Carrie Fox:
Hi, and welcome to Mission Forward. I’m Carrie Fox. For more than 25 years, I have worked alongside social sector leaders who do the essential work of holding communities together and moving us forward, often in moments of deep uncertainty. And in those moments of uncertainty, maybe like the one we’re in right now, when it feels like there is so much we don’t know, it helps to ground ourselves in what we do know. And that’s where data comes in. When all else feels shaky, it’s helpful to get grounded in the data and the facts and the insights that can power our purpose forward. And it’s why we’ve dedicated this season of the show to making sense of the data. Now, up until this episode, we have been looking at our own Insights on Purpose report, in which we go deep on the issues facing nonprofit and foundation leaders. And we’ll come back to that in some future episodes. But today we are looking at a different report, the 2026 Conscious Consumer Report, specifically from our friends at Public.

And we’ve got two great people here to help us make sense of it. Phil Haid, CEO and founder of Public, and Caleigh Farrell, Public’s VP of Research, who led the report. I’m thrilled to have them. I have known and admired their work for many, many years, and this is going to be a great episode. So stay tuned.

Phil and Caleigh, welcome to the show.

Phillip Haid:
Thank you, we’re excited to be here.

Caleigh Farrell:
Yeah.

Carrie Fox:
You sent me this research. I would have seen it on my own, but I am thrilled that you raised it with me because it’s fabulous. It is so good, and there’s so much in here. We’re going to get to as much of it as we can, but maybe you could ground us first in what is this research, for folks who haven’t yet heard about your research report, the Conscious Consumer Report.

Phillip Haid:
Yeah, great. I’ll kick it off and then, uh, Caleigh will, uh, she’ll jump in and she’ll correct me and she’ll set me straight. So, um, but we like to start off by sort of just the really quick story of why do we do this? Um, and the quick story is, you know, as practitioners like you, Carrie, like, we have found over time there’s so much research that has been produced around the conscious consumer. And essentially it always says the same thing. There’s variations, but essentially the same thing, which is that people will pay more and they’ll do more for companies, for brands that do the right thing. And that just wasn’t our experience.

There is 10% of the population, what we call the sustainability stewards, and I’m sure we’ll get into segmentation, who are more open to that. But by and large, our experience as practitioners was that that just wasn’t the case. And so we thought we need to create our own research to actually sort of pop the balloon, as it were, in looking at the conscious consumer. Really ask ourselves essentially three things. One, how big a segment is it? Like, how many people actually are conscious consumers? And of course it’s purported behavior, but still, like, what percentage of people will shop their values, their ethics, and make a conscious choice? So that was the first thing. The second was who are they? And so to kind of treat them as some kind of homogeneous group of people, and we’ll get into some really interesting findings about sort of what people assume is the conscious consumer, which you think would lean more Democrat, left leaning, more affluent. So we’re gonna, we’ll get into that. But who is this conscious consumer? That was the second thing. Really wanted to understand the segment and what are the differences.

And then the third thing, and this is where the research got really interesting for us and why we did this, was what are the claims that actually drive conscious choice? So, you know, literally the wording on a package of yogurt or on the tag of a t-shirt. Like, what are the words, the claims, that someone says, I’m gonna pick this product over that product? And so we felt that that would be really additive to both challenge the assumption that people will pay more and do more, and then figure out not just what not to say, but what to say. And so that’s why we did this conscious consumer research. We started it last year, we’ll get into it. And then this year we followed it up, trying to take the learnings from last year. And we’re really excited by what we found.

Carrie Fox:
Very cool. All right. So there’s a lot. I’m gonna have you just keep going because there’s so much I wanna know, particularly on that claims piece, which I just find so intriguing. Um, but start at the top for me on this. You know, the sustainability stewards maybe is 10%, but you learned that there are a lot more people who are conscious consumers than the 10%.

Caleigh Farrell:
Yeah, absolutely. Um, so we found five conscious consumer segments, and they are identified by the frequency by which they shop their values. And I want to also asterisk that when we say shop their values or shop their ethics, values and ethics aren’t arbitrary. In our research, we establish that ethical shopping means using sustainability or benefits to people and planet as a driver of purchase or boycotting. So we’ve established what the baseline is. And across the five segments, we move from people that shop their values 80 to 100% of the time, which are the sustainability stewards. They opt in with the reliable frequency. And those that opt in 0% of the time. But there are three other segments that are really, really important.

Those that shop their values some of the time. When you combine the sustainability steward with those three other segments, you have 68% of all consumers that are actually shopping ethically some or all of the time. And there’s huge opportunity to move that mushy middle, using air quotes on a podcast. There’s a lot of evidence that we can move them up the purchase frequency ladder by communicating to them better, appealing to their core drivers of, to what actually drives shopping habits, which is what the claims actually, really interestingly, reveals.

Carrie Fox:
Yeah. Okay. So one, sorry, Phil, you go first.

Phillip Haid:
No, I was gonna say, so just the baseline is, so when we asked it in 2025, how do you shop your, you know, your values, your ethics? We found that 38% of people are conscious consumers. Okay. Uh, and we’ll get into it. But it actually went up in 2026, which is super interesting given what’s happening in the world. So we created a baseline and essentially an index for how many people are conscious consumers. And then we looked at it across the segments that Caleigh was talking about.

Carrie Fox:
So this might be hard to say that it’s one to one, but if from 38 up to 68…

Phillip Haid:
No, so we went from 38% in terms of the total, uh, to 40%, so two points. Um, and the interesting thing about that is you’re like, you know, listeners might say, well, two percent, like, why are you making such a big deal? But two percent in a year where affordability, we’re in an affordability crisis, right? Inflation is still, like, really persistent, where every poll will tell you that people are more price-sensitive in the US than ever, right? Um, and the world that we both live in, that, you know, this pushback on woke business, you know, is getting louder and louder, and people don’t care as much about social, environmental impact as they did, say, back in ’21, ’22. All of that is a backdrop. So we expected the index to go down, and it actually went up, which tells us this isn’t a niche thing.

This is actually quite interesting.

Carrie Fox:
Mm-hmm. Okay. All right. That’s really good to know. One thing that I found so interesting, and it kind of popped a myth for me, is across all of the demographics that you have in this research. So tell us a little bit about, when you say the conscious consumer, I know this is across many age sets, uh, political ideologies, but tell us a little more about who was involved in taking this, uh, research.

Caleigh Farrell:
Yeah, so it was done based on a gen pop audience in Canada and the US, and we found some really interesting trends across those five segments. So, um, I think it’s often easier to look at the polar ends of the spectrum. Uh, it’s easier to define the characteristics that really, uh, easily define those segments.

Carrie Fox:
Mm-hmm.

Caleigh Farrell:
So on one end of the spectrum, with sustainability stewards, they’re more likely to be 35 to 54, uh, a little bit higher education levels in that group, often likely to have children. The other end of the spectrum, more likely a 55-plus category, less likely to have children, or at least school-aged children, and have lower levels of education. And then across the board you see a smattering of demographic variables. What’s really, really interesting in this year’s report is that it challenges two widely held assumptions or myths about who the conscious consumer is. The first one is that income is a reliable predictor of level of conscious consumer behavior, and it’s not. We see income move all over the spectrum across the five segments.

And in fact, the sustainability steward is the most price sensitive of all the segments. And so we can’t say, oh, you have more, so you’ll pay more and you’ll buy the products. It’s not one plus one plus one. And so that was myth busted in this year’s survey. And then the second is that those that shop their values are more likely to be liberal or Democratic leaning. And what we found is that, particularly in the US, there’s a really even split, even amongst that sustainability steward, between Democrats and Republicans. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, we’ve long thought that that apathetic actor category, people that never shop their values, we’ve sort of largely dismissed them as an immovable beast that we can’t actually, um, encourage to act and shop their values. We’ve long thought and dismissed them as right-leaning individuals, when in fact half or almost half are actually liberal or Democratic leaning.

Phillip Haid:
Uh, and when you go right in the middle, what we call the mindful moderates, the gap between, uh, being Democrat or Republican is like, is very small. Right. And one of the things we found so fascinating about that is because, as Caleigh said, like, the myth around, um, you know, the affluent Democrat is who you sort of think of, right? And of course if you think about all the narratives and the sort of the whole pushback that’s happening, it’s just not accurate. And I think one of the interesting kind of proof points out in the marketplace is if you look at the MAHA movement. Uh, and we won’t go down the vaccine rabbit hole, but if you look at what Kennedy is trying to do around taking toxins out of, right, you know, out of our foods and out of, like, things, you know, uh, creams and all kinds of things we put, cleaners, et cetera, uh, or trying to reduce sugar, salt, and fat in our diets.

That’s not a Republican issue and that’s not a Democratic issue or an independent. That is about what we as individuals and as our family care deeply about, about how it personally affects us. And that’s critical. And I know we’ll get into this, but that’s critical to the research. And so they have to stop with this narrative about this is all about the woke and the left who care about this stuff, and conscious consumerism is over and people don’t care, and that was a moment, you know, we’ll chalk that up with Black Lives Matter. It’s just not true. Right.

So we always say don’t believe the headlines. Because the reality, what we’re seeing, is this is mainstream behavior, and it’s not about the political persuasion. This is about relevancy to people wanting to live their lives in a way that is gonna help benefit their health, benefit their communities, benefit their families. And that’s the driver.

Carrie Fox:
Yeah. All right. So there’s so much I have to ask you, and I’m going to give you two paths. You go wherever you want to go next. Which is, I both want to hear what you learned about the words, the words that work and the words that don’t, right? We’re gonna dig into that. I also want to hear about, so what do people do about it, right? Those who are marketing products and communicating, these are pretty big ahas you’ve made. And so I know that there are probably some pretty clear recommendations that you’re making. I’m gonna want to hear about those too.

So take us where you want to next.

Caleigh Farrell:
Yeah, I think we’ll start with the claims and move into it, because I think there’s a natural segment there. And sort of building on where we’ve just landed, our first report found that half of consumers had walked away from a sustainability purchase, or a sustainability-linked purchase, because of confusing claims. That number grows to 87% among sustainability stewards. And you think to yourself, you know, those of us that work in this space, you’re like, what is so confusing about our claims? We’re saying, you know, buy this and less emissions. It’s not that confusing. And then you now have this layer of analysis that says it’s not the liberal affluent. We’re talking to a lot of people that come at issues from a lot of different framings. And when we speak simple human truths about individuals and the benefit to people, we’re going to appeal to a wider demographic that come at these issues from all sorts of places, but ultimately share an aligned perspective on improving the health of people and improving the health of the planet, particularly when they benefit themselves.

And so that layer allows us to better assess the language we need to bring. And so when we took the claims from last year, we found out that me now works better. We applied that learning to the claims that we tested. So to say it another way, last year we took 16 commonly used sustainability claims, tested them for resonance. Those that had a me now benefit, that benefits me in the present day, outperformed those that have a we later angle. Those are normally, like, environmental science-based claims, and they perform three to four times less well than top performing claims that center individual benefit to the consumer.

Phillip Haid:
And can we just double click on that for one sec here? Because I know you get this in this space, but it’s so obvious, and yet there’s this massive gap. So just to kind of, for listeners to kind of think about that. It’s so obvious that you focus on the benefit to me today, not how is this going to help the world in the future? And yet, if you look at how most, um, social, environmental, uh, claims are communicated, it’s always about the collective benefit in the future. Right. But we just have to stop doing that, because that is, it’s not helping. It’s not moving the needle.

And it’s like, it’s such an obvious point that we saw in last year’s research. But it’s like, but we looked around and we’re like, well, why do we keep doing it? And then Caleigh will keep going. But what we then did is, of course, we said, okay, well, let’s take that learning. And let’s look at the claims, and then let’s actually rewrite them with that learning to show people, to show brands, how could you actually say it better to drive purchase?

Carrie Fox:
And what’s really important, I probably shouldn’t even have to say this, but none of this is about false claims. You can’t just change the language and say it. I mean, these are, you are working with people who are really deeply committed to making sure that they are doing the things they say. Because that’s a whole other part of this conversation, is how many false claims are out there too. And sometimes it’s hard to make sense of those.

Caleigh Farrell:
Absolutely, absolutely. And in all instances within our report, and when we talk about our report, we say you can’t just transform your language without ensuring that you are compliant with the regional standards on both what you can say, from a green claims directive and beyond. Uh, but we wanted to put pressure tests and investigate whether or not, you know, consumers told us in the first year, we want, do we want to shop claims that prioritize benefit to me. And so we wanted to say, like, okay, so we applied that language. Does that actually turn out to be true? And in almost 70% of the cases across the two categories we tested, which was consumables and wearables claims, um, we saw positive performance in that transformation. When we, um, when we transformed a claim like certified organic, which was a low bar performer in the first year, and changed it to grown organically to be safer for you and your family, we didn’t change anything about the core tenet of that promise and commitment. We just added simpler terms that located the value of that commitment to the purchaser, and saw great positive growth in its performance.

Carrie Fox:
Yeah. Give that to us again, Caleigh, the before and the after.

Caleigh Farrell:
Yeah, yeah. Uh, from certified organic to grown organically to be safer for you and your family. Again, being certified organic or grown organically is still the core tenet of that claim, but we’re expanding upon it to close the loop on why you should choose a product that is produced that way. We’ve seen in the claims that we tested, actually, though, the claims that benefited the most from integrating the me now, not we later learning were actually the science-based environmental claims.

Carrie Fox:
Mm-hmm.

Caleigh Farrell:
Where historically the consumer benefit is a little bit more obtuse. Claims like durability have always pulled well in our first year and pulled really well in our second year, even with change. We did see positive growth, but the, um, the benefit to the consumer is a little bit more overt in those instances. But when we toy with environmental claims to make that human element more overt, we actually see tremendous performance upgrades.

Phillip Haid:
And I’ll give you an example of that, to what Caleigh’s saying. So, you know, you see on some claims about made with less water, right? And the thing is that you have to understand, okay, well, what’s the relevance of that? So if it’s less water, then what happens? So what we wrote it to this year is made using recycled water to keep our rivers and lakes cleaner. Right. So there isn’t as much of a direct personal benefit, but we tied it to something that our consumer, we assume that our consumer still cares about, and it performed better. And there’s, uh, there’s another element that’s really interesting about this, and we know this as marketers, so you’re always trying to be as reductive as possible, right?

You’re always trying to say as much as you can in less words. But I think what we’re seeing in this report is sometimes you have to use a few more words, with more specificity and more personal benefit, to actually drive the conscious choice. So we could say made with less water. That’s much nicer to say. It’s much shorter than our longer made using recycled water to keep our rivers and lakes cleaner. But it performs better because people actually get it. Right? We can say made to last. It’s a beautiful line.

We love it. We use it in our work with, uh, clients. But we said instead, durable for longer use and less waste. So sometimes when you’re more explicit and you can show the personal benefit, we know that the result is it’s gonna drive conscious choice.

Carrie Fox:
I mean, it’s what we have always known, right? I mean, the power of story to pull people in and help you understand complex topics. That’s really what you’re saying here and reinforcing here, is a few complex words may not work as hard as add a few more, but simple, words that actually have someone feel and be able to see themselves in that product and in that benefit, and they’re more likely to move in that direction.

Caleigh Farrell:
Yeah, I think one small important thing that we don’t really get into in this report, but a lot of the terminology in this space uses the word less. Less emissions, less water, less plastics. When you shop, you shop from a scarcity mindset. And less is never a good thing. You know, like, you don’t want less toilet paper in your packaging. You don’t want less cleaner. And even though it seems like a very small thing, part of our discipline is actually to help people overcome that psychological barrier, to explain why we aren’t sacrificing anything in the quality of our product and your experience of it by removing something. And so extending that language, even though, to Phil’s point, it’s sort of counterintuitive from a marketing perspective, what you’re actually doing is explaining why that matters and how it benefits people, including the shopper.

Carrie Fox:
Caleigh, so we primarily talk about nonprofit and foundation issues here, though everything we’re talking about today is so relevant to this audience. But we talk about this word nonprofit, right? We lead in the nonprofit sector with what we’re not. And we often talk about the importance of having to flip that, how much more a community benefits because of your existence. And you’re saying the same thing, right? So the scarcity versus abundance mindset is really important, and thanks for connecting those dots.

Caleigh Farrell:
Yeah, for sure. And I think it’s also important to state an obvious fact, that not every claim has a direct consumer benefit. Which doesn’t mean it also can’t benefit from simple language transformation. So we took a claim like, um, made by, uh, made with people in fair working conditions. Which is a supply chain benefit. The trickle down benefit to the consumer is pretty minimal, right? You feel good about it. There’s the halo effect. But we changed that claim to made by people receiving living wages in fair working conditions. Humanizing that fair working condition claim to actually mean something that you can sort of more easily…

I feel like when I explain these claims, I use the word grok a lot, which really geeks me out, but it just very simply telegraphs the transformation of that language. And I really like that claim as an example of the from-to that you can make on resonance, just by using simpler, more human, more kitchen table type language.

Carrie Fox:
So, um, for those listening, both Mission Partners and Public are B Corporations. You all are still a B Corp. Okay, just making sure.

Phillip Haid:
We are. We are indeed.

Carrie Fox:
Um, were you all at the Champions Retreat recently?

Phillip Haid:
We weren’t, because we were sharing this research at Engage for Good in Palm Springs.

Carrie Fox:
Very cool. Okay.

Phillip Haid:
Yeah, we missed it.

Carrie Fox:
So I was not either, but I got a report-out yesterday, and I heard that there was really quite a lot of focus on, um, this whole challenge that is greenwashing. Setting that aside and basically saying stop being silent about your commitments to the environment. Sing it from the rooftops now. It’s time to get louder about our environmental commitments. Um, it sounds like y’all are reinforcing that through what you found in your research too.

Phillip Haid:
We are, for sure. And it’s one of the myths that we really want to challenge, and we shared it, um, in the presentation last week. Because the, again, the common sort of, uh, feeling right now is this is not the time to communicate, right? Uh, it’s a challenging time. The administration will come after you. If you get too loud, you might get penalized, you’ll lose government contracts, and so on. Um, and what we have found is, you know, if you have done the work, there’s some caveats here, but this is actually an excellent time to communicate. But the caveats are, one, you have to have done the work. So to what you were saying earlier, Carrie, like, if you’re just trying to use nice language, but you haven’t actually, you know, you can’t substantiate the claims, this all falls apart.

So that’s obviously a given. So you have to have done the work. The second thing, though, is you really have to understand your audience. Because, you know, if you look at, um, if you look at what happened with, uh, Costco, right? You know, everyone’s holding up Costco as a great, you know, impact brand. Well, they’re not really, right? It’s just that they never wavered from their values. Right. And it’s really interesting. I think why Target is getting so much, um, challenge in the market over the last, and you know, uh, there’s a whole bunch of reasons for it, but the pushback to Target was they had done a lot of work to support communities, and particularly Black communities, and they felt like, people felt like they walked away from that.

Right. So now it’s like, well, we better put our heads down and not talk about it. But there’s a whole bunch of brands in the marketplace who are continuing to talk about it because they’ve done their work, they understand their audience. So you’re not going to be for everyone, right? And they’re showing up in a whole bunch of different channels in which to do it. And they’re completely winning. And then the most important thing is they have embedded impact, social impact, environmental impact, is just part of how they communicate. It’s not some separate thing.

It’s not about we run our business and then we talk about the great things. It’s just part of who they are and how they communicate that to their consumer. And when you do that, and we can get into examples because we shared a whole bunch, when you get into that and you see it, they are absolutely winning in the marketplace. So this is a great time. You know, greenshouting, I think, was what B Corp talked about, right?

Carrie Fox:
Greenshouting, yes.

Phillip Haid:
Greenshouting. If you’ve done the work, you know your audience, you’re embedding it in, um, and you’re showing up, you can absolutely shout. And we’re seeing the results. We’re seeing lots of brands do extremely well.

Um, so this is, this is a time. It’s like when everyone says, you know, when the market crashes, people say you don’t want to buy stocks. It’s actually the best time to buy stock. So this is a moment where in challenging times there’s massive opportunity. And we are constantly trying to say to our clients and others, this is the moment to actually double down, but there are things that have to be in place in order to do that. Yeah.

Carrie Fox:
All right. We’ve got time for one more question. I’ve got to ask you about this, uh, one which is related to trust. Right. We talk about trust on the show a lot. You can’t move your mission forward if people don’t trust you. And that’s the brand writ large. It’s also the person at the top, and all of the ways that we talk on the show about ways to earn and build and keep that trust. So tell us a little bit, because part of this research looked very, very closely at the topic of trust.

Caleigh Farrell:
Yeah, thank you for asking that question too. We don’t talk about this part of the report as much. Um, and it’s chock-full of insights, in my mind. So we asked consumers which industry, between government, business, and non-governmental organizations, have the best ability to impact an issue. And when they responded, businesses rank second, right? Consumers largely believe, the general public largely believes, that businesses have outsized ability to impact issues facing people and planet, just behind government, above nonprofits. And when we asked them who they thought was actually going to take action, the business’s performance drops down dramatically. We have low confidence and low trust that govern, that businesses are actually going to take action against the commitments.

That confidence gap, as we’ve called it, is what we think continues to help eradicate, or sorry, erode trust in business today. And in order to regain trust, obviously that’s not just a communications exercise. Uh, we know that trust is built on the capability and character of a business. And if you don’t have those, you don’t have much to communicate. But if you have those things and you have the ability to communicate, finding the right channels to do so in can actually really help grow confidence. And we know for a fact that sustainability and impact communications can really contribute to brand equity and overall reputation and trust. And so to show up in the right places with the right messages that move people, we actually think is like your, you know, sort of like your superpower in this space.

Phillip Haid:
And you know what’s so counterintuitive about it is that if you are doing the research and you see that your brand has low trust, you sort of, the knee-jerk response is, well, we better just put our heads down, do the work, not communicate, stay silent, right? And kind of build it back. What’s counterintuitive about that is, in fact, um, and again, with the caveat that you can’t do greenwashing, but the things that you have done, what’s counterintuitive is the more that you communicate across a whole multitude of channels, our research showed this as well, actually drives an increase in trust. Right. So it’s not one channel. It’s actually a multitude of channels. So the knee-jerk response of, well, we better not communicate, is actually the counter. What you should do is you should start communicating the things where you’re showing the benefit back to your audience, and do it in multiple channels, right?

That actually will increase it. And the last thing I’ll just say too, and building on what Caleigh said, was what’s so interesting is brands that have high levels of brand equity get so much leeway in the market, right? There’s so much research that shows that when you ask somebody who’s doing a good job, they go to the brands that they love, whether or not they’re doing a good job. So if your brand love scores are pretty good, it’s another reason that you can actually communicate to increase your trust. So it isn’t just do the work and then communicate. It’s actually, no, do the work and communicate. And it’s not necessarily one before the other, you need both, but there is a baseline of activity, of action, of credibility you must have first, or you can’t move to the communications.

Carrie Fox:
Wow. You all uncovered a lot in this research. So we are going to link the research in the podcast, but also I just want to thank you for digging deep into the issues where, again, there were so many misperceptions that this research makes so clear. And so I’m so glad you’re doing this. I’m so glad you’re able to be here and share it with us. And I really look forward to seeing how brands in the market start to shift in response to what you recommended here. It’s so clear and practical, and clearly will have a greater impact.

Phillip Haid:
Thank you.

Caleigh Farrell:
Thank you.

Carrie Fox:
Well, thanks for being with us today. I appreciate you both.

Caleigh Farrell:
Thanks for having us.

Phillip Haid:
Great to be here.

Carrie Fox:
Hi there, and welcome to a new featured segment on the show we’re calling Wider Lens, where I get to pose a few questions to a leader working in a neighboring field to find out how they are navigating the change of today in ways that can help us all become smarter strategists and communicators. In today’s segment, we are talking finance with Johnny Flavin of Aspire Capital Advisors, one of the sponsors of this season of Mission Forward and a dear friend of mine. Aspire Capital Advisors has been a great partner to me over the years, and I am grateful for their investment in this show. Johnny, the firm’s managing principal, believes as I do in leaving the world better than we found it, and I’m thrilled to welcome him to this show. Johnny, welcome to Mission Forward.

Johnny Flavin:
Oh, thank you so much, Carrie. Thank you for having me on. I’m super excited, and, uh, excited just to have, you know, great conversation with a great friend.

Carrie Fox:
Yeah, me too.

Johnny Flavin:
So, uh, so very, very much excited about this.

Carrie Fox:
All right, so let’s see how much we can get in, because I got a lot of questions for you in the time that we have. All right. I thought maybe we would start with this idea of planning versus reacting. Right. So one of your, uh, organization’s core beliefs is, I love this phrase, a goal without a plan is just a wish.

Johnny Flavin:
Yes.

Carrie Fox:
So when the headlines feel scary or uncertain, and maybe they feel a bit that way right now, right, how do you as a financial planner, advisor, help folks tell the difference between adjusting a plan and reacting out of fear?

Johnny Flavin:
Yeah. Excellent question. So the biggest thing to make sure, or how we take a litmus test, are you just reacting out of fear, is how far are we deviating from that plan that we’ve set up? Meaning that when we sit down, what a good financial planning firm should do is say, okay, let’s set out these very clear, very succinct, you know, short-term, mid-term, long-term goals. And if all of a sudden there’s a hiccup, you know, whether it’s with the government or politics or this or that, if all of a sudden you’re totally deviating from these goals that we’ve set up and everything, then that’s not a plan. Or, that, you know, now you’re completely going off the road, um, that we’ve laid out for you. So in times of uncertainty, clients really look for certainty in the planning process that you’re doing for them. And part of that planning process is having, you know, there are going to be market hiccups.

Doesn’t matter who’s, you know, at the helm of the, you know, presidency or anything like that, there are going to be hiccups. Markets go up and down. They have a natural cycle that they go through. Um, so with that said, that initial planning process should take that into account. Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t make adjustments along the way, because obviously if we do a plan and things change, yes, we make adjustments as necessary. But what you don’t want to have happen is a client completely saying, whoa, I need to get off the rails and completely go in a different direction because of what’s going on. Because that means that we didn’t do enough on the front end.

Carrie Fox:
Hmm. Smart. Okay, so what I love about you, Johnny, is every time I talk, you’re telling me about some great conference you’ve been to, an article you’ve read. You’re really kind of steeped in what’s happening, right? In your industry, but you think about how that connects more broadly too. And so I’m curious, as we’re talking this fall of 2026, what’s one trend or pattern that you’re watching that you think might be not getting enough attention?

Johnny Flavin:
So it’s interesting is, and some people are not gonna necessarily view this as a good thing, but it’s just something to get out in the open and talk about, is companies really are preparing themselves, if you will, for, uh, you know, in case we do have a market downturn, or, you know, go into another, uh, I don’t want to use the term recession, but just, you know, times of uncertainty, if you will.

Carrie Fox:
Mm-hmm.

Johnny Flavin:
And so what some companies are doing, you know, they’re, for example, talking about goals, they’re increasing some of the cash goals, meaning the money that they’re sitting on to wade through, uh, a bad time like this. Unfortunately, what this also ties in with, and we see it a lot right now in Seattle, is it does mean that some, unfortunately, people are getting laid off. But they’re doing this to make sure that, hey, if things do get rough, um, you know, we’re not going to be laying off double the people during a bad time. So, um, so though, and we’re seeing this trend, then this is one thing, and sorry, just being a financial planning geek, one of the…

Carrie Fox:
Yeah.

Johnny Flavin:
Trends that’s going on right now is there’s actually a lot of what we call cash hoarding in the world.

A lot of these companies, I think it’s like right now there’s, and don’t quote me exactly, but it’s about $8 trillion that’s sitting in the wings of these companies that are saying, hey, if things do get crazy, I’ve got the monetary, you know, I’ve got the cash sitting there to weather through that. Some companies, and I’m just going to take a little bit of a deeper dive. Some companies, for example, like a lot of these AI, these companies developing AI, they’re actually not hoarding as much cash simply because the fact that they’re spending it right now on a lot of development, because, as you know, AI is the latest and greatest, you know, shiny spoon that everyone’s trying to get a piece of. So while the AI companies might be throwing cash at that, or taking on more debt because of that, the other companies are saying, okay, great, while you guys do that, we’re gonna, you know, put some, a little bit more reserves in the bank, you know, to see how this pans out.

Carrie Fox:
Yeah. Yeah. All right. So let’s pick up on that, because this idea of reserves in the bank, right? So there are a lot of people who are listening to the show right now who are the ones responsible for the reserves in the bank, the leaders who steward other people’s resources. So many of our listeners run nonprofits, foundations, associations. They are literally the ones responsible for the reserves, the retirement plans, their team’s individual well-being. So what’s something that purpose-driven leaders, again, maybe often overlook when it comes to readying or preparing for their organization’s financial resilience?

Johnny Flavin:
Great question. And you know, dealing with organizations all across the board, um, sometimes people don’t realize that, okay, it doesn’t matter how big or small your budget is, but you can still have those short-term, mid-term, long-term goals. Now, it might take you a little bit longer to save up to have, and I’m just throwing out random ideas here, might take you a little bit longer to have, you know, saved up that year’s, uh, supply of, uh, salaries for people. Uh, might take you a little bit longer to try and provide, you know, better, you know, matching or something in the 401(k). But we have that laid out for them and say, okay, we’re starting here, and here’s what we’re trying to get to, you know, get to in the future. So really defining, and each organization will be completely unique, but really defining what is that organization’s short-term, mid-term, long-term goals, and then how do we go about filling in those buckets? And that’s, yeah, this is not rocket science, but you’d be surprised at how many businesses don’t sit down and take the time to say, okay, here’s how much we should have, you know, in a short-term bucket, you know, to take care of employees. In a mid-term, you know, some midterm goals that we have for the employees. And long-term, you know, typically being goals of, do we want to put more into the 401(k), or have, you know, better retirement benefits, et cetera.

Carrie Fox:
Right, right. And I’ll admit we hadn’t done that as a small business until, now many years ago, we sat down with you, and it was such an important conversation. It was this inflection point in the business, right? That we may be small, but we can be very meaningful with those resources with a plan. So I think you were such a great partner in thinking about that. Let’s finish up. We got time for one more. And I really want to ask you this, because this is so core to who you are, this idea that, um, or even more, kind of a precept of what you believe, that we can always do well by doing good. And so let’s talk about that in practice.

What does that look like to say we can do well by doing good, for someone who wants their resources to reflect their values?

Johnny Flavin:
Yeah, I, so I’m just a firm believer in, you know, by doing, you know, putting good out there, good comes back to you. I truly believe that. And putting good out there means, you know, the ways in which you interact with business partners, the, you know, how you’re investing, you know, are you doing, you know, mindful investing in other companies. And also on a granular level with your employees. You know, how are we taking care of the employees? How are we investing in the employees? Helping, you know, helping these employees grow in their positions and feel appreciated. So I think on all levels, just, you know, how you interact with the other companies, you know, where you’re doing business with, all the way down to, you know, the employees that you surround yourself with. Well, how can you, you know, do better, if you will?

How can we do better, and how can we put more good out there so that, you know, good comes back to you? And I think it’s a simple concept. It’s just, you know, putting people first, and, you know, putting people first before profit margins, things like that. How are people doing? And those profit margins and other things will, you know, will develop as we make sure we take care of our, you know, the people.

Carrie Fox:
Johnny, you and the team at Aspire Capital Advisors have been such a great partner to us over the years, and I invite folks who are listening to go check out investwithaspire.com. We’ll have that in the show notes too. Johnny, thanks again for being here today, for sharing your wisdom, and look forward to having you back on the show soon.

Johnny Flavin:
No, you’re very welcome. Thank you for having me on. I loved it, and definitely hope everyone has a great rest of the year, and thank you for having me.

Carrie Fox:
Thank you.