Ep 84 Abigail Forsyth: The KeepCup Story - Leading the Reusable Cup Revolution

Welcome to the For Love and Money podcast, the show where business and social purpose meet to inspire a movement for positive change.

Here's your host, Carolyn Butler-Madden. On today's episode of the For Love and Money podcast, I'm speaking with Abigail Forsyth, OAM, a leader in the global campaign to promote sustainability. Now, Abigail is co-founder and managing director of KeepCup. Since launching the world's first barista standard reusable cup in 2009, KeepCup is now embraced by re-users the world over, diverting millions of single-use cups daily.

KeepCup is in business for better. They're a certified B Corporation, a living wage employer and member of 1% for the planet, donating at least 1% of global revenue to environmental causes. Abigail has been honoured with an Order of Australia medal in the General Division for her years of outstanding service to sustainable design on the Queen's birthday list for 2020.

Now, Abigail has opened offices and warehouses in Australia and the UK and set up hub operations in the USA to service growing consumer demand in over 76 countries around the world. But the business has stayed loyal to its roots. Keep Cups HQ is located in the Melbourne suburb of Clifton Hill, where Abigail lives with her family.

In this interview today, we explore Abigail's entrepreneurial journey from law to entrepreneurship, what triggered the idea of KeepCup and how Abigail and her brother Jamie started the business. She shares the joy of the early years of the business, taking us on the journey of its evolution against the context of shifting market perceptions and the impact of the pandemic, which was massive.

We talk about her leadership style and how important it's been to the success of the business, and we discuss the vital importance of profitability in building a purpose-driven business. Abigail also shares her personal passion for sustainable living and protecting native forests. For listeners curious about building an enduring business driven by a higher purpose, this episode will give you some great insights with no holds barred

on the bumps in the road that it takes to sustain success. I hope you enjoy it.

Abigail, welcome to the For Love and Money podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. Ah, thank you very much for having me. Kick off with the first question I ask all guests on this show, which is when you think about purpose in business, is there a role for love? It's always a role for love. I thought you might say that. Tell me more. I think, well, I mean, at the baseline, we're all emotional creatures. We all make decisions with our feelings and then justify them rationally.

So, yeah, there's always a role for love, whether it's the team you're working with, the mission that you're on, the advantages you get, even the love of the deal, even the love of winning is a lot. Absolutely, absolutely. And you're so right, that idea that we do make decisions emotionally and justify them rationally. It's amazing how many people don't seem to understand that in some ways. And, you know, with purpose, there is such an opportunity as you have proven with KeepCup.

So I'd love you to share a bit of your backstory and some of the key experiences that brought you to doing what you are doing today. I hear you started in law. I did start in law. Yes, I was a lawyer working in a small Melbourne firm and I didn't really enjoy the law degree. Like I was a kid who got the marks and did it for probably that reason alone.

But I really loved working and I worked in a small firm. I had a great mentor who was a really clever man with great attention to detail, which is probably not my skill set, so he was a good foil for me. But, you know, a lot of the time the advice I was giving was more around, I was more into the business side of the advice and, you know, walk away from the legal, like walk away from the court, don't go there was probably the base where I would begin.

And at the same time my brother was calling me every week with a new business idea. He was in the UK and he'd seen veterinary supermarkets, he'd seen Pret-a-Manger. And, yeah, I look back now at like 24 saying to mum and dad, And I was the first generation to go to university and saying to them, I'm going to stop doing law and open a cafe. I think they would just like. But where did this entrepreneurship come from? Was it in the family?

Yeah, it's in the family. So on mum's side, my grandfather was a plumber and a chicken farmer and, you know, in the Great Depression, he ran around on a motorbike to, you know, get the jobs first. And he was a very can-do, you know, the can-do Aussie guy. And then on the other side, no, and then Dad. Dad started his own business as well. So it was in the blood. I think it is bread in the bone a bit, that attitude. Yeah, absolutely. So, yes, keep going. Sorry to interrupt.

So then Jamie's pulling up with these ideas and so we opened these stores called Blue Bag in the city in the late 90s and it was like really based on the Pret idea that it's all convenience culture and it was the late 90s that, you'd know, a laptop in one hand, a disposable cup in the other, that was a bit of a status symbol.

And then over time, I just became more concerned about the amount of packaging we were going through as a business. It was also the rise of coffee, like takeaway coffee. Like there wasn't really any takeaway coffee until the late 90s, like fairly new thing. Found out they weren't disposable, went to Maya to buy some to sell in our stores so people could reuse, found they didn't get under the group heads.

They were giant sort of, I mean, they're what's fashionable now, like the giant family thermos. And I was like, who would want to carry that ugly thing? I still don't get it. You know, with that, I guess, entrepreneurial spirit, we designed our own and thought they were pretty great really, what we designed. And then we went to tooling manufacturer in Victoria who's like, oh, my God, this is just a cup. What are you thinking?

Like I've got millions of dollars worth of tools here in my warehouse for people who had much better ideas than you, but they couldn't sell them. So you've got to be able to sell your idea. So from there, we called up through the catering arm of Blue Bag at the time. We called up different businesses, got to the facilities manager. They didn't want it because they were making a margin off buying disposable packaging.

Got to sustainability. They didn't have a budget at all and then got to marketing and said, hey, there's a disconnect here. Like you're trying to get six-star green buildings, you've got solar on the roof but everyone's sucking out of a non-disposable paper or plastic cup. Why don't you try Keep Cup? So we got an order for $5,000 off NAB and an order for $5,000 off Energy Australia before we'd even made the product. Wow.

Wow, that's a huge win. Yeah, and that was like, wait till you get the PO, he couldn't believe it. And that was through the marketing departments of both companies.

Yeah. Yeah, interesting, really interesting. And then it sort of just rolled on from there. And I think, you know, we had designed the Australian and New Zealand style of drinking coffee with the light roast, the smaller volumes was really being exported to the world at the time. And then we designed a cup that was suitable for that style of drinking. And then it was people were thinking about this issue. Like the first market we did, people were like, oh, I've been thinking about this.

This is my business idea. So our timing was really good and it was something that was just, you know, I think when ideas catch hold, they're sort of just a little bit ahead of where everyone's thinking. Yeah, absolutely. And so when was this that you actually launched? 2009. Yeah, okay. So you'd gone from the late 90s where you'd actually started to think about it to so probably around 10 years, was it?

Yeah, well, it was like the late 90s was the start of, like in the late 90s, the disposable, the single-use cups stood out in the Australian landscape, like nothing much was packaged. Yeah. And now everything's packaged. Like it's just bananas. It's gone the opposite way to the way it should have. Yeah, and so that convenience, I mean, convenience culture is one of the strategic pillars of BPs, what they're trying to do.

That's how they're going to keep the fossil fuel industry going with plastic packaging. Yeah, wow. Wow. So tell me, so this is 2009, you launched. You obviously had some big customers when you launched.

What were the early days like? They were so fun. They were so fun and so hectic. So you've left Blue Bag behind at this stage? Yeah, we sold Blue Bag pretty much straight away. I was very much in the selling space. I loved the behaviour change part of it. I loved the sustainability story. I loved the sort of the virality of it, like getting people to – and it was a time where you would walk down the street and if someone had a keep cut, you'd sort of, you know. Yeah,

right. Love that. I bet you're in the club. It really took hold in all the independent cafe scene, like you go into a cafe, a barista, you go, oh, nice, you know, good on you, nice keep cup. Like it was very, that was a super- Very tribal. Yeah, it was tribal. Yeah, you're right. And that tribe just kept, you know, growing. We attended a lot of cafe shows around the world, so specialty coffee,

and they were a lovely bunch of people. So you met great people that were, they were interested in coffee, I was interested in sustainability. It all sort of came together pretty nicely. And then internally as an organisation, like people would be like, what's my career path or, you know, and I'd be like, I don't know. Like I didn't really set out to, like the organisation was a by-product of what we were trying to do in a way. That's being purpose-led.

Yeah. So and B Corp actually was a bit of a saviour for us. So we were under founding B Corps in 2014, but it was the process of becoming one and having to have an org chart, right position descriptions, like all that sort of stuff, which probably most businesses do automatically, we built it out of the B Corp model. Yeah, right. Because, I mean, my business is a micro business, but we're B Corp certified and the number of light bulb moments that went off in my head.

I mean, it is good business. It's like a blueprint of good business practice. Yeah, absolutely. And so how quickly did you grow then? Super quick. So I have two brothers. My younger brother was travelling with his partner at the time and we said, oh, I just started in the UK. It'll be, that'll be easy. Yeah. It was, I mean, it was a completely different market. Everyone over there in 2010 was drinking tea. It was, but we got in at ground zero of that specialty coffee scene in London and the UK.

So, and then, so that was 2010 and in 2013, we opened in the US. So we had an office in LA. And did I read somewhere you're in 75 countries now? I don't know if we are still, but yes, we certainly were. Wow, that's absolutely incredible. Yeah, it really took off around the world and yeah.

And so can you share some of the biggest challenges you faced in those early days? Yes, so managing people, managing people, managing people. Yeah. I guess growing the business and understanding.

Still it was like often like so employment, the employment law is one thing but then how that gets interpreted by people it's the interpretation of it and the nuance of it that you really have to learn about how people like to work how they how you do business how how people respond like in in the states people go that was great meeting great meeting we'll be in touch and you know you'll never hear from them again.

All the cultural things in australia you know they're gonna get in touch with you again so But it's just like different ways of communicating. I think the rapid growth of the demand like was pretty intense as well. So making sure that our production could keep up with the demand and then shipping it all over the world. So, yeah, just a steep learning curve all round really.

And I just want to go back to sales because you mentioned sales before and when you were talking about it, you had a big smile on your face. Yeah. Like how, tell me about that. Like in those early days, what was sales like for you? It was just so fun because you were convincing people to replace a single-use item with a reusable item. So there was a real sense of kind of, you know, the business, you were doing good.

It was also, you know, really profitable and really fun to get these products on board and then see them out in the street. And I guess for the right people, the sense of camaraderie in being engaged in something bigger. Yeah. And I asked because one of my previous guests was talking about sales.

Her product is a, it's Byron Cello. It's a Limoncello product. And she talks about, when she talked about sales, she said, oh my God, it's not selling. I just have the most amazing conversations with the most wonderful people. And I got that sense from your big beaming smile. Yeah. Yeah. It's about having an open conversation then. Like, I just like, I mean, I guess I must be a sales person at heart.

Like, it's about finding the lever in the conversation that's going to unlock problem solving for the person that you're talking to. It's fun. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And so you're in London in 2010. You're in the US in 2013. Take us through the timeline. Yeah.

Yeah, so that's all going pretty well. Well, we launch our glass product around 2014, 2015, so the glass and the cork, and that just, it probably takes a while. It probably takes a couple of years, but by 2017, 18, that product is flying and it's really, you know, it's like it has a sense of organicness to it, the beautiful cork band, the glass, like it's doing super well.

And then in 2017, Craig Rewcastle does War on Waste and goes on to a Melbourne tram and says, you know, talks about single use. And then in the UK, they do a war on waste and Blue Planet too. And like it doubles the business overnight. Wow. So it was huge. And it was a huge around the time of this sense that if we all band together, it's all about individual behaviour change. If we all change our behaviour, then, you know, the world changes with us.

And it's a very positive and very empowering sort of feeling and living by your values and having that become a viral thing is pretty powerful. But then in the climate march, like so then the climate march is at 2018, 2019 and I remember seeing an Extinction Rebellion poster saying keep cups won't save us. And so the tide sort of started to shift a little for us because we.

Well, a few things were happening. There was loan schemes, there was compostable cups, like the clarity of that vision around single use and reuse was starting to get muddied by other people's ideas about how to solve the problem. Some big competitors entered the market as well. So you've got your Yetis and your Stanleys and you're really seeing. You know, I'm lying in bed at night thinking, oh, my God, like we've sold all these cups.

Am I part of the solution or am I part of the problem? them like have people got too many keep cups and yet these bigger companies are probably like oh my god they haven't even touched the sides of what this could be yeah and then covid happened um starbucks banned reusables mcdonald's banned reusables like the whole thing just i remember that so clearly it was you you just got this sense of oh yeah and it was you know i i had some personal challenges in that time as well

around in my family and it just was like oh you know single use and hygiene just became linked you know we'd done so much work to pull those things apart yeah I mean when we started in 2009 I got a a letter from the premier of Victoria saying there was no legislative impediment to refilling cups there was no hygiene issue because people didn't believe it they thought that the when we first started people thought that the reason we were using takeaway cups was hygiene like right requirement

right and so we had to prove that was a common that that was a that was a common perception yes amongst people yeah yeah wow and so that's like that's been glued together again like I get so frustrated when I go I go to a cafe that's near a hospital and everyone's down in their scrubs getting their coffee. And it's like, no, no, those scrubs were supposed to be the high, like, but now everyone puts plastic over and then it goes in the bin. It's just eye-wrenching the amount of.

So we've gone backwards. Absolutely backwards. And, you know, that was, yeah, hygiene and single use.

And so that happened and then I think also people saw how quickly governments could act to, you know, lock us in our homes, to do all these things it's like well why aren't you doing that for some of the other bigger more intractable problems we've got in our society and that whole sense of hey why why why are individuals responsible it's actually systemic change that we need to happen and we need it to happen really fast so what i'm sweating

over my single use cup when the fossil fuel companies continue to open more coal mines or you know people are flying in their private jets around the world, there was that, A real sense, I think, of inequity happened and KeepCut because we'd been so strong on that sustainability and individual behaviour change. We really felt the brunt of that as a brand through our messaging.

So how did you get through that? A lot of looking at it. It's what Dad said. If you want to blame someone, go and look in the mirror. Brutal. A lot of introspection around that. Yeah. I did hire in some people to become sort of a management team. I guess I lost my confidence in my ability to steer the business to the next phase. But I made errors there because I sort of let go of the wheel and it didn't really work.

And probably they were the worst hiring decisions I've ever made because I wasn't driving that accountability. And, you know, you forget how much of the business is your own secret source that is driving the culture and driving the strategic direction of the brand without you even necessarily having some strategic plan. It's like it's how you do stuff. Absolutely. And I actually want to come back to that in a moment but keep you on the track that you're going.

And, I mean, when you say you lost confidence at that time and you brought a management team in, would it be fair to say that maybe at that point because you'd lost confidence your motivations were less about the change you wanted to create in the world and more about how do we survive this oh yeah absolutely you know you build a beast that you have to keep feeding yeah 100 so you start to make decisions that maybe not really but you know that starts to be the driver

rather than that that the fun and joy of those early days where you're driving behaviour change and getting stuff done.

Enjoying the podcast? If you're looking for more inspiration, head to our website, thecauseeffect.com.au for more resources on how you can start using your business as a force for good. Or buy the For Love and Money book. Every copy sold allows us to protect one square metre of rainforest. Thank you. So you brought the management team in, bad decision, exited them? Yep. So that's all very painful, takes up a lot of time and mental energy.

And also, I guess, that realisation that was also painful is that we started off as an innovative product, but that doesn't last forever. You're not an innovation forever. And now we're a lifestyle brand. I mean, we do things in a particular way. We have a particular take on the world and how we want people to engage with the brand, but we're a lifestyle brand and we are selling a product that ultimately you don't need a single-use cup, but you don't really need a keep cup either.

You know, it's not, you know, we're not saving the world. Extinction Rebellion, we're right. Yeah, so I guess it's that shift that we've had to make and I've had to make personally that's probably been the most, difficult. So how do you see the business now? I mean, you said it's not innovation-led, it's lifestyle-led, but in your mind, you know, you're still driven by that purpose, the environmental purpose?

Yeah, I mean, that's still what lights me up, but it's, you know, we do, like, for, I mean, we were so fortunate that for, what. 15, no, 10, 10 years, we were just a two-product business. We sold two products. Amazing. We used to always go, oh, you need more products. I'm like, why? Why do we need more products? Well, now we do. We do to compete. We need more products because people are coming and if you don't have an offer that meets a lot of needs then it's challenging to exist. Yeah.

Yeah. And so what are your current core products and what is their connection to sustainability? So I guess our sort of our get out of jail moment was the introduction of our cold cup range. Yeah. But really, it's just a new lid on the existing products. It's still, you know, it's still a fairly sustainable innovation in that we've just put a different lid on what we've got.

But what it is, is it's the next generation of coffee drinkers are less likely to use a disposable, like they're drinking cold cups. They're drinking ice coffees. They're drinking ice marches. They're eating from Maasai bowls. Like it's so, I guess it's meeting people where they reach for a disposable item and going, hey, try this instead. Yeah. And still back to our sort of very lo-fi origins. Like we're not really, it's not a giant thing. It's not a loud thing.

It's just something that's really easy to use, easy to clean. You know, we're now got our plastics 50% recycled, our steels 90% recycled. So, you know, we still stick to those core values, but they are things that are going to happen. In terms of material changes, we did take some of our waste and make it a unique range two years ago. Like we crushed the product and had it remoulded, but that's a pretty boutique thing to do.

And really those big changes are going to come out of China or come out of big manufacturing where they've just got massive waste streams that they are going to change over. and everyone, like, it's not going to be so much a point of difference. Like, we'll be the vanguard of it because it's around our values, but eventually everyone will be 90% recycled steel in these products.

Yeah, which is great, right? I mean, that's where we want to get and you're part of that and you've been part of the movement that drove it in the first place. So that counts for so much and, you know, you've got to be so proud of that.

Well it's got to start with someone right yeah absolutely absolutely and if I hadn't started there with you it would have started no doubt but perhaps not not quite a single-mindedly yep so yeah I want to go back to you talked about you know realizing when you when you appointed the management company realizing how much your own leadership style drove the business's success, how would you describe your leadership style and how do your personal values,

do you think, influence the culture at KeepCup? I think that it's probably, I think my personal leadership style has changed because after a period of having a real lack of confidence, I think I've come back.

More confident to go well I'm just going to be who I am I'm just going to be how it's you know it's it's my life I've gone this far if I'm coming to work I want to enjoy it and I want to work with people I like to work with like it's flipped back again to from feeding the beast to going well actually I'm gonna I'm gonna make it how I want to have it so we we moved buildings and we fitted out this amazing building that we're in now we moved in in November 2019 so just before COVID and it

was like triple the size of where oh god and I was like oh my god I'm like toot and calm and I've built my built my oh my god and it was built where I had in my own office yeah and I was in there for about a year it was when I had the management team and I I absolutely hated it. I like being out on the floor. I like sort of hearing the chit-chat. I like being, you know, there's a joke that I'm probably the most distractible person of the team. I'm the one who goes down the most rabbit holes.

But I like, you know, I like that. I like being around the ideas. I like having that very open, very quite flat structure. And I think, you know, when the consultants and people came in, they're like, oh, you know, you need to make it more hierarchical. And, you know, you're getting it all wrong. And, you know, it has meant that the business couldn't take that step to commercialise and that's okay because that's not, that's never going to be me.

That's not what I'm, that's not what my skill set is. I can't, like, it will be for someone else to do that if that happens. Hence why it's a lifestyle business. Yeah. And, yeah, I mean, this idea of you've got to scale your business, you know, you've got to make it global, you've got to make it, multi-million dollar, what's wrong with lifestyle businesses? Yeah, and I think. Yeah, I mean, I know a lot of, yeah, there was that, I think that the tech, the tech trend of what, when did that start?

Like the 90s and that idea that you run at a loss to get to scale. Like that, sure, that makes sense if you're building an app, but it doesn't make sense for a business like ours, where if you can't make margin on the product that you're making a small scale, you'll never make it at a large scale. It's sort of the opposite. So, you know, profit has become back in fashion, which is good. Yeah. Absolutely.

And tell me about innovation. I mean, obviously you, and you talked about moving from an innovation basis to a lifestyle business, but what drives your innovation process or what has driven in recent years, your innovation process and how do you decide what new features or products to develop? It's probably a lot of discussion and argument and observation.

There's probably observation like there's a core team we've got a design team we talk about what we see in the market we talk about what the opportunities are we talk about could we do this what and it's there is a delicate balance of what are we doing versus what is everyone else doing um so you can't be too you need to keep your eye on that but you can't be too distracted by it you need to keep doing what you're doing and what works for you yeah yeah

I mean I think probably the thing it's like I'm like But, you know, ultimately the most sustainable thing we could do is shut the business. Well, you could say that about a lot of businesses. Everything. So it's that. Slow it down. Stop thinking about growth. It's probably from that point of view you go, well, why are we here? What are we going to deliver that's worth delivering?

And you do get to a point where you're like, well, we need to make products that are fun, that people enjoy using, that, you know, elevate the drinking experience or the eat. Like you get to those places. And so it's probably there that we, but again, it's where are people using something single use and how can we intervene to make it reusable and make it fairly seamless. And what does the business look like today? Where are you operating? How many in your team? So in the peak, we had 85 staff.

Yep. And now we've got about 40. And so we shut down. I was about to sign a lease in the US in February 2020. Oh, God. Oh, God. But you didn't. I didn't, didn't sign it. So, and we were getting, like they were, we got tipped out of where we were. So, we moved to 3PL in the US, which has probably been a pretty good move. Yeah. Still got the team in the UK and then the team here, you know, because the other thing is we were a pretty analog sort of business.

A lot of our business came from cafe and retail and now we've had to, you know, pivot pretty quickly to become much more adept at e-com and tech. So are you 100% e-com now? No. No. No. We're still in retail, still in cafes, still do a lot of corporate orders as well. So gifting for corporates, that sort of thing. Yep. Yeah. So I'd like to ask you to sort of reflect back on your whole journey and, you know, looking back, what are you most proud of?

I don't know, probably like nothing to do with work really. Do you mean about work or is it everything? Whatever feels like the right area to go in for you. I think I'm proud of the change that we started, but I'm also very aware that if it wasn't us, it would have been someone else. So we were just, you know, there was a moment that we took hold of and I ran with it. I ran as hard as I could, as fast as I could and did it.

And so I'm really proud of that and the team that we built along the way to do it. Like that's been fun. And then I'm proud, most proud probably of my family and my friends and, you know, and that's, that's what, that's what I'm here for. And, you know, the work's, the work's the work. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, and that, the balance of profit and purpose, like how do you manage that in a business like KeepCup? I'm really interested in profit. Yeah.

Absolutely. It's the lifeblood of any business. The thing is as well, like we've given hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars to Bob Brown, to Wires, to Sea Shepherd. You can't do that if you're not making profit. You can't do it. So your ability to affect change is directly linked to how profitable you are and also the pressure that you're under.

Like when you're profitable you can make a few mistakes without like you know losing sleep at night yeah you know and I think that's one of the reasons that you know I've kept the business pretty tight because I do want to make money I am making money so that I can enjoy the next you know 30 40 years of my life and spend it with my friends and family and do what I want to do when I want to do it like and not just have to feed a beast yeah

so the freedom the freedom you know for me the profit is freedom. Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't agree with you more, which is why this is called the For Love and Money podcast. And, you know, apart from, you know, feeding your own needs, it's also about if you do want to create change or impact through the business, you've got to be profitable and, you know, it's got to be scalable.

So, yeah. And as you say, that's a really important point as well, to be able to make mistakes without completely falling over as a result. Yeah. And I think that when I look back at the people I've enjoyed working with the most and who've been able to deliver the most impact, they're commercial thinkers always. Because I think like, you know, whenever someone goes, what is my budget? I'm like, oh, no, no, you don't have some pot of money to just experiment with.

It's like, what are you going to return for what you're doing? And it's when people who, it's people, because that's what I mean by commercial. It's like, if I expend this effort, what will the return be? And that's the thinking that everyone needs to have. What will the impact be? Yeah, absolutely. And what value are you creating for the investment that I'm going to put into that?

100%. So, Abigail, do you have any advice that you'd give to entrepreneurs who want to build businesses with a strong, either environmental or social purpose at its heart? Like from your learnings, what advice would you give someone thinking of undertaking that? It's hard. It's hard because ultimately business is a ruthless beast as well. Like you have to be pretty mercenary at some points around the decisions that you make.

So I think that people who go in with great social purpose or are really, you can get eaten alive because you have to make really tough decisions.

But I would say, that's not very positive, I would say that you need to have a really strong set of values that you stick to and you drive everything through that lens like people often say why is your business sustainable it's like well it's just every decision we make what power are we going to use how are we going to you know what are we going to have for lunch how are we get like every single decision you drive through that lens of your

values and then it just becomes second nature which goes back to that leadership style and why that management company didn't work for you at that time. So important. So important. So what's next for you personally and for KeepCup?

For KeepCup, we're just about to launch this very, I've got a fantastic marketing team and they've come up with this great marketing campaign that we're about to launch this weekend and it's called SipCheck.

SipCheck. SipCheck. So for old people like me, I was like, oh that's cool it's like don't forget your reusable cup and your phone and stuff like it's your sip check but no it's about more the when you've got your when you do your outfit check your fit check so now we're gonna co-opt it into the sip check so you show your ah so it's just a really fun way to get i guess the next generation of reusers engage young people know they they understand the problems the world faces they don't need to

be told what they should and shouldn't be doing but how do we engage them so I'm pretty excited about and we've got some new products we're launching as part of this campaign but I'm really it's a fun very authentic very you know low-key back to our it's sort of back to our our I feel like we're back to our roots back in our mojo about how we how we talk to people how we want people to feel yeah fantastic and how empowered we want people to feel about you know how they live their

life so yeah I love it I will look out for that and perhaps if there's, I mean, we'll put in the show notes links to Keep Cup so people can check it from there, I guess. Do you have a YouTube channel? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll link to that because I'm sure it'll come through there. That's fantastic.

Thank you, Abigail. I'd love to ask you to close with your dream, Abigail's dream. And this doesn't have to be work, but just generally, if you could achieve your wildest dreams over the next five years, You know, with everything you've been trying to do, what could it look like? What might it look like? I think for me to be living my wildest dreams would be my biggest passion is the protection of native forests. And, you know, that's what I would like to spend the rest of my life focused on.

Yeah. and certainly here in Australia, it's something that we do need to focus on, isn't it? So being out, from a recreational point of view, being in those wild places, I walked Lara Pinta last year with my daughter and that was just one of the most magical places I've been on earth. So spending time in nature, protecting nature, looking after those things is how I'd like to spend the rest of my, that's my wildest dream. Wonderful. And that lots of more people get to enjoy those places.

I think they're so important to our psychological health as individuals but also as a community, like I think, and that's increasingly being recognised by people, how important those nature-based living is. And to be able to, I went to Central Australia last year on an Intrepid Travel First Nations-led tour five-day experience, which was incredible. And I felt that we were completely disconnected, you know, from our phones.

Yeah. And to have that ability to not have, you know, you can't look at your phone, you're not connected. Yeah. It just puts you in a completely different headspace. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah such an amazing opportunity that's a beautiful dream thank you for sharing that with us and thank you for sharing your time and your story it has been really insightful for me and i think our listeners will get a lot of value out of it and yeah i just really appreciate the work you've done abigail so thank you thank you thanks for you thanks enjoy the conversation thanks very much, thanks for listening to this episode of the for love and money podcast if you'd

like to take a deeper dive into the purpose movement visit us at thecauseeffect.com.au and remember doing good is good for business so if you're not doing good then what are you doing.