FEC Monday Series: Sustainability and Ethics in Entrepreneurship

On October 5th, Harmony Plus continued our Monday Series talk show. For our sixteenth episode, we interviewed Ben Conard. Ben is one of the Top 10 Biggest Trade Advocates in the World and 40 LGBT Leaders under 40 as well as a TEDx speaker and the founder of Five North Chocolate.

The Journey of Ben Conard

The idea behind Ben’s Five North Chocolate company came from his own experience with chocolate. He hated the feeling of guilt after eating chocolates, the calories it might have, and how unhealthy it might be. It really took the fun away from him and others in his childhood whenever they wanted to enjoy chocolate so later on in his life he came up with the idea of healthy chocolate, the ability to enjoy chocolate to its fullest with zero guilt.

Since he didn’t see many viable options out on the market to fix his problem, Ben started his own fair trade certified company. That means that the products were produced in accordance with Fairtrade International’s rigorous environmental, economic, and social standards. Fairtrade International is a third-party nonprofit organization that sends representatives to rural areas to check the manufacturing and labor to make sure no one is being abused as well as to check whether they are receiving their wages, etc.

“ I believe a lot of the companies don’t really do it [get Fair Trade certified] because they don’t either see the point, are not aware or because it’s at a cheap cost so they don’t really care too much about these people so far away. Consumers really help businesses do well so if the consumers really care more about fair trade and push for it, it’ll really help the businesses implement Fair Trade.”

Starting his own company was no easy task, it took a lot of hard work, commitment, and learning on his end to make his dream a reality. Ben’s career first started when he got into business through an Entrepreneurship class. The class taught him the basics of entrepreneurship: how to set up a business, how to ensure it doesn’t fail, how to manage finances, and marketing. The entrepreneurship class helped Ben start the process of mixing his own passion for chocolate with entrepreneurship.

Looking back at what worked and what did and what didn’t work for Ben

To measure a company’s success you want to see that your goal is achieved and your consumers see the change that your company has brought. Ben measures the impact his company makes depending on its consumers. Once he starts to see people around the world talking and marveling about healthy chocolate and not feeling guilty about buying it anymore, then he realizes that his company has really made an impact upon the consumers and people around the world. It takes a lot of effort but with resilience and passion and finding the right people to work with, dreams can turn into realities. However, every journey includes failures, and that’s a part of life.

In the world of business, failing is common and it’s a good thing. In fact, NOT failing means you’re doing something wrong. Ben was no different, he also stressed the importance of failing and how learning from your failures helps you design a better product. One should not get discouraged from the failures though, through a lot of hard work and resilience victory is only inevitable.

Ben’s major failures in his company were in the operations and production side. Having a physical product is really hard. He messed up several batches in the kitchen and production.

“We didn’t realize at first that we had to give specific instructions to manufacturers, the countless hours, money spent and hard work was frustrating. But we learned from it to help get us on the right track. Resilience, optimism, and hard work really help you get through this. My advice is to just start, you’ll never find time to start, you just have to start. It’s a long journey, but start small and work your way up and good things will be ahead.”

If you want to learn more about Ben’s experiences, please check out the full episode here.