The B Corp Journey of Factor Tachtig

Hey there, and welcome to our blog series exploring B Corp Journeys!

We talk to friends from the movement and ask them to share their experiences and insights with us. With a bit of luck, you can apply their experiences to your own B Corp Journey. We aim to help smoothen the process for those looking to certify and be a force for good.

In this piece, you’ll read about the B Corp Journey of Factor Tachtig. Seen through the eyes of Jeroen van IJzendoorn, the founder, owner, and brand strategist. He also happens to be our 23plusone Friend and one of the coolest creatives we know. No one ever rocks new sneakers quite like Jeroen… But enough about his style. Jeroen has much more to offer than that. You’ll read about:

- The great work they’re doing at Factor Tachtig
- Jeroen’s vision on sustainability
- Experiences with B Corp certification
- Helpful tips for a smooth certification experience

Enjoy!

About Jeroen (and Factor Tachtig)
Jeroen van IJzendoorn works at the B2B brand communications firm ‘Factor Tachtig’. At Factor Tachtig, clients are invited to co-create deliverables. Together with the Factor Tachtig team, they are challenged to build their brand through a continuous creative process. With this approach, Factor Tachtig creates brands that have longevity. A form of sustainability, if you ask Jeroen, who sees sustainability as something far beyond the green box within which it is often placed.

At the core, it’s about thinking long-term. Similar to the exchange between yin and yang, sustainability's environmental, social, and financial sides must be given attention to positively impact each other. Building long-lasting client relationships, for example, leads to a better understanding of each other and, therefore, to stronger brands. Simultaneously, the stronger relationship also allows for more influence, meaning you can inspire clients to think differently. Now that’s thinking win-win.

Cross-pollination is an important topic for Jeroen in general. He has an impressive perspective on and appreciation for the intersectionality of complex issues. Sustainability is clearly an environmental problem. But it’s also a social problem. Financial security might not often be mentioned in the sustainability debate. But Jeroen sees it as an important element. As is biodiversity. Given that the planet will easily outlast us, the fragility of the human species cannot be underlined more. Otherwise, there will soon be no place left for us…

But Jeroen is far from pessimistic. He sees changes in our way of thinking and doing business and is energized to support these developments. B Corp, he thinks, is a positive guiding force due to its inherent nature as a movement rather than being a static certificate that’s renewed yearly, like ISO certificates. By being a movement, the vision of B Corp gets amplified much more powerfully. And in exchange, it also amplifies the voice of people or organizations with a similar message but with less clout.

B benefits (and negatives)
This is exactly what the main benefit is for Jeroen with regard to B Corp certification. His message, which he has been expressing for 16 years already, gets more powerful by association with the movement. Rather than ‘just another creative on sneakers telling us how we should improve,’ he can now build on the more established expert position of B Corp.

But it isn’t all rose-colored for Jeroen. Especially the limited appreciation for the context difference between large MNOs and small SMEs was frustrating when filling in the B Impact Assessment (BIA). Although B Corp does allow for different certification processes for organizations of differing sizes, there are still questions that seem odd from the perspective of a small organization. For example, processes that need to be formalized and established in larger organizations to benefit everyone can be managed differently in smaller organizations. Currently, the evaluation system does not account for this.

However, Jeroen also experienced benefits from the certification process, such as the potential for the BIA to make us aware of how we do things and to show opportunities for further impact improvement. At Factor Tachtig, this resulted in creating the ‘Prikkelraad,’ an advisory board meant to spark and challenge the team. This a nice example of how the BIA can support holistic thinking about impact, as it’s easy to lose sight of all the details of impact improvement if you lack a model or structure to place this in. By using the B Corp method, this problem gets tackled effectively.

Tips and tricks (from Jeroen)
1. If you ever consider getting certified, take a first shot at filling in the BIA. By doing this, you’ll appreciate how comprehensive the BIA is and how likely you are to certify.
2. Maintain a top 3 list of impact improvement points, and start working on them as you move towards certification. If you decide it’s too much for your organization to manage, put it down but realize that this means you’ll fall behind others in the coming years.
3. Get your team involved (as much as possible). Engage them in fine-tuning the certification results, so they feel part of the process and will internalize the philosophy if they don’t already.

Celebration
The party to celebrate getting certified is yet to come at Factor Tachtig. The certification is still fresh, but the official acceptance email came sooner than expected at a busy time for Factor Tachtig. While Jeroen believes it would be close to greenwashing to flaunt this achievement too much, he also recognizes that it is something to be proud of. If people can jump on tables to celebrate winning an Effie award, getting B Corp certified is surely something to be even more proud of. So no party yet, but it’s upcoming, and we’ll be there to celebrate another organization committing to being a force for good.

Final note
Jeroen closes off our conversation with a powerful statement:

‘I am happy that we are part of a movement of companies that take making a positive impact seriously’. I believe in the importance of reciprocity. I notice that we’ve lost this. I believe in karma as well. If you do a lot of good, it will come back to you somehow. And I hope this [the certification] is a way to show our commitment to making a positive impact, even if it doesn’t create financial returns and just ‘costs’ us money. If this leads to others getting inspired by the mentality and us getting love in return, that’s great.’

We are happy to see people like Jeroen and organizations like Factor Tachtig getting certified. It was great chatting about the B Corp Journey experience. Thanks to Jeroen for taking the time!

If you want to learn more about Factor Tachtig, visit them here.
If you'd like to learn more about Jeroen, you can check his LinkedIn here.

And in case you have any questions about B Corp and how we can support you in your B Corp Journey, reach out to me directly here.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article! If you are interested in being interviewed for this series about your steps towards B Corp certification, let us know, and we’ll reach out to set up a conversation!