🎙️ We know what greenwashing is. But are we talking enough about "greenhushing"—when companies stay completely silent on climate to avoid criticism?
In this episode of Tangelic Talks, Victoria and TJ sit down with Helen Neal, founder of HN Communications. As a B-Corp certified sustainability communications consultant who has worked inside the UK Parliament and with major brands like Nissan and Virgin, Helen has a front-row seat to how regulations, politics, and public trust collide.
Helen breaks down why most corporate greenwashing isn't actually malicious—it's a structural failure between data-heavy sustainability teams and creative marketing teams. She explains why the term "ESG" is fading in favor of "business resilience", and how she built an AI tool called Zena to help companies fact-check their climate claims against global regulations to prevent fines.
In This Episode, We Explore:
🛑 Greenwashing vs. Greenhushing: Why companies are retreating into silence.
📉 The Death of ESG: Why "responsible business" and supply chain management are taking its place.
🏢 Structural Failures: How the disconnect between comms and sustainability teams creates accidental greenwashing.
🤖 Zena AI: How Helen built an AI compliance tool to check sustainability claims against global regulations.
⚠️ The AI Trap: Why you should never let generic LLMs write your sustainability content.
đź’ˇ Radical Honesty: Why humility is the biggest superpower a climate startup can have.
🔹 About Our Guest: Helen Neal is the founder of HN Communications, a B-Corp certified agency helping global brands navigate complex climate regulations and communicate their environmental impact transparently.
💬 Join the Conversation: Do strict fines for greenwashing actually help, or do they just make companies afraid to communicate? Drop your thoughts below 👇
🌱 Support the Mission: Find extended guest resources at TangelicLife.org/TangelicTalks.
đź”– #TangelicTalks #Greenwashing #SustainabilityComms #ESG #Greenhushing #ClimateCommunications #ResponsibleBusiness #ZenaAI
Tags: greenwashing vs greenhushing, Helen Neal, sustainability communications, ESG decline, corporate sustainability, AI compliance, Zena AI, avoiding greenwashing, Tangelic Talks
In this episode of Tangelic Talks, Victoria and TJ sit down with Helen Neal, founder of HN Communications. As a B-Corp certified sustainability communications consultant who has worked inside the UK Parliament and with major brands like Nissan and Virgin, Helen has a front-row seat to how regulations, politics, and public trust collide.
Helen breaks down why most corporate greenwashing isn't actually malicious—it's a structural failure between data-heavy sustainability teams and creative marketing teams. She explains why the term "ESG" is fading in favor of "business resilience", and how she built an AI tool called Zena to help companies fact-check their climate claims against global regulations to prevent fines.
In This Episode, We Explore:
🛑 Greenwashing vs. Greenhushing: Why companies are retreating into silence.
📉 The Death of ESG: Why "responsible business" and supply chain management are taking its place.
🏢 Structural Failures: How the disconnect between comms and sustainability teams creates accidental greenwashing.
🤖 Zena AI: How Helen built an AI compliance tool to check sustainability claims against global regulations.
⚠️ The AI Trap: Why you should never let generic LLMs write your sustainability content.
đź’ˇ Radical Honesty: Why humility is the biggest superpower a climate startup can have.
🔹 About Our Guest: Helen Neal is the founder of HN Communications, a B-Corp certified agency helping global brands navigate complex climate regulations and communicate their environmental impact transparently.
💬 Join the Conversation: Do strict fines for greenwashing actually help, or do they just make companies afraid to communicate? Drop your thoughts below 👇
🌱 Support the Mission: Find extended guest resources at TangelicLife.org/TangelicTalks.
đź”– #TangelicTalks #Greenwashing #SustainabilityComms #ESG #Greenhushing #ClimateCommunications #ResponsibleBusiness #ZenaAI
Tags: greenwashing vs greenhushing, Helen Neal, sustainability communications, ESG decline, corporate sustainability, AI compliance, Zena AI, avoiding greenwashing, Tangelic Talks
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LearningTranscript
00:00forced businesses to rethink how they see sustainability we are seeing and i think
00:05you'll continue to see a rise in conversations around how do we be a responsible business for
00:11the long term certainly creating a warm and engaging mechanism for your podcast consider
00:16great tell me as a suggestion that combines an upbeat and abiding spirit without any micro music
00:22welcome to tangelic talks your go-to podcast from tangelic where we dive into the vibrant world of
00:28clean energy development sustainability and climate change in africa we bring you inspiring stories
00:34insightful discussions and groundbreaking innovations from the continent making waves
00:39in the global community tune in and join the conversation toward a brighter greener future
00:44let's get started
00:48beyond the headlines of energy infrastructure and climate lie the real stories welcome to tangelic
00:54talks we find out who's building our future who's funding it and what actually works
00:58and exactly what happens after today we are joined by helen the founder of hn communications
01:03a b core certified sustainability communications consultancy working with some of the world's
01:08biggest brands but before building her own agency helen worked inside uk parliament government affairs
01:14major corporations she's giving she's had a front row seat to how regulations politics business and
01:20public trust collide so today we're asking are sustainability regulations helping companies
01:25communicate more honestly or are we too scared to communicate at all and how can we navigate
01:31credibility in climate communications to avoid greenwashing so welcome to tangelic talks helen
01:38thank you for having me i'm really happy to be here we're really happy to have you and i think
01:42greenwashing is one of those things that always comes up in the sustainability space you know it's one of
01:49those nuggets but i guess one of the things we're really interested in in this season is how that
01:54ability to communicate can affect the scalability the credibility of a project especially when we're
02:00doing community engagement and when we're trying to get funding right so if you can just talk us through
02:05a little bit of what greenwashing is and how it intersects in sustainability yeah absolutely i mean look
02:13we have i think we can all go into our local corner shop right and we look at the products
02:19and the things
02:20that are on on the shelves and some of them will say you know brewed with 100 renewable energy some
02:25will
02:25say 100 this or you know fully recyclable and i think the level of our kind of collective mistrust these
02:35days is pretty high with a lot of brands in terms of what they actually claim and i think this
02:42has
02:42happened over the past sort of five to eight years where this mistrust has grown because so many
02:47businesses have been getting it wrong yeah um greenwashing is essentially when uh an organization
02:54either overstates a particular claim or they might uh not necessarily give the full picture of what
03:03they're saying or um maybe not even give the right amount of data or sometimes they haven't simply
03:10verified the the data to back up their claim so there's lots of things that cause greenwashing but
03:16often it's about have you made something that is slightly overstated where you haven't given enough
03:22evidence that's essentially what greenwashing is yeah and another term that gets thrown around is
03:28green hushing how is that different to greenwashing so green hushing has kind of come out off the back of
03:35greenwashing so greenwashing is all about actually companies rather than communicate at all um they
03:43want to actually say nothing because it's safer to say nothing than potentially get criticized for being
03:51seen as overstating so what we've seen is companies retreat from saying anything at all and in actual
03:58fact i think what's happened politically over the past couple of years and the change
04:03in kind of global tone from the us on sustainability has meant that we've seen a lot of these big
04:11businesses who made brand statements you know five years ago very quietly retreat from this space because
04:17they know that this topic is not welcome on the agenda right now that being said despite that retreat
04:23i'm hopeful and i think that while some companies may be slightly shying away from talking about
04:30sustainability which i don't think they should but even when they are they're not necessarily
04:37reducing their level of investment and focus around sustainability within their organization
04:42i'm not saying everyone's we have seen some but the vast majority far more than you would expect if
04:49you read all the headlines are still maintaining a level of investment which i think is a good thing
04:53yeah that's very positive because that's not the story you hear many times
04:58no no for sure and even that the the word um esg um was i felt that that was quite
05:05a big term and phrase
05:07a few years ago and kind of similar to what you said it feels like that term is um not
05:13disappeared but
05:13definitely reduced from companies um i noticed that a few websites just don't really use that as much and
05:20maybe they use that sustainability tool so um what are your thoughts there towards esg in that term in
05:25general so there's nothing wrong with esg but i think the term overall has been kind of widely sort of
05:36misused or kind of misinterpreted and actually i don't think it did many favors for a lot of businesses
05:41to use this term in the first place i don't i think we're going to see a complete kind of
05:47cutting out of
05:48what those words esg or that phrase esg in terms of how companies talk about sustainability going
05:55forward and i think that is just on a decline i also and it's not a popular thing to say
06:00but i also
06:01think things like the sdg goals are not going to be sticking around longer term i think the realization
06:07as we get closer to 2030 when you know we're not going to meet pretty much all of them i
06:14think a lot
06:14of businesses are going to say well hang on a minute was this even right should we be thinking
06:18about this in a different way and what i'm saying here is just because we're potentially saying it's
06:25the end of the sdgs it's the end of esg does that mean the end of sustainability no it doesn't
06:31but i do
06:31think this is about a new reframing of what sustainability is and particularly for how brands
06:37think and act around sustainability but i genuinely don't think it's going to be a bad thing i actually
06:44think it can be a potential positive yeah sure yeah no i was just gonna ask is when you were
06:50talking about that i remember when csr was retired because we were like nah corporate social
06:55responsibility is too much a loaded term and then we moved it into esg and now it yeah as you're
07:00saying
07:00we might just move it to something more like a lot of websites now just say sustainability straight up
07:06you know yeah but i wonder even if it will go even further and there are plenty of conversations
07:13now that talk about sustainability in a way that is actually much more palatable for a boardroom and
07:23maybe that's better and i'll explain why i think over the past couple of years and obviously what's
07:28happened in the us um and and the the change in leadership in the past couple of years over there
07:34you might think was a bad thing for sustainability and i'm not saying it was a wasn't a a bad
07:39thing
07:39however i think there was an unintentional positive i think what happened with the trump administration
07:45it forced businesses to rethink how they see sustainability and actually focusing on the things
07:53that they can align most closest to when it comes to business and what i mean by that is
08:00we are seeing and i think you'll continue to see a rise in conversations around business resilience
08:07management of our supply chains responsibility of our supply chains and human rights how we take care of
08:14nature how we manage the resources that we use so that we can continue to be an operating business
08:21in 5 10 50 years all of those things are sustainability but i think they're now starting to be couched
08:28in
08:28how do we be a responsible business for the long term and so i think the language has shifted
08:34and the mindset about what sustainability is has shifted and is shifting and i think it will continue
08:41to do so but my view i'm a complete pragmatist you know i believe in you know progress over
08:48perfection always particularly when it comes to sustainability and i think this can only be a good
08:54thing if businesses are sitting around the table and starting to see sustainability as a net positive
09:01solution within their organization because the moment they see that rather than it being a cost
09:06which is what they have seen until now more action will happen and that's what we want we want more
09:11action at the end of the day right sure and as like you said as long as the progression is
09:17being made
09:17even if there's maybe certain practices or policies you don't agree with then there's obviously a benefit
09:23there um but just just going on with h1 communications so you've worked with various
09:30large corporations nissan as a martin um i'll be really interested since one is talking about
09:36sustainability what are some of the misconceptions or mistakes that companies are making um when it
09:43comes to trying to improve themselves on that sturdy basis when you are consulting with them and trying
09:49to improve them so i'll talk about it in broad terms in terms of where i'm seeing those those particular
09:56uh challenges i think i genuinely believe that the vast majority of business never set out to do things
10:05like greenwashing i think that the vast majority want to look at what they're doing and see how they can
10:12improve it i think they do it for a number of reasons some because it fits with their brand and
10:17it fits
10:18with their philosophy of who they are and what they stand for some they know that that's also really
10:23important to their customers and some believe it as part of their you know long-term growth and plans
10:29for um for change so there are many reasons as to why this is important for them but i think
10:36what happens for a lot of businesses and these are great organizations who have you know super intelligent
10:43teams and departments so why are they getting tripped up in this space i think it's a structural
10:49problem and it's a process problem internally within corporates as you guys know you'll have all of your
10:55different departments the sustainability team the comms team the marketing team legal the reality is that
11:01a lot of the time these teams don't necessarily always talk to one another i think what happens with
11:07sustainability because we've seen such a rise in regulation and regulation that carries risk of
11:14of significant fines um there is a there is a way in which we need to communicate on sustainability that
11:22is not the same as you would usually just you know market your brand or your product it has to
11:26be
11:26different but i think what's been happening is the sustainability teams will take that kind of raw data that
11:32information you know those potential areas to make claims and it gets handed over to the comms team
11:38and i'll be the first person to put my hand up you know i'm from the comms world we like
11:42to look at
11:42things and make it short and snappy and we want it to resonate with people and set their hearts on
11:48fire and
11:49you know do all of that great stuff and so we we get really creative with our language and our
11:54messaging
11:54but we need it to be really sort of super focused now of course that doesn't depend itself particularly
12:02well when you need to credibly communicate on sustainability and be able to explain all of the
12:09kind of data that supports all of that it just it just doesn't fit it's not natural bedfellows
12:13so i think what happens is all of that data gets to the comms team the comms team take that
12:18run with it build
12:19these beautiful campaigns make these great claims but forget that there's a background to how we
12:25communicate on this and make sure that we have all the evidence and data to back it up at our
12:29fingertips
12:30and be able to communicate that to our customers as well so i think this is what's happening internally
12:35and structurally for for businesses where they often get tripped up um there are some simple ways that
12:42you can at least get yourself a bit further along the line and kind of reduce your risk and it
12:48isn't
12:49rocket science there are just some things about like we were saying earlier about thinking
12:53sustainability differently you can think about the communication slightly differently as well
12:57that makes sense and i guess in a smaller scale then if you have a startup or someone who's
13:03you know just a one-man band basically and they're deploying a new project or they have an idea for
13:12um an entrepreneurship that might bring for example microgrids to rural communities and things like that
13:18how are they supposed to be communicating because especially in that initial phase you don't
13:24really have that data you have theories and ideas of how things are going to go but you can't really
13:30back up your claims just yet so where how do we deal with communications in that initial phase
13:36always worth taking a slight step back so when you want to make claims or you want to talk about
13:42what you're doing even at a really small scale this is going to sound super obvious but it's really
13:47important to start with a bit of humility and honesty and and this works really well with the topic of
13:53sustainability the truth is no one no one no government no big business no one has all the answers when
14:02it
14:02comes to sustainability and you know really encourage businesses small and large to say we're here we're
14:12trying this is work this hasn't this is what we plan to do next and we're going to see how
14:19that works and
14:19then we're going to test it out it's really important to ryan rather than try and claim that you have
14:26got
14:26it all sorted and you've got that claim and everything's super clear the reality is it is so i think
14:31the more
14:31you can start with humility and explain your process and journey and keep the story very human
14:37then i think you'll earn a lot more credibility and a lot more um trust with the people that you're
14:45communicating to and of course that goes with all communication right but it is especially
14:51sustainability yeah no it's it's that word trust is is so important now especially in the world that
14:57we live in where probably trust is at a all-time low of its politics or nature right yeah yeah
15:04yeah so no i i think that's it's it's so important because i think there's so many companies that
15:10promise the world a lot of the time and even in certain industries it the promises they will
15:17work don't really synergize with the industries that they're working in um so yeah i find that so
15:23interesting but i think maybe um a weirder question for me but i'm always intrigued with some of the
15:29companies that you're working and are there any restrictions to companies that you do um allow
15:36to maybe consult with because i can imagine that there's a few companies that maybe it might not
15:42fit the parameters or are you welcoming to all companies depending on what they're seeking
15:47we are not for every company that is for sure um and we we're a b corp as well so
15:53i think that
15:54immediately puts some parameters around who we can on who we want to work with um and that can be
16:01hard
16:01you know we're we're a small business ourselves you know we're a team um and i think it can be
16:08challenging to say no but it can also be equally deeply liberating and every time we've said no
16:14we have become clearer and more focused about who we are and what we stand for and i think that's
16:20really important and as a business owner myself you know you when you choose to run a business and
16:27build a business it's really hard and there are good days and bad and i just think i haven't chosen
16:35this challenging path just to say yes you know it's important to be able to say no and it's important
16:44for our brand and our credibility so you know there are certainly um organizations that you know
16:50probably quite obvious that we just wouldn't work with but we wouldn't be right for them anyway
16:56yeah no that makes sense one of the things we saw on your profile that i found really interesting was
17:01zena zena how do you pronounce it it sounds more about that yeah sure so um you know the world
17:09of ai
17:10let's be honest we're all involved in it we're all in it in some way shape or form and um
17:15again i love
17:16anything that is you know often new and different and obviously this is all kind of built bubbled up
17:23in the past couple of years and last summer this is true and slightly sad but i'm going to admit
17:28it
17:28last summer i was on holiday in mallorca with my family and uh i spent the second half of the
17:33holiday
17:33on a sun lounger building this platform just doing it through vibrate i know it's deeply sad isn't it
17:40um luckily my family allowed me at that time to just they were like she's she's she's somewhere
17:49else so um hey mallorca sounds like a good office honestly it was definitely like you know channeled
17:55the mind by the beach but um in all seriousness i think i just got swept away from it like
18:02quite
18:02literally in um just doing vibe coding you know using a uh like a replic tool and just went down
18:10a bit of a rabbit hole and i really encourage anybody particularly entrepreneurs and businesses
18:14if you're looking at how do you embed ai into your your organization or what you're trying to do
18:19you just got to spend some time all in because it's the only way you're going to learn and make
18:24connections as to how you can use it for yourself and your business so we talked a little bit earlier
18:30about um sort of you know the work we do and what advice we give to to our clients so
18:36all of our
18:37work we base it on our own methodology which we call impact so it's all about how do we build
18:43our
18:43communications in a way that is our gold standard and it's called impact and it basically stands for
18:49integrity meaning proof action consistency and transparency and we judge all of our work all of
18:56our communications against that impact framework and i thought wouldn't it be interesting if i could
19:03put our philosophy into a system and sort of channeled everything through that i wonder if it
19:10could do it so we put that in the the tool first and built out this agent and it could
19:15do it it did
19:15it pretty well actually um these things always need more time you know like they always say oh i built
19:22this million dollar business in two days using ai it's just like totally it's not true it's not true
19:27um and so built that out and then i thought okay going back to my regulatory days in government
19:34relations and parliament wouldn't it be interesting if i could then layer over all of the global
19:40regulations that i know impact the way in which businesses communicate on sustainability the ones that
19:45are going to you know find a business if they make a greenwashing claim yes i put that on top
19:52of that
19:53layer so we then did that and that's really when i got to the point where i really needed some
19:57specialist help and brought in some incredible tech people to kind of help build it out so that's how we
20:03built zenit and essentially what the tool does is it can read any um website or your content or memo
20:11press release whatever it might be and it will review it within the lens of our impact methodology
20:17and in the lens of those global regulations where you can get fined and it will then give you a
20:22score
20:22of how risky it is it will highlight the areas where you're at risk and it will tell you which
20:29regulations
20:29you're at risk from and then it will highlight and give recommendations as to what you need to think
20:36about in order to improve it so we never rewrite it and that's a really important thing because
20:42um getting ai to write your sustainability content and put it out there big no-no from our perspective
20:49and i can explain a bit more about that if you like but we so we coach so the user
20:54gets coached from
20:55the tool to be able to say well actually you you need to provide um verified data at this point
21:02you need to explain how you qualified that statement so think about you know how much was
21:08the water usage which communities did you work with make sure that you keep put that included as
21:13well so it will give the user that coaching and guidance so that's essentially what it is
21:18it really does help the user to improve how they communicate on sustainability and also keep them
21:24or at least reduce the risk of coming under threat from regulatory uh problems
21:31right okay and i can imagine as well in terms of keeping that legacy and maintaining the
21:38sustainability standards something like say no does does that because they can continuously
21:44use the the app use of the ai device um to ensure that they're still at that same level that
21:51you've maybe kept them at when you originally gave them that sort of advice exactly and it you know
21:57the user will always have a full file of everything they've ever checked and in actual
22:01fact we times it gets time stamped and it will confirm who did so from auditing purposes if you've
22:08said that oh yeah you know we checked it we did this etc you've got an audit trail as well
22:12and that's
22:13quite important particularly on reporting um so you know we've got that as a built-in tool but all of
22:19these things we've learned as we've tested with you know our clients and our partners to kind of
22:24build this out interestingly enough though i something i didn't expect was that a lot of people use it to
22:30actually draft original content i always thought it was going to be used to just simply you know put
22:36existing pre yeah sent in but no i think a lot of people have started to use it more as
22:41a kind of you
22:43know checking tool as they iterate which you know it just goes to show what you think you create and
22:47then actually what users want can often be quite different as well that's super interesting yeah because
22:55this is one of those where you mentioned earlier that you don't trust ai to write things from scratch
23:01and just put it out there yeah is that what people are doing with it is that what you're saying
23:07that
23:07they're using it to write i would i would hope not but you know i think you know a lot
23:12of people out
23:13there are using ai to to write lots of stuff and put it out there we've all seen it right
23:17we can all spot
23:19ai content yeah i love and it's like oh it's horrible it's not nice but i think it's particularly
23:25problematic with sustainability so one of the things we did whilst we were building the tool
23:31was we said oh wouldn't it be interesting if we um test it against all of the existing llms because
23:38one of the questions came back to us was saying look this is great but why would i why would
23:42i use this
23:42and not a regular llm yeah that point let us let's test it out and actually there's a few things
23:51when you put content into an llm and you ask it a question you'll get an answer and then you
23:57ask the
23:58question again you're going to get a different answer so that consistency of knowing where is the
24:04truth becomes very difficult and of course for something like this you have to be absolute and you
24:10have to be consistent so what we what we've done is we've built those guardrails around the tool so
24:16it can't just randomly hallucinate and think like a normal llm would also some of the llms and we tested
24:24six of them uh with with green claims and uh some are some openly offered to rewrite some rewrote them
24:33completely and they were totally wrong some cited regulations that just simply didn't exist
24:39um so there's a lot of problems that come with just using llms that are are generic because they
24:46don't need to be the guardrails around it that are so important for something like sustainability
24:51so it was really interesting to kind of test all of that out but i would strongly advise anybody
24:56not to simply rely just on ai it's so important including our tool you know once it's done check it
25:04yourself um because i think that human review at the end is is where the that last 20 percent that
25:12top
25:12level value really is and i think that's how we're going to see a lot of ai be used within
25:19business it will
25:20do you know that kind of lower level work but when we get to that expertise i think that last
25:2720
25:27percent that's so important to still be done by a human in our opinion okay and sorry can i just
25:34pause
25:34um just recording because i've just got a frozen picture of you on my screen yeah me too
25:42it's okay it's okay i just i just thought i'd say just um thank you yeah just make sure yeah
25:48it's okay um but uh okay so i'll i i'm just gonna touch on um another area as well because
25:56i i saw um
25:57that you were in uh you were working in the government for a little bit and like two and i
26:02have a very brief role there but maybe we'll be oh yeah yeah i was there's my first intern there
26:08for the fcl a very a very long time ago um but i i do feel that um probably a
26:16lot of your experiences
26:17and a lot of the skills that you obtained were very useful in terms of um seeing what's beneficial
26:23in terms of sustainability for a company so we'd love for you to just delve in there in terms of
26:28what
26:28you've learned and what you've been able to take on um for haitian communication with north yeah sure
26:33what do you want should i start with parliament and then work into the court of course of course
26:37yeah so um so i did a master's in war studies actually and uh i wanted to be a spy
26:45it didn't
26:47happen i'm not a spy didn't happen they wouldn't happen that's what a spy would say
26:54um but i went into parliament and i worked for some mps and actually like i'm sure maybe you you
27:01experienced this too uh i wrote to um nearly 60 mps and they all said no apart from one uh
27:09it's a
27:10really hard route to get into but i was quite determined and i got i managed to get some work
27:15experience and ended up getting a job um i was really grateful for the experience i mean this was
27:2025 years ago a very different world very long time ago um but i think it still sticks with me
27:26today
27:27and i think you know for all of our mistrust for all of our frustration and and the frustration is
27:34is real and we're right to have it i still in my heart and in my core believe in that
27:40institution and
27:41there are many people within that world that are working extremely hard to do the right thing and it
27:47frustrates me a lot when there are just there are some of these groups that some individuals that just
27:54pull it down but anyway i think what i learned from that experience was that that pursuit of
28:03doing something better and improving something and fighting to continue to improve it no matter what
28:09i think that passion and that drive i think really kind of has stuck with me ever since and then
28:15i think
28:16going to somewhere like virgin and virgin atlantic just really continued that passion you know and i think
28:22i learned so much from that business even now i look back and i i i can see so many
28:27lessons i
28:28learned back then that we've embedded into um you know how we work and how we think about work now
28:34but
28:34i think one of the big things i took away from virgin was you know to use your personality to
28:40use
28:41difficulty so rather than you know feel like you have to fit a mold or a caricature you know i
28:47need to
28:47be really serious i need to be really corporate i need to be this and the other um it really
28:52encouraged
28:53you to be you and use all of you and i think when you're liberated to be your full self
28:58that's when
28:59you do your best work so i think that was a big thing that i i took away from them
29:03and then i think
29:04with nissan you know japanese company you couldn't you couldn't get any different but weirdly again i think
29:11for that organization just the uh meticulous attention to detail and rigor and continuous improvement
29:21and and perfection i found really drove me in a completely different way and so i think bringing
29:29those two kind of wildly creative and then deeply analytical and uh focused i think really helped when
29:36i then set up the business myself but i never intended to set up a business so we'll just put
29:41that out there
29:41it's not i didn't sit down one day and write a business plan it kind of just happened yeah
29:49it usually happens like it's never the route that you think you're going to take no it never is it
29:54never is i always find that interesting because now you're like you said you you've looked at nissan
30:00and virgin and you're working for so many different global companies but they'll have headquarters and
30:06ethos in a certain country so nissan and japan of course and i'm sure their sustainability
30:12um aims and features are probably different to a company in the uk and a company in the us so
30:18you work with so many international companies how do you how do you balance that in a way
30:24you're absolutely right i think all of the you know these different countries and companies think
30:29about it all slightly differently um but i think what's interesting at particularly a global level
30:34of course you know they will all have operations in some other jurisdictions around the globe and that
30:40brings its own challenges because how europe thinks about um elements of sustainability let you know
30:46let's talk about um gender equality for example how europe thinks about it to perhaps how uh japan
30:53thinks about it to have perhaps how um you know australia thinks about it there are real significant
30:59cultural nuances that you have to always be mindful of and you have to build a strategy that incorporates
31:07all of those yet has a unifying factor that brings the whole strategy together so you have to have a
31:14core
31:14and then you have to have the core flexible enough to be able to allow for those nuances to dance
31:22and exist
31:22and be free as well trying to restrict them and pretending that they're not there is a big mistake
31:27because it just it just allows discontent and dissatisfaction locally so i think it has to
31:33be a balance of the two and it's always that kind of i liken it to a dance but it's
31:37always about
31:38managing it between between them really no that's fair and i guess i really want to touch on trust when
31:46we move on to the blog and sort of the because policy is meant to give us more trust right
31:51but we can
31:53kind of nerd out about it in a bit i kind of want to close out the episode with a
31:57think experiment
31:58thought experiment okay if you could give one piece of advice to a young climate entrepreneur who has
32:05developed a genuinely impactful solution but is worried about saying the wrong thing when they
32:10communicate what would you tell them i would tell them start with humility and start with honesty
32:17almost radical honesty because i think the more that you can uh own it and speak about it and and
32:24tell
32:25the full truth and the full package without trying to sound smart or clever or that you've got it all
32:31sussed you know i think that humility will bring you a huge amount of credibility and if you can
32:38build that credibility from the get-go you're going to be onto a winning path and i just used the
32:44example
32:44of um patagonia who are obviously the poster child always for things like communication around
32:51sustainability but if you remember that don't buy this jacket advert you know i think it's so
32:55smart and i think they always start with humility first and the customer and being very honest rather than
33:06get caught up with believing you have to have this kind of corporate veneer in order to be successful
33:12in actual fact if you are a startup entrepreneur your superpower is being the anti that and you can
33:21speak with that radical honesty in a way that will get you to the next ladder on the rung in
33:27my opinion
33:27so i think starting with that is is absolutely would be my advice that's awesome thank you so much
33:34helen for being on tangelic talks like i said we're going to stay on for a bit longer talk about
33:39policy
33:39regulation and trust but you can find that part of the conversation on our blog at tangeliclife.org
33:45as well as more information about helen website more about zena and hn communications
33:53thank you so much for being here and we'll catch you guys in the next one bye
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