🔒Executive Q&A: Looking beyond profits with Redemption Rock and McLaren & Associates

In October, Redemption Rock Brewing Co. became the third certified B Corp in Worcester County, meaning its focus is on providing a community and global benefit, rather than strictly looking at revenue and profits. Its certification came just over a year after McLaren & Associates CPAs, in Shrewsbury, became Worcester County’s second certified B Corp, following in the footsteps of Worcester sober home Vanderburgh House. Dani Babineau from Redemption Rock and David McLaren from McLaren & Associates sat down (virtually) to chat about the benefits of being a B Corp.

McLaren: What made you decide to become a B Corp?

Babineau: When myself and my three partners decided to open a brewery, we wanted to do something that wasn’t just making money, or about making beer. We wanted to make the world a little bit better. We learned about B Corps at a seminar at the Craft Brewers Conference about six or seven years ago, and it immediately resonated with me.

It is about being held to a higher standard. What I love the most is it is a road map for us to run the company the way we want to run it. It feels very authentic to who we are as people, who we are as a company, and what our customers love about us. The certification itself is a rubber stamp that we are doing some things to make a difference. What about you?

McLaren: Our goal was to really be different than any other CPA firm out there. I don’t mean just in Worcester; we want to be different than everyone else worldwide. This means giving back to the community, but it is so much more than that. It means dealing with small business owners who are so underserved and need a lot of help. It is not just dropping numbers on tax forms, but showing these small business owners how they can create significantly more money so they can create more jobs and have a bigger influence on the community and their family. We use only local small businesses as vendors. We’ve done a lot of free services to the community, in particular with everything going on with COVID-19. We do videos to give people free information.

I think we are the 11th CPA firm in the world to get the designation, and the first in New England. It is not the typical focus for a professional services firm. That doesn’t make anyone else wrong, but it is just what we do. We believe we will succeed by doing good.

Babineau: We’re on the consumer-goods side, so we’ve done the deep dive for what it means for us. I feel consumer product companies are probably one of the biggest categories for B Corps since people are looking at businesses like breweries to contribute to the world and their communities in some way.

It is interesting you all as a professional services firm have become a B Corp because those businesses tend to be demonized as evil accountants who are all about the money. It is a cool thing you all are considering your impact on the world.

McLaren: What are you doing differently compared to non-B Corp breweries?

Babineau: Honestly, the biggest difference is making conscious decisions to be better and following through on them. We put a lot of time and energy into our hiring process. We implemented a blind hiring process. In the beer industry, there are a lot of problems with lack of diversity, whether it be gender, race, or ethnicity. We really wanted to tackle that.

In the blind hiring process, we got rid of accepting resumes. I hate resumes. We developed a series of questions to gauge passion and ability and completely blinded them so we couldn’t gauge their gender or their ethnicity. We evaluated them, and then did a blind chat process. We only unblind them right at the end when we are doing final evaluations. Since we started doing a blind hiring process, we’ve only hired women, including two women of color, which is interesting.

We also pay a living wage, which is unique in the service industry, instead of doing a sub-minimum tip wage. When people do want to leave a tip, we end up donating all of them at the end of the month to a different local nonprofit. Then there are little things people can make around sustainability and local sourcing. It is more fun to work with people who are in our local communities, rather than big box stores.

Babineau: What has been the more challenging aspect for you?

McLaren: The most challenging part at the beginning was getting the team to believe we are really here to make a difference not only in the community and in clients’ lives, but in the team’s lives as well. So much of the focus in professional services firms is on money, when a new team member comes on, you need to not only say that is the focus, but you need to walk that talk.

Our culture is very different. We hire based on personality. You can be the most skilled person in the world, but if you don’t fit into our community here, it is never going to work. We look at people, knowing skills can be taught later. No one can come in and hit the ground running. We do a lot of training ourselves, way above the industry standard.

Everyone here gets a vote, and all the decisions are made by the team. The big struggle for me is when the team votes to say, “This is the way we are going to go,” and I think, “This isn’t the way I would go;” but that is what we decided. You get a lot more buy-in with the team when they are actually making the decisions. We let go of the reins and let them run the firm.

Babineau: You are taking a step back as a person who is in a position of leadership to let go of your ego and say, “This is the decision.”

McLaren: Yes, that’s not easy.

Babineau: It never is.

McLaren: Have you seen benefits from being a B Corp?

Babineau: Definitely. We use it a lot in our marketing. It has helped us develop a really loyal group of customers. Especially with COVID, we have customers who really want to see us succeed. We have this emotional connection with our customers we wouldn’t have if we were just a regular brewery.

McLaren: We found that as well. Initially, we struggled in competing with the large accounting firms, who can just throw money at people. Now, that we’ve become a B Corp, we have a waiting list of people who want to join the firm. We get calls from people from all over the United States, both from people who want to work here and those who want help becoming a B Corp themselves. It has turned things around for us.