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Why is it so hard to build ethical companies?

From creating products with low environmental impact to paying workers fairly and creating progressive policies to support them –– building a company with sustainability (both for people and for the planet) in mind should be a no-brainer. 

But we live in a capitalist hellscape that often incentivizes companies to do everything they can to make the most profit possible –– at the cost of workers and the environment. Today’s guest knew there had to be a better way, both for her companies and the families they served. 

Shazi Visram, founder of Happy Baby and now the CEO of Healthy Baby, joined Tori to talk about why it was so important for her to create a company that prioritized the highest quality production standards and education for families.

What you’ll learn:

• What it takes for a company to reach Certified B-Corp status, and why more companies should follow suit

• How you can invest in more sustainable brands and companies

• How companies and individuals can better support families through progressive paternity leave policies

• How to set your children up for success financially in the future

Shazi’s links:

Healthy Baby

Instagram

TikTok

Shazi’s Website

Resources:

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Transcript:

Shazi Visram:

I do believe in the energy of the money that you make. I would feel like a worthless piece of shit asshole if I made my money by hurting people, disparaging communities, selling people shoddy shit. But for me, the value of investing in things that are socially good and sustainable and meaningful, is that one day when you get the return, it’s a nice feeling to see somebody good win that you care about and you’re rooting for doing something to change the world for better. That’s awesome.

Tori Dunlap:

Hi financial feminists, I’m so excited to see you. Welcome back to the show. If you’re new here, welcome. We are a show that talks about how money affects women differently. We teach you how to be better with money, but also how to just understand that money affects every part of our world and every part of our society. And when more and women have more money and are more financially confident, the entire world starts to change. If you’re an oldie but a goodie, welcome back. I’m excited to see you. How many times will I say excited in these intros? Who knows? As a reminder, a couple housekeeping things. One, subscribe. The easiest thing you can do to support the podcast you like is just hitting subscribe.

Even if you don’t listen to all the episodes, fun fact is that hitting subscribe is better than just clicking through the show every couple of months when you remember it again. Hit subscribe, super helpful to the podcast you listened to, including this one. And if you’re on Spotify, go ahead and hit reply in that fun little box down below. We would love to hear from you. All right, today’s guest. We have so many people in our audience who are parents or hope to have children someday and even just love supporting their friends who have families. And what we’ve heard repeatedly and what we know is how this lack of support for families, especially in the United States, is a societal issue that just has drastic repercussions.

So today we invited Shazi Visram on to talk about why investing in families is one of the best investments we can make and her story of impactful entrepreneurship. Shazi Visram is an entrepreneur and mother committed to bettering the world through business that is socially, financially, and environmentally enlightened. She’s the founder of Happy Baby Brands, which she led to become the number one organic baby food company in the US market. Shazi is also the founder of healthybaby.com, which is the cumulation of a life’s work dedicated to protecting children’s neurological health. Healthybaby is a safe space for families to find the knowledge, community and products to build connected minds and bodies during babies early years, a time when they are making one million neural connections every second. Holy shit.

Healthybaby is the pioneer of the first ever diaper verified by the environmental working group and as an advocate for social entrepreneurship, this room is actively engaged as an investor and advisor to companies innovating for a brighter future. In 2013, she was acknowledged by President Barack Obama as, “Not only an outstanding businesswoman but also a leader that all of us can emulate.” In 2018, Visram proudly received Columbia University’s University Medal of Excellence for her gifts as a leader, her optimistic spirit and determination. In this conversation we dove into her background on raising funds as an entrepreneur working to develop cleaner and more environmentally friendly products for children and families and how the heart of this work is truly to support families in creating a healthier environment for their children.

We chatted about her work raising capital and building A certified B Corp, a distinction for companies that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency and legal accountability. We also talked about the importance of investing in sustainable companies as a part of our overall investing strategy, especially if we want to support companies whose values align with ours. It’s so obvious that Shazi truly caress not only about creating great socially responsible products that families feel good using, but truly support families holistically and helping families gain access to both high quality products and information. And we learned in our episode earlier this year with the Skim when we discussed the economic power of women that when we support families, everybody fucking wins.

We also dive into some fun ways to set our kids up for success financially. So if you have children or you want to have children, this is super important. And if you’re a business owner with children, we drop a great tip on how many small business owners can actually help their kids start investing sooner using their small business. Something I want to acknowledge before we dive into the episode is that we talk about how these higher quality products and especially when it comes to the things we give our kids or we use around kids, we recognize that this comes from a place of privilege. Today’s discussion is to just spotlight one way of doing what you can as a parent. Without further ado, let’s get into it.

But first a word from the companies that allow us to bring you all of this good free content. Excited to have you. Thanks for being here.

Shazi Visram:

Of course. My pleasure.

Tori Dunlap:

You have a beautiful home. I’m like looking at that mirror behind you. I’m like, where do I get one of those? It’s gorgeous.

Shazi Visram:

You have to get it used at an estate sale.

Tori Dunlap:

That’s what I’ve heard.

Shazi Visram:

$400. Everything in my house is used. But yeah, it does look good.

Tori Dunlap:

It’s smart and sustainable just like every business you’ve run. So I love it. We usually ask money experts this question on our show, but I think it’s also interesting to ask and hear your take. What is your first money memory? What is the first time that you remember thinking about money?

Shazi Visram:

It’s funny, I actually looked at the questions last night. I was thinking about it because it’s like a flood of memories. And the very, very first one, it’s weird. Are you ready? I grew up in a motel in Alabama. It was like a days in Fultondale right off of I65 exit 266, room 123, 125. And every once in a while a family would come and stay for more than one or two days and I might make a friend or something. And I remember once a family, they must’ve stayed for two, three weeks, because I became friends with the daughter and the son and we would swim in the pool together and it was just nice to have somebody. The mom waitressed in our little, it was nicer than a waffle house but not as nice as a Cracker Barrel.

And the mom waitressed in the restaurant and the dad helped cooking. And I remember being in their room when they ca
me in with their tips from the night and it was like this huge stack of money, not stack, it was a huge pile, but it was all a dollar bills and they were just so happy and so excited to have found an opportunity to make I guess extra cash while they were on the road and I don’t know, maybe there’s a crazy story about where they were going, but they were so nice and we all went to Shoney’s after that. It was the first time I ever ate in a restaurant and I had the hot fudge cake and I remember it was a dollar and it was the best dessert I think I’ve ever had in my life. So put it all together, there’s a lot there.

Tori Dunlap:

You’re like, this is the height of luxury right here.

Shazi Visram:

Whatever feels that way, is that way. Right?

Tori Dunlap:

Totally. In our discussions about having you on the show, you talked about sharing your story of your first a 100K. Can you talk to me about that?

Shazi Visram:

When I was starting my first company, Happy Baby and I had no money, nothing at all. My parents, they did well, but they’re not going to fund my Bohemian lifestyle in New York City. I started selling real estate and I lived in Brooklyn and I learned the power of doing a deal where you’re not just the listing agent but you’re also the agent that finds the buyer. You know what I’m talking about? It actually changed my life forever, is understanding how that works, because it’s like a double incentive to get the listing and sell the listing. And then the key to doing it is to getting the very best price for the listing. So who you’re working for, you do right by them, and then also who you found is the perfect person to buy it. It started making me see that if you brought the right people together, it takes some time to play the chess.

I got an awesome listing. It was in Brooklyn. The family was so smart. They were both Columbia professors but they were both hoarders and I mean not little bit. And I had to figure out what do I do because this place is beautiful underneath but no one can see it. It was the height of a real estate boom and I got the listing, which is cool, and then I sold the shit out of that thing. And I had five people in and we did a best and final. I just made sure that anyone who really wanted it was going to put their best foot forward and got really lucky that the person who did put their best foot forward was also the highest bidder. So they got the highest price, the buyer got what they wanted. I did the work to clean it up and showcase the bones. And then I think I got 116K, which was my first 100.

Tori Dunlap:

That’s amazing. What was your experience in real estate like in terms of informing how you became an entrepreneur? What experiences did you take from that that applied to building a business?

Shazi Visram:

My whole world is the world of baby, Healthybaby. It’s not like real estate, but growing up in a motel you kind of see what it’s like when someone will pay a certain amount for a room per night. I always had these metrics even though I hated them, my parents drilled them in, not on purpose, but you just live there. It’s like the language you speak. And then with real estate, it’s interesting. So you’re buying something, you’re going to keep it, there’s mortgage, some people rent. The rent is like 30 hotel stays and then you have a whole year of a commitment. And the biggest thing that I learned in terms of how you can create recurring revenue, is that it’s this much work to sell a studio and it’s this much work to sell a four bedroom, $10 million apartment. It’s actually the same. You’re doing all the same stuff.

Tori Dunlap:

Right. It’s the same amount of effort but a different outcome.

Shazi Visram:

Well, and actually if anything, selling the studio is harder because first time buyers are like, they’re thinking this is the biggest thing they’ve ever done in their life and they’re not thinking I’ll probably do that four or five more times in my life. It’s 150K, back then it was, that seems like the biggest thing and it’s actually a lot of management to manage those buyers versus someone who knows, I’m going to live here for three years, four years, my kids are going to go to this school and then I’m going to probably move on. And the place will appreciate with age and more financial comfort I guess. It’s like those decisions feel big but not as big as the first time. That was something I learned, is that build in the ability to do the same amount of work but for the biggest outcome.

Tori Dunlap:

That makes total sense. You mentioned before growing up in Alabama, and I think in other interviews you were mentioning this feeling of being othered when you were young, the feeling that you carried into business school where you were this black sheep. Do you think that affected your ultimate path in life and why you decided to start your first business?

Shazi Visram:

Sort of, yeah. I think everything affects everything. Being a black sheep is sort of lonely, but it’s also sort of awesome because at some point you find these other black sheep and you’re like, hey, cool, we’re a black sheep. Actually what’s funny is you say black sheep, but my dad always told me, because he’s from Africa or he was from Africa, and you find yourself in this country and everything’s so radically different. He moved when he was 40 from Tanzania, so totally different. And he would say, Shazi, everyone here they are sheep, you are a lion. Don’t forget this. So is it bad to be different?

Tori Dunlap:

I would argue not.

Shazi Visram:

At business school I was a total black sheep. I still don’t know how to use a computer. This is funny. I don’t know how to use a computer, I don’t know how to type. It’s not exactly my forte. I can do anything, but that to me is like, oh, I could hire an accountant. I pretty much run my life off of my phone. I have so much stuff going on. It’s awesome. It’s very, let’s say generative. I know that when I create abundance, it’s going to make the world a better place. And I figured out my way to do it and it might look black sheepish or it might not look completely typical, but it’s my way and I really like it. I’m not going to change and I fucking crushed it this way. So who caress if I do it differently than someone else with two accounting teams and five lawyers and a ton of due diligence.

I just do what feels right, which again is not the smartest when you’re dealing with money. I walk around with this consistent way of sizing things up, probably from the Birmingham days. I could tell you right now, if you walk into a restaurant, it’d be my mom, dad, me, my brother, we’d probably be eating during a time where no one else has eaten yet or before just because we were not a typically scheduled family. But then the first five minutes you sit down, you know exac
tly how many tables are there, how many seats, what do you think the turnover is, what do you think they make on an average order?

Tori Dunlap:

I do the same shit and it’s annoying to everybody else in my life. But yeah, I do the same.

Shazi Visram:

And you’re just sizing it up, and it’s not bad and it’s also not super healthy to always be like that, but foundationally to me it’s more ingrained than the MBA experience. I was definitely a black sheep at Columbia Business School. But the irony is I’m on the board now, because I’m around the most successful people in the world and I love being around them. I love learning from someone who can teach you something no one else can. And there are people like that around me and I’m so lucky to have earned a seat, I guess, or been given a seat. So yeah, being different. I was so different at school. I had a tattoo. Nobody at business school has a tattoo, at least when I was there. And then on top of it, nobody would ever want to start their own business. Back then it was not cool. It was consulting, VC, possibly investment banking. Entrepreneurship wasn’t cool.

Tori Dunlap:

You’re going to business school to not be a business owner.

Shazi Visram:

Well no, to go work for someone else to make more money and use your new MBA badge as a reason to get this massive step up in salary or something or to switch careers. And all of that to me always just seemed very confusing. Many people that I knew at business school, they were given everything, not given, but they grew up in such a different way where they’re at the top of this pyramid of possibility and anything they might want to do, they could do and they could change the world and pick something incredibly cool and meaningful. A lot of times you just see people with this glassed overlook with dollar signs in their eyes.

I have sketches of me drawing the adults in my class, they’re taking us on the computer, drawing a picture of everyone, like dollar signs in their eyes because that was the culture. And then 2008 pretty much humbled a lot of people. And I was outside of the norm because I wanted to start something new. It was risky. Why would you risk everything you had or why would you risk your reputation or the potential of just going to work at Bain or whatever? And to me that was like I would feel ashamed to work for someone else. That’s the benefit of looking at everything and being okay with being different.

Tori Dunlap:

Well, let’s talk about that risk you took in starting your first business. How did that lead you to develop Healthybaby, which is your current company and what led you to focus specifically on baby products on families?

Shazi Visram:

If you are socially minded or just care about making change and you want to do something like drastically impactful. The way I’ve seen it, I’m always sizing things up. The way I realized the most impactful thing I could ever do is create something healthy for a new family and progressive and sustainable and fresh and new, that could support a healthier life. Because at the time when I first had the idea for Happy, organic was 3% of the baby food market. Parents of course want better for their baby. They just didn’t know better. And you don’t know better until someone shows you a new way. But on top of it, you’re changing a food system. You go from hyper processed food with no real regulations to a different way that is towards regenerative and anything that we need for a sustainable future. And of course parents want it.

And in fact, retailers wanted to pay up for it because they never made money on typical baby food because that’s called a loss-leader. And ultimately you have this great cycle of trading up and trading up helps everybody, but especially the baby. So if you can find something where you make your life better because you’re so passionate about it and you really care, because it’s really hard not to want to support a new family. It’s everything that we have for our future. And then new families, they just need help. It’s hard. It has been 20 years ago, it’s even harder now. And then on top of it, you give them something better and they buy something they feel good about and then also the retailer makes more money, it’s such a win-win, win. That was the obvious thing. Of course, I had to change the world. There was nothing else possibly more important than that.

With Healthybaby, it’s very similar, but it’s expanding the vision to saying everything in our baby’s environment has to be clean and healthy and supportive of the new family being able to make connections and create a better future. And as cheesy as it sounds, I have yet to find one single thing that’s more worthy of my time professionally.

Tori Dunlap:

Do you feel like developing products with children or four children and families is something that’s discounted because women are generally the ones that are making those decisions?

Shazi Visram:

No.

Tori Dunlap:

Good. Okay, great.

Shazi Visram:

If you care about ROI, there’s studies, if you invest in maternal and infant health, the ROI is at least like 15X more than any other category, socially, but also financially. People want better products for their babies. Case closed. Even in 2008, there was this terrible recession and everyone was so freaked out. I was always raising money for Happy Baby and I changed our valuation because I thought, oh no, the economy and our same store sales are going to go down, then we have to discount our valuation, because all these other startups were, which was such an actual mistake. A bunch of startups sure would go out of business because people weren’t going to spend on superfluous things, but the health of your baby, yeah, no, I don’t think it’s discounted at all.

I think commodities are commodities, but bringing premium to a commoditized space is a totally different thing. We did it with baby food, same thing with diapers. And some people are like, I don’t care about what’s it in diaper, my baby’s just going to shit in it and then I’m going to throw it away. But it’s like, well, yes, but your baby’s also going to sit in it 24/7 for three years. And there are endocrine disruptors and all kinds of things that actually damage our health, human health, and they’re in the diaper. And yes, it is a very convenient product and you are going to use it disposibly and send it out into the world and it might live in the landfill forever.

But number one, we can change that. We can improve it. And yeah, of course they’re going to use it eventually, probably within the first day they put it on. But that’s important to me because I know firsthand how chemicals can affect our neurological health.

Tori Dunlap:

You make obviously a compelling case and the data backs this up of it’
s a win-win win for everybody. Yet when we talk to members of our community, women in our community who are mothers or who are thinking about becoming moms, what we hear over and over again is that they don’t feel supported by society, by their partners. You were mentioning it is more difficult than ever to become a parent and specifically to become a mom. So what can companies be doing better to support parents, to support mothers and how is Healthybaby working to better support moms and families?

Shazi Visram:

There’s so many companies that are not in the baby space, but their employees are in the baby making space and we have to support our new families, not just the moms, but the dads too. So paternity leave is really important.

Tori Dunlap:

Yes.

Shazi Visram:

Maternity leave is like obvi, but then also dads need to spend time with their new babies too and connect. Or if you’re adopting, bringing new life into the world and setting a family up to succeed is better for all of us. So being flexible, understanding personally how challenging it can be, especially if your child has a health issue. And the studies show that if you treat your employees well with respect and good maternal leave policy, they’re more likely to come back versus the turnover of losing them. So it’s also, again, it’s a win-win win. It just seems hard in the moment to be like, I’m going to pay that person to leave for three months and then let them have this flexibility that everyone else doesn’t have.

But everyone else didn’t just make a whole new entire human baby. And it’s hard. And it’s really hard on salaried employees, but it’s really hard on anybody who works by the hour. It’s just a whole different game. And so that’s where we need better policy and better buy-in from businesses. And then from business like ours, you get so much hard fought knowledge that I think is what can make a difference. And having a healthy connected child in many ways because I’ve learned from the difference between my son and my daughter and my son has a pretty severe neurological disorder, and I think we’re growing into a world where like it or not there’s just more and more and more chemicals being used to create things and they don’t go anywhere.

And the most vulnerable ecosystem in our universe is a developing baby’s brain and body. And so there are things you can make sure you avoid, but there’s also things you can make sure you do to encourage healthy development and parents who are so, you’re so stressed out, it’s so scary, you just have this, when they send you home from the hospital, you are wondering like, well, why did they let me bring this?

Tori Dunlap:

There’s no manual.

Shazi Visram:

Well, and I’m trying to help make the manual and then I think our diapers are the best diapers in the world. I know they’re made with the most care, but I don’t care about selling diapers, Tori, I care about the time of babies in diapers because that’s when their brain develops 85%. And I know what it’s like to have sort of a child whose brain has issues and it’s really hard and there are a lot of things we could do proactively. If you’re taking folic acid the day you conceive, you have a 40% decreased chance of having a child with a neurological issue. Shouldn’t everybody know that? I didn’t know the first time and I was running the fastest growing organic baby food in the company. I’m not making any health claims, but now I know. And so guess what? I made the best prenatal in the universe.

Healthybaby is more than diapers. It’s a whole platform for new parents to have support to feel like they can buy products that are truly healthy. And then at the same token get advice on how to use those in your daily life, because the things you touch in your daily life are the things that matter the most. It’s not like stuff that you buy, you don’t need stuff, you don’t need to collect stuff, you don’t need to buy $200 shoes, $100 shoes. It doesn’t matter what shoes your baby wears, but none of that’s important. The things that are important are the things that actually create who they are and that is healthy food. It’s the environment and things that go on their skin and protecting them from things that shouldn’t be there. And it is love and attention.

And those are the fewest best things in life, and all of us should be able to have access to those. That’s not for an exclusive few.

Tori Dunlap:

I want to take us behind the scenes of building a business. One of the questions I get and that we get in our community a lot is the world of VC funding. If you’re not in that world, it can be really intimidating to both try to seek VC funding if you’re an entrepreneur, but also potentially even investing as a business owner. I’ve just started Angel investing. That was something that no one taught me. Can you break down what it means to be a VC and why it can be worth it for women entrepreneurs, even if it’s so male dominated?

Shazi Visram:

Venture capital is different than Angel, as you know, venture capital is typically a fund. The fund typically has a timeline, like a horizon for when they want their money back and they’ll throw big money into things. They’re just working on the odds. And I’ve done some deals where I’ve actually made a 50X, right? Let’s say you have a bucket of money like the VC fund has and you throw 10 things out and you do your diligence and you pick as well as you can and you have a charter of what you’re focused on or what you care about or hat you know, whatever it is. There’s a trillion funds, they all have their own setup, but for the most part you’re looking at making initial deals, getting in early and cheap, creating a liquidation preference so that your fund gets their money back first before everyone else.

And knowing that some of the ones you’re going to invest in are not going to make it, and that’s okay because there’s going to be a couple that do and that’s going to cover it all. And now they’re trying to use AI to help funds only pick winners. But there’s some things about being a winner as an entrepreneur that are, I don’t know how to say it, but it’s-

Tori Dunlap:

Hard to do.

Shazi Visram:

It’s subjective. It’s the person, it’s the passion, it’s the market. Is the product uniquely differentiated? Do they know how to do it? Is the tide in their favor? With Happy I felt like I was building a boat and the tide was rising and I just needed to build a good boat, a good solid boat didn’t matter to me, tide was rising. There were so many hard things that were battling, but building the boat that didn’t leak. And it leaked a lot. It wasn’t like a yacht, but it was a good boat. VC is like that, but that’s a very corporate way of funding. There’s a charter, and again, remember they want to get their money back in a certain timeframe because big investors, like individual investors, family offices put their money into those funds. So you’ll have a bucket. I don’t know what it is for most people.

I’m big into venture because it’s what I love. But most people will have a bucket once they finally get some money and you’ve got someone trying to help you manage it, which I don’t really, I now finally have, but I’ve been doing everything myself, which is crazy. The bucket, at some point you’re going to want to call those investments back in or try to flip them if the time is up. And that’s what I don’t like about VC. But what I do like about VC, if you have the right choice with the right people who see your vision and are not going to push you on time and believe in doing it the way you want and they support you and then back you up as you need more, that’s the best kind of VC partner.

I’ve seen it go many ways for different people and it’s really sad when you see a CEO lose their business. They didn’t meet the initial expectations that the VC had, but you can’t predict the future in the beginning as much as you want to. We have projections, we hope they make sense, but really part of it being an entrepreneur is seeing how things are and adapting all the time. And so then how good is the entrepreneur at adapting? And so with that, the VCs are trying to choose all these different attributes, not just of the CEO and the founder, but everything together. And it makes it challenging because you really don’t know. It is a guessing game, but at the same token, there are things to me that are a tip off for someone who’s going to win.

Tori Dunlap:

Can you tell me what those are? I’m curious, as someone who’s been on both sides of it, what are you looking for in an entrepreneur, in a business? If I’m a business owner listening and I’m wanting to seek VC funding or I am trying to pitch my business, what attributes do I need? What do I need to showcase in order to make a deal happen?

Shazi Visram:

Well, let me just clarify, I’ve never raised money from VC, I’ve only ever raised money from private individuals and ultimately they’re the ones who are investing in those funds. So if you have a direct line of access to the decision maker in a way, to me it’s better because you set your own terms and they’re in it because they can see you not just through the funds lens, because the fund wants to make their 2%, their 20 and stay in nice hotels and all these things that are fees based on the amount of money that they have in the bank. So it’s really different when you’re talking about like, okay, what do I see or what makes a winner? You want a founder who has a vision and that seems obvious, but it’s like not everybody really does have a bigger long-term vision.

You want people who think big and who want to do big things and then who also have a plan, who are strategic and who have a resilience about them so that you can trust that when hard times come, my husband now went from a yoga dude to a golfer and he’s always talking about it’s not how someone plays from the fairway, it’s how they play from the rough. You want people who know how to play from the rough, who you can trust are going to do well. That’s a trait that I would look for, is like look at the founder, look at the why, look at the passion, look at the plan, and then question the strategy and the competitive landscape and then their ability to navigate that.

Tori Dunlap:

That’s really good advice.

Shazi Visram:

And also, do you really like the product and do other people like it? What are they selling or what are they making or what service are they bringing? Is it differentiated in a way that you get it? Because it’s like one thing when you invest in something and someone’s like, oh, it’s such a great blah, blah, blah and it’s this and that and I don’t know anything about it. If I don’t know the industry and I don’t really know how to give input. For me, those are ones that I feel like it’s rolling the dice versus making a smart choice because I do better when I invest in what I know.

Tori Dunlap:

There are 7,000 companies that are B Corp certified. Yours is one of them. Can we talk about this distinction, why it’s so important to you? What does it mean to be a B Corp? What do you have to do? What boxes do you have to check in order to make that happen?

Shazi Visram:

Okay, so I’m so proud of being in B Corp. I met the founders the first time at the White House talking about how you can use business as a force for good.

Tori Dunlap:

I love that very subtle, just drop, oh yeah, I met them at the White House, no big deal. It’s fine.

Shazi Visram:

That doesn’t mean shit. That doesn’t mean you get to be a B Corp. That’s the beauty of it. It doesn’t mean shit. You could be their mother. You still need to go through the process. That is the beauty of it, right? It’s like third party regulated in a way. So you are creating a business ultimately that the DNA should match within the B Corp community, which is that we are here for a triple bottom line and it’s not about checking boxes, it’s about showing outwardly with some level of metrics that you are who you say you are, you’re in it for why you say you’re in it, you’re going to do things, you have goals, you have targets.

And the beautiful thing about B Corp is they give you so much support around handbooks for doing things better. The very first time I ever saw the pronouns on your email address, very first time, must’ve been eight, 10 years ago. When was the first time you saw that?

Tori Dunlap:

It’s probably been sooner than that.

Shazi Visram:

Four or five years ago maybe?

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah.

Shazi Visram:

It’s newish. No? B Corp did it first, not because they’re so, it’s just like they are on the cutting edge of how to really navigate a socially responsible business towards progress.

Tori Dunlap:

Right. It’s not virtue signaling.

Shazi Visram:

Like I said, your cousin’s not just in the B Corp community because you are. It doesn’t work that way. You’re graded, you have a score and ideally you’re improving the score. At Happy Baby, I don’t know recently because I’m not involved in any day-to-day and sold the company, but we’ve best of the world game changers like B Corp and that’s really cool. Someone is saying externally validating that your company exists to make a difference. Patagonia is number one. It’s a little bit competitive for me, but I want to be the best in the world. The B Corp community, I don’t know every single one of them, I can’t vouch, but I know the intention and I know that it’s really nice to have guidebook.

Because for startups and entrepre
neurs, when you’re first starting out, you’re making so many choices and most of them about how do I save my capital and do this the most thrifty way, because you have to, because you’re trying to build your boat and if you build your boat with support from those guys, it doesn’t really cost you anything and you’re getting the advice that I’d hope you’d want anyway. My suggestion is for everyone to look into it and to support B Corps.

Tori Dunlap:

I’ve literally opened up a tab and I am looking, I’m like, what are the requirements?

Shazi Visram:

It’s consumer power, because then people who care about the right thing will buy from companies who do the right thing and it’s a shift.

Tori Dunlap:

And that perfectly transitions into one of my other questions about investing in sustainable businesses, especially since for the average person, right? Investing is literally investing in the stock market. It’s very difficult to navigate. I’ve talked about this in my book. There’s always decisions to make about what you want to stand for and how you want to stand for that. Whether that is, okay, I’m choosing to not invest in companies I deem unethical or I’m going to vote with my dollars and support women, person of color, minority owned businesses. For you I think one of the great things that you’ve done is you’ve made it a big part of your portfolio and your mission is investing in ethical companies. Can you talk about how you evaluate that and what draws you to invest in those companies?

Shazi Visram:

I wouldn’t say I believe in karma, but I do believe in the energy of the money that you make and I would feel like a worthless piece of shit asshole if I made my money by hurting people, disparaging communities, putting people at risk for making products that weren’t safe, selling people shoddy shit, not doing right by every single family. I take it personally, I think you’re not supposed to take it personally, but I take everything personally and my family eats everything I kill, so to speak. Nobody gave it to me. I didn’t have a rich uncle unless one has been hiding in the wings. But for me, the value of investing in things that are socially good and sustainable and meaningful, is that one day when you get the return, it’s a nice feeling.

To see somebody good win that you care about and you’re rooting for, doing something to change the world for better, that’s awesome. It’d be cool to just own a stock and see it 10X, that probably feels good too. I’m not saying it doesn’t, but for me, I think you can do both. I don’t think you have to trade off. I don’t have any oil and gas pipeline investments, but I also, I’m not really big in the stock market to be honest.

Tori Dunlap:

Can you tell me more about that?

Shazi Visram:

Yeah, just don’t fully understand it.

Tori Dunlap:

Well, you’re in the right place. Anytime that I can help, let me know.

Shazi Visram:

You should tell me how it works. I think I’ve missed the Columbia Business School. I think Wealthfront and Betterment are two examples of robo-investing type of options with super-duper low fees, who really make it easy for you to understand what you’re doing and see your returns, analyze your risk, set your portfolio. I have money in the stock market, I just manage it myself because a lot of you want your financial advisor to do it for you, but then there’s a fee on top of the fee. And in today’s world it’s actually pretty easy just to do it directly if you have the mindset of I’m going to set some parameters and I’m not going to look.

Tori Dunlap:

Yes, you’re echoing my entire, all of my work around investing. I teach women constantly, you don’t need a Wall Street Chad to come save you. You don’t need somebody to invest for you, you can invest yourself and you should invest yourself because nobody cares about your money like you do.

Shazi Visram:

Oh my God, yeah. Let’s just have we do anything for the health and wellness of my children, especially my son. He needs me to be his biggest advocate for the rest of his life. And the money that I make, it needs to serve him. Case closed. He’s the sweetest little angel in the world. I don’t know if he’ll ever be independent. It’s on me. And if you put money away now, luckily he’s been on the back of every single Happy Baby package. That’s an ability to say, okay, my kid’s a spokesperson for my brand. It’s true. He’s on it and he’s part of the story, and that allows him to get paid whatever the maximum is to put into an IRA every year and just find a way to prioritize that so that one day when it’s time to cash that out, it’s tax-free and that can be managed, that will grow like crazy. You know the beauty of compounding interest, it’s unreal.

Tori Dunlap:

I plan on doing future episodes about this, but to highlight what you just said, I have plenty of entrepreneurs who are parents who do that, who get their children involved in the business in some way. Now, this isn’t child labor, but it is involving them in some way where they can literally become part of the payroll so that they can contribute to an IRA, because IRAs require you to make some sort of money. So a previous guest on our show, Andy Hill, he runs the Marriage Kids and Money podcast and he has done this where occasionally he’ll bring his kids on and interview them on the show, and to compensate them for their time, they’re part of his payroll. They consult, and I’m putting consulting in quotes, on his business about how to coach families.

So he is able to take some of the earnings for his company, put them in an IRA and Zoe’s his daughter, in Zoe’s name, and that way she can get the compound interest before she’s even an adult, when she’s 9, 10, 11 years old. And it sounds like you’re doing the same thing and it’s really smart. It’s a really, really smart strategy to be able to, if you’re financially able, and especially if you’re a business owner, set your kids up for success in the longterm. So that’s great.

Shazi Visram:

If you invest for your kids now, in 18 years the amount that they’ll have is shocking. And what else will shock the shit out of you is the cost of college 18 years from now.

Tori Dunlap:

Also very true.

Shazi Visram:

And it’s like the very first thing that you should do, but it’s not exactly like what normal, average, typical people, I would never have known, nobody told me, there was no playbook. But to our point, so you’re talking about, so bring your kids into your business if you can. My kids are the reason I do everything. If I’m going to make something in the world, it’s going to be good enough for them and t
hey’re going to be there because this is why I do it. Invest in your children’s education. We need to protect their health. There’s so much we can do. And to me, that’s the biggest investment. And then our time, because the first three years especially, the more time you spend with your baby, the more successful they’re going to be in life.

And then there are things you can learn and do to set them up for success. And this is totally that kind of thing. Everybody who’s listening to you is already playing around on all these sites and seeing the power of money compounding, because you don’t have children yet or don’t or might not want to.

Tori Dunlap:

I don’t.

Shazi Visram:

You look too young and fresh.

Tori Dunlap:

The lines haven’t started and that’s how we know I don’t have children.

Shazi Visram:

[inaudible 00:39:09]. It makes you make choices differently, because especially if you’re the one in charge of everything financial, it’s not just about you. I could go to the beach right now and never come back, but I can’t. As you change in life, everything changes. And honestly, setting your child up to have an education and the future with all the tools that we know we all need for success and that we all don’t get access to. I live in a very fairly posh town in Connecticut. You’d be surprised how many people, how surprised they are if I’m the one that pays the check at lunch. If I’m sitting with someone who’s a white person. Yesterday I was walking with my mentor who’s 80 years old, my best friend. I call him the Silver Fox. He’s been my mentor forever, helping me be strong and be confident and make good choices, everything.

And we’re walking in Greenwich, on Greenwich Avenue, and I’ve got my back brace on because I just had back surgery and he’s helping me off the chair and we’re laughing so hard because everybody probably thinks I’m his nurse. You know what I mean? It’s funny to want to prove a point all the time like, I made this, I can do this. I am a woman of color. I came from Alabama. I got called bad names when I was little, dah, dah, dah. But it’s also like then you achieve a lot and it’s like, what am I doing it for and why? And what do I care about? It goes back to your black sheep comment from the very beginning. I don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks of me except for my family and my children and how I bring abundance into this world and then distribute it to people who deserve it so I can help people.

That’s it. Case closed. But I’m so lucky. What kind of kid when they’re 12 is like, I just think I should send myself to boarding school. I don’t think if I had done that, I would do the things I do now, but it’s just like we need to be able to challenge ourselves. We need to have educations. The way America is going, it’s not like you just are guaranteed good college experience once you graduate after being a really good student. We need to set our kids up and invest in those trends. Every single thing you can do, 529, 401(k), Roth IRA, IRA in your kid’s name, bringing them into your business. This is the way to set ourselves up for better. And then we could let go of the whole story of all the sadness. Who cares?

They don’t need to know that. They should. I need to take my daughter to my dad’s orphanage in Africa. It’s been 10 years since he passed away and she’s seven and she doesn’t have any clue what it could be like. And I do want to take her, but at the same token I also don’t need her to carry around this burden of living in a motel room and all that stuff. That was like my story. I want her to have her story and the way you do that is to let them with an education and opportunity.

Tori Dunlap:

Right? Shazi, thank you for your time and your expertise and your work. I so appreciate it and I am so excited for people to hear this episode. Where can folks find out more about you?

Shazi Visram:

You just need to go to healthybaby.com and just become a member. You’ll get so much information, especially if you’re a new parent, and even though it really doesn’t make us one penny, it’s like my life’s work is that prenatal and then everything else is super good too. Check this out. You can buy our products now or just go online to register, and so we’re giving away $10,000 for 529 college saving plans. Same deal.

Tori Dunlap:

Amazing.

Shazi Visram:

And anybody can come to the site and register for it. You don’t have to be a buyer, but you do have to have a baby. But if you’re thinking of having a new baby, Tori, actually you should write an article or two for us and be an advisor. But I’m just assembling all the best wisdom in the world to share with new families so they don’t have to sort through it all and they can learn from some of the things that I’ve learned the hard way. Healthybaby.com, please go, I am terrible at promoting myself. But it’s not me, it’s a platform for health and connectedness for every new family. So healthybaby.com.

Tori Dunlap:

Amazing. Thank you for being here. A huge thank you to Shazi for joining us for this episode. You can find her Healthybaby products in Target stores and you can also sign up to receive free resources at healthybaby.com. To learn more about our guests, read transcripts and grab additional resources, head over to our show notes page. As always we appreciate you being here. Thanks for being here financial feminists. We’ll talk to you soon.

Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First $100K podcast. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap. Produced by Kristen Fields. Associate producer Tanisha Grant. Marketing and administration by Karina Patel, Sophia Cohen, Kahlil Dumas, Elizabeth McCumber, Beth Bowen, Amanda Leffew, Masha Bachmetyeva, Kailyn Sprinkle, Sumaya Mulla-Carillo, and Harvey Carlson. Research by Ariel Johnson. Audio Engineering by Elizabeth Path. Promotional graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolfe, and theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound. A huge thanks to the entire Her First $100K team and community for supporting the show. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First $100K, our guests and episode show notes, visit financialfeministpodcast.com