110: Building a purpose led, B-Corp business: A conversation with Kirsty Leighton, CEO and Founder Milk & Honey PR

ShownotesI recently spoke with Kirsty Leighton Founder and Managing Partner of award winning consultancy Milk & Honey PR, the highest scoring B Corp global communications agency in the world. As someone who speaks so much about purpose, it is always a great learning opportunity for me to engage with people/founders who believe in the power of purpose. In this freewheeling chat with Kirsty Leighton we spoke about the meaning of purpose and how it manifests itself in business conduct, engagement with stakeholders and sustainable practices. We also spoke about bravery, setting up a business in her mid-40s, building an agency that behaved differently 👇🏾👇🏾👉🏾 The Elephant in the Room for the industry - poor diversity and social mobility👉🏾 Addressing challenges facing the industry including the disruptions around new technology, upskilling the talent pool and also changing the traditional agency model👉🏾 What comms professionals can do to maintain their seat at the table👉🏾 The drivers for transitioning from LLP to an employee ownership trust👉🏾 B-Corp certification, as a path to betterment, external validation and respect👉🏾 What leaders are doing to prepare for the future of work - including dealing with hybrid, new technology, mental health, work life balance etc….And much more. Link to the podcast episode in comments 👇🏾👇🏾Episode TranscriptSudha: Good afternoon, Kirsty. Thank you for being a guest on The Elephant in the Room podcast today. Kirsty: Lovely to be invited. Thank you so much. Sudha: Okay, so let's jump right in. Give us a quick introduction to who you are and what you do. Kirsty: So my name is Kirsty Leighton. I am the founder and I've given myself the very exalted title of Group CEO of Milk and Honey PR. An organisation that I set up six and a half years ago. So six and a half years ago, with just me, with my almost 30 years experience now we've been able to grow that from just me in six years to now 50 people in three continents and four offices. Sudha: Wow. That's amazing. So when and why did you decide to launch your own consultancy? Did you have an aha moment? I know that women are fairly risk averse and often when they take that first step, it's because they're not satisfied with what is happening in the workplace, or there's some sense of dissatisfaction. Kirsty: Well, that was absolutely the case. I was incredibly fortunate that in the last 25 years prior to starting Milk and Honey, I had worked for some amazing, always PR agencies. So I'd always been on the agency side. And I'd learned an awful lot during that time. I got the opportunity to work in lots of different types of PR, but what I found is that sometimes the intention of what an organisation's policy was looking to achieve was perhaps slightly missed in practice.Kirsty: And there was just these little niggly bits where I could see what the intention was, but the practical delivery wasn't quite delivering it. So my last role, which was at Hudson Sandler before I'd set up Milk and Honey, they were actually coming out, they were doing a management buyout from Huntsworth, and I just thought actually, do you know what? Do I really want to wed my future to this organisation as brilliant as it was? I was there as MD for five years and thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought, actually, do you know what now is the time, if I'm going to do something on my own, to do it.