Welcome to Beaver Tales
Field Notes · Issue 01
If you are reading this, you have arrived early. Thank you for doing so.
Beaver Tales is just launching. We are still building and will continue. This is the first note we have sent, and that matters to us — not as a milestone, rather as an honest signal about where we are. We cherish that you are here at the beginning, not once everything is figured out (if ever!).
So, welcome. Let me set the scene for what this is.
Beaver Tales is a podcast, though it’s more than that, it’s a platform about people building extraordinary businesses worth believing in. It’s how we build a community around those inspiring actions.
That sentence does a lot of work, so let me break it down.
There are founders, leaders and teams out there doing things in their particular way. Making decisions they know are harder than the obvious alternative. Choosing the longer road because they believe it matters. Treating their people, customers, stakeholders, communities and supply chains with a level of care that does not always make short-term sense — and doing it anyway, knowingly, simply because they know it is right.
Most of them are not shouting about those choices.
That last part is, I think, a key point.
In today’s world, the business stories that get the most attention tend to come from the companies that are best at being loud: fastest to scale, most confident on a stage, most fluent in the language of purpose while operating in ways that quietly undermine it. I find that exhausting. And I suspect a lot of you do too.
One pattern I have noticed during a career working across more than forty countries and inside a lot of different organisations, is that the companies and teams doing the most interesting work are often the ones least inclined to tell you about it. They are too busy building their way.
Beaver Tales exists to find those companies and teams, to sit down with them, and tell their stories well. To channel inspiration to lift them higher.
Why am I the one doing this?
I spent a long time asking myself that very question. My background is negotiating and working with executive teams — not podcasting, not media, nor building a platform. This kind of visibility does not come naturally to me. I grew up in a farming family where the fruits of your labour, literally, were your measure of success or not. I would far rather champion someone else’s work than my own - which is agency pure and simple.
That is, it turns out, exactly my why. I’m tired of listening to the same old loud stories we are inundated with by people who do not respect others, let alone themselves.
Acting with agency to tell someone else’s inspiring story is much easier than telling your own. The people I want to feature — the humble builders championing their stakeholders, the ones going about it without fanfare — I find they are usually the last to make the case for themselves. So I thought: if I can create a community to lift them higher by assisting to do that with them, if I can be comfortable enough to get them to tell their tale in a way that makes you say this is worth my attention, then maybe that is an important role I can play.
So I came to the conclusion; why not me? Though I won’t be alone, please join me.
There is a word at the heart of this project that I want to use deliberately.
Inspiration.
It gets used so loosely in business that it has almost lost its edge. Let’s start at the beginning. The etymology or Latin root — inspirare — means to breathe into, or literally to breathe life into. Howard Napper, our first guest, teaches us that in many languages other than English, the same word carries both meanings: breath and spirit. Breath is life force. Inspiration is what happens when something breathes life into you before you have even processed why.
For Beaver Tales, inspiration is not a feeling you leave with and then forget. It is a clear signal that something in you has shifted. That you are now more likely to do something, to act. In business that means to share, support, invest, connect, purchase, introduce someone, or to rethink a decision in your own work.
That last step is the test. Inspiration that never becomes action is just a pleasant feeling. We are not here for only pleasant feelings.
Chasing the Tale
So what kind of stories are we looking for? What makes a Beaver Tale?
Not perfect companies or teams. Not polished purpose statements. Not founders with a clean origin narrative created by consultants and a media-trained answer for everything.
We are looking for real commercial enterprises seeking profitability where something is being built differently with genuine intention. Companies where the decisions to build the harder way were made consciously, not accidentally. Stories where you can feel the cost — the margin compressed, the growth slower, the shortcut refused — because someone believed it was worth it.
The kind of story where, when you hear it, you find yourself compelled to act, thinking: I want to know more about that. I know someone who should hear this. I would buy from them. I could partner with them.
That is a Beaver Tale. And when a story lands like that — when it moves someone from attention to action — it’s not only a Beaver Tale, it’s also a beaver tail. The tail hits the water and everyone in the ecosystem around it pays attention. The keystone has spoken.
A note on how this works, and where you can come in.
Beaver Tales is nowhere near a finished platform. It’s the beginning. We are building it alongside the podcast, learning from our guests, making mistakes, asking for assistance, and being honest about each. We have set up a company — Inspiring Profits Ltd. — whose purpose is to do more than spotlight inspiring businesses. We want to channel real attention, community, and support toward the businesses and people we champion. Over time, we aim for that to grow into something tangible. We will get to that.
For now, what we are asking of you is simple, take any or all of the following:
Listen closely.
If something in an episode moves you, do not let it just sit. Reach out. Share it with one person who needs to hear it.
Tell us about a company you think belongs here.
Make an introduction.
Buy from someone we have featured, and let us know.
And if you know a founder, leader or team doing something quietly extraordinary — someone whose work deserves more oxygen — tell us about them.
You can reach us at https://beavertales.co. A message stating why is enough. We will take it from there.
The community shapes what Beaver Tales becomes. That starts with the people who arrived early.
You are one of them. We are glad you are here.
Be the inspiration!
— Jason
The first episode of Beaver Tales goes live Thursday 4th June. It features founder Howard Napper of Agoy Limited (www.agoy.co.uk), a trailblazer of sustainable yoga products, a pioneer in his field for 25 years, and someone whose story of building differently will stay with you. Subscribe below to get it straight to your inbox when it drops.
Know a business worth telling? Let us know.