Social enterprise. Mission-driven business. B Corp. Triple bottom line. However you describe your company, you’re doing more than just making a profit. You’re making a positive impact in the world, too.

This guide is meant to help you develop a sustainable marketing strategy to spread your message and engage new supporters. It’s based on the Open Source Marketing project, and was created to support mission-driven businesses.

My name is Cassi Lowe, founder of Be Good, and I’m a design & marketing professional with 15 years of experience. I’ve worked with a wide range of businesses, large and small, throughout my career. Over time I realized I most enjoy working with businesses that focus on people and planet as much as profit.

I would love to see a world where triple bottom line is the standard way of doing business. That’s why I’m publishing this guide for free. I want to make sure ethical businesses have the resources they need to thrive.

What is covered in the guide?

• A deep dive and review of your current business
• How to find quick wins
• Keeping your strategy simple
• Creating awareness through outreach and inbound marketing
• Capturing and nurturing leads
• Closing the sale
• Generating repeat business
• Tracking metrics that matter

Click here to read the full guide, and download the free workbook >

Bigger Vision Marketing: A Digital Marketing Strategy Guide for Social Entrepreneurs was originally published in Good Press on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Creating a sustainable textiles industry starts with the raw materials. Ellie Skeele founded Himalayan Wild Fibers to help support families in Nepal, both through job creation and fair pricing for raw fiber, and also sustainable agriculture practices that ensure a positive impact on the environment.

In the interview below, Ellie shares her insight into finding your place in the value chain, and trusting your gut to make decisions.

Tell me about the work you do and your organization.

I founded Himalayan Wild Fibers in order to commercialize and sell into developed textile markets, Himalayan nettle fiber, which grows almost exclusively in the mountains of Nepal below the tree line. We buy the raw fiber and pay fairly for it, which is pretty unusual in the textiles industry. Then, we convert it to an export quality fiber that we sell predominantly to Europe, where it’s blended and spun and converted into yarns and fabrics.

The reason that I founded the company was to create fair payment for the purchase of the raw material. I adopted two children in Nepal. Both of them were given to me out of poverty, and that shouldn’t be the case. So when I saw this fiber, and began to realize that maybe it had more value than just being used in handicraft in the tourist district, I saw an opportunity to do some real good for the mountain families, predominantly women.

What was your background before that? How did you get into this?

I was in hi-tech, but I’ve had a lot of different kinds of careers. I’m not a straightforward, career path person. I’ve been self-employed more than I’ve been employed.

What has been the biggest lesson you’ve learned so far throughout your career?

A couple of things pop to mind. My gut talks to me, and I trust it. Before I had any data, before I had the right kind of evidence that this would work, I had some anecdotal experiences that validated. I knew in my gut that if I executed correctly, that it would work eventually. I think that’s an important thing to honor what your gut is telling you. If my gut was saying, it’s time to quit, it’s not going to fly, I would honor that as well.

The other big lesson is that it’s important to really understand your place in the value chain. Many spinning mills see us as just a farmer, they don’t see us as a collaborator, a partner. Being able to overcome that because we need to be more than that in order to enter the market effectively. So you have to understand your place in the supply chain.

In terms of funding, I would say the biggest lesson or the big observation is that everybody in the world has been talking about impact investment for quite a long time now, but most of the money that I have seen is still grounded in VC-like expectations or the five-year exit. And it’s hard to get something that’s regional, that’s economic development.

Our message is a little bit complicated only because it’s multi-pronged. We have a really fabulous story because we have multiple impacts that are positive. Not just neutral, but positive, and that actually complicates the finding of capital. Investors fund what they’re familiar with and almost 100% they are not familiar with raw materials and the manufacturing process. They understand software, they understand hardware, they understand apps, they understand retail products, but a lot of the hoops they want us to jump through are completely inappropriate for a raw material selling into an established industry. So our access to capital is pretty limited.

What advice would you give to other social entrepreneurs?

Don’t over complicate things. So many people think you need to immediately have a CFO, CMO, a CTO. You don’t need those things. Your potential investors, if they come from that world, are going to tell you, you need them. We’ve been challenged, “why don’t you have a CFO?” We don’t need a CFO; we don’t need a CMO. We don’t need any of these things. We have a Chief Impact Officer. That’s all. Don’t conform if it’s not relevant.

What’s your vision for the future, either for your business or for the world or for both?

The textile industry actually makes me feel positive because there’s so much conversation about not just being sustainable, but being regenerative. People are getting it. The regenerative agricultural movement that’s really taking off in food is even more easily taken up by the textiles industry. Food and agriculture, they’re dominated by very large profit making companies. Food companies are so huge. And if you try to change them, they will make less money. Whereas in textiles, the crops are not so consolidated in large corporate holdings. The brands are on the forefront of pushing the suppliers. You’ve got these leaders and brands that are bringing everybody else along with them, educating consumers on one end, educating the supply chain on the other end.

It feels hopeful. I will add a caveat that the market that’s being addressed with all of this is the developed world. If you look at the less developed world, they will buy whatever’s cheapest because that’s all they can afford and you can’t blame them for that. Having lived in Nepal for 20 years, I knew there wasn’t a market for our fiber. They just need the cheapest thing that they can get. So that part is a little disconcerting.

What action do you want readers to take?

To be more aware of what they buy. When you go to the supermarket, if you look at the labels, if you go to the organic section, or if you get EWGs dirty dozen and clean 15, and you comply with that, start doing that with the things that you put on your body. So that’s both cosmetics and your clothing. Some people will say that clothing affects you through your skin, but it’s more about the impact it has on the environment outside of you, which is why people pay less attention to it. They start first with the things they put inside. Then they’ll go to the things they put on their skin, and then they’ll go to things they wear on their bodies.

Look at the labels. Every garment you buy has a label in it. There’s a lot of greenwashing going on, but with a little bit of education, you could do a pretty good job of understanding.

Don’t buy bamboo. About 99% of the bamboo that’s labeled out there is really bamboo viscose, which means the bamboo has been cut down, pulped, and then extruded. That means it’s made from cellulose, and usually the bamboo is clear cut and the process of producing the fiber is not closed loop and very polluting. And a habitat is destroyed. A lot of really unethical people take advantage of the ignorance of the consumer.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Trust your gut. If you know it’s going to work, stick with it and find the right kind of funding. Everyone who has put money into this company is a private investor, an individual. You have to be really clear on what kind of investor works best for you.

It can get pretty intimidating to look at a tech pitch deck and how slick they are. I think most good investors, again, individuals, not investment funds, can see past that really quickly. I’ve wasted a lot of time trying to slick up my deck. It didn’t matter. It mattered that I had a different deck for a different kind of investor. If it was someone who was interested in economic development and poverty, that was one deck. If it’s the textiles industry, it’s another deck. If it’s just broad impact investing, it’s something else. That part is more important, to really define your audience, and the audience is your potential investor. That’s different from the audience for your marketing material. That feels really intuitively obvious, but I think for some people, it might not be. You need to hone your messaging depending on who’s listening to it. If that means having three or four different decks, you need to do it. Messaging is always more important than the design and slickness of it.

Find Ellie Online

Himalayan Wild Fibers: https://www.himalayanwildfibers.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellie-skeele-1b703b1

The 2-Week Social Media Planner for Impact Businesses [Free Download]

Always know what to post on social media to tell your story, energize your cause & grow your social enterprise.

Plan your posts 2 weeks in advance in less than an hour.

Click Here to Download >

Promoting a Regenerative, Sustainable Textiles Industry; with Ellie Skeele was originally published in Good Press on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Jeroo Billimoria brings her extensive background in social enterprise to Catalyst 2030. This collaboration brings together approximately 200 organizations to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

In the interview below Jeroo gives her insight and advice to fellow social entrepreneurs, based on her career of starting 9 social enterprises.

Tell me about the work you do and your organization.

Catalyst 2030 is a practitioner-led movement, mainly by social entrepreneurs. What we want to do is systems change work. At the current rate of progress, the Sustainable Development Goals will be achieved by 2094. That was pre-COVID, so probably the next century post-COVID. We have the solutions to help expedite the change, so how can social entrepreneurs and other social innovators work towards expediting the change, towards making things happen?

That was the reason that we started Catalyst 2030, with now close to 200 members who are part of the network, and growing rapidly. Our main objective is to make sure that we achieve the SDGs by 2030, and that we change ecosystems so that they become more supportive of this.

What was your background originally?

I studied social work and management, and I have started nine social enterprises, three of them global.

What prompted you to go into social enterprise or to start those originally?

My mother was a professional social worker. She had worked a lot in adoption. My father was an accountant, but he really believed in social change issues. I think I was just obviously brainwashed into it. It was a natural evolution. I don’t take any credit.

What’s been the biggest lesson you’ve learned so far throughout starting all of the various social enterprises?

You make lots of mistakes, so just accept it. I made so many, I can’t even count. Whatever you do, you’re just a drop in the ocean, so don’t take yourself too seriously.

What advice would you give to other social entrepreneurs?

One of the things which I learnt along the way was that it’s very nice to be passionate, but it’s as important to have a concrete strategy. So you always know where you’re going and you know your own result, and the scale you want to achieve.

What’s your vision for the future, either for the organization or any of your other social enterprises, or just in general?

Everyone should be sustainable and there should be no poverty. We can achieve that if we achieve the SDGs.

Is there something you’re particularly curious about right now?

I’d like to see how the world takes shape after COVID. Will there be more social cohesion? Will there be more proactive work towards achieving the SDGs, or will it be again business as usual? We’ve seen how much it has benefited the environment, being at home, not being reckless. I would like to hope that we as humanity learn from it.

What action do you want readers to take?

If you see something, do something about it. Follow your heart, but also use your head. Find the balance between intuition and strategy.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Be happy. Don’t take yourself too seriously.

Find Jeroo Online

Catalyst 2030: https://catalyst2030.net

One Family Foundation: https://www.onefamilyfoundation.one

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeroobillimoria

How Social Entrepreneurs are Collaborating to Achieve the SDGs by 2030; with Jeroo Billimoria was originally published in Good Press on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

For most of us, Africa’s another universe, a land of giants.
But when Lawrence Anthony gave shelter to a herd of rogue elephants, he learnt a very special truth. A thought leader, a dreamer, and idealist right through to the end, he has a message we all could learn from. Curious?

Lawrence Anthony was a South African conservationist, and proud owner of Thula Thula game reserve. One day, he received a phone call: the sort of phone call you kind of wish you’d put down as soon as you accept. There was a herd of elephants several hundred miles distant in some pretty deep trouble- a matriarch gone rogue and killed, causing riot amidst the rest and threats of culling within days. In Africa, there’s no such thing as compromise. Once an elephant herd is out of control, it is inevitably shot.

So Lawrence was asked if he would take on this herd- give them a new home on his own property. To do so would be the act of a madman: risking his own life and those of his staff, a fortune in property damage and with an exceedingly slim chance of success. So of course he said yes. What happened next would change his life forever…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJcbi60i1V0&t=6s

The elephants broke out of the reserve twice and killed one of his rhino, yet still he persevered. Eventually he earned their trust- they saved his life during a wildfire, and came to mourn at his house after his passing. He shared a connection that few could dream of, going beyond the age-old species boundary and all the more powerful as a result.

Quite the bedtime story, isn’t it? Wouldn’t we all love to talk to elephants? They’re amazing creatures, and we’ve barely seen the tip of the iceburg when it comes to understanding them. They can sleep standing up, tell how full a cornflakes packet is by smell alone, and hear through their feet. If there is any more useful set of attributes out there, I’m yet to find it. Check out this video on how they communicate with each other…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVU62pAeLUo

Impressive, right? I don’t know about you, but I sometimes struggle to make out someone talking at five metres’ distance, much less five kilometres! The best bit is: some day soon we might just be able to understand them. Some very clever scientists (aren’t they all?) are using computers to map out languages in hundreds of dimensions. They find how often words appear together and draw this in a super-complicated web that you couldn’t hope to imagine. By comparing these webs, they’ve decoded ancient human languages with the tiniest scraps of evidence, and are setting about doing the same for animals too.

The French playwright Peter Corneille once said: “If anyone wants to know what elephants are like, they are like people only more so.” It couldn’t be more true. They give each other their trunks to suck for comfort, mourn and weep over their dead, use tools, solve complicated problems… you name it. They can even by left or right trunked. Then there’s all the history we might talk about with them: Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps, war and peace, times of drought and times of plenty they’ve lived through alongside humans. Oh… and the weather!

So there it is. Elephants are kind, clever, compassionate and boast some skills we can barely dream of. There is so much we could learn from them, and impossibly this reality of our talking might not be all that far away. One final thought, here from our friends at TED: a new project, that is to create the interspecies internet.

https://www.ted.com/talks/diana_reiss_peter_gabriel_neil_gershenfeld_and_vint_cerf_the_interspecies_internet_an_idea_in_progress

It seems we might not be the only ones talking, with dolphins and elephants and chimpanzees all on the list. Thanks to the internet we can speak to each other from across the world, and send you our daily articles to read. Why can’t animals do the same? Give a million chimps enough time and typewriters and they’ll produce Shakespeare’s complete works. That’s something I’ve got to see.

Lessons from the Elephant Whisperer was originally published in Good Press on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Access to radio and digital audio content is something many of us take for granted. Kristine, and her organization, Lifeline Energy, are bringing this technology to the people who need it most. They’re providing access to education, health, agriculture and emergency response content to communities mainly in sub-Saharan Africa.

Kristine shares her journey from corporate career to leading Lifeline Energy for the past 21 years. In the interview below she talks about what she’s learned along the way and her advice for fellow social entrepreneurs.

Tell me more about your organization and the work that you do.

Lifeline Energy has been in existence for 21 years and we design, manufacture, and distribute solar and wind up media players and radios for mass education and emergency response.

That’s evolved considerably over this time. We pioneered the human energy or the wind-up space, which also then included solar energy and always for group listening. Then as technology advanced, we created the world’s first MP3 player, radio and recorder for the humanitarian sector. The majority of what we do now has the MP3 capability, which means you can add dozens of hours of content, books on tape, whatever you like. People can record their own voices and they can record a radio program so you never have to miss anything. Also, in emergencies like floods or typhoons, people still want to listen to a trusted radio broadcast. It remains very popular.

Now our focus is increasingly going to be a new start-up called Radio Voice Bank. It will be an online platform, as video is to YouTube, Radio Voice Bank will be to audio. It will be a repository, an online searchable library of local language audio content.

If you look at the COVID current crisis, that would mean that people anywhere would be able to access content in their own language. That means that we can then unarchive hundreds of thousands of hours of content that’s already been aired, accommodate for people who want content replayed, and offer channels to topic experts. We could have people with expertise in Coronavirus recording content in hundreds of languages to reach the very last billion. Although there’s so much focus on content these days, there’s relatively little content for the markets or the people that we’re talking about.

How did you get started with this career track, or come up with this idea?

The idea for wind-up radios wasn’t mine. I was an executive with a banking group in Johannesburg and was on sabbatical. At the time, I was asked if I wanted to head this new charitable entity to deliver the radios to people who need them the most, but could afford them the least. So I said I’ll do it for three months, as a favor. I was spectacularly unqualified, I had no background in radio. I was well-traveled in Africa, but I had no background in the non-profit sector either. My experience was corporate, and this was a helpful skill set that worked well for things that were practical logistics and manufacturing, etc.

I have always had a real interest in rural women and rural populations, so it was a wonderful opportunity for me to blend my private interests with my professional capabilities. Those three months turned into 21 years and three months.

Was someone else running it before that or was it new?

My husband co-founded the commercial company that created the wind-up technology and manufactured the first model wind-up radio. They wanted to be able to get the technology to people who needed it. It never occurred to me that it would be something I would want to do, because I couldn’t imagine not working in the corporate sector. I was asked if I wanted to get it up and going and because I was on sabbatical, I had the time. I agreed to do it for only three months. It was a great move; it’s been a great career.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned throughout this journey so far?

That being poor has nothing to do with intelligence. That being poor has nothing to do with very much other than you don’t have the same economic and educational opportunities, and that rural women are extraordinary. I’ve been to 34 African countries. I’ve never had a bad thing happen to me. It’s been a massive learning curve and as a result, my worldview has completely altered.

What advice and you give to other social entrepreneurs?

Every chance you have, you always have to pay forward. One thing that I don’t really like about the space is that there are a lot of “hero types” who can be very self-promoting. If that’s why you’ve gone into this sector, then you’re misguided and misdirected in your values. You can only really make sustained, genuine, long-term change by collaboration through systems change with large groups pointing in the same direction. I’m part of a new group now, a new social movement of social entrepreneurs and other social innovators called Catalyst 2030. Those kinds of principles are at the absolute foundation.

These are people that are generally later stage social entrepreneurs. We’ve got some young voices, there are other social innovators and academics, coming together to systemically look at the SDGs and to create real deep and meaningful change, and the achievement of those goals through genuine cooperation, collaboration.

Social entrepreneurship itself is actually quite lonely. I had no one to take me under their wing and teach me. Although I had a highly experienced board, they didn’t mentor me. I learned by trial, error and guessing. I had a blank canvas, but that suited my personality.

What’s your vision for the future, either for your organization or for the world or for both?

My vision is Radio Voice Bank — combined with ways for people to be able to access content, whether it’s radio, smart phones or feature phones. The reality is that much of the world is still un-accessed and limited to quality, meaningful content. People can start to change their own outcomes. People will start to make better choices and decisions. Many major life decisions are made by the poor based on guesswork. They just don’t have the information they need, so they make the best guess they can. Then they end up often making mistakes.

My vision is that poverty is eradicated, or greatly mitigated. And that lasting and positive, powerful ways are introduced that provide equality for women, that upgrade skills and education, and health options and opportunities.

There’s a much greater consciousness for the environment from this current situation. I think there are enormous opportunities. For the first time in ages people can see the sky in China, wildlife now are wandering in places they wouldn’t have been able to go due to poaching. There are positive happenings when you look at atmospheric maps and dissipating pollution. There are no wildfires anywhere in the world right now.

I believe there’s so much that we can learn from this crisis. I think this is going to dramatically change the philanthropic and investment landscapes, at least I hope it does. It doesn’t matter whether you’re rich or poor, you can get sick. Chances are if you have money, you’re going to get better treatment, but this disease is not discriminating.

What action do you want readers to take?

You have to educate yourself. The world is not a scary place unless you want to see it like that. I’ve been to 102 countries, many places on my own. I’m sensible, I’m well-read before I go somewhere. I trust that the laws of hospitality will protect me. I still have people say to me when I go to Rwanda, “Aren’t you afraid?” I’m like, “Well, the genocide was a 26 years ago now.” And you can walk around Kigali at night, nothing will happen to you. There’s many misperceptions about the world and particularly about Africa.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

I’m fascinated by what is going on right now. I think that solutions to many of the problems that we’re facing are going to be tackled by experienced social innovators. It’s not going to be the UN. It’s not going to be the big NGOs, because their track record is just too mixed. When you look at the results that social entrepreneurs have achieved on their own, it’s extraordinary. I can only imagine the results if we work together.

Find Kristine Online

Lifeline Energy: https://www.lifelineenergy.org

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristine-pearson-6ba2b65

The 2-Week Social Media Planner for Impact Businesses [Free Download]

Always know what to post on social media to tell your story, energize your cause & grow your social enterprise.

Plan your posts 2 weeks in advance in less than an hour.

Click Here to Download >

Delivering Meaningful Audio Content to Underserved Populations; with Kristine Pearson was originally published in Good Press on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What happens to your coffee grounds after you make or buy your daily cup of coffee? More often than not, they end up in a landfill and contribute to the greenhouse effect. Dean Sprague is working to reduce the amount of coffee grounds in landfill by upcycling them into luxury organic skincare products. He combines the ground coffee with other ethically sourced materials to create a full range of products.

In the interview below Dean shares his journey from chef to social entrepreneur, and his advice for other social entrepreneurs who may feel overwhelmed by the issues we’re facing.

Tell me about your company and the work that you do.

I rescue used ground coffee from cafés and treat it and turn it into beautiful organic luxury skincare.

How did you come up with the idea to start doing that?

Well, it’s kind of funny. I offered to give someone a hand. This person is a local business owner here. She has a Himalayan pink salt importation and distribution throughout Thailand. But she wanted some help, so I offered to help. And while I was helping out, I learnt a few things. And what I found was a way of ‘unfolding’ my own skills, experiences and passion for food system justice, the wisdom I gained by saying ‘yes’ to the opportunity was in exposure to a new industry I had zero experience in, the spa and beauty industry. It was an unfolding of skills that made a lot of sense.

If I could give you some background, I’m a 30 year chef. I was a chef in Melbourne, in the UK, and I have worked in the US. I’ve had a great career, it’s taken me, a kid from the suburbs, all around the world. In the last 15 years, I went back to university because I was curious about how food operates from a technical level.

I started lecturing and training people with ‘job-ready’ skills for the hospitality industry, started working with local employers for placement of the students which led me into business development. Being a BD eventually led me into what really made me happy — community development — working with long-term unemployed people, people who have English as a second language, recent asylum seekers, people who had dependency issues and mental health issues. I was setting up community enterprises and community projects, but I always kept on coming back to food-using food as a way of breaking down barriers. So anywhere there’s food shortages, or people going without food, or there’s too much food (waste food), I was in there putting on the cape, flying off into battle and addressing food system issues.

I’m a coffee lover. All you have to do is talk about coffee and all of the sudden I’m off, “Yeah, let’s go get some coffee.” But what I noticed is using the skills as a food technician and being active in food system issues addressing waste; I had a bunch of skills, knowledge and the resources and the network, I saw that coffee is simply being thrown out. The stats say 90% of cafés simply throw their used ground coffee into a landfill. There’s not enough people doing something with it. I see it as a very valuable wasted resource. For example there are people in the UK who are creating biofuels from the used ground coffee, and they’re taking tonnage of waste coffee. You can certainly also use it in agriculture. You can plow it into soil, it enriches soil, and adds carbon to soil. You can use it in horticulture, putting it on your plants. Certain plants you can’t, of course, and skincare.

The benefits of using the used ground coffee is that, not only do you get great exfoliation from the fine ‘crystals’ of the coffee, you also get the benefits of the caffeine. It actually tightens up and firms the skin, it can minimize and treat things like eczema, psoriasis, scarring, dermatitis, and by reducing cellulite, which was a totally unexpected thing to discover. Some people do unfortunately have excessive cellulite and caffeine tightens and firms the skin up. Cellulite is basically fat, sort of pushing out through the webs of the membranes that are holding it all together. So, why throw used ground coffee out when it can be used in agriculture, horticulture, biofuels, skincare? I’ve been communicating with people making recycled cups from the ground coffee, and I’ve even seen sunglasses and sculptures made from it.

There’s a local artist here who takes ground coffee, mixes it with a setting agent and makes beautiful sculptures and statues, really reflective beautiful colors, all uniquely different from each other. We’ve only just begun to find uses for ‘waste’ ground coffee.

Once that used ground coffee gets into the landfill, it begins to break down. It converts into CO2 and methane. Both of those gasses rise into the atmosphere. They deplete the ozone layer, and contribute to the Greenhouse Effect. Stopping it before it gets into the atmosphere is known as sequestering. There’s more and more coffee being drunk literally every day. Upwards of two and a half billion cups every single day around the planet. So collectively there’s a lot of coffee waste.

What I’m observing as well is that as more and more Chinese and Indian people, with their rising ‘middle class,’ extra money to spend and leisure time, they are beginning to do what we do in America, the UK, Australia and New Zealand, they are starting to go out to cafés to experience ‘cafe culture.’ As the uptake of this increased coffee consumption becomes evident over the next five to 10 years, the demand for coffee increases, the offset for waste increases, it’s now time to address it. Not many people are actually thinking about this or certainly not addressing it.

At the moment, I’ve got too much coffee waste. Everywhere I go I speak with cafe owners and baristas: “What are you doing with your used ground coffee?” and they’ll normally say, “We don’t do anything with it, just throw it out.” Some customers might come and get it for their garden, but to coordinate individual cafés with bulk amounts of waste coffee and actually use it productively does take a little bit of effort, but it’s nothing that’s beyond us and our capabilities for innovation.

We can’t stop the uptake of coffee, its’ consumption is increasing each year. All we can do is slow the process of it ‘breaking down’ into methane and CO2. I love my coffee, and as more and more people start drinking it, the problem is going to escalate.

How did you decide to use skincare as the vehicle for reusing the coffee grounds?

I offered to help this person with some business development, and I would go with them into a few spas. The idea was to get their Himalayan salt in there so that they could use it as body scrubs, foot scrubs, and I just looked at it and went, “oh, this stuff’s actually quite easy to make.” What I do with the reclaimed ground coffee is blend it with beautiful ingredients. This is where my ‘Chef’ skills come in handy; blending the used ground coffee with other beautiful ingredients. I use cold pressed organic virgin coconut oil, I use some beautiful sweetly aromatics like Indonesian Vanilla, all of the ingredients that are used in the range are sourced from ‘fair trade’ — ethical and sustainable farmers that are working collectively with community standards as their motivators and especially against the ‘big brands’ who have been ‘squeezing’ the life out of their communities for decades. The Himalayan pink salt that’s used in the scrubs as the main exfoliation agent is bought from a collective who are building schools and supporting women into their own businesses in India.

Single Origin Skincare produces a range of soaps, scrubs and beard oils and we’re researching and introducing new products like our new ‘Chocolate Mocha Soap’ which is coming soon.

SOS uses premium, beautiful ingredients, which are all ‘single origin’ sourced. I only work with ethically-driven people who are thinking about sustainability and the environment a whole lot more than the government is.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned so far?

Well, you learn about yourself when you’re developing a start-up, your attitude to things. For someone going out there without a ‘guidebook’, you’re going to encounter your own blockages and your own fears. You often ask yourself ‘how do I move forward or what is this thought-pattern that’s stopping me from doing ‘the next step’?’ I constantly ask myself: “how do I go through, how do I go over, how do I go around a blockage or resistance?” It’s about being able to be resilient and determined, and I’ve learnt that nothing’s going to stop me (even myself!) from trying to save the environment and from doing the things that are necessary to make a positive impact. In fact I’m more determined to want to do it more and more and more. There’s been many times where I’ve said to myself, “what am I doing this for?” And “it’s too hard, nobody cares anyway.” These are the moments where it is easier just to give up, they’re also the moments where we are likely to have the most profound breakthroughs and insights.

Learning about the self, and it’s true on whatever we do, because collectively we’ve got to get our act together and say, “Hey, there’s something wrong here. Let’s go and fix that thing. Let’s try and do something about it.” There’s enough research and scientific evidence, there’s enough people who do care, most importantly, that are willing to come along, be part of whatever you’re doing. By learning about yourself, and addressing our quirks and shortcomings within yourself in order to be able to help others. And you need to give yourself a little bit of a break. As a chef, I would easily work 12, 14, 15, 16 hour days, seven days in a row, 14 days in a row, 21 days in a row. But I’ve decided it’s more about working smarter and more effectively. I’ve had a great career, but now it’s time for me to use those skills and experiences and passions and actually contribute to making a positive impact.

Is there any other advice you would give to other social entrepreneurs?

Yes. Don’t stop doing whatever you are doing! It’s the little things that slow us down. Some days it’s simply being able to open up the laptop to send ‘that’ email some days, just keep on doing it and taking action. And for anyone concerned about the impact of our own consumption often it’s just those little teeny tiny things. It’s like, when you’re holding a plastic bottle you’ve got the choice of throwing it into the trash or actually separating it into the recyclables. Sometimes even ‘just’ that little bit of action will make the difference. And often, what I’m presented with is a global issue that not enough people are becoming involved or aware of, so it can feel insurmountable and it’s the default feelings of helplessness ‘it’s too much, there’s too much going on and what difference can I make?’ But to hell with that attitude; I’m going to do something that makes a difference anyway.

What’s your vision for the future, either for the business or for the world or both?

I would actively encourage more people to follow whatever they’ve seen or observed that isn’t ‘right’ and for them to say, “Hey, I’m going to do something about that.” We need more social enterprise. We need more businesses with a social conscience. We need more businesses with an environmental impact awareness. I’m going to be a part of growing this ecosystem of sustainability warriors. I’m going to help people who are a little bit younger, a little bit more energetic than myself, to help them to survive and thrive. Even if it’s by just ‘propping’ them up a little bit or by supporting them and encouraging them. Together, we grow.

Besides, I want a world where everything we buy, we give it a little bit of consideration. By saying, “Hey, you know what, this cup of coffee that I love in the morning, it was originally a seed, it was a plant, it was a tree. There was someone tending it, making sure it was watered and then picking it and harvesting it and sorting it and distributing it and roasting it and then extracting it and ta-da here’s my cup of coffee in the morning, I’m giving a moments reflection and thought to everything that’s been contributed to this process.” These thoughts help us to realize the impact each one of us makes either positive or negative.

I see that whole coffee growing through to cup process as magic, it gives me a very real connection to Mother Earth. When I’m in the coffee growing regions of Northern Thailand I feel such a connection to the whole loop of seed to plant to fruit to bean to cup.

I at least take a moment to go, hey, respect to the person that grew it, the person that picked it, the person who sorted it. There is so much disrespect for what is all natural, what is good. Coffee exists only on our planet, so let’s look after both coffee and planet; that kind of thinking is applicable to celery seeds or tomatoes and so on, everything we do has an impact.

Part of the vision of what I’m doing business-wise is that I spend a lot of time in a place called Mae Sai on the Thai-Myanmar border, which is roughly about five hours north of Chiang Mai where I live, they grow a lot of coffee there. I’m helping the farmers introduce more organic farming principles there, so that they’re not as reliant on using chemicals, which is a good thing.

While I’m in that region, I’m noticing that there’s all these kids running around the remote villages. These kids, they’re not going to school. It’s too difficult to actually take them down the mountain each day and back again for school, so they’re not getting access to any sort of education.

I’ll sit and read with them, help them with their English skills, because unfortunately, there’s going to be some unscrupulous person come along one day and go, “Oh, we’ll sign a 10 year deal with you and we’ll pay you a dollar per kilo for 10 years.” And without English skills and without knowledge, they’ll say, “Hey, that sounds all right,” but they’re getting stiffed along the way.

So, I’m helping the growers and their communities with fair-trade, sustainability and ethics principles.

If I could just add quickly, here in Thailand, during the 1950s the late King of Thailand actually started this ‘Royal Project.’ The Royal Project was introduced to minimize the opium growers and trade up on the Myanmar border. He wanted to eradicate the issues associated with opium, and he knew he had to replace it with other crops. So what he did is, he reached out to the world. This is in the 1950s, the guy’s thinking organic, sustainability, respect for his own culture, and he encourages people to take pride in the cultural artwork, dance and music and stories. He also realized that you have to replace the income that was being phased out by from opium. One of the crops he introduced was coffee. He reached out to the world. There were countries all over, Ethiopia, Papua New Guinea, Columbia, Guatemala, etc. that sent coffee to be grown here. There’s roughly about 80 varieties of coffee grown in Thailand. Not a lot of people know this, and there’s varieties that are grown here that are not growing anywhere else now. The trouble is because there’s very little communication between growers, that if there was a wildfire, you’d lose a variety of coffee. So I’m all about bringing these guys together, so at least we’re talking, saving some seeds, thinking about the future a little bit more.

What action do you want readers to take?

The basic principles apply to everything we do. Those principles are of respect for that thing that you’ve got in front of you. It actually helps us in a health-sense as well. It creates a spiritual alignment with what we’re consuming. And it doesn’t matter if you’re talking about brand new clothes or earrings or perfume or food that we all consume. It’s saying, “You know what, there’s people attached to this thing.” It’s about being mindful at the moment of consumption. For example 70% of food produced goes into the trash. So it’s saying, “Hey, what can I do with that?” I know it’s a little bit jumbled, but for people to be mindful that there is a whole process, there’s people attached to everything that we consume. Be a little bit more mindful about what we do consume, and certainly about how much we consume.

If you can, if you’re in a situation where you do need something or you want something, try and go to ethical companies who have sustainability principles.

Is there anything else that you’d like to add?

If any readers know of any cafés or barber shops that would want to know more, I’m seeking those sort of partnerships with people who are aware. The more I can offload products, sequester those products, the better off the actual enterprise is going to be. It is a for profit, the profits are used to get books to kids in the mountain regions, to help them with edible gardens, to help them with more sustainable farming methods. I’m willing to do it, I love doing it and willing to keep on doing it and not going to stop anytime soon. If I could get a few sales through some channels, that would be awesome.

Find Dean Online

Single Origin Skincare: https://singleoriginskincare.com

FB/Instagram: @singleoriginskincare

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dean-sprague-36447343

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Upcycling Waste Coffee Grounds into Organic Skincare Products; with Dean Sprague was originally published in Good Press on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Nadia’s corporate career experience in product and business development sparked her interest in human centered design. She carried that passion through to her work at The Impact Collective and SafetyNet Technologies. Her work helps create sustainable and equitable solutions for the people who need them.

Read Nadia’s interview below for her advice on staying focused on the people you’re serving, and her vision for the world based on fairness and equality.

Tell me more about your company and the work that you do.

I wear two hats. At The Impact Collective, we’re a consultancy based organization that works with impact organizations or those that are looking to create social and environmental impact. We help other organizations by integrating with them, but also providing sustainable solutions that can help them after we leave so that they don’t depend on us and need us.

With my other hat, at SafetyNet Technologies, we develop technology to help the fishing industry become more sustainable by creating devices that help fishermen attract the fish they need and want to catch and repel those that they shouldn’t or don’t want to catch. Reducing bycatch, which is the unwanted catch, by up to 90%.

How did you come up with the ideas to start these two different businesses?

With The Impact Collective, I was part of a program here in London called On Purpose, which is a one year social enterprise leadership program. You do consulting projects with different impact organizations for that year, six months at a time. I really liked the style of being able to come in with a set time frame and be able to create the change that was needed during that slot, but then helping them become sustainable afterwards as well. So after the program, a bunch of fellows and I set up The Impact Collective as a post On Purpose contingency where we were able to still work on projects together and bring together people from varied backgrounds and skills and expertise. So, if you need accounting or marketing or strategy or project management, we can create these ad hoc structures that are a bit more versatile for what the client’s needs are.

With SafetyNet Technologies, Dan Watson, who was the original founder, started it at university where he was doing some research on how to help fishermen catch more selectively. Some Scottish fishermen had just been fined and arrested for discarding fish in Norwegian waters, but they didn’t have any technology to help mitigate that. So he was looking, as an engineer, on how we can help build technology and came across these papers from the 70s where scientists were chasing fish in tanks with flashlights and seeing what their reactions were. There was an interesting case there, so he started building some prototypes for these scientists around the world to test those hypotheses and came up with some really interesting results of being able to attract and repel different species of fish. They would react to different variations of light. When I met Dan and he told me about this technology, I was eager to help him bring this to market to make a massive impact in the industry, so I joined as a co-founder and business strategist.

What was your background originally before that?

I started off as a mechanical engineer. My first career was at Procter and Gamble in Cincinnati where I was working in Research and Development with a focus on Products Research, so how to translate consumer needs into technical specifications. I really liked the human centered design aspect of it, looking at people’s needs, or our society’s needs, and how we can help solve challenges through products or businesses.

The business side really intrigued me because I thought there were so many ways to help different parts of society, which is altering business models a little bit and helping them become more sustainable for really great, impactful ideas.

I had another job at P&G focusing on the bottom of the pyramid and how we can create products and services to help serve those customers. Then, realizing I didn’t know much about business, decided that I should get an MBA focused on social entrepreneurship. I did that for a year at INSEAD and then following that went into the business world of impact and moved to London.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned so far throughout your career?

At the end of the day, and maybe because I’m a stickler about this now, but it’s definitely coming from that human centered design aspect. Understanding what the needs are that you’re trying to solve for, or create a solution for, and understanding the root of the problem and the whole context of how it might fit.

There’s a lot of really great ideas out there, but they’re not always necessarily able to be implemented because it might not be exactly right for the context; or likewise, sometimes needs aren’t being met because we’re not really listening to consumers or beneficiaries at the end of the day. Start from that base of understanding the people that you’re serving and how you can create solutions versus coming up with solutions first.

What advice would you give to other social entrepreneurs?

Being social entrepreneurs who want to save the world, sometimes we get so ambitious and eager about doing it, we kind of forget who we’re doing it for. We’re very creative and want to come up with different ideas. Testing them early on and understanding if the route that you’re taking is the right one. That might involve multiple, multiple iterations, but I think get out there early and start talking and testing your products or services with those that you’re serving.

What is your vision for the future? Either for either of your businesses or for the world or for both?

This actually translates into both of my businesses, hence why I’m working on them. I would like to see a world that’s fair, where there’s equality in all kinds of senses, whether it’s between different classes and systems and diverse groups of people, but also in terms of fairness and equality for all living things in the world. From both a social standpoint but also an environmental standpoint.

What action do you want readers to take?

Get involved. If there’s a passion, sometimes it can seem daunting. This is more to aspiring social entrepreneurs, or those that are interested in it. It can feel quite overwhelming, in terms of what’s already out there, but just get involved, start putting time towards those causes or connecting with people that are in the field that you’re interested in. It never hurts to reach out. I think one of my mom’s favorite sayings is that, “You’ll always have a no, but you can get a yes if you ask.” So it doesn’t hurt to ask. If it relates to anything that I might’ve spoken of that’s of interest, feel free to reach out to me as well.

Find Nadia Online

The Impact Collective: http://theimpactcollective.co

SafetyNet Technologies: http://sntech.co.uk

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadialaabs

Twitter: @NadiaLaabs

Email: nadia@sntech.co.uk or nadia.laabs@theimpactcollective.co

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Creating solutions from a Human Centered Design Perspective; with Nadia Laabs was originally published in Good Press on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Grocery shopping can be an overwhelming task, especially if you have special dietary needs, or want to make sustainable choices. Galen Karlan-Mason founded GreenChoice out of these same frustrations that he felt. GreenChoice is a mobile app that gives you the tools you need to make the best food choices for you and your family.

In the interview below Galen shares his story and what led him to create GreenChoice. He provides insight into what it means to pursue your passion, and how to find balance in your business to create a more well-rounded, successful product.

Tell me more about your company and the work that you do.

GreenChoice is a food discovery and insights app. We help you find and buy the best food for you and the planet based on your dietary preferences and values.

What I found was that, as somebody who has allergies, as somebody who wanted to live a healthy life and try and align my purchases with the things I cared about most, I was often at a loss when it came to grocery shopping. There’s so many options. The average grocery store has over 20,000 products, all of which are making certain claims, some of which are more honest than others. There’s really no good way to sort through that noise to find the products that you’re looking for except for this generic product label that we’ve been using for decades.

One day I was in the grocery store feeling frustrated, feeling overwhelmed, trying to make good choices for myself and the planet and said, someone should really help me. I wish there was something to distill all this information, something to shine the light on the products that met my needs and goals. That was the catalyst for GreenChoice.

Was it always an idea to be an app, or did you go through different ideas to bring this to life?

From the beginning, a mobile app was always part of the vision. We recently passed a really pivotal tipping point as a nation where the large majority of Americans have a smartphone. This is tremendous potential. Yet, often I think we are sucked into our smartphones for maybe less than ideal reasons. The question I started with was, can we leverage this incredibly powerful device for good to really empower us to make the choices that we want to make for ourselves?

Blend that with the fact that it’s really handy to have a tool in the grocery store. Many shoppers are actually already using their phones in the store. They’re maybe comparing prices, or they’re referencing a shopping list, or maybe they’re actually Googling claims. I know I was. We can consolidate that whole experience, let you build your shopping list on the phone using GreenChoice in a very informed way, use it to differentiate products in the store and save you the time Googling.

I think we’ve come to a place now where we’re recognizing the need and opportunity to also be available via desktop and online because of the growing demand for online grocery shopping and online food discovery.

What was your background originally?

A different world. As an undergrad at Brandeis University, I was a dual major in international global studies and business, concentrating in real estate and environmental studies. The plan was to ultimately go into sustainable real estate development. I was excited by the role that real estate development has in building community and the potential it has to effectively improve socioeconomic equality and, quite frankly, set our society up to be more sustainable.

I studied abroad when I was a junior in college. I was living in Lima, Peru, playing soccer, studying. I fell in love with the experience. It was an experience that I wasn’t ready to give up come the end of my study abroad semester, so I decided to stay there. I ended up living in Lima for a year. The latter half of my time I was playing for a semi professional soccer team and starting a nonprofit focused on youth empowerment through a soccer based curriculum.

The idea was, let’s reach kids where they’re at with soccer. Let’s deliver a curriculum that isn’t being addressed in traditional school, focusing on issues of equality, gender relations, healthy living, and goal setting. This way the parents would be on board, the kids would be on board and you disguise this curriculum in the form of soccer practice.

I came back after that year to finish up school and very quickly the program that we had created fell apart. It was pretty humbling for me. It was pretty frustrating as well, but I think it really inspired me to go back to school and study business. I had been a decent student, but had never been that serious of a student. I think that failure must’ve flipped a switch for me. I wanted to seize the opportunity to study, and I was fortunate enough to get into the MBA program at Brandeis International Business School. It was while I was there that I started GreenChoice.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned so far, throughout this whole journey and your career?

The pursuit is not linear. It’s been a zig zagging journey for me to bring me to where I am today and to bring GreenChoice to where it is today. I find that there’s a lot of ways to get where you want to go. For me, I’ve never known exactly what the place that I was going looked like, but I knew what it would feel like. I’ve learned through the ups and downs of this journey that it’s incredibly exciting to just keep pursuing while recognizing there will inevitably be setbacks. The more flexible or pliable you can be, I think the better off you’ll be.

I’m a firm believer that this idea, the pursuit of happiness, is flawed. I think the pursuit is happiness. I’ve found that personally I am just much better at things that I love. If you have the opportunity to pursue something that you love, or something that excites you, it’s worth it. That may sound oversimplified, but it really is that simple. Whatever way you can find mechanisms for pursuing that interest, I think it’s to your best interest and, quite frankly, to the best interest of everybody around you and to society if you pursue it. It doesn’t have to be your life calling, it just has to be something that excites you in that moment for that time. That is reason enough to chase it.

What advice would you give to other social entrepreneurs?

Be less altruistic, but never forget why you’re doing what you’re doing. If you want to raise money, and if you’re competing in a capitalist society, I think you need to train yourself to make decisions or think about the business and what you’re building less altruistically. With that said, if you lose touch with that deep purpose and mission that you started with, I think you’ll very quickly become lost.

By no means have I totally figured this out. It’s playing that line. When I start to feel lost, it’s usually because I’ve diverted from this purpose which we started with, which is to empower people to create a healthy, just, and sustainable world through their food choices. Usually, coming back to that is very, very centering for me.

With that said, I think it’s been to the benefit of GreenChoice that investors, or stakeholders, or mentors of mine have pulled me to think less altruistically about the business. It has ultimately resulted in us having a more well rounded product, service, and vision. Playing that line is a hard one, but I think to whatever degree you can, it will better serve your business. It will also help you achieve the impact that you aspire to have.

What’s your vision for the future, either for your business, or for the world, or for both?

I’ll start with the world and then I’ll comment on how GreenChoice fits into that. I see a day where everyone has the information and inspiration they need to make healthy choices for themselves, for society and for the planet. We live in a world where our day to day choices have a profound impact on the world we’ll see later in our life and in which future generations will live. My hope is that society will very quickly move in a direction to embracing the agency that we have, to foster and create the world we want to leave behind for our kids and grandkids. I think critical to achieving that is that everyone has access to health. This climate crisis jeopardizes not only the planet’s health, but our health.

The world that I hope GreenChoice can help create is one where it doesn’t matter how much you make. It doesn’t matter the color of your skin. It doesn’t matter the religion you practice. It doesn’t matter where you’re born — you are able to eat healthy food, you are able to care for your family and you are able to make day to day decisions that reflect your values. I think if we can achieve that at scale, then the sky is the limit. I think we hold the key to our future, but everybody needs to be on that ship.

Right now, there is tremendous inequality that perpetuates the health and environmental challenges that we have as a nation and as a planet. I think our future depends on us democratizing access to the education and inspiration we need in order to live our best lives and create a future that we all want.

What action do you want readers to take?

I’d love for them to check out GreenChoice. Download the app, it’s free to use. See what it’s like to do your grocery shopping with us and make food choices with us. Learn about your food and learn how to improve your family’s well being in the process.

I’m always really interested to hear from our users, and I dedicate time every week to talking to new users as they join. I welcome them into our community and love to hear from them. Any way that we can improve GreenChoice to better serve your readers, we’re very interested to hear their thoughts.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

I would argue that what we eat is one of the single most impactful decisions we make in our lives. There are very few things that rest at the nexus of so many complex local and global issues as food does…

There is a strong case to be made that our diet is the single greatest determinant in our personal health. 70% of the US is overweight. Seven of the top 10 causes of death are diet related. One out of every three American kids today will have Type 2 Diabetes by 2050. These are realities we should not and can not afford to accept.

75% of global deforestation is tied to agriculture and 20–30% of global greenhouse gas emissions are tied to our food system. This makes our diet the single largest contributor to climate change in many respects.

Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, Dean of Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, argues that based on those two arguments, very fairly one can make the case that food should be treated as the number one economic issue for society to address. Our diet has tremendous power to unlock our personal health and our planet’s health. I urge everyone that reads this to consider this, and at the very least, lean in to your food choices. Start to ask the questions, what’s in my food? How will it affect me? Where did it come from? Who made it? If you just start there, I think you’re headed in the right direction, and we’ll all be better for it.

Find Galen Online

GreenChoice: https://greenchoicenow.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/galenkarlanmason

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Making Healthy Food Choices for Yourself and the Planet; with Galen Karlan-Mason was originally published in Good Press on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Sydney Sherman’s vision is to eradicate extreme poverty. She founded The Etho to help ethical brands and artisans connect with conscious consumers world-wide. You can think of it as the “Etsy” for ethical brands. Her goal is to make The Etho a centralized hub where people can make purchases and know that it’s a reliable source for ethical products.

In the interview below, Sydney talks about the struggles entrepreneurs face and the importance of continually working on your mindset.

Tell me about your company and the work that you do.

The Etho is a marketplace for ethically produced products. Around 2014 I was doing a lot of traveling around the world, and I was seeing a lot of extreme poverty. That led me to see that there’s a gap between some of these ethical vendors, the products people are making, and the increased interest in how to access those products. And I was thinking a lot about Etsy at the time, and how they created the craft market, and how no one’s really done the same thing for the ethical market. So that’s our goal, to do anything and everything we can online, and eventually offline for ethical brands.

You said you were doing a lot of traveling and that’s what prompted the idea. What made you decide to go in this direction, as opposed to something else?

I come from a family of entrepreneurs, so I had already started one business at that point and was just about to start another. I’m always thinking of problems to solve through business. I’ve always had an interest in other cultures and visiting other places even when I was much, much younger. I was raised by people that were constantly looking at how to solve problems.

I think one of the biggest things that entrepreneurs overcome is the mindset it takes to start a business. A lot of people don’t even know that it’s an option, or see it as a very difficult option. And for me that was the easy part. I didn’t see that as a barrier.

When I’m seeing extreme poverty en masse, it’s one of those things you just can’t unlearn. I started seeing all those things, doing a bit more research, and you can’t look at a pair of jeans the same way after you’ve seen poverty on that level, especially when it’s thousands of people in one location.

All of those things converged, and lead to this point.

What was your background originally before starting the different businesses?

I have very little work experience. I worked through college and high school, had internships. I studied advertising in school and then got an MBA to start this business. I did not want to go back to school, but I recognize that a double sided marketplace would need to bring a lot of volume business. So it takes a while.

What’s been the biggest lesson you’ve learned so far throughout your career?

It goes back to mindset and resilience. That’s the hardest part, because I think most problems are solvable, and if they’re not solvable then there’s a pivot, or maybe that’s not what you’re supposed to be doing. I care about the people that I work with, I care about the brands that we are trying to help. There’s a lot that really matters to me. So I think that any people-problem issue that we have I might take more personally than otherwise. Business is very trying on the individual, so I would say constantly working on myself.

The company is a reflection of me in some ways. Always being open, aware, and trying to keep myself sane, happy, healthy, all of those things, is probably the hardest. The rest of it I see as a problem that can be solved.

I just got a new partner in August and before that I was operating the business as the sole decision maker, and now there are two of us so that has been an adjustment (although a good one!). It’s still my own mindset that I have to work on to be approachable.

What advice would you give to other social entrepreneurs?

To have those one or two people that you can ask for advice. A lot of people have a lot of opinions so they should be people that you would trust to tell everything to, and someone who’s willing to give you feedback in all areas. This is isn’t just professional, it always is inevitably personal as well. So, finding those people, not listening to too many people, and listening to your gut. It’s difficult. Sometimes, I don’t know if what I think is right, so having feedback is helpful.

I didn’t take a vacation, like a real vacation, for two years. It’s operating nationally, so I could be on 24/7. Especially the first year, I was working crazy hours. I would say having that space to take a vacation, it cleared my mind and gave me the ability to reassess, and tackle problems in a different way. As hard as it is, having space to take a break is also really important.

What is your vision for the future? Either for your business, or the world, or both?

My true goal is to help eradicate extreme poverty. Personally, professionally, in any capacity that I can. Here are numbers that show the progress we’re already making. Every day 170,000 people move out of extreme poverty. 325,000 people get their first access to electricity. 200,000 get piped water for the first time. We are making a lot of progress, and people tend to think that the world is getting worse, not better, but all the facts point to that the world is improving. I think it’s possible in our lifetime and maybe in the next 10, 20 years, to eradicate extreme poverty. That is the goal.

For the business, we want to be the hub for ethical businesses and consumers. Everything that they would want to do online, connecting to other sites, offline markets even, running financial reports, knowing what products sell best, anything we can do for the brands we want to be able to do from our site. A lot of them are lacking the tools. Ethical businesses under-utilize technology compared to other small businesses. Oftentimes the workforce is there helping them come out of extreme poverty or human trafficking or something like that, so there’s an extra added element to it, which means more work. Helping them get online and connect to the world is my vision for the company, and also for consumers to have one place that they know. We polled just under a thousand people through a third party. There was not a single place that they listed for ethical consumption, that they knew was reliable source for products. They need it.

What action do you want readers to take?

I realized people don’t want to know a lot of the issues, it’s depressing. So just knowing that there’s a source where they can make a purchase they were already going to make, but have that go the extra mile without extra work on their part.

It’s a combination of little actions from all of us. Whatever they can do, even if it’s just recycling a little bit more that day. I think it’s a really easy way to start.

Find Sydney Online

The Etho: https://theetho.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sydney-sherman-038b7a48

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Connecting Consumers with Ethical Brands; with Sydney Sherman was originally published in Good Press on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Social enterprises exist not only to make a profit, but more importantly to make an impact. But it’s impossible to know how much impact is being made without measurement. Impact measurement is also key to growing and scaling a social enterprise.

Unmesh Sheth’s company, SoPact, provides an impact measurement and management technology platform to help any social enterprise scale their impact. Read the interview below for Unmesh’s insight on the importance of measurement.

Tell me more about your company and the work that you do.

Our company’s name is SoPact. We are the leading company in impact measurement and management. It’s a growing area for not just impact investment, which is doubling every year, but also for sustainable business and philanthropy. There’s a strong interest in this space. At the same time, as impact investment is growing, the need to also build the impact evidence in social business and social enterprise is critical for scaling social mission.

SoPact Impact Cloud is an impact measurement and management platform. It’s a technology platform that we have been working on for more than four and a half years. It’s been used by leading nonprofits, religious international development organizations, social enterprises, large asset owners, asset managers, and community development banks. It’s a platform that’s been used to manage the life cycle of impact measurement and management.

How did you come up with the idea to start this business?

It’s pretty accidental, I would say. I’m in technology, I was one of the early-stage innovators in the software integration space.

As much as I enjoyed cutting-edge technology, and leading, being in Silicon Valley, it was fun and exciting to have a nice paycheck and stock options.

Coming from India, issues of poverty, social inequality were core to my personal early childhood learning. My dad was very well known, political and social scientist. As much as I enjoyed the technology side of it, I wanted to use technology and data for the people, for the people who do not have any voices at all. That couldn’t be easy as a career change. I left the corporate career for good in 2010.

I was a technology advisor for largest nonprofit in the world, called SEWA. Then I worked in observing some of the changes in healthcare technology in tribal areas and saw a huge validation of what impact measurement can do to scale the social mission altogether. Later on I worked with an organization in Bangalore, with people with disabilities.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned so far throughout your career?

Through this whole journey, there are a couple of things that I learned. One thing is that oftentimes the grant makers or impact investors don’t really align their outcome with the organizations they fund.

Secondly, on the other hand, they keep on demanding all sorts of data in the form of monitoring and evaluation. Several billion dollars of data is collected, but there’s hardly any actionability out of that.

As someone who wanted to build something that can create a collaborative ecosystem, we felt initially that the philanthropic sector wasn’t for it because we felt it was not transparent enough. At the time impact investment was growing, the word impact measurement was very new. There was no word, impact measurement and management (IMM), as it was called social impact measurement. Everybody had a different definition of what impact measurement was.

Over the period of the last five, six years that area is quite concentrated and now it’s becoming quite important. I just came from four major world conferences such as GIIN, SOCAP, GSG, Social Value International. One thing that became very clear, that if impact investment is to grow, impact measurement and management has to be an integral part of the strategy. In fact, they are the two sides of a coin.

What advice would you give to other social entrepreneurs?

Many social entrepreneurs think such impact measurement is costly. They cringe at the word impact management. I want to warn them that social impact management is not about cost; it’s about learning and improving your mission. You cannot improve your social mission without learning the data from the stakeholders. That is a continuous exercise. It’s not a one time exercise. The organizations that take impact measurement seriously end up making very scalable businesses. I urge them not to wash off this particular term, impact measurement.

What’s your vision for the future, either for your business, or for the world, or for both?

I’m a big believer that social enterprises and sustainable businesses are critical to some of the major challenges that we see in the world.

I think impact investment is aligning to that particular call for action. In reality, impact investment is a very small part of a big puzzle that we need to focus on. Ultimately, the corporations of the world will have to pull into this thing to solve some of these giant issues that we see.

Social businesses are critical in terms of the way they are building a reference model for private and public sector in general. Our mission is to help every social business in the world in a scalable manner.

For that matter, as an organization, we are a mission driven social enterprise. We have already built a very robust, very flexible and comprehensive platform. Now our next challenge is to make an affordable platform available to every social enterprise, social business and nonprofit in the world. We are working through some of the processes on educating the market through the various different online training platforms like Youtube, Udemy, Lynda, to Coursera so people have a clear understanding of what different processes looks like. Ultimately, through the social impact accelerators and impact practitioners community,, we would love to reach every impact enterprise in the world.

What action do you want readers to take?

We want everybody to understand what impact measurement can help to scale social mission. One of the biggest things they should be focusing on is to learn from the data. If you look at the corporate world, the reason why they are where they are is that they continuously learn from the data. The same behavior needs to be ingrained, even in social businesses. I do realize that they have limited resources, and knowledge, and capacity, but it’s up to them to educate themselves in this space and understand the value. Most importantly, I urge them to reduce the fear of technology.

Is there anything that you’d like to add?

There is a lot that we need to do collectively in this world. I think the more we get aligned to the higher purpose, whatever mission that we have, let’s make sure that we do it with a clear intention in mind. If you are in social business, it’s vital that you remain very patient, that you stay within your means, and do something to integrate and improve continuously. A continuous rigor of applying those learnings is what ultimately is going to help you scale.

Find Unmesh Online

SoPact: https://www.sopact.com/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/SoPact

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/unmeshsheth

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The Importance of Impact Measurement and Management; with Unmesh Sheth was originally published in Good Press on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.