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The guys welcome the CEO of Klean Kanteen, Jim Osgood, to discuss why his company decided to become B Corp certified and the positive effects the certification has had. Jim also provides his perspective on the question, "One of our employees does great work and isn't breaking any office rules, but we have noticed he is posting very questionable content on his social media. Can we fire him for this since he lists us as his employer on his profiles?" Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub. NASIR: Welcome to our podcast. This is where we cover business news and add our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. As I’ve said before, soon to be dot-pizza. I’ve looked it up and it is definitely coming – just not yet – TBD. MATT: I’m glad you took my advice from the last episode and varied your intro. It did sound a little bit different so I do appreciate that. NASIR: Okay, that’s good. What do we have to the start of the show here today, Ji—Matt? I called you Jim which, of course, is the name of our guest. MATT: Well, now you ruined the surprise. NASIR: I know. I messed up. MATT: So, in the last – I was going to say “couple of months” but, really, all of this year and some of the last year, there’s been a lot of people that I know have approached me or contacted us and asked about wanting to start a company but wanting some social good behind it, too. I think a lot of people do some preliminary searching and stumble across this B Corp idea. They might not know a lot about it but that’s typically a lot of the phone calls or contacts that I get is people saying, “Hey, I want to start this company, I want to do something good, not just be all about making money. How about this B Corp idea?” It is a cool idea and not every state currently allows it but it is out there for a good chunk of states. I think almost half of them now. In California, it’s still relatively new as well. NASIR: Yeah, I think California has been around for probably four or five years, I want to say, but I’m lind of guessing there. I know it’s been a little bit of time and I know Delaware now has it, too. So, some of the more important states for these corporations are there. But let me just break down here. Benefit Corporations – or I should say “B Corps” – is a legal status. It kind of depends. Colloquially, they’re used kind of synonymously but it can mean different things. But, basically, that kind of legal status, basically, it’s a for-profit corporation but the difference is that the shareholders can hold the company accountable differently in a sense that, in a for-profit corporation, the board of directors and their officers have to take the best interest of the company by making as much profit as possible. But, whereas, in a benefit corporation, they could also choose to add on a public benefit as a standard of their success, so to speak. And so, they’re not held to the same kind of fiduciary duty as they would other companies to their shareholders. But then, on top of that, there’s this whole benefit corporation certification that a third-party, I think there’s at least one, I think there might be another main out there that goes through this process. And so, to kind of get a better idea of how this works, we brought in Jim Osgood, he’s from Klean Kanteen. Welcome to the program! JIM: Great to be here, guys. Thanks for inviting us! NASIR: Absolutely. Klean Kanteen is a B Corporation, certified by B Labs, correct? JIM: That is correct. We were certified in October of 2012 and we are also, since that time, a registered benefit corporation of California. NASIR: Very cool. So, just to define that, your legal status as a benefit corporation in California but then you’ve been certified by B Labs, is that correct? JIM: That is correct.