B Lab – The Nonprofit Behind B Corps

B Lab is the muscle behind the B Corp movement and the legislative initiative.  B Lab is dedicated to using the power of business to address the world’s most pressing challenges and support entrepreneurs who use business as a force for good.

B Lab drives systemic change through three interrelated initiatives:

1. Building a community of Certified B Corporations to make it easier for all of us to tell the difference between “good companies” and just good marketing.  Current corporate law makes it difficult for businesses to take employee, community, and environmental interests into consideration when making decisions.

2. Accelerating the growth of the impact investing asset class through use of B Lab’s GIIRS Ratings & Analytics by institutional investors.

3. Promoting legislation creating a new corporate form that meets higher standards of purpose, accountability and transparency.

In mid-December, a groundbreaking law was quietly approved in Albany, NY. Not even a month later the same exciting law went into effect in Sacramento, CA, with people waiting in line to sign up. So what could this new innovative law be? It is the beginning of a new era in responsible companies! Both California and New York were the first to enact a law that would include “conscious corporations” as a legal type of business. Not only will these new laws benefit the corporations who are certified, but society as a whole.  This new legal structure expands corporate accountability so they are required to make decisions that are good for society, not just their shareholders. [Continue reading at Autonomie Project - Boston based B Corp]

Is your company a B Corp?

Does your business have what it takes to be certified and legally-declared good for society and good for our earth?!?

B Corporations are required to:

1. Purpose: Have a corporate purpose to create a material positive impact on society and the environment
2. Accountability: Expand fiduciary duty to require consideration of the interests of workers, community and the environment
3. Transparency: Publicly report annually on overall social and environmental performance against a comprehensive, credible, independent, and transparent third party standard.

Some current stats on the mover-and-shaker businesses certified as B Corps:

521 B Corporations | $2.9 Billion in Revenues | 60 Industries | $2 million Annual Savings

B CORPS AROUND BOSTON!

Consumer Products

• LEAP Organics http://leaporganics.com/
• Autonomie Project, Inc. http://www.autonomieproject.com
• Preserve http://preserveproducts.com

Social Impact Tools

• True Impact LLC http://www.true-impact.com
• CSRwire http://www.csrwire.com
• Sourcemap Inc http://www.sourcemap.com

Finance/Investment

• Trillium Asset Management http://trilliuminvest.com
• Farm Capital Services, LLC http://www.farmcapitalservices.com
• Next Street http://www.nextstreet.com
• Social(k) http://www.socialk.com

Architecture/Design

• South Mountain Company, Inc. http://www.southmountain.com
• The Green Engineer, LLP http://www.greenengineer.com

Renewable Energy

• Co-op Power / Northeast Biodiesel http://cooppower.coop
• Harvest Power http://www.harvestpower.com/

But that’s only the beginning; Meet B Corps around the country!

B Lab reminds us that communities are everywhere; shaping movements, growing ideas, and aiding in change.  The results connect like-minded people, both physically and digitally, and create opportunities to reach individual and group goals more quickly and easily.  In B Lab’s own words: “Who knows what opportunities may arise in the future to: share best practices, volunteer together, engage in policy advocacy, do business with each other, network our employees for inspiration and ideas.” 

If that doesn’t align with Workbar’s coworking mission, then we don’t know what does!  So we’re happy to host their upcoming Boston B Corp Happy Hour & Mixer right here at WorkBar.  Join us on May 16^th to meet the faces behind B Lab and the Boston companies leading the B Corp movement!  The event is open to all B Corp employees and those interested in learning more about the B Corp community.

Boston B Corp Happy Hour | May 16th @ 6:30PM | Event Details and Registration

“From working in a 10′ by 12′ space with 11 other coworkers, to working above a restaurant (co-owned by the coworking owner) that only serves cilantro based dishes, and a coworking space that turns into a bar promptly at 6pm. I spent 77 days in Tokyo Japan, exploring their restaurants, bars, culture, and of course their ever growing freelance and entrepreneurial lifestyles.” ~ Jimmi

Jimmi, a Boston based, freelance programmer/game developer spent 3 months living and coworking in Japan – Not knowing the language or having any cultural ties, he just threw himself into – One connection he was able to find; coworking!

Where do you start in a foreign country?

Prior to landing in Japan, referencing the Tokyo Coworking Wiki page was not very useful considering those were the few spaces to think of listing themselves on the English resources page. In reality, there are MANY more spaces in Japan.  When he arrived, Jimmi turned to the local space owners for recommendations. Luckily, it turns out that the coworking space owners in Japan are a friendly group who are happy to share resources and information on other spaces – even providing a map marking coworking spaces in Japan.

Coworking can be found in the strangest of places.  Think an empty concrete garage can’t be a cool coworking space?

BEFORE:

Open Source Cafe AFTER:

Full library on the left:

Like coworking space in the US, spaces in Japan were very focused on creating a strong community, regularly hosting social, networking and professional events.  Open Source Cafe even featured a special event with Jimmi to share his experience as a freelancer in America:

The Functions of Facebook

Surprisingly, most communication by coworking spaces is done through Facebook – some spaces even use their Facebook pages in lieu of a website.  One of the spaces, just a few blocks from where Jimmi was living, used their Facebook page to announce daily opening times, which just so happened to be whenever the space manager made his way in for the day.  Also, Facebook is treated much like Linked In is here.  Unlike people in the US, Japanese people ‘friend’ each other from the smallest of interactions, so needless to say,’ Jimmi made a ton of new Facebook friends over the last 3 months – many of which he actually formed lasting relationships with.

Redefining the Business Card

He also found the use of business cards unique – beyond professional settings, business cards are passed regularly in casual settings as a standard form of introduction … So, ‘when in Rome,’ Jimmi made up some temporary cards before he had more time to print up a fresh batch of business cards to hand out.  At first, he printed the cards completely in Japanese but quickly found that people were more excited to receive cards with the English language on them, so he had to revise.

Now check out Jelly Jelly Cafe (taken from the term Jelly meaning, a pop up coworking group/space) A focus on work and play – Jelly Jelly Cafe, a coworking space during the day – breaks promptly 6PM when it transforms into a bar! Or Pax  a coworking space situated directly above the Paxi House, owned by the same man, a restaurant that serves only cilantro based dishes! Why?  Because he thought the novelty of it would be a hit, and sure enough, it is!

Its obvious that food and drink are a common component of most coworking spaces in Japan, in one form or another.  No need to be fancy, in fac,t many owners frequently hop over to the nearest grocery store to stock up on inventory selling cans of Pringles and soda.  As far as beer is concerned, its sold, its consumed … the legal logistics are still a bit fuzzy.

Hotspot Hussle

Outside of hitting up many of the coworking spaces over there, and as you can imagine, there were tons of restaurants and sites for Jimmi to visit – but working on the go proved to be tricky with regard to hotspot access.  Jimmi discovered there were rarely, if any open networks. When he was able to find one, it would often require him to crouch outside of a restaurant to check email or hang out in a stairwell for a few minutes to pick up a signal he found weeks ago.

Coworking – The Melting Pot of Cultures

It’s amazing how coworking functions across borders … what was most incredible to hear about was how coworking allowed Jimmi to meet people he connected with easily, make friends to explore the city and nightlife with and most of all, to find one of the few cross cultural overlaps where the Japanese and American societies met, creating a natural bond!

Three months, dozens of coworking spaces and TONS of stories to tell – We’re excited to haven Jimmi back with us and as you can see, they’ll miss him too – His going away dinner in Japan!  Welcome back Jimmi!

Some more fun:

• Celebrating the longest day of the year and working from sun up to sun down
• Pax coworking chant (Chants were common throughout coworking spaces)

If you’re interested in learning more about Jimmi and his travels, let us know @workbarboston or connect with him at one of our upcoming events.

• Monetize your Blog
• Blogging Basics
• Building a Community
• Working with Brands
• Social Media Platforms

The featured speakers were fantastic and left us with great takeaways and lots of thought provoking content to toss around.  As a result we took back with us a bunch of new online tools, blogging tips & techniques to explore and try out on our own blog/website.  Here’s what we found to be most interesting and useful – oh and if you have any suggestions to add, shoot us a note @workbarboston or info@workbarboston.com.

Bloggers’ Road Map:

ASK: What are you good at? What are you BEST at? Set expectations you feel you can achieve
GOALS: Set and evaluate your blogging goals every 3-6 months
DEFINE: Your process.  Need help or need a baseline? Ask other bloggers about their processes and see what works for them
CREATE create create CONTENT content content
FOCUS: “Comparison is the thief of joy”
SHARE: Guest post to other blogs
LEVERAGE: Your blog and audience through events/working with brands.  DON’T shamelessly solicit aka “email to advertise with this blog”
MEASURE: Your blogs traffic, understand where your readers are coming from and why

How to avoid “Blogger’s Block”

• Create a series you can come back weekly
  
• Repost/reblog relative content (i.e. seasonal and annual topics)
• Guest posts
• When asking for guest posts – propose posting 1/2 the post on your blog and linking the rest back to the contributing bloggers website as incentive for the guest blogger to share their original content with you!

Check out these Online Tools:

…to measure your web traffic:
Heat mapping (See where people are clicking) http://crazyegg.com

…for better time management:
Track you time (time is money!) http://rescuetime.com

…to protect your content:
Handy widget to track if/when people copy your content http://copiesgate.com

…to check the rules of the road:
Blog with integrity! Best practices: http://www.blogwithintegrity.com/

… to track Pinterest analytics

• Pinerly: http://www.pinerly.com/
• Curalate: http://www.curalate.com/

…to track Twitter & Facebook analytics:
Track your influence, reach & growth with Crowdbooster: https://crowdbooster.com/

Check out our sponsorship table! We had tons of fun chatting with everyone!

A few month’s ago while eating lunch at WorkBar, I had an interesting conversation with Allen, a member who had taken an 8 month break from his WorkBar membership and had just joined back up.  I was commenting on how, now that he’s back, he can finally frequent his favorite local lunch truck again – the Clover Food Truck!  We got to talking about food and the small but important lifestyle changes that resulted from Allen’s transition from WorkBar to working from home and suddenly made a very shocking discovery! Allen has been using a Wi-Fi body scale from withings to keep track of his weight for quite a while … Can you guess what the LOWEST point on his weight graph in the last year and a half was?

March 31st, 2011, the lowest point on the graph, was Allen’s lowest weight and represents his last day as a WorkBar member before returning to his work from home lifestyle. Incredible!  Almost immediately after returning to his home office, Allen’s weight SKYROCKETED!

After getting Allen’s take on why he thought coming into WorkBar helped him take the weight off–and after doing some research online–I noticed that there were numerous reports of the home and traditional office as workplace weight gains .. which puts Workbar, a shared office space, right in the middle – the sweet spot!

Our secret *lowfat* sauce lies in our non traditional approach!  For people who have the flexibility to be mobile — thinking about WHERE you work is worth doing.

1. Don’t let the alarm clock RULE your morning!

TRADITIONAL OFFICE: “Your day likely starts with more of a reluctant roll out of bed after pressing snooze for the last possible time. You grab a coffee and bagel as you dash out the door. Obviously, you know this isn’t the best breakfast; but at lunch you’ll have more time to eat properly.”

BREAKING OUT: Ever notice how different you feel waking up early because you have to compared to when you choose to?  When you choose to go into the office, you see the value in it.  Coworking offices, filled with driven, high-energy professionals who choose, every day, to take advantage of the space and community available to them.  Anyone can make the choice to go into the office, no matter what kind of space it is – Create the type of morning routine you want to wake up to, whether it includes a 2 egg breakfast, morning workout, or cup of coffee with the NYTimes.  If you value your time, your space, and your choices, it’s much easier to value your lunch, your body and make healthier choices overall.

2. Work according to your own productivity clock

TRADITIONAL WORK FROM HOME: “Keep regular hours. Even though you have no commute, make sure your work day has a beginning and ending time. It’ll reduce stress, allow for time to prepare healthy meals (instead of ordering takeout), and give you time to rest, which all help to prevent weight gain.”

BREAKING OUT: Hours of productivity vary from one person to another and, while some like to get into the office first thing in the morning, others find themselves doing their best work between 12PM and 8PM.  Work according to your own productivity clock – listen to your body and figure out when your best working hours are.  Work a strict 9-5? More and more companies are adapting progressive policies including the ability to work remotely and set your own schedule and work hours.  When you do work, however,  do it in a WORKplace. A physical barrier between work and home is key.  People that work from home often throw off their life/work balance as work time melts into personal time and vice versa… this can have a toll not only on your body but on your relationships with friends and family.  You’re also able to ‘stay regular’ without constant access to the fridge, snack cabinets and the chips you left out on the coffee table the night before.

3. MOOOOOOVE Baby!

TRADITIONAL WORK FROM HOME: Now that you don’t have that extra flight of stairs, or that walk from the parking lot to your office, try to add in some new exercise to keep your body in good shape.

BREAKING OUT: This was Allen’s biggest challenge when he decided to go back to working from home!  His commute was gone, without a food truck he only had a couple feet to walk to the kitchen … and during the winter months, it’s tough to find a good enough reason to venture out.  Finding a workplace outside of your home (even half the time) naturally gets your muscles moving, your blood flowing … it may not be much, but over time, it adds up!  Walking to the train, from the parking lot, out to lunch .. getting out of the house or office for impromptu errands… groceries, pharmacy, post office… more movement, more fresh air, see where this is going?

Could be a coincidence, but we can see  a clear pattern here … looking for a quick waistline fix? We can’t give you that – whether you’re in a traditional office, working form home, or working from the road. Step back and notice your patterns, they define how and how often your body moves and what kinds of foods are available to you.  Whatever your situation, you can ALWAYS an opportunity to change your pattern and boost the parts of your routine that arent doing you or your body any favors!

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” ~Albert Einstein

Have you noticed any specific work patterns or lifestyle changes, big or small, that have effected your waistline? We’d love to hear about them! Email info@workbarboston, tweet us at @workbarboston or leave a note on our Facebook page!