AMANDA 0:01

Welcome to the purpose power brand, a podcast about leaders and brands transforming business into a force for good. I'm Amanda Stassen, business and brand strategist, social justice advocate and founder of BIZU Innovation Group. I'll be speaking with leaders who are proving that not only does purpose drive profit, but the future of our world depends on it. If you want to grow your business, increase your brand loyalty and not get left behind in the ever-changing marketplace. This podcast is for you. Today we're talking with Jarrod Goldin co-founder at Entomo Farms, a Canadian leader of cricket powder, and North America's largest cricket farm. Welcome Jarrod to the Purpose Power Brand podcast. Thanks so much for joining us today.

JARROD 0:42

Thank you so much for having me. Amanda. I'm excited to chat with you today.

AMANDA 0:46

Awesome. Listen, right off the bat. I am super, super curious. Were you one of those little boys who brought bugs surprises home for your mom?

JARROD 0:55

No. But my brothers were. And I'll blame them on instigating all of this.

AMANDA 1:01

Yeah, but in all seriousness, so three brothers all busy with their lives. You're a practicing chiropractor? What was the genesis of the Entomo idea that brought you guys all together? I mean, what were you seeing in your world, or even in the world around you that sparked the idea.

JARROD 1:19

So I think, you know, the, the foundation was that my brothers had been farming insects for the reptile food trade and the bait trade. And they had a successful business doing that. And then in 2013, or 2014, when the United Nations in the Food and Agriculture Organization, the FAO put out a very comprehensive white paper and the title was edible insects, future prospects for food and feed security, you know, we kind of looked at that, and the potential for insects to enter, you know, the food and feed world, if you will. Around the same time, there was a gentleman named Pat Crowley who was pitching a protein bar he had made out of cricket powder and other wholesome ingredients. And Mark Cuban invested in his business on Shark Tank. And I called my brothers up and I said, you know, usually that's three ducks in a row. But in this case, I think there are three crickets in a row, or three insects and you guys, you know, you know what you're doing. You've done this for years, you have the UN and the FAO saying this is an inevitability. And you have a smart entrepreneur, like Mark Cuban, who's saying that he can see the line for consumer packaged goods. I always wanted to work with my brothers, as you mentioned, I'm a chiropractor. And I've seen the impact that food and the choices that we make around our food have on our health long term. And I said, Why don't we try raise some money and see if we can start a human grade insect farm. And the rest, as they say, is history.

AMANDA 2:53

Wow. So at the time, when you brought the idea forward to your brothers, was it crazy? Was it a crazy idea at the time?

JARROD 3:02

Not to them, and they had been hearing or seeing whispers of entomophogy or the kind of normalization of eating insects for the North American market, they had done a couple of events. So, it wasn't totally new to them. And it's hard to add crazy, the two of them, but everybody who loved us in our world, you know, wanted to know what the hell we had smoked, you know, and Dan together to come up with what would likely be the hardest business in the world to do successfully. But that wasn't the case at all, you know, we were looking at the world around us and thinking of how we could leave it a better place than we found it and give people options that are healthier for them and healthier for their planet, right and do something meaningful and leave a legacy for our children and try and make a real positive impact on the planet and you know, all of our fellow planetarians, I guess.

AMANDA 3:58

I love that. I love that. We actually describe Purpose Power Brands as those that know what they stand for why they matter, and they live it out. And I know you started to mention a little bit about and Entomo’s purpose in what you were describing before. But can you dive into that a little bit more? And maybe tell me why in your words, you feel it really matters to not just the planet, but to also us as people.

JARROD 4:23

I think that from my perspective, it's always about choice. And to some degree, when we go into a grocery store, or we look around us with respect to the clothes we buy, or the things we consume. There was a great deal of purposeful, I think naivety on the producer’s perspective and the consumers perspective, not to appreciate a connection between what we were consuming and the impact it had on ourselves as individuals on the person who was making it and the impact on the planet. And there's more and more coming out around food and unfortunately, industrial meat farming plays such a large role in climate change. And we are not an anti-meat company, we're just, you know, trying to offer people alternative choices to traditional meat or traditional protein, one that is better for them and better for the planet. We learned from that UN and FAO article that there may be a lot of reasons why insects should be considered, as you know, this great alternative. And the more research we do, the more science we do, the more you know that data seems to prove itself out that in many respects, Amanda, what I've said to someone the other day is what water is to liquids, insects are to food. They're just extremely good for people, and as I mentioned a couple times, and we can dive a bit deeper into it, they also happen to be extremely efficiently farmed from a sustainability perspective, or energy usage or pollution perspective.

AMANDA 5:55

Maybe talk about that a little bit more. What makes the claim the statement that you know, crickets are the planet's most sustainable superfood. When I originally thought about crickets, I mean, the first thing that comes to my mind is like John the Baptist, you know, from the Bible who ate locusts. And I was like, are locusts the same as crickets or are they different? And then what did he know way back then, that you know, we're just sort of cluing into today? Like, how are they the most sustainable superfood on the planet?

JARROD 6:24

Yeah, so I think you know, locusts, crickets, and grasshoppers are all pretty similar, you know, they look the same, although from a species perspective, they are different. And I think it's, you know, like, everybody generally has had that experience where they eat a certain food and they feel energized and turned on and excited, and full of energy and other foods that make you feel lethargic and bummed out and lazy and cloudy and cloudy headed. And hopefully you're making choices, you know, on the former versus the latter. But sometimes the other foods that sugar heavy foods or salt, heavy foods, they do taste good. I mean, there's a reason why people love them. And unfortunately, they're not that good for us. So, but to come full circle, I guess back to your question around sustainability. So a lot of it has to do with the feed to food conversion. So okay, you know, for example, cows converted about 10% of the feed, they're fed into food we can eat. So, you know, 100 kilos of grains into a cow can convert into about 10% of food in meat, because for example that a person can eat. And unfortunately, that very inefficient conversion ratio means we have to cut down a lot of rain forests to grow a lot of wheat to feed a lot of cows. We can take the same amount of those grains and feed them to an insect like crickets, and they converted almost 100%. And they're also much smaller, and they can be raised in a vertical environment, and they produce almost no methane gas. So, you're saving tremendous amounts of water or different kinds of water, because they're far more efficient at converting the feed and put into a food output. And then of course, the space it takes and the methane gas that's produced. So an example I like to give is that if a family of four got their protein from insects, just one day a week, so maybe in the morning, they put it in a smoothie in the afternoon, they put the powder in a pizza crust, and in the evening, they put the powder into their veggie chili. And if a family of four did that one day a week for a year, they would save the planet, about 750,000 litres of water if they made that choice over a traditional meat in their kitchen and in their diet. So obviously, you extrapolate that across 1000s millions, billions of families, you can see even just from water saving perspective, how tremendous that is. And then of course, the methane speaks for itself. And the cessation of destroying healthy lands to grow grains to feed our livestock is another big piece.

AMANDA 9:05

Wow, that stat is staggering. That's a staggering, and particularly when you think about what's happening across the planet in the area of water and water scarcity. That's a massive, massive stat.

I want to shift gears just a little bit and go back to talking about purpose for a second, before we dive into what makes sustainability, sustainability. You know, today, more and more people are choosing to buy brands that have a purpose. Purpose is on everybody's lips. It's part of everyone's agenda. So a lot of businesses are getting on what I'm going to call a bandwagon and they're crafting their why statements and they're putting them up on their website. But it's so much more than just a statement that goes up on a wall. And actually, there's a lot of talk that we're now at risk not only of greenwashing but also purpose washing. A lot of businesses are making a grave mistake almost equating their purpose to the idea of giving to charities or aligning themselves with causes they think are important to consumers. But it actually has no clear or authentic connection between their purpose and the work they're doing. But what I see across in Entomo, what I'd love for you to speak to is how you guys have incorporated purpose and how it comes to life in everything you do, not just in the products you sell, but across your whole operations across your whole business, maybe take us behind the scenes a little bit and share with us how the operations work, and how it brings your purpose to life.

JARROD 10:33

Yeah, I think that's a really interesting insight and nuanced reflection around that umbrella. Because I think for us, it was never calculated, we never sat down in a boardroom with a whiteboard to say, you know, how can we add these elements to our brand? How can we seem purposeful? How can we seem, you know, that these things mean something to us? Yeah, quite frankly, we just rolled up our sleeves and we went to work. And right, those things followed us insidiously. And, and by default, because they are inherently part of our mission, it's not something we had to calculate. It happened, you know, excuse the pun, that literally organically and naturally, right, and the work we do, and the reasons why speak for themselves, of course, we are capitalists, we are in this to do well and make money and put a roof on our heads and feed our families. But what I think we've seen and what your work gets to and gets at is that you can do that, and do it in a way that helps people that advances their lives, that offers them great choice and does not destroy the planet. At the same time. You know, being successful and doing well in business isn't, you know, tied automatically to somehow exploiting people or exploiting the planet. And we are lucky that what we chose, you know, and it's not that dissimilar, quite frankly, to the work I do as a chiropractor. It's just altruistic by nature. It's, it's just you sign up to help people, because that's who you are. And that's in your blood and in your nature, and in your ethos. And, of course, I guess any phenomenon, or thing or business can be abused or misused. But, you know, we're, quite frankly, on a mission, you know, for various reasons. I mean, you know, my brother Darren traveled to Madagascar, and he saw what real food insecurity looked like. And he said, you know, if we don't make this our problem, it's going to be our children's problem. And, you know, for us and our family, we don't like to see disenfranchised people starve. So you could argue that it's Darwinian, but, you know, I'd like to resist against that, that Darwinian principle and try and make a difference and help these people and empower them to to look after themselves in a positive, healthy and sustainable way. Instead of cutting down rainforests to hunt lemur, because they're, they're starving, or they're eating burnt, right, you know, burnt wood, you know, mixed with water to make little ash pies. So, you know, I think we're lucky, Amanda, in that, we never had to calculate how we added those tenants, to our business. And in that regard, just to take it one step further, it attracts the kind of people who have that same kind of purposeful, driven, mission-based disposition, because insect farming is hard work. It’s extremely hard work. Our farmers, you know, sign up for a job that is difficult. But it's important to them, and they feel lucky to be part of something that is, you know, creating something that's good for people and good for the planet. And, you know, we don't have to kind of interview for that personality. If you're there, and you're curious, and you're showing up, it's because you give it a damn.

AMANDA 14:03

Yeah. Wow. I mean, there's so much jam packed in what you said, we could spend hours just talking about how to build an organization that's missional minded. When you flow from the values of the founders or the leaders, it just flows throughout the entire organization, how you hire, who you hire, what kind of communications you do, the type of accounting practices, all of those things flow inherently, as you said, organically, because they're part of who you are. It's part of your human mission to do something that is of value to people's lives and affects everything that you do. Clearly.

JARROD 14:41

Yeah, we're fortunate there's nothing to spin, you know, or pivot from around what the business does. Of course, it's not perfect that we would love to have solar panels on our roofs instead of using electricity. I mean, there are parts of it that can be improved, no doubt, and there's lots of room for growth and improvement in every aspect of our business. But in its fundamental core principle, you know, it's here to advance the health of people's lives and their pets and their planet. So, the rest, just like you said, falls pretty naturally from there.

AMANDA 15:20

We've actually found in just the different leaders that we've talked to you and working with different brands and businesses, that the ones that are the most resilient, the ones that are the most able to navigate challenges, and, you know, everything from COVID, to competitive marketplace issues, those are the ones that really lean into why they exist, right? It's the ones that, despite the fact that maybe sales are not going the way that we wanted them to, we are going to stand for what we believe, and we're gonna keep moving forward. And it sounds like you guys are like that, it sounds like you know, you're set up to really be able to navigate everything from COVID to hiring issues, like I mean, talk a little bit about how it's built resilience within your organization's not just at the leadership level, but with employees too.

JARROD 16:13

Yeah, so I think, again, when you're on a mission to disrupt a part of everyday society and disrupt it in a way, that's good, the reason you wake up is deeper, you know, we don't wake up to make money, we wake up to change the world. And we know that that's not going to happen overnight. And we know that we're going to have to jump through hoops and be frustrated and have doors slammed in our face. And we just know that that's going to be part of it. But that's almost motivates us even more. So when you're on I think that kind of mission, the way in which your fire was lit, you know, it's just kind of permanently turned on. And the fact that it's so difficult, and that the challenge is so big, you either bury your head in the sand or you never give up. Because you know, food insecurity and our entire food system, and where it's come to today is a big problem for all of us. It affects people and people's lives in ways that most people will never know or understand whether it's what's happening on the bottom of the oceans, or in, you know, disenfranchised socio-economic communities where hogs are raised and the impact of the pesticides for their feed on those local communities. It's quite sad. So for us, it's like, we want to make a difference. We're here, we're determined. And if we're successful at what we do, then the money will follow. And we're very lucky to have investors that see what we see, and that those things are important to them as well. And they've funded our company and enabled us to put food on our table and a roof on our heads. And hopefully one day, our hard work will help them to earn their reward for believing in what we're up to, from a moralistic perspective, as well as a business case.

AMANDA 18:07

It's this whole idea of very conscious capitalism that benefits all - not just shareholders, but all stakeholders. So let's flash forward. So from the time that you started the business to today, right now reports a projecting that the edible bug industry is going to be worth $8 billion by 2030. So it's not just sustainable. And it's not just business for good, but it's also profitable. What do you think has changed in the consumer landscape over the last number of years, that's really driving this growth?

JARROD 18:38

So I think that this is what's even difficult for us is that, like, who will we be when we grow up kind of a thing? I'll give you a great example, that there's a wonderful company that has been funded by alphabet by Google. And there are name’s Verily, and they grow infertile male mosquitoes that they can place in areas where you may have an outbreak of dengue fever, or malaria, where they've traditionally used heavy pesticides to kill off those mosquitoes. But we know that that has a negative impact on the local communities, especially pregnant women. And, you know, using this natural if you will approach of these infertile mosquitoes to go in and cull these populations is a much more healthy option for people in those communities, but they couldn't get the mosquitoes to eat. And for fun, one of the people involved said, let's try feed the mosquitoes, cricket powder and see what happens. And the mosquitoes loved it and they're thriving on the cricket powder. So we didn’t go into this business to be a mosquito food company. And then, you know, the insect poop, which is called frass turns out to be a fantastic fertilizer. And we're very excited to be launching a retail product with Canadian Tire across Canada under their Golfgreen brand. And they'll be selling selling this wonderful organic fertilizer Canadian Tire. Wow. So we don't necessarily start our business to become a fertilizer company. And the fastest growing segment of our business right now is in pet food, you know, we're doing work with Purina and we have an amazing customer Jiminys out of California that's selling pet food and dog food and treats out of Petco, as well as, you know, other great companies from Quebec. So the product itself is so diverse, you know, it's very, very high end B12. You know, we're doing studies in Denmark now and the kind of B12 it is, you know, it's almost 30 times higher and B 12 than red meat. So can we extract the B12 palletize it and make a B12 pill? What about the oils they're people that are extracting the oils from the powder and using it in the pharmaceutical industry or in shampoos or creams. There are industrial uses, like it can be very sticky so could it be used as a natural glue to bind food packaging instead of food packaging using synthetic glues, is there a natural glue that can be made from the cricket powder that's better and food. There are natural shelf stabilizer proteins and the powder, so can it be used in baked goods like bread and bagels to keep them more shelf stable? So this is what's equally exciting and frustrating? You know, certainly from a kind of investor's perspective is that we need to remain focused on our core competence and what we do and what we're trying to achieve with this product with this ingredient. But the truth of the matter is, we're just at the beginning of what this can do what it's for where its utility will be best served. And aquaculture or livestock feed there was an Italian shrimp farmer who put 10% mealworm powder into the shrimp feed and a doubled the survival rates of the shrimp hatchlings. So you know, is it acting more medicinal in let's say something like aquaculture where you could reduce the amount of prophylactic antibiotics or steroids or hormones that are given to the fish. So people are looking at it as a feed when it made actually act more medicinally, pharmaceutically you know, when you're looking at it from a business perspective. So the reason I think that those growth trajectories are out there is a, because of the uptake from the human food side of the business, we're launching a wonderful product that will be in Loblaws and Shoppers Drug Mart soon, called Actually Foods, and it's a cheese puff. So the human food side is definitely taking off as people are learning more about the health benefits and wanting to make sustainably healthy choices. But so are the other categories and pet food, livestock feed and soil amendment or fertilization.

AMANDA 22:47

I love, you just sort of encapsulated this the beauty of innovation across the entire lifecycle of a product from its inception and how it's grown through to its end of life, if you will, and using every aspect of that. And you're creating new industry from that, that is just sensational, and super inspiring and super exciting, and the way that we all should be thinking as leaders in today's world.

So listen, in every episode, we want to leave our listeners with some purpose power tips that they can apply today, to level up their business and brand. What would you say are your two, you know, most practical power tips for how to activate and harness purpose to drive growth.

JARROD 23:32

I think you have to be authentic, you have to do something that resonates with you, that is meaningful to you that is authentic to you. Looking at what other people have done and trying to copy that it may have worked for them because of who they are not just what they do. And I see a lot of people wanting to jump on other people's bandwagons or try and mimic or copy what they've done. That is very different than being inspired by what somebody else has done. And to aspire to follow other people's paths is a wonderful thing. And I'm not saying you know, to take anything away from that. But if it is just not quite right for you, then keep playing with your clay. Keep playing with your idea. And you'll know when it's right for you, because there will be no doubt.

So that's the one thing and then the other thing is may be to be really stubborn. Don't give up. And you know, the corollary of that is be patiently stubborn. These things just take time. It's supposed to not be easy. If it was easy, then everybody around you would be doing it. But if it's not and it's difficult, and you've put yourself in that position to do something that resonates with you, and that feels right and feels good. That it's difficult is part of what makes it exciting. It's the challenge and the journey. And I think those are the two-ish pieces of advice I would leave your listeners with.

AMANDA 25:08

Thank you. Listen, Jarrod, you've been amazing. Thank you so much for the work that you're doing in and through and Entomo to make people's lives and the world better. Any final thoughts you want to share?

JARROD 25:21

Just thank you for the work you're doing as well Amanda. I really appreciate you reaching out and giving us this opportunity to participate in your podcast. And thank you again, so much for caring about our story and choosing to share it with your listeners, I appreciate it just as much.

AMANDA 25:37

Last thing, where can people find you? Where can they track more? Where can they you've shared a little bit about where the products are sold, maybe? Where can people find you and learn more.

JARROD 25:46

So our website and our Facebook page, our social media is a great place people can go, we do have a store on our website, we sell our products through Amazon. We sell a lot of our customers products on our website as well. People are interested in sample packs. And you know, most excitingly, I think with the Actually Foods launched with these wonderfully healthy protein rich cheese paths, you know better for you healthy, functional snacks. They'll be available in Loblaw by the end of the month. And people are welcome to email me through our website as well. And I'm happy to answer any questions or any follow up questions any of your listeners may have.

AMANDA 26:26

That's awesome. Thank you, Jared and really appreciate your time. Thanks a lot.

JARROD 26:31

My pleasure. Thank you, Amanda.

AMANDA 26:35

Thanks for listening to the purpose power brand Podcast. I'm Amanda Stassen. If you liked what you heard, be sure to share and subscribe on your favorite podcast player. We'd also love to hear what resonated with you or if you have a guest suggestion, drop us a line at info@bizu.co Special thanks to Mark Salam for original music and lead podcasting for production. Lastly, if you're ready to purpose power your brand to grow, win and impact at scale. Let's talk visit www.bizu.co. Bye for now.