24 fingers: Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to another episode of 24 Questions. I’m Emma Goode, founder of Essex digital marketing agency 24 fingers, and I’m absolutely delighted to be joined today by the wonderful Jill Poet of the Organisation of Responsible Businesses. Jill is someone I often refer to as the person I want to be when I grow up in business, so this is going to be a fantastic conversation.
Jill Poet: Thank you for that lovely introduction, Emma. It’s a real pleasure to be here with you today, and I have to say, I think you’re already pretty grown up and doing incredibly well in business.
24 fingers: That’s very kind of you to say. So Jill, before we dive into our 24 questions, tell us a bit about yourself and your background.
Jill Poet: Well, my background is in management accountancy, which I did for about 40 years working with micro and small businesses. I’m passionate about small businesses, and whilst I don’t do much accountancy work now apart from a few exceptions, I still handle my own company accounts and have one little payroll client that I’ve been doing forever.
My main business now is the Organisation for Responsible Businesses, which is my absolute passion. I also have another website business called Healthy Life Essex which is packed with information helping people live happier, healthier, greener lifestyles.
24 fingers: That sounds fascinating. Tell me more about the Organisation for Responsible Businesses.
Jill Poet: The Organisation for Responsible Businesses, or ORB for short since it’s a bit of a mouthful, is almost the same concept as Healthy Life Essex but for businesses. We’re encouraging small businesses from sole proprietors upwards to care about people, care about the environment, be happier, do all the right things, but still be profitable and work efficiently.
We operate as a membership organisation. It’s now a member-owned not-for-profit national organisation, and we offer both membership and certification options. I’m very proud of what we’ve built.
24 fingers: That’s incredible, and I’m proud to be a member myself. Now let’s kick off with our first question – what’s your favourite word?
Jill Poet: Authentic, I think.
24 fingers: Perfect. What gets you up in the morning?
Jill Poet: Well, to be clear, I’ll be 75 next month, and one of my concessions to being older is that getting up early isn’t necessarily one of them. I love what I do and I’m passionate about it, but unless I’ve got something really important on, I wake up when I wake up, potter about, have coffee and juice in bed, and read for a little while. It’s quite civilised really. Then I’m at my desk, driving this business forward that we’ve built.
24 fingers: I love that approach to work-life balance. What do you honestly think of social media?
Jill Poet: I like LinkedIn. You can criticise it, but it’s still very honest and business-orientated for the most part. You do get some silly things on there, but mostly I quite like it.
I’m not personally interested in all the other platforms, and what social media is doing on a personal basis for a lot of people, I think it’s just horrendous. I steer clear of it. I think it’s particularly worrying for young people – there needs to be so much more control.
24 fingers: I completely agree with you on that. Are you a Kindle or physical books person?
Jill Poet: Both. We actually have quite an extensive library in our lounge, so Mike and I both love hard copy books. But of course, I love the convenience of the Kindle as well, the fact that you can take it anywhere – holidays, train journeys, whatever. So yes, definitely both.
24 fingers: I’m not quite sure what industry to put you in, but what would you say is the biggest challenge facing your industry?
Jill Poet: That’s an interesting question because I don’t neatly fit into any industry. Whenever I get those tick boxes that say “select your sector,” it’s nearly always “other.”
Some people might say I’m in the sustainability industry, and I tend to avoid being put into that because we’re not consultants. But even more so, what bothers me is that when most people talk about sustainability, they’re talking about environmental sustainability. Actually, the environment is a big part of what we talk about – it’s one of the important pillars – but it’s just one of the pillars.
I think we need to take a very holistic approach to sustainability, and of course, sustainability in terms of business starts with sustaining the business for the long term.
24 fingers: What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Jill Poet: I can remember having those questions, and it was quite odd because, being that much older, it was very much expected that a girl would get happily married and have kids. Now I did get married and have kids very early, and yet when anyone asked me that when I was younger, I didn’t define myself by that. I always just used to say I just wanted to be happy.
24 fingers: That’s beautiful. What led you to your current career then?
Jill Poet: It was a progression. As I said, my background was working with small businesses on the profitability, accountability, and governance side of things, but I was very passionate about small businesses.
We’d launched Healthy Life Essex and converted that to a community interest company. I was going to a lot of meetings in the early 2000s where there was lots of talk about corporate social responsibility, but it was all very much corporate-focused.
With my small business passion, I kept thinking, “What about small businesses. They need to be doing this as well.” And no one was talking about that. When we looked around, there wasn’t anyone addressing it, so we thought we’d better plug that gap in the market.
24 fingers: That’s fantastic forward-thinking. Your favourite word was authentic – can you use it in a sentence please?
Jill Poet: I do wish more good businesses would talk about the good things that they’re doing in their marketing, on social media, on their websites. Obviously, they always need to be authentic about it, but it’s important to share that goodness.
24 fingers: And now can you make it rhyme?
Jill Poet: Well, if I did, it would be something like “If you don’t use authentic in your marketing, then you must be a bit of a…” and I’ll leave it to the audience to work that one out.
24 fingers: I love it. What advice would you give to your younger self?
Jill Poet: I probably would advise myself not to have got married as young as I did. I quite liked being a wife and a mother, but I just made a very bad decision in the person I married as my younger self. I don’t think I really understood what love was all about. I thought you fell in love, got married and had children – I didn’t realise it was a bit more complicated than that.
24 fingers: We can discuss our divorce stories later. What’s the best thing anyone’s ever done for you?
Jill Poet: I’ve been on this planet for nearly 75 years, and lots of people have done lots of lovely things. Nice things can be something big, or it can be something like just a touch on the arm to say “I’ve got your back.”
Over the years there have been so many nice things, big things and little things, and I can’t think of any one thing that I would say is the nicest thing anyone’s ever done.
24 fingers: I think you’re very generous as a person, Jill. You always want to help somebody or go that extra mile to support and encourage, so I’m sure the universe is giving you that back – you deserve it. What’s been your career-defining moment? You might not have had it yet.
Jill Poet: Perhaps I haven’t yet, because when we launched, we were so way ahead of the field, and it was just after the crash. Getting that traction when we’d also got financial challenges because of the situation at the time was quite difficult.
There have been some defining moments – acknowledgements, awards, I’ve published a book – but I still think the major defining moment is yet to come in terms of national recognition. The membership and certification in particular – we have a certification that’s a great alternative to B Corp for anyone who knows what B Corp is. Getting that national acknowledgement would be the main thing I’d love to see.
24 fingers: No doubt you’ll achieve it. If you won a big award of some kind, who would you thank? I think I might know the answer to this.
Jill Poet: Actually, it would be my husband Mike for always being there and supporting me. We very nearly pulled the plug on the business in the very early days because of the financial situation. I didn’t have to tell him much about it – I didn’t tell him until a few months later – but I knew that however bad it was, even if we had to sell the house and live in a caravan, he would support me. Whatever has happened, he’s always been supportive.
24 fingers: That’s wonderful. Can you tell us your time-saver of the day please?
Jill Poet: It’s probably totally different to what most people will say, but for me, my time-saver is making sure that I go through and clear my emails throughout the day. Not just at two particular times, but not looking at it every single second either.
I find that if I don’t keep my email inbox cleared, then I get a backlog, I miss things, I get frustrated. So for me, it’s important that I do that, whereas other people think “don’t look at your emails.”
24 fingers: Email is definitely a beast that has to be tamed. Where do you see your industry in 24 months?
Jill Poet: Well, it depends how we define our industry, doesn’t it. If I think about it in terms of holistic sustainability, I would like to think it’s getting more traction.
It’s challenging because the last year or two has been going in the wrong direction because of external factors. All I can say is that those of us in this sector just need to keep driving it and keep positive.
24 fingers: Where were you 24 months ago?
Jill Poet: I’m not sure that a great deal has changed actually in terms of the last two years. Three years ago there was a big change, and that was when we gifted the company to the membership.
24 fingers: That’s such an interesting decision. Tell us more about that.
Jill Poet: Mike and I launched it in 2010 as a normal limited company, but we wanted to protect the legacy of the company. So in 2022, actually on my 72nd birthday, we gifted the company to the membership.
We incorporated a new company limited by guarantee with not-for-profit articles, transferred the existing company assets across, and then gifted it to the membership. That was to protect the legacy of the company and ensure that focus on small businesses in particular.
Our articles of association even have some processes built in that we need to retain to protect the integrity of the membership. We probably could have a lot more members and a lot more money coming in if we removed those, but it would have no real value. That goes back to authenticity and core values.
24 fingers: If you could have a 24-minute Zoom chat with anybody living or dead, who would it be?
Jill Poet: I think it would be Jamie Oliver, which might sound a really strange choice, but I find him fascinating. I was thinking David Attenborough first, which would be phenomenal, but actually Jamie is so much fun and the way he picks up these causes he’s clearly absolutely passionate about and throws his all into them. I just think it would be a lot of fun, and I love his approach.
24 fingers: And he’s from Essex.
Jill Poet: And he’s from Essex, yes, and I like a lot of his recipes too.
24 fingers: What’s one word you’d like people to describe you with?
Jill Poet: Tenacious, I think, probably.
24 fingers: Perfect. What’s one quote that defines your work ethic?
Jill Poet: I suppose “a tenacious leader in the field.”
24 fingers: What’s your favourite social media campaign. I know you’re not huge on social media, but is there something that’s struck you?
Jill Poet: I don’t really look at social media campaigns. I’m on LinkedIn, but in terms of the other platforms, I just don’t go on them.
One campaign that’s been important though is the whole “pay in 30 days” campaign. There’s just been an announcement from the government that they’re going to do something about it finally and put more powers in place. Whatever type of small business you have, whatever sector, it’s just so important that we get proper payment terms in place.
24 fingers: I absolutely agree with that. What’s been the best part of your day?
Jill Poet: I can’t tell you that we’re still recording.
24 fingers: Hahaha. Finally, is there anything you’d like to plug?
Jill Poet: I think the thing I’d say is we have a little five minute questionnaire that anyone can do. There’s no cost, no commitment. We call it “perfectly imperfect” because in five minutes you can’t cover everything. But it’s a thought-provoking thing – you get immediate feedback responses about how you operate your business, and there’ll be something within that that makes you go “Oh, I didn’t think about that.”
24 fingers: What’s the link for anybody wanting to do that?
Jill Poet: It’s questionnaire.orbuk.org.uk – that’s O-R-B-U-K dot org dot uk.
24 fingers: I’ll put that in the comments. Jill, thank you so much. It’s been wonderful to catch up – always inspiring. I can’t wait to see what happens next. I know this isn’t the end for ORB, this is just the middle. It’s a fantastic organisation, one that I’m proud to be part of. Thank you so much for your time.
Jill Poet: Thank you Emma, it’s been an absolute pleasure to be here, and it’s great that you’re part of our organisation. Thank you.
