The Third Growth Option with Benno Duenkelsbuehler and Guests

Social Impact and Skincare

• Benno Duenkelsbuehler • Season 2 • Episode 11

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Anna-Maja Björkenvall, CEO of LXMI, shares transformative insights on how meaningful work can elevate both your business and your impact. Inspired by the late Laila Janna's philosophy of "give work versus do good," this conversation explores how businesses can uplift marginalized communities through dignified employment, connecting underserved populations with opportunities at Fortune 500 companies. Learn how technology can bridge opportunity gaps and promote economic empowerment on a global scale.

We also delve into the world of sustainable skincare, exploring how mission-driven practices can differentiate your brand from competitors. Discover the benefits of authentic sourcing, overcoming greenwashing, and building a strong social impact initiative. 

Anna discusses how purpose-driven strategies can enhance employee loyalty, boost customer advocacy, reduce marketing costs, and increase engagement. 

Always growing.

Benno Duenkelsbuehler

CEO & Chief Sherpa of (re)ALIGN

reALIGNforResults.com

benno@realignforresults.com

Speaker 1:

Hey, welcome to the Third Growth Officer podcast, where we talk about all things growth, yes, even and especially those hard parts where you shed some skin and pick yourself up by the bootstraps. Hey, I'm Benno Dunkelspüler, growth Sherpa and OG hashtag growth nerd. We're on a mission to redefine success inside and outside the business, one TGO episode at a time.

Speaker 2:

All right, Anna Maja Bjorkenvall, CEO of Luxme New York bjorken vall, ceo of lux me, new york.

Speaker 1:

You're in new york today. Uh, I'm benno the host. Um, this is third gross option podcast. Um, uh, anna, you have been part of lux me for six years ceo since 2020 and uh, lux me, as well as other businesses around the Luxme brand, are very, very purpose-driven. Purpose is sort of a buzzword out there. People try to. You know, people sometimes misuse it. The concept of purpose to fit. You know, to check a box. The concept of purpose to fit, you know to check a box. And Luxme, and you know this, I'll call it the parent company or brand, samasource. You know you can't really talk about Luxme without talking about your late founder, laila Janna. Did I say it right now?

Speaker 2:

Yes, Laila Janna.

Speaker 1:

Did I say it right now? Yes, laila, janna. Okay, good, you have sent me some of her YouTube videos and articles. Just a lion's soul, I think you called her a few minutes ago. Her social impact venture, samasource unbelievable. Started as a nonprofit, has since become a self-sustaining for-profit company. So I want to just get your insights and your thoughts around the power of purpose and the impact purpose you know is having on Luxme and possibly you know your own growth is having on Luxme and possibly your own growth. But let's start with Laila's phrase give work versus do good.

Speaker 2:

What does that mean to you? To me, it really means everything currently right In a day and age. Like you said, the world nowadays, do good often means nonprofit and philanthropy and the business world's focus on maximizing profits and maybe at best, value added. Nice to haves, planting trees or give back donations. Ultimately, it's a fundamentally disempowering approach. It's a fundamentally disempowering approach. There's so much talent in the world that we, on a global scale, are not tapping into simply by this lottery of geography. Talent is equally distributed, opportunity is not, and for us, we really see that giving work is just such a powerful force when it comes to creating change, work and feeling productive. It's at the core of human dignity. It really provides a sense of agency and sustainable opportunity in a way that donations and handouts rarely do. And it also comes down to a fundamental perspective on human life and potential.

Speaker 2:

You know it's. Do we view these marginalized populations as kind of helpless charity cases in need of handouts, or do we view them, as you know, humans capable, for you know, all sorts of great endeavors, as long as they get the opportunity to do so? So you know it's, I think handouts and this kind of nonprofit do good worlds, or the approach. It makes us feel good as donors a lot of the times, but it doesn't truly solve core problems and it can create a lot of really unsustainable dependencies, whether it is, you know, giving to someone, to an individual, or on the kind of larger scale, you know, foreign aid model, where a lot of the times we, you know, we give and hope that it reaches the people, that the funds reaches the people that need it the most. But even in the case when that happens, it still can create a lot of um, unbalanced dependencies where the recipient government is then more, uh, responsible to the donor community, to the donor government and the indebted, literally indebted, yeah, and indebted?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly, and it's the whole thing around. You know, we try to solve all these other issues downstream, whether it's healthcare or education or sanitation, by giving work and fair wage, meaningful, dignified work to people in these communities. It really kind of shifts everything and, you know, kind of flips it on its head. This, this, this idea that you know, yeah, work in a business and make all your money and then, you know, when you reach a certain age, then give it all away in philanthropy, but you can actually, you know, create, uh, businesses like luxme or samasource, as you mentioned, or many other social impact ventures out there that do good in the whole um, during, during, before, during and after um the whole purchase, the purchase cycle, so to speak.

Speaker 1:

Talk, talk a little bit about SamaSource, because I I found that, um, I I think what SamaSource has is about has done is doing is amazing. Uh, it about has done is doing is amazing. Uh, it's just amazing work.

Speaker 2:

So just talk a little bit about samasource before we get into lux me yes, I mean samasource, like you mentioned. It's, it's kind of the parent sister company to us. Uh luck, miss founder lila jana founded that in her early 20s she, um, she was setting up these computer centers in in rural parts of africa, uh giving giving work to uh women and and young adults and very basic computer uh entry skills, programming or entry uh, even just yeah, data annotation or say, for example, comment moderation for Facebook or annotating images for Tesla, that sort of stuff.

Speaker 2:

It's very basic, simple, straightforward tasks that can be done on a piece piece by piece basis. I mean, you don't need a lot of training but in that way, connecting these marginalized communities to Fortune 500 customers like Google, microsoft and Tesla, and that is really the power of you know, the power of technology, because obviously we have a lot of you know, really amazing ventures where it's you know, giving, for example, microloans to people in these communities. The tricky thing is, you know, yes, you're empowering people with not a lot of resources to sell to other people with not a lot of resources. So by connecting these communities through the power of technology with these Fortune 500 companies, you can really create a lot of really amazing change. Started doing that, like I said, in the early 20s, built that up, started as a nonprofit and then later built it into fully sustainable and amazing for profit.

Speaker 2:

And as she was traveling back and forth to Africa a lot and to these remote regions, she came upon these amazing local ingredients that people have been using for generations and she just realized how amazing all of these plants and botanicals are, but obviously a lot of the big skincare brands don't go and scout in rural Uganda or something like that. So she realized that, oh, by applying the same type of give work model, she was also able to create them LuxMe from that. So it's the whole mission of giving work as a way to uplift and create change in society. She, like I said she, was a really incredible soul. Uh, she very sadly passed away from from an aggressive form form of cancer, um, in 2020, and just at the way too early age of 37, but already at that point she had lifted over 50 000 people out of poverty. And you know, it's just. I always think what would have, you know what would have happened had she lived until her 80s or 90s. Right, she just had this vision about how to create a difference in this world.

Speaker 1:

But what I found so fascinating about Laila's story is that she had just a single sort of simple vision for let's just help, let's just do something. I wrote down these three tips how anyone can have impact, and I just kind of wanted you to react. Or let's talk about that a little bit. She says, number one try to turn pain into power, to build grit every chance you get. That one really resonated with me because grit is one of my company's core values.

Speaker 1:

When I'm not a podcast host, I run a growth agency and it's all about grit, um. And the third one don't need you, don't need to be a saint to make an impact. And and my god, when you watch these videos of this um, of your late founder, you do kind of look at her as you know, a saint, but, um, she just put her pants on one leg at a time, like everybody else, and she just tried to make stuff happen. Um, and I think people overcomplicate purpose, people overcomplicate helping um, talk, talk a little. I mean anything in those three that I just mentioned resonate more than the other two maybe.

Speaker 2:

Of course. I think all of it is so impactful in the message and I think, like you said, laila was incredible and it was such a blessing to work with her, but she was also just a regular person, right. She just had this vision and this idea that it's through creating work that you can really make a difference. And you know, she had worked a lot, just volunteer working from an early age in predominantly in Africa, and just seeing all of this talent that was there and all of these super smart kids that just didn't have the opportunity right, and especially her herself as an immigrant, um, you know, first generation, um first generation india to california right exactly, and seeing that you know, yeah, she, she had the chance through a lot of hustle and grit.

Speaker 2:

You know, the family didn't come from good means at all, or so I think, seeing also that, yeah, it's, it's, it is a birth lottery, right, a birthplace lottery, and all of these amazing people that live with you know terrible circumstances and you know it's just how do we really empower them?

Speaker 2:

And, um, in that way, like, yeah, once you realize that it's really work that makes a difference. Because, yes, of course, we can come in and you know, well intentioned, from the west and build a school, for example, right, but what happens to that poorest kid when their parents can't afford school uniforms or school books and they get taken out of school, right? Right, then it just even creates even bigger gaps in society, right. So by giving work to those poorest parents, you can really shift a lot. The same thing when it comes to healthcare, education, all of that stuff, right. So I think it's the thing of not putting people that make a difference on a pedestal, I think is so important, because it really, you know, we run the risk of kind of thinking of us versus them and in that way, you know, feel like yes, these are people if we look at, you know Mother Teresa or MLK or Gandhi that you know. It's easy to view it as they had something that I don't have.

Speaker 1:

They are specifically talented, it becomes intimidating to the rest of us. Right that are not Gandhi or Martin Luther King or Mother Teresa.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think that's the big part of the problem, because we remove ourselves from that moral duty to act right and and yes, not everyone can do everything and obviously, you know, mother Teresa and all of these heroes have done fantastic things, but they're human, regular human beings as well, right, just just like you and I, and I think that's why it's so empowering to see that, yes, you know, we can all do something, and just that, whatever that little might be, I always, you know, encourage especially entrepreneurs and business owners to look at a social impact model.

Speaker 2:

There's so many easy ways that, you know, people can incorporate purpose into their business, even if it's not on their own business, but looking at who do they partner with, who are your vendors, where do you buy your supplies? There's so many different ways we can tap into that, and you don't have to be a sage for that right. So I think it's, you know, there's, you know there, yeah, there's, there's, there's just so much to I can talk about it in terms of all of these things you know it's passion.

Speaker 1:

Let's pivot a little bit from sort of the founder story and Sama source and you know that concept that she came up with of uh. You know, give work versus doing good, and let's specifically talk a little bit about you. You in your role as ceo of lux me. Talk a little bit of uh. So you mentioned uh. You know it's a personal care brand, uh and uh built with natural ingredients.

Speaker 2:

Talk a little bit about lux me and yeah, uh, let's just start there yeah, I mean obviously I can talk a lot about that too, but just briefly to to explain that lux me is a social impact skincare brand, uh, based on rare, clinically effective plant-based ingredients that we source in these developing nations through women's fair trade cooperatives and in the process, then giving work to oftentimes, women or indigenous communities and also, in that way, give a financial incentive to the local communities to keep these natural resources alive and preserve the biodiversity. So it's a really cool process for the modern consumer to be part of doing something good not just for your skin but also for the world at large and the environment. For example, we have one ingredient is called tuka oil that we source through environmental nonprofit called Conservation International and this tribe in the Surinamese Amazon jungle, where the project enables the tribe to protect 235,000 hectares of Amazon rainforest. So it's a really cool, you know way to for the modern consumer to, especially when it comes to climate change.

Speaker 2:

It can feel so daunting and a lot of the things that we hear about climate change is somehow live less. It's eat less red meat, fly less, drive less, live less. Do these type of initiatives where you're getting ready in the morning anyway, but you can make a difference in something so simple as your skincare routine, while also then tapping into this incredible library of medicinal plants that are available out there but that we don't really have access to because, you know it's it is complicated to source them, but it's a source that source them right in a in a in a good way. But that is one of those things that you know, I'm really excited about when it comes to Luxme and the promise that we can, that we can get to the customer.

Speaker 1:

And I I bet you that one of your challenges at Luxme is that is having your message cut through the clutter of a lot of other brands that are sort of you know, greenwashing, whitewashing, you know that are pretending to be, you know, pretending to have a purpose, pretending to be good for the world and the environment and humanity, and all of that, and they're really not right. I mean, there's a lot of your competitors are saying some or many of the things you're saying. So how do you get your story out there in a cynical world?

Speaker 2:

It's true there's a lot of clutter and a lot of noise out there, but I think also the consumer is really savvy and they do see through a lot of this inauthentic messaging in our message. They know it's not a trend for us. This is what we're built around and I think when you come from a really deep-rooted mission and where it's value-led not, like I said, a nice-to-have after the fact the consumer really resonates with that and we all want to make a difference right, and I think the consumer is realizing that they can really kind of vote with their dollars, you know, make an impact through their wallet and their purchases. So of course, there is always going to be competition, but that's kind of just part of the game. It's just how do you keep on staying true and consistent and authentic in that? And you know know, having a strong purpose really helps with that, because it's just kind of, is that a roadmap for us forward?

Speaker 1:

and I mean it's clear, it's clear to me and you know, in the conversations you and I had prior to recording this podcast and you know in in watching the you know YouTube videos of Lila talking about Samus Horse and purpose and give work versus doing good that you know you're all bought in. I mean, you've devoted the last six years of your career to helping and supporting and nurturing and growing Luxme. So I think for you and people on your team, you know there is sort of an employee loyalty aspect that comes from just feeling good about what you're contributing to, that you're contributing to something bigger than just a P&L income statement. You know some press release you know some press release.

Speaker 2:

You know you and your customers really believe in what you're doing Absolutely, and I think that's one of the many benefits of being a mission led brand. And I think you know a lot of times if I talk to other entrepreneurs or founders and was trying to encourage them to go the social impact route and they say, oh, you know, it sounds expensive, right, and you know, I understand that. That, you know, I understand that concern, but I think you know for sure it takes effort and thoughtfulness to put something like that together. And you know it might not be for everyone to take on, not be for everyone to take on, but, like I said, it's you know, looking at it, holistically though it's, can you afford not to? You know for, for, for you know, any social impact brand or any brand, right it's.

Speaker 2:

You know employee retention and recruitment of you know really high quality talent is really tricky, especially in this globalized world, right, and you know many people, especially in the youngerized world and many people, especially in the younger generations, they're not just looking for a paycheck. Of course, pay is always important and we all have bills to pay, but at the end of the day too, we want to feel like we're part of something bigger. And keeping employees engaged hear a lot about this quiet quitting and all of that stuff. Motivation is a huge, huge thing. So having a clear why to your business that is, you know, beyond just we want to crank out products and get rich type of thing it's really important and, like you said, it's also for the customers. You know they, you know they come, they, the customer, come to us for the quality of our products, but they stay because of what we do and they become really loyal customers because of that. They tell their friends, they become real advocates for the brand and, like I said, they want to be part of this movement.

Speaker 2:

So we barely spend money on marketing and this is just thanks to this social impact mission that just kind of energizes every part of the business. So you know you might do a regular business and, you know, end up spending way more in marketing, turnover costs, hiring and you know employee engagement and all of that. So I think if you look at it holistically and you see that everybody wins like even the most crude, hardcore capitalist would see, then the benefit of going for something like that. Obviously, like we said, it has to still be authentic and genuine, because people see when it's, you know, perfunctory and inauthentic, but you know, just looking at, okay, well, what is something that makes you frustrated or angry in society or something that you feel really passionate about and kind of build around there, and yeah, it just, it just acts as this kind of sixth gear, both for myself and for the team and for for for people around the brand. So I do, you know, I couldn't recommend it more than you love what you do and you're very passionate about it.

Speaker 1:

And I think that's a good place to sort of wrap up this conversation and also give or ask you if folks wanted to reach out to you one-on-one, what is the best way for them to find you on LinkedIn or an email address, whatever you feel comfortable giving out there, because I think, after listening to you talk about the power of purpose and what it means to the Luxme brand and what it means to you personally and your team, and people are going to want to ask you one-on-one because they'll have questions about help me walk, help me, you know, talk me through your experience as it relates to my experience. Right, what's a good way for people to reach you?

Speaker 2:

It's easiest to reach me on LinkedIn.

Speaker 2:

It's a little bit of a tricky name to spell, but you know I'm not trickier than mine exactly, exactly, so you know, put that in whatever podcast podcast description to to make it easier to find, or through um lux me official on all of the big you know, all of the big social media platforms, because I do think that, yes, there are a lot of really easy kind of low-hanging fruit tools to apply when it comes to social impact.

Speaker 2:

Like I said, it doesn't have to be so daunting to redo your whole business, but it might just be the vendors that you work with and for e-com businesses, for example, there's a lot of really great resources out there they can look into. For example, abilityone companies that do 3PL handling, but it's the biggest work training program for people with disabilities. So it's, you know you can make a difference through something which is a subsidized government program and in the same way, you know, really leave a legacy in a way, and you know it helps in the storytelling around the brand. So there's so many of these little tools that people don't necessarily know about, but you know I'd be happy to share and if there's anything I can do to help, I'm always happy to do so to share and, um, if there's anything I can do to help, I'm always, always happy to do so and, by the way, lux me is lxmi and I and I guess your website is lxmicom, correct?

Speaker 1:

okay, you know, I took a leap of faith there. Uh, thank you so much, anna. Uh, this was uh. I appreciate you sharing your insights and your passion for what you do. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much for having me. This was great.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to this episode of TGO Podcast. You can find all episodes on our podcast page at wwwrealign4resultscom. You can find me, benno, host of TGO Podcast, there as well. Just email, benno B-E-N-N-O at realign4resultscom. Let's keep growing, you.

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Benno Duenkelsbuehler

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