More Plastic Than Fish: ZeroCo’s solution to the single-use plastic crisis, why the future of business is purpose-driven and how to crack a Kickstarter campaign.
12/07/21 • 47 min
Every minute, a garbage truck worth of rubbish goes into our ocean. If we don’t make drastic changes as a global community, there’ll be more plastic than fish in our oceans by 2050.
Despite what we've all been taught, recycling is not the solution. In Australia, just 15% of plastic that we send to recycling is actually recycled. The other 85%? It ends up in landfill or in the ocean. We have to shift our thinking to a refill model, reducing the number of new plastics that we buy while simultaneously removing existing plastics from the environment.
Mike Smith, founder of Zero Co, joins us for an eye-opening account on the environmental crisis we're in due to the prevalence of single use plastics. Mike shares lessons on how to crack the Kickstarter model - Zero Co ran Australia’s most successful Kickstarter campaign in 2019 - what it was like starting a business in the height of the pandemic and how building a passionate community has been crucial to Zero Co’s early success.
Changing consumer behaviour is tough. The price - quality - convenience trifecta is a key driver for consumers. Mike shares how he thinks about changing behaviour, and how it’s no longer enough to just launch a business. To grow, businesses now and in the future need to solve for the world’s biggest problems. Doing good and deep purpose has to be baked into the DNA of the company and their reason for being.
Every minute, a garbage truck worth of rubbish goes into our ocean. If we don’t make drastic changes as a global community, there’ll be more plastic than fish in our oceans by 2050.
Despite what we've all been taught, recycling is not the solution. In Australia, just 15% of plastic that we send to recycling is actually recycled. The other 85%? It ends up in landfill or in the ocean. We have to shift our thinking to a refill model, reducing the number of new plastics that we buy while simultaneously removing existing plastics from the environment.
Mike Smith, founder of Zero Co, joins us for an eye-opening account on the environmental crisis we're in due to the prevalence of single use plastics. Mike shares lessons on how to crack the Kickstarter model - Zero Co ran Australia’s most successful Kickstarter campaign in 2019 - what it was like starting a business in the height of the pandemic and how building a passionate community has been crucial to Zero Co’s early success.
Changing consumer behaviour is tough. The price - quality - convenience trifecta is a key driver for consumers. Mike shares how he thinks about changing behaviour, and how it’s no longer enough to just launch a business. To grow, businesses now and in the future need to solve for the world’s biggest problems. Doing good and deep purpose has to be baked into the DNA of the company and their reason for being.
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'We're in the Customer Service Business': How Prioritising Customer Happiness is Enabling Cars24 to Disrupt the $55B Used Car Sales Industry
Australia's used car industry's worth $55 billion and about 1 million cars are sold every year, some are new, some are used.
Despite the huge market for car sales and our reliance as a country on personal vehicles, the process of buying and selling used cars is fraught with risk and hasn't evolved a great deal over the years. Whether you're buying a car off Gumtree or from Dave at the dealership down the road, you never really know if you're getting an absolute steal, or a total lemon. Given the size of the market and the evolution in how we shop and buy almost everything else, it's incredible that the industry has seen so little disruption.
If you follow disruptors and innovative business models, you probably know of Carvana - they’re the fastest growing online used car dealer in the United States and were recently added to the 2021 Fortune 500 List. Well, Australia has its own disruptor in the car sales space.
Meet Cars24. Erin Williamson, Cars24’s Chief Customer Officer, joins us on the show to talk about used car horror stories, the opportunity Cars24 saw to disrupt the market and provide an alternative model for used car buyers, how their business model works, why Cars24 doesn't have sales people, and why their online model is the way of the future for car sales.
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Season 3 - Coming May 14
Unconventional Business is back, with season 3 coming May 14th.
Follow the show and get ready to hear from some of our best homegrown challenger brands, including Airwallex, Tracksuit, me&u, HotDoc, Gelato Messina and more.
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