and soul and their passion into what they're doing because of what we stand for. And a lot of our partners with veritree are seeing that with their employees as well.

And we're doing a really cool program right away here with one of the largest retailers in Canada. For their staff day in Earth week. You make a pledge, what is the one or two things that you're guilty of that isn't the best for the environment but isn't gonna negatively impact your day-to-day life and make that pledge, we're gonna hold one another accountable and we're gonna celebrate you fulfilling that by planting trees for all of us.

So I think different employee engagement, consumer engagement, programs like that. Um, there's value in that makes people feel good and it also helps the planet.

Jeff [00:31:12] I think it's amazing. We're starting to see more and more headlines about ESG goals that maybe were kind of like vanity or, or virtue-signaling, or they were greenwashing. And the fact that you're able to kind of prove that, you know, the money that people are putting into the environment is actually going to a holistic solution.

But like, and I'll just kind of refer to some, some research that was published last year. It says that 13 flagship carbon capture and storage projects on a global scale, out of the 13, two of them failed, more than half of them underperformed, and one of them was phased out. Why is tree planting a better solution for carbon sequestration than some of the, I'd say more technology based solutions out there?

David [00:31:55] When we look at all the solutions out there, I think we need all of them and we need to focus on all of them. And every solution has different pros and cons. The technology solutions that we have today might be lightyears ahead of where they're at, five years from now. So I think it's important that we're running different courses with all these different technologies.

Jeff [00:32:14] So you're saying not necessarily get focused on how are they performing today, but because it might be bleeding edge technology that will get a hundred times better in five years.

David [00:32:23] Exactly. When we started printing our first t-shirt on American Apparel, it was an American Apparel t-shirt with tentree on it.

Now our product is tracked using blockchain. From the field we get, for instance, our hemp from, all the way to our factory. We now track our buttons that are coming from coconut. We track our cork patches that are sustainably harvested from cork. All the way to the consumer, and we can measure scope one, two, and three emissions. We do offset that. And then in addition to that, we plant trees.

But that wouldn't be possible if we didn't start with one T-shirt and just evolve over and over again. So I think evolution of this technology, the same way we evolved our t-shirts, is so important.

Jeff [00:33:01] Yeah, great point.

David [00:33:02] What we can do today is, there's been a huge financing gap that the United Nations has indicated. We need over 8.1 trillion dollars invested in nature to meet our climate goals between now and 2050.

Now it's forecasted that right now about 4 trillion will be invested. So there's still a 4 trillion dollar gap that we need to make up as a whole and if we don't do that, things are gonna be very challenging for all of us, such as our food security, such as maybe there's wars because people are starting to migrate from one area to another because of floods and fires. Like it's just not a good outcome if we don't hit our targets.

So what's really important is we look at all those different solutions. And nature-based solutions, such as tree planting, restoring coral reefs, rebuilding kelp, which kelp doesn't necessarily sequester the same amount of carbon as like a mangrove but it cools the ocean, it lowers the acidity levels.

We're doing a kelp project with some local indigenous groups just outside of Vancouver, and we're actually doing environmental DNA of fish eggs in the area before and after our projects. All these nature-based solutions have more impact than just the carbon.

It's the impact on our overall ecosystem. On the fish that are scoring upstream so the bears can eat. We had a big bear problem this last summer outside of our house because it all comes back to that kelp and those fish eggs that were overeaten by sea urchins, which used to be controlled because sea otters would eat the sea urchins. But we had the fur trade, so we took out a lot of the sea otters, so it all comes back. And restoring that equilibrium is something we can do through nature-based solutions, but I think it's important that it's done in a measurable, verified way because businesses work hard to generate results. It's very competitive.

But without something like veritree, how do you really measure your results if you're a not-for-profit or if you're creating a carbon credit project. So I think it's really important to be able to measure that. And look at the productivity of investments in nature because maybe we make up that 8 trillion gap in nature financing but if it's not done right, it's just gonna be a waste of money.

Jeff [00:35:20] Mm-hmm. Just tell me about the process that you have when you work with a business. Is it analyzing their ESG goals and then kind of looking at, okay how can we actually help them achieve them? Or are you actually helping them start their ESG goals for the first time and then kind of positioning veritree inside the kind of a new framework?

David [00:35:37] We plug into people's ESG strategies to really support specific pillars. For instance, a lot of the businesses we're working with, they're focused on the UN SDGs. And they're looking at like the Benchmarking Alliance, the Global Benchmarking Alliance, which benchmarks the most influential companies and they benchmark these businesses based on UN SDGs.

Jeff [00:35:57] SDG?

David [00:35:58] The Sustainable Development Goals.

Jeff [00:36:00] Okay, got it.

David [00:36:01] And those are closely correlated with our 10 impacts. Now we're not gonna come in and work with businesses and help them with their overall strategy because mitigation is so important. Let's mitigate the carbon and the negative impact through your efforts. But we'll plug in and help them with their restoration or nature-based solution option to support some of their ESG goals. So that's how we really help support them.

And then we link it back to some of their business objectives as well. What does HR wanna accomplish? What does the sales and marketing team wanna accomplish? How can we use our solution, which is authentic, measured and verified, and help you be a more exciting, compelling organization, but also making sure that there's a low risk of being perceived as greenwashing and making sure that we're also suggesting different things.

This isn't our core service, but if we see a business is just looking at like veritree because it's an impactful solution they can talk about, but maybe investment within their own supply chain would be better for the planet somewhere else. But it might not have the same like marketing value as us. We'll call that out to make sure businesses are looking at like the real impact as opposed to like a bright, shiny impact that isn't as impactful, if that makes sense. Cause that's where they can get into some trouble.

Jeff [00:37:21] A hundred percent. Having an authentic impact is the goal. And, and what I like about the approach that you guys take is that you're not just going up to companies with your hands out saying like, “Hey, make a donation.” There's a lot of people like that are hesitant to make donations because they feel like very little of the actual donation amount, you know, 10, 20, 30% of it actually makes it towards the impact that they, that they actually want to have.

For you guys to be able to verify exactly what's happening in a way that is easy to understand and holistic, I think has a huge amount of value. And the other thing is that you're also involving the customer, at least you know, with Neo for example, like making it easy for people to do the right thing for the environment.

Can you tell us a bit about the actual product itself? So like, what are some of the ways that you've partnered to bring the consumer in on doing what's right for the earth?

David [00:38:08] Yeah, so for hospitality industry, we've worked with a number of hotels where you can opt out of cleaning service and we'll plant trees and, and you can see your verified measurable impact through scanning a QR code at check-in or, or scanning the tag you put in your room. And we've seen guests will opt out, opt-out rates up to 50% compared to 17% before this, on an ongoing basis. So that's not only saving hotels money and resources for the planet, it's also helping them invest against some of their ESG goals.

What's cool too is we've even had some groups come back to us from hotel chains saying, you know, “This is awesome. One thing you guys didn't really sell us on is the amount of sheets going into the wash is way less. So you're also like, saving our assets from wear and tear long term.

Jeff [00:38:56] Yeah. So they're saving tons of money, lower maintenance, lower labor costs and they also contribute to the environment. And I'm assuming that customers are also like working with companies that are taking care of the planet.

David [00:39:11] Absolutely. And then we've seen a lot of these groups come back to us and say, “Hey, can we attach restoration efforts to our conferences we're hosting? We've got this company coming in, they're having a big event, we'd like to include in our proposal to differentiate us from our competitor, a tree being planted with every person so they can kick off the conference by saying we are restoring the planet.”

That's really cool there. We've seen supplement and CPG companies include a tree with every protein powder sold, or a tree with every gummy pack sold. That's another way we've seen people do this. We've had construction businesses and land development companies restore 10 x the area that they're using to build on through veritree. And what's really cool is we're able to then match their impact to somewhere local to where they're selling their apartment building or building their new ski resort.

So we've been able to find a lot of real diverse ways, whether it's opting out of paper bank statements, or whether it's opting out of cleaning service to incentivize good behavior by more good actions, which are taken through the veritree platform and our partners, which are all vetted, certified, and measured by us.

Jeff [00:40:21] Just some of those examples, David, are huge because they're value creating as opposed to, you know, costs to a business. I think, cuz like even for ecomm companies out there, you can just kind of add on carbon offset for your purchase right at checkout. Is that something that is widely available or is it still in beta?

David [00:40:58] Yeah, it is widely available and we've seen opt-in rates to sequester carbon at checkout anywhere from 5 to 10%, which is pretty cool. That money then gets invested in restoring the planet through nature-based solutions, through sequestering carbon.

And I think it's important to know this is through like real projects that are really sequestering carbon. Carbon offsets are bought and traded on the carbon exchange, and there's a place for them and they're intended to sequester carbon as well. But there's a lot of different levels where our solution is able to then give the exact coordinates and the exact impact right down to like, the site level of where the individual's impact has went.

And when you look at, for instance, all of the reporting we get, it's about one report for every 2000 trees, one update we get. So it's pretty intensive where you can hone in and see photos, videos, tracking time. We can even see when people who are restoring the area have stopped for a snack or a bathroom break because that's how intense the tracking is.

Not cuz we're micromanaging, but we just need to know and see those inputs, so we can also understand what's working and what's not. Because hey, maybe we find a better way to plant. Maybe it's a different density or a different type of species breakdown through one of our partners, which is a tree geneticist that's helping us put the right trees in the right spot.

What's more impactful than even just verifying and measuring this? It's sharing that data with everyone. So we can be more productive as a global society, restoring the planet, which gets me really fired up.

Jeff [00:42:31] It's such a good, like, I, I just feel like you're, I don't think you're too far ahead of the curve, to be honest. Because I think like the world is gonna wanna know that, are we doing the right things? We're putting a lot of time and energy into taking care of the planet, are we doing it the right way? Who needs to have access to the right information at the right time? That transparency that you're able to provide just isn't really around at scale today.

And I think that if we're gonna want to get to that 8 trillion dollar amount, you're gonna need to get so many people on board and they're gonna need to know that the information they have is true. I feel like whenever we talk about the environment [it] is always doom and gloom, global warming habitat loss. What's got you optimistic about the future?

David [00:43:09] What I'm excited about is that next generation of eco-conscious consumers that care about their purchases. We've seen with tentree, it's really helped us build the business. When we were on Dragons Den 10 years ago, Kevin O'Leary was like laughing, saying, “This is not gonna last. This is stupid. Like, oh, save the baby whales.”

And we've been able to prove that, that there are consumers out there that are willing to pay more for a product that is sustainably sourced. And there's also a huge group of people that want circularity and wanna buy from Facebook Marketplace or ‘buy nothing’ groups and do their part by buying secondhand or consignment stores, which I think is pretty cool. So what, what inspires me is that.

As well as seeing people get outdoors and enjoying it. You know, it's kind of like all of the Instagram photos of nature and stuff. It's like through technology, but in a weird way it's also exposed how incredibly beautiful our planet is and how we've gotta respect that and restore that. So that's what gets me really excited.

Jeff [00:44:11] Where can people learn more about tentree and veritree.

David [00:44:14] tentree.com as well as veritree.com. You can check out our Instagram page however, I highly suggest you're not always on there scrolling cuz you got a beautiful world out there. You gotta get out and enjoy. As well as through a lot of our great, great business partners, which we've got over 300 businesses now investing in measurable restoration, that wouldn't have been possible without their communities really getting behind them.

Jeff [00:44:38] If you're a company and you are starting to think just by this conversation that maybe you haven't put enough diligence into your own ESG strategy, what should they do? What should the process be? Is it just going to veritree.com and kind of inbounding on your website? Or should they reach out to you directly? What, which steps should they take?

David [00:44:57] Either or. So david.luba@veritree.com or you can go through our inbound forms online. We're here to kind of help everyone, whether you are an expert already and maybe there's some guidance we can offer. Maybe we can learn from you! Or if you're just starting out in your journey, we're here to help everyone as best as we can to help make it easier to restore the planet.

Jeff [00:45:17] Well, David, thank you so much for coming on. I've learned a ton, even from just meeting you previously and, and from now. I feel like every single time I chat with you, I learn even more about what we need to be doing better when it comes to taking care of the environment.

So I appreciate you, I appreciate the time that you've taken to come on and tell us a bit about what you're doing, and I think that the work that you're doing is incredibly important and I hope that more and more companies listen to the amount of rigor that you put into understanding the impact that we're having on the environment and making a difference in a measurable way. So I just wanna thank you so much for coming on.

David [00:45:50] Awesome, Jeff. Well, thank you for having me.

Jeff [00:45:57] Thank you for tuning into Behind the Brand. If you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe and leave a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you’re interested in learning more about Neo Financial, visit us at neofinancial.com.

Behind the Brand is a production of Neo Financial and MediaLab YYC. Hosted by Jeff Adamson. Strategy, research, and production by Keegan Sharp, Alana Tefledzuk, and Kyle Marshall.