I’m looking forward to the day corporate clients require their suppliers to be B Corps
Thomas Holland’s passion for business with purpose was inspired by his mother and sister. Now the Chief Solutionist at Corporate Floors, a company he co-founded with his mother in 1997, he tells MaCher how better business can create great change.
Tell us about the history of Corporate Floors.
I founded Corporate Floors under a different name in 1997 as a commercial carpet cleaning and installation company based in Dallas. My mother was my partner, but she lived in El Paso and was running a commercial furniture company. In 1999 I bought her shares and renamed the business Corporate Floors. Over the next 15 years we grew geographically via acquisition and organic growth into Austin, San Antonio, Houston, Denver, Los Angeles and San Francisco. In the last five years, we have reorganized the business into a holding company with wholly owned subsidiaries that have their own management teams but share the same core values. Today, the Corporate Floors family of brands includes Corporate Floors, a commercial flooring contracting company; APEX Surface Care, a national commercial surface care company; APEX Property Services, a commercial building cleaning company; The Elevated Cab, an elevator interior design, fabrication and installation company; and Texas Carpet Recycling, a commercial construction debris reclamation company.
Where did your passion for business with purpose come from/who inspired you?
My mother always led by example when it came to using business as a force for good. She was very involved in the community and a variety of charitable groups, and I saw how that brought together all the stakeholders in the business. My other inspiration was my sister, who built her career around serving others and today is the director of a large non-profit in Tempe, Arizona, that serves the local homeless and elderly community. As our business grew, I realized how many families relied on our success, which was very humbling. I also started to realize we could make a larger impact in the communities in which we worked. We didn’t want to grow for growth’s sake; we wanted to be successful so we could find better ways to impact our communities. As an added bonus, we’ve discovered that the younger generations are attracted to companies that are making a difference and that have a social mission. Our commitment to the greater social good has helped us recruit really talented people who have big hearts.
What do you think is the importance of the B Corp movement for business?
It’s interesting how different stakeholders view the importance of our being a B Corp. In our West Coast locations, we find that B Corp certification is more widely known and our clients there generally understand what it means. However, in our Southern and Eastern locations, we usually have a lot of explaining to do as many have not heard about it. However, once they understand the concept, they really like it.
I think it’s vital that more businesses join the B Corp movement. We cannot rely solely on our federal, state and local governments to make the changes we want or to better our communities. They are highly inefficient and slow to act. We work at the speed of business, which is much faster, and we have the ability to be much more nimble and focused on the social drivers that are important to us. In my opinion, we can affect greater change in more targeted areas.
Have you seen evidence of this among your customers or wider market you want to attract?
We work with a number of Fortune 1000 companies, and we have found that being a B Corp creates a tangible alignment between our values and theirs. It gives us something to point to and say, “This is not only what we believe in, but what we are acting on.” As a smaller company, it can be difficult to provide tangible metrics on the impact we are having as a result of our social mission and values. Our B Corp certification allows us to do that. I’m looking forward to the day when corporate clients start to require their suppliers to be B Corps. It will weed out many vendors who talk the talk but don’t walk the walk.
How much does your business look to other B Corps as partners/suppliers?
We recently started calling other B Corps to see how we could work together. We purchase specialty flooring and cleaning supplies, so there are not a lot of options for what we need. However, we have reached out to B Corp marketing, insurance and financial companies, and those conversations are going very well as we have a common set of core values.
What examples of how B2B collaborations can really drive change can you point to?
Our best example came last year toward the beginning of the pandemic when one of our largest clients, a global search engine company, shut down all its facilities we were cleaning across the country. This would have had a huge negative impact on our business, but what was amazing was they said, “We want to continue to pay you a percentage of your contract so you can keep your people working.” What was even more amazing is they expected nothing in return — no credit for future work, nothing. To us, it was a lifeline. Initially we didn’t know what to do with the funds, but we ended up creating our Community Giveback Program through which we provide 1,000 person- hours per year of pro bono cleaning and disinfecting services to women’s and children’s crisis centers as well as homeless shelters. Since the program began, we’ve been able to benefit dozens of organizations while keeping our technicians working.
What are your key learnings from the process of becoming B Corp certified?
It was a very thorough, detailed and frankly laborious process — but it should be. I’m glad that it was difficult as that made it mean more in the end. We were able to get all of our brands certified. We found many areas where we needed to better document both our processes and our accomplishments. We also realized that while we spoke a lot about our social mission inside the business, we were not measuring our leadership team’s role in meeting that mission. Making the success of our social mission part of every job description in the company is our next endeavor. It’s crucial to get buy-in from everyone in the business.
What does the future look like for your business?
We’re living in interesting times given the pandemic, and while many of our plans have been put on hold, we’re starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel. We got very lean last year, and this year, we’re executing some of our growth goals, starting with the recent acquisition of a specialty cleaning business in Seattle. We are very excited about this and will continue to grow aggressively this way so we can take advantage of the uptick in the market, which we are confident will happen.
Who is your sustainability hero?
Honestly, it’s every B Corp entrepreneur. For a business to go through the rigorous certification process and make the investment required to become a B Corp is a serious commitment. I would love to see B Lab provide a consolidated score for all B Corps and consolidated numbers that illustrate the impact we are having as a whole. It must be powerful.
This article has been posted by MaCher to celebrate B Corp Month 2021 and build awareness of companies that meet the highest standard of verified social and environmental performance. For more information about Corporate Floors, please click here.