Q&A WITH DANIEL FLYNN Co-Founder of Thankyou.

Q&A WITH DANIEL FLYNN
Co-Founder of Thankyou.

You’ve spoken about building Thankyou from the ground up with purpose at the core. What advice would you give to business leaders trying to build a profit-for-purpose model today?
Look. Advice number one is to get clarity around the purpose and that mission. It’s important that you can articulate it to yourself, to your team and other stakeholders; that’s step one. But step two is to build it into your model. And that’s not just from an intention. Like we intend to do good, we’d like to do good, we hope to do good, but what does that look like? Maybe from a legal structure perspective, or maybe it’s about getting certifications like B Corp and Fair Trade and whatever’s relevant for your industry so that when push comes to shove and the commercial pressures are there, and they will always be there, purpose doesn’t get put to the side, but it remains at the core.

In the face of adversity and repeated knockbacks, what kept you and your team moving forward?
In one word – faith. Faith that we will find a way, faith that this mission is important and therefore we must faith in, I think, in each other as a team and pulling ourselves through.
And for me personally, faith that this is what I’m meant to be doing. Now none of that makes it easy, and that’s a little bit of what faith is. It’s uncertain. It’s hard to put your finger on, but like, hope, faith, can get you through the hardest and toughest of things.

How do you stay grounded and true to your mission in a world that often rewards short-term gains over long-term impact?

Such a great question. It is really hard to stay grounded in your mission when we live in a business, leadership, and social media culture that often glorifies the short-term win.
I think it ultimately comes down to mindset. I’d reference books like Good to Great or Simon Sinek’s work on The Infinite Game. Jim Collins, who wrote Good to Great, also wrote Built to Last and that’s the goal, right? Anyone on a mission should be building to last.
That means being willing to let go of some short-term wins in pursuit of long-term, greater gains. There’s risk in that – personal risk, leadership risk, organisational risk, and risk in terms of time and resources. But if you’re working on an important mission, not just fast fashion or fleeting, money-making, smoke-and-mirrors ventures, if you’re building something with purpose and values at its core, you have to be in it for the long game. And to properly answer the question: how do you stay grounded? I think it comes down to sticking to your values, even when others don’t, and being willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.

You challenged major corporations and disrupted the market. What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned from pushing against the status quo?
It is a push and the status quo is very real. The way things have always been done is considered “normal,” and it’s well guarded. We’ve learned that when you challenge that, you come up against resistance—whether that’s systems, old ways of thinking, or even entrenched power structures.
It really takes creativity, vision, and grit.
Grit to keep going, to stay the course, and to find what’s possible when everything feels impossible.

You’ve used your platforms to spark change in different ways. How do you define “impact”?
You’ve used your platforms to spark change in different ways. How do you define impact?
Thank you. We use the term impact to describe what happens as a result of the profits we make – the difference they make in helping to end extreme poverty.
We think about impact in multiple ways:
The way the product is made, and the effect it has on people in the supply chain and the planet.
The impact on the consumer from a health perspective, from a safety perspective.
So, we view impact as the outcome our product or organisation has on the world around us.

How do you balance being idealistic with being realistic in your work?
This is a tension, and like many tensions, at times it feels incredibly tight. But it’s an important tension to manage: to dream big dreams at 30,000 feet while also diving down to stick at the detail on the ground and then having the courage to get back up again.
The question asked is: how do you balance it? It is a balance, and I go back to grit. It isn’t easy to keep idealism and realism in the same hand. And at the same time, it’s very important because we need bold vision, based in foundations that are built to last.

What advice do you have for leaders wanting to stay courageous and values-driven in a turbulent world?
I would say: be very careful what you listen to and what you let in. For me personally, the last four years I’ve been off social media. Now, that’s from a personal perspective – Thankyou. is still on it. I go back in from time to time, almost like going back into the matrix, to see what’s happening and where things are at.
But I aim to limit the number of day-to-day, hour-to-hour, or minute-to-minute interruptions. The world’s chaos, for me, has to be managed because in my role, it’s about creativity, vision, hope, and strategy. And that requires focus. While I do need to be aware of the turbulence in the world, I also need to stay focused on the mission.
So I’d say: there’s an element of stepping back from distractions and noise in order to create remarkable work. Be careful what you’re letting in. If you’re like me, and you’re learning about a lot of the darkness and challenges in the world, you have to counter that with absorbing a lot of hope through what you read, what you listen to, who you follow, and who you allow to speak into your life.

What’s inspiring you right now, in business, life or culture?
That’s a fun question. I think my kids are inspiring me because they’re pretty oblivious to all the issues in the world, including things like paying the bills and the practical elements of life. I watch them dream dreams – for Thankyou., sometimes, and for themselves and I love that.
I love the innocence children have, that we all had, but seem to lose as we grow up. For me, a lot of hope for the future is found in this idea of play, playing with ideas.
A hero I’ve looked up to is Virgil, the founder of Off-White. I loved how he would play with ideas, with language, with design. And while he’s passed, his work has marked me, and Thankyou. and the world.
I think it’s going to take a lot of creativity and play to figure out the path forward through many of the world’s great challenges.