Nohelia Rambal in 2020 launched the UK-based startup Goodfind, to facilitate the purchase of eco-friendly products. On the site, you can find environmentally curated brands and special offers. Started as a side gig, Goodfind has grown and is now backed up by a great team. In this interview, Nohelia goes over the journey she had that lead her to the creation of Goodfind and some of the skills she was looking for when hiring talents. Go ahead, and meet Nohelia!
Nohelia, tell us more about Goodfind!
We are a directory of sustainable brands that helps consumers to find good brands that do good and consume more responsibly. The idea behind it came from my background in marketing, I’ve spent many years in the corporate side driving demand and driving purchases and retention for multinationals and big companies.
I always wanted to do something more purposeful, I wanted to feel like what I was doing made a difference beyond that particular industry, and when in 2019 I’ve decided to take the leap and kind of go solo and independent, first as a consultant not quite as an entrepreneur at that point. I realized I needed to learn: “What is the need out there?“, a process that many entrepreneurs go through. My first step, just to learn a bit more about it, was to consult as a marketing consultant for impact organizations, social enterprises, and brands that do good in general.
In my process through that, I got a couple of clients that were charities, a couple of social enterprises, and a couple that were just independent brands that had a good mission. I realized very quickly they had amazing products and services, but they really struggled to get the right audiences, the right volume of customers it was always kind of a struggle either because of the lack of skills or budget or basically the team wasn’t big enough to actually to compete against most bigger brands more established, out there.
To me very soon after I started working with these brands it was really much about ‘There is a massive gap here‘. Everyone I know would like to consume from these brands, they would like to know about them, but they don’t know how to find them.
On the other side, there is a mass of these amazing brands, and not enough people that know about them, so the tool was created at the back of one of my passion and kind of will to do something that was purposeful and impactful. Understanding that gap in the market, cause it’s not easy to do a Google Search and come up with these things, so I created the small search engine that will give you only purposeful results to your queries, and that’s how it started.
What issue are you trying to solve with Goodfind?
The issue that we’re trying to solve is the lack of representation. The big father problem is the way we consume: our economic growth for more than a century, has been based on overconsumption and overproduction, we have utilized a lot more resources than we can actually afford to utilize, this is the parent problem out there. The second problem is that people are waking up: more than 54% of people really want to change their lifestyle into something more sustainable, this is a global statistic.
But what they find as an obstacle is, first of all, it’s very difficult, it’s time-consuming and it is very daunting as a process. Because you don’t find the right ads and secondly, really high prices and not knowing what the context is for that. Another problem is the lack of support, from the governments, for instance, there are not enough rewarding experiences, there’s not enough incentive for people to go the extra mile, the extra effort, and trying to consume more sustainably.
Goodfind is trying to make it easier for people, there is no obstacle to consumption that is more sustainable. They can actually really quickly come and set, compare between a few brands and choose one and buy from that brand in a matter of minutes, like they would do in another platform, very know commercial platforms, and choose any other product.
We’re trying to eliminate the barriers to consume more ethically, actually, we have done that job for you, look these are the options, we have done the research, we have done the reading, it’s done for you! In a way, we’re trying to bring convenience and ease into ethical consumption.
What qualities do you look for, when hiring new team members?
I think at this point my secret sauce for hiring people have 5 main elements:
The first one is passion for change, cause what we do is for impact and reliance in there that in people, people that we look for have to have that passion otherwise it’s a non go. The second one I really like to talk about is bias towards action, and this comes very much from the company culture I’ve experienced in the past: the analysis/paralysis that a lot of people and companies have, finding blockers to try things out, it’s something I don’t share. I much rather get something done that is not 100% correct and learn from it, than putting myself and the team pressure to develop something to a perfection point that doesn’t exist.
That goes hand in hand with having a growth mindset as the third element, for me, having people who know that can improve is super important and obsessed with doing the right thing, this comes with learning how to be more inclusive, understanding that you will make mistakes and that you can fix them and kind of always striving to learn more about on ‘ok, what can I improve on?‘ “What can I fix and do right this time”. To be fair that’s probably what it means, knowing that you’re going to do what is right for people. Actually, this platform is about doing the right thing for minorities, for diversity, for inclusion for all of these topics that other people are not represented enough. And the fifth and the last one is transparency. From my cultural background, I am very open and I don’t have a lot of filters, I’m trying to say things as they are, kindly, but as they are, and I appreciate that in people, so for me is very important to work with people that can actually tell me things as they are, in a kind way, but in a way that actually that will be constructive. Those are my five things I look into people. But as I said until very recently I didn’t even think about it It’s been an amazing journey.
When hiring on-demand talent what skills have you been looking for?
The first skill I hired was actually a virtual assistant. Back in the day when it was only me at Goodfind, I realized that there were a few admin repetitive tasks that were taking so much of my time and I wasn’t even able to spend time planning, discovering, researching new things, etc. As a solo founder, having only my time available, I realized very quickly that I needed to hire someone to do that stuff, otherwise I would never be able to move forward quickly. That was the first hire we got, and then the second-ever hire was a marketing apprentice. Much of what we do relies on getting messages out there and growing our audience, trying to get in people’s minds. What I’ve understood very quickly was that I needed more help in managing those social media channels, and help me spread those messages. After that, we worked really closely with a consultant to do our rebranding, understanding our messages, our brand, our personality, what we want to say in which way, etc.
What’s coming up for GoodFind?
In the UK Fathers day is on the 20th of June and we respect a lot, it’s not an easy day for a lot of people like Mother’s Day: some people might have not anyone to celebrate some people might have lost someone that were used to celebrate, it’s always a hard decision to choose what to talk about and when. The reason why we’ve decided to go with this gift guide, it’s because the majority of people out there will be looking for fathers days gifts and these are the opportunities as a company to actually do our mission which is changing peoples behavior, “Don’t go to the regular place you go to buy the same last-minute gift that is not eco-friendly, that doesn’t have any social impact, come to us and buy it here, you’ll make a difference!“. So we have decided to go for this type of seasonal campaign because it’s very important for us at this particular stages: like Christmas, Mothers Day Fathers Days, to change behavior because most people will be actually behaving the same way: they will be looking for a gift. The brands that are part of that campaign are getting so much exposure to new consumers, they probably otherwise wouldn’t reach out to, cause they have their different audiences. The idea is to amplify the impact that those brands do themselves and then amplify our impact by getting more people on board, with the idea of thinking differently about consumption.
One last message for our community of changemakers?
I encourage everyone to just take one thing, just think about one element of your life you can do more sustainably and just do that one thing. It doesn’t have to be perfect, you don’t have to become a full-on green warrior tomorrow, just do one thing and that makes such a difference. So I encourage everyone to not underestimate their own capacity to make a difference.
Work for Impact supports brands and organizations for a better world
We believe in setting goals that benefit everyone, not just ourselves. By working with socially and environmentally responsible organizations and nonprofits, we want to promote projects that have a positive impact on the world as a whole. We only succeed when everyone succeeds. If you’d like to know more about us, sign up for free or book a meeting to know more about how you can scale your team.