Building a purpose-driven business is hard. Scaling one is harder. In Part 2 of this two-part episode, three women founders share hard-won lessons on growing a social enterprise without losing the mission: how to price against “free,” survive multi-year corporate sales cycles, stay profitable, and keep going when systems change feels slow.

You’ll hear from Tessa Clarke, Founder of Olio, the food-sharing app fighting food waste; Alessa Berg, Founder of Top Tier Impact, a global impact investing network spanning 80+ countries; and Heather Terry, Founder of GoodSAM Foods, an ethical, sustainable snack brand with zero middlemen in its supply chain.

Tessa explains why Olio’s biggest competitor isn’t another startup but the bin, and how a “never be beaten by the bin” pricing philosophy shapes the entire business model. Heather makes the case that cheap prices hide real costs (“someone is suffering for you to buy it at that price”) and why she’d rather scale slowly and profitably than fast and fragile. Alessa shares how to handle the moment your company outgrows its systems, and why the thinking behind AI tools matters more than the tools themselves.

If you’re a social entrepreneur, impact founder, or sustainability leader trying to grow a business that does good and makes money, this episode gives you practical frameworks and honest advice from founders who’ve done it.

What You’ll Learn

• How to compete when your real competitor is free, convenient, and doing nothing at all
• What to expect when selling to large corporates, including sales cycles of three to eight years
• Why “no impact without sales” should shape every mission-driven business
• Why profitable, slow growth can disrupt a broken industry more than fast scaling
• How to recognize when your business has outgrown its processes, and what to do next
• How to use AI tools effectively by focusing on the logic and thinking behind them
• Why community and belonging are essential, though unpriced, assets for founders
• The financial basics every impact entrepreneur needs to know
• How to sustain yourself through the long game of systems change

00:00 – Intro: from founding an impact business to scaling one

01:05 – Pricing a sustainability service when waste is “too cheap”

02:20 – The downside of selling to large corporates

02:53 – The hidden cost of cheap products

03:25 – Profit isn’t the enemy of the mission: “no impact without sales”

04:30 – Outgrowing your systems as you scale

05:17 – Using AI with intention: cognition over tools

05:53 – Advice for social entrepreneurs

06:15 – Systems change takes decades, not years

06:25 – Find your community: roots that make your branches grow

07:30 – Know your numbers: why finances are the lifeblood of your mission

08:00 – Closing

About the Show

IT SHOULDN’T BE THIS HARD by grounded is a podcast show for business leaders, social entrepreneurs, and sustainability professionals navigating the messy meaningful work of responsible business and conscious leadership. Co-hosted by Phil White and Heidi Schoeneck, each episode brings together social impact entrepreneurs, corporate changemakers, and sustainability leaders -who've been there and are doing it- for lively, playful (and sometimes provocative) conversations about why it's so hard to do the right thing (and do the right things). This episode was produced and narrated by Paloma Jacome.

Additional Resources

🤖 Meet Gaia, Grounded's sustainability AI: https://grounded.world/gaia

🌍 Get Grounded: https://grounded.world/

#Sustainability #ImpactInvesting #FoodWaste #SocialEntrepreneurship #WomenFounders #Business #ItShouldntBeThisHard

Three fierce women founders join us on IT SHOULDN’T BE THIS HARD, all kicking ass across different industries: food waste, capital flows for a new regenerative economy, and ethical, sustainable snacking. Tessa Clarke (Founder of Olio), Alessa Berg (Founder of Top Tier Impact), and Heather Terry (Founder of GoodSAM Foods) aren't waiting for the system to get fairer, cheaper, or more rational before they act. They're building what needs to exist themselves.

Tessa Clarke grew up on a farm where food waste "was pretty much criminal" which is exactly why, on moving day, she resorted to what she calls cross-border vegetable smuggling rather than let the removal men throw out perfectly good food. That was the lightbulb moment for Olio, now a neighbor-to-neighbor app that's moved 150 million meals' worth of food. Alessa Berg built Top Tier Impact's 80-country ecosystem by trusting what she calls her own "internal coding" instead of forcing her path into a five-year plan. And Heather Terry built Good Sam Foods around a simple, radical bet: cutting out the middlemen and prioritizing farmers.

This episode gets into the reframes that changed how each of them operates: why Olio stopped talking about saving the planet and started talking about what's in it for you, the "drama triangle" Alessa uses to catch herself before slipping into victim mode, and Heather's belief that "weaponizing cash" by building a company that's profitable and does right by its supply chain is can be more disruptive than protest.

• Why environmental messaging failed to drive action for Olio and what actually worked instead
• How Olio turned its biggest weakness (food vanishing off the app in seconds) into its main revenue driver
• Why treating corporate partners as paying clients, not donors, is what unlocked Olio's supply side
• How to use the "drama triangle" (victim, hero, perpetrator) to catch yourself before you play the victim
• Why Alessa trusts "emergence" over rigid five-year plans and what that looks like in practice
• How Top Tier Impact operationalizes "take responsibility for your reality" as a company-wide rule
• Why Good Sam Foods runs its entire supply chain with zero middlemen
• How cutting out middlemen directly improves the economics of smallholder farmers and indigenous communities
• Why Heather sees profitability itself as a form of protest against a broken system
• How scaling slowly and staying profitable can undermine a broken industry faster than scaling fast

00:00 – Three founders, three industries, one instinct

01:30 – Tessa Clarke: growing up where food waste was "pretty much criminal"

02:00 – "Why isn't there an app for this?" Olio is born

02:44 – Alessa Berg: trusting her own "internal coding"

03:15 – Building Top Tier Impact's 80-country ecosystem

03:49 – Heather Terry: backing smallholder farmers, cutting the middlemen

04:21 – The Reframe: what changed how each founder operates

04:30 – Olio's pivot: from "save the planet" to "what's in it for you"

05:06 – Alessa's framework: escaping the victim-hero-perpetrator triangle

05:45 – Heather's reframe: "weaponizing cash" as protest

06:10 – The Reframe, in practice

06:31 – Olio's 100,000 volunteers and the supply-side fix

07:35 – TTI's rule #1: take responsibility for your reality

07:59 – Good Sam's slow, profitable scale as "system sabotage"

08:36 – Closing + what's coming in Part 2

About the Show

IT SHOULDN’T BE THIS HARD by grounded is a podcast show for business leaders, social entrepreneurs, and sustainability professionals navigating the messy meaningful work of responsible business and conscious leadership. Co-hosted by Phil White and Heidi Schoeneck, each episode brings together social impact entrepreneurs, corporate changemakers, and sustainability leaders -who've been there and are doing it- for lively, playful (and sometimes provocative) conversations about why it's so hard to do the right thing (and do the right things). This episode was produced and hosted by Paloma Jacome.

Additional Resources

🤖 Meet Gaia, Grounded's sustainability AI: https://grounded.world/gaia

🌍 Get Grounded: https://grounded.world/

#Sustainability #ImpactInvesting #FoodWaste #SocialEntrepreneurship #WomenFounders #Business #ItShouldntBeThisHard

In Part 2 of this two-part conversation, co-hosts Phil White and Heidi Schoeneck continue their conversation with Matthew McCarthy, former CEO of Ben & Jerry's, moving from the false choice of purpose vs. profit into some of the thorniest territory in modern leadership: anti-woke backlash, the monetization of conflict, and the quiet collapse of trust underneath it all.

Matthew opens up about "authorizing yourself" instead of waiting for permission, then turns to what we call "wokery pokery" — the way both sides of the culture war often care more about conflict than the actual issue at stake. From there, the conversation moves through the fear of being publicly called out, why hyper-transparency has made holding statements obsolete, and why trust may be the single biggest driver of business performance.

Matthew closes with a candid look at the hardest part of leadership: not choosing between right and wrong, but choosing between two things that both hurt and why compassion for the people around you (including the ones treating you badly) might be the most underrated leadership skill there is.

• Why "authorizing yourself" is more important than waiting for permission from your boss or company
• How delegating responsibility upward quietly drains your own agency
• Why most "toxic" people are engaging in toxic behavior, not being toxic people
• The difference between the anti-woke movement's stated concerns and its actual function: monetizing conflict
• Why holding statements and PR positioning no longer work in an age of hyper-transparency
• Why "the coefficient of trust" may be the most important number a leader never measures
• The direct link between organizational trust and financial performance
• Why "check your values at the door" is a dangerous myth
• The hardest part of leadership: choosing between two painful options, not right vs. wrong

0:00 — Introduction: purpose, profit, politics

1:20 — Avoiding sticks vs. moving toward carrots

3:00 — "Authorize yourself"

5:29 —Wokery Pokery — has "woke" gone too far, or worked too well?

6:16 — Walking the talk vs. inviting criticism

9:39 — The Coefficient of Trust — "a moment of manufactured terror"

11:16 — Trust as fuel: why low trust correlates with poor results

13:53 — "Check your values at the door" is a dangerous distortion

15:00 — The case for "real talk" about the human cost of leadership decisions

15:30 — Closing: build trust, make trade-offs, keep moving

It Shouldn't Be This Hard is the podcast for leaders, founders, and change-makers navigating the messy intersection of purpose and performance — exploring why doing the right thing in business can feel far harder than it should.

🤖 Meet Gaia, Grounded's sustainability AI: https://grounded.world/gaia 🌍 Get Grounded: https://grounded.world/

#Sustainability #Leadership #BenAndJerrys #Trust #AntiWoke #Business #ItShouldntBeThisHard