A note before we start. GoodNorth is one of the two arms of the Sponge impact business model. It is not a Sponge lead generator. It is not a conversion event. It is not a funnel step. We have kept it on the clean side of a clear divide from day one. The reason will become obvious as you read on.

How it actually started

The unexpected start was the B Corp Leadership Development Day in Sydney, September 2017.

Sponge had earned its B Corp certification on January 1, 2017. Then I put my head down for nine months waiting for the BLD to come around.

That day was an incredible thing.

Two hundred people in the room. In between every session, the lunch breaks, the coffee break, I found myself in another inspiring conversation with someone doing something phenomenal with their business. Using it as an absolute force for good.

The accumulation of those conversations across the day did something I had not expected. I was surrounded by awesome humans, and I wanted to be around this group. To be blunt, I felt like I had wasted 9 months of certification.

I am a big believer in what Jim Rohn used to say. You become the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So I made a commitment there and then. I would get to know every B Corp in Australia and New Zealand. Befriend them. Hang out with them. So I could be more awesome. There was 221 at the time. How hard could it be?

I came home buzzed and inspired.

The problem was the community I had just discovered did not really exist on the ground. There was no regular gathering. No ongoing connection.

Sydney first, then Brisbane

Back in Sydney where I was living at that time, I tried to instigate B Corp drinks with the passionate few who were already doing the work. That was the start.

Then when I decided to move to Brisbane in 2018, I called Tim O’Brien. He was one of the new B Corp friends I had made post-BLD, and we had spoken about the need for community. I said to him: “I am coming up. We are going to blow this f£!king thing up.”

We met up. We talked about what was possible. And that was where GoodNorth was born, under another name, Byron to Bundy. It was named by committee, which made sense at the time, but was also confusing to so many. We rebranded it later.

A friend of mine, Tom Dawkins, was coming to Brisbane and asked if he could bring a couple of mates to a dinner we had planned. I was still new in town so I said yes. One of those mates of his was Tom Allen of Impact Boom. I noticed his motorbike helmet at the table and told him we were going to be friends.

A few rides later, the cafe talk got serious. We were both wired the same way. Good business community building. Breaking the silos between social enterprise and for-profit and impact-driven. Getting people who care about the same things in the same room.

He has been in my life ever since. Best man at my wedding. The birthday party he invited me to was where I met my wife.

The event format started as quarterly in-person events up and down the East Coast, from Byron Bay through the Sunshine Coast. We were just getting momentum when COVID hit, and the only path forward was to take it online. That pivot turned out to be the unlock. Fifty-seven Purpose Speed Networking events later, the online format is the heart of what we do.

What GoodNorth actually is

GoodNorth is a community for purpose-driven business owners doing good in the world. The dual purpose was locked from the start.

One. Create profound connection within the Business For Good community.

Two. Foster deep, real, true collaboration across that community.

That is it. Nothing more complicated than that.

The divide we keep on purpose

This is the part that often gets misunderstood, especially by people in the Sponge world who hear about GoodNorth and assume it must be a Sponge marketing thing.

It is not, and it never has been.

We have kept GoodNorth on the clean side of a clear divide from day one. Not because it could not be commercialised. It absolutely could be. We have chosen not to, because keeping it authentic about the impact requires it to stay separate from anything Sponge sells. The moment GoodNorth becomes a funnel, it stops being what it was built to be.

To us, that is the cost of doing this right.

This is also why you do not see us promote GoodNorth much, and why some people in our world have wondered what exactly it is and why it exists. This blog is the long version of the answer.

What we run

Four formats currently.

Online Purpose Speed Networking. Monthly. Free*. One hour. People dial in from all over the world. The Purpose Matchmaker does its thing in the background so you meet humans you actually want to know. This is the flagship event and the easiest way in.

*$20 Play or Pay. Refunded when you show up.

Quarterly drinks in Brisbane. In person. In collaboration with Tom Allen and Impact Boom. The Brisbane crew, plus anyone passing through who wants to drop in.

Annual Reignite Retreat. Held in winter. Built out of a long conversation between Tom and me about burnout and what is actually required to help our community keep going. The retreat is where the deeper immersion happens. We are up to the 6th now.

Business For Good Network (BFGN). Our members community, run in partnership with Tom Allen and Impact Boom. Private events, masterclasses, and ongoing connection between the public events.

Check out the current lineup, calendar and links to access each of these via GoodNorth.co

A note on the B Corp word

Sponge was a certified B Corp. We certified, recertified twice, and made a considered decision not to recertify a third time.

That decision is not an abandonment of values, community, or the work. We removed the B Corp wording from our events and stopped running exclusive B Corp events, but the philosophy and the practice carry forward through GoodNorth and through how we work at Sponge every day.

Many have associated me with B Corp and B Lab over the years because of my passion for it. Which made the decision to decertify a real conflicting experience for me personally.

On my last call with B Lab after the decision was made, my good friends there said that I, and GoodNorth, are very much B Corp adjacent. That meant a lot, and it still does.

I personally look forward to the day when the business models currently allowed to certify are no longer ethically allowed to, so I can rejoin without the internal conflict.

For the longer story of why we made the decision, the decertification blog is here.

Why I keep showing up

There is a frequency and a mutual elevation that comes from being in a room of good people doing good things. I caught the bug at that BLD in Sydney and I have not lost it since.

For an hour each month (and the other times in the platform), regardless of what is going on in my life or how much pressure is on, I am immersed in that community. My spirits lift. My energy lifts. I am inspired by what people are doing and by their purpose moments. I love hearing what drove them to be the good human they can be in a world that does not always make that easy.

The people who keep showing up say the same thing. No matter what is going on for them, they know they can come and they will leave buzzed and recharged. The event centres them. It energises them. It puts them back in the room they need to be in.

The deeper connection happens in the spaces between the public events. The members community. The Reignite retreats. The smaller conversations that grow out of one good introduction.

I do not care who helps who become more of an impact maker. Collaboration is the key. The common thing is the frequency of the people who show up.

Why we are passionate about growing this

At Sponge, we are passionate about growing the Business For Good community. Here is why.

There are so many wicked problems in the world that we cannot rely on government alone to solve them. The work falls to good humans who are purpose-driven, and the fastest way, the better way through is collaboration. When we collaborate, we accelerate impact. We stop reinventing the wheel. Combined energy. Aligned energy. Shared purpose. All of that good stuff.

It can be an incredibly lonely role to be in the small percentage of people who think about business this way. Business as usual extracts every dollar it can, regardless of the human cost or the planetary cost. That extractive model is the driver of the big problems we are seeing in the world. Choosing to think about business differently is hard work, even when you know it is the right work.

Being supported by a community that gets it changes everything. It makes the hard work survivable. It is how we accelerate.

That is what GoodNorth is for.

How to join

Whether you are a newbie or a seasoned pro. Whether it is your first time or your fiftieth time. You are welcome.

My role as the host is to make sure you feel welcomed to the community as part of the family. Because you are awesome and you deserve to be surrounded by awesome people.

If you have been sitting on the fence, watching from the sidelines, mildly curious but never quite making it through to an Online Purpose Speed Networking session, this is your sign. I promise I will make you feel warmly welcome.

Come along. Trust me. No one will ever know. I will not even know. You will just be another new face among the smiling nervous faces. And those nerves drop quickly when you realise you are surrounded by awesome people.

I would love to see you there.

The Online Purpose Speed Networking is free* and the next one is one week away. Tuesday May 19, 2pm Brisbane time . One hour. Online. Wherever you are in the world, if you can make the timezone for an hour, you are in.

*$20 Play or Pay. Refunded when you show up.

Lock in your spot here.

If you want the deeper layer, the GoodNorth private members community is where the ongoing conversation lives, but you have to attend an event first.

I will be in the room. Come find me.

Until next time, be unapologetically awesome.

Luke