Lorenzo De Plano of Turning Point Brands: Five Strategies Our Company Is Using To Tackle Climate Change & Become More Sustainable
An Interview With Penny Bauder
The more diversity you have within your organization, the more unique thoughts you’re going to be presented with at your company. With different perspectives, you’re able to see situations from various lenses, which allows you to make the most effective decisions possible. It has been great to see the progress Turning Point Brands has made in this arena.
As part of my series about companies who are helping to battle climate change, I had the pleasure of interviewing Lorenzo De Plano.
Lorenzo De Plano is an entrepreneur who founded Solace Technologies, which was acquired by Turning Point Brands (NYSE: TPB) in 2019. Lorenzo now runs and manages Turning Point Brands’ New Ventures division and oversees product development, product launches and marketing / promotional campaigns that support strategic product introductions for the broader organization. He has also spearheaded Zig-Zag’s transition to e-commerce and digital, along with new marketing campaigns associated with the brand.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
During my time at the University of Southern California, I worked on and started a few startups. In 2019, I sold one of those companies, Solace Technologies, to Turning Point Brands (TPB).
After I sold Solace, much of my team’s focus at TPB was to build up the company’s product development marketing and overall growth engine. Our mission was to build an active ingredients and distribution company that went far beyond the conventional limitations of a cannabis or nicotine portfolio.
At the time, Zig-Zag a ubiquitous brand — with a 150-year-old legacy — resided under the TPB umbrella and was an ideal target for reinvigoration. For some time, the Zig Zag brand was losing market share to competitors and had yet to define itself with a new and evolving landscape and culture. Our mission was to revitalize Zig Zag’s iconic brand for the dawn of a new era.
What is the mission of your company? What problems are you aiming to solve?
Turning Point Brands is a consumer products and distribution company. However, our mission is to build products and brands that humans have unique experiences with. We want to redefine what a consumer product and distribution company that markets products to adult consumers can be and that is our mission.
Can you tell our readers about the initiatives that you and your company are taking to address sustainability? Can you give an example for each?
We are constantly developing the missions behind our brands and the ecosystems they play a part in. Part of our process is to look at our core values within the company and then project those outward through the initiatives we support.
Currently, most brands are carbon-positive and few have ways of reaching brand sustainability. With Zig-Zag, one of our core ingredients is paper, which makes it easy for us to give back and play a key role in our own ecosystem. It was here that we created the Burn One / Plant One program. Through partnering with One Tree Planted, a non-profit 501(c)(3) environmental tree planting charity, a tree is planted for every online order we receive over $15.
The Burn One / Plant One program is a small step in a much larger journey for our company. Our goal is to arrive at a place where we are effectively carbon negative as a company.
How would you articulate how a business can become more profitable by being more sustainable and more environmentally conscious? Can you share a story or example?
What we’re doing with the Burn One / Plant One program is a perfect example. Do I think it’s the most that we can be doing? Absolutely not. There’s always room for improvement. With that said, when we first discussed doing this initiative, it came from the fact that it made sense for the brand. We looked at our ingredients and thought that our brand should be symbiotic with nature, that goes full circle from consumption to output to usage. That was the real focus.
Many companies are trying to create different sustainability initiatives just to see what sticks, because they think that consumers will start buying their products as a result. Companies should look inwards instead of outwards when developing these initiatives.
The youth-led climate strikes in September 2019 showed an impressive degree of activism and initiative by young people on behalf of climate change. This was great, and there is still plenty that needs to be done. In your opinion, what are five things that we should do to inspire the next generation to become engaged in sustainability and the environmental movement? Please give a story or example for each.
I believe that the solution to our environmental problems will come through innovation. When we talk about the environment with kids, we must inspire them to innovate and though sustainability plays a role, innovation will need to resolve our greater challenges. Though our daily decisions are impactful, when it comes to something as massive as climate change, perhaps we need to inspire the next generation to look for solutions with a telescope instead of a microscope.
What are your five things that you wish someone had told you before starting out in your career, and why?
- Don’t micromanage, learn to adapt, and offer autonomy to talented individuals.
- Know when to fight the current and know when to allow the current to take you downstream.
- Only work with people who have integrity; if they don’t have integrity, your partnership won’t last long.
- The more diversity you have within your organization, the more unique thoughts you’re going to be presented with at your company. With different perspectives, you’re able to see situations from various lenses, which allows you to make the most effective decisions possible. It has been great to see the progress Turning Point Brands has made in this arena.
- If you want peace, prepare for war.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person whom you are grateful toward that helped get you to where you are today? Can you share a story about that?
There are a lot of people with whom I’ve worked with that have taught me instrumental lessons, both good and bad. Being a second-generation immigrant and growing up with parents who worked very hard was perhaps the most impressionistic and inspirational component of my early development.
Looking at my parents’ work ethic and the work ethic of other families who have come from foreign places, I understand that nothing should ever be taken for granted. I am very fortunate to have grown up in an environment where the mindset was to never expect anything from anyone. This mindset was important when starting out and has been instrumental in my development as a human being.
You are a person of great influence and doing some great things for the world. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the greatest amount of good to the greatest amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I can’t in good conscious claim that I have earned these accolades yet. That being said, if I could inspire a movement, it would be to encourage and inspire people to utilize social media for the good of society. If there was more educational messaging being disseminated on these social media platforms, it would become a more productive resource for mankind. Currently, the content on these platforms feels rather trite.
Do you have a favorite life lesson quote? Can you tell us how that is relevant to you in your own life?
A life quote that always strikes me is, “I don’t want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me.” I always really liked that concept because, to me, it essentially means not living in somebody else’s world. I believe we need to sculpt the world around us to our individual liking… I think that everybody should aspire to do that.
What is the best way for people to follow you on social media?
Readers can follow Turning Point Brands on LinkedIn.
This was so inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Lorenzo De Plano of Turning Point Brands: Five Strategies Our Company Is Using To Tackle Climate… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.