Sustainability Is Good for Business: A Conversation with Mary Fehlig

What does it really mean for a business to live its values—and why does sustainability matter even more now?

In this episode of the Riveo Impact Lab, Elin sits down with Mary Fehlig, Founder and President of The Fehlig Group, to explore how sustainability, ethical business practices, and commercial success are far more connected than many people realize. With more than 30 years of experience helping organizations navigate responsible business practices, Mary brings both a long-view perspective and a deeply practical approach to what it means to build a business that benefits people, planet, and profit.

From her early work helping companies understand corporate responsibility before it was part of the mainstream conversation, to guiding businesses through today’s shifting political and cultural landscape, Mary shares why sustainability isn’t just a trend or compliance exercise—it’s a business imperative.

In this conversation, we explore:

• Why sustainability must benefit the business in order to endure
• How responsible business practices have evolved over the last three decades
• Why small businesses have more power and impact than they may think
• The role of values in shaping business decisions and long-term success
• How supply chains, consumer expectations, and purchasing power are driving change
• Why language like ESG and DEI can become complicated—and how to bring the conversation back to what really matters

If you’re a business owner, entrepreneur, or leader trying to make sense of sustainability in a changing world, this episode offers both encouragement and clarity.

Because building a better business doesn’t mean doing everything at once—it starts with recognizing the impact you’re already making, and choosing to build from there.

🎧 Listen now and discover how values-driven business can create meaningful impact—for your company, your community, and the future.

The Riveo Impact Lab is produced for you by Riveo Creative. For more Riveo Impact Lab content, including the video versions of all our episodes, please visit https://riveocreative.com/riveo-impact-lab/.

Transcript

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[electronic music starts][Emily] Welcome to the Riveo Impact Lab, the podcast in which we explore what it means for small businesses to have real impact in an evolving world. On this podcast, we engage our curiosity around topics like sustainability, diversity and inclusion, and the ethical outcomes of our decisions, all from a small business perspective.[Elin] Hi there. I'm Elin.[Emily] And I'm Emily, and we're really excited to share our episode with you today. As a reminder, we release episodes once a month on the second Thursday of every month. So make sure to follow us on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. And you can support us by listening, sharing, or leaving a review.[Elin] Yeah. Today we're sharing our interview with Mary Fehlig, the founder and president of The Fehlig Group. Mary is a true leader in the field of sustainability and ethical business practices. The Fehlig Group has been in operation for over 30 years. Mary herself has been named a Women’s Business Enterprise (or WBE) Star, and was elected to serve on the board of directors of the Business for Social Responsibility®, which are just two of her many, many accomplishments. I first met Mary a few years ago, when we were doing a sustainability training with one of our corporate partners, and we've had the great fortune to work with Mary in many capacities since then. We're excited to continue doing so into the future as well.[Emily] Yeah, and I've had the opportunity to learn from Mary in a few different ways, both from participating in The Fehlig Group’s Pulse Report audit, which is something that we'll get into in the episode, as well as participating in a sustainability accelerator program, which I think, Elin, you were referencing. Mary truly is the person that you want in your corner when it comes to understanding social responsibility and how to approach these ideas of sustainability and ethical business practices in a way that's not only good for people and planet, but also is actually good for your business. So she's, was a fantastic guest, and I'm really excited to share this episode with everyone.[Elin] Yeah. Me too. She's knowledgeable. Every time I talk to her, I get inspired. And I think the conversation in this episode is no exception to that, so. Sit back, relax, and please enjoy this episode of the Riveo Impact Lab.[electronic music][electronic music concludes][Elin] Mary, I'm really excited to have you here today. You're somebody that we've wanted to get on our podcast for a long time. So thank you for taking the time to talk with, with me today.[Mary] Thank you for your patience.[Both laugh][Elin] Well, I'm glad we were able to make it work out. And, I guess a great place to start the conversation is to hear about The Fehlig Group. And maybe you could explain, you know, what it, what you do and why you started doing it in the first place.[Mary] Okay. It was, you know, again, you know, we've been doing this for a while, since ‘93 and it really was to help companies identify, implement, communicate and evaluate their responsible business practices. You know, back then we really had to kind of—“What?”[Mary laughs] And it's like okay, so how do you, you know, have business practices that are, you show, you know, that you're a good steward of the planet. How do you respect and treat your people well? And then also make sure it's contributing to your profitability. So that's the whole, you know, people, planet, I mean planet, people, profits, or. And then also how do you do that in a way that also doesn't, you know, that doesn’t hurt, and actually, you know, it doesn't hurt future generations. So that's the goal is how to encourage companies to understand, this is a business practice. Because it was interesting, Elin, back there, it was, “Mmm, you know, that’s government's role,” or “That's, that's the church's role. This is not the role of business to take care of people and to be, you know, stewards of the environment or be any sort of a safety net for our society at large.” And I always quote the Ben and Jerry's, actually it was Ben who would always say to me and, you know, and in these presentations that, you know, it's whoever's in power should be the one that steps into that role or responsibility. And if you look at over history, how you tell who's in power is by looking at the buildings, who has the biggest buildings?[Mary laughs] Whoever has the business biggest buildings needs to step into this. So anyway, it was, it was, you know—that's the goal. And that's what we do for clients is, you know, help them embrace sustainability, which we believe is a business imperative, which we can talk more about, and has evolved significantly over the years. But if you want to say how I started?[Elin] Yeah. Like, how did you, like, back in 93, it seems like you were well ahead of the curve, I think, if I’m—[Mary] Yeah, I was. I was. I had to do, I hired somebody to do research about. And the question was, how can my—I love business and I was selling technology and I was selling, you know, and I was helping people go online. Okay, I'm dating myself. So one transaction touched so many aspects of the business. That fascinated me. But every personality test and vocational training thing I did said I should be working for a nonprofit. I saw some sort of social work, some sort of social mission. So where does social mission and commercial success intersect? And that's when I actually pursued—somebody told me, so I went out and pursued Businesses for Social Responsibility. And I think I went to their second conference, you know, so, where Madeleine Albright and Bill Clinton and everybody was showing up, was talking about this. And so I learned—they were like my university. So that's how I found out about how—you know, and, you know, my goal was to find my goal, where can I really have purposeful work? And then to be really transparent, I had these two beautiful baby girls at home and if I was going to leave them, it had to be cooler than selling feeds and speeds and networks, you know, so.[Elin laughs, Mary then laughs][Elin] Well, I think you’ve, you definitely achieved that. And over the past, what is it, 33 years...[Mary] Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.[Elin] ...you've been in business, you've made huge amounts of impact. And I'm sure I only know a portion of what you've done, and how, how you measured your own impact because you've helped companies large and small with their sustainability. So, what was—like has there been a shift over the past 33 years that you could identify, thinking back to, you know, when you were first getting into this and— I guess there's probably been more than one shift because now we're—[Mary] I was going to say, “Yes.”[Both laugh][Elin] There was kind of like a renaissance, and now we're in a different time.[Mary] Yeah, but, Elin, it really has shifted over time. And, you know, I've been here before. I've been at a point where it looked like it was pretty perilous, you know, it was precarious. So, it's shifts and I think that's what we've done is that we've always shifted with what the needs of the business community, the business atmosphere are. You know, so if it was, you know, you know, in the 90s, climate action was not a top priority. Most of our work was in philanthropy, and it was in volunteering and trying to really embrace—and because of the, at that time, it was a, a labor market that were people trying to find employees. So we worked a lot in terms of that's how the benefit to the business was or the business environment was, “Oh, I got employees. We need sales.” You know, we'd shift, you know. Or there was a big issue around climate, and then so, you know—and as you know, after George Floyd, that was a huge shift too. It's all important, you know, but in terms of—we really, I would say in terms of shifting, it's us not dictating, you know, where you need—it’s helping people live their values and then not dictating, “Well, we want you to go back and work on philanthropy.”[Mary laughs] It’s showing up where the critical issues are and then surrounding it with the full platform of what was possible.[Elin] So you weren't always just focused on environmental, like sustainability?[Mary] No. No, no. We started in philanthropy and volunteering, you know, and, and then moved into human resources. I would say even before the environment, we were more in “laborer

and”: 8:51

human trafficking and sweatshops and, you know, all—so it's just been, in fact, for many years, I would be called in to different companies to say,“You know, what's, what's the issue du jour? You know, what are we working on now? You know, what's, what, what's the issue that has—” And it’s, I don't want to be, I don't want to diminish the effort because it was the issue that got attention, you know? So let's step into it. But, our experience is once somebody started stepping into,“I can live my values and it can, it can benefit me commercially,” that was just a gift to them. But and again, it was, it really, whatever the issue was, is that we tried to step, we’d help, we’d invite new people into or expand that service with an existing client. Is that an answer to that question?[Elin] Yeah. Yeah. I just didn't realize that about your history because I've known you as the sustainability experts, you know, environmentally. So that's really interesting, just thinking about how you, you've evolved and touched an even wider, you know, range of, of these issues than I realized. But one of the things that's really interesting, I think, is what you just said about it being good business. And I feel that you like diversity is good business because you're selling—you know, if you're, if you want to sell to a very narrow part of the population, or do you want to sell to our diverse population, a broader range of people and, and talk to those people in a way that they understand and relate to? Like, what is the better business practice to me?[Laughing] You know, it’s like, like these things, the environmental issues are good business practices. I, it gets, it confuses me to see messaging to the contrary.[Mary] And I would say one of our core principles, guiding principles, is that we, it has to benefit the business.[Elin] Mm-hmm.[Mary] And when I started this, I had a bunch of people at the BSR community that were like, “No, we're just good people and this is the right thing to do.” And my IBM and Xerox background said, “It's not sustainable.”[Laughing] You know, it’s like, it's not, it's not enduring, if they can't, if the business is not benefiting. So I was kind of a little bit of a black sheep, in that I would say, I would always pursue and always communicate what the business benefit was.[Elin] But that's so smart. And look, you're here 33 years later, still doing good business, so.[Mary] Right. Right, right.[Elin] Black sheep or visionary?[Laughing] Like depending on your perspective.[Mary] Maverick. Let’s go with maverick as opposed to black sheep.[Both laugh][Elin] Yeah. I love it. Yeah. When you think back on all those businesses you've helped, large and small—you know, we were your client, and, and you helped us get started on our own sustainability journey. But you've helped so many people. So is there a story that kind of stands out to you that's exemplary of the work that you do?[Mary] Well let me— I can think of one for both, large and small, if I may.[Elin] Okay.[Mary] Large, it would say, it's, it's a while ago. It's Climate Action Week in New York. My contacts at Marriott are at the—you know, the people in charge of corporate responsibility and sustainability are at the Climate Action conferences. The Fehlig Group is responsible for their Carbon Disclosure Project we now call CDP, but it was called then the Carbon Disclosure Project. And I'm literally down, because the Marriott executives had to be at Climate Action, I'm on the floor of the—and the, the, the scores were announced on the floor of the stock exchange because this Carbon Disclosure Project is funded and is for investors. So, it was at this point in time the scores were released on an evening in October on floor of the stock exchange. And all of a sudden it dawned on me, it was like,“I'm here on the floor taking credit for all these—” But the people I was working with were the communications people. After that, I went back to Marriott and said,“Can I talk to the senior vice president of operations?” You know. And so I went to him and said, “I'm taking credit for the work that you do, how you run your buildings and what you're doing. And I'd like to talk to the people that are doing this.” So we set up a team of leaders in engineering all over the world. It was a really—we’d probably gathered for more than a dozen years about, “What are we doing? What are we doing this year? What are we going to do next year?” And it was really an exciting turn to, from words on a page to being able to directly talk to and have them go, “It matters? Cool. Let me tell you what else we're doing,” or “I'm thinking about doing this.” So it, that was an exciting, that was an exciting opportunity and experience. And then on a small scale—and I think you're probably one, I know you're one of them, is that we work with the businesses and we do a thing called, we have a Pulse Report, right, where we come in and say, “All right, this is who you are. This is kind of what's expected of you based on your industry, your competitors, your, your customers. This is what you're doing, you know? And here's a path for it.” And so that's how. But, you know, like, I'm sure this happened with you. Is that you, when we come to, “This is what you're already doing,” and businesses went, “Really? I'm already doing all this,” or,“Yeah, based on what's expected of you, you're already doing it. You don't know that's what's considered under the lens of sustainability.” And that's really a pleasure. I mean, that's obviously that, that floats our boat is when people realize they’re doing so much of this, they just don't understand it fits into this definition of sustainability.[Elin] Mm-hmm Yeah. That was huge for us. And, and before we came, before we met you and before we became more educated in sustainability, I used to think that we were too small to make a difference. And we're like, we're a small team. We're remote team, and we’re a service company. We're not a manufacturer. So I just was like, “Who, us? You know, can we even make a difference?” And then we started to understand,“Yes, we're already doing things. We just have to take the extra step of tracking them so we can quantify what we're doing and then improve upon what we're doing. And...” It was just very eye opening and exciting to take that training and to realize that we're already on this journey and we can improve upon that, so. You, you know, you changed our whole trajectory when we you did your training and, and kind of learned about that, so.[Mary] But it's just, it's just really permission to this wonderful— I mean, it's, it's permission to,“I get to live my values and it contributes to my commercial success.” That's pretty cool to me. Oh, I mean, that kind of is, that is the core of what this is all about, is— but, you know, what, what is important to you and what do you... We had this, we had this thing where I wanted to migrate—the beginning of The Fehlig Group, another story is that I am the daughter of a, a, of a wholesale manufacturer and custom millwork company in Saint Louis that just closed down after 150 years. All right. But I grew up with a father that, when they, you know, that would not move, even though the neighborhood around them all of a sudden wasn't the prime place to be, was more of an economically depressed area. And everybody else was moving out of town. He stayed there because it was like, “Everybody, you know, everybody works here. How are they going to get out to us? You know, how are they going to—” I mean, there was just so many stories of watching how they were so connected and their values, his values showed up in that business. So I feel like I lived that experience, you know, so. But I do feel like that—so I really wanted to do small businesses, but it was, you know, the first decade at least of our, of this business, it was primarily big businesses. I tried everything. I, you know, I went to the chambers, small [inaudible], but I was really brought in by the larger companies. And so, but it was interesting because I got to see the progression. I got to see them go, “Wow, what I do matters?” Like I was just talking about to, you know, working on scores. And now this shift of how do we get the full value chain, which means us...[Mary laughs]...the small businesses. So I'm very excited that this shift has happened. Very excited.[Elin] Yeah. And it's really cool that you were able to build your business based on your values. And I think that your business is quite unique and to my knowledge, like you're the one I always hear about when— and in fact, yesterday I was on a webinar with, I think they're called WAICS, W-A-I-C-S? Washington DC Sustainable—[Mary] WACIF.[Elin] Yeah.[Mary] WACIF.[Elin] WACIF. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. And, and they mentioned you. And I didn't realize, you know, you just seem to be connected everywhere. So it's, you know, and I always feel like,“Ooh, and I know her.”“Ooh, and I know her.”[Both laugh][Elin] You've built a very, you've built a very cool business. And yet with, you know, changing political, you know, parties and all the things that are happening externally, the, the world of sustainability and corporate social responsibility can be challenging to navigate. If you're, if I asked you what was the biggest change you've seen over your time with this work, would you be able to answer that question?[Mary] I think right now. I’m an optimist, so I'm, I'm looking for the silver lining, in that, when, when we— it had gotten to be a lot of compliance.“You have to have an eco—you have to have an assessment by this company, or we won't do business with you,” as opposed to, “Let us use this assessment as a communication tool to really tell you who we are. And let’s find— and because of that, we're going to be partners.” That, it was, it was okay, but it was a big shift. But now that it's gone and now, you know, not that that's gone, but now that the government or the messaging has changed to, and just this intense, intensity about it is, I can't—I mean, I do trainings and people say,“Well, you know, it doesn't matter anymore, so why should I do this?” And I'm like,“Because you're good people who want to be good stewards of the earth and treat your people well, you know, and you want to live your values.” So it's kind of, to me, it's kind of going back to that original messaging. So that's a big shift and this—but so that's a shift. But also the other shift is that, as I was saying, you know, for the, you having the 20 or the 20-plus years really just pretty exclusively into big corporations, you know, and now working with their suppliers, as a, you know, we, we train the procurement teams how to work with the suppliers, we do the intermediary, and then we work directly with the suppliers. That's not going away. And that's what, you know, especially the big companies, because it's like we saw them go through, you know, the education, the identification,[Laughs] the implementation, the communication, you know, with— and now they're turning around to their suppliers and asking them to do it. Small and medium sized businesses— all the suppliers are going through the same process and the companies know how long it takes, so they want to keep that moving. So our focus really is more on the supply chain.[Elin] Yeah. I always feel—when I, when I became introduced to the world of sustainability and started meeting some of those larger corporations that require the assessments and actions from their suppliers, it made me think like, “Wow, you know, this really, despite what the government's doing or what else is happening, this really can make a real impact, positive impact on the world,” because some of those companies are really big and they're, they're requiring—there's kind of a ripple effect. You know, they're requiring improvements in their manufacturers and in their, you know, all of their suppliers. And it's got to make a difference.[Mary] It does. But what makes even a difference is all of us. And there's so many. We just did a, for WACIF, we just did a, you know, a—I've been taught to link proof points of how many consumers and why this matters and what, and plus, my gosh, the next gen and the, first of all, millennials and then the next gen, their, you know, it's almost mandatory, you know. I mean, the whole conversation has changed, so. And the more and more that we require it as consumers and, and, and, and purchase with our power, it's, that's going to be a big change. And then also telling companies,“This is why we're doing this. We are choosing you over them because of this.” You know, so it's kind of back to, for me, it's a little bit back to, back to when this, you know—I feel like I'm going a little bit back in time. But in terms of, remember, this not is, it's not just about getting that, you know, meeting that legislation or meeting that one client. It's about, “Is this good business?” It's what, access to markets. It's attracting talent. It's risk mitigation. The climate's all about risk mitigation.[Mary] Yeah. And I remember you saying that in the past, when the government has relaxed environmental regulations, your business became even busier because people were doubling down. At least I think that's what you said. The people were doubling down on wanting to do something.[Mary] I mean, I went and asked,“Okay this isn't going”— to executives—“This is going...do you want a pause, because it's, you know, it's a lot to, [inaudible] into it and, it's hard to get everybody to get all the information we needed.” And he went, “Absolutely. Because, you know, we if, if, if not us, who? As well as we want, we want, we want to be able to answer the question,‘What were you doing then?’”[Elin] Yeah. Yeah. And I really like the, the way you framed it in that, sometimes in this day and age it can feel like we don't have the power, like it can feel very discouraging to see, “Oh, there's no more environmental regulations out of all these manufacturers and such.” But we do have power because we do have the purchasing power. We do have, you know, other ways to express support of, you know, what we choose, how we choose to spend our money or our time or, who we choose to boycott.[Elin laughs] You know, like, we do have something that we can do.[Mary] Now, now this might be a little biased because I'm a woman, but 30, you know, 33 years ago, we said, so when I'd have to go talk to people and say,“This is coming. You're going to have to show up.” It was because first of all, social media. Communications was all going to be out of, not, you know, you’d better be good because you're going to get exposed.[Mary laughs] And the rise of women, the rise of technology, there was all these drivers that said, there's, this has to happen. And then plus, you know, and now we say that the climate, you know, it's no longer a theory. We're all experiencing the extreme weather events. We've sees, you know, what happens with health inequities, with the pandemic. You know, we're all experiencing it now so. And my, I guess one of my things is I do get nervous with acronyms like ESG, even when it came out, it made me nervous. It's real easy. But, it just made me nervous because I have people going,“Well, you know, well, no ESG,” and I went, “So you don't want to take care of the planet and you don't want—”“Well, no, that's not what it's about.”[Laughing] I was like, “Yeah, it is.”[Elin] Mmm. Why, why is that? What, why do you get nervous about acronyms? Because people are just like—[Mary] People can weaponize them, and people can weaponize them and, and not understand what they are.[Elin] So it's easy to just brush it aside and say—I guess that happened with DEI.[Mary] Exactly. That was a, you know, CRT was the first thing that raised a flag. And then—which, critical race theory, and then DEI, and then I, and then, and then I went, I. I, so I’ve never done a presentation that I haven't said— and I use sustainability both for social, for the people, for the planet and the business.[Elin] Right. Right. Yeah. And thinking about like a business being sustainable, you treat your people well, you do certain things so that you can stay in business. Yeah. I love your approach of it being good for the planet, good for the people, you know, and good for the business.[Mary] And good for the business. And if it’s, you know, and, and when we would talk to people—and so it's back to, because when we started there were a lot of people that just did it because they're, you know, they hung out literally with, you know, how, you know, the Starbucks, The Body Shop, Ben and Jerry's and those folks, you know, and, “We just do this because we're cool people.” I mean, this is, I'm putting words in their mouth, but that was, you know, “We don't—” And I'm like, well then it’s, you know, that, back to that whole concept of it has to be beneficial to the business for it to be enduring, to, for it continue and, that we're back to that conversation. And, and back then I'd say, you know, I, we always talked about trying to have people hold on to the business objective but not forget the soul part of it, too. You know? You still get to feel good about it.[Mary laughs] You still get to live your values. Don't, you know,— it's, it’s Mary and I'll, I'll, you know, marry both those together.[Elin] Right. Yeah. And I, I guess—so my next question I think is related to this too, and it's, for a lot of people, individuals and small businesses and nonprofits thinking about, you know, all the, the challenges that they're already facing just in this day and age. Financial challenges, so many other issues—you know, I’m thinking about nonprofits. You know, they have so many difficulties these days with grants being cut and, and legislation changing and such. So the idea of doing more with sustainability could feel overwhelming, you know, as they navigate these other pressures, or maybe their team is just doing so many things. So I'm sure there's a way to reframe the thinking around that and to help them feel a little calmer and better about engaging in more sustainable behaviors. Can you, like, kind of speak to that?[Mary] Well, I think it's about, again, I believe it's a business operative, to open new markets, to—And, and, and that goes for the environment, the social, the philanthropy, the voluntary. So, and go back to my comment about I was selling technology that touched, information technology that touched multiple different departments. So you can do—I mean, and one of my, one of the, one of the ways into this, I was working with a catering company and they had—their, their philanthropy money was drying up at one of our recessions[Mary laughing] over the years, over the years. And so we said,“Okay, well take your clients to this museum for your marketing efforts, not your philanthropy. This is, instead of taking them to a restaurant or to a hotel, you know, and.[Elin] Mmm. Mm-hmm.[Mary] But not only do you get the opportunity for this direct sales opportunity when your marketing department likes it and your philanthropy department likes it, and your employees—because now you're touching all those different stakeholders, you're. And that, ‘cause there’s so much, when you think about, every, everything, you've got to think about,”What's important to me and our company, and,” but also, “Who cares? And where is it going to enhance those relationships?” And if you're leveraging all of them, it's, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a price performer.[Mary laughs][Elin] Yeah. Absolutely. So just a little outside-of-the-box thinking can go a long way.[Mary] Yeah. And just to think about,“Well where, who are all the people that it matters to that were involved with the local market, with the local community? Who cares if we’re being environmental? Who cares that we have an EcoVadis? You know. I was just talking to a client yesterday. I said, “Go out and find everybody on, you know, in this org, in this business group, because they all say they're going to ask all their, their suppliers to do it.” Well, that's amazing marketing tool now. You know, as you know, Elin, all the pharmaceutical companies are stepping into, want EcoVadis in their suppliers. Well that's a great opening statement for a marketing call. It's just to be strategic about, it’s how do you use this? I feel that it's as, as impactful as technology was, in terms of as, as, you know, application software that moved out of that computer room into the, into the user’s. One transaction should hit multiple areas.[Elin] So really— like for this podcast, we, we speak to small business owners and they really should be, no matter what business they're in, they really should be paying attention to sustainability, is what I'm hearing you're, hearing you say.[Mary] Yes. And find a way. Yeah, and it should be something that makes—and also should make sense to go,“Oh, that would make sense why that company's doing that.”[Elin] Mm-hmm.[Mary] You know, that, that, have it also build your brand equity, have it be part of your messaging in terms of, well they support this or they do this because that's— I mean, Elin, all that you do, it's because you're helping, you want to tell somebody because you want them to know you can help them do it. You help, help them communicate it, message, show their impact. But it's so, and so back to what you're doing builds your brand equity.“Well, this is who we are. Not because it's just a nice thing to do. It's good. This is our competency.”[Elin] Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, exactly. Exactly. No I, I like the way you think, Mary. What—so we, we ask everybody this question. And I'm curious to hear your answer. What does the word “impact” mean to you?[Mary] The outcome. I can have, I can have an outcome on, based on the information we, on the work that we do. We can affect, have change, is what impact. Impact doesn't have to be my values, you know. It doesn't. It just has to be, “We don't want it to be words on the page. We want it, don't want it to be busywork. You know, it's has to have the desired outcome. It has to have that impact.” It just happens, to ours is to do responsible practices that benefit the planet, people and the business.[Mary laughs] So that's the desired outcome, is that. I don't know if that helps, but. I do get called out sometimes on, on, you know,“Is that a bad person because their values are different than yours? Or a bad company?” And it’s like, “No, they're just not mine,” you know.[Elin] Mm-hmm. I've loved everything you’ve said today. Thank you. Is there anything, as we wrap up here, is there anything else you want to add or discuss?[Mary] How they find out about us. And I think that's fehliggroup.com, and if you want to share our email. But even more importantly is you and I, you know— The Fehlig Group is really moving more into a collective because we are leveraging the 30-plus years in this. And so we want to work with businesses that are moving this forward, you know, moving this effort, moving this impact, moving the, the, the. And so anybody, you know— and then what, why we love working with you is because you help tell that story. You help, you know, communicating exactly. And that's such, as I said, you know, if you're doing this and not talking to the right, all your, all your stakeholders, yeah, it is, it is just a, an extra burden on the company. It's about, that communication’s so important. Anyway, my point being is that, yeah, fehliggroup.com, if you want to, you know, share our, my, my email address. But through you, hopefully, would be a great way for us to talk, you know, because if you do our, if you do what we recommend and don't tell the story, it's, it's, it is a burden on the business and not something that you can leverage for commercial success.[Elin] It feels like—[Elin laughs] I'm doing a jigsaw puzzle right now and this kind of feels like, like you need these different pieces to come together, to be successful, you know, because doing the actions, understanding the impact, telling that story, engaging the stakeholders, letting your customers know what you're doing so they can be engaged with you, like, it all works together. And I love that. We're kind of concluding with that thought. So, yeah. Mary, it's been a pleasure talking with you. Thank you so much.[Mary] Yeah, this was fun.[electronic music][electronic music concludes][Emily] Our Make an Impact Tip of the Month is consider what your stakeholders truly value and write it down. Then audit your current efforts. Where are you already backing up those values with action? Double down on what's working and bolster your impact by closing the gaps.[electronic music] Thanks for listening and make sure to do good in the world this month. If you have questions you'd like us to address on the podcast, you can reach us at info@riveocreative.com. Subscribe wherever you listen so you don't miss out on any of our incredible upcoming guests. And we'll see you soon at the Riveo Impact Lab.[electronic music][electronic music concludes]