Neil Yeoh on Community-Led Growth for 6+ Years

**David Nebinski** (0:03)
Hey, friend, it's David Nebinski here in Brooklyn, here at the Portfolio Career Podcast, where we take ownership of your career and design a life that you want to live. This conversation is with Neil Yeoh. Neil is the founder and CEO of OnePointFive, a community-based business. He started the business in February 2020, and it has evolved a lot, and particularly in the face of some tough business and political environments, and you'll learn all about that. So if you're a founder or someone who's focused on community-led growth, this episode is for you. You'll learn about growing a team, B2B, creating like a flywheel, and like just so much more. You can learn more about the podcast and my learnings from it on my newsletter at davidnebinski.com/newsletter. So excited for you to build and grow your portfolio career. Here we go with Neil. We're here at Neil's HQ.
You know, this is a learning on...
I love kind of visiting you and seeing the team here. I was not expecting the size of your company. Like what... Give us a snapshot of the size of your company right now.

**Neil Yeoh** (1:13)
Yeah, we currently have 20 team members. Our company is called OnePointFive. It's been a climate advisory and academy, trying to future-proof organizations in the workforce of the future, bootstrapped about six years ago, and still doing the work despite everything that's against us here, headquartered in New York, but have a lot of really great appreciation for people who show up, use their talents for the greatest good and to their fullest potential, and for OnePointFive to be a vehicle for 20 people is like a privilege as a founder.

**David Nebinski** (1:50)
That's crazy. I mean, what was the part about the New York and what did you mean by that about just like, yeah.

**Neil Yeoh** (1:57)
Yeah, I mean, for those that follow the news, the federal government may be a bit anti-science at the moment.
A lot of funding may be cut in areas where they, in my opinion, they should not. And particularly with the word climate change, which has somehow become politicized, despite it being a real thing that's happening, has been a forcing function for many organizations in our industry to either have to evolve or adapt, but still fight the good fight without over-correcting when these things can be cycled. So the last 18 months out of the six year journey of a bootstrap social climate entrepreneurship journey has been bloody hard.

**David Nebinski** (2:36)
Yeah. Well, it's hard to hear that.

**Neil Yeoh** (2:43)
Yeah.

**David Nebinski** (2:44)
And I think it's a testament to who you are as a builder, as a founder, as a human to kind of push through all of that, and to have this 20 person company. I mean, it's wild. Like, I literally am still just like, I can't believe this is happening.

**Neil Yeoh** (3:02)
And it's so wild that you say that, because when you say the number 20, it's such an interesting mindset as a founder that what is big, what is small, what is success. And I've had to really grapple with this, especially when a company may not have that shiny silver lining. Climbing was a big conversation six years ago. There was a lot of climate jobs, and we can talk about how that drove a lot of our community. Yet when maybe the jobs dry up or it's not cool to do these things, or you're a founder that has had to stick with it for like six years, which feels like a long time, even as a millennial, to sort of grapple with why am I still doing this? Is this still what I should be doing? Am I successful? By what metrics am I measuring my success? Is it the size of our organization, the amount that we make? Is it, what is it? And I think I've had to also come to terms with that life of purpose. Founders, I believe, are there to pioneer change.
But it is an interesting one, and sometimes you're best or worst enemy, right? And it takes an outside perspective to sort of see, perhaps, yes, we are 20, we are strong, we are doing things, we're not just a tiny team.
And so I really appreciate that.

**David Nebinski** (4:24)
And Bootstrap, too, it's not 20, but like raised 20 million last night.

**Neil Yeoh** (4:31)
Which is ironic, because people look towards the fundraising as a measure of success, but it means that they were able to convince people to invest forward. But to Bootstrap is a completely different route of customer-funded dollars to find product market fit and to be very conscious about cost, but not to not invest into the future.