Great Big Ocean

How do you approach building strategic alliances or relationships to grow your organization?

It really comes down to the people behind it. That's something that I take very seriously as I personally nor SOA would align ourselves with a brand just because of what the brand represents. Instead, we align ourselves with the leadership, with the people that are running the brand of the organization. And we have turned down organizations or corporate sponsors because they simply were not people we wanted to do business with. They didn't have the same values or principles that we hold important.

Well, can you give me an example of that? I know you probably don't want to put out any names, but what were some of the values or leadership traits that you felt were not in alignment with what SOA stood for, and that's when you said thank you, but no, thanks?

Sure. I mean, I'll tell you one of the companies. They were a cruise line company, and they came to SOA, they wanted to do a partnership. And so what we were thinking about in this partnership is helping them innovate, deeply innovate the way that they're carrying their ships, innovate and make them more sustainable, helping bring entrepreneurs into the fold. However, they just wanted to do events and market themselves the rest of the away, and of course, is a con to the greenwashing that a lot of people know. And so we just did not find that fit, and we wanted to truly disrupt their business model because we could find the entrepreneurs to do so, whereas they just wanted to align with us because of the brands that we represent and because of the marketing capacity. So I think that, again, and again, that comes from the internal leadership of the organization, right, and having those conversations, we were talking -- we're having two different conversations, right? I was talking about innovation, disruption, and the new frontier of cruise ships, and this person was talking about the short term events we can do together.

Yeah. More glitz and glamor than actually making a difference.

Exactly.

And so vice versa, can you give us an example of a partnership you currently have, where you felt is like, wow, everything is really in alignment, that their values are our values?

Definitely. So one of our incredible partners is called Peace Boat, and what Peace Boat does, they're all about educating young people globally on different issues. So they tackle all the UN goals. And so one of their growth areas was around the ocean, they wanted to help young people become more educated. And so before even entering the partnership, I had a one-on-one with their director, I met the founder as well, and just understood, again, their core area, why they were doing this, what their vision was for the future. And so being able to align personally and having those same, like shared interests and same values was important to me before deciding to move forward with the partnership.