Leafymade has taken on one of the largest challenges today -the pollution of the world with plastic. In their web shop they provide disposable items, such as single-use plates and straws, made from natural materials. They use leaves, wood and wheat for example, which are all 100% biodegradable and compostable. They also a reusable collection with bowls made from coconut shells, amongst other products.

The team share the same believes as I do -that the world has to become more sustainable. Not only in terms of the environment, but also regarding the way we treat each other.  Therefore, I decided to help this young, green start up in the ways that I could.

I’ve met the team a handful of times and always like their energy. As I said, they want to be a socially sustainable company as well so they make a point in providing good salaries and work conditions in their factories and focus on giving women the opporotinty to live a self-determined life by working for them.

When we first got in touch, we discussed ways I could help them -reviewing their products being one of them. But after talking back and forth about what they are focusing on (and struggling with) most at the moment we decided that I would help them in a different way.

I decided that I would give them free exposure on my(my company’s) Instagram page to help them boost sales and gain brand awareness since they felt they were lacking in that department. In that way, I used my personal brand to give them a push, which I felt confident doing since I really believe in what they are doing. By showing their products in an interactive instagram story they gained new costumers, traffic to their site and followers to their social media accounts -something that they found super helpful.

When creating the content for the Instagram story, I decided to ask my followers which products, in addition to the ones leafymade already provide, they would be interested in seeing transformed “leafymade-style”. This was much appreciated by leafymade, since it gave them a way to see in which direction they could go to meet market demands even more.

Here’s what it looked like on @veganskmatlada, this was visible for just over 13k people for 24h. If any of you are interested in helping leafymade, they would love to recive help (both hands on and feedback) with their website, products, packaging and sales.

They also gave us a discount code if anyone wants to support them by buying any of their products: ECOLIFE20 gives you 20% off until December 25th 🙂

Every single person, every single organisation on the planet knows what they do, 100%. Some know how they do it […]. But very few people or organisations know why they do what they do..”

Simon Sinek

I think many of you have heard the TED talk “How great leaders inspire action” by Simon Sinek. I had, in fact, not heard about this process until I met with a group of friends a few days ago and used this method for our potential start up.

Simon Sinek means that there is something that a lot of companies are doing wrong -they start with WHAT they are doing and then they’ll explain how. This would, according to Sinek, leave the potential customer or client with unsatisfaction. By delivering your message from the inside out, by starting with WHY you are doing something, you’ll share your vision with the customer in a more effective way.

As I mentioned, my friends and I are starting a new project based on sustainable development and we decided to use Sineks model from an early stage. Both to make sure that we are all on the same page regarding our WHYs, HOWs and WHATs but also to start thinking in this way from the very beginning -which will hopefully make it easier for us in the future when we start to share our idea.

If you have not heard about Simon Sinkes “The golden circle”, you can listen to his TED talk here. He talks much about marketing aswell (using Apple amongst others as an example), but we thought this was a great tool for us in an early stage of starting a new project.

Luckily, we had three windows in the meeting room which could indicate the three levels of the “Golden Circle” -our post its did not stick well to the actual circle we had prepared beforehand 😉