Kevin Wilhelm - CEO, Sustainable Business Consulting

Kevin Wilhelm is the author of "How to Talk to the Other Side" and CEO of Sustainable Business Consulting and is one of the world’s pre-eminent business consultants and speakers in the field of sustainability.

Kevin brings over 20 years of experience working with 165+ businesses ranging across 37 different industries including clients such as New York Life, Expedia, IAC, Nordstrom, REI, Alaska Airlines, The Seattle Sounders, North Face, Tommy Bahama, the Northwest Seaport Alliance.

He has spoken hundreds of times, taught 13 different business courses on sustainability and is the author of three acclaimed books in this field including:

• Return on Sustainability: How Business Can Increase Profitability & Address Climate Change in an Uncertain Economy
• Making Sustainability Stick: The Blueprint for Successful Sustainability Implementation
• Sustainable Jobs: The Complete Guide to Landing Your Dream Green Job.

Kevin joins the Sustainable Nation to discuss:

• Kevin’s new book – How to Talk to the "Other Side": Finding Common Ground in the Time of Coronavirus, Recession and Climate Change specifically about the power of listening, engaging in a difficult conversation, polarization of climate change, and the power of allyship
• Evolution of sustainability consulting over the last 16 years
• Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders

 Kevin's Final Five Questions Responses:

What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?

Well, I would say anything you can do right now, especially over the next 18 months or two years, where, when you are trying to talk about sustainability, if you can get some training in how to make the business case, how to, show the financial benefit of, you know, whether it's cost savings or enhanced revenues that you might bring in by using sustainability. It's really important to have that because as we head into another period of economic uncertainty in the fall, and certainly into Q1 next year, if you want to jump into the profession, it's great to have all the skills to do the work, but if you can also have the skills and speak the language of business, you're going to be a little bit more successful.

What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?

I think the reality that things that seemed impossible in February now are just taken from the norm. I think that the change in mindset on the idea of working from home on the idea of needing travel to business meetings, needing to, you know, go to actual conferences in person, as opposed to speaking by video, I think it really fills me with a lot of excitement because I think it breaks down a lot of the norms which were in the offices. And I think it might lead to further innovation on other great challenges that we need to address.

What is one book you would recommend sustainability leaders read?

So Josh, can I plug my own two books or do I need to throw another one? I would say that if, if you're trying to make that business case, one book that, you know, was put together with about 65 different other thought leaders kind of on sustainability about how to actually implement sustainability, it's called Making Sustainability Stick. I will shamelessly plug my new book. It's called How to Talk to the Other Side, which is about finding common ground in a time of coronavirus, recession and climate change. And really the reason why I wrote this last book and I'd recommend it to your listeners is that people know what we need to do. You know, people know it just like with the masks and dealing with the pandemic, people know what they need to do, but emotion overtakes reason. And it's the same thing as trying to get people to take action on issues like climate change. They know we need to take action, but they just, for some reason don't. And so my book breaks down kind of the why behind it, and then how to actually engage people on a more personal and human level on an issue rather than trying to hit them over the head with science and facts.

What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?

Gosh, that's a great question, Josh. Well, I'd say, certainly check out this podcast, and follow it on the news. But I would say a lot of the resources I go to are, you know, sustainable brands, environmental leader, triple pundit, and using those, you know, not only bookmarking them, but make sure that the newsletters are coming to your office. You don't have to search for it and they're hitting your inbox. And then as far as tools, I think that, one of the most important ones for any audience listener to understand is how you really, especially as we lean back into climate and as we come out of the pandemic is how to do a greenhouse gas inventory. So if you can go to the World Resources Institute or the WBCSB, just get familiar with, you know, what is a carbon footprint, how to do it, because it'll take away some of the mystery to you. And if you're able to kind of understand that you'll be able to take a greater step towards helping organizations take action on climate change, which is what we all need to do not only after the pandemic, but we can even start doing right now.

And finally Kevin where can our listeners go to learn more about you and your work, and maybe find your new book?

Yeah, thanks, Josh. You can go to learn more about my company and myself you can go to our website, which is sustainablebizconsulting.com. There you'll also find resources on, you know, in blogs and other things that you can follow as a listener. And then to find my book it's available on Amazon. So you can either search by my name, Kevin Wilhelm or How to Talk to the Other Side in books. And I will just put the, you know, you gotta get the tagline on it, which is about finding common ground and the time of coronavirus, because there are some other books that are out there called how to talk to the other side. And it's about how to talk to people in the afterlife and things like that. And don't buy those books. When I was searching for my title it didn't pop up. And then a few of them were published like that. And I was like, oh, maybe I should've changed the title, but I'm not talking to people in the afterlife. That's for sure.

About Sustridge

Sustridge is a sustainability consulting firm providing consulting in sustainability strategy development, sustainability reporting, GHG emissions calculating and management, zero waste planning and guidance in a TRUE Zero Waste, B Corp, LEED and Carbon Neutral certification.