Anna Robertson is the co-founder and Chief Content Officer of The Cool Down, the first mainstream climate brand. Anna is an Emmy Award-winning executive and producer who has shaped media brands and built content that speaks to Americans.

John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. I’m John Shegerian, and I’m so honored to have with us today Anna Robertson. She’s the co-founder and chief content officer of The Cooldown. Welcome, Anna.

Anna Robertson: Thank you so much for having me. What a pleasure to be here. I’m a huge fan of the show.

John: Well, I’m a huge fan of what you’re doing at The Cooldown, and I want to get into that in a little while, but first I want to get into your backstory. Where did you grow up, and how did you even get on this fascinating, wonderful, and important journey that you’re on?

Anna: Well, I was born in London and grew up most of my life outside Washington, D.C. in Arlington, Virginia. I always knew I wanted to be a journalist of some kind since I was in fourth grade and sort of followed that path through my entire life. I did a lot of internships and sort of immersed myself in every different part of the media business. By the time I graduated college at UVA, University of Virginia in Charlottesville, I had started an online news magazine. This was back in the olden days because I’m old, and that was right when we were getting email addresses and internet was coming online. I had started an online news magazine. I really wanted to get into TV, and I ended up getting a job working the overnight shift at ABC News and sort of parlayed that into an amazing opportunity working with Diane Sawyer first as her assistant and then as her producer for 5 years. Traveling with her around the world, covering the war in Iraq and 9-11, Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami in Asia, and then really just spent 5 more years at ABC, at Good Morning America, went to Yahoo when digital was starting, and then went back to Disney and was working most recently in the local news space, really focused on local news innovation. That’s kind of where the climate bug hit me, although I’ve always been really passionate about the topic in general.

John: When did you have the combination of the climate bug and the entrepreneurial bug to say, “Okay, I have to do my own thing? I’ve got to start my own thing here and see how that goes.”

Anna: Yeah. I think personally, I was living in Los Angeles when I was working for Disney-owned television stations. I had been evacuated from wildfires in the middle of the night with my 2 little kids, had friends that had lost their homes to wildfires. I had concerns about sending my kids to preschool because the air quality was poor. So I kind of saw what was happening. I think many of us are experiencing the impacts of extreme weather, which is, of course, affected by climate change. In my job, I was thinking about local news, which is really dealing with the effects of extreme weather. I felt like we weren’t doing a strong enough job of kind of connecting the dots for people between what was happening in their day-to-day life with the weather and what’s happening bigger picture with our climate. So I did a lot of work at ABC. I’ve always been kind of an entrepreneur within big companies, and my role was focused on innovation. So I brought together a team from National Geographic, who, of course, have led on this issue for a long time and were owned by Disney, together with ABC News, as well as our local meteorologists across the country, who had kind of witnessed this weather changing over time before their eyes. They were all very passionate about it. Many of them were sort of skeptical about whether it was climate change, but case by case, from New York to LA to Houston to Chicago, even though the weather was very different, they all saw this happening. So ended up producing a special for Hulu called Climate of Hope, where we told the story of climate change through the eyes of the meteorologists and really just wanted to do more. I was kind of wondering, why are my friends and family not as engaged and not kind of connecting to this topic. I realized that a big piece of the problem has been communications. A lot of climate content is very overwhelming for people, I think. A lot of it is written in complicated jargon that people just don’t understand. A lot of it is very text-heavy. Honestly, most of the climate content that was out there was pretty boring. So while I tried to do what I could within Disney to sort of make as big of an impact as I could, I felt like there needed to be something more disruptive in the marketplace and in the media space around climate. I started meeting people in the climate space. Everybody sort of connected me to Dave Finocchio, who is my co-founder of The Cool Down and my partner. Dave had started Bleacher Report, which was obviously a very successful sports site. They had really disrupted traditional media to create a sports brand that was native to digital, native to a younger audience that really connected people with the fans and the content that they loved without some of the traditional approaches that you see in sports media. So we really came together and were able to raise some money to get The Cool Down started to do something really different and transformative to try to reach really mainstream America.

John: What year was this? What year did you put this together?

Anna: Well, we started conversations in 2021, and then I left Disney in 2022 at the beginning of the year. We launched in July 2022, really with the goal of building the first mainstream climate brand. It was really a giant experiment. Could we drive content at scale? Could we drive connection at scale around climate topics and really reach beyond the eco-community that has traditionally consumed a lot of the climate content? So a lot of people talking to each other, which is not going to solve the problem because we’ve kind of maxed out on engaging that audience. While they are very engaged, the only way the climate movement will expand is if we bring new people into the conversation, if we bring more conservatives and other viewpoints. So our idea was to really create The Cool Down sort of like a sports site, right? Like you come to a sports destination, and you don’t have to agree on what team you support, but you have to agree that you love sports and that you, just like we all love the planet, we can all have different solutions and we can respect each other’s opinions. There’s so much innovation happening out there in the space that we really wanted to come at it with a more hopeful, positive tone that could connect people to the opportunity we have. Businesses have such an opportunity to reach new customers, to remain vibrant. We really wanted to kind of showcase what the future could look like, rather than just putting a doom-and-gloom sort of lens over everything. What are the opportunities? So we launched in July 2022, and we’ve had an incredible first year. We’re now reaching about 30 million people a month, 30 million uniques a month. We are one of the fastest-growing media brands, full stop. We are certainly the largest climate brand, which is really incredible. So it’s been a great start.

John: I love it. So first year, things go gangbusters. So second year, talk about the second year and the evolution of the site. How do you evolve it now that you have all that visible traffic on it? What do you do next?

Anna: Yeah, well, there’s a couple of things. One thing is obviously in continuing to grow our audience, but also continuing to engage them and giving them opportunities to connect and to create action around the education that they now have about what’s happening to the planet. So we’ve created a guide product that can kind of take people through a journey, really, based around what their personal interest is, because everything is connected to climate. So giving people more sense of community, agency, and action. We’ve also launched a… Once we started to get scale, we started to monetize our site and build a business around it. One thing that we realized is that we have an incredible amount of data about our audience. So with 30 million people coming every month, we’ve been looking at that audience and trying to understand what’s motivating them. What are they clicking on? What are they sharing and saving? Because in this environment, a lot of the data we have about climate-interested audiences really from focus groups and surveys. A lot of those are what people say they’re going to do and not what they actually do. We realized that that data would be incredibly valuable to businesses and to business leaders who are trying to reach mainstream America with sustainable products and services. So we are launching a whole B2B aspect of our company that’s really focused on helping to make businesses and companies smarter about how to reach this audience. That includes a free B2B newsletter that anybody can sign up for features, profiles, and interviews we’ve done with big companies and with small companies, as well as some data and insights each week from our treasure trove and from new testing that we’re doing all the time that kind of shows what messages are working and really tries to address some of the difficult questions that companies are trying to face. We also have some insights offerings as well as real-time message testing and traditional advertising products as well. What we want to do is try to close that consumer intention action gap and make businesses more effective at messaging to consumers and make consumers really want those products and services a lot more, because now there’s really no sacrifice required in these products. A lot of them are the same price point. A lot of them are better for your health, better for your family. They oftentimes can save you money, particularly in the long run. So we want to kind of get that message out. We think there’s a huge opportunity to expand what we’re doing to the business community.

John: Got it. So what was your… The first year you got up to a million people a day, approximately 30 million people a month. What’s your next goal? You’re going to take it from just B2C, business to consumer, now take it to B2B. How do you keep evolving the site? And what’s your bigger vision, three to five-year vision here?

Anna: Our goal in terms of an audience is really focused more on engagement. We have about 200,000 newsletter subscribers, and we’re hoping to grow that to 500,000 by the end of the year. We want to get as quickly as possible to a million newsletter subscribers because that’s where we have that direct relationship, and we can really drive those folks into action. We know they’re really interested and engaging in these topics. So for us, it’s really going deeper with our audience and building community around, and for them, as opposed to just continuing to scale our audience, although that’s always nice, right? And I think in 3 to 5 years, like we want to be the guide, the go-to guide for individuals and for businesses who want to shift to the clean economy. So that’s really our mission.

John: In terms of lessons learned, not as an entrepreneur, but lessons learned in terms of just what the consumers are thinking about in terms of sustainability, what are the two or three of your favorite lessons that you learned the first 18 months of what consumers are thinking about in terms of sustainability that you’re going to be excited to monetize, hopefully, with the businesses that need this kind of business intelligence?

Anna: I think the big one is that as much as people want to save the planet and have a great heart to do so, they’re not going to do so unless it sort of works for their life, especially in an environment where people are stretched, right?

John: Sure. So true.

Anna: That they can’t buy something that’s going to be more expensive or more challenging. We have to make it easier for people to want to adopt these products into their lives and to educate them about why it’s so important. First and foremost, it doesn’t help to just put a green leaf on your product. We have to make better products that people want, and then… Oh, by the way, PS It’s sustainable or it’s great for you. That’s always, I think, a great way to retain customers. For example, I just interviewed the VP of sustainability for Rothy’s Shoes, they make these really sort of fan-favorite flats that a lot of women wear. They’re machine washable, super comfortable. They’re stylish. They’re also made from plastic water bottles, and they’re doing really creative things to create a sustainable shoe. They’re selling the shoe because it’s stylish, comfortable, machine washable and functional. They’re not selling it because it’s sustainable. I think that’s the way a lot of brands need to think. Home Depot interviewed their chief sustainability officer about their switch to electric-powered lawn equipment. They’re going to be shifting to 80% electric power, electric lawn equipment, and it’s just because it’s better. It’s quieter. It works really well. It doesn’t pollute your environment and create pollution for your kids. So I think they’re not marketing that as sustainable. They’re just marketing it as better. Obviously, there are certain value propositions that work even better than others. When there’s a money-saving proposition or a money-making proposition, that’s a huge lesson that we’ve learned. That’s a really exciting opportunity. Circularity is a great example of that. There are some companies that are really making good money off of their businesses to take back old clothes or old items and make those into new products. I think you’ve seen that from Patagonia. You’ve seen it from REI and North Face and others that are creating really successful business models there. One of the other things that we’ve learned, which is really helpful, is that as much as we talk about big climate heroes with a capital H, the best messages often come from the person next door or the TikToker or the Redditor or the Instagrammer. So a lot of the content that we produce is curating from those platforms and really normalizing this and making it something that’s fun and easy and addictive and really rewarding as well.

John: Wonderful. Where does government fit in here? I applaud, of course, the Biden administration has done great things with the Investment Recovery Act, but are you more focused on the consumer and business side of it? Or do you believe good government also plays a role here in helping us move to our goals of making the world a better place?

Anna: Yeah. I think good government obviously plays a huge role, but we can’t depend on government always to make the changes that we need. We need to broaden the conversation beyond just progressives and just Democrats. I’ve spent a lot of time over the last year with conservatives. I interviewed John Curtis, who started the Conservative Climate Caucus, which is one of the largest caucuses within the House of Representatives. About a third of House Republicans are a part of the Conservative Climate Caucus. I actually went to the Conservative Climate Summit and spent the day listening to leaders who are conservatives talk about this issue. Everybody knows that we need to win. We may have different points of view, but we all need to keep America competitive. We need to do things more efficiently. We need to help some of our farmers and people in the oil and gas industry who have provided incredible service to our country to help them pivot into this clean economy, which is absolutely the future and everybody knows it. There’s an opportunity to really sort of try to focus on what are the things that we all want. We all want clean air. We all want clean water. We all want great jobs, high-paying jobs. We all want to be competitive in the global economy. So how can we agree upon those things? It’s critical that government is a part of it. You can see the impact of a lot of the decisions that have been made over the past year or two, some of which have been bipartisan. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and many of the things that have happened. I mean, the effort to save the Great Salt Lake. We have a lot of bipartisan support for figuring out a way to save the Great Salt Lake, to protect the economy of the area where I live, which is Park City and Salt Lake City. I think government’s a key piece, but we also need individuals to understand that they play a role and businesses to step up to step up as well. It’s also something that businesses need to think about from a government perspective because we’re seeing a lot of regulation start to kick in from Europe. A lot of the companies that operate here in the US are multinational companies that will need to meet those regulations as well, and a lot of times those things come to the US as well. That’s more opportunity than ever to understand that every company needs to have a sustainability strategy and a message for reaching mainstream America.

John: As you just say, businesses can be transcendent in terms of what they do and things of that such, and they don’t have to wait for the next election cycle or other things that are such like. I think they really do have a great opportunity to lead on these issues. We’ve mentioned the United States a couple of times. How much is your wonderful website? For our listeners and viewers out there, of course, this can be in the show notes, but I just want you to go to www.thecooldown.com. I love your website. I’ve been a subscriber for quite some time now. How much are you focusing also on out-of-the-country opportunities as well and consumers and businesses out of the United States?

Anna: Well, thanks for the endorsement. First of all, I’m glad you’re a reader and I love that. Our primary focus for our audience development is in America, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t source ideas from all over the globe because there’s so much innovation happening everywhere. So we bring a lot of those ideas and we do obviously have readers that come around the world because our distribution footprint is distributed globally, but our focus mostly is on the US audience.

John: Got it. I couldn’t agree with you more when you talked about ease of use and accessibility. What we found in the recycling industry is if it’s not easily accessible and if it doesn’t fit into people’s lifestyle, they’re just not going to do it. If you make it a headache and things of that such. For composting and recycling of clothes, electronics, and all the other stuff that we have tons of in and around our houses, I think landfills are filled with 50% of old food [inaudible] old food matter. What are two or three things that our listeners and viewers can do? What are some action items that they can do to make their own home a cleaner and greener place? So we start with just one day at a time, one foot in front of another.

Anna: Well, I think you just brought up composting and that’s one of my favorites. I think a lot of people don’t know a whole lot about food waste and what happens when our food goes in the trash. First and foremost, we throw away about $1200 to $1500 a year as Americans individually on food. That’s like going to the grocery store and buying 5 bags of groceries and just leaving 2 in the cart and not using them. First of all, it’s a huge waste of money. Second of all, when food goes into the trash can and goes to the landfill, it turns into methane gas, which is one of the most harmful greenhouse gases that we produce. This is a topic that we can actually have an impact on in our homes and in our businesses. I think reducing food waste by meal planning, being smarter about what you’re buying, composting, if you do have excess food, typically most places have either a composting pickup service or something that will come and get it or a place to drop it. I actually instituted help to get a composting program off the ground with our elementary school. So now our elementary school, 500 kids are composting at lunchtime and they are not only diverting 40,000 pounds of food waste we’ve diverted from the landfill, but they’re getting a leadership opportunity and they’re learning about compost. So I think reducing your food waste is something that we all can participate in and will actually have a really great upside for everybody. That’s a really big one that I think is super important. The other one I would say is just reducing our plastic consumption. I think many of us don’t think about how much plastic we interact with in a day-to-day basis. Obviously, all the products that you use, getting more informed about what’s in those products, but even just reducing plastic, which we all know is getting harder and harder to recycle, as you know very well. I think that’s a huge step in the right direction is trying to figure out ways that you can reduce plastic in your own life and try to switch to cleaner products because there are so many that are great. I just did a story about Grove Collaborative. They just announced on the cool down that they’ve sold 20 million refillable concentrates, which is a huge milestone because a lot of people don’t know how to use refillables, but you can now order refillable products for your hand soap or many of your household essentials that avoid having to buy another plastic bottle.

John: Where has a company like Hertz gone wrong? Why did they announce 2 weeks ago that they’re going to be now selling off 20,000 of their EV cars because the consumers are not using them? What happened? From your perspective where was the disconnect? Because to me, driving an EV car is a no-brainer as opposed to a gas guzzler, was there a disconnect between Hertz and their consumers in giving them ease of access to these EV vehicles?

Anna: Well, I think the headlines were a little overblown on that one and in general you know that they want…

John: Yeah, like they always are, by the way, like they always are.

Anna: Yeah, the headlines are definitely about EVs not working in the cold or EVs sales, like people not wanting to buy them. It’s not the truth. I have an EV, it works great in the cold. I live in a cold climate and there’s no problems with it. We obviously have a little bit of gap from an infrastructure standpoint. Our charging infrastructure needs to be a lot better. I’ve rented through Hertz many times and I rent through Hertz always when I can because I love that they’ve been committed to electrifying their fleet, but it is a learning curve for people and there needs to be a lot of support for customers. I read a stat, I was doing a profile on Uber and they’ve switched a lot of their vehicles to EVs and there was a stat that I think 40% of the riders in the EVs in Ubers had never been in an EV. That is really staggering and it’s an amazing opportunity to introduce people to these cars because once you start driving one, you don’t really want to go back to a gas car in most circumstances. It’s a little bit different when you rent a car and obviously, the charging infrastructure is different in different cities and you really have to be an educated consumer to be aware of, is there good charging infrastructure in the city that you’re visiting and understanding that, not just assuming that it’s all going to be there. There’s probably a little more customer support and education that could have happened there in my opinion. By and large, I don’t think it’s a failure at all. I think they’ve introduced a lot of people to electric vehicles and they’ll continue to invest just as everybody else will. If you look at the biggest brands across America, they’re all investing in EV charging infrastructure from 7-Eleven to Subway to Hilton to Albertsons. Walmart has just announced a huge investment in charging infrastructure. That’s only going to improve and in the next 3 to 5 years, you’re going to see a huge shift, but the EV sales story is a terrific story. The amount of EVs that have been sold and that Americans are buying way surpasses what the expectations were.

John: Absolutely. Any revolution, which I call the sustainability revolution, let’s just call it for lack of better terms at this moment, is in a straight line. There’s zigs and zags and ups and downs. I think in terms of timing, in terms of when you started your great platform, The Cooldown, and for our listeners and viewers, again, thecooldown.com, I think your timing was perfect because I haven’t seen this much activity around these topics and the subject matters that you’re covering in 20 years. Everyone cares now, whether it’s large financial institutions, whether it’s EU, whether it’s Asia, whether it’s United States. I have 2 children. My kids love the environment and they constantly reinvest in the environment in terms of the cars and how they live their lives in their homes. I think there’s a tremendous interest. Talk about your life as an entrepreneur. From what you expected when you first drew this up with your partner and where you are now, talk a little bit about the ups and downs of being an entrepreneur, not working for Disney or Diane Sawyer and other great people that you’ve worked with and other great organizations that you worked with along the way.

Anna: As I said, I’ve always been an entrepreneur within those big organizations, but starting your own company is completely different. Huge learning curve. The first year was really hard. Everybody says the first year of a startup is really hard, trying to figure out that product market fit, really immerse myself not only in an industry, the climate industry, which I wasn’t a climate expert by any means, so I had to really learn a lot there, but also just figure out what works in a digital media environment. It’s not an easy digital media environment anymore. Media consumption is so fragmented and there’s a lot of complexity there. It was definitely hard, but it’s been really exciting and a huge learning opportunity. We always talk about how it’s a marathon, not a sprint. I think that’s the key thing is really just testing things out. If they don’t work, moving on quickly and trying something new. Luckily, I think we are at the right place at the right time. We have an incredibly talented team of people who have a lot of experience in building these things and building companies that are successful. We all have really amazing skill sets. Dave has brought over a lot of his team from Bleacher Report, which brings just a really unique perspective to the climate space, and applying some of those lessons about how to build audiences has been just a real game changer. It’s been challenging, but really exciting as well.

John: Well, Dave and yours[?] experience, we can bring environment with sports and get sports more messaging the environment as well then because both of you have now both of those angles covered.

Anna: Yeah, we’re working on that. We have a partnership with the NBA, which has been amazing. They’re super passionate about educating within the league around this topic, making it a priority for them. I just interviewed the head of sustainability for the NFL about the Super Bowl and what they do at the Super Bowl and all of the NFL games to be more sustainable, which I think a lot of people have no idea there about. There’s so much to be done in so many categories because climate really touches everything that we do.

John: That’s so true. How do you run your organization? Is it a dispersed workplace and everyone works from home or their offices? How many employees and how do you manage that?

Anna: We’re a fully remote organization. We work all across the US and even outside of the US, but we really wanted to create a media or an organization that went beyond New York and LA and wasn’t just sort of… I think there’s just a different vibe when you work in one of those cities. There is something to sort of bringing in your perspective from wherever you live. The fact that I live in the Park City, Salt Lake City area brings a different perspective. What my friends and the other moms and things are talking about in my community might be different than what we would be talking about in New York. So we’re everywhere from Bend, Oregon to Austin, Texas to Savannah and Atlanta and all over the place. We have about 10 full-time employees and a really amazing roster of freelance writers as well that work with us across the country. We’ll probably be growing a lot this year because we are certainly in sort of an inflection point for our company. We’re reinvesting in the growth of the company and really trying to make an even bigger impact. So I think we’ll see that size grow a little bit this year.

John: I think the diversity perspectives that you get with people being a remote workplace type of organization is actually kind of really wonderful.

Anna: Yeah, it is really wonderful. It’s definitely challenging starting a company with everybody working remotely. We had some growing pains there. We definitely try to meet regularly in person when we can about twice a year with the whole team and then much more regularly with the senior leadership team. It definitely has its ups and downs, but I think it’s been amazing for the organization.

John: How do people in our audience sign up for your B2B newsletter and other information that you’re putting out there?

Anna: If you go to thecooldown.com/partners, that’s where you can sign up for the B2B newsletter as well as reach out to us through that site or to me directly. My email is [email protected] and I’m happy to give it out to anybody. We’re eager to understand and listen to what problems companies are facing and how we might be able to help them solve those problems with this incredible audience that we have as well as reach new customers. So certainly recommend sort of the first step would be to sign up for that B2B newsletter and also connect with me on LinkedIn, follow me on LinkedIn. I’m actually doing interviews with business leaders every week. I mentioned a few in the course of this conversation that I’ve been doing, but all of those are video interviews and profiles that run on The Cool Down as well as video clips that we’re putting on LinkedIn that are really geared towards like lessons for marketers. We’re working with an amazing sustainability advisor, Freya Williams, who wrote a book called ‘Green Giants’, which is really about how you build billion-dollar businesses around sustainability. We really want to help those companies meet new customers, strengthen their brands, and just kind of close, as I said, close that intention action gap.

John: I love it. I think that’s just fantastic. Anything you’re specifically excited that you could talk about right now for the rest of this year, 2024?

Anna: Oh gosh, so many things. We just spent the day with Alex Honnold, the climber from Free Solo. That was super fun. He invests in climate solutions and has a foundation called the Honnold Foundation, which is focused entirely on climate solutions. He also really lives sustainably in his life. I think in a way that’s really more practical for how we can all adopt these things into their lives. It was really fun to do a little house tour with him, to do a test drive of his electric truck that he loves, to compost with him, to look at how he thinks about sustainability. So I’m excited about that. This interview series has been super fun and we’re really looking forward to next week. I have an interview with Hellmann’s about their mayo cat commercial in the Super Bowl. We’ve got REI coming out, interviews with big companies. So I think, yeah, really excited to connect and be inspired by what’s happening out there, which I think a lot of people just don’t know about. They don’t know that some of these folks are doing all of these innovative things.

John: I totally agree with you. For our listeners and viewers, again, to find Anna and her colleagues and to get great information that’s on her website, please go to www.thecooldown.com. It will be in the show notes as well. Anna Robertson, thanks for joining us today, and you’re always welcome back on the show. As you and I know, sustainability is a journey with no finish line. Entrepreneurship is pretty similar as well. We want to keep up with what you’re doing and all the great stuff, how you’re growing your website. We want you back. By the way, thank you for not only spending time listening to the Impact Podcast but thank you for making the world a better place.

Anna: Thank you so much, John. It’s been a pleasure. Thanks for all you do on this topic and more.

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