In this episode of the BSuite podcast, Anne Richardson interviews Katie Burkhart, founder of The Matter Companies. Katie shares her expertise on what it means to be a purpose-driven business and the solutions she and her team have developed to help businesses that have decided to embark upon this path.
We need to change how we do work.
Key Takeaways
Katie’s Story
Katie Burkhart is a serial entrepreneur and the founder behind the Matter ecosystem, which currently includes MatterLogic™, Matter 7, and MatterPulse. She defines Matter as equal parts strategic and impactful, delivering critical focus, perspective, and alignment while constantly distilling the big picture into pointed actions.
Katie is an expert on purpose-driven business and she speaks worldwide on the topic. She’s an Entrepreneur contributor, and her work has been published in The Startup, UX Collective, and Boston Content.
The Matter Companies
Katie started the first of The Matter Companies ten years ago with the launch of Matter 7, a branding agency with the goal of helping businesses build purpose-driven brands. Matter 7 has worked with over 100 companies to date, focusing on a 7-step process to develop a company’s identity, brand guidelines, and website.
MatterPulse was created to address a common problem many of the Matter 7 clients faced. While setting up a company’s purpose-driven strategy, Katie found that leaders had difficulty translating their new branding into actionable business strategies. MatterPulse provides guidance to business leaders on making this shift.
MatterLogic™ “the beating heart of the Matter ecosystem” defines what it means to be purpose-driven. Katie and her team developed the Matter Logic Operating System mlOS™ which is an open-source operating system to help businesses determine and fulfill their purpose.
Defining Purpose-Driven
Establishing a business’ purpose is a multilayered challenge. But that same process can be an extraordinarily valuable exercise. Katie defines a purpose-driven business as one that ”has a valuable reason for existing and a clear understanding of why that matters.” After the purpose is established, then you build your business in a way that links your impact to your finances. This process helps denote that profit is not the purpose of the company but rather profit is the outcome of pursuing your specific purpose.
At Richardson Media Group we find our purpose by taking an educational approach to our work and informing those around us about the need for positive change via our internal and external content channels. We educate through our daily communication with clients and share meaningful topics through our media outlets.
We have decided to pursue our B-Corp certification to establish and develop a sense of continuity around our agency’s impactful business strategy. Although certifications can be difficult to navigate and may present challenges to smaller entities in certain industries, we can attest to the fact that the hard work is worth it. MatterLogic, the system Katie has created will help make running a purpose-driven business more accessible to businesses of any size and structure, an innovative idea that we are excited to watch grow.
