TLDR: after getting acquired, instead of letting my knowledge go to waste, I took the thousands of hours of research and put it into a zero cost tool -- Chat GPT for Sustainable Brands.
You can try it out here
While topically this is about the synthesis of technology, sustainability, and the beauty / CPG space, it's a tale of career transition, personal legacy to a degree, and the different modalities in which people want to be helped.
Over the course of 3/4 years founding Bluebird to bring low cost life cycle assessments and recyclability tools to the masses, scaling to dozens of customers, and ultimately being acquired -- I became a subject matter expert on product level sustainability. I spent literally thousands of hours researching, talking to experts, customers to build tools that solve hard sustainability & business problems for brands. It's something I grew a real passion for, but it's also now in the rear view mirror as I transition out of my role as CEO to civilian post acquisition.
Despite that, I still receive countless emails asking for advice, especially from the beauty founder working out of her own apartment without funding, a product product developer who's trying to change the culture from the inside out, and marketers who feel some ick around the greenwashing they're putting out.
The knowledge I've accumulated shouldn't go to die, and luckily it isn't. Instead of answering these emails and calls one off, I dumped all my knowledge into an AI chatbot to give people a zero cost way to access this accumulated experience. For example:
sustainability marketing strategy
how to use LCAs to make informed tradeoff decisions
choosing sustainable packaging, with lower cost
communicating sustainability to drive ROI
all the emerging legislation and compliance that's going to hit brands (this is not legal advice!)
It felt poetic in some ways -- my overarching North Star is to help people and the environment, and while I'm writing, advising, and coaching people in various ways, I'm still very much a builder -- especially of technology tools. And technology tools are an important way for people to get help at scale in the way they want to be helped.
More on that -- people in the beauty space love to talk :). Myself included. They talk to each other constantly, update their mental models of how things should be done, then go out and put their work in the world. They don’t always need fully-featured tools. A lot of times they just want to be told what to do. And being told what to do (if it's good advice) can be fast, directionally correct, and also has the feeling that you're getting it right by hearing from someone who's done it. That's why a chat bot could be helpful for some.
Building the chat gpt for sustainable brands
Building this thing was actually really funny and insightful for what the world thinks.
Using is it like to myself, but also the world's sum knowledge of the internet. That means at some times it's way smarter than I could have imagined, but then also... very not.
Why? It's picked up a ton of sustainability misconceptions repeated again and again on the internet. This is actually really hard for brands to deal with because even if they make thoughtful sustainability decisions, they might have to counter misconceptions from their customers.
Some highlights:
Me: "what brands are doing sustainability well?"
The Internet via chatbot: "Shein is very popular with the Generation Z."
Me: "Cool."
Me: "is glass more sustainable than plastic?" (the
number one question I get)
The Internet via chatbot: "plastics are made from fossil fuels, which makes glass more
sustainable" (about 5% of the story)
Me: "when should I use a life cycle assessment (LCA)?"
The Internet via chatbot: "you should eliminate micro plastics from your products"
Luckily you can reinforce the model to whack a mole out the bad habits, reduce the 'creativity' streak it has, and get to something that is helpful, most of the time.
As a sidebar, this felt a lot like training an animal or child. I really hope millennial parents don't raise their kids the same way they prompt engineer a chat bot.
Test it out and let me know what you think
You can test it out here.
If you're a beauty founder, product developer, marketer, or sustainability analyst, give it a shot here! If you see anything out there that needs correcting, let me know.
A quick note -- I actually made two of these bots -- one that gives higher level guidance and another that gives much more specific, actionable guidance. Why? Mostly just limitations in the AI models. GPT4 is much better, but much more expensive. Given how people are using the chatbot I put out there already, there's no way I could operate it out of my own pocket. So if you really find the free one useful, consider getting the locked down version which goes beyond helping yourself, covering the cost of the tool for everyone else too.
As always, would love to hear any thoughts or feedback you have.
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