Lisa Geason-Bauer, founder and president of Evolution Marketing, joins Kim Allchurch Flick to discuss sustainability/ESG consulting, impact storytelling, ethical marketing, and environmentally responsive design.
Lisa describes founding the firm on Sept. 15, 2007 to prove a professional services company can succeed using a triple bottom line lens – people, planet, and profit – while navigating Wisconsin’s long recessionary period after 2008.
She recounts building the state’s B Corp ecosystem through Be Local Wisconsin and helping companies certify, noting growth from a handful of B Corps to 26+ statewide and preparing members for B Lab’s new standards.
The conversation covers challenges like politicization of environmental and social sustainability, the need to find common ground, and Lisa’s optimism tied to launching Evolution Marketing’s 2025 Carbon Footprint and Operational Impact Report, climate education, and practical actions such as home efficiency, reduced plastics, local food systems, and Malarkey roofing innovations.
NOTE: Lisa made an error, saying B Local Wisconsin started in 2007 when it was actually 2017.
Listen Now
Time Stamps
00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro
02:30 Evolution Marketing Origins
02:40 Triple Bottom Line Explained
04:43 Recession Era Lessons
06:51 Wisconsin B Corp Growth
11:26 New Standards and Recert
12:53 Polarization and Language
18:59 Finding Common Ground
23:55 Climate Report and Hope
27:52 Beyond Tech Fixes
28:42 Clean Tech Optimism
29:14 Off Grid Reality
30:24 Low Cost Home Swaps
31:27 Question Behind Green
34:08 Responsible Consumption
35:14 Local Food Mindset
38:14 Farmers Markets Shift
39:56 Beeswax And Preserving
42:53 Eco Roofing Case Study
46:07 Research And Community
47:31 Dinner With Ancestors
48:52 Land Stewardship Lessons
51:16 Closing Reflections
Kim Allchurch Flick: Hello everyone. I am Kim Allchurch Flick with the Mighty Measure Podcast. Delighted to be here today with Lisa Geason-Bauer of Evolution Marketing. She’s the president and founder, and our topic today is the 19 year journey of impact, sustainability and practice, and the evolution of triple bottom line businesses.
Lisa Geason-Bauer is the founder and president of Evolution Marketing, a Wisconsin based woman owned, certified B Corporation, specialing in specializing in the area of sustainability consulting, impact storytelling, environmentally responsive, creative design, and ethical market. Lisa is a sustainability ESG practitioner and has been helping companies tell their impact stories for almost two decades.
As a consultant, she has worked on projects in supply chain sustainability. For example, product transparency, social sustainability, for example, workplace or workforce engagement, culture and DEI, renewable energy, energy efficiency. The green building space. Lisa is a co-founder of Be Local Wisconsin and current co-president.
Be local Wisconsin’s nonprofit. Mission is to connect, support and educate Wisconsin businesses on how to drive positive community impact. Through adoption of sustainable and inclusive practices since 2016, Lisa has helped companies become certified B Corps, and she is Wisconsin’s only consultant to have completed multiple to 2023 and 2026 blab US and Canada.
Trained consultants program. So Lisa, it’s so awesome to have you here and reading this. I’m delighted because we got to meet in person at the Champions Retreat in Milwaukee, Wisconsin earlier this year, and I took one of the side programs, which was the Green Home Tour at your house, and I was. Jazz, I was awestruck.
I was so happy. So welcome and thank you so much.
Lisa Geason-Bauer: Oh, thank you, Kim. I’m so excited to be here and I’m so glad we got to meet in person at the Champions Retreat and at my home. It was. It was. It was very nice. It was nice to see B Corps people and get to show the things that we’ve done over the last almost 10 years at my homes.
Kim Allchurch Flick: Absolutely. So 19 years in business too. What has been your journey and inspirations to this point?
Lisa Geason-Bauer: Okay, so literally September 15th, 20 2007. Evolution Marketing was founded in Wisconsin, and when I started the business, my entire mission was literally to demonstrate that a pul, professional service company could operate in a triple bottom line manner, meaning that we could run all of our decisions through the lens of impact on community.
So that would be the social side. So that’s people. We could run our decisions through the lens of environmental stewardship. So making sure that all the decisions we make actually we’re best for the environment. And then lastly, that we could be economically viable. Over long term. And again, it’s worked because we’re not, here we are 19 years later still in business.
And that we’ve been able to actually make a profit, but also besides making a profit, have an impact on our local community. So that’s why I started Evolution Marketing and on our services, as you’d read. Our sustainability consulting and then marketing communications for sustainability consulting. So we’re, we work in this really intersectional space of public policy, operations, sustainability, and communication.
And so when I started, nobody was doing this in Wisconsin and there were very few firms, I think honestly in the United States that were doing this really. I’ve looked to companies in the EU that were doing things similar. Again, maybe not exactly like evolution marketing. So when I started, I’m like, let’s just prove that we can do this.
’cause again. This is 2007. This is before the great Recession. This is, I’m in Wisconsin, so a truly purple state in the Midwest. Maybe a little bit more fiscally conservative, maybe a little bit more socially conservative, but big time environmentalists. So I really entered the market space doing a lot of environmental communication environmental communication tied to compliance like sustainability, storytelling about environmental actions a business was doing.
And we’ve evolved over time. Of course, there was always the environmental consulting piece. Sustainability consulting piece or ESG consulting piece, pick a phrase in my mind is holistically I think of systems, but that’s how I entered the world. And at our 10 year anniversary we realized, hey, we’ve been doing this.
We spent the first 10 years of our business literally beta testing my mission, and we were able to do it, which is gives us where we are now. But I think people forget that in 2007 the world was so different. We had a horrible, and then when the great recession happened in 2008 businesses in Wisconsin, really from 2008, actually, the recession, Wisconsin was under recessionary terms from 2008 to 2018.
We did not come outta the Great Recession until quarter two. Our end of quarter one, early quarter 2, 20 18. So for 10 years we were under recessionary economic terms in the state. And so think about trying to implement really innovative sustainability stuff where there was a price tag associated with it would, it was very challenging.
So we’ve come a long way since then, but I think people forget a lot of this stuff was new and triple bottom line from a concept. It, it only came out in the late eighties, early nineties. So that concept has only been around about, mid, like 30, 30 plus years. So we’re still perfecting what does that look like in practice?
And so that’s what I strive to do with Evolution Marketing is to actually beta test it and demonstrate that it is doable to operate in a triple bottom line manner and also be successful and create impact and help my community,
Kim Allchurch Flick: and you’re doing such a good job of it. And as you’re speaking, I’m thinking I’ve been in the social enterprise world through corporate life quite a bit, but then with my own company fewer years, but over 10 and just how many landmarks you’re mentioning the great recession of 2008, and then there was COVID and how, I think part of it is companies that create resilience do so because they still have belief.
In the triple bottom line and managed to work their way through it, but also how many things are changing and we’re both B Corps consultants and know that this new standards has been a topic of the last three years that is coming to fruition and actually being activated now, and how it’s like a great leap forward.
There are a lot of these things happening, but I love how you’re hearkening back to. To the past and using some words that still have meaning. So with that what is your worldview of your community and what are you seeing happen with, how are people in your community rising up? How are people waking up to this and how have you been changing along the way?
Lisa Geason-Bauer: Okay. So I think when you say community, I have a lot of communities that I’m part of. So there’s the, our B Corp community, which, as I said, this is my 10th year of helping companies become B Corps. So I was doing that before I was even a B Corp myself. And way before there was ever the B Corp consultant training program.
Again, because I’m a sustainability person, right? So it’s really exciting to see in 10 years. We’ve went from when we started Be Local Wisconsin. We started rumblings of it in 2007. We officially launched January 1st, 2008. But throughout 2007 we were building the foundation for Be Local Wisconsin.
And at that point we had. Five, certified B, either there five or six certified B Corp of the state, and it might’ve been five. And then that note, like November, December of 2007, the sixth one came in. My company was the seventh. And so I was like, well, we started this thing called Be Local Wisconsin. I’m helping folks in the B Corp community.
My company really needs to be a B Corp. And I honestly, I just didn’t have time to do my own application because I was busy helping my clients. In 2018, my, we did, one of my interns, my intern that year she was like, I wanna do that. I’m like, fantastic. So she did our B Corp application the first time.
And so July, I don’t remember the date, but I wanna say it’s July 23rd. Sometime in mid July 2018, we became the seventh certified B Corp in Wisconsin. And then. That fall, we had done a half day workshop for, with the, the handful of us that were B Corps in Wisconsin, half day workshop, and we had 20 plus people in attendance.
Almost every one of those co people represented a company. Those companies have all, now, I shouldn’t say all, the vast majority, I wanna say it’s like 90% of them have now become B Corps in Wisconsin. So we went from this, this small scatter, like a handful, right? Or a. Whatever, six or seven B Corps, six B Corps mine mc became a seventh handful, to now we have over 26 in Wisconsin and that’s, to me, I know we think 2018 is a long time ago, but it’s really not that long ago. And I think we, we saw a big in influx of B Corps second half of 20 18, 20 19, 20 20. So we’ve seen a bunch of growth in that space, which is amazing. And these are folks from all across the state.
And so we’ve really built up our community. And what I love about our little be local Wisconsin, I say little because we’re a mighty small, mighty nonprofit. Half of my board are folks that used to be at B Corps in other states, and they lived in Wisconsin, but they work for B Corps remotely and now over, career changes, job changes.
They’re no longer at B Corps, but they’re still involved with B local Wisconsin which is really nice because that shows their commitment and maybe some of them are working in government or in other really social impact or social justice aligned positions. So I think. When you think about it that way, because there’s only 26 of us, we’ve really helped to grow the movement in our state by having folks associated with the B Corp community move into other roles and other jobs, which has, I think, been super helpful because in a state like Wisconsin we truly are a purple state.
I mean our ballots are split ticket. One person votes, they vote for a for president, and you vote B for secretary sorry, Senator. So two diff from two different parties. But that’s how a lot of wisconsinites think. So with that I think it was really important for us to grow our community.
And then in Wisconsin, we happened to have, it was originally called the Wisconsin Sustainable Business Council. They’ve rebranded to be the Sustainable Business Council a couple years ago. But I was on their board for a really long time and actually. Be local, Wisconsin came out of that board and out of that organization because it was the people in Wisconsin doing sustainability and said, Hey, we’ve got enough folks now in the B Corps space to let’s form a B local.
So for me, when I think of community, I’ve got my sustainable business community, that’s B Corp. It’s folks that used to be a B Corps, but now in government and other jobs that maybe they’re not at B Corp, but they’re like B Corp allies or B Corp supporters. And then we have our sustainable business community, which is huge and continue to grow.
And so that’s. That community in my mind is not stopping. It’s moving forward. We have a conference every year for the Sustainable Business Council and we bring together every year we have folks from the B Corps community who speak. It’s just a really nice, like holistic space where anybody who is.
In, in that bigger holistic sustainability bubble, they all come together, right? And we meet, we talk, we learn from one another. And it’s not that, it’s like we’re learning about things that aren’t related to B Corps. Everything is related to B Corps at the end of the day. And I think in all sincerity, everything B Corps is doing helps the sustainability community, right?
So I just think sometimes we need a little translator. And so I end up being that translator a lot of the time. Hey, we’re doing this in the B Corps community. What can the regular sustainable business community use? So that community it’s like it’s my family, right? I’m surrounded by them, they’re wonderful.
But I think everyone right now is having just a challenging time from a community perspective, right? And so I think we doing programming where we can really help and educate the folks within the B Corp space especially about all the changes under the new V two version tube, I think is really important.
And so that’s actually the theme for Be Local Wisconsin for the next year and a half, is what can we do to help folks in our community? Educate them to help them be prepared so that they can have a successful experience going through the recertification. And I say this as I was the first company in the US and Canada to submit for recertification earlier this year, and I’m still working through Evolution Marketing’s application.
So it’s a process. The new standards are a big pivot, but it’s not a bad pivot. It’s just different. And I’m really excited about the new pivot. It’s just, it takes time to be prepared. With everything you need, meaning the documentation.
Kim Allchurch Flick: Indeed and with anything change can for some be a struggle.
It’s always different and yet it’s still moving forward. And because it’s somewhat unknown. Maybe that’s part of it. And I was wondering if you could speak to obstacles and challenges you’re seeing some of which you already brought up. And you also mentioned that some B Corps have perhaps chosen this change in the standard as a window to, not recertify, but what are you seeing as obstacles and challenges for some of the people you work with, including those allies and everyone else in the community?
Lisa Geason-Bauer: I think, at least in Wisconsin. So this is probably maybe a more Wisconsin or maybe a more Purple State issue, but many companies right now are afraid to talk about the things that they’re doing that might be pro Jedi, which is justice, equity, diversity, inclusion. Pro de and I, or I like to say social sustainability because they’re worried about what an elected official might say.
There’s been proposed legislation in Wisconsin that has not gotten traction, but that. Doesn’t help the things that I’m doing say to say it kindly, right? And so I think there is a sociopolitical shift happening in some places where things have become partisan that actually are not. So to me, environmental sustainability is not partisan.
I believe everyone. Republican, Democrat, libertarian, green Party wants clean air, clean water, right? They want to make sure that we have natural habitats for fish. When you go fishing, you want to make sure the fish you’re eating are healthy, you want to have the ability to go hunting. All of these things are all connected together.
You. And I think in some cases there’s this partisan divide that’s occurred that’s made environmental sustainability a partisan topic, which it should not be. To me, environmental stewardship is not partisan, and the work that I’m doing is at these intersectional spaces. So I work with folks from all different sociopolitical and ideological differences on a daily basis.
And I think ’cause of that, I’m very consciously aware that words have meaning. And especially right now, certain words may have been co-opted or influencers or media organizations may have attached meetings or co-created a new meaning for words. And so what you say to somebody really matters. And I am in one of, one of the, the Reds counties in, in the United States in the, I’m in the, the three, three most conservative counties in the state of Wisconsin.
And every day I interface with folks who are different than me. And so it’s really important for me at least, to meet people where they’re at. And I think this goes to the challenges, but yet also the opportunity because I have young people that come to me all the time who are getting degrees or finishing school or in their first job and they’re like, oh my gosh, I had this problem.
I got into a fight with my uncle at Thanksgiving. You know, about carbon reporting or about some, some nuanced thing, and. I said what happened? The young people are like I yelled at them and I was like, okay, hold up. Yelling at your family members is probably not a good idea, instead, I’m like, you need to take a step back. You have to be more neutral. And so this ends up being a conversation I, I have. A lot, probably more so than I actually wanna admit, but I, this also ties into how do we as sustainability practitioners advance sustainability? How do we as B Corps consultants encourage businesses to become B Corp and to advance the programming and the strategies and actually implement and op the, operationalize the B Corp standard.
So I think we all really need to. Maybe take a step back Sometimes from the emotional response we may have to words and specific words or phrases that people put out because at the end of the day, I truly believe there’s more that unites us. Then separates us. And I think it’s hard to think about that sometimes because of the, the partisan nature of everything.
It’s like everything’s been coopted by partisanship, which is a real problem. So I think that’s a real challenge. But we also have an opportunity because many of the people I work with, come across from very different perspectives, and I’m not saying one is bad or one is good.
I have no I work in the nonpartisan space, because of the work that I’m doing. Because at the end of the day, it’s really about how can I help your company to advance sustainability? Whether that’s addressing your workforce issue and challenges or helping you to address environmental stuff so that you’re ready for your next audit.
It’s, to me, that’s holistic sustainability. So does that answer your question? I hope
Kim Allchurch Flick: it does, and it makes me reflect a lot as well. There’s I have a, a couple of clients that have also, they are also in more conservative states, and when they share their values upfront with a client, sometimes they’ll get pushback, like what one said.
She was, she would say, well, you’re just trying to turn me into a Democrat by a potential climate client. And we talked about okay, what can you bring to the table that makes the connection? Maybe it isn’t sharing the value so hard or leading with it, but what’s the work you can do together? And find a way to build that bond.
But it also makes me laugh in a way, because when I was in Wisconsin with you and you’re very well run Champions Retreat, there was someone from Georgia who was talking about being a B Corps and going into a space which was clearly, clearly very conservative. Red hats and shirts everywhere. But she said she was going through this massive store.
And seeing B Corps products on the shelf as well. So at the same time, two things can be together at once, and it doesn’t have to be opposing and polarizing. But I love what you said about being the interpreter. And I think that’s where it matters is because polarization helps people make assumptions and stereotypes, and that is no good at all.
But when it comes down to it, yes, we all want clean water. We want clean air, we want to f. Feed ourselves and others. We want to live a basically good life and support our families, and you’re so good at interpreting across those lines and hopefully making the lines dissipate a little bit over time. So I love what you said about that.
And we see it as well. I do wanna give some grace to also the people that are afraid. To speak up or present what they feel because potential backlash, which could come out of nowhere. And I live in a small rural town where that has actually been happening and happen yet with it. I, I think, that still things can still move forward and do well that serves everyone in a nonpartisan fashion.
So with that, what makes you optimistic and what new things are you working on?
Lisa Geason-Bauer: Okay. I will address that in a minute, but I wanna say what you’re experiencing in your rural town. I think that’s very real right now and I just wanna voice over that. That it’s real. And I do, I, I had, I strive to give myself and my clients grace each and every day because these are really challenging times that we’re living in.
And one of the things I’m a sociologist by training, so one of the things that we do here or that I do, that my team at Evolution Marketing does, when those situations arise. And I literally, I advise people on this all the time. Find something, find a common ground about something. Like for example, I was on our regional workforce development board for 15 years.
I stepped off of it last year, and usually in the room I was, for a long time I was the youngest person in the room. I was one of the few women in the room. So I represented a lot of different diversity buckets, for lack of a better way of saying it. And of course, with my business being a B Corp.
Very different than this room filled full of manufacturers that were owned by men. And so we would go to the board meetings and it don’t get me wrong, like I was on the board for 15 years, so it evolved over time. But when I first joined the board, I would find things that I could talk to elected officials about that we all agreed on.
So innovation was something that everyone agreed on, saving money. Taking your operations, so finding efficiencies in your business operations, especially in manufacturing. So it’s finding whatever the, whatever those little pieces are. The other thing, at least in Wisconsin, and I think this is probably pretty universal across the US and Canada, a living wage.
I was on the workforce of all award for so many years, and living wage was not a conversation point. And I’d say the last four to five years, living wage has become very important across the board. Vast majority of people, everyone I know says we should have a living wage. I don’t know, many people who are disagreeing that folks should be paid a living wage.
And so I think finding those little nuggets or those little items that there’s agreement on, and then working from there, because I, that’s the only way I, and that’s, to me, that’s sociology 101 find our commonality and then work from that commonality towards a solution. But you have to also be willing to give and take, and I think that’s the part that’s hard. We’re told right now it’s like my way or the highway. And it’s like in actuality everything’s a negotiation, right? And you know what? There may be things that somebody else knows that I don’t know. So being open to hearing these ideas, and I truly believe the more diverse people you have at a table, the better the solutions are going to be.
I know that’s a little off, off topic, but I just think it’s important to talk about.
Kim Allchurch Flick: Absolutely off topic, but on and here we are in 2026, more than halfway through the year. It also reminds me of some of something the British did. They took people from very different walks of life, but they knew they were, would be polarized, and they put two people in the same room and they said, you can talk about anything you want, but politics.
And they started talking about. They’re church, they’re grandkids, they’re do I love dogs? Do, what kind of flowers do you grow? What type of work do you like to do? What makes you laugh? What’s your favorite music? And it started really breaking down some barriers. And there’s a little bit of magic that happens when we give ourselves a chance to be able to do that.
And one of the things I’ve been doing in our small little town is no matter where I go. I smile and say hi to everybody in the grocery store, in the gas station line, whatever it might be. I’m just gonna approach everything in that fashion. And who knows maybe I’ll get a smile back, maybe I won’t but at least just not try to enter into anything as it might be a conflict, but enter into everything as it might just be a moment of grace in passing.
Lisa Geason-Bauer: That is lovely and I 110% agree. My response in any situation is to smile. And I know not everyone does that. Sometimes people will frown or you can read facial expressions, but I’ve been in enough meetings over the last 30 years of my career where. Things are being said, and like my face, if I did not smile, my face would portray how I really felt, right?
And so that, and that’s not gonna be helpful if I’m trying to negotiate and or come up with a solution that works for everybody. And so I think responding in a positive manner, smiling is really important because at the end of the day, we’re all humans, right? We are all people, and I think sometimes we forget that because we get into the emotions of everything.
It’s like we take your step back, we’re all human. We all, at the end of the day, wanna take care of our families. We wanna support those that we love. We all should have access. I believe we should all have access to, to clean air, clean water be the ability to support ourselves and be paid a living wage.
So
Kim Allchurch Flick: Concurs. And so what does make you optimistic and what cool things are you working on?
Lisa Geason-Bauer: Yeah, so what I’m optimistic about is we are just, we’re launching today the Evolution Marketing 2025 Carbon Footprint and Operational Impact Report. And Kim will be sharing out a copy of it with with the podcast, which I’m very excited about.
And this year, because again, we’re working through the new standards and we’re going through our, verification part of that. Right now with Two cert, we have a whole section dedicated to our climate action plan. Again, my business was started in 2007. My first climate action plan was done in 2008.
So I took, and we’ve been working on it for years, and I think what gives me hope is that there’s always something to do. I think a lot of times folks are like, here’s a goal. Let’s meet the goal and then we’re done. And it’s like, no, that’s not the case. We’re 19 years in. I have new goals for this year.
We’re taking actions every year. Now, are the goals different today than, than they were actually, I should say were the yearly goals different? Yes, but the overall, the arching goals in our climate action plan have been the same. Our climate action goals were high enough level that we could implement yearly, and part of that is understanding holistic sustainability, which I don’t know if everyone does.
I was in grad school in the late nineties. I’ve been working in carbon space since the late nineties, so I’ve been doing this a really long time. So when I started Evolution Marketing, I really wanted to make sure that we, in b in everything we’re doing. Operating in a climate responsible, climate friendly, environmentally responsible, pick a word manner.
And to me that was decarbonization. And so we’ve been taking decarbonization actions for years. However, we’re at the point where we’ve decarbonized to the point where we can’t do anything else. Let get a sip of my water.
But instead, now we do education. So once you’ve done the actions, then you need to educate about those. And so what gives me hope is that I truly believe and we joined this program, it’s called the Department of Natural Resources, so Wisconsin’s, department of Natural Resources, green Tier Charter for Climate Action.
We joined it last year. It was a new charter last new charter. I think they came out in 20 23, 20 20, 23 or 24. So they’re pretty new. We were the, I think, the sixth business to join Wisconsin, either fifth or sixth. So there, there aren’t that many of us, but. When we did that we go we agreed to go to quarterly meetings with folks that are part of this program throughout the state of Wisconsin.
And at our last meeting, our state of Wisconsin climatologist released a new state of Wisconsin Climate Impact report saying basically, this is what, what’s going on with climate in Wisconsin. And I’m borrowing his phrase, that’s why I’m talking about this. He said, we’re at a point in time where it’s all hands on deck moment, everybody.
Doesn’t matter the size of your business, doesn’t matter the size of your home, right? Like everybody needs to start taking actions. And so in one way, it’s horrible that we’re in a climate emergency, but in another way, we have so many more tools now that we could use to address it. We have businesses like mine who are doing climate education on a regular basis.
There’s so many more resources now. So my hope for the future is that every single person listening to this podcast can take action. And if you like something that we’ve done in our Impact report, copy it. That’s why we put this out there. We really want to help elevate the conversation and let business people know that small businesses could take action too.
’cause I also think sometimes we expect big businesses to make, Microsoft, we’re gonna decarbonize back to 1975. That’s amazing that Microsoft is doing that. However, they’re a huge multinational company. We can’t expect Microsoft to solve all the problems. Or the fact that, I love Google and I’m using the Google office suites and that’s running on renewable energy.
That’s awesome. But that’s just one choice. There’s so many other little things we can do each and every day. And I know you were at my home, so we went through, like we compost. It’s just an example. We removed the buckthorn, which is a invasive species in Wisconsin, you know, so we do a whole variety of.
Things that all tie into decarbonization every year. And that’s how we operate. But then we also educate and share what we’re doing with others so that other people ’cause you don’t know what you don’t know. And the older I get the more I’m really convinced that there’s a lot of things that, that I don’t know either.
So being open and being curious to hearing about what things we can do to help address this challenge, I think is important. And just knowing that we all can have an impact. We can’t, we don’t, it’s not. We don’t want to put all of our hopes and dreams on technology. We can’t tech our way out of the climate crisis, right?
So what can we do? We can all be empowered to take action.
Kim Allchurch Flick: We can’t tech our way out of the climate crisis. That what a beautiful quote. And it’s so important and there’s small things we can all do as individuals. The other thing, as you were speaking, I was reminding myself how I’ve been so excited about innovations some things that weren’t there 3, 5, 10 years ago
Lisa Geason-Bauer: Yeah.
Kim Allchurch Flick: That we can now embrace and future innovations are coming. And there are incubators for tech innovators, like clean tech incubators like Virtue Lab, which is based in Seattle and Portland. So there’s things there that even if we don’t see them every day, just knowing they’re there can help us with a little bit of optimism.
And you’ve done so much with your house almost completely taken it off the grid in many ways.
Lisa Geason-Bauer: I wish we
Kim Allchurch Flick: could
Lisa Geason-Bauer: it, it’s illegal to go off the grid. Yes. We, so even if we wanted to, we could not leave the grid because it is currently illegal in the state of Wisconsin.
Kim Allchurch Flick: Oh, okay. That pardon my misstep then, but it does make sense.
But your energy usage is so low and giving somewhat back to the grid. And I live in a house with solar panels as well, where every power bill is in the negative because it’s also giving back somewhat.
There’s things we can do.
Lisa Geason-Bauer: Yeah. I wish we, this is a point of contention that I have with the state of Wisconsin.
I wish we could go off the grid. But yeah, the way we have invest, we have five investor owned utilities, and currently that is not, if you build a new home, you could potentially build it not, and not connected to the grid, but it has to be a new home. And it has to be, there’s a bunch of criterion that have to, it can’t be like in a subdivision.
It has to be, in a rural farm field surrounded by nothing for miles, but there’s a system in place that’s, that controls me in Wisconsin.
Kim Allchurch Flick: Yeah, indeed. And the other thing is it means we, we can continue talking about this and make a step at a time.
Sometimes we can’t do everything at once. Some adjustments, particularly in environment cost money, like buying solar panels is not inexpensive and yet there’s an upside to it. But there are other things. That we can do that leave us pretty even. Some examples in my house are I decided I’m anti plastic as much as I can possibly be, even though food is almost impossible to wholly do away with it.
But cleaning supplies, I now am down to zero plastic packaging and zero plastic content in any cleaning supplies in the house, and I start spreading the word the cost of that has. It’s been pretty much parody. It hasn’t cost that much more. And another bonus I hadn’t thought of in the beginning was because some of these things are.
Dry capsules that you mix with water. I got so much space back inside of my cabinets that it’s just remarkable. So there are things and I think the other thing that you’re really wise about, you and your husband and I think about more is. Sometimes we tend to stop at the first question, and I’m gonna give an example.
I was at the Oregon Zoo one time, which has a lot of conservation and whatever people might think about zoos, and I’m one of them. But this particular one has a lot of conservation science and is doing things behind the public view that are very strong for the environment. But there were some volunteers out of probably high school age who were standing by an exhibit that said There’s renewable palm oil.
And I said, oh, what do you mean by that? And I said Palm oil grows, so once it’s planted, it grows and you never have to plant it anymore. And I said, but I’m gonna tell you a story about someone I know who’s a friend who happened to, at one point in time, be the US Ambassador to Malaysia. And in Borneo, there has been so much deforestation for palm oil that is yes, now sustainable.
It is still growing in producing fruit every year. But all those orangutans lost a tremendous amount of habitat and. When the helicopter took off outta the forest and flew over the palm oil, the heat inside the helicopter increased. So what’s the question behind the question? Is this palm oil sustainable?
Yes. If a plant keeps growing, keeps producing, all it needs is maybe some water, sun. But what’s the downside? What was before that? What was taken away? And I think that’s one of the mindsets that it’s hard for us to grasp. We tend to stop, like recycling is really good because we’ve been trained that,
Lisa Geason-Bauer: yep.
Kim Allchurch Flick: Recycling has some huge downsides per the New York Times article of February 14th, 2025 and others before that, the green fence that I studied at Portland State University. Gosh, that was 2013. We knew then that recycling was bad, that China was sending full containers back of our recycling back to us because they wouldn’t take it anymore.
Yes, exactly. So how do we reshape our questions and try to unpeel the onion a little more and ask the question behind that, that first point? Because. A lot of people would stop and say, oh yeah, recyclable palm oil. I feel better about that. I know that are renewable. So I think we’re. Framing that a lot has been done.
We’re excited about where we are. We’re excited about innovations, but we can still challenge ourselves to keep thinking more and asking questions and saying, okay, this is good where we are at this point. What more can we do and what can we press against a little bit to challenge and say, yeah, but is it as good as we’re being told?
What do you think about issues like that?
Lisa Geason-Bauer: I think you’re right and I wanna take it a step further and say. Again, I’m a sustainability person through and through, right? I’m a sociologist who worked in I’m a rural and environmental sociologist, so like that’s my classical training.
So for, so me, for me, I’ve always watched people and watched companies and watched how things happen. And to your point, okay, what does responsible palm oil mean? How is it different than sustainable palm oil? And what third party certifications exist now? And I think. We’ve come so far from the late nineties when I was in grad school till now about factoring out or digging into, I call it, doing a deep dive right into these topics.
And people are learning so much more. And I think taking, bringing the regenerative mindset is also really important. But also I think at the end of the day, we have to move away from this take, make, and consume model to. Do we do? First of all, do we even really need this? And if we really do need this, how can we do that?
And I’m gonna use the word responsible because people define things differently, but for me, responsible is gonna be both socially and environmentally responsible. Okay? So should we be buying in the middle of summer tomatoes grown in a different state? Not state, a different country. In the United States.
If we can grow our own tomatoes here, should we not be buying our tomatoes locally? And I remember being at a, a food ag conference, literally, I think it was like 2000, it was either 1999 or 2000 and Michigan State University. And the keynote speaker talked about apples and he said, I went to the, this was in the fall time, and he is like, I went, I think it was 2000 this happened.
He went to, I went to the, the local co-op and he’s like, I looked at all the apples. There was only one, one set of apples that were local to Michigan. So fall and Michigan, there’s lots of apples, but they weren’t at the co-op. The apples were from Oregon, they were from Washington, they were from the West coast.
So those, the food miles for all those apples. And so like that. Got me thinking about, okay. And I grew, and now I grew up on a dairy farm. So a lot of our food was local. Like we raised our food, we ate our food, we ate our animals, we drank our cow’s milk, we had our butter. All of that was from our cows.
But I think a lot of people just go to the grocery store and they just, they want something, they get it. I remember being a kid. Avocados, were not at the grocery store in the wintertime, avocados and, I don’t know, I actually don’t know when avocados started showing up at the grocery store. But I was, I, from what I can remember, it was the nineties, like probably late nineties.
I remember seeing avocados at the grocery store, unless you were in Hawaii or, ’cause trust me, like I’ve gotten lots of avocados awesome. In Hawaii or California or places where avocados go. But I think we’ve moved away from this seasonal diet, just as an example. And I think now, as we look towards the future, if.
If we are, ’cause all the prices are going up. And my mother-in-law was really concerned about prices this fall for food because so much of the food that she buys at the grocery store is trucked in.
An organic farmland surrounds us. It’s lovely. So I said to my mother-in-law, , well, you could go shopping at the Farmer’s market stores.
And she’s like, yeah, but they’re only open Lisa from whatever, nine to five. And she started kinda giving me, like, pushing back and they don’t always have what I want. And I’m like. Yes. They won’t always have what you want, and you’re going to have to make the effort to go when they’re open.
I get that you could go to the grocery store at any time of the day or night. Grocery stores are open 24 hours now. But I’m like, at the end of the day you’re also like, you don’t always need to have tomatoes. Don’t get me wrong. I love tomatoes. I love avocados, but I also realize I don’t buy tomatoes in the middle of winter unless I’m getting them at a farmer’s market where I know they were grown hydroponically by a farmer.
Now I understand there’s a level of I have that privilege, right? And I know that there are people that don’t have that privilege, but I just think the more local we can eat as an example, that helps all of us. So then I can manage my pricing because I know, but I also need to realize that maybe in fall I’m eating different things and I ate in spring.
And I think sometimes we want what we want, what we want it, and we don’t realize that there’s a cost to that. Not just a physical cost, but like a, like an environmental cost. And so to your point I mean I’m trying to use this as a good example, but I think people have started to really rethink food and food systems.
I’m not saying it’s perfect. I’m not saying we’re done, but like I’ve been part of the farmer’s market food scene for over. 30 years now. A really long time and I know that we, during the great recession, more and more people across the United States went to farmer’s markets. More and more farmer’s markets opened in Wisconsin.
Like I literally started a winter farmer’s market and then all these winter farmer’s markets started showing up all winter long during the Great Recession because people wanted to support farmers, but also help. Buy produce into the middle of winter. So you could buy 20 onions for, I don’t know, five bucks.
I’m making up a number right now. But you could buy a lot of things at the farmer’s market that were gonna be cheaper, but you just had to know how to process it. I remember buying like bags of carrots and we made carrot cake, carrot muffins, we did all these different carrot things you know what I’m saying?
So it’s like you have to understand how to process it and have the ability to do that, but. When we have less things and we, when we, when the price of things goes up, that I think encourages people to start to think about it. To do your point, ask these questions. What things can we do? That can change that, and I think growing up on a farm like I was taught, never waste anything. You only buy something if you’re, if you actually need it. Not because you want it, though. I do enjoy jewelry. That’s one of those things that it’s just. It’s an individual thing. My husband’s like, you don’t need any of that.
He’s like, you just want that. I was like we can debate that. The point at the end of the day is, I’m not saying don’t treat yourself, but I think if we all start to look at our daily habits and the things we’re doing, there’s probably many things that each of us could do to live more sustainably or responsibly.
And then the last thing I’m gonna say is, have you heard of bees wax paper? Oh my God. I love. I’m obsessed. I all of the presents, I do a lot of baking, so I gave vegan baking to all of our friends and clients. Last year for Christmas or for the holiday season, they all got it. It’d be bees wax, wax paper, and they all got their own set of bees wax paper with it so that they could start taking plastic out of their homes.
Kim Allchurch Flick: I love that. There’s so much we could talk about. I think there’s a webinar in our future, you and I, about all the, the things that can add up by what seemed like small but mighty changes that we can make getting rid of plastic is a big one. And you’re also making me think of historically what did people do?
They took their fresh produce and they preserved it.
Lisa Geason-Bauer: Yep.
Kim Allchurch Flick: Canned, and that’s where canning and freezing and in all, in some countries they pack things in salt, like fish and Yep, yep. There, there are ways to do it and, but also supporting local because I do think that a lot of us forget about what transportation costs are, and they’re not just monetary costs, they’re climate costs as well,
Lisa Geason-Bauer: discussion.
Kim Allchurch Flick: So I do appreciate all these points you brought up.
Lisa Geason-Bauer: One, just with the transportation right now, the costs are going up because the fuel is went up. Right?
Kim Allchurch Flick: Fuel. Yeah.
Lisa Geason-Bauer: So my mother-in-law, she was really upset and concerned. She’s like, I don’t know how people, and she’s on a fixed income, she lives in a retirement home.
She’s like, I don’t know how people are gonna be able to afford their groceries. And I was very nice when I said, there are winter farmer’s markets. There are things you can do. It may be inconvenient, but I think sometimes that inconvenience is probably gonna also be better for your health in the long run too.
But people just, they don’t know what they don’t know. And so my mother-in-law’s awesome. And she means, well, she just, it’s from a generation that ha was, it had so many things like I can’t imagine. Growing up in the sixties and, and then looking at what we have in the two thousands, right?
The fact that you could get any type of food you want any time of the day, it just it’s amazing, right? We have food from around the world in our grocery stores. And my mother-in-law loves to cook, so she loves exotic things, and I’m just like maybe tone that back a little bit,
Kim Allchurch Flick: yeah, indeed. Or get some exotic seeds and grow some under a, a light in the basement or something. There’s fun things we can do.
Lisa Geason-Bauer: Yes, exactly. She does not grow. She I literally, I’m growing organic lettuce for her and she’s like, oh my God, I want lettuce, Lisa. Because she’s, she does not grow. But that’s, we all, we each have our own thing.
But the point, I just think we have to have these conversations though.
Kim Allchurch Flick: Yes. And I loved what you said is responsible, what, thinking about what are things we can do responsibly that is a, and around a couple of layers of it. But there, there’s a future discussion here and I think it’s super important and ongoing.
And also for everyone, everything will be in the show notes as well. There’s a lot of links that Lisa’s providing. Is there anything else you’d like to add before the final question?
Lisa Geason-Bauer: I think you should talk about the Malarkey River real quick because I think people need to know that. We have an Eco Home page on the Evolution Marketing website that’s in English and Spanish, and we showcased that page when we had our tour, the Eco Home Tour.
But tell everybody your story, Kim, about what you learned and then what you did with the Malarkey RevX. I think this is just amazing.
Kim Allchurch Flick: Here we go. Because I was at your home tour standing outside as you were discussing with that group of people, all the energy efficiencies you’d added to your beautiful home.
And one of them was these roof tiles, and you talked in detail about the roof tiles and how they actually reflect instead of pull heat in. And I know in older homes, if you’ve ever been in an attic in the summer, it’s in uninhabitable. And how that. This particular roof tile actually helped reflect that back out, but also that you said that, and these roof tiles were made in Oregon and two of us were standing there in Wisconsin saying, that’s an Oregon company.
This is fantastic. And while my primary work is being a consultant in the same space in Oregon and Washington. I’m also a licensed real estate agent and we were selling, getting our house ready to sell in Beaverton, Oregon. It needed a new roof, so guess where I went for the new roof. Went over very well with the buyers and also two houses that I’m representing now have malarkey roofs on them as well.
And it’s a very good company that. It has a lot of values driven I things baked into their charter and also my, our solar panels are from Oregon and they’re also from a benefit corporations for good benefit company. So that there are ways to do things that are really super, so it’s sometimes it’s asking the question, I need a new roof.
What are some options? That are really good for the environment as well, and the good part is the price point was really no different than standard options, so I thank you for that, Lisa, because I didn’t know about a company in my backyard until I went to Wisconsin and saw it on your house.
Lisa Geason-Bauer: But you know what, that’s okay because what I did my research, and I think I drove my husband a little crazy before we put our new roof on, and I did all of this research and this was back in 2021, and I came down to it and I was like, okay, I want the malarkey roof.
And so our roofer company was like, oh, okay, Lisa, they’re out of Oregon, so you’re gonna have to pay. A fee to get it shipped here. And I was like what’s the fee? And he’s like it’s $5,000. And I looked at him and he said, but you know what? Let’s, we’ll do Hals these, if you pay 2,500 for shipping, we’ll pick up the other 2,500.
And I said, done. So like at the end of the day, yes, I paid a little bit more, but again, this is 2021. So I think the prices have probably come down since then, but. Well worth it because not only does it reflect the sun, it also pulls water out of the air and pulls well, actually pulls smog outta the air and makes, turns it into water, and it’s made with recycled materials.
So O-M-G-I-I should just go work for malarkey because I’m so obsessed with our roof. But the reality is. There really are some cool companies, to your point about innovation and sometimes we just don’t know because these are newer companies, they have newer product lines, right? So it’s incumbent upon us to do our due diligence.
But I think it’s hard because there’s so much going on in the world right now that we don’t maybe have the time. So I, that’s the other thing is I would just encourage people, if you have a big decision to make, take some time. Do some research, look into it, talk to people. ’cause that’s how my dad did it, 30 years ago or whatever, a long time ago.
That’s how my dad and my grandpa did things, is they would talk to people. They were always asking, oh, we have to do this on the farm. Well, what have you done on your farm? And I didn’t ever fully understand that at, but now we, at, on our fingertips, we can ask Google and we, there’s so much more that we can find today where back in the day we didn’t have to, but I think.
Reaching out to folks in our community is so priceless because let’s learn from each other. I don’t need to reinvent the wheel. So I think that’s a, something that maybe like a, a drawback or throwback to the way things used to be.
Kim Allchurch Flick: Indeed, a little bit of research can go a long way and some good keywords, and we have for some that are certified.
B Labs directory. Or other places, other ways to search too. But keywords like eco-friendly. There’s so many ways to run a search and try and hone it down just a, a little bit and also and. Certainly try and keep it local, but this is an example of where the options weren’t available. So maybe more and more will happen.
But I think you and I are both so encouraged by innovations and taking advantage of them as well. So for the last question, this is, if you could have dinner with one to three additional people living or deceased, who would they be and why?
Lisa Geason-Bauer: So I was just talking about my dad. So my father, my grandmother, and my grandfather are all deceased.
My grandpa and grandma died on my dad’s side of the family over 30 years ago. My dad passed away 11 years ago. So I would have dinner with all of them and I would actually talk about what we what my company does, and how the world has changed. Because I keep thinking back to, I grew up on a dairy farm.
My grandfather was born on the family farm. He died on the family farm. My dad was born on the family farm. He died on a piece of land next to the family farm, which was his home. That’s not gonna be my future. I am. I the, where I was, the home I lived in my whole life as a kid, that’s not the home I’m gonna pass away in.
And just these shifts that have happened in familial like agricultural families where you have a piece of land. ’cause our family farm is 110 years old, and so like I would love to talk with my grandparents and my father about just. My father, not as much as my grandparents, just ’cause my grandparents had been gone so much longer, but how the world has changed and.
Most people today aren’t born in the same home that they’re gonna pass away in. And most people don’t have that relationship with the land. And so I think land stewardship is so important to me. So I would love to talk with them about that and just see their take on the things one that I’d also love to like.
Okay. We’ve done these things in my house. We’ve done these things in my yard. What other things could we do? Because growing up on a dairy farm, we did a lot of things that one might say. How do I say it the right way? Were environmentally responsible farming practices, but they also were things that just made sense and it was the way farming used to be done.
50, 70, 80 years ago, you planted cover crops. You wanted to make sure that in the middle of winter there was something growing so the soil didn’t road. Because we live in Wisconsin and we have snow, and snow comes down and then snow melts, right? So erosion’s always been an issue here, however. More mainstream farms or bigger production, ag farms change their farm management practices to do things that maybe weren’t as environmentally responsible, that then the short term produced results.
But at the end of the day, there were long-term ecological repercussions, right? And how does what I learned as a kid and what our farm did, and all of us kids working on the farm, how does that then translate to what I’m doing today? I’m striving to use that same mindset, of like a addressing, not per se I don’t have cover crops because I don’t have that big of a spot of land to have cover crops.
But I have trees and I’m taking care of my trees and I’m planting things with the trees and and just trying to. Make good decisions. And so I would love, I think, to talk to my grandparents about that because they lived through the recession and as a child, like we had a cellar, and then the, the cellar were jars of, everything was tanned, or it was pickled.
And then we started freezing things. I remember we got the chest freezer, I don’t know, maybe I was seven, five or six. They got this chest freezer and it was this big deal because then the meat went to the chest freezer, and so just all of these things that. To me we’re like huge technological changes, but have actually revolutionized how we eat, how we feed ourselves, how we take care of ourselves, right?
And to see, and then the sustainability space. ’cause my grandpa would always be like do you really need that? I said this earlier, do you actually need that? No, I want that. You don’t need it, Lisa. That’s fine. Don’t worry about that. You don’t, you only worry about what your needs are.
And I think if all of us as a society, maybe we’re less consumer driven, consumer product driven, I, I think that would make the world a better place and maybe help to address some of the plastic problem and. Other overproduction problem that we have.
Kim Allchurch Flick: Oh, indeed. What a beautiful table. I am so appreciative.
I think there’s future conversations and let’s talk about that. Everyone, thank you so much for being here, listening. This is really special. This conversation is going to continue and we hope that you’ve all picked up something. Show notes are there for you. And this is Kim Allchurch Flick signing off with the Mighty Measure Podcast.
Wishing you a wonderful day. Thank you all very much. Bye-bye.
This Episode’s Guest: Lisa Geason-Bauer
Lisa is a sustainability, ESG practitioner and has been helping companies tell their impact stories for almost two decades. As a consultant she has worked on projects in supply chain sustainability (i.e. product transparency), social sustainability (i.e. workforce engagement, culture and DEI), renewable energy, energy efficiency and the green building space. Lisa is a co-founder of B Local Wisconsin and current co-President. B Local Wisconsin’s nonprofit mission is to connect, support, and educate Wisconsin businesses on how to drive positive community impact through adoption of sustainable and inclusive practices. Since 2016, Lisa has helped companies become Certified B Corps and she is Wisconsin’s only consultant to have completed multiple (2023 and 2026) B Lab US & Canada Trained B Consultants Programs.
