What separates companies that thrive for decades from those that struggle to sustain success? According to Daryl Brewster, the answer often comes down to leadership, employee engagement, and a clear understanding of who the business serves.

As CEO of CECP (Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose), Daryl works with hundreds of the world's largest companies to help executives create long-term value for employees, customers, communities, and shareholders. Throughout his career, he has seen firsthand how organizations achieve stronger performance when people understand the impact of their work and how it contributes to something bigger than themselves.

In this episode of Logistics With Purpose®, host Enrique Alvarez sits down with Daryl Brewster for a conversation about leadership, employee engagement, business performance, stakeholder value, and the future of work.

Daryl shares lessons from his leadership journey and explains why engaged employees often become the foundation for stronger customer experiences, how leaders can build trust during periods of uncertainty, and why long-term value creation requires looking beyond short-term results.

The conversation also explores how artificial intelligence, technological disruption, and evolving workforce expectations are changing the way organizations operate. Daryl addresses what leaders need to do to remain effective in a rapidly changing business environment and why human connection continues to be a critical competitive advantage.

Whether you're leading a global enterprise, managing a supply chain team, or navigating business transformation, this conversation provides practical lessons on creating lasting value in an increasingly complex world.

Additional Links & Resources:

Learn more about CECP: https://cecp.co/

Connect with Daryl Brewster on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darylbrewster

CECP data and resources: https://cecp.org/data-resources/

Learn more about Mana Nutrition: https://mananutrition.org/

Learn more about Logistics With Purpose®: https://logisticswithpurpose.co/

Subscribe to Logistics With Purpose®: https://logistics-with-purpose.captivate.fm/listen

Learn more about Vector Global Logistics: https://vectorgl.com/

This episode was hosted by Enrique Alvarez.

Welcome to Logistics with Purpose presented by Vector Global Logistics in partnership with Supply Chain.

Now we spotlight and celebrate organizations who are dedicated to creating a positive impact.

Join us for this behind the scenes glimpse of the origin stories, change making progress and future plans of organizations who are actively making a difference.

Our goal isn't just to entertain you, but to inspire you to go out and change the world.

And now, here's today's episode of Logistics with Purpose.

Welcome, welcome, welcome to another exciting episode of Logistics with Purpose, the only podcast focused on supply chains, Positive Impact.

I am Enrique Alvarez, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Vector Global Logistics and I have an amazing guest with me here today.

Someone that has gone from driving a beer truck to turning around a company to actually continue and carrying on the legacy of Paul Newman.

So we'll find out a little more about all those things as we talk to our guest today.

Daryl Brewster, CEO of Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose (CECP), the only nonpartisan CEO led coalition dedicated to helping companies turn purpose into measurable business value.

He has worked with more than 200 of the world's largest companies to advance stakeholder focused leadership and long term value creation.

And his professional journey spans more than 30 years in senior leadership roles across some of the world's most recognized consumer brands including Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Nabisco and Campbell's.

From corporate turnarounds to purpose driven transformation, Daryl brings a unique perspective on how companies can create value not only for shareholders, but more importantly for employees, our communities, society and the whole world.

Daryl, welcome to our show.

Enrique, thank you so much for having me.

It's great to be here and great to hear about the good work that you're doing about how to really incorporate and embed purpose into logistics and supply chains, which is outstanding work.

Well, thank you once again.

It's going to be a really good conversation.

So everyone fasten your seat belts and I'll start with a question for you.

Darrel.

CSCP is dedicated to helping companies turn purpose into performance.

When most people hear corporate purpose and we know this because we've talk about it, is it purpose taking away from performance?

Are purpose driven organizations they sound or the media and I guess makes it sound like they might not be as high performing or strict or profitable, which it's all not true and you'll tell us about it.

But through your work, what have you learned about companies that really separate the we are purpose driven and high performing or we just say we are purpose driven.

It's a little bit more of a marketing tool than Anything else?

Yeah, no, it's a great question.

We do hear this from time to time.

But all the research that we've done, personal experience that I've had case studies with companies, is that purpose matters.

So having a purpose, a sense of why an organization exists, we'll talk more about it being a North Star in turbulent waters that we're all going through these days, but it really can help out.

But it's more than just a statement.

So purpose is the, you know, why the corporate, you start with that statement, it's about embedding that into your strategy of the organization and then also to have the systems that back it up.

And I think that's particularly critical when you talk about supply chain and logistics.

We looked at those who had embedded purpose versus those who just said purpose or those who didn't do it at all.

And those that had embedded purpose outperformed.

They had greater revenue, they had greater earnings, they had lower risk, they had greater innovation, they had less organizational turnover.

So all those being really good factors in terms of why purpose is connected to performance.

And if better purpose, more integrated, more embedded in the organization, tended to leave over time to better performance.

No, that's great.

And we'll actually deep dive into that in a couple more minutes.

But the CECP describes itself as the only nonpartisan business council and co led coalition dedicated to driving measurable returns on purpose for people that don't know what the CECP is.

And I know that you guys work with 200 of the world's largest companies, but at the end of the day it's one of those organizations that it's huge and massive, yet some people might not know who they are and what they do.

What is the SCP's mission and the role it plays in the business community?

Yeah, we sit there to really support the world's leading companies, to help them unleash the power of their corporate purpose to drive long term value through positive impact.

We work with more than 200 of the world's leading companies.

We've been doing this for more than a quarter of a century to really help them embed, as we've talked about, integrate purpose into their operations and tap into that to really drive better business results and better performance, elevating the stakeholders that they share.

Now stakeholders all have asymmetric needs.

Employees would like to get paid more, customers would like to pay less.

So there's trade offs that have to happen.

But the notion of a purpose, why you exist.

Why the organization is there can really help unite an organization and its key stakeholders here as you move forward.

And that's kind of what we're really about.

So we work with many of the Fortune 100 companies, we work in the US around the globe, really helping people think about purpose through data, through convenings, through benchmarking, through case studies, through frameworks to help them build a better company, unleashing that power of purpose that can help their company be more successful and also help us build better businesses and better world through business.

Well Derek, could you tell us a bit more about the story of how the organization came about the founder, how what's the main purpose and how has it changed over the last years since it started?

Yeah, CCP was founded by CEOs and Paul Newman, the actor slash style addressing maker who some may recall but by Those force other CEOs and their teams with the belief that the world leading companies which are the ones we work with, can and should be a force for good in society.

And that's really what we found it at.

Our early days were very much focused on how companies could invest in their communities.

Communities are those parts of an organization, stakeholders that you may interact with because you live near there, whether it's a place based community or a virtual community, but you don't necessarily transact with.

So that was kind of the beginnings as time has gone on that we found out that the principles that we work there really could apply across the business and the enterprise and really talk about all the stakeholders that companies have.

And this notion of purpose being a force for good was not only a good thing for the world, but could be really good for businesses, their employees and their key stakeholders as well as well.

And you guys have conducted a lot of research on this and you briefly mentioned it a couple of minutes ago, but I actually have here, it's cssp.

Recent findings show that companies that align their business practices with purpose reported 25% higher revenue and 22% higher pre tax profit than their peers.

And we are a B Corp certified company.

And one of the things and one of the questions we always get is like well what's the return?

What's the roi?

What's the return on being a purpose driven company?

Well, the numbers are clear but how do you actually explain this?

Why purpose transforms itself into results?

What would be the link there and the connection between purpose and performance?

Yeah, and I'm going to start a little bit with the ROI calculation, then I'll go a little bit deeper.

If you Think about the roi.

So it's about the return on the investment.

The investment in purpose isn't necessarily very huge.

It's about a mindset, it's about why you kind of exist as an organization, et cetera.

So a little bit of that repeated communicated clearly to an organization then embedded in the system is a relatively low cost to drive substantially better performance.

And the reason you get that is you've now united your team around a specific area and a goal you have.

You've built that into the strategy of the enterprise, which makes sure it helps you to make decisions better.

That's not just a thing on the side, it's part of your business strateg.

And if you build it into your systems, it can help repeat it over and over again.

So we find out is when companies have that sense of purpose and it's embedded, integrated their organization, their employees are less likely to leave, they're more likely to be engaged, they're more likely to innovate.

That in of itself helps reduce risk because companies have a sense of what's the right thing to do.

A lot of purpose is about what do people do when no one's watching.

Right, right.

It's a sense of what, why you exist as an organization.

So it helps on the downside, but it also opens up new opportunities about where companies can go.

It can share new insights, new ideas, because you're really kind of focused not just on the basic blocking attack, and that's very important, but it helps get people to have a higher calling.

You know, set.

The purpose is biblical in nature.

It goes back, it gives us a reason why to get up in the morning, to make a difference in the lives that we have and the customers and the stakeholders that we work with.

Well, and how can leaders that are listening to us, that are probably in supply chain, most of them, and they're worldwide organizations with very diverse employee workforces, how can they use purpose to actually have their teams more empowered or more excited about the company that they work for?

Is there three pointers that you can give them right now that could help them?

Yeah, that's a great question.

And again, it's kind of a lens for people to really think, you know, one.

And it really does help people get more engaged with the enterprise.

You know, first is having a purpose, being really clear about what that purpose is.

That's a starting point and they're going to be underlying.

That may be the core company values, certain missions, goals, et cetera, but that's sort of the why of the enterprise that I think is really critical for folks, you know.

The second is, you know, who you're really trying to work with as you go through those areas and how people in their own roles can see how they can contribute to that overall organizational purpose that, that a company may have.

So we think those are really key areas.

The second is how did that get embedded in the strategies of the company?

So as we think about decisions companies make on a regular basis, coming back to that purpose can be a really kind of an organizing thought, a way to think through it.

You got to look at the numbers.

Of course, this is not just, you know, soft stuff, but as you think about that, it helps you kind of qualitatively round out those numbers to really see what matters to an organization, what is consistent with where they're going.

And then the third piece is how do you really.

But I call, embed or integrate that into the organization through systems, through incentives, through the insights that a company shares, through the initiatives that a company pursues, through the feedback they provide for their employees, the metrics and measures which we'll talk more about as it replaces supply chain.

I think supply chain is a good area because supply chain seems like it's so, so different from rest of purpose.

That's a marketing thing, et cetera, but it's not because it's really about connecting with your employee base, connecting with your customers that you're serving in there, and ensuring that you're really engaging with the communities along the all of whom can help you deliver better results for your investors and creditors.

Well, and you mentioned like the interconnectivity of things.

And I think that is very important for companies and people that are listening to us, because at the end of the day, it all comes down to transforming it into actions.

Because without the actions, the results are not going to be there.

And then purpose is just going to be like a, like a nice thing to talk about, right?

Absolutely.

Yes, exactly.

So it's got to be, again, integrated in the organization.

For folks, people should have a sense of what your purpose is.

They should have examples of how that's been applied within the business.

And hopefully it does because our notion here is to unleash that is it helps people see, oh, if I can think about this, maybe in a different way, it can lead to a better result in my own role for my department, for my organization and company.

Well, I would love to thank you for that and I would love to step back now for a moment and get to know you as an individual, someone that has such a Successful experience.

So if you don't mind, if we would love to hear a little bit about your background.

Where did you grow up and what was your childhood like?

Yeah, no, it's a great question.

And I grew up in a suburb of New York there in a, in a fabulous family.

Great, great parents, great brothers, et cetera.

And we're kind of a, kind of a working class family.

My dad, who always talked about responsibility, I think it's an important part of purpose.

You know, he started working as the security guard in the night shift at a large manufacturing plant not far away, but worked himself up to become the plant manager.

A thousand plus employees.

And he would get up every morning at 3:30, you know, to go to work, get the plant rolling and all the rest, and would be home late in the afternoon to coach us in little league sports and things like that.

So that was part of what we grew up in, the sense of purpose really, how you can get involved and that everybody has this responsibility to really make a difference.

I think that was a great impact.

Came together in one of my first jobs for a for profit enterprise.

There's a gentleman that he coached sports with.

They both coached me in little league baseball and football and things.

Pat Papaccio.

And Pat was great.

It was kind of a great stuff.

So he got me an opportunity during summers as I was getting ready to go to college and help pay my way through school.

And I was a card carrying teamster working for Anheuser Busch.

Those who've flown into Newark at the Newark Brewery, it's across the way there.

That's where we drove right on Highway Route 1.

And that was my first real experience of that.

And I learned a lot, certainly from my dad, but also from Mr. Papaccio, as we would call him.

He was an electrical engineer who was helping pay his way through school.

Enjoyed the work and the benefits so much that that's where he built his career.

He was a truck driver, a teamster for Anheuser Busch, but talked a couple of great lessons that I learned.

One is if you invited him over to the house and you were serving adult beverages, beer in particular, and you did not have Budweiser there or a Budweiser product, Michelob, one of the others.

He would leave, he would just leave.

He would say thank you for inviting me over.

Sorry, you don't have what I have.

Well, at first it threw people away.

But I will tell you that in our small community in New Jersey, the market share for Anheuser Busch and Budweiser products was probably 10 points higher than anyplace else.

Cause he believed he was a truck driver.

But he believed, believed in what the business was.

Was all about and what it meant.

And it meant.

If you knew Pat, he just.

He believed this.

Now, they also had discussions with management.

He was in a union.

There were.

But he believed.

These are the guys who paying my salary.

They're treating me well.

I owe that to them.

When I started on the job and my training was a couple of days, he'd go out with a veteran driver.

Pat was the driver and his son.

And we would go to stores.

One of the first places we went to was a restaurant a couple of towns not far from us.

A restaurant that was very expensive.

I don't think I'd ever been there before, but we went in the back room, we delivered 100 cases of beer, which was great.

And we used to get the.

Not the best of the delivery routes because we were low on the totem pole.

And as we're leaving, the owner came in and said, I think you guys shorted us.

And he used some very words you use in New Jersey a lot, A lot.

Fbo, all that kind of stuff.

And Pat stopped.

He said, did he put.

I say, yeah, I counted.

I can count one of the things I could do.

And said, yeah, we definitely have it in here.

And he said, okay.

Pat pulled out a hundred dollar bill, which was a lot of money now, and it's a lot of money then, and said, I'll bet you it's all here.

The guy was taken back.

We went through and counted every single case.

It added up, thank goodness, to 100 cases.

Owner was embarrassed, turning red, got out his hundred dollars.

And Pat said, don't worry about it.

Just know that Bud man always delivers.

That's amazing.

That's purpose.

That guy never complained again about anything from Budweiser.

This is Pat.

He was a master's in electrical engineering.

But this was how passion could really make a difference.

And that's a story that I was My first jobs, you know, we're working delivering beer and that.

What fun job when you're 18 years old, 19 years old.

It was incredible.

But that just really said, here's somebody who.

The company really got a sense of purpose.

And while companies go and things change as time goes on, it's really stuck with me about the power that can have to not only grow market share individually, but also to deal with customers in a really powerful way.

If the whole company was made and employees like Pat, they would be 100% the best.

They'd 100% share.

Exactly.

100% Share.

I mean, everyone else will then just leave the house if they don't have what they hear drinking.

And I think embedding, you're not going to get perfect, but embedding that into the organization, what a difference that can make.

We know.

Listen.

So listening to your story and how passionate Pat was about the brand and the culture and the company itself, do you think that's one of the things that, hey, he was just wired like that, or, I mean, what can the companies do to actually have an outcome like the one you saw in Pat?

Because some of that probably is inherent in the person's way of looking at life or seeing things.

Yeah, I do think, look, I think the individual really matters.

I think the opportunity for the company is to create the environment so that can happen as we go forward.

And I think one of those things was, you know, there was a clear purpose.

This is.

This was we're selling beer and it's a competitive market.

So the idea that this is a positive things at the right level of consumption, all those.

This can really help people in tough things just live through and enjoy experience with other folks.

And all the rest is one part, but the job.

The other thing was.

And I would generally be brought in for big weekends when people really needed extra staffing.

So I was part of our group.

And you need to get the beer there on time, on delivery.

If it shows up on July 5, it doesn't count.

It needs to be there for July 4.

It needs to be there for Jul 3 in advance.

So that, I think, was also, I think the way Pat and a lot of the Teamster carrying groups now, they would argue over wages and things like that.

That's a reality.

But that was kind of the belief.

This is our job, this is our responsibility is to really be there.

So I think embedding that into the purpose really helped out.

I think there were ways that you can really engage employees, but some of those were really emphasizing safety within the group.

This was safe.

And if anybody was not doing safe, that was addressed by the group.

The quality of products.

If there were dented cans, you were not to deliver those, you're taken back.

All right, that was a mistake.

Elsewhere, a lot of focus on eliminating waste, reducing waste as part of the process that I think really kind of helped build and embed build that purpose in at least the Pat and at least many of the other drivers, you know, many years older than I was at the time, into the way they thought about it.

This is our job.

This is what we kind of got to get done.

I think the company in that case, in many cases helped to reinforce that not all do home fur.

That's a great story.

Thank you so much for sharing it with us.

And that of course speaks very highly of any company.

Right.

If you can achieve that level of passion and inspiration in your employees and of course if you can do that from the people that are driving the trucks to the people that are leading the company, then that's kind of maybe the definition of a successful company.

If you have such passionate and inspired employees working for you after, after that, because that was a really, really good lesson for you.

What did you do?

And then how did you become more in tune with purpose as something that you would up doing?

I mean, did you ever think that you would become the CEO of this organization when you were younger?

Well, just a couple thoughts here just as we come back to purpose.

You know, Gallup does surveying of employees and they know that more engaged employees lead to better results.

But today, less than a third of employees, about 30% consider themselves engaged at work.

So if we can get that 30% number up to 40, 50, 60%, it's going to make an incredible difference and incredible impact in terms of companies, their performance, their work and all the like.

You know, it's interesting I kind of have gotten to purpose a little the other way around is that when I had had been very fortunate to run a bunch of great companies, you mentioned some of those over the years and moved up and Campbell Soup and ran their European operations, Nabisco ran Nabisco Cookies and Crackers also, you know, truck delivered products got involved in across the supply chain, the buy part, you know, purchasing, making, moving, obviously selling, marketing our products as well.

And then when I got to a certain stage and we had turned around Brandon Nabisco turned around Krispy Kreme and then reflected back as I got ready for the opportunity at cecp, I said what were the things and times in my career when we had most success and it was looking backward that said, you know, it's when we get people to rally around the purpose of the enterprise when they could really see why they were there to really make a company work.

And I've seen that in my board efforts as well.

So I kind of got it it kind of after the fact, not by saying, oh, I'm going to be purpose driven and that's going to all these good stuff.

It was what worked.

And I found out that when we could embed and purpose had been embedded in the organization various different ways.

And it wasn't just words, but it was built into the business of strategy, what it was all about.

It had systems that generally reinforced that, that that's when we had, you know, better results than when we were just kind of flying by the seat of our pants.

And I think that's especially true today in the turbulent world in which we're.

Absolutely, and you're right, we actually do live in a challenging world.

AI comes to expedite things in many, many ways and it's going to be interesting and exciting.

I particularly think that the media wants us to believe that it's worse than what it really is.

But you've done this for more 30 years.

You mentioned multinational multi billion dollar corporations around the world, across different industries, across different regions.

Is there like a belief or like a trait, like a leadership trait that you actually have kept constant throughout your entire career from the time that you were developed delivering the beers to now.

Is there something that kind of keeps the same for you, like a guiding principle that you can share with us?

Yeah, and I think it's what we talk about at cecp and I've expressed it in different ways over my career, which is this idea of sort of a purpose driven leadership.

And our role here is to elevate each of the key stakeholders we have within an organization.

Now they may not all get elevated at the same time.

There are trade offs that need to be made from time to time.

The needs are asymmetric as I mentioned earlier.

But that idea of kind of taking care of the people with whom you're working and serving your customers, certainly your employee base, the communities with which you work, the suppliers that you're dealing with and all those that, that really can help bring things together and therefore help provide better return on the investment that investors and others are making.

So that idea of really thinking through each of those stakeholders and how you can elevate them, I think really helps.

That's kind of what we talk about at ccp, right?

If you get your, your sea of customers, your E of employees, your sea of communities, and you get the planet and the purpose altogether, you got ccp.

And that in our research, as we've just seen and we've seen over and over again, tends to lead to better results.

You got to execute, you got to do all those efforts, but it can gives you an overarching piece at a fairly low cost that can really help make all those other things work so much better.

I like that.

And it resonates with Me in another interview that we had just recently with Dan Gestikob, the CEO of Big Green Egg, he said the purpose is top five.

But let's not forget that there's tons of other things.

There's other four or five things that you need to do.

Otherwise, I mean it's just not a magic wand either.

Right.

You need to have.

It has to be embedded.

But I think it can make all of those other efforts better.

Correct.

Right.

Just gives you a little higher level.

Can take each of those things to get people more engaged, get them more involved, show that the company cares, gives you the benefit of the data if things go awry.

And that happens from time to time.

But you still have to execute.

So it's not like, you know, having a purpose in of itself, but if you still need everything else, you need all the other things.

But it makes, I think everything else that much better.

Absolutely.

It's just like the booster button on some of the computer.

Like a booster button.

It's a unifying thing.

It's a booster button to grow.

It also helps reduce the likelihood and the response to downside because things do happen.

I think they happen less in a purpose driven company because people are all on the same wavelength and what it matters to all the groups, people don't take the shortcuts that can create real big issues.

We've seen too many of those in corporate world.

So I think that's less likely if you do make an error.

I think companies are better to back out, but I think the real piece is the booster button to help companies do even better.

Absolutely.

Like, absolutely.

And I think, well, I have two teenage kids and I think that at this point in time where we're still talking about purpose, sometimes I feel like, is this still a thing?

Right.

Because we have proven the value of it.

And at the end of the day, companies that don't realize that we're going to run out of consumers, my kids are basically not going to buy just from anyone, which is probably what we did because we didn't know any better.

We really have the information that they have now.

We didn't know who was making our shoes back when we were younger, or at least me.

So.

But now that now that it's well known and understood, the future is brighter because consumers are more educated.

Yeah.

I think in a more transparent world you kind of see all these areas and you can't hide as much.

And that's happened in various industries over time and therefore the essence of the enterprise comes out.

Right.

That sense of Purpose.

And that's what we talk about a lot with our companies at ccp, which is really helping them.

Seeing the data we've shared, the case studies, we have frameworks we can provide to help people, you know, kind of do a better job.

And I think, you know, a lot of time, again, I think as we mentioned, it can feel like it's the marketing.

It's not.

It can really be embedded into our supply chain that people are making, who are buying and making and moving the products that we, we, we, we develop and sell or the services we provide.

Darrell, you have served on boards of public and private companies and I like that because I really wanted to get a little bit deeper into the profit nonprofit.

And you actually have experience on, on both sides.

So you actually have been on the boards of the mission driven organizations like the Partnership for Healthy Kids, MANA and the National Organization of Disability.

Now with your experience on one end and the other, what would you recommend to both sides?

Maybe starting with the non for profits on how to kind of continue to not only use purpose to drive performance, but then also to be successful?

Yeah, no, I think it's a great piece because I think it is an area and I've learned that I grew up in the for profit world and you know, looking back, saw the value of having that mission, the purpose, et cetera, that's what we really look to unleash.

But I also think that mission driven companies can also learn from businesses.

Right.

And getting, as we talked about those other four things, the execution elements, et cetera.

You know, one great example of that is mana.

This stands for Mother Administered Nutritive Assistance.

It is a nonprofit producing company.

We make peanut butter packets essentially with vitamins and minerals for the world's poorest kids.

It is very clear we are a nonprofit group.

Much of our product goes to sub Saharan Africa, was in Ukraine.

When there's wars around the world.

Our biggest customers are unicef, usaid and it's a nonprofit.

But we produce products with United States peanuts raised by farmers in the US Produced in a facility in Georgia.

We're adding another one because of the needs around the globe.

And we came into the market with a very clear thing.

We want to serve the world's poorest kids.

These are kids who can't afford our products.

So somebody's going to have to provide that and to bring the prices down to the marketplace.

So that was kind of our notion.

And we actually had one of our board members at the time was from Walmart.

So we had that Walmart kind of A mentality and we really have transformed.

This was an interesting at that time numbers have evolved x inflation.

It was about $80 to produce these products.

And if kids consume them for about a month it really between mother's milk and traditional food it really changes their lives.

First of all they live and second of all they're less likely to be stunted.

And millions of kids a year go through that in the world's poorest countries.

But there's only so much money out there.

So if we can getting the prices down, more kids get served.

And we brought the prices down which were $80 and I imagine today with inflation would be well into the hundreds.

Today we're about 40 to $50 a kid.

And that has now we have a wonderful CEO of our organization.

Our founder Mark Moore who was a Christian missionary.

That was his piece.

But he's also now running a business and he knows across his businesses we can reduce the costs if we can be more efficient, better quality, more safety.

If we can find better transportation routes to get our product out.

Every dollar we save helps us save another.

You know, we save about a million kids lives.

We contribute to that a year that adds like another 50,000 kids and you can do 20,000 kids when you do the math.

So that's.

And that you can sort of see in our manufacturing plant.

Our operations group is really cares about it plus the safety in terms of you know really ensuring the products you have are of great quality.

Because kids lives are on the line as they.

As they move up through the.

You know, in the in age.

So that's I think a great example.

But we have metrics, we have KPIs for that business.

Here's what you got to do.

Here's what has been ordered.

Have we delivered?

Are we using our ingredients properly?

How do we look through all this?

So the mission is great.

It's a wonderful thing.

I've been glad to be involved with it for more than a decade.

But we also have to have the other side of it.

So we need to have the executional elements that are part of it to really make this piece work.

Well.

Thank you so much and congratulations again.

It sounds like an amazing organization.

We will make sure to put the links to all these organizations that you're mentioning so that people that are listening this episode can go and learn a little bit more.

And of course they can maybe through their websites or links also help these organizations that you're mentioning.

Because you're right, it's amazing that you go from maybe manufacturing food products or Shipping things from point A to point B to.

Well, all of a sudden you're saving lives, which is so much more powerful and drives just performance even more than just building things.

Right?

Yeah, yeah, that's great.

No, and that and every business contributes in its own way.

Some may save lives, others may make people happier in the role.

Obviously Glass and Budweiser may help at certain times as well.

So each business has its own.

Very helpful.

Very, very helpful.

For sure.

Yes.

Sometimes.

Almost though.

Daryl.

Well, I, I'm not even going to ask you, but I'm guessing you are a Budweiser fan.

You know, I, I'm not a. I actually just.

It's not.

I'm not a big beer drinker but.

Well, you're not like that, I guess in terms of.

Exactly not like that.

Yes, yes, yes.

But still have always been a Budweiser fan and fans of Oreos and other stuff.

But even if you don't love that product per se, I think you can still figure out what that purpose and mission is that we can help contribute to.

To.

Absolutely, absolutely.

They still have like good mission and a good culture, it sounds like.

Right.

Going to CCP now.

Is there like a particular.

There's 200 organizations.

I'm sure they're all incredibly interesting and inspiring and exciting.

But is there one in particular that you have a special connection to you or is there like a member case study that maybe has stayed with you for this years and could you share it with us?

Yeah, I'll share a couple of them.

Only because I could share one probably for most of ours and I'll pick one.

In fact, I'll just make it easier.

I'll just pick the biggest company we serve and then I'll take a smaller but fast growing one.

And one of the great examples I think in this field has been Walmart.

It's the biggest company the world has ever known.

It has really taken particularly logistics and supply chain, some of which they run their own, others they work through suppliers to a whole nother level.

Its efforts around sustainability in this field, which is so important, have really led the way, probably more so than many government and edicts that have been out there.

And we had Doug McMillan, their CEO at our annual CEO conference, which is part of what we do at CCP.

We work with people in responsibility, in community foundations, in community efforts, sustainability.

But we also work with CEOs because if we get the CEOs on board, it really can make a big difference.

And Doug talked about and he put up a couple of charts, we had about 40, 50 CEOs together to go through the conversation.

And he put up a chart and he showed when he came out, first years, he went out and visited all of his operations.

2.5 Million employees.

Looked them across the world.

4Th biggest city in America, as he said, without a jail.

This is kind of what they do.

How do you get people to work together?

And he heard a bunch of things.

He heard from a lot of the people that they need to improve their technology, which they have made huge investments, but they also need to pay their people more.

Their turnover was enormous.

Hundreds of thousands of people have to hire every year.

How could you build a career at Walmart?

And so Doug made a big move.

He increased and announced an increase in wages that continues to go on.

And of course the response from investors was not positive.

What are you taking our money for?

And he took a bit of a hit.

Now, the Walmart family allowed the votes that he was good.

He was very clear about that, the support of the board.

And then he showed.

As those wages went up, turnover fell down.

Yep.

Sales moved up forward.

All these things, safety in the facilities filled up.

And it was, it was, it was substantial increases in terms of what people are doing.

They were getting training.

They have a fabulous program now where people can kind of build careers at Walmart.

Walmart has something like 300,000 promotions a year.

So how you could really build a career.

And it really was a remarkable story here of the world's biggest company, how by investing in its frontline workers who are obviously so critical in supply chain logistics, et cetera.

What a difference that can make.

Now some people thought it should be bigger and faster and all those other things, but relative to where it's been, was a big improvement.

And I think it's really led to a Walmart that along with technology that continues to grow even at its incredible size and I think generally have a very big impact on the world and getting people's.

Nobody does more in affordability than what Walmart's able to do.

And I think they've also done a really good job of partnering, you know, sometimes a little too much partnering with suppliers.

I've been on that side of it.

But we've also had, and I'll give an example, we've also had some great conversations with them when we've had to add costs, why that is and how we can do that more efficiently.

So I think Walmart's a great example.

And of course they touch so many products around the world.

That is really, you know, really kind of neat.

So I think that's a great example of a big company.

Well, thank you so much.

You mentioned that you were going to mention another smaller one company that I've.

Been involved with as an investor and have sat on the board is a group called Fresh Pet.

Fresh Pet is a refrigerated pet food company.

Right.

We make and we supply to Walmart, by the way, as well as many others.

It's grown from, you know, a few million dollars now.

We're over a billion dollars of annual revenue.

It's the leader in this whole segment.

And really this is a business was built on purpose and we had the three Ps of purpose, which is about pets.

We care about pets.

We're in the pet, the dog and cat food business.

People are both our own, the ones we really work with and the planet.

We just are out with our sustainability report which has, you know, we've been really leading the way from, from that perspective and as a board member.

But the people side was an interesting one.

So we have, you know, great quality products for the pets and all the rest.

But we really looked at our audience that we make these products, we manufacture our products, the supply chain.

And what we were seeing is that our plants and we were paying market, maybe a little above market kind of pricing.

But we had a significant amount of turnover.

And it really hit us during COVID and supply and demand went way up during COVID catching up.

That was great.

But we're running very high turnover rates and the management team and I chair the comp committee came to us and said, you know, we need a different strategy here.

We can't just raise it by 20 or 50 cents.

We need to really help people be able to build career.

So put together a plan.

And a lot of these pieces have been around together to really help to do that.

And one was we took wages up, substantially increase those to move beyond the competitive set.

Second is we gave people career paths.

So you could start at one level and you can move up through six levels.

And that continues to evolve in the, in our, what we call the FreshPad Academy.

So people can go up their work record through training, et cetera.

They can literally be billion.

And we provided people who'd been at the organization for some period of time, you know, six months to a year, could get equity so they can have shares, they could be owners.

And we hear this from Pete Stavros at KKR and others.

So all of a sudden you change the mindset.

Now there were some what we can't afford this how are we going to do it?

Well, what happened is it did increase our labor rate but our turnover went from you know, 80, 90% a year down into the teens.

Huge savings in terms of that and turnover.

Second, our safety improved.

People are on the job, they knew what they were doing because they had less turnover.

The proportion of our people who have been with the company for five years has gone from very, very few while we're growing to a much, much higher percentage.

Our quality has enhanced and improved, which has been great.

Our costs have come down and our margins.

It's a publicly traded company, people look it up, our margins have gone up, up.

Things happen as time moves on.

But it's really a great piece of investing in the team.

We have to really help them build careers within our organization, have them really be part of the success of the enterprise.

And it's been one, I've been proud to be part of it.

We can always do better but it's really a thing of just looking at it from a very different angle than others had done.

And something we've seen a number of CCB companies look at their frontline workers and say, you know, we can do better.

So this is not great idea.

If we're turning over that much of our staff every year.

There's a better answer out there.

So that's the kind of stuff I think we can talk about putting that purpose lens on and thinking a little beyond the short term.

Here's where to go.

Well, we can cut turnover now.

This is a great thing.

Of course when people don't turn over, they get better at their job and now they're adding value and improvement, enhancing the productivity of the effort.

So I think those are kind of at both sides again.

Again Freshpress, pretty big business now but both sides really make a difference and then people who really care about the quality of what they're providing.

It's fantastic.

No, it's amazing, right?

It's a win, win, win for the consumers, for the suppliers, for the company, for the employees.

And at the end of the day, the funny part is that for the shareholders it is a better way of maximizing the long term return of any company.

It's right.

They are, yeah.

Long value, time frame, long value of the, of, of the enterprise is what you're looking at as a shorter, shorter vision that some boards and some CEOs might have which is just trying to the next five years.

But you're not going to build the company that really maximizes profits if you're only thinking about the next Five years.

Well, five years would be pretty good.

Most time is this might be the next five.

Right.

Even less that would be actually good for many companies.

But yeah, I think that's.

And that's.

We see the way you can really drive long term value through positive impact.

It's kind of thinking about this having a purpose that brings this together.

Really how do you elevate the stakeholders, you're working with those customers, employees, communities, the planet, if you will as well.

And then taking that longer term time horizon really does help.

If it's in the short term, you do other things.

But we're in this for the long term.

Our businesses, we're here in the world, we're in this thing to really how do we build it?

And by taking that longer time horizon again, something we really talk about a lot at cecp.

And we help companies with tools and so they can think about that and share that with investors.

You're making an investment today usually don't get a return on day one.

Here's how that can really lead to outsized returns and outperformance over time.

These things connecting together makes a difference.

Again, part of what we work with at CECP in our companies.

Well, you gave us the example of a huge company of a smaller company that has grown significantly and I'm sure there's tons of companies in between.

And at the end of the day, the answer is still pretty straightforward.

Right.

I mean you have to care about your people, people really, really care about them.

And then you have to make sure that you drive performance based on something that's bigger than just making money because otherwise people are not going to be engaged.

So treating everyone respectfully and pushing forward, great.

And we're fine with companies making money because if they have money, they're going to do more stuff.

But sometimes the measures, just the short term ones aren't what's going to get you to do that over time.

Time.

And that I think is really critical.

It's the value of the enterprise for the financial guys, the discounted risk adjusted future cash flows.

That's how you value most people value businesses today.

I love it.

Those are the things you can really drive by a sense of purpose.

That roi, because the I is not that high here, in some cases you have specific investments, you ought to see what that return is going to look like.

But the notion of purpose can really be critical to helping you succeed from that standpoint.

Point.

Well, and Darrell, taking this to a different level for people that are in our audience and they're listening to the conversation.

And they're actually, I'm sure taking notes as as much as I am right now.

What could be like one practical step they can take.

And let's think about maybe two examples out there.

People that are actually more in the C suite level or business owners that are listening to us.

And then, well, what if I don't own the company?

What if I'm just one of the employees that works here?

And by the way, this company doesn't have the culture that I think, think could have.

Should I just go and leave and find a better company or what's your take?

How do you advise people that are listening on a very practical one step, two step approach for turning purpose into performance in their organizations?

Yeah, first I think it's just the sense that purpose can help enhance performance.

Right.

These things are not mutually exclusive.

In fact, they're highly connected and you can see that in company over company in terms of the ones who.

And when you lose that sense of purpose, that's usually when companies get in trouble.

So I think at the C suite level, CEOs and others is in many companies we know that we work with already have a purpose.

So you don't have one.

Think about what that purpose is and help to describe that, that people can really resonate, resonates across the group and organization.

And then it's.

How do you embed that?

So I think that's the one place that we really talk to folks of.

You've got your purpose statement.

Okay, okay.

Tell me how it's working.

How, what decisions have you made as a result of that?

Think about as a business strategy rather than something over on the side.

This is, this is a lens through which to look a lot of the decisions you're, you're, you're making.

That's what we Talked about at Freshpad, that's what Doug McMillan did at Walmart.

Right.

This was the lens.

Otherwise my short term return.

I'm going to spend all this money.

Is it going to work?

We're going to track, we're going to see how it's going to go.

We'll make some adjustments along the way.

These aren't exactly there.

We need to be competitive in the marketplace, et cetera.

We have many stakeholders that we have to work with.

So I think that's there and that and then putting the systems in place.

Right.

So it happens.

What are the incentives?

You know, Fresh Pet, we move to responsible business goals each year.

They're different but they all talk about how you can see results that would Be purpose related whether it's safety, quality, you know and the like building the pipeline for future growth.

So I think that's the one there is just embed.

It's part of the organization.

Some putties put the people put the purpose on the wall in their meeting rooms or on their calls.

That's great but it's really how do you embed that into the enterprise to really make sure and make inc investments and others around that.

I think for the someone who's in the company there, they're part of the organization.

I think they can really have an influence with their own work, their personal purpose.

Why are they there, their workforce that they're working with, the department that they're a part of to really make an impact and a difference there.

I think they can have influence with examples with results that they can share more broadly.

I think that's where they can do it because it's know there, there's great research here that people live longer who have a better sense.

You know, you gotta be, gotta eat healthy, you gotta exercise, all that.

But a sense of purpose leads to longer outcomes.

It leads to a better experience in life.

So I think that's where the individual can really have and thinking about those elements of the company that they can, you know, be the Pat Papaccio within their enterprise right of hey, here's what I am.

This is what comes now.

We think that virtually every company can get there and that's what we try to help them.

The companies offload are trying to do.

They have a lot of pressures.

There's no doubt they have a lot of short term pressures, activist investors.

That's the reality of the world that we're in.

We have social, you know, geopolitical things, et cetera that can make it hard.

But by you know, managing through those with a sense of purpose can really really I think help those groups.

And I think most companies can get there and sometimes you may have to make a tough decision that they're.

They're just you know, not there.

That's an individual piece.

That's not what we encourage.

We encourage being part of the solution in organizations and companies.

How do you.

How do embed that?

How do we live up to what we're trying to do to really meet the needs of our consumers and our customers more efficiently, more effectively, more responsibly than our competition.

That's kind of what we're about and do that in a way that can elevate our communities and manage downside risks and concerns that there might be out.

There so well, for everyone listening, just be the Pat of your organization.

And if Pat was able to inspire you, I'm sure that Pat inspired a lot of people along the way.

So I'm pretty sure that he actually ended up making a big change, not only only in the company's future, but in a lot of lives in general.

So it's a really good positive attitude to have and something that I think everyone, regardless of your organizational level, can learn from.

Exactly.

Yeah.

People can you.

We can each have an impact, we can make a difference and some are going to happen at different levels.

But how do we make it within our families, our communities and the jobs that we really work on in some areas that we can all, you know, move in a world that seems so divided today of how we can bring folks together to, you know, do better at what the.

And more responsible in the work that we do.

Daryl, as we kind of wrap our conversation today, once again, thank you for being here.

What do you, what do you think of the future?

I would like you to actually put your, your future forecasting hat.

And what, what do you think the future is going to look like for not only the ccp, but then purpose driven organizations and companies that are really purpose oriented.

Yeah, look, we're going through tremendous amounts of change right now geopolitically.

AI, it's changing things that we have, the speed of which this change we've always had change is unprecedented.

It's like being out in those turbulent seas and you're not quite sure which way the boat's supposed to go and the ship's supposed to go.

That's why it's really important to have that North Star.

Right.

So we think that that purpose driven thing can really rally.

That's going to be.

The companies do that better, are going to attract employees, customers, et cetera.

So in that context, I am optimistic in that.

But it's not going to be a smooth path.

There's going to be ups and downs.

I think one of the great challenges will be around AI.

How do we do this?

This is going to be transformative for all of us.

I come out of food and beverage business and things like that.

100 Years ago in the US most people worked on farms.

Those were not the glorious jobs we think they were.

They were hard jobs.

And if the sun didn't come out at the right time, we didn't get enough rain, you might not make it.

And by the way, way, billions of people around the globe live like that today.

That's why Mana has a, has A role.

So we got to kind of think about that.

But we did elevate it by bringing innovation to the party.

In some cases that meant horses had to be repurposed, jobs had to change.

Today in America, less than 1% of people are actually far in the farming world.

But we are able to produce amazing amounts of food because we've used technology, etc.

I think in a way AI is going to disrupt some stuff.

I think people need to kind of embrace it.

But I think that sense of what AI can do and I think we're starting to hear more and more about, you know, we're hearing, as you mentioned, the negative stories about AI on work.

We're actually hearing a lot of positive stories about it's going to create new opportunities and new jobs.

But I do think having that sense of purpose that why can ensure that we're more.

We channel AI in a way that's going to be, you know, build a better world through AI versus, you know, mess things up.

But it will not, it's not going to be a straight line.

We've seen that before with other technology drives.

Hopefully we'll be smarter on this one.

It's an area at CCP that we're working with our companies about AI in the workforce, part of an effort around AI responsibility and community work.

So we've got work to do right now.

But we know we've gone through these before and we've got to put the emphasis on it to make sure we do this well and right.

So I am optimistic, but it isn't going to be a straight line.

But I think as Martin Luther King said, it will bend toward justice and a better world as we move forward.

But we all as leaders have to step up to help to guide that.

Well, thank you so much for sharing that with us.

And I wanted to ask you, what does the phrase logistics with purpose mean to you?

Yeah, it's about, and I look at logistics and I look at supply chain integrate, but it's about how can we, we buy, make and move products and services.

We talked more about products that are easier to visualize, but how can we move those to meet the needs of our customers?

I think more efficiently, more effectively on time, on cost and more responsibly.

And I think it means that having a sense of purpose and we can measure on time, delivery, we can measure costs, but it's that next set of measurements that I think are often going to drive your longer term cost of measurement.

Things like safety, quality, eliminating waste.

We could talk more about Some of these different areas.

So I think having those I think can really help out.

But to me it's, you know, this is how we get stuff from one place to another is in the logistic world, how can we really do that in a responsible way that can meet what's expected but maybe do even more or at least cause no harm as we go through that?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Actually, I read a quote the other day from Henry Ford that I think, or at least, least is attributed to Henry Ford.

That said, a business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

And we think we've seen that over, I think we've seen it over and over again.

You know, if it's, if there's not something underpinning, you can do it for a while.

And we've seen a lot of people, you know, a lot of.

But how do you really do that.

And you really, really maximize it?

Yes.

How do you really maximize it?

By, you know, and I think the, the measure I look through is thinking about that through your stakeholders.

Stakeholders.

And are they getting the products they need?

Are we taking care of them?

And there are trade offs.

It's not easy.

But if you can add some innovation to that, which I think AI can, we've certainly seen that logistics field, et cetera over the years that can give us maybe the best of both worlds as we go forward.

Absolutely.

Well Daryl, thank you so much for joining us today.

It's been a pleasure.

How can our listeners connect to you and of course learn more about the Chiefs executives for corporate purpose.

Yeah, they can go to our website at CECP Co and that's a great way to kind of learn more about cecp.

We do look forward to really supporting the world's biggest companies.

We also do have opportunities for pay setter companies of certain size.

Our strategy is big companies can really make a positive impact on that and many of them need that extra help because they have so many other pressures that we're really wrestling and dealing with.

But we're glad to sit down and see if we can both share the insights, the learning that we have, which is mostly publicly open source and publicly available.

But also if people want to engage with CCP as being part of our growing network where we can help support them in unleashing the power of their purpose to drive long term value through a positive impact on the world.

Well Darrell, thank you so much.

And to everyone listening to this episode, I hope you liked it as much as I did.

And if you want to continue listening to engaging conversations like the one we just had with Daryl Brewster.

Please don't forget to subscribe to the Logistics with purpose podcast on YouTube or any of your platforms, and be sure to follow us on social media as well.

Thank you very much.

Stay tuned for the next episode in two weeks.

And Daryl, thanks again, Sam.