The story of the new Certification Oceania

Since I was a young kid growing up touring the world with Cirque Du Soleil, I have always wanted to make an impact, to leave people smiling the same way my dad did, every single night on stage as a clown with Cirque DU Soleil.

Today, I am proud to introduce to the world, the new Certification Oceania, we are the worlds first B Corp Certified and JASANZ and IAF Accredited ISO Certification body, a sustainable compliance option for clients wanting to attain ISO Certification and using their audits as a force for good in the world.

Being the rebel that I was when I was 18, I ran “away from” the circus, in search of the Jose way to make an impact. This began with university, which after a short stint, I realised wasn’t for me. Guided by family, I applied for Flight Centre, to begin a journey where I could “learn while I earn” and get stuck into this “business” thing. 5 years flew by, and I learnt so much, from the best of the best, learning about leadership, effective communication, negotiation, governance, everything. Flight Centre truly provided a world where you got out what you put in, and I put a lot in but got so much more out.

I was fortunate enough to always qualify for the Global Conference (top 2% of sales), entrusted at only 19 years old to turn around one of the highest loss stores in the Escape Travel brand into a profit, making countless funny videos, breaking the internet with a Round the World Business Class Airfare for $3,500, raising thousands for charity through our stores and being mentored by the CEO Skroo Turner and many incredible people in the FCTG Family.

I learnt so much while having an incredible time doing it. Flight Centre provided me an opportunity to channel thinking outside the box, doing things the Jose way and to develop my “Three Smiles Ethos” which started in my first month at the Queen St Mall Store in Brisbane, where I decided that I could only ever give a customer a price once I made them smile three times, which was an ethos I took throughout my Flight Centre Career and is now being a guiding principle of how I do life and business.

1. Make the person I am  with Smile.
2. Make my team /my family Smile.
3. Make someone completely unrelated to the transaction or conversation Smile.

It was this ideology that when the Pandemic destroyed the Travel Sector in 2020, allowed me to pivot and search for a new path. My uncle saw my interest in wanting to make an impact and invited me to join him on a project in Rural Queensland, where he was conducting a ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management System Audit of an Indigenous Health Corporation - sounds exciting right? Audit? International Standards? ISO 9001?

Well, it was, because you see, my uncle likes to think laterally like I do, and whilst we were there doing a “ISO Quality audit”, we also worked with the organisation to improve the Domestic Violence Prevention Program - and improve engagement in the community of healthcare services. That project opened my eyes to so many things, about how different life is for men and women, about how different life is in a rural community but also opened my eyes as to how these boring sounding things like ISO can be used to help improve how things are .

This kickstarted a beautiful partnership between my uncle and I, travelling around Australia, working with organisations on how to improve things and not just meet ISO standards but leave an impact. My uncle and aunty also saw an opportunity to set up a certification body with a purpose to make it easier and specialise in the Oceania Region. Having worked all over the pacific in the past, he wanted to set up a body that made a difference and made things easier for people, removed the jargon and improved organisations, not just offer a tick in the box.

From there, Certification Oceania was born, and I was appointed as Sales Manager and we worked to build a certification body that was simple, had Bishop passion whilst complying with JASANZ's requirements. After 2 years of hard work and passion, we received our JASANZ Accreditation to sign off us as an official ISO Certification Body.

JASANZ  is basically the tick of approval to say you've got the chops and that the certificate we give you  is worth much more than the piece of paper it’s printed on!

That brings us to this year, when my aunty and uncle decided they wanted to play more golf and travel and put Certification Oceania up for sale, my fiancée and I decided this was our opportunity to truly make an impact in the most unlikely of ways. So we sold all of my possessions (including my FCTG Shares and cinema equipment), and we got a loan, to purchase Certification Oceania, with a mission to create a certification body that leaves an impact in the world guided by the Three Smiles Philosophy I developed all those years ago as a young 18 year old in the Queen St Mall Flight Centre.

Our first task upon settlement was to break down a certification body and build it back from scratch incorporating Smiles, Impact and ESG in every step of our certification process.

How we did this: 

• We spoke to humans like humans, we asked our auditors what they want in a certification body that makes an impact, we asked our customers what they wanted out of an audit.

• We looked for partners we could work with to create impact built into our certification process. Our first partnership was with an old friend from Flight Centre Days, Chris who works for Reforest, a Queensland based Social Enterprise, so we built in a campaign where just by submitting our application form, we plant a tree to thank our customers and for each and day we have an auditor auditing, we plant another tree. Building in impact to your certification.

• We reset the expectations on profit in order to increase our impact margin, this makes sure that our pricing can stay competitive for our customers and still grow our impact. IMPACT. BUILT. IN.

• We broke down the walls of complicated jargon and re-wrote out our terms and conditions, our audit reports, our steps as simple as possible. We tested explaining the steps to people like people, literally stopping people on the street or in airports to test out how we explain ISO. Improving each time we did it.

• We redesigned our Certification process to make all Stage 1 Audits completed via Teams or Zoom to save of emissions, and travel expenses to clients.

• For our Stage 2 audits and where travel is required, we cover the cost to offset the travel, not passing it on the customer but covering it ourselves.

• We digitised all our processes to be an entirely paperless organisation and provided guidance to help our auditors provide helpful Environmental recommendations for our customers

• We hand pick auditors with a simple question in mind - could we sit down and have a meal with this auditor or if we were stuck on a flight sat next to them, how would we feel? We know that sounds over the top but if you have ever been audited before, you will wish someone asked this question!

Whilst we built back together the puzzle of an Impact and ESG focused Certification body, we simultaneously worked with the incredible team at

Ocean Design Group to develop our new visual brand to communicate this new way of certification to the world.

The process of redesigning a certification body was made harder by my fiancée experiencing a near death experience following complications from a surgery, meaning we had to take time to pause, reflect and again really intentionally decide what and how we would live our lives.

For a while there I thought we would have to sell the certification body, and just slow down, but Talani being the incredible human she is  emerged from hospital and recovered with even more passion to really make this certification body one of a kind and use this as a force for good in the world - this is why we work with Healthcare partners like Wishlist (in women’s health) to improve Healthcare Outcomes as part of our Impact Projects.

Lastly, we wanted to put ourselves and our processes to the test, and submitted our B Impact Assessment - for those who do not know about B Corp Certification - simply put B Corp Certification is a recognition given to businesses that meet high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability. It shows that a company is not just focused on profit but also cares about its impact on people and the planet. As B Corps we work to balance purpose and profit, aiming to create a positive effect on their workers, customers, communities, and the environment.

We are proud to announce that we achieved our B Corp Certification earlier this month as the first JASANZ and IAF Accredited ISO Certification body to do so.

We are proud to be the first, but we know that we will not the last.

During my FCTG days, I ran a store at the University of Queensland and our vision and mantra was simple - "the Four Minute Mile".

You see, before Roger Bannister ran the first 4 minute mile on the 6 May 1954, the world thought it was impossible to run a four minute mile; however, shortly a month after Roger ran his perception breaking run, another named John Landy ran it, and as of today, there are over 1700 people who have completed the Four Minute Mile.

The Four Minute Mile was impossible until Roger did it, and that is why we have rebuilt our certification body, to be one built from the ground up as a certification body for the world - because we believe in a world, where running business with impact is as easy as it is for a clown to make someone smile.

Thank you for reading and welcoming the new Certification Oceania to the world.

José Bishop