Build With Conviction: How To Find Your Brand Purpose To Create Impact with Dr. Kimberly McGlonn

Dr. Kimberly McGlonn demystifies why being an outsider is a strategic advantage in the fifth episode of Get Down to Business: A B Corp Podcast. In Dr. McGlonn’s words, “When you really are coming from a perspective where you are, you know, first to be overlooked, it actually gives you another capacity to think about problem-solving with less restriction.”

Finding The Common Thread of Value for Stakeholders

In the fifth episode of Get Down to Business, Dr. McGlonn McGlonn, founder of NOOR By Grant BLVD, tells co-hosts Lauren Everett and Denise Jones about what it means to build a business that reflects your values and offers true value to all stakeholders. She recounts how adopting an intersectionality mindset has helped her to approach business differently.

NOOR By Grant BLVD is a sustainable luxury brand that weaves ethical production practices, commitment to intersectional designs, and a heart for community growth into a holistic value for its stakeholders. Dr. McGlonn reveals that in adopting an intersectionality mindset in rebranding her business, she has expanded her ethos, not deviated from it.

According to Dr. McGlonn, the nature of intersectionality is seeing more than one thing at the same time, and hers is fueled by a real sense of urgency. To truly make progress, we can’t choose one or the other. We must find that intersection that connects all that truly matters so that we can show up more authentically. 

Business owners don’t have to shrink from their calling because it feels expensive, but rather become more ingenious. Dr. McGlonn says, “If doing the right thing is something that I can’t afford to do, then I need to find a new way of doing better.” Dr. McGlonn considers it a privilege to recognize and understand how her lived experience has informed her ability to observe and approach marginalized folks. 

Are You Fulfilling Purpose? Reevaluating Your Role In Your Market Ecosystem

Borrowing an excerpt from Dr. McGlonn’s new book, “Build It Boldly: How Daring Business Leaders Can Gain Influence and Create Impact,” new entrepreneurs should ask themselves these three questions before investing further in their venture:

1. Who am I presently? Can I be honest with myself and others about who I’ve been?
2. How does the business meet a clear psychological need for my target consumer?
3. How can businesses, and I, as an extension of it, create a positive impact on my community of origin and/or residence?

Answering these questions gives you more context on what you can offer your stakeholders and who those stakeholders should be. “I think about the ways in which we oftentimes romanticise people who show up as heroes in communities that are not theirs and experiences that are not their own, even with the best intentions,” says Dr. McGlonn. 

Since becoming a Certified B Corp, Dr. McGlonn notes she has reoriented her team members on her brand’s true mission so they have the tools to drive it. It has allowed her to deepen her teaching practice. “The B Corp assessment also offers an opportunity for professional development within company culture,” she shares.

The Value of Coming with Receipts

Dr. McGlonn describes a B Corp as “an aspirational movement towards better,” and we agree. “…B Corp [Certification] just became a pathway for communicating to other people that I said what I said and that I was gonna do what I was gonna do and that I will have receipts to kind of support what we were building,” stated Dr. McGlonn.

Since becoming a B Corp in 2021, Dr. McGlonn admits her concept of what a business is and what it could do has broadened. Although still grappling with the aspirational push of B Corp Certification, Dr. McGlonn believes that completing the B Impact Assessment has helped her understand how she can add value and educate her consumers about her mission and values.

Dr. McGlonn admits that the impact assessment team at B Lab was intentional about understanding the essence and scope of her business and made accommodations where necessary. She added that going through B Corp Certification is worth it for brands looking to be on the right side of history. 

B Corp Certification has also helped her broaden her concept of brand value. The story of NOOR by Grant BLVD(which means light) is a journey to self-discovery by harnessing hidden potential. The brand is helping solidify the belief that the best identities we can adopt are the ones we cultivate when no one is watching by holding up a compass for its consumers.

Rewriting Cultural Norms with Evidence-Backed Impact 

For a community of people who have so much to share, Dr. McGlonn observes that Black women have been marginalized and overlooked as having no real value to offer. However, providing data to back your value not only establishes your business’s credibility but also helps silence implicit biases. 

“Having receipts is another way of entering into a qualitative conversation with a quantitative track record,” she declared. She describes B Corp Certification as that evidence. In her opinion, B Corp Certification gave reassurance to investors interested in impact. For discerning consumers, the B Corp logo offered direction, and for her, earning a certification as rigorous as  B Corp Certification has become a symbol of pride.

Dr. McGlonn notes that earning B Corp Certification is her response to staying authentic in the current political climate. Although the United States’ current political climate has posed significant obstacles for Dr. McGlonn, she insists she focuses on doing the actual work without worrying about how much exposure it gets. Her interest is in knowing how consumers are responding to her brand’s actions. 

For her, the most important step in earning B Corp Certification is surrendering to transparency and accountability. “I think the standards are high, and I think the standards could be higher,” Dr. McGlonn suggests. In her opinion, the B Corp movement can help do two things: drive up wages and drive down consumption, which she believes will steer the global supply chain away from exploiting people of color.

Dr. McGlonn is building a brand that ensures even the smallest details of its resource use align with the big picture. Since recertification, NOOR By Grant BLVD has been more intentional about managing waste, innovating its design patterns, and sourcing materials ethically. 

Redefining Sustainable Luxury Through the Language of Economic Freedom.

Dr. McGlonn notes that our culture has yet to redefine the concept of luxury. As a pioneer, she observes that there’s still reluctance in accepting black-owned luxury goods because it doesn’t fit the optics of what luxury should look like. However, with more intentional consumer education, this narrative can be reshaped. 

True luxury, she notes, is being able to pay a living wage to those in the supply chain. More stakeholders should care more about the role our finite resources play in creating luxury. Earning B Corp Certification has helped NOOR By Grant BLVD become more transparent in breaking down its cost of goods and letting that define its pricing.

Dr. McGlonn recognizes that the beauty of the B Corp movement is in creating an international standard that can advance the narrative of what it means to do good business. In this way, we can expand our notion of sustainability. In her opinion, sustainability starts with an awakening of radical care for self and seeing that care reflected in others. 

To Dr. McGlonn, sustainability is taking care of people through the lens of how we want to be taken care of. And being part of the B Corp movement has evolved her sense of care and community. Having access to a community of diverse people united in driving social change has been transformative. 

Dr. McGlonn admits she met one of her closest friends, Tess Hart, co-founder of Triple Bottom Brewing, through the B Corp movement. Tess has become a haven for her because she understands the climb, triumph, and trials of her adventure.

Episode 5 of the Get Down to Business podcast featuring Dr. McGlonn McGlonn, founder of NOOR By Grant BLVD, will be available across streaming platforms, accompanied by video on B Lab U.S. & Canada’s YouTube channel, on August 5th.