I’m Courtney Blodgett, the Founder of Yield Positive. Yield Positive’s mission is to help everyday investors yield positive – positive returns, positive impact – through sustainable investing. Below is the story of how Yield Positive was created.
Part 1
In Summer 2019, I futilely attempted to find easily accessible information about sustainable investing. I am a darn good Googler but it still however took me ages to find information about sustainable investing options for individual, or retail, investors. The interest of millennials/Gen Y’ers in sustainable investing is regularly reported on but there seemed to be a disconnect between media reporting and available information. “Finding sustainable investing information shouldn’t be so hard,” I thought.
Part 2
Not long after Part 1, I read “Leapfrog Hacks”, Nathalie Molina Niño’s fabulous book for women entrepreneurs. Niño lists 50 “leapfrogs” – loopholes or shortcuts – to help entrepreneurs. Hack 11 is “Forget passion. Find things you want to punch”. Inspired by Leapfrog Hacks, I made a “to punch” list. My frustration detailed in Part 1 resulted in a “lack of accessible sustainable investing information” being on my list. Niño’s next bit of advice after making the to-punch list is to come up with a solution to what you want to punch. Considering that I had a past amateur boxing career, I was game to punch. My punch landed solidly on creating a sustainable investing content platform for the everyday sustainable investor.
Part 3
After receiving positive words of encouragement from people with whom I shared my idea, I decided that I was going to make the platform happen. In September 2019, the platform, then named Larix Investments was launched in a beta form.
Part 4
After launching Larix, I held a number of workshops with potential users. After much listening and learning from people, I reframed the platform and rebranded to become Yield Positive. Yield Positive was launched in March 2020.
