Scaling Impact Shouldn't Be This Hard | Alessa Berg, Tessa Clarke & Heather Terry (Part 1)

Three fierce women founders join us on IT SHOULDN’T BE THIS HARD, all kicking ass across different industries: food waste, capital flows for a new regenerative economy, and ethical, sustainable snacking. Tessa Clarke (Founder of Olio), Alessa Berg (Founder of Top Tier Impact), and Heather Terry (Founder of GoodSAM Foods) aren't waiting for the system to get fairer, cheaper, or more rational before they act. They're building what needs to exist themselves.

Tessa Clarke grew up on a farm where food waste "was pretty much criminal" which is exactly why, on moving day, she resorted to what she calls cross-border vegetable smuggling rather than let the removal men throw out perfectly good food. That was the lightbulb moment for Olio, now a neighbor-to-neighbor app that's moved 150 million meals' worth of food. Alessa Berg built Top Tier Impact's 80-country ecosystem by trusting what she calls her own "internal coding" instead of forcing her path into a five-year plan. And Heather Terry built Good Sam Foods around a simple, radical bet: cutting out the middlemen and prioritizing farmers.

This episode gets into the reframes that changed how each of them operates: why Olio stopped talking about saving the planet and started talking about what's in it for you, the "drama triangle" Alessa uses to catch herself before slipping into victim mode, and Heather's belief that "weaponizing cash" by building a company that's profitable and does right by its supply chain is can be more disruptive than protest.

Key Takeaways

• Why environmental messaging failed to drive action for Olio and what actually worked instead
• How Olio turned its biggest weakness (food vanishing off the app in seconds) into its main revenue driver
• Why treating corporate partners as paying clients, not donors, is what unlocked Olio's supply side
• How to use the "drama triangle" (victim, hero, perpetrator) to catch yourself before you play the victim
• Why Alessa trusts "emergence" over rigid five-year plans and what that looks like in practice
• How Top Tier Impact operationalizes "take responsibility for your reality" as a company-wide rule
• Why Good Sam Foods runs its entire supply chain with zero middlemen
• How cutting out middlemen directly improves the economics of smallholder farmers and indigenous communities
• Why Heather sees profitability itself as a form of protest against a broken system
• How scaling slowly and staying profitable can undermine a broken industry faster than scaling fast

Timestamps

00:00 – Three founders, three industries, one instinct

01:30 – Tessa Clarke: growing up where food waste was "pretty much criminal"

02:00 – "Why isn't there an app for this?" Olio is born

02:44 – Alessa Berg: trusting her own "internal coding"

03:15 – Building Top Tier Impact's 80-country ecosystem

03:49 – Heather Terry: backing smallholder farmers, cutting the middlemen

04:21 – The Reframe: what changed how each founder operates

04:30 – Olio's pivot: from "save the planet" to "what's in it for you"

05:06 – Alessa's framework: escaping the victim-hero-perpetrator triangle

05:45 – Heather's reframe: "weaponizing cash" as protest

06:10 – The Reframe, in practice

06:31 – Olio's 100,000 volunteers and the supply-side fix

07:35 – TTI's rule #1: take responsibility for your reality

07:59 – Good Sam's slow, profitable scale as "system sabotage"

08:36 – Closing + what's coming in Part 2

About the Show

IT SHOULDN’T BE THIS HARD by grounded is a podcast show for business leaders, social entrepreneurs, and sustainability professionals navigating the messy meaningful work of responsible business and conscious leadership. Co-hosted by Phil White and Heidi Schoeneck, each episode brings together social impact entrepreneurs, corporate changemakers, and sustainability leaders -who've been there and are doing it- for lively, playful (and sometimes provocative) conversations about why it's so hard to do the right thing (and do the right things). This episode was produced and hosted by Paloma Jacome.

Additional Resources

🤖 Meet Gaia, Grounded's sustainability AI: https://grounded.world/gaia

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#Sustainability #ImpactInvesting #FoodWaste #SocialEntrepreneurship #WomenFounders #Business #ItShouldntBeThisHard