Keep It Super Simple; How You Can Change The World In 87 Seconds
Interview with John Munn, Founder of ZeroSmart
Tell us about your business. What do you do?
We make people and pets carbon neutral quickly and easily via carbon offsetting, planting trees for the long term and funding quality climate-positive projects to immediately remove more carbon than you contribute to the atmosphere.
What is your startup’s origin story?
My partner and I set up ZeroSmart after looking for ways to do more for the environment and finding it incredibly difficult. My partner is a vegetarian and I am low-meat, we both recycle everything, are very conscious consumers, use eco-energy suppliers, and regularly get involved in initiatives to plant trees etc. However, the more we looked into it the more we realised our carbon footprint was still enormous, popular eco-friendly small changes that have quite a big impact on your lifestyle actually have very little impact on your carbon footprint. They do more to make people feel good, and although every little certainly helps, we felt we could and should do more. After some research we came across carbon offsetting, but in order to get involved you either had to have near PhD level understanding of climate science or £5k+ per person to invest in the initiatives. It wasn’t that the initiatives were too expensive, just that the minimum orders were too high. Although we understand the science so got involved it dawned on us that it would be incredibly difficult for other individuals to do the same. So, we set up ZeroSmart to make it easy for people to become carbon neutral and climate positive via carbon offsetting. It is a way people can actually a huge, positive, environmental impact without hugely compromising their lifestyle, which encourages more people to take that first step. We use the co-op mentality of membership in order to reach the minimum order requirements for the top-level carbon offsetting initiatives and all projects are verified by independent third-parties such as the UN, Gold Standard (by WWF) and Verra.
Had you been involved in the industry before this startup? What is your background?
I am a multiple-award winning serial entrepreneur currently helping people become carbon neutral. I have run a music management business, the world’s first brewery to specialise in ancient alcoholic drinks, an ecom business, a social enterprise, and I currently work as a business coach alongside setting up another social enterprise that helps people become carbon neutral. I started a brewery that specialised in ancient alcoholic drinks when I was 20. After successfully exiting that, I started Global Digital Week when I was 22. We ran digital education events at universities across 7 countries and delivered online training to universities, governments, and businesses across 97 countries. We worked with SMEs as well as companies like LEGO and Google. I have been an expert contributor to the UK government’s ‘remote working’ courses that were released earlier this year that have been incredibly popular for teaching people how to work during these Covid times.. I have been a finalist for numerous awards, 3 in 2019 alone including the Great British Entrepreneur of the Year awards and Social Entrepreneur of the Year for the entire EU at the All Digital Awards.
What’s unique about your company? What are the key differentiators between you and other players?
We have three main differentiators : 1: We keep things very simple. You don’t need to have a PhD in climate science to understand how it works, how you can make a difference, or how much impact you are having. 2: We are designed for individuals, so everybody can get involved. There are no huge minimum order requirements to hit. You can offset everything from your family pet from £5 per year or your entire lifetime so far. 3: We base our offsetting on cutting-edge climate science. Most carbon offsetting initiatives focus on planting trees. Although trees have a part of play, they take too long to have a significant impact and there is only so much suitable land. It takes roughly 20 years for trees to grow to sufficient maturity (the point they start to really have an impact) and often tree-planting initiatives actually have a negative ecological impact by planting monocultures of trees or on unsuitable land types such as wildflower meadows. We have a blended strategy, with trees planted only on land verified to be ecologically suitable alongside supporting initiatives that have an immediate impact. All of our projects are ‘voluntary emissions reductions’ meaning that you are not just supporting things that would be done anyway (e.g. projects that are government mandated) but entirely novel projects that wouldn’t happen without your support. This is part of our guarantee that you have a positive climate impact both now and in the future.
Take us through a day in your life. What does the typical day look like?
My partner and I work from home. As such, we usually start the day with a ‘fake commute’ (long walk in the morning to simulate a regular commute), then goal-setting, then work for a few hours. We work to our own rhythms, so if we need a break we take one and if we are in the mood to work then you will find us working right the way through the night.
What has been the most challenging part of growing your company?
Working with a partner from home is always difficult, there is an element of being ‘too close’ in both personal and business relations that sometimes you ‘can’t see the woods through the trees’. It works well most of the time, but it can be hard to disengage from work at times.
What has been your best marketing channel? What are some channels you are looking to explore next?
Word of Mouth, without doubt. Almost all of our subscribers come from referrals from other subscribers and people they know. We would like to support this further with some social media groups.
What apps do you use that you would recommend to others?
google drive/suite is a must for us, hootsuite is great, I always recommend Zoho to everybody, mailchimp, wix, calendly, toggl. Keeping things as simple as possible
Do you have a book, podcast, or Youtube channel you would recommend to other Entrepreneurs?
book: 4 hour work week (ferris), maverick! (semler), influence (cialdini), any fiction you enjoy so you can relax podcast: EOFIRE, masters of scale, tedtalks, the tim ferris show, anything that helps you get out of your own head and relax (any non business things)
If you could go back in time to the day you founded your company, what advice would you give yourself?
Depends which company. I would’ve told myself not to focus on the money and to get things done to an ‘okay’ level rather than strive for perfection with my first company — I spent too much time on low value tasks. It is always better to get an MVP out and then use real customer feedback to improve. For Global Digital Week, I would have told myself to focus more on PR to get the leverage required for better partnerships. To shout more about the great things we were doing, I spent so much time focusing on doing the work I forgot to spend the time leveraging the work that was done. For this company: I would spend more time planning specific tasks to be completed so there wasn’t so much time feeling lost, to use my experience so far to create a simple step-by-step action plan. To start sooner. To get more of a social life set up (I recently moved country to a place where I barely speak the language, I am in the process of starting a company in the middle of a global pandemic in a place where I do not know the culture or language or have any social connections). To be more structured in work
What’s something you’ve learned from building your business that someone else can learn from?
There are only two things that really matter; your target audience research and the data. Every decision you make should be based on your understanding of your target audience. The data is there to tell you why you’re wrong and how to improve your understanding
