From climate roots to circular impact: how Josef Werker built Humble into a purpose-driven sustainability venture

What inspired you to start your business? Was there a specific gap that you saw that maybe others overlooked?

I’ll start with the story of my mother, which is really the entire inspiration behind Humble—it ignited the fire. My mother is a climate activist, and she’s a leader in one of the major protest groups that fight for climate change action. Even when I was a kid growing up, we didn’t have much. We didn’t really have any money.

So we wouldn’t go on holidays—we would go camping in the woods illegally. We learnt to really appreciate nature. We would never get brand-new clothes or presents; everything would be secondhand, thrifted from what we call charity shops. At the time, we just thought this was because we didn’t have much, but ultimately later we started realising these were really sustainable practices.

She taught us to appreciate nature from a very young age. Eventually, when I saw her later in life in her activism, doing these protests, I was really inspired to build something that helped us in this fight to protect nature—but in a way that I can. For me, protesting in the street isn’t what I do. What I do is build solutions that help people and businesses help the planet at the same time. That was the total inspiration.

So, was there also a gap in the market? Definitely. No one was doing anything like this when we kicked off. It was very, very new. People in the Philippines especially were not really focused very much on sustainability, and so we came in and did something very new.

In your earlier days, as you were building the company or the brand, what was the biggest challenge that you remember facing, and how did you overcome it?

So first, the business itself. What we were doing was super unknown. Getting people involved took a lot of convincing—getting people to care about the planet. It wasn’t like we were just replicating a model like an e-commerce platform that already makes sense if you just execute it. What we were doing was totally unknown. Plus, we were launching in the middle of the pandemic. So add that on top of everything—it was just total chaos.

The second challenge would be the pivots themselves. Because we’re doing something so new, we started in one way and then, because of various things, the model shifted as we spotted more scalable opportunities. We ended up pivoting to something else—to where we are today.

Just a quick backstory to understand the business more: we started with an app where people could book collections. We would go to their house and collect all their unwanted items—furniture, electronics, clothes—and then we would recycle it, refurbish it and resell it. That was Humble 1.0.

Today, we’ve completely shifted by spotting more scalable opportunities and what makes more sense with greater growth potential. Now, we take tech from businesses—laptops and phones—which we refurbish and resell to individuals on our platform and to other businesses. Then we measure the climate data that those businesses need for their ESG reporting.

So the pivots themselves were a challenge.

The third challenge, which is a bit more personal, would be myself. I had great struggles, as all of us do, but my mental health took a battle. I came from a place of trying to control every outcome while dealing with things in my personal life as well, while trying to build businesses.

Prior to Humble, I built a very successful company called Penbrothers. I was the CEO there for five years. It was the fastest-growing company in the country for three years. It was a great success, but it came at a serious expense. I was working 18-hour days, sleeping three hours a night and going through very serious mental health conditions.

When we started building Humble, the same thing happened. That was a massive challenge, which I later learnt how to overcome—thanks to God, thanks to changing my lifestyle and my way of thinking, and getting away from intense hustle culture.

Since then, I believe your business—especially for startups—is really a reflection of the founder. If you’re suffering and you’re not doing well, it’s very unlikely your business is doing well. Once you make certain changes and you find beauty, joy and a good lifestyle yourself—when you feel better—your business will reflect that.

It’s one of the first things I always tell people when I mentor them or give talks. It’s not necessarily about the biggest challenges in your business. It’s about how we can get you feeling great—the best version of yourself spiritually, physically and emotionally. Because if you’re thriving, the business will follow that story.

I’d really like to make that known because a lot of entrepreneurs and founders feel like they need to be invincible. They feel like they need to tell their investors and everyone else that they’re fine. But the reality is that’s clearly not true. It would be good if we could use this opportunity to say, “Hey, I really wasn’t fine.”

What would you say sets Humble apart from your competitors? What makes you unique?

Number one, we extract more value from the items. We help our clients maximise the value of the laptops they want to recycle or refurbish.

The second would be the climate focus. We don’t let anything end up in landfill. We monitor the data of our clients’ impact on the planet, which they use for their ESG reporting.

Another differentiator is our network in the Philippines. We’ve closed some of the biggest clients in the country—Robinsons, Aboitiz, the Lopez Group—some of the top conglomerates. We’ve also brought in major investors like Gobi Partners and the Philippine government.

But what I’d like to highlight even more is our people. It’s funny—when you talk about your team, it’s a bit like saying your baby is the most beautiful baby in the world. We all think our baby is the most beautiful.

But I really believe our team—in terms of passion and quality—is next level. My co-founder is unbelievable. She’s saved my life many times. I’ve never met a group of people so passionate about protecting nature.

The third thing would be faith. We are deeply rooted in faith and spirituality. We’re spiritually inclusive at Humble, but we believe our ultimate founder is God. We start our weekly kickoff meetings in prayer. People can pray to whoever they like—we accept absolutely everyone and every belief.

I was actually a massive atheist my whole life until about a year and a half ago. Everything changed when I found God—or God saved me. Before that, I tried to control everything in business.

But when you release control and surrender it—pray about it—you still work hard, but you’re not the only one driving toward the solution. The insights come. The clarity comes. Then you can make the right decisions and take the right actions.

That transformation has been beautiful.

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