Episode 62: Ian Bentley, CEO of Parker Clay - How I Built My Purpose-Driven Business

0:07 Hello, beautiful humans. Welcome to the human Beauty movement podcast. I'm your host Jennifer Norman. Throughout my life, I've been a lover and a seeker of all things beauty from art and dance to cosmetics, and fashion to music and nature. But through my own personal Journey. I've come to discover what I believe is the most beautiful thing. In the universe, the beauty of the human soul, on this podcast, I sit down with beautiful humans from all corners. Of the globe and all walks of life to learn how they are living their own unique. Soul Beauty out loud. You'll hear from game changers. Rebels with gray causes stages odds, feeders and Valiant Warriors who fall down seven times and get up eight. This is the podcast where abundant energy flows and supreme wisdom is bestowed, get ready to enjoy the inspiration. Hello, beautiful humans.

1:04 Welcome to Today's Show. So I A lot of you may agree with me when things are going well, and life is pretty comfortable, it's easy to take things for granted. It's easy to go into any given Store, buy shoes or a bag. Just spends a lot of money on it because you like the brand or you like the style, not always do. We think about who made the bag where did it come from? And under what kind of conditions was that bag made? My guest today is an incredible human being who wants to help people understand the impact that they're making when they buy. Bye. So let me introduce you to in Bentley, co-founder and CEO of Parker. Clay, a mission-driven company. That makes ethical bags. Hello Ian.

1:47 Welcome to the show. Hi Jennifer. Thanks for having me. So excited to be here, and share a little bit more about what we've done, what we're doing. Yeah, I can't wait to let everybody know what you're doing, because it is absolutely incredible. I think that you can kind of say that you're taking be unethical baggage, out of buying great bags. So, can you tell everybody what was the inspiration behind? Parker clay. How did this origin story? Come about. Yeah, thanks for asking that. And the way that you let into the story, just absolutely love that consciousness of thinking about those things. And the way that we think about things and we might need to borrow that line that you just dropped as well with a great way to think about it. And you're right, I mean, even talking about things going well, and life going well and kind of the process for I guess, going all the way back for Brittany.

2:33 And I, my wife and I was literally, we started dating in high school. So high school sweethearts. He's she was a senior and I was a sophomore. I always like to point that out, because in high school, that's a big deal, right? You were cool. I think. That's right, that's right. Hopefully my kids here that he grew up in Santa Barbara, we did. Yep. Grew up in Southern California, Santa Barbara. Not a chef in place. By the way, it is a lovely place. No, it's the certainly, a beautiful part in the world. I'm grateful to call it home, still even today. Yeah. And so, we went to college down in San Diego. Got married, really young. We're fortunate enough to Back to Santa Barbara and start our careers here. Brittany is a designer, she's work for Fortune, 50 companies, doing design and Creative Design, Graphic Design, and I started working in real estate development.

3:20 We bought our first house at our first two children. And so, my sons are Parker and then next game clay. Those are the boys names. And we started talks about adoption as something in that we were interested in and it was always funny because And I would we'd watch like date night movies, like Hotel Rwanda or things that you're like not the lightest, you know, most rom-com, they were serious subjects. And we were just really interested in what was happening in the world and we would look at statistics and read statistics about orphans worldwide. And here's statistics like 160 million orphans and I think with Statistics, it's very difficult to personalize. It's like these huge numbers.

4:01 What do I do? And I'm looking at my door at home, seeing Parker and seeing clay playing the And it just hit me. It was like if that was one of my boys, I would do anything to be there for them and to help them. And then I think about all these other kids around the world and went like, yes, we have plenty of room in our table for more and we love to adopt. And so that started the process of us adopting which is what ultimately led us to Ethiopia. We looked at countries all over the world even here in the US, But ultimately landed in Ethiopia to adopt our daughter who was just a few months old and that was really the The beginning of big change for us looking at what else we could do.

4:42 How else we could get involved. And so kind of part, two of that was, we came back with our daughter, from Ethiopia, at our, you know, careers doing life. And again, we're kind of in the iconic American Dream, right? We had just bought our house. We have our kids like things are going well, careers are going well and there's this like unsettled part of our lives were working on. What else is there? We just experienced this incredible country, incredible people and Over and over again. We kept hearing, people say if you want to help come and create opportunities here in Ethiopia, don't you know, hand out or not the solution. It's really jobs and opportunity and that like couldn't leave our minds. So we ended up going back. A few more times after adopting, our daughter from Ethiopia and met this amazing organization that was helping women out of trafficking, and prostitution, doing job training and skills training and Rehabilitation work.

5:33 And they said, hey we would love to create more jobs and we're like love this. We can help And the options were kind of well, we could donate money, we could go over for a week or so at a time and help out and then there was this like crazy idea. Well, maybe we could move there and help and that was like yeah, that's crazy. Will never do that well less than a year. After adopting our daughter sayla, we sold everything that we owned, bought one-way tickets and moved our family to Ethiopia to partner with this group. And that was really the reason why we moved to Ethiopia Parker, clay at the time. Not. I mean they were my sons, but it was not a brand yet that we had started and that came after living in Ethiopia. Wow, I have so many questions.

6:15 But first of all, I wanted to say how amazing I mean that is the True Heart opener. You had this innate desire to take on a child, which is a huge undertaking, I come from a family. A lot of people on this podcast know, my story that when I was two years old, I was also adopted from Korea, my parents had three of Their Own Own children already and then two years after I was adopted. They adopted my brother and sister from Vietnam. And as a matter of fact, yesterday was 48 years, for them. Is, I've already been? No congratulations. I've been in the states for 50 years and so I absolutely my heart goes out to people who are willing to bring other children of need into their family and create a new life and then from there, you decided to go all-in and I totally agree with this. It's like, you know, you can give a fish or you can teach them to fish you Gives run, you can donate. But the real benefit the greatest way that we can change economy, change society, build different countries into better prosperity, and to have them Thrive is to put the economy where they're at and so helping to teach and educate and providing job opportunities and bringing wealth into those. Local communities is the best thing that we can do. And so yeah you and your wife for Or just like literally pulling up your whole entire family. Taking that kind of a risk and moving to Ethiopia where they were probably a million unknowns

7:46 maybe two million. I mean, yes, it was crazy. I just yeah, I stood at LAX with these tickets with the kids and I'm like at least a one percent chance. This is the worst decision I've ever made. And so how old were you boys at that time? Yeah they were three and five years old. So just little guy we have pictures of pulling them around on their little wheelie suitcases. And you know What I love about kids, they're such a pureness to you know, they're like yeah sure that Mom Dad will follow you and I think as a mom and a dad you're like oh this is heavy. Am I totally messing up my kid's life by doing this? Are they going to have the right education? All these things and there's really I think there's moments in your life where you have to kind of abandon the most rational, logical thinking and step off the edge into something completely on. And that was a moment for us which has been one of the greatest moments of our life, for sure. I think it speaks so loudly Loudly to The Testament that if they're not safe, you're not safe. So it's like there is no safety unless we're all safe. And so you may as well take a rest because you're seeing something like once you see it, you can't unsee it. You can't turn a blind eye and to do. So would be so completely negligent. I think in your heart and in your mind to just walk away and say, oh, you know, I've done my part, I've adopted a child but rather you said there's more than I can offer. There's more good that can be done and who better to do it but me and so let's do it.

9:07 I think that with that, there was a term that I discovered early, when we were first adopting and it was called depraved indifference and it's actually my understanding of it is a legal term which, you know, let's say you're at a park sitting on a bench and there's a lake and someone's out drowning in the lake and you know, how to swim and you have the ability to go and save that person but you don't, it's this depraved indifference. And I think we often don't know how to, we feel like there's such overwhelming pieces, like I said, even going back to adoption millions of kids, but you An do something for one person. And I think it's always that like first step, right? The proverbial. That first step is sometimes always the hardest to take, but through that door opens up so much amazing opportunities. And when it's for purpose, when it's with purpose, you're right. Even if I feel like we're at, even if we were to not be successful, we have made impact on thousands of lives through what we've done and that is Success, right? Even if it was for one, it would be successful in my eyes, but obviously the vision is much.

10:07 Bigger because we want to impact millions of lives. Yes. Oh, so you knew that there was some sort of a calling, but when you got there, undoubtedly, the fact that you're probably scared that you're worrying. Like, oh my gosh, I've made a huge mistake. Like all of those doubts are probably still with you for some time. At what point did you see things starting to move? Tell me what happened after you landed and started to get your feelers out? Yeah, well, you know, Jennifer entrepreneurs, never worry. They're never afraid. They always have full confidence and yes, Yeah, right. The truth is, yeah, there's a lot of scary moments in that and, you know, surrounding yourself with great people, being with my family, obviously, a huge sense of confidence, having a great Community behind us as well, was a great sense of support.

10:50 And so, we were there working with these women, primarily doing job training and skills training. But we were always looking for ways to find industry where it could scale. It could be competitive in the marketplace. At the time we were doing, like handlooms, scarves, and textile. Which were beautiful but they also weren't as competitive in terms of price point. Things like that in the market. And so what we did want to do was create any sort of Enterprise that was more of a philanthropic purchase right at the time. If you think back to like 2012, 2013, this is the time when like TOMS Shoes was really starting to go buy one. Give one bounded great. Which we, now know isn't the best model because of just its impact on those economies.

11:34 They were giving away a bunch of shoes and their shoe cobbler. Herbs that are making shoes that now don't have a job, right? That's not the best model though. It was really, how do we create sustainable jobs? And at the time we were looking for, what's here in Ethiopia that we could utilize, and it happened to be Britain's birthday, one year and we were out, there's no big like shopping malls and things like that there. But we found in this Boutique Center, this little bag and it caught Brittany and eyes eyes. Both looking at it going. That's interesting. We look inside and there's a tag that says Made in Ethiopia and Into on the other side of the tag flip around, I had the guy's phone number and so we called this guy. Just interested in learning more and asked him, you know, where did you get the leather?

12:16 He goes, what do you mean? Where they keep the leather? From here? Ethiopia was like, really, okay, I see goats and cows and sheep everywhere, but don't realize the byproduct of that is beautiful leather. And so he met us, we went to a Tannery. And at the Tannery this day, there was these shipping containers out front, where they were loading it with leather finish, leather. And I asked the owner of the Tannery, where are you shipping? Being this too and he goes oh we're that one's going to Italy. We ship all the time to hold on your shipping. This leather to Italy and instantly. If I said made in Italy rightmost you and the listeners could probably think of a number of name brands that are made in Italy. But what does that mean? What is it actually from Italy? Or was it just literally physically, made in Italy?

12:57 And so, that was kind of a light bulb moment of saying here, we have all these women that are some of the most incredible filled with potential, you know, hungry for great opportunities. You to go to work. And here's this beautiful, raw material, that's not even being made into anything in the country. It's all being exported to really premium bags. Let's create this Brands here, made in Ethiopia at the source, creating jobs for these women. And that was really, the aha moment where we started creating a few products. Testing it out, people loved it. And that was the beginning of Parker, clay, amazing. And so, how many women do you start with? And then tell me like fast. Forwarding.

13:37 Like, what does it look like today? Just to see how you've scaled over the years. Yeah, so that was 2014 when we officially started while we live. There, we started literally with, I think two or three sewing machines and 325 people get mostly all women and in a small little room of a place that we had in Ethiopia and we just figured it out, we disassembled some bags and tested things, we taught ourselves, we learned what goes into making a really beautiful premium bag and that was yeah, that was 2014. And today, we actually just recently moved into a new facility, huge facility, like, over 16,000 square feet. We've got about 200, employees, 80 percent, are women.

14:17 We do on job skills training. Some of these women who have had no history or background in leather, we're able to bring them into job training. Big, percentage of our team have never had a stable job. So, it's the first time they have contract Jobs first time, they even have savings accounts. We subsidize food programs, so we have a great lunch. CH and Cafe on site. We provide transportation, we're working on a child care center at the facility and it's just on and on and on we continue to do more and more as we grow. But the vision really is that we would have thousands of people working with us and that would be impacting millions of lives throughout the supply chain of what we're doing, bringing really fashion leading fashion brand to Africa, that the world would know. That Africa is not just this massive continent, where people think about it as Charity or issues. That it is a beautiful vibrant continent that is got so much opportunity.

15:12 So we feel like we're onto something at the very beginning that is about to really take off. Wow. Congratulations on being able to see your vision through and I know, it's still just the beginning. I am confident that this will have impact, not only in Ethiopia, but through those that you inspire to have businesses just like yours. And so, tell us like, when you're starting out a business and you have these values Do you have this hope of how your business is going to operate? What are some of the challenges that you face as an entrepreneur, as the CEO of a company? I'm sure profitability and constantly doing the right thing. Ethics, even International Trade, what are some of the hurdles are the obstacles that you come across?

15:56 Yeah, you named a lot of them in there and all those are challenges. There's a great book called The obstacle is the way by an author called Ryan, holiday love what he writes. And what I've learned Through reading a lot about that as well. And I've experienced in my life is the obstacle often illuminates, that opportunity. That's just ahead. Sometimes have to walk through to get there and starting a business in Ethiopia is definitely not one of the easiest things to do. I think, had we not live there. It would be very challenging to start the business. There's language there's culture working. Cross-culturally is very challenging. I think, when I first came to Ethiopia, there was a mentality of Western business, that just doesn't work there and trying, To bring that is not the right approach, right?

16:40 You're working with a different culture, you're in their culture, and you have to respect that honor that. And so that's been something that we've been able to do really successfully, but I would say that building any scaling company comes with growth challenges around infrastructure, operations strategy, the multi kind of cultural and National legal aspects, and business aspects. So what it really comes down to me is putting the right people. All around you putting great people around you, who frankly are much smarter than I am. Who can do great things and take the business where it needs to go. I think, my job, I recognize is really zooming out and seeing the whole picture and making sure that all the right pieces are kind of in alignment and that we're driving things forward. But there has been the challenges. I mean, I'll even say they like during covid. Right?

17:29 For many people, 2020 was a very challenging year. What's about to happen? And now, we've experienced it over the last few years, and we have Always put people first, and I think that has always done very well for us is when we honor our team honor, our people when covid hit we have some women who are immunocompromised and we didn't know what was about to happen. So we sent them to hey, we want you to be home. We're going to pay you and make sure that you're taking care of, until we can kind of sort out how this needs to work and quickly move to put contingency plans in place for our business to ensure and that led us to actually having one of our biggest years in the history of Parker clay through. So I think that the foundation, it's always about putting people first and I think that if you have the right people and they are prioritized that those challenges become much easier to overcome and when there's a purpose I think that also really galvanized has your team and the community around you wear. What would the world look like if blank didn't exist? And if you put that any company or brand there, I think that kind of tells you how important it is. What would the world look like if blank didn't exist? And I think that gets to the Core Or of, what does that company organization doing to impact the world? If it's well I wouldn't have a nice bag. You know that.

18:43 Okay, that's one thing, but we wouldn't be empowering women to thrive. We wouldn't be transforming those communities Parker clay didn't exist. Like there's things like that, that start to come to mind. So that's always been a very motivational push. I think through those challenges for us and that's allowed us to overcome a lot. Yeah, when you've got a real deep seated purpose and one that is so important, like what you have and you've seen The impact of what it can do versus, what be environment, what the society is like, without it, how important it is, and you'll almost do anything in order to make sure that your persevering, because then you're honoring everything that goes into the success of their livelihoods.

19:25 And so it's not just a bag to your point, it's everything that that bag symbolizes. It's the prosperity and the future in the hope of an entire economy, such as what you're helping to create. So, For those of you entrepreneurs that are out there listening. You're right. It's so easy to say this is getting too hard, it's not worth it. I give up but really dig deep down inside like what is your internal Mission? What is that purpose? Why are you here? Why are you doing it? If you can answer truthfully, that you are making an impact in other people's lives. That go beyond the product or service, directly of what you're providing. Then it's worth it. Keep doing it. Don't give up. Find a way.

20:07 The universe will be at your beck and call if you just so respond to it. And just sometimes go with the flow of the energy of what you're finding because people will come to you. Ian has been able to find great, very intelligent and wise people to surround himself with to help ensure the success of his business and to ensure the success of its growth, this will all come to you. So it's really important to know your why it's really important. I know that some Angela Duckworth book grit. I know that you mentioned the obstacles. The way that's one. Of my favorites as well. But there are so many wonderful books out there that can really help you Galvanize in your purpose and in the perseverance to continue on even when things get tough.

20:49 And it's interesting because I did yesterday, here are statistic that purpose-driven companies during the whole covid. Crisis were about 75% more apt to thrive and to do well and to not fold a lot of other companies, shuttered, their doors, they just didn't have what it took to persevere through. Those sorts of crises of when things get really tough. But when you are mission driven when you are purpose-driven, there is more of a likelihood that you will be able to find a way and good things will come to you. 100%. Yeah, I couldn't agree with that more. Yeah. So my next question, I know that along the way one of the other things in terms of growth is fundraising. You had some unconventional fundraising initiatives that had been successful.

21:32 And so I was hoping that you could share some of those with us too. Yeah, during covid. The challenge. When that hit was team, how can we be creative Innovative? What could this look like? And so we always use, it's an African proverb. And it says, if you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far go together and we have really adopted that throughout the company. It's part of our core values. It's really at the core of what we do or we say we go together and during covid, we came up with this initiative recall that we go together and it was basically inviting the community to support us and kind of you know by it was almost. This is Structure of it was almost like being able to buy a gift card that we would double the value of but you would get it down the road so you get it like a year later, things like that. So it was a bit of an investment up front, the then get to use it down the road and we had overwhelming just response to it.

22:21 Everybody loved it. Everybody came out and said, hey again, we want to see Parker clay exist in this world. We believe in the mission, believe in what you guys are doing. And that really galvanized a group, it took us further as well. We're able to go through that as I said, and then more recently. Bentley? What we kicked off we started it really officially more this year was a really unique way of fundraising and it's called a regulation A+ so something that came into law not that long ago and the concept was it's a community Purpose Driven around it where typically a business like ours, this would be what what most would reference probably like a series a in terms of fundraising, we've proven our growth, we've established ourselves and now we're looking to really pour more fuel on the fire to God, and rather than just going out to the kind of elite or high wealth individuals, who would it be investing, maybe millions or Capital, which there's nothing wrong with that in and of itself. But what we wanted to do with said Community, the people who've been around us who've been part of this success. We want to invite you to invest, literally into the company and have shares in Parker.

23:29 Clay. And so, that's what we just recently. Launched, its really a unique way of being able to invest, you can invest Eating at $500 into Parker, Clay versus what typically would be reserved as hundreds of thousands. If not, Millions is kind of the traditional fundraising ability and what I love about it is that it democratizes investment, it allows everybody to come to the table and say we want to be part of this and as a result as we continue to grow and work on scaling, the business that the opportunity of growing financially in that is really exciting to be able to pursue that. So that's what we're literally were in the middle of That right now and everything we've shared right is very authentic and genuine about who we are and what we do and there is nothing better than the idea to us as Founders to have the community with us. Not only buying the beautiful bags but also saying, hey we want to be part of this financially as well and believe this can be a huge company and opportunities that go well beyond.

24:30 And so, we've been really excited and really encouraged by the results and turnout. So far from that. Yeah, we have until a more months to continue to raise money through this crowd fund around. So, is there a specific crowdfund app or a platform that you're using it for this raise? Yeah, we're hosting it. So, if you go to invest dot Parker. Clay.com, that is where it's hosted. So we're hosting it on are essentially our own website for you to go on. We're working with a great company called dealmaker that is really the technology behind the Rays and just as you go online and you're able to buy a Parker clay bag. You can really kind of go to this website and learn about what we're doing, learn about our growth and what we've been able to do so far.

25:15 We had to do a full-blown audit and we have approval qualification by the SEC to be able to do this. So it's all really well documented and out there for people to do the research, and you can go online and basically buy shares in Parker, clay direct from the website. So we've got a video, our whole story that I shared got a video with some fun pictures and clips of Brittany. Die. Pretty somehow has managed to look younger and more beautiful. As she's aged, I've like gotten gray and less hair, but you'll see that in the video. But yeah, it's really a fun thing for us to be doing this and part of it to even have an offering tier, we have perks for this raised and one of the highest tears, if you invest a certain amount will even take you to Ethiopia and show you the factory and help us design a bag and things like that.

26:03 So lots of fun ways to get involved but honestly yeah. Love the idea and the response and just the messages that we get from our community, we had this woman and here in Santa Barbara, who wrote a review on our website. Like did not ask her to or anything and a group of friends in the community bought her one of our bags. While her son was getting treatment for cancer and she said that as my son was going through this, these women gave me this bag that I wore on my back, knowing they have my back and it was like so beautiful. So it's not just a leather bag. Yes, it's beautiful. And you want to buy it because it looks great functional, but it represents so much more.

26:44 And I think that example is what at the very core were trying to build and want to build it Parker clay exactly. This is not just conscious shopping and being a conscious consumer. It's not just being a conscious investor and certainly that is important to help vote with your dollars to allow good businesses to prosper. But it's really about the seed of the Intention, if you are helping to support these good businesses, use, good entities to thrive and, you know, that their heart is in the right place that intention carries through and this was a perfect example. As Ian has just described of how this product is helping to touch people's lives, how the symbology of what Parker clay stands for is really so much more profound and meaningful than the physical bag itself.

27:35 It's really about About having each other's backs, it's really about bringing along the goodness at every single stage. So, consider the bag consider investing. I'll make sure that the website for investing. And any information that you'd like to find is in the show notes. But then also consider gifting consider spreading word about this company as well as other companies that you find that are very similar in their goodness and in their intention as Parker clay. And you know, that I have several of them on my podcast. It's important. It's important to be knowledgeable and to be aware of the impact that we as decision makers, within our own lives, are carrying forth, what we're bringing into our households, the energy that we're bringing into our lives. And so, I just want to thank you and so much. Thank you so much for all of your work for Britney. And before I depart, I know that you have two more children, you're a father of five.

28:28 So I want you to tell you about that. We've talked about the first three. Tell me about the next to. Yes, 05 kids, which, you know what it's like coming from a big family. Ali. It's fun. Crazy. So we adopted our daughter at nine years old while living in Ethiopia. So we kind of, if you're in the adoption world, we broke the traditional Trend, which is adopting out of birth order and it's turned out great. She is now 19 going to college down in Los Angeles at LMU doing great. Like wants to go back to Ethiopia and do work there to make an impact. Like just love her story and where she's going, and then we got pregnant with our fifth. Kya is her name. She was conceived in Ethiopia born, back here in the US, and she is now eight years old, which is crazy. So we've been back here in the US after your, she was born here in the US and we stayed here because one of our other daughters, we had some medical treatment that we needed to get her, which is what another story brought us back to the u.s. from Ethiopia for that time.

29:28 But now we go back and forth. Usually at least quarterly we're going back and forth so we'll be back together and along the way to. We bring back one of the kids are a couple the kids and then we try every few years to bring the whole family back to Ethiopia to spend time there. So it is fun and wild and a family of seven is we love it. We love it. Intently co-founder and CEO of Parker clay. Thank you so much for being on the show today and thanks Jennifer. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for listening to the human Beauty movement podcast. Be sure to follow rate and review us wherever you stream podcasts. The human Beauty movement is a community-based platform that cultivates the We of humankind, check out our workshops, find us on social media and share our inspiration with all the beautiful humans in your life. Learn more at the human Beauty.

30:16 Movement.com, thank you so much for being a beautiful human.