In this interview with talk with funnel marketing expert Michelle Evans to learn how she went from a cosy job at Microsoft to making her own schedule as an entrepreneur building funnel systems.
We wanted to learn how she help busy entrepreneurs free up their time to work on their most important tasks. Well, smart funnel systems that automate your process is a big part of that and what she does best.
Get her best advice and start building smart systems that work for you.
Michelle got the entrepreneurial spark at a young age. Today she works with a fantastic community of business owners – coaches, consultants, experts, speakers, authors and solopreneurs – using her 20+ years of successful marketing experience to create client-generating, income-producing, stress-reducing marketing funnels.
On top of it all, she family loving mom who has 3 active kids running around.
As Marketing Strategist she basically helps business owners make more money.
She says she has a proven, strategic approach to marketing that works. An approach you can learn. An approach where you do the work once to set it up and then let the system run. 24/7.
No more losing money on bad marketing. No more creating content that is lost and abandoned in the far, forgotten dusty corners of the internet. No more navigating the overwhelming and confusing world of marketing alone.
This article was published in partnership with B the Change
Fetzer Vineyards is a company with a legacy of firsts.
It was the first California wine company to operate on 100 percent renewable energy, back in 1999, and in 2005 it was the first winery to publicly report and verify its greenhouse gas emissions with The Climate Registry. Nine years later, Fetzer became the first certified zero-waste winery in the world.
And there’s more.
Fetzer was the only U.S. winery to be invited to present at the United Nations’ Paris Climate Talks in 2015, and in 2016 the company became the first winery in the U.S. to be certified Carbon Neutral by Natural Capital Partners.
Josh Prigge, Fetzer’s director of regenerative development, reiterates what his company’s founder, Barney Fetzer, believed — that “Earth-friendly practices yield better grapes.”
At a winery that started making wine with organic grapes in the 1980s and relied on solar energy as early as the 1990s, caring for the environment is bred into the culture.
Today the concept of regeneration is growing more and more important at Fetzer. Regeneration describes the goal of replenishing the Earth’s soil, forests, waters and other resources to rebuild healthy ecosystems that can sustain themselves.
“This is the natural evolution of our company,” Prigge says. “[Regeneration] is the natural next step.”
Regeneration was a new term Prigge brought to the wine company when he was hired two and half years ago but he admits that Fetzer had already been employing regenerative agriculture practices for years. Grazing sheep have been used to help control weeds while chickens devour destructive caterpillars in the vineyards. And literally tons of grape seeds, skins and stems are composted and reintroduced into the vineyard soil every year.
And Fetzer isn’t solely doing this because it’s “the right thing to do” the company knows regenerative agriculture can produce a better wine grape and their energy-reducing, closed-loop practices that sequester carbon help guarantee not just the sustainability of their fields but of their entire business.
Winemaking That Goes Beyond Sustainability
Fetzer is replacing the aeration ponds that have been used to treat the winery’s wastewater with a brand new BioFiltro BIDA® System developed in Chile. The system uses worms to help digest the waste matter. They’ll be the first winery in the U.S. to deploy this technology.
Hundreds of thousands of worms inside a cement box filled with organic filtration elements and beneficial bacteria will eat and digest the contaminants in Fetzer’s wastewater, killing essentially all harmful bacteria and readying the wastewater to be used for irrigation in the company’s organic vineyards.
This new process reduces the energy used in treating 15 million gallons of wastewater by 85 percent. And the worm castings, a nice way of saying worm poop, can actually be added to the winery’s compost piles to improve the quality of the soil throughout Fetzer’s vineyards.
Although it’s already carbon neutral, Fetzer has set a goal to become carbon positive by 2030. Prigge and his team are working with a local university to figure out how much carbon the company puts back into the soil over a given period of time so they can compare that number to their carbon emissions and work toward sequestering more carbon than they emit.
Fetzer has supported a series of offset projects to sequester carbon or cut emissions all over the world, including a landfill-gas project in Colombia and one in New York, and a reforestation project along the Mississippi River in North America.
Carbon Sequestration and Regeneration Enhance the Bottom Line and Could Reverse Climate Change
Prigge points out that practices like reducing energy consumption and reusing wastewater reduce operating costs. “Any time you can use nature as a solution,” Prigge says, “you’re going to save money.”
Fetzer became the first certified zero-waste wine company in the world in 2014 and diverted 99.1 percent of its waste from landfills in 2015 by reusing, recycling or composting its garbage. During the same year, the company was able to save $900,000 in operating costs, just through the zero-waste project.
“I think [regeneration] is completely possible and scalable for companies of all sizes,” Prigge says.
Today, more millennials than boomers are drinking wine in the United States, and, according to a 2015 Neilsen study, almost 75 percent of millennials said they would pay more for products of companies that were committed to environmental responsibility. But it’s not just millennials. The study showed that two-thirds of overall consumers say they are willing to pay more for sustainable brands — an 11 percent increase from the year before. In this environment, companies like Fetzer may have a head start on their competition.
But Fetzer is looking to gain more than a competitive advantage. “If all agricultural lands transitioned to regenerative agricultural practices,” Prigge says, “we could sequester more carbon in our soil than we emit globally, and we could reverse climate change.”
Company culture is one of those vital elements of your business reputation, one that has an impact on what sort of employees you can attract, all the way to defining how the public perceives you – because what happens inside your walls will ultimately reflect on your entire brand presentation. However, as employees as the very lifeblood of your brand, making sure that you carve the optimal company culture for them specifically is the key goal of many growing businesses.
With so many different companies, it’s only natural to have at least as many different methods to create the right culture for each of them. The following tips are considered the golden rules of building a stronger company culture no matter what industry you’re in or how many people work under your wing, so you can implement them and watch as your internal relationships bloom. Rest assured, that alone will be more than enough to skyrocket your success and help you stay relevant in your community and beyond.
1 – Focus on Purpose
If your business doesn’t have a well-defined mission, vision, and goals, you cannot expect your employees to feel as if there is a clear road ahead for them within your company. Younger generations, the ones that are overwhelmingly taking over the workforce today, put an immeasurable emphasis on the importance of purpose. If their job is at a standstill, or if their work has the potential of being that “stuck in a rut” career path, they will walk.
Make sure that your brand exudes purpose. If Apple is all about innovation, and if bright, fresh ideas are appreciated, then all the employees will know that no matter their department or field of work, innovation should be in their core. Help your employees truly understand and love your brand, because that is the only way you’ll ever find and hire talented candidates that will not just be there for the paycheck, but because they believe in your aspirations.
2 – Encourage Transparency
Another crucial segment of a healthy company culture includes how you communicate and what kinds of relationships you encourage within your office walls. If your C-level teams keep to themselves and never exchange ideas with anyone in the “lower” ranks, you will soon experience culture problems. People need to feel as if they belong, and communication is a key piece to that puzzle.
Instead of instilling fear, you should inspire open communication, idea exchanges, regular one-on-one meetings, anonymous surveys, and let your employees know that all of their input matters. When they see that you take their words to heart, they’ll feel even more inclined to find other ways to enhance your productivity and overall effectiveness.
3 – Reward and Incentivize
Remember that we are, after all, humans. We like praise, we enjoy rewards, and we appreciate when others value what we do and how we contribute. Sometimes, all it takes is an email which puts forward specific ways in which you believe an employee makes a difference for your business. Words do matter in your relationships, so even a few words at a corporate gathering couldn’t hurt.
However, financial incentives of various kids can also do some talking instead. Now, instead of an impersonal check or picking out a nightmare gift, you can hand out Christmas gift cards that will express your gratitude for you, loud and clear. They’ll be able to spend the money in a manner they see fit, and you can make sure the gesture is more personal and thought-through on your part. Of course, the occasional extra day off or a weekend spa getaway can also do the trick, although it’s reasonable to expect that only the more prosperous businesses can afford such extravagant gifts.
4 – Foster a Learning Work Environment
In addition to purpose, modern-day employees are eager to advance as people as well as professionals. They will not settle for a dead-end job where not only can they not get a promotion (not even a title), but they also cannot expect to learn anything new and master new skills that will help them in search for a better-suited position elsewhere. Some employees will inevitably outgrow their positions, but the least your company can do is ensure that there is a learning curve to challenge them on a regular basis.
Every single job description you post should emphasize that there will be opportunities to learn and move forward. Whether you choose webinars, office lectures, conference trips, or mentorships within your company structure, every employee should feel that they are more than welcome to expand on their current knowledge. Instead of unhealthy levels of competition, they should perceive their own limitations and boundaries as their greatest challenge to overcome.
5 – Ensure Work-Life Balance
Finally, contemporary businesses struggle with extremely high levels of burnout among their employees. This is a natural consequence of highly competitive work environments, where only those who stay late and deliver results ahead of time are rewarded and praised. Don’t let this become your culture-killer, because sleep-deprived, anxious, depressed, and unhealthy employees can hardly stay at the peak of their performance.
Offer competitive health packages, ones that include regular fitness activities, healthy lunches, and of course, let them know explicitly that staying after hours will not be rewarded, since they need to build their social lives, as well. Let them know their personal lives do come first, and the sheer act of respecting these boundaries will enforce a company culture that is far more trust-based.
It will always be challenging to strike the perfect balance for any company culture and establish leadership as well as guidance as your core principles of running a company. These tips will help you get there, just keep revising your methods and make sure that you always listen to what your employees need.
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Somya is full of energy and ambition. I’m pretty sure nothing can stop her! Our conversation will inspire you and provoke new ideas. It’s amazing to see what one person can do if they put their mind to it.
Somya has one clear mission in life – socioeconomic empowerment.
By working hard, understanding the economy and collectively transacting consciously, she believes all can be empowered and live a better life. She is a social entrepreneur with a passion for helping people through financial planning, education and impact-driven entrepreneurship. She is the founder of Youthful Savings, Managing Partner of CPA for the People, LLP and the Creative Director of Audacious Endeavors. She is a Certified Public Accountant and a FINRA licensed financial advisor. Her social enterprises focus on fiscal and monetary policy reform through the empowerment of people.
Somya is a member of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, Southern California Mediation Association and an active volunteer with the Centinela Youth Services restorative justice programming. She is dedicated to solving socioeconomic issues and appreciates the opportunities of growth that solutions-based, action-oriented thought communities provide to her mission.
Somya is a firm believer in affordable education as an agent for change. She paid her way through a Bachelor of Science in Accountancy, Master of Science in Accountancy, Master of Business Administration in International Business and is currently pursuing a law degree. Somya credits her academic success to her parents’ zeal for education which then gave her the courage to pursue social entrepreneurship as a career. She realizes that not all youth are as lucky and hopes to inspire every youth she encounters to become the best version of themselves, have the confidence and resources to pursue higher education and serve humanity at large so the world can become more kind and equitable.
Freshwater resources have diminished by 25%, oceanic dead zones have ballooned, and we’ve produced 6 billion tonnes of plastic waste since 2015. We buy a million plastic bottles every minute. The resulting fragments of waste have become suspended just beneath the ocean’s surface, where they’re consumed by marine creatures and, ultimately, people. So goes the lifecycle of toxic waste.
Humanity is perched somewhere between enlightenment and extinction, and we need thousands of eco-heroes to tilt us towards a more hope-filled future. Sarah Kauss is one such warrior, and her efforts to hack away at plastic usage has grown into a $100 million dollar business named S’well. You could call it a bottle production company, but if that were true, The Wall Street Journal and Forbes would be speaking about more interesting things. The truth? S’well is a movement, and the dying world is paying attention to it.
If you think a single trendy product can’t carry a revolution, you haven’t met Sarah Kauss. Her reusable bottle, which keeps drinks cold all day, has become an icon of social advocacy. She’s built her brand on the back of enough ecological causes to make UNICEF blanch. Its revenue brings clean water to the most vulnerable children in the world. It fights alongside cancer research groups, plants thousands of trees each year, and is leading humanity towards an AIDS-free day.
S’well is as famous for its causes as it is for refusing to seek out angel investors when it was still a sparkle in Sarah Kauss’ eye. She pumped $30,000 of her own money into the startup instead, then patiently nudged it towards success.
Her far-sightedness has become an inextricable a part of her brand, which is why S’well products aren’t bottles. They’re hydration accessories. S’well is not a business. It’s a picture of the future. Kauss is not a social entrepreneur. She’s a dreamer, and her goal is to displace 100 million bottles by 2020.
Overcoming Hopelessness
She’s no stranger to hopelessness, and that’s precisely the reason she’s managed to bring hope to a situation that seemed doomed from the start. Humanity’s race towards its own extinction has gathered enough inertia to carry it towards its own horrific end, so it needs leaders who’ve learned how to find light in dark places. “No matter how insurmountable the situation may seem,” says Kauss, “I’ve been there before and always come out okay.” She keeps a five-year diary to remind herself of what she’s managed to accomplish in the past. This leaks into her approach to social entrepreneurship, which must push against humankind’s distress until something breaks through.
The term “social entrepreneurship” was coined in the Eighties. It’s a new approach to societal distress, so every leader must invent their own business model. That many of the world’s most successful social entrepreneurs are potent branders is no coincidence—they must invent needs in a compelling way while simultaneously invigorating causes that have traditionally attracted indifference.
Sarah Kauss is no different.
As a Harvard Business School graduate, she’s refused to squeeze herself into old fashioned business models. “It might be good to say that I had a complex business plan with detailed financial goals, but I didn’t. I had a basic business plan with this amazing ambition to enhance the drinking experience in the hopes of ridding the world of plastic bottles.”
Sounds simple, but you can’t build an empire out of dreams.
The road towards a plastic-free future is a challenging one requiring slow, steady growth.
“I wanted to position S’well as a premium brand and not just a reusable water bottle. I set out to learn everything I could about retail and manufacturing to bring this idea for a new kind of reusable bottle to life. Then I hit the pavement hard, going to 17 trade shows my first year. But I didn’t say yes to every opportunity that came my way and took growth slowly. This was pivotal to creating and maintaining our brand positioning.”
The trendy S’well bottle is a miracle of industrial design, but it’s also every bit as elegant as the brand itself. You want to drink out of this bottle, but maybe its contents are infused with a little hope and a generous sprinkling of spirit.
If you had the entire world’s ear right now, what would you say about our plastic pollution problem?
“Action is our friend and together we can do more by doing less. Here’s what I mean: the problem of plastic can be overwhelming. We’re bombarded with stats and stories that can create paralysis because you just don’t know where to begin or believe that your individual actions can make a difference. But they can. If we can find ways to simplify the challenge and offer easy solutions to act on, we’ll be able to get more people on board. That’s what we’re doing with the Million Bottle Project. We’re trying to educate people on the impact of single-use plastic bottles and the simple steps we all can take to reduce consumption.”
When you started S’well, how did you overcome the fear of losing it all?
“I so believed in the business I was creating and the good that S’well could do that it helped push any fear aside. I [also] had an amazing network of people who were willing to help me learn from their experience. This goodwill only made me that much more determined to be successful.”
What have been your biggest challenges growing S’well?
We had to on-board new people and new systems while trying to maintain quality and deliver an enormous amount of product around the world. We made it through the crises of unexpected growth and took a hard look at the business. We made some tough decisions about certain partnerships, created a few new relationships, further built our infrastructure, and basically recalibrated.”
You never raised funding. Why did you take that approach and how did you make it work?
“Using $30, 000 of my own funds was about being in control—growing the business the way I felt made the most sense for the brand. I wanted to keep the consumer at the forefront and not have to settle in an effort to grow the business quickly. Through patience, I was able to make it work. From the start, I wanted to position S’well as a premium brand and not just a reusable water bottle. It was—and is—a hydration accessory. This new concept took time to take off.”
What can we expect from S’well over the next year?
“We’ll be launching new accessories and some exciting new products, plus a range of fresh designs and collaborations. We’ll also be working with our partners, like UNICEF USA, RED, and Breast Cancer Research Foundation.”
Based on your experience and success as a true change creator, what key lessons would you share with a mentee?
“We all dream of growth, but if you don’t have the right people in place when it comes, it can be daunting. Having the right talent from the start will not only help you grow faster, but give you more agility when you’re punching above your weight.”
Speaking to Sarah Kauss is like getting a fresh injection of entrepreneurial spirituality.
She’s replacing industry analyses with determination, strategic triangles with optimism, and basic logic models with hope. That’s not to say she’s abandoned theoretical frameworks, only that she’s throwing all the optimism she has at them. And it’s working.
Stanford Business Review once called social entrepreneurship “a wave of creative destruction that remakes society.” When you’re dealing in drastic goals like AIDS and cancer, all the branding talent in the world can’t save you from compassion fatigue. Sarah Kauss seemed to understand that right from the start, so her secrets to success include patience and autonomy—and why shouldn’t they?
Entrepreneurship is about far more than just strategy. It is, at heart, a grand attempt at personal greatness, and Sarah Kauss is now one of America’s top female achievers. That means she has, indeed, achieved greatness. That greatness just happens to have pumped many of its profits back into the earth.
S’well’s core beliefs are “Sip well. Serve well. Sleep well.” That’s enough philosophy to turn a droll day into something brighter, and those tiny echoes of change are the figurative butterfly wings that cause hurricanes on the other side of the world.
The wind is already turning into a gale. Kauss’ 1 Million Bottle Project recently took the brand to the Sundance Film Festival, where 6,000 people took a pledge to abandon plastic bottles for a year. The product waltzed onto the pages of O Magazine, through Fashion Week, and into TED gift baskets.
It all began in 2001 when an unknown accountant named Sarah Kauss left for business school. That’s when the first plane hit the Twin Towers and the world became covered in thick, sticky dread.
The next year, Kauss opened her five-year journal and realized how far the world had come since September 11.
She had watched the world dig an impossible hope out of the ashes, which is why she can see beyond today’s smoggy horizon. And if Sarah can see the sun, maybe, just maybe, it’s because it is, indeed, rising.
Check out one of our favorite bottles!
Key Takeaways
Rapid-fire start-up growth isn’t the only way to broach social entrepreneurship. Sometimes, slow and steady builds the strongest brand.
Build a network of supporters who will fuel your determination during the first years of your business plan.
Simple business plans can build empires if you develop a powerful brand identity.
Sometimes preserving your vision is more important than preserving your bank account.
Premium brands take time to take off.
Prepare for growth by hiring people who can manage your mature business from the start.
Social causes require work, not complexity. People need small, achievable actions if they’re to be motivated to create change.
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Think about how much clothing you buy in just one year. What about the clothing that you throw away?
This is just your personal consumption.
Now imagine an entire throw-away industry–that’s the fashion industry that Rachel Faller wants to change with her zero-waste fashion approach.
When she sat down to talk to us here at Change Creator, we thought we’d learn more about the staggering statistics of waste in the clothing industry, but it didn’t take long for us to learn so much more from this passionate social entrepreneur.
1 – Changing the Culture of Disposability
Our society is too quick to buy and throw things away. The clothing industry has an entire culture of quick and cheap or what insiders coin fast-fashion. For decades, this increased level of consumerism, matched with a wasteful industry, has led to devastating consequences for the environment, on the products, and on people’s lives, Faller would argue.
Nobody is coming up with sustainable fashion solutions to address the magnitude of this problem on a global scale, but thanks, in part to social entrepreneurs like her, things are beginning to shift.
How does Faller ensure consumers buy her brand, not just her mission?
In terms of fashion, she recognizes that the consumer is not going to stand behind your brand based on your mission or values alone; you must have a product that people are going to want to buy. Clothes have to look good, be at a price point that makes sense to consumers, and be accessible.
Faller’s approach to creating her zero-waste fashion is to address all of these industry concerns. She’s not just creating social change; she’s running a fashion business. We asked her what some of the challenges were in expanding her zero-waste fashion business, tonlé, and reaching more consumers, and she explained,
“The biggest challenge with ethical fashion today is that it’s just not as accessible.”
There are not enough ethical brands out there to meet the needs of consumers. “The way the industry is currently,” she says, “if you want to invest in ethical fashion, but have a party on Friday night, you probably won’t be able to find anything.”
Time is another factor that deters consumers from investing in ethical clothing as demands for new clothes increases each season with brands such as H&M, and Zara delivering. “What used to take the fashion industry 16 months to produce, from concept to clothing in the marketplace, now takes some brands one month,” Faller says. Consumers are demanding more options, lower prices, with little to no waiting times for the latest fashions, and the big brands are giving them what they want–at all costs.
“If we can get our clothes into those major retailers, then consumers are more likely to purchase our clothes. We don’t just need to get our clothes out there, we need consumers to demand ethical clothing, and we need to make clothes comparable in style and price” Faller argues.
There needs to be a demand for our clothing, but we also need to create that demand for ethical clothing through awareness or consumer protest. “Ultimately, people buy things because they like them. Once people come to our store or our website, if we don’t have merchandise that people will like, they won’t buy from us,” Faller explains.
2 – It’s Not Just About Awareness
An activist from a young age, Faller was exposed to world poverty issues early in life which implanted that inner motivation to make the world a better place.
“I knew what I wanted to contribute to in the world. In some way, these lessons from my travel stayed with me from a young age.”
However, not every volunteer opportunity is a good one. Looking back, it pains her to consider that some of these volunteer trips to help communities may actually have done more harm than good. Her advice: “Be mindful on how you try to change the world. It’s not just about travelling and volunteering abroad. Do your research before you decide to help other communities abroad.”
If you are taking away jobs from locals, for example, you are doing more harm than good in that community. “When vulnerable children, for example, are exposed to the revolving doors of help and volunteers, this can have damaging effects” Faller explains.
Being an agent for change means working within these communities, creating the right opportunities for people and that begins with education. Faller says it best:
“I know things can be different. I know it’s possible, especially if you immerse yourself in the communities that are doing all the work and collaborate with them.”
3 – Collaborating with Communities: A Change Creator Example: Dr. Gavin Armstrong
When Gavin decided to start marketing and selling his Lucky Iron Fish to help address the iron deficiencies in Cambodia, he knew he’d have to learn about the people in that country and work with them if his product was going to sell.
Some of these lessons came the hard way, as you can read about in Issue #6 of Change Creator Magazine. After so much research, working with community groups in Cambodia, Gavin thought he could simply travel around the country selling his Lucky Iron Fish, but this approach didn’t work. It wasn’t until he partnered with some local NGOs that already built trust and lines of communications with these communities that his sales began growing.
The lesson here: Work within–not just for–the communities you are serving. You are not going to solve a social problem and scale your business by creating a new social problem.
That level of trust needed to work within these communities does not happen overnight. Many so-called volunteer organizations do more harm than good. As Change Creators, we need to do our homework. Our solutions cannot tear apart a local economy, but rather, should work with them, building relationships to grow our companies.
4 – Outside of the Mainstream
Faller began to question her role in the fashion industry in college after a trip to Cambodia in 2007 exposed her to local artisan groups calling themselves fair-trade. She saw that there might be another way to pursue fashion and stay true to the core of her beliefs.
“I was hesitant to pursue a career in fashion because even at a young age, I didn’t want to participate in some of the practices in the industry,” she says. She studied textiles and fiber arts, but with more of a fine arts approach, by doing a lot of community artwork and working with a community art center.
Her passion for social justice did not go away, but neither did her love for making clothes. On her first trip to Cambodia, she learned about the fair-trade movement, especially as it related to textile and fashion.
She quickly got about to applying for the coveted Fulbright Scholarship so she could further study and learn from the fair-trade local artisan groups in Cambodia. It was not her intention at the time to start a clothing business, but as she grew to know the women in this local community and work with them to find suitable employment, it occurred to her: If not me, who?
Her intentions, at first, were to help a group of local women start their own ethical clothing company. But as this progressed, she quickly learned she could assist them more by giving them jobs and running the business herself. So, she did.
After returning from the yearlong year of research, she quickly moved on to starting her business. She was determined to take on two major issues: the wasteful clothing industry, and the lack of decent and safe opportunities for women in Cambodia.
5 – The Wasteful Clothing Industry
We asked Rachel about the environmental challenge she took on with her company, addressing the estimated 1 million tons of textile waste that dumped into landfills around the world each year, not to mention the factories that pollute 70% of China’s water.
As Faller says, “Garment factories waste a lot of fabric: minor imperfections, excess stock, and offcuts are all tossed out in the name of efficiency.”
This excessive waste is a major problem: That’s why tonlé has a zero-waste approach.
6 – Differentiating your brand: What makes Tonlé stand out?
Tonlé salvages scraps of material from offcuts that would otherwise be thrown away and repurposes them creatively to make new clothing: Say, a striped dress. They also use smaller scraps of material to make their own fabric yarn which is then weaved into bags, scarves, or even chunky jewellery.
Even after all this repurposing, there are still tiny scraps of fabric left which tonlé uses to create their own paper–leaving zero waste. This zero-waste approach is at the core of the brand, but it’s not Faller’s only focus.
Watch this video that details the process tonlé goes through to ensure zero waste in their clothing manufacturing:
7 – Giving Local Women Opportunities
Another key to Faller’s success and business model is providing a decent, safe working environment to local Cambodian women.
These women, who may have been working in unsafe situations as construction workers, factory workers, or simply unemployed would not have the livelihoods, fair, above-average pay and safe working conditions if it weren’t for tonlé.
Growing her business is not just about selling zero-waste clothing; it’s about changing the communities within Cambodia, one woman at a time.
As tonlé expands, so do opportunities, and that makes Rachel Faller a Change Creator to support.
Listen to our full interview with Rachel Faller
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I had a great talk with award-winning author, speaker and ethical marketing expert, Shel Horowitz. We cover a range of thought-provoking topics that will inspire you and your impact business.
A bit more about Shel.
For over a decade, Shel Horowitz, “The Transformpreneur,” has been showing business owners how to be more profitable by being green and ethical. Shel shows businesses how to go green affordably and effectively and how to market that green commitment to winning new customers, turn those customers into fans, and turn those fans into ambassadors for you.
Recently, he’s focused on the profit motive as a powerful tool for turning hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance.
Shel is an international speaker, transformational business consultant, and the multiple-award-winning author of ten books, including the long-running category bestseller Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green and the newer Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (both co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson, Father of Guerrilla Marketing).
In this interview, he shares strategies, tools and insights that he has never shared before and you can’t get anywhere else. Don’t miss this one!!
Jay Shetty is a rising star who has carved out his path by mastering the art of storytelling. Shetty was listed on the Forbes 30 under 30 list, has billions of views for his videos and was the host of HuffPost Daily.
He now works with the biggest brands in the world. He has been invited to keynote at leading companies including Google, L’Oreal, Facebook, Coca-Cola, HSBC, EY, Microsoft and Accenture. In 2016 he won the ITV Asian Media Award for Best Blog and came 3rd in the Guardian Rising Star Award in 2015.
His authentic marketing style is exactly what the saturated digital market requires today. We had to learn more about how he does it!
This is a really unique interview because we were able to pull the two leaders of the Lean movement together at the same time. I personally read Eric Ries book, Lean Startup when it came out and it was transformative. Since then his ideas of taken hold of the startup world. Before that Eric worked with Ann closely, and now Ann is taking on the social impact space with Lean Impact. Eric wrote the forward and the book is amazing as it takes the Lean Startup principles and molds them for social impact. The insights and stories are priceless!
If you don’t know Ann and Eric here is a bit more about them. Don’t miss this interview, its packed with insights and they made our issue 23 cover story for Change Creator Magazine which offers a deep dive into their lessons that will help you become more effective as you grow your own impact business. If you don’t have the app, be sure to download it on iTunes or Google Play or just visit us on the desktop app here.
ABOUT ERIC
Eric Ries is an entrepreneur and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup, which has sold over one million copies and has been translated into more than thirty languages. He is the creator of the Lean Startup methodology, which has become a global movement in business, practiced by individuals and companies around the world. This methodology was the inspiration behind his founding of the LTSE and his books The Leader’s Guide and The Startup Way.
He has founded a number of startups, including IMVU, where he served as CTO, and he has advised on business and product strategy for startups, venture capital firms, and large companies, including GE, with whom he partnered to create the FastWorks program. Eric has served as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Harvard Business School, IDEO, and Pivotal, and he is the founder and CEO of the Long-Term Stock Exchange.
ABOUT ANN
Ann Mei Chang is a leading advocate for social innovation and author of LEAN IMPACT: How to Innovate for Radically Greater Social Good (Wiley, Nov. 6, 2018). As Chief Innovation Officer at USAID, Ann Mei served as the first Executive Director of the US Global Development Lab, engaging the best practices for innovation from Silicon Valley to accelerate the impact and scale of solutions to the world’s most intractable challenges. She was previously the Chief Innovation Officer at Mercy Corps and served the US Department of State as Senior Advisor for Women and Technology in the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues.
Video for Social Impact Communication: What Really Works?
The consumption of video content has skyrocketed in recent years, thanks to social networks and other platforms dedicated to the distribution of this type of content. According to the Global Internet Phenomena report, it is estimated that 56% of the internet flow corresponds only to video. Business Insider data show that more than 500 million hours of video are seen on YouTube per day and approximately 4.3 million videos are viewed every minute. These data give us enough context to understand that video is the most important trend in digital media nowadays.
Some non-profit organizations think they can’t afford video production and they ruled out his asset from their communication products. But as demonstrated by the Digital Persuasion study: How social media motivates action and drives support for causes, watching an online video is one of the main drivers that has motivated people to take action to investigate more about an organization or cause. Meaning that these organizations are losing a great opportunity to communicate their mission, projects, and impact through video.
So, the question is: How can non-profit organizations effectively incorporate video into their communication strategy?
THE OIA Framework
Create good videos that deliver results. It’s not a matter of budget; instead, all depends on the type of video, the structure, the goals the organization wants to achieve and, of course, creativity. We recommend the OIA framework: Objective, Impact Story, and Action to outline the structure of the video.
Objective: It establishes what the main goal of the video will be. The three most common types of objectives are: educate clients or beneficiaries, motivate the public, or position the organization or its leaders.
Impact story: The key to any video is that it has powerful and well-executed storytelling.
Depending on the objective of the video, define the main character that is the protagonist of the impact story. The audience must be able to identify the character with their problems, aspirations, or motivations.
The type of video plays a key role in the effectiveness of the video. In order to determine what kind of videos work best for different uses, VIVA Idea – a Latin American think-action-tank based in Costa Rica in collaboration with Worcester Polytechnic Institute students – conducted a survey and a series of a focus group of 132 people from all Latin America. The sample was composed of people of different educational levels with the common denominator that all work or have worked on a social project.
The researchers tested 3 types of videos:
A narrator with people performing actions in the background
A person speaking without visual aids
A fully-animated video
The results obtained were the following:
According to the level of experience and education of the audience, the type of video that is most attractive to them varies. For example, business professionals or experienced entrepreneurs may prefer lecture-style videos, while the general audience without expertise and lower education levels tends to prefer more easily-digestible animation videos.
Animated videos can be a good starting point for organizations that want to incorporate video in their communication strategies. Since this type of video appeals to a wider audience, producing animated videos is within reach of all budgets since the production cost of the videos ranges from $700 to $72,000 for a 60-second video.
How to start using video?
Users of digital platforms are exposed to an incredible amount of content every day, therefore non-profit companies have to fight to break through all that noise to stand out and deliver their message effectively, videos can be an excellent vehicle to achieve this.
The best way to start is to take a cell phone or a camera and start recording the work of the volunteers, testimonies of the beneficiaries or the experiences of the members of the organization. It does not matter if at the beginning these videos do not look good with time and practice you will master the technique and each time will produce better pieces of content. The important thing is to go out, record and experiment until finding the formula that works best for the organization to spread its impact message.
Nine years ago, Dale Partridge was just like most entrepreneurs.
He was launching his first business–a software company that helped rock-climbing gyms set their routes–and learning how to grow it into something successful.
As the company grew, he picked up more knowledge about how to create and scale a business and he parlayed that experience into the next one, repeating the pattern as he built multiple companies from the ground up.
Today, he’s a serial entrepreneur with a total of 7 multi-million dollar businesses under his belt and the best-selling author of the book People Over Profit. His company, Sevenly, has raised more than $4,000,000 for charities all over the world.
But that was just the first act for Partridge. After all of his success, he decided to change directions–selling off the majority of his stake in each company and starting something new.
His latest venture, StartupCamp.com, teaches other entrepreneurs how to build the company of their dreams in tandem with living a balanced life. So far, more than 3,000 people have signed up for his online course and he’s hosted a myriad of in-person seminars and events.
In May, he’ll be releasing his second book, Launch Your Dream, A 30-day Plan For Turning Your Passion Into Your Profession.
We had the chance to interview Partridge to learn about his experience building multiple purpose-driven businesses and get his advice for other entrepreneurs hoping to do the same.
Slow march toward success
One of the biggest lessons Partridge has to share is about the importance of consistency over time.
There’s a great fallacy in entrepreneurship that says starting a company is the biggest portion of the battle. Often, we’re enthralled with the chase of building and creating something new. We spend months–or years–on analysis, prototypes, beta launches, and revisions.
Then the day comes to launch the business and it feels like all of the hard work is coming to a close. Unfortunately, this isn’t how it works. Starting a business is tough. But it’s just the beginning.
Although he’s now a well-known entrepreneur with a sizable online audience, Patridge wasn’t always an internet celebrity.
His journey started from the same humble beginnings as anyone else. But what he learned from the climb toward success is that it’s a slow and steady climb up the mountain.
“[When they first start their company], people think it’s the Superbowl,” says Patridge. “It’s really the first game of the season.”
The launch of any business is really a starting point. And what comes next is consistent work that builds the company bit by bit, one day at a time.
For his own brand and each of his businesses, consistency–not rapid pace–was the key to building an audience. “What people want is consistency,” he explains. “Consistency beats frequency any day.”
He cites his own experience over the past few years as a testament to consistent work and dogged attention to detail from the start. When he first launched his podcast in 2015, he had just over 1000 plays even with already having an established audience. Today, that first episode has been played more than 300,000 times.
“Remember that when you’ve built your audience two years from now, people are going to go back and listen to the first episode,” he says, explaining how the numbers grew as his brand and his reach grew over the years.
He encourages other entrepreneurs to find something they can do every day and then do it–every single day–hundreds of days in a row. For him, it has been podcasting and sharing something through his social channels. He’s remained committed to his specific frequency every day for years, and over time that work has paid off. Even his early work that didn’t garner much attention has now been seen by thousands or hundreds of thousands of people.
“That work now? Don’t skimp on it,” he says with emphasis.
Building trust
Beyond his core businesses, Partridge has built a brand around his personality.
He’s known as an entrepreneur and a businessman, but also a self-styled relationship guru and life coach. A quick look at his Facebook or Instagram pages will show you that he isn’t all business.
“I spend a lot of my time talking about marriage, talking about parenting, talking about healthy families,” he explains. And it’s often not the type of fluffy life advice that you find online. Partridge has posted deep thoughts and insight on topics ranging from personal connections to masculinity, fatherhood, and cell-phone usage.
And people listen because of the trust he’s built with his audience.
That brand-building and trust have also helped propel his businesses forward. Talking about marriage and children helps him sell $1,000 courses about entrepreneurship.
He calls it “irony”, the ability for him to attract an audience based on the things he shares about his personal life who then become fans of his business advice. Since people are used to cut-throat business coaches with growth-at-all-costs mindsets, it makes sense that an entrepreneur as successful as him espousing the need for balance would stand out in a crowded market.
“Someone signs up on my Startupcamp course on how to start a business or buys one of my books because they trust me on my personal side,” he says. “It’s a great way to build trust in a natural way.”
Being authentic
Building that level of trust with our audience–where they’ll buy from you and rally around your brand and your product–doesn’t just come from consistency, though.
Authenticity is the other key component. People have to believe what you’re saying or, more important, believe that you believe what you’re saying in order to trust you. And in a world of “hackers” and “ninjas”, authenticity isn’t always the first thought in an entrepreneur’s mind.
“Genuineness and authenticity are not always as authentic as you hoped,” explains Partridge. He says that many entrepreneurs feign authenticity but it’s obvious when it’s not genuinely motivated by good intentions.
You can’t fake it, says Partridge. Not only will it ring hollow, but you’ll be called out for it. He points out that, “people are getting a pretty good BS meter on the internet.” And anyone who has seen an “expert” crash and burn online knows it’s true.
Authenticity isn’t just important–it’s the price for admission in most cases. The alternative is to be thrown to the wolves that lurk in comment sections and subreddits around the Internet.
Measuring your success
As an entrepreneur, there are a million ways to measure your own success. Sometimes it’s measured in terms of users, revenue, or profits. Other entrepreneurs count how many people they employ, how much money they’ve raised, or even their customer satisfaction ratings.
Partridge measures his success a bit differently. Business metrics–altogether–make up only half of the equation. The other half of success is how well you’re managing the rest of life.
“For me, I really try to look at success in a holistic way,” he explains about his personal measurement. “If you’re really successful at business but you’re not successful at home, then you’re not successful in my eyes.”
He offers a few questions to consider: “How are your relationships? How well are you stewarding your finances? How healthy are you? What do your children think about you? How’s your relationship with your spouse?”
This is how he sees his own version of success. But as a business coach through StartupCamp, it’s also how he sizes up other entrepreneurs. He tries to read between the lines to determine their true priorities and their reason for starting a business.
“You can really see that in people,” he says about talking with other entrepreneurs. “What are the priorities? Are their priorities money? Are they something else?”
Many entrepreneurs, he says, turn to business success as a way to mend what he calls “some kind of brokenness.”
“I can sense brokenness pretty quickly,” he says. “[Sometimes], people are trying to earn approval.”
And that’s maybe the greatest lesson to learn from Partridge’s success. It’s that people’s intention matters–that your intentions matter. And doing what’s right isn’t the same thing as doing what’s easy.
The right way is often the hard way
Partridge is quick to admit that adhering to principles of trust and integrity are not easy. This way of running a business is slower and more difficult.
“Integrity, maturity, putting people first–it comes at a cost,” he explains about his dedication to building a mission-driven business. “It’s not free. It’s not fast. It’s not easy. It’s always the harder way. It’s always the slower way. It’s always the more patient way.”
But even still, to him, doing things the right way–the way that emphasizes the value of people and the importance of balance–is worth the extra time, money, and effort. It’s a sacrifice he’s willing to make.
“I think for a long time, I was a knower instead of a learner–I had a sense of pride that came with me,” he explains about what led him to focus on his current business and the other aspects of his life. “I hurt a lot of people.”
This kind of self reflection can be difficult. Especially when it leads you to conclusions that may not be comfortable or convenient. That’s when things get can seem darkest–when you’re forced to choose between what you’ve been doing and what you know you should be doing.
Now, he’s cashed out of most of his businesses and is focused on running StartupCamp. He has more time for family and relationships and often shares his advice through social media on the importance of those ties. That’s the kind of advice he has for entrepreneurs now–it’s to focus on building something great only to the point where you don’t sacrifice the important things to achieve it.
“Spend time cultivating your relationships,” he tweeted in March. “The fruit of your life won’t be things you can keep in a storage unit.”
Although Partridge had accomplished so much by 28 years old, it was stepping away from all of that and making the hard choices about his priorities that led him to his happiest point.
It may not have been easy. But, for him, it was right.
Check out these articles for more helpful insights…
Change Creator sat down with Rick Alexander, the Head of Legal Policy at B Lab who is also an expert in Corporate Governance and Benefit Corporations; Author and Speaker on Governance Topics.
B Lab is a non profit organization dedicated to helping corporations and business owners shift their focus from profits to the impact that they have on their community as well as the planet.
This interview led us through the process of becoming a more socially-conscious business owner and being the change needed to redefine the way that the world conducts business.
For those of you who are interested in learning more about what it takes to make this change, here are the top 10 key takeaways and lessons that we received while speaking with Rick.
1) The Issue for Aspiring Social Entrepreneurs Lies in the Current Business Infrastructure
“We think that the current infrastructure much more encourages companies to put profit above purpose,” Rick told us early on in the interview.
The issue with the current business structure is that there is a heavy emphasis on the financial bottom line for business owners. The legal systems that are currently in place for businesses prioritize profit over societal impacts and also make it difficult for already established corporations to turn their attention over to these areas of focus.
Therefore, in order to change the way that we do business and to make it easier for corporations to focus on social good, we need to change the systems that we have in place.
2) Change Begins With the Legal System and Our Bottom Lines
At the moment, business is almost entirely focused on earning and infinite growth.
Our legal system encourages owners of corporations to set their sights on making more money while not putting equal importance on the ability of a company to make an impact on the world around them.
While capital is certainly an important part of running a business, purpose and impact should be a main focus as well.
How do we change the system so that we focus on all of these aspects? To make this change, we need to implement tools that make it so that the legal systems recognize the importance of focusing on profit, economic impact, and social impact.
3) What a Benefit Corporation Is
Simply put, a benefit corporation is a type of corporate entity that deviates from the normal profit-driven model and instead seeks to benefit all of those working within the company as well as the outside world.
In addition, benefit corporations are also focused on being more transparent and accountable when it comes to their business operations.
4) A Benefit Corporation Is Still a C Corp (With Some Minor Differences)
A C Corp is a term that refers to a tax status given by the U.S. government to corporate entities that are taxed separately from their owners. Although it may seem as though a benefit corporation would differ from this structure, a benefit corporation is still a C Corp. The only difference between the two is that a benefit corporation explicitly states their intent to focus on profit as well as their impact within and outside of their company.
5) It All Starts With a Provision
There are no special types of qualifications that a potential corporation needs to meet in order to become a benefit corporation. A corporation that wants to become a benefit corporation need not change anything about the traditional structure. All a socially conscious business owner needs to do in order to form a benefit corporation is to add a provision that states its intention to be a socially responsible benefit corporation. They are still technically a traditional corporation, however.
6) Not All Lawyers Are Knowledgeable Or Aware About Benefit Corporations
The term “benefit corporation” is a rather new term and is not known amongst all law practitioners. This can make it difficult for entrepreneurs who want to form a benefit corporation if they decide to seek help from a lawyer who is not well-versed in social entrepreneurship. “I think it’s important for these younger entrepreneurs to make sure they’re talking to the right people,” our founder Adam Force advises, “just because someone has a big resume doesn’t mean their knowledgeable in these new, upcoming approaches.”
Rick builds upon this piece advice by telling us that some law firms are skeptical about benefit corporations and will actually advise against forming these structures rather than helping them do it.
7) The Differences Between Running a Socially-Conscious LLC and a Benefit Corporation
For beginning entrepreneurs and for those who are running a small business, an LLC is the way to go according to Rick. LLC’s are much simpler to run and have less tax implications than a corporation.
Once an entrepreneur begins raising capital and expanding, their attention should turn their attention to building a corporation. However, both can be successfully run with a socially conscious structure.
B Lab gives both LLC’s and corporation’s the advice and language necessary to turn their business from one based on profit into one based on both profit and impact.
8) Altering Business Operations Means Altering Our Way of Thinking
If you approach anyone in business and begin talking to them about a business structure that may not make as much money but will make more impact, it is extremely likely that they will not take you seriously. In business, money is often the meter of success, not impact. In order to change the way that people conduct business, we need to alter first the way of thinking.
This is exactly what Rick seeks to achieve through his work at B Lab. Only through a better understanding of how impact can make a difference in business will people be able to choose change over profits.
9) The Impact Assessment Tool
The B Impact Assessment Tool is a tool that entrepreneurs can use to understand what it takes to be a socially responsible company. The tool takes entrepreneurs through an assessment that will determine their current social and environmental impact, gives them a comparison with thousands of other companies to see which areas they are struggling in and which they are excelling in, and helps them determine what they can do to improve their impact.
10) Rick’s Book, Benefit Corporation Law and Governance: Pursuing Profit With Purpose
Rick’s new book, Benefit Corporation Law and Governance: Pursuing Profit With Purpose, serves as a reminder to readers that it is important for business owners to focus on impact in order to improve the world around us and helps walk them through the process of using benefit corporations as a tool for social good. You can learn more about his book here.
Are you interested in forming your own benefit corporation? Are you an LLC owner who is trying to have a bigger impact on the world around you? If so, you can hear the full interview with Rick Alexander here and you can learn more about B Lab and their mission on their website.
The path you are on now is probably not the one you envisioned when you set out on your journey. Life has a way of leading you down unexpected avenues and, sometimes, far off the beaten track. And it is off one such beaten track, in the highlands of Vietnam, that Jake Orak found his calling.
One minute Jake was rubbing shoulders with chemists, thermodynamic experts, and mechanical engineers in the bustling metropolis of Minnesota (USA), and the next he was discussing business terms with the Hmong people up in the northern highlands of Vietnam. It’s not quite a tale of rags to riches, but Jake is on a mission to make the world a better place, one hand-made textile at a time.
Before Ethnotek: Craving Something More?
Jake studied product design at University and, after graduating, seemed destined for a flourishing career in the design industry. He landed a nice paying job at 3M, complete with a handful of perks and benefits. The folks at 3M set Jake to work designing interesting items such as stethoscopes, Iodine Surgical Applicators, and RFID Library Scanners.
Yet Jake was “craving something a bit more ‘lifestyle’,” something a little less corporate and more suitable to his personality. When he found an opportunity to intern with an international bag company, Jake knew he had to take that “leap of faith.” The challenge was that this internship would require him to move to Vietnam, millions of miles away from his life in Minnesota, and also meant giving up his well-paid career.
While Jake’s friends and family were a little surprised by the fact that he would leave his job for a $500 a month design internship in a foreign country, they were supportive none-the-less. Fortunately for Jake, and much to the reassurance of his parents, the internship worked out well. He was quickly promoted and began learning a lot of interesting things about the bag industry; things that piqued his curiosity. He loved it.
The Birth of an Idea
Jake soon discovered that he loved designing bags. After completing his internship and learning as much as he could about the industry, he continued working for that company for three years. It was during this time that Jake discovered another passion. Textiles.
Jake explains that Vietnam has many national holidays throughout the year, and it was on one of those holidays that he decided to go on a 10-day solo motorbike trip through the highlands of Northern Vietnam. It was a life-changing trip because it gave birth to the idea behind Ethnotek. “It came out of just exploring the northern highlands,” says Jake, “and interacting with the indigenous Hmong hill tribes that are still thriving there.”
With a keen understanding of design, Jake became enthralled with the delicate process that the Hmong people went through to create beautiful fabrics and textiles. “To see [the textiles]” Jake explains, “was inspiring.” He immediately thought “it would be so cool to combine these textiles with a technical, functional bag.” Jake was also curious to see if any other, similar cultures around the world could collaborate and create an ethical sourcing model on which he could grow a business. He was right, but it would take him another three years to bring his initial idea to fruition.
Watch artisans in action doing what they do best as Ethnotek travels the world
Motivation
One common rhetoric in entrepreneurship is “follow your passion”. The reasoning behind this logic is that if you are working on something that you are passionate about, you will continuously be motivated to work on it. In reality, motivation comes from many different sources. For Jake, it was the reward of connecting talented, hardworking people with the rest of the world.
The trip to the Vietnamese highlands made Jake aware of a saddening decrease in the demand for textiles from certain cultures. High costs and long lead times are a major deterrent for businesses in the textiles industry. They want things cheaper and faster.
Jake realized that this trend would eventually diminish the long-standing textile and fabric weaving tradition in these cultures. A problem, which was easily solvable, and one which served as good motivation to start a business. He initially wanted to incorporate the Hmong fabrics into garments but realized that he had no real knowledge of garment design or the fashion industry.
After acknowledging that designing bags was not only his strongest skill but also the field he enjoyed the most, Jake decided to combine his passion for design, his desire to help communities, and his love of handmade fabrics with his knowledge of bags.
Mentorship
While Jake had already become a talented and experienced designer, he knew very little about the variety of aspects required in running a bag business; supply chain, distribution, seasonal inventory, etc. These were things he did his best to figure out himself during the startup stage, but it was through mentorship from other experienced business connections that helped Jake take Ethnotek to the next level.
Most of Jake’s mentorship came from reading stories of other successful social entrepreneurs. Jake discovered “it was important not to be afraid to ask questions..“people all over the world were so eager to help if you just ask them.”
Jake’s business idea drew the attention of one advisor in particular that Jake refers to as a crucial mentorship. This person offered valuable advice and guidance on a weekly basis and asked one small thing in return: the pleasure of being part of such a great business. “He has helped us avoid a lot of potentially big mistakes,” says Jake. A mentor is important in any business.
Marketing: How Sharing the Company Story Led to Success
Paying for advertising is one of the quickest ways for a startup to build brand recognition and begin generating revenue, which is important to consider in the early stages of creating a business. However, Jake chose a different approach for Ethnotek Bags – he decided on good old fashioned word-of-mouth marketing.
“Once you understand what we do, it’s pretty easy to get excited about it.” Jake Orak
Word-of-mouth is the oldest and one of the most effective forms of marketing. But it often takes time. But Jake had a great business and a fantastic story behind it. That is just what Ethnotek is, as Jake says, “Once you understand what we do it’s pretty easy to get excited about it.” Aside from a few recent Facebook boosted posts, the company has not paid for any advertising, instead creating authenticity with the brand, and building strong relationships with customers.
The Future
Ethnotek currently sources its products from cultures across three continents. Jake Orak is the proud CEO of a successful company that provides durable, practical and stylish bags. Each sale helps to ensure the revival of a tradition, the preservation of unique cultural identities and the livelihood of global communities.
Jake lives and runs the business from headquarters in Vietnam. Ethnotek’s growth is continuous. The product range now includes laptop bags and accessories such as travel wallets and sling bags. It is a global movement — it’s all about the future of these artisan villages that Jake is so passionate about celebrating and empowering.
One of the most important growth channels we have found at Change Creator is through strong partnerships. What has been most fascinating is how easily we can become stuck behind the desk working in the business rather than getting out to conferences and working on the business. One day at the right conference can be a game-changer based on who you meet.
Rafik Riad is originally from Egypt and has studied and worked globally on policy design and project implementation in the field of international development.
In 2011, Rafik founded SALT, a fair trade social enterprise that worked with communities in Africa and Latin America. Rafik’s appreciation for social enterprise led him to found Buy Good. Feel Good. in 2014.
Today Buy Good. Feel Good. is North America’s largest marketplace dedicated to connecting social enterprises with buyers and consumers.
Here’s a great example. We interviewed the founder of S’well water bottles, Sarah Kauss, for Change Creator Magazine issue 17 and found out that in one year she attended 17 tradeshows where she made all her big distribution deals. Today, S’well has reached over $100M in revenue. That’s certainly worth the price of admission!
We love the work Buy Good. Feel Good. is doing and are the official media sponsors for the 2019 event. And of course, our team will be representing in Toronto this April to attend the Buy Good. Feel Good. event as well. Maybe we’ll see you there?
This is where good people motivated to push the world in the right direction through responsible business and purchasing will convene. Full of energy and excitement you can expect to connect with ambitious entrepreneurs, distributors and buyers alike. You might be one conversation away from changing your business forever at Buy Good. Feel Good. Expo. As they say, surround yourself with good people and good things can happen — but you have to put the effort out.
The event goes for a couple days starting on April 12, 2019 and ending on April 14, 2019.
Nows the time to start planning and reserving your spot an exhibitor.
In days of yore, April Fool’s Day was about leaving glitter bombs on car seats and planting grass in colleagues’ keyboards. These days, it’s a marketing event glitzy enough to compete with the Super Bowl. Brands across the globe put their senses of humour to work in an attempt to win attention from a target demographic that just isn’t listening.
It’s been 12 years since Google launched its April Fool’s Day campaign, and it continues to gather a wider audience. The world’s favourite browser has reinvented the day, and every year marketing publications from Forbes to The Independent publish piece after piece about what Google pulled out of its hat this time. The brand has become such a ubiquitous part of April 1 that it’s featured on the April Fool’s Day Wikipedia Page. Take that, David Ogilvy. Even history’s most renowned copywriter didn’t manage to earn that much free brand exposure – but you can.
Nonsense and Sensibility: The 2015 Campaign
Google launched the prank ‘slow internet movement’, turned Google Maps into a Pac-Man game, and released yet another hoax app called Chrome Selfie. It merged two potent strategies into one: guerrilla marketing and video-based optimization. If you’re a small business owner with a budget small enough to cry over, it’s this combination that you need to be wielding to put your brand on the map (with or without Pac Man).
Guerrilla What?
Guerrilla marketing works because it’s absurdly cheap and easy to understand. All you need to make a campaign work is an overactive imagination.
It’s effective because today’s consumers have no patience for big budget advertising. In fact, they have no patience for anything that smells even vaguely of advertising.
Your promotions need to have an impact, but you needn’t hire Martin Scorsese to handle your video. Dropbox took itself from zero to 100 million users on the wings of a 2D explainer video and, four years later, its videos and graphics still haven’t deviated from that format. Why change what works? Google isn’t interested in Disney-worthy animation either. Why would it be when consumers aren’t?
How to “Video”
Fifty-two percent of marketers claim that video offers them a higher return on investment than any other medium, and it will account for 55% of all online traffic in 2016, so it pays to understand how to use it.
Subjective video quality has become a field of its own, unveiling the facets that resonate most with audiences.
Studies show that consumers respond well to unusual video elements like:
Dim lighting or night scenes
Bouncing images or handheld cameras
Animation with scrolling text
Ombre color effects
Unusual shapes and moving patterns
High color saturation
Camera pans and zooms
You might have noticed that these elements are not on the list:
Tom Cruise and Charlize Theron
Oscar-worthy performances
DreamWorks-style special effects
A Pulitzer-worthy script
There’s a reason for that. The internet is the first medium in a century to have been invented for consumers instead of advertisers. This unusual characteristic has created a new era in modern marketing. Consumers are now notoriously distrustful of advertising because the internet is their turf, not that of Saatchi and Saatchi. The second they catch you trying to sell to them, you’ve lost them, so these days, your campaign needs to entertain, inform, and engage. The masses no longer listen to corporations, but customer influencers. For that reason, the only marketing of any value today must be consumed out of choice.
You don’t get sceptical buyers to consume your videos using the kind of direction that belongs on a Hollywood set. It’s stories that achieve that. Google has capitalized on the humble yarn to turn a simple search engine into a way of life. It has woven a giant patchwork quilt of tales across the web in the form of videos for every one of its global demographics. Seth Godin summarises this approach perfectly in his essay, Shouting into the Wind: “If enough people care, often enough, the word spreads, the standards change, the wind dies down. If enough people care, the culture changes.” People spend money only when what they’re buying is worth more than its price, and Google is a lifestyle with a personality all of its own.
Where Google Ends and You Begin: Fighting with Budgets
Small businesses typically solve their cash flow problems through direct response marketing: campaigns that call for a specific action, whether it’s subscribing to a mailing list or placing an order. In a way, there’s a method to their madness: If you try mimicking the big-budget-quality of brand titans like Google and Coca Cola, you will fail. Google and Dropbox have, however, demonstrated how branding can be done on a small business budget. Chrome might have the kind of marketing dollars you can only dream about, but it knows how to make its cents count.
In video marketing’s infancy, the suggested length for an explainer was two minutes, but Chrome has put its money on 15-second ads instead: A baby chews on a laptop, a dog swings on a hammock, and a man films himself shopping. These are not exactly videos worthy of Steven Spielberg’s directing smarts, but they work because they tell the Chrome story and appeal to emotion. There’s plenty of humor there, but primarily, Google has fed old fashioned branding through the modern-day media of digital video and gamification. It’s then repackaged all three and sent them out as a guerrilla campaign. In some cases, it didn’t even film its own visuals: it’s far cheaper to source and buy existing content as long as it serves your campaign.
Doing Video the Google Way
Appeals to emotion are one of the most effective ways to sell, and brands are now focusing as much on 2D animation as they are 3D because storytelling is far more important to today’s viewers than visual impact. This may be responsible for the rise in popularity of 2D—it’s far easier to develop a novel style with it than it is with 3D, and online viewers respond, not to a particular style or genre, but to pure novelty.
Facebook’s Auto-play Generation
Getting your audience to click ‘play’ is no longer the challenge it once was. In September, Facebook rolled out auto-playing videos, which have increased engagement and made storytelling far richer for marketers. Sound and sight are instantly and automatically engaged during browsing, and once the video has been played all the way through, a carousel appears introducing two additional adverts by the same marketer.
During the feature’s test run, KLLM Royal Dutch Airlines’ ad campaign was compared across Facebook and YouTube. Fans engaged with the YouTube version 300,000 times, but 350,000 on Facebook. The auto-play option will introduce a new era of native marketing, and advertisers will no longer have a choice as to whether or not to use this kind of strategy. There is simply no option. Competitive advantage just became harder to secure without video and guerrilla marketing.
Expanding from Concept to Campaign
Video lacks a certain longevity, so guerrilla campaigns benefit enormously from other media online and off. The “Dumb Ways to Die” campaign of a small train company developed a video that exploited two catchy elements: cute 2D characters and catchy music. Its cartoons did as their namesake suggested: demonstrate idiotic ways to die. To make sure their audience retained the information, they gamified the concept, rolled out a range of soft toys, and published a book. Taking guerrilla marketing into the offline world can be expensive, but it’s not always necessary if you expand your concept to mobile, tablet, and social media instead.
How to Run a Guerrilla Campaign in a Few Easy Steps
Assess your demographic. Not all target markets are responsive to guerrilla campaigns. They rarely put forward the corporate culture needed for regulated industries such as banks and insurance companies. Guerrilla campaigns depend on ruffling feathers, so make sure they fit your brand.
Tell your story. What is your brand? Who is your demographic? What culture do you want to portray? Most importantly, what do you have to offer your customers that is more valuable than the money they would need to spend on your product?
If you had to communicate your essence in five seconds, what would you say? This is the core of your message.
Guerrilla campaigns rely on press attention. With that in mind, conceptualise your campaign, making it edgy enough to win the interest of both customers and the media. The insights of a PR manager are useful at this stage.
Make sure your campaign resonates and draws a response. Does it inspire, provoke laughter, or demand thought?
Use a combination of media: games, mobile-based tactics, text-based content… you’re only limited by your imagination.
Create a way to track your results. Constantly reassess and adapt your campaign to push up your return on investment.
Guerrilla campaigns demand devoted customer follow-up. After they’ve made a buy decision, you need to make contact.
Search Engine Optimization
Even a guerrilla campaign needs to catch Google’s attention.
Decide where to host your video. YouTube works well for this kind of campaign because its intent is to entertain. Self-hosting gives you more control over your search engine results, so consider using Wistia and Vimeo Pro. These are paid services, but they link to your website, which may increase your return on investment.
Choose keywords for your video file name, title, and the XML sitemap.
Keep a tight rein on your comments section. It’s a unique opportunity to offer service and develop relationships with your potential clients while you identify your top customer influencers.
Provide a video transcript if possible. This directs Google to your content via a wider array of keywords and keyword densities.
Rich snippets, Schema.org markup language, and Geotagging localize your brand and attract search spiders.
Create a strategy for building links that lead to your videos. Blogs, third-party sites, and Facebook are traditionally used, but if you’re going the guerrilla way, it will pay to think outside the box.
Dr James McQuivey of Forrester Research claims that one minute of video is worth 1.8 million words.
These are not just cat and baby videos.The average internet user sees about 32 videos every month, and 50% of C-suite execs watch business related videos at least once a week. Most click on the marketer’s site afterwards.
According to Forbes, 90% of customers say video helps them make buying decisions and 64% of customers say that seeing a video makes them more likely to buy. Are you rich and successful enough to afford not to have a video campaign?
Many social entrepreneurs often wonder how they can help hundreds of thousands of people, and at the same time build a profitable enterprise so they can turn their venture from a side hustle to a full-time endeavor that multiplies their impact and income.
Gavin Armstrong, CEO and founder of Lucky Iron Fish, has made that happen. He not only created a product that has a global impact, but also successfully commercialized the venture for it to become profitable and sustainable. In this interview with Change Creator, Gavin shared his experience and insights on the evolution of the business.
Iron deficiency impacts over 3.5 billion people around the world! Here’re 5 marketing lessons he’s learned along the way, and how you, too, can apply them to navigate the world of social entrepreneurship:
Understand the Local 1 Community
Lucky Iron Fish was first developed in Cambodia as an effort to help solve iron deficiency. Gavin’s effort to understand the local lifestyle and tap into the Cambodian culture helped him align with the communities and gain traction in the market. He conducted extensive research to understand those he was marketing to.
He spent a few years in the country while launching the product, and paid attention to the psychographic of the market:
He developed a focus group kit to gain insights on how the villagers see and feel about things, which helped inform how he could adapt his message for different communities.
He talked to the women in the villages – end users who cook for the family – to understand the impact of iron deficiency in the country, as well as their cooking habits, so he could better integrate the product into their lifestyle and routine.
He showed them the different shapes under development to find out which one resonates.
He chose the fish design as it’s a symbol of luck in the local culture, making it easy for villagers to accept this new product and use it on a daily basis. When he was conducting research, Gavin didn’t speak the local language. He didn’t completely rely on the translator to get his answers, either. Instead, he paid attention to the facial expressions of the interviewees and the way they physically react to and interact with the product.
To make sure he creates a product that’s compelling to the end users, Gavin didn’t simply ask what they want and take the response at face value. He observed their interactions with the product at a tactile and physical level. The research and interactions with the local communities gave him valuable input to quickly iterate the design through a process of rapid prototyping and refine the product such that it’s widely accepted by the local market.
This level of attentiveness helped Gavin build trust with the community – an essential component to the success of the product. After all, he was asking the villagers to put the product into their cooking pot to make food for their families. Gavin’s deep understanding of the culture and the market also informed the development of the brand’s image and color palette. Like many social entrepreneurs operating in a foreign culture, he had to learn from mistakes and quickly adapt. For example, when they tried to cut cost with black and white package design, they found that this didn’t work because these colors are equated with death in Cambodia.
The final packaging is done in red and blue and white – the Cambodian flag color – to evoke national pride. Every element of the brand – from the shape of the product to the color palette – is carefully considered so the product can be easily accepted into the households of the targeted end users. Gavin also innovated the product to meet the needs of rural Cambodia. The principal feature of the Lucky Iron Fish is that it lasts for about five years, providing a practical and sustainable solution to the iron deficiency problem in the area.
Embrace The Origin
Gavin wanted the brand to have a global impact and implication, at the same time recognize the history of its origin. For that to happen, the brand needed to appeal to a wide global audience while staying true to its original mission. They use storytelling techniques that connect consumers with the brand on an emotional level to help build a loyal following. The design of Lucky Iron Fish’s logo and website pay tribute to the root of the brand by using the color palette of the original packaging – red, white and blue – as well as images of villagers from rural Cambodia.
Gavin shared the story of Lucky Iron Fish’s origin and local involvement, connecting consumers with the product at an emotional level. While embracing the origin, Gavin didn’t lose sight of the global market. The company leveraged the simple 3-color design of the original packaging and translated it into a template that can be adapted to different markets. The simple and customizable template allows the use of color combinations that speak to local markets while keeping a consistent image for the brand.
Develop Local Partnerships
One major blunder in Lucky Iron Fish’s early days happened in sales and product distribution. Initially, Gavin developed the idea of a “traveling road show” – he’d travel to villages and stop for a couple of days, present the product then move on. He made the incorrect assumption that because the value proposition of the product was so clear that he could just go from village to village and sell it.
The biggest disconnect occurred when he failed to establish trust within the local communities. He didn’t stick around long enough to answer questions, engage in dialogues, and give villagers the opportunity to try the product before making their purchase. To remedy the less-than-desirable results, Gavin switched gears. He partnered up with NGOs that have already established trust and a line of communication with the communities.
Local representatives of these organizations are available to answer questions and assist villagers to make sure they’re getting results from the product. Partnering with local NGOs also helps the company reduce costs. Although they still go to villages to offer talks and workshops, they can now increase efficiency by covering more ground in less time.
Leverage Media Opportunity
Lucky Iron Fish has a “Buy-One-Give- One” program – for every fish purchased on their website, they donate one to those in need.
The initial volume of sales (and the number of fish donated) worked fine for partnerships with small- and medium-sized NGOs. However, Gavin had challenges getting in the door with larger organizations.
The big break came when the company was featured in a BBC article. Their sales went from 100 in a month to 100 in an hour. Besides immediate revenue for the company, it also meant they now have tens of thousands of fish to give away. Offering free product is a great way to enter the NGO space. Almost overnight, Gavin had the volume to approach large NGOs and establish partnerships.
This media opportunity not only helped the company increase revenue by turning their online business from a secondary component to being front and center, thereby reaching a global market, but also gave them the traction to gain the much-needed foothold through larger NGOs in local communities they wanted to help.
Introduce Product to Developed Countries
Gavin saw an opportunity when he realized that iron deficiency is also a problem in the developed world. In fact, it’s a serious health concern in the US and Canada. He also recognized the gap in the market – there’s an increasing number of health and socially conscious women looking for a more natural solution that’s healthier than popping a pill every day.
The company started offering the product to this demographic – women who manage the household looking for ways to raise a healthy family – attracting them with not only the innovative feature but also the “buy- one-donate-one” program.
At the time of our interview with Gavin, the product was available in 66 countries, and as of January 2019, they have given away over 45,000 Lucky Iron Fish, helping 200,000 people.
The commercial success of the product, in turn, fuels the social impact that inspired Gavin to start the venture in the first place. There are many marketing lessons we can learn from the success of Lucky Iron Fish. Even though the specifics may vary depending on context, it’s always important to listen to your market, pivot and adapt quickly, and not be shy about introducing your product to developed countries so you can leverage the success to fuel your venture.
The greatest social movements in this world not only bring us together, they focus on what we can do as individuals to change something intrinsically wrong with the world. In short, they give us the power and authority — as individuals — to make our world a better place.
When a radical movement can harness each of us to dig deep into our power, it becomes a compelling, sustainable force of good in this world. The activist spirit must go beyond ourselves if we want to make any sort of an impact in this world.
That is why it is so vital to celebrate “The Body Is Not an Apology” — a thriving, global multimedia platform bringing millions of people together, changing the global narrative on body activism, all spearheaded by the incomparable Sonya Renee Taylor.
Investing in Every Body
Last October, the Change Creator team went to the world’s largest social impact funding conference, known as SOCAP conference, in San Francisco, California. As you can imagine, it was an eclectic mix of people from around the world, all there so we could discuss impact + money.
Many themes emerged from that conference — much more than a pure definition of what social impact investing is, what it could be, or how we measure impact. Themes of diversity in investment — or rather, the lack of diversity in investment — was a theme that kept popping up its head throughout the week.
At one of the mini-sessions that I attended, named Money Divas, the panel discussed the lack of support and funding for women-led companies. When the panel opened up questions to the audience, I got to meet the remarkable Sonya, whose commentary on the lack of female funding was:
“If we can accomplish so much with so little, imagine what we could do if someone truly invested in us and our ideas.”
At that moment, I knew I had to get to know this force of nature. At that time, I had yet to get the full backstory but I knew I wanted to invest in that kind of presence, that kind of commitment. The simple idea that we should amplify each other’s success really struck a chord with me.
I have thought about that idea of what impact investing really means. It’s not just enough to say we’re funding ideas that change the world if we are not funding all kinds of people changing the world — women, minorities, indigenous, disabled, trans. All people deserve investment.
(Sonya’s speech at SOCAP.)
A Formula Towards Radical Leadership
I think Sonya would be the first person to tell you that everything that has led her to where she is now is by accident. The formula for her immense success — there is none. Every choice she made, every new endeavor came to her because she was examining what it meant to be human because she was intensely curious, but also because she was also intensely outspoken.
Sonya’s journey to become the radical leader she is today started with a conversation. On tour, with her poetry troupe doing the National Poetry Slam Championship in Tennessee, Sonya first uttered the words that would change the trajectory of her life. She describes this intimate conversation in her book, “The Body Is Not An Apology”:
“We were complicated and honest with each other, and this is how I wound up in a conversation with my teammate Natasha, an early-thirtysomething living with cerebral palsy and fearful she might be pregnant. Natasha told me how her potential pregnancy was most assuredly by a guy who was just an occasional fling. All of life was up in the air for Natasha, but she was abundantly clear that she had no desire to have a baby and not by this person.”
As Sonya will tell you, her nosiness and openness made it easy for her to probe into the details of how her friend got pregnant in the first place.
“Instinctually, I asked Natasha why she had chosen not to use a condom with this casual sexual partner with whom she had no interest in procreating. Neither Natasha nor I knew that my honest question and her honest answer would be the catalyst for a movement. Natasha told me her truth: “My disability makes sex hard already, with positioning and stuff. I just didn’t feel like it was okay to make a big deal about using condoms.”
That is when Sonya, in a way to comfort her distraught friend uttered these words: “Natasha, your body is not an apology. It is not something you give to someone to say, ‘Sorry for my disability.’” Sometimes all you need to do to start something is to speak it into existence. When Sonya heard herself utter those words, something quite special stuck.
“Language has the power to create. As we speak a thing, we are literally allowing it to exist in this world.”
The truth that Sonya comforted her friend with would soon become the mantra by which she lived her life. Those words would stick with Sonya for quite some time. They would not only become a poem, but a Facebook page, then a thriving movement, then a company.
In the early days, Sonya might not have imagined where those words would lead her life, but she could sense she was on to something much larger than herself, which she alludes to in this early performance of the poem as she tells the audience of the Facebook Group they must like and support. “This is the poem that spawned the Facebook page that will spawn the movement. I’m claiming it.”
And, claim it she did.
Watch Sonya perform the poem that started it all in an early performance.
Radical Self Love as the Ultimate Activism
Let’s face it. From the moment we wake up, we are inundated with messages that tell us our bodies are not good enough. These messages are hard to quiet, even if you are Sonya, on the road, touring, performing “The Body Is Not An Apology” to a new audience every night.
Yes, she knew that she had to live in her own truth of radical body love, but that outside voice telling her that she was not good enough was still there. One day, Sonya came across some an Instagram account of a plus-sized model who had just booked a substantial lingerie client. Here was this beautiful woman, unabashedly flaunting her “juicy thighs” for all to see and admire. Plus, as Sonya recalls, “someone was paying her a lot of money, too.”
That one act of defying the system led Sonya to post her own picture on Facebook, as she encouraged others to share photos where they felt beautiful, too (no matter what the outside world says).
This one act of radical self-love would lead others to do the same. The next morning, Sonya woke up to 30 other brave souls sharing their photos, as the movement was quickly picking up steam. That’s the thing about radical self-love — it can be just as contagious as self-hate. It’s up to us to choose what lane we want to live in.
What does radical self-love have to do with social change, anyway?
So many messages in our world tell us that our bodies are not good enough. That we need constant improvement, that we should be more healthy, more thin, more white — the barrage of negative talk is fast and furious, and consistent. Persistently telling us that we are not the norm so we, therefore, are not worthy.
We live in a system of body-shame indoctrination. Every act of body terrorism has been designed to support the agenda and systems of greed and power in our world. Once you realize that all those messages of not good enough are actually supporting the social constructs of society that keep us pushed down and less than, you start to get a little pissed off (at least you should).
One of the first steps in any successful activist movement is to realize when you are being conditioned, how you are being conditioned, and to get pissed off about the damaging social constructs you have been sold all your life.
If you want to dismantle the systems of the world, you have to understand how they were first constructed. That’s what activism is. This kind of thinking is what should drive your social good business first. It’s not about profit, the right business model, or even finding that unique sales proposition that will make your company unlike any other. It’s about deconstructing the systems in this world of greed and power. That starts with you.
You. Taking back the messages that we are being sold every day and replacing these outside voices with our own inner voice that radically loves us is the first step in transforming the world.
We, as activists, as Change Creators must ask ourselves: Whose agenda is your self-hate? That criticism that you have of yourself — who is benefitting from it? It is not in our best interest to support those agendas.
“Radical self-love is contagious; just as body shame is contagious. We get to decide what it is that we want to spread. If we can radically love ourselves, we can radically love the world.”
Activism by Dismantling the Social Constructs
Sonya wants us to imagine the social constructs we can eliminate if only we radically loved our bodies. Take, for example, the history of racism, as Sonya explains:
“Race as a construct was created as a way to validate the exchange of human bodies as slaves. First, the system wanted to exploit people and get cheap labor. So, the system created a structure that said we could rationalize cheap labor, thus they needed to say that these people were sub-human, which rationalized this horrific structure.”
How quickly the construct of racism is dismantled when we don’t allow others to see any human being as less than. As Sonya’s Facebook group grew, she quickly realized how powerful this idea was. She started a national conversation, not about self-acceptance, or loving your size 16 self, or celebrating your red hair — no, it was always a much larger, much broader conversation. It had to be. As she explains:
“We have internalized those messages of hate, all those messages we’ve received about what bodies are bad and this conversation about radical self-love has to be more than just about accepting our bodies, it has to be a conversation about race. It has to be a conversation about disabilities. It has to be a conversation about fatness. It has to be a conversation about queerness. It has to be a conversation about transnesss. And all of the other ways our bodies exist on this planet.”
As the conversation grew larger, so did the role of TBINAA in the world. Change is a thinking, doing, being process. We have to be in touch with our thoughts intentionally as we create that shift in consciousness. Activism has to start from within.
“We can’t create outside in the world what we have not figured out how to access inside of us first.”
5 Steps to Building a Mission-Driven Company
The steps Sonya took to grow her company were just like the rest of her journey. Yes, she quickly saw that this thing she was doing had merit, had some legs, and could grow, but in a way she could never have imagined it would become what it is today.
Here are the steps that Sonya took to build her business:
Step 1: Build an Authentic Community
If you want to build a lasting movement, you quickly have to realize that you are going to have to get people on board. In the early days of TBINAA, Sonya just shared ideas on the Facebook group. She would curate content every single day that supported that radical self-love that she was out there preaching.
After so many months of connecting with others online and on tour, Sonya had to take another look at her own actions, her own insecurities and fears and do something radical herself.
Yes, sometimes building that authentic community starts with you.
Creating the 30-Day RUHCUS Project
Sometimes, building a movement means doing something completely terrifying and uncomfortable. Eventually, we all have to face what’s really holding us back from living our authentic truth. As leaders of a movement, you have to be willing to be vulnerable at times and to always access yourself — are you out there living what you are encouraging others to do?
When Sonya realized that she still hung onto some body shame about her hair, she decided to take her own radical step. Developing traction alopecia early in life, Sonya had relied on her wigs for over a decade. The scariest thing she thought she could do was be bald in this world because she had been conditioned to believe that she would no longer be beautiful without hair.
In typical Sonya fashion, she didn’t take this step alone. No, she created the first major project of TBINAA — called it a RUHCUS (Radically Unapologetic Healing Challenge for Us). Before she was done her own 30 days, she realized how many people had taken her up and started their own RUHCUS projects.
Sonya lived her work.
She kept touring the country, building her community and soon realized that she would need to find the right people to help keep this thing growing.
Step 2: Find the Right People
When the TBINAA Facebook group reached over 20,000 people, Sonya realized she’d have to start building a team of people to keep it going. She quickly got an intern on board to manage the daily posts, curate the content, and push the vision further. She also found early adapters and volunteers who wanted to help, brought ideas to the table, and could get on board building this out alongside her.
They would ask, “I really love these ideas, can I write something? I want to support this idea; can I start a support group?” For that, Sonya would answer with a resounding “yes.” The business was building itself with the support of its members. She gave people not only the “yes” they needed to get on board and help, but the permission to bring ideas to the table and follow through with them.
As she grew the company, she knew she’d only hire the people that stood alongside her. As she’ll tell you, “It’s easier to teach skills than it is to teach values.”
Step 3: Formalize the Structure and Protect Your Brand Equity
It became apparently clear early on that Sonya would have to formalize the movement to protect the integrity of TBINAA. She did not want to see other brands exploiting this idea of body activism and radical love to sell diet aids or t-shirts. Could you imagine?
Not only did she have to get the right team of writers, supporters, and business developers on board early, she needed money to invest and formalize this growing movement. Yet, as we already touched on early in this article, finding investment as a black woman wasn’t going to be as easy as a trip to Silicon Valley.
Step 4: Monetize the Movement Early
Knowing that she had already built a solid, authentic audience, she thought it would be a radically good idea to get funding through a crowdfunding campaign. Today, looking back, she might do things differently.
The amount of work to raise that first bit of capital — a little over $40,000 — was outrageously difficult, but that was the seed fund she needed to start www.thebodyisnotanapology.com.
That was the first step to monetizing her business and making this movement an established, structured thing.
She had to take ownership of this thing early on. If you don’t own it, somebody else will. It became clear that she needed to create some concrete organizational structure around this movement if she wanted to hold on to it and watch it grow.
Step 5: Grow the Vision of the Company (and Keep Making Money)
After trademarking her company and establishing her ownership of the company, it was time to create some deliberate growth and that takes vision.
At this point, TBINAA had a team, some initial startup funds, and a trademarked idea. Figuring out that monetization model would not be easy. It would take some tweaking to find that sweet spot and to explore ways to support the organic growth that was happening.
Today, their model is a subscription-supported model that provides their supporters (on all levels) to monetarily back the vision and growth of the company. Building out webinars, workshops and products is also an integral part of the business plan as value increases. They also have millions of visitors to their website each year and continue to grow as they continue to build out authentic, relevant content that people cling to.
Building a strong monetization model is so vital when growing your movement if you want to build long-lasting social change. Don’t be afraid to make money early. Money can continue to be the fuel that spreads your message and grows your community — it’s not only okay, but it’s vital to monetize as soon as you can!
How You Can Find Your Inner Activist
As we have seen from Sonya’s success, all great activism starts with the inner journey. All social change begins with radical self-love. Loving ourselves, not just accepting ourselves, can deconstruct the social systems that build oppression.
It sounds simple enough, doesn’t it?
If you want to change the world, start with yourself. But, as we have seen, that journey from the social constructs we’ve grown up with to that fiercely powerful, radical self-love is not linear. There will be times when we doubt our greatness, when we transfer that doubt to others, and when we fall flat on our faces.
Recognize that radical self-love is the first step. Do the hard work of looking at your own social constructs. What do you believe? What are your core values? Do the inner work first, before you begin to change the world.
Remember, you can begin today to speak into existence that which you hope to change.
Key Takeaways
Be your own Sonya. Live in your truth. Align your business to your values from the get-go; it’s the only way to build lasting results.
Get early supporters on board to help build your vision. Give them the authority to make decisions, bring ideas to the table, and make it their mission, too.
Monetize your movement if you want to build a sustainable solution. Figure out the business stuff, too; don’t wait to start making money.
Listen to our exclusive interview with Sonya Renee Taylor
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This might sound like a trick question, but it’s a question that Gabriella Geffen has to deal with every day. “Gabi” is a business development expert at the Maharishi Institute and is also a member of the National Task Team responsible for developing Entrepreneurship and Social Entrepreneurship in South Africa.
The world has changed dramatically over the course of the past few decades, and many people are coming face-to-face with a harsh truth: humans will never be better at being robots than robots themselves.
This has dramatically changed the global employment market, and in places like South Africa, it has contributed to massive, systemic unemployment. Some 27 percent of South Africans are unemployed. Youth, meanwhile, face an unemployment rate in excess of 50 percent.
Gabi notes that so many are unemployed even as over a million jobs in South Africa remain unfilled.
Employers want employees and South Africans want jobs.
However, there is a disconnect between the skills and education that employers need, and the skills and education that many South African youth possess. Even those bright South African students that succeed in the face of abject poverty and failing public education systems often find the doors shut when it comes time to acquire an advanced degree.
Many South African public universities have acceptance rates on par with Ivy League universities. Meanwhile, yearly tuition comes in at about $2,000, an insurmountable sum for many of South Africa’s impoverished.
Maharishi Institute founder Taddy Blecher, featured in issue 12 of Change Creator Magazine, realized this after helping impoverished high school students learn meditation techniques that helped them perform better in school. Many students deserving of an opportunity to attend college were simply denied the chance.
How do you break the cycle of poverty?
In a world that is increasingly dependent on college education and people skills, a lack of access to higher education can all but ensure the perpetuity of poverty. So how does one break that cycle?
How do you provide students with an education that will equip them with the skills they need to succeed in the modern world? How do you ensure accessibility, especially for those who are impoverished and disadvantaged?
Gabi and the other staff at the Maharishi Institute grapple with this challenge every day. And the solutions they have come up with may ultimately revolutionize the modern higher education system, both helping teach people to be people in a modern world, and ensuring access for all.
Finding Sustainability to Increase Accessibility
The Maharishi Institute started out with the same ambitions as many other university programs targeting impoverished communities: simply be free. However, as Blecher and other early-day Institute employees found out, there’s no such thing as free. The money always has to come from somewhere. Donations are great, but they are hard to sustain.
The Maharishi Institute shifted towards a pay-it-forward model.
Students would pay fees, but these fees are more affordable than the public universities in South Africa and students are given access to loans. The Institute started with a no-fee model but found itself too dependent on the whims of the donors. However, by having students contribute, the university can better sustain itself. All tuition fees paid go towards ensuring opportunities for future students.
Another challenge would help the Maharishi Institute become even more sustainable, and could pave the way for a tuition-free future. Institute leaders soon learned that many employers didn’t want just a degree, they also wanted experience. Students in South Africa faced the same conundrum students in other countries have to deal with: Employers demand experience but students can’t acquire that experience because no one will hire them.
The Maharishi Institute provides business education to thousands of students. These students have business skills, so why not use them? The Maharishi Institute has been building out businesses, essentially hiring its own students and then paying them.
Currently, the Institute is focused on building up Invincible Outsourcing, which aims to become a first-rate outsourcing and call centre business in South Africa. Enrolled students can not only pay for their tuition but also earn a stipend to pay for daily living. This makes education not only affordable but sustainable for poor students.
For impoverished students, the ability to work through school and to be paid for that work also helps lower the often overlooked opportunity costs. When your family is barely scraping by, heading off to college to increase your future wages can seem almost selfish. After all, your family members have to eat today, not tomorrow. Shouldn’t you be out trying to earn an income now rather than in the future?
For many impoverished South African youth, this is the reality they face. The Maharishi Institute is providing a solution. Attend university and help the Institute build up businesses along the way. These business aspirations help students pay for their life in the moment. On-the-job training and work experience, meanwhile, helps students further build up their resumes, establish networks, and prove their mettle.
Some students also go on to work at partner companies, such as Accenture. The Maharishi Institute’s leadership has found that while many companies want to invest in education, few know how to actually do so, and often the results are, at best, scattershot. For companies, rather than funding a school or classroom, hiring students, paying them a wage, and then providing on-the-job training can be an effective way to contribute to the student’s success while pursuing their own business aims along the way.
Regardless of where they work, students are given an invaluable opportunity to break the cycle of no experience. With actual job experience in hand, Maharishi graduates are among the most competitive in the market. Indeed, nearly every graduate has secured a skilled job, and collectively, Maharishi’s 17,000 graduates earn over 1 billion rand per year! To put that into perspective, the Institute itself runs on just 24 million rand per year, highlighting the tremendous return on investment.
If Our Deepest Drives Shape the World – How do we Reshape it? | Gabriella Geffen | TEDxCapeTown
Meditation Is Another Key Ingredient to Success
You might be wondering what Maharishi means. This term actually refers to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a meditation guru who founded Transcendental Meditation, which in turn is another key element of the Institute’s success. Early on, Blecher and other staff members realized that many students were coming from backgrounds that were so traumatic, that they struggled to focus in class. In fact, many students were suffering from various forms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Despite his doctorate and sterling academic resume, Blecher himself was far from a model student when he began is actuary studies. In fact, he struggled in many classes and was at risk of failing. Then he discovered Transcendental Meditation, a scientifically proven form of meditation to greatly enhance concentration, clarity, creativity and learning and retention rates. For Blecher, Transcendental Meditation would be life-changing, and so it was incorporated directly into the Maharishi Institute’s curriculum.
Of course, just because meditation worked for Blecher, that doesn’t guarantee that it will work for other students. A renowned public university in Johannesburg decided to test the effectiveness of meditation in reducing stress among college students. The University took its own first-year students and the Institute’s first-year students and then measured their stress levels. Unsurprisingly, many students from both organizations were suffering from high levels of stress.
At the end of the year, an independent psychological study measured stress levels once again. The results? Students at the university reported increased stress levels. This should come as no surprise. After all, the burdens and expectations of a university can be overwhelming. However, when the University remeasured students at the Maharishi Institute, they found that stress levels had dropped substantially. In fact, many students were asymptomatic, seemingly cured of their PTSD symptoms and high-stress levels.
For the Maharishi Institute, meditation is as important an element for teaching humans to be human as formal education. While the Institute’s bread and butter is online, remote education, Gabi stresses that providing students with an opportunity to make professional connections is vital for helping them further their career.
Digital Delivery, Human Focus
Technology is at the heart of the Maharishi Institute’s long-term aims. Yes, many of the students are taught technology-related skills, but it goes much deeper than that. The Institute’s long-term aim is to continue to reduce costs. While most Universities around the world are constantly increasing fees, the Institute is constantly searching for ways to reduce them. With technology and the increased success of its business-side operations, the Institute hopes to eventually charge students only $500 per year in tuition.
Yet as Gabi points out, Universities aren’t just about imparting academic knowledge but also teaching human skills and encouraging the growth of human networks. What makes Harvard Harvard and Oxford Oxford isn’t just the world-class faculty. It’s also the networking opportunities and chances to build lasting relationships. The Maharishi Institute combines distance learning with site learning and on-the-job training. By doing so, Maharishi students can build up human networks and relationships in a way that many online students can’t.
Ultimately, the proof is in the pudding. While many South African universities have a throughput rate of about 25 percent, meaning only a quarter of students finish their degrees, the Institute’s throughput rate weighs in at 80 percent. This, even as up to 70 percent of students arrive unequipped for a university. A combination of meditation training and foundational education allows the Institute to get students up to speed quickly. Roughly 17,000 students have already been educated, and combined they earn over 1 billion rand per year.
Now, the Maharishi Institute is looking to take the lessons learned and to offer opportunities not just in every province in South Africa, but across the world. The University aims to be on the ground in at least 15 countries in the next five or so years. Besides other African nations, India and non-African countries are being targeted. Currently, the Maharishi Institute is aiming to train 100,000 business leaders who will generate over 1 trillion rand in lifetime earnings.
Along the way, the Maharishi Institute is providing valuable lessons to other social entrepreneurs looking to shake up the education sector. It’s not enough to impart knowledge, you have to teach people to be people. In the modern world, humans can’t compete with robots, but by focusing on human skills, universities can still help students launch successful careers.
For those coming from traumatic backgrounds, that could mean teaching meditation or other methods to increase focus. Further, while technology is a useful tool, educators need to remain conscious of the need to teach people skills and to build social networks.
Key Takeaways:
Maharishi Institute moved beyond free tuition and relying entirely on donors by asking students to pay it forward with tuition fees. By doing so, they built a more sustainable model that will provide more opportunities to future students.
The Maharishi Institute leverages online learning. However, they use site-based learning as well to impart people skills and to help students cultivate personal networks.
Founder Taddy Blecher recognized that students who were coming from such underprivileged backgrounds struggled to focus. Transcendental meditation training, however, has been proven to alleviate stress-related conditions.
Listen to our full exclusive interview with Gabriella Geffen
You know the money is in the (email) list. And you’re looking for a great email marketing software which will help you make that list, grow that list, and make money from that list.
Well, you’re in the right place.
In this article, I’m going to talk about two of the most awesome email marketing tools ever: ConvertKit vs. AWeber.
Which of these two tools are right for you?
That’s what you and I will try to figure out in this article. And I say ‘try’ because ultimately, there is no definite, single answer. Maybe ConvertKit’s automation features will woo your heart or maybe you’ll fall for AWeber’s better email editor.
Right now, I don’t know – and neither do you. So let’s find out…
ConvertKit & AWeber: What Kind of People Are These Tools Made For?
Creators who have just bought hosting for the first time. Budding entrepreneurs who are still figuring out how Shopify Works. Bloggers who’ve just installed WordPress.
That – and anyone who isn’t a multi-million dollar company and is just getting their online business off the ground- that’s the kind of people for whom both these tools are made for.
Why do I say that?
Because of three main reasons:
They have affordable pricing that starts at a price you can actually afford.
You don’t have to deal with unnecessary features that aren’t related to email marketing.
It doesn’t take a thousand years to learn how both these tools work.
In short, the highlight of both these email marketing tools is that they do one job: Build, grow and monetize your email list. And they do that job really well.
In the next section, we’ll show you the exact features these tools have – and what makes them different.
ConvertKit vs. AWeber: What You Need To Know About Their Features
But before we get started, here’s one thing you should know.
Both ConvertKit and AWeber are really similar tools. This is because they serve the same audience, and hence, have many similar features.
What actually makes ConvertKit and AWeber different is the unique ways these features work in both their environments.
For example, both ConvertKit and AWeber provide you with a system to organize your subscribers using tags and segments. But the way this system works in both tools is drastically different than you’d think.
That’s why, to help you properly understand the difference between both these email marketing tools (so you can choose the best email marketing tool for your business), we’re going to systematically look at the feature they provide – and then compare the different ways each feature works in each tool.
Before we get to my comparisons, check out my full ConvertKit review here to learn more!
Let’s get started…
ConvertKit Vs. AWeber: Feature List + Comparison
In email marketing, you need to do these three things:
Managing Your Subscribers: The first thing you every email list needs are subscribers. Both ConvertKit and AWeber have their own way of letting you capture new subscribers, adding them to list(s) and segmenting them which we’ll discuss in this section.
Writing Your Emails: The second thing you need to do is write emails for your broadcasts, autoresponders and automated campaigns.
Automating Your Email Marketing Process: The last thing you need to put together is the automations of your emails. This is what lies at the heart of every email marketing software. We’ll discuss in-depth in this section how both ConvertKit and AWeber approach automation.
You can think of these things as ‘steps’ you need to accomplish to fully create your automated email marketing campaigns.
That’s why, I’ve divided this section into the above three steps – and listed (and compared) each feature of both the tools under each step so you can easily understand how ConvertKit and AWeber are different.
Step 1: Managing Your Subscribers
To start your using your email marketing software, you’re going to need to add some subscribers into it first.
There are two ways you can do that:
If you’re starting from scratch and don’t have any subscribers, you’ll want to create opt-in forms to put on your website or on a domain.
If you already have a subscriber list, you’ll want to import it as a CSV file into your email marketing software.
This brings us to discussing…
Feature # 1: Forms
In ConvertKit, you can build an opt-in form or a landing page to collect emails of your new subscribers. But in AWeber, you can only create an opt-in form.
However, in AWeber, you get 70+ templates for your opt-in forms, each designed for a different purpose. But in ConvertKit, you get three kinds of forms which aren’t even templates, just different versions (full, minimal and stripped) of the same design.
But it’s important to note that you can also create a landing page on ConvertKit and in this case, the template selection is much more diverse. In AWeber, landing pages are pretty much nonexistent.
Now, moving on to the similarities, in both these tools, you can customize pretty much everything about your form. You can change the colors, the images, the text, the location of the elements and even add your own custom CSS.
And the best part?
If you don’t have a website, both ConvertKit and AWeber can host the forms (and landing pages too in ConvertKit) which you create in each respective tool for you. No domain required!
Once you’ve started getting subscribers, you’ll need an intelligent way of sorting them based on their interests.
This brings us to…
Feature # 2: Segmentation
Once you start gathering subscribers, you’ll want to segment them based on how their interactions with your emails.
For example, let’s say you have a photography course. One evening, you decide to send an email to all of your 500 email subscribers promoting it. Next morning, you’re delighted to see 5 people have bought your course.
The smart thing to do would be to send them emails showing how they can make the best of your course – and even send them advanced tips.
To do that, you’ll want to segment the 5 people who’ve bought your course so only they receive your emails.
Both ConvertKit and AWeber approach segmentation in different ways. Let’s discuss how:
ConvertKit Segmentation:
In ConvertKit, you can only create one list of subscribers. That list can then be categorized using tags.
For example, for those customers who bought your photography course, you can tag them as ‘photography_course_buyers’. If someone clicked on the link to your course but didn’t buy it, you can tag them as ‘photography_course_interested’.
Once you create the tags you want, you can organize your tags further into ‘segments’.
For example, suppose you have three courses: photography, photoshop, and web design. You want to divide your list depending on what subject your subscribers are interested in.
In this case, you’ll want to add the tags ‘photography_course_buyers’ and ‘photography_course_interested’ into a segment – and repeat the process for your other two courses as well.
And in this way, you can manage your subscribers in ConvertKit.
AWeber Segmentation:
AWeber’s segmentation is more robust, mainly due to one feature: You can create multiple lists – with each list having its own subscribers, tags and segments.
The rest of the process i.e. adding tags and segments – works in a similar fashion to ConvertKit. You add the tags you want to a subscriber and add those tags to a segment to organize your subscriber list.
But since AWeber lets you create multiple lists, you can manage different businesses and websites within one account without having to pay for another.
Step 2: Writing Your Emails
Ok. Once you’ve added your subscribers and now know how to segment them, we can move on to writing emails for them.
Both ConvertKit and AWeber give you three ways to create an email
As a Broadcast: Broadcasts are one-off emails you can send to all your subscribers.
As an Email Sequence: An email sequence is a sequence of emails which are sent over a period of time to a subscriber. For example, if you want to send a 5-part email course, you can send that automatically using an email sequence.
As an Automation: An automation is when you create tie in your email sequences – and the actions your subscribers take when they interact with them – with specific triggers which leads to a fully automated email marketing campaign.
This isn’t anything new. Every email marketing tool lets you do this. The difference is when it comes to actually creating emails. Which of the two tools is best for that?
ConvertKit’s email editor is nothing out of the extraordinary. And that’s what makes it special.
Crazy, right?
Well, here’s why:
In ConvertKit, you can only create text-based emails. No fancy templates. No nothing. Not even videos.
Just plain simple text – combined with some basic color, font and size editing along with some pictures and gifs (yes!). That’s what your emails are going to look like in ConvertKit.
This is because ConvertKit claims that text-based emails have a higher conversion rate and will help you avoid most spam filters.
But, I really wish ConvertKit would have given the option to create fancy emails if we wanted too. Completely taking away templates seems like a drastic move.
AWeber’s email editor is far superior that ConvertKit’s basic text editor.
First of all, you can create both simple text-based emails and fancy template-based emails. Your choice (as it should be). And you get many templates to choose from (over 700+!) for your emails.
In addition, AWeber has a really awesome ‘elements’ panel on the left side of the editor which allows you to drag and drop any ‘element’ you need in your email.
This means you can easily add images, a text box, social media share icons, and even coupon codes to your emails in an instant. All you need to do is edit the elements. No need to spend time messing with the arrangement of the elements on the email.
But you’re still not finished.
Once you create your emails, one final thing which still remains is…
Step 3: Automating Your Email Marketing Process
The importance of this step cannot be underestimated.
Automating your email marketing process is directly tied with the activities you did in step 1 and 2.
In fact, it isn’t an understatement when I say that the success of your whole email marketing depends upon how well you automate your email marketing process.
That’s because, without effective automation, you won’t be able to:
Categorize your email subscribers into relevant tags and segments when they interact with your emails.
Which means you won’t be able to engage them with the relevant content your email subscribers deserve.
This will lead to bad conversion rates, failed campaigns and ultimately, low sales.
Automations stop this from happening.
In our example in the first step, we mentioned how you can tag the people who bought your photography course with ‘photography_course_buyers’ tag.
Well, with automations, you don’t have to do that. The moment a subscriber of yours buys your course, your email marketing software can tag them based on that ‘trigger’ i.e. a subscriber purchasing.
In AWeber, creating automation is a simple process.
You simply select which subscribers, tags, and segments you want to put in an email campaign. Then, you send them the relevant emails – and assign additional tags at the end of each email to trigger the next email.
And whenever you want, you can add the subscribers you tagged from previous automation to a new email marketing campaign by simply creating new automation.
But there’s the main problem with AWeber:
Every single automation is created separately in a new window. This means whenever you want to create a new automated email marketing campaign, you’ll have to do that in a new window.
And because of that, you won’t be able to see how your different automations ‘connect’ with each other.
In the automation game, without any doubt, ConvertKit wins.
When compared to AWeber, ConvertKit offers a much more visual, coherent and better automation system.
You get a visual graph in which you can easily start with an email, tag it with a specific action your subscribers take when reading it and then follow up with other emails and campaigns.
Yes… campaigns.
Unlike AWeber, ConvertKit lets you connect email campaigns within automation. And since it’s all visual, you can see exactly in which campaigns your subscribers will go based on the actions they take.
In my opinion, this feature alone single-handedly makes ConvertKit a more powerful email marketing tool than AWeber – just because it is so much better at automation.
The Final Verdict: Which is Best for YOU?
As with all things, pricing often plays a bigger influence on our decision – simply because of many of us have tight budgets (more than we’d like).
Well, the good news here is both ConvertKit and AWeber offer similar pricing, with AWeber’s pricing getting better the bigger the plans get. But the difference isn’t that much that AWeber should sway your decision based on pricing alone. And thankfully, both give you access to all their features regardless of which plan you get.
Here’s a screenshot of both their plans you can check out:
ConvertKit Pricing
You can get a free trial of ConvertKit and test out this email marketing platform for yourself today!
AWeber lets you build separate lists and has a better way of segmenting your subscribers. If you have multiple businesses, you’ll save a lot of money because, with ConvertKit, you’ll have to create another account to get another list.
ConvertKit gives you a better automation tool than AWeber. You can clearly see how you different email campaigns interlink with each other using the visual builder. In AWeber, each automation is in a separate window which makes things disjointed as time progresses.
With that being said, both tools are awesome and don’t have any deal breakers which make the other one the outright winner. We can confidently recommend both, depending on your needs.
If I had to choose one that’s best overall, I would say I prefer ConvertKit’s automation tools and visual builder the best and that’s the one I would choose!
So, based on the features we’ve discussed above, which email marketing tool will you choose?
Christal Earle is a lot of things; she is a social entrepreneur who believes change is possible through smart collaboration and thinking differently. She’s a social advocate for the stateless peoples of the Dominican Republic and the environment. She’s a businesswoman who started her enterprise with a lightning bolt of inspiration and only $1,000 to her name.
But most of all, she’s brave.
She’s brave because amid life-altering moments of adoption, divorce, financial despair, and literally, no place to call home thanks to governmental bureaucracy, she chose to take on a cause bigger than herself.
Does that sound familiar? As entrepreneurs, we all must be brave as we take on problems much bigger than ourselves to create positive social change through sustainable solutions.
Meet Christal, Co-Founder and CEO of Brave Soles — a social enterprise that sells 100% handmade leather shoes with recycled tire soles made from discarded tires found in the landfills of the Dominican Republic.
Her innovative solutions using upcycling, microfinancing, and community engagement are helping break the cycle of poverty for her suppliers and providing hope for impoverished communities. As a social entrepreneur, Christal harnesses the power of storytelling to teach others how small economic choices, like buying a pair of sandals, can have a worldwide impact.
The 5-minute journey that woke Christal up
Christal Earle’s journey as a social entrepreneur started in 2000 when she co-founded Live Different, a Canadian charity dedicated to creating positive social change. In 2004 Live Different went International, making worldwide trips to impoverished communities in need of help.
In the summer of 2006, Christal took a break from her humanitarian work and vacationed at an all-inclusive resort in the Dominican Republic. It was during that trip that her life would forever be changed thanks to a five-minute journey her friend asked her to take to a community she was helping at the time.
“That was my first exposure to poverty at that level. I remember sitting in this Haitian woman’s house and having her explain that her home, which was smaller than my living room, was a communal home shared by many. She told me what it was like to be her; she was a single mom with four children, their beds were up on paint tins above the ground, and how each time it rained her house would flood.”
That moment was powerful for so many reasons, but mostly for the sacred trust she experienced with that woman who graciously let her into her world, allowing her the opportunity to take a “walk in her shoes.”
And to think, five minutes up the road was an all-inclusive luxury resort! The loud disparate dichotomy based on chance (or lack thereof) was deafening for Christal, and she knew she had to do something.
Thankfully, this chance encounter would be the reason Christal decided to make the Dominican Republic a priority for her humanitarian outreach efforts where she would find both her inspiration for Brave Soles and her adopted daughter, Widlene.
Garbage Dump Destiny
After that talk with the Haitian mother in the one-room shack, Christal brought hundreds of Live Different teenagers to the Dominican Republic that year.
They would visit a garbage dump where many impoverished people, mostly stateless with no legal place to call home, worked for $1-$2 dollars a day.
Christal and her team helped these people collect bottles and other recyclables. Since recycling is privatized there, this is how most stateless individuals earn an income. While there, Christal befriended a woman with a toddler on her hip. They chatted, she helped her find bottles, and they parted ways.
About a year after this encounter, Christal learned that woman passed away, and her child was now an orphan. She and her then-husband were thinking about adoption already, so they began a quest to find that child, Widlene, which they did in 2009.
Widlene is of Haitian descent and was born in the Dominican Republic, so to adopt her required official documents and judiciary approval. This process took months instead of the anticipated weeks, and during that time Christal’s marriage began to dissolve. They completed the process only to have an earthquake destroy the paperwork and, unfortunately, claim the life of the judge.
Now Christal had a daughter who doesn’t speak the same language, she had no legal abilities to protect her nor could she leave the country with her. On top of all that, she was legally separated from her husband and now had to face the reality of being a single parent in a foreign country.
What’s a girl to do but start rebuilding her life?
“I was still working with Live Different, but I felt a pull to do something else. I’m an entrepreneur at heart, and inside me, I wanted to be able to create something that was going to provide a way for me to co-create with other people.”
Christal split her time between the Dominican Republic and Canada while she and her now ex-husband, co-parented their daughter. She spent her time away making money as a speaker and while in the Dominican Republic, she continued to host teams taking them to the garbage dump to work with the stateless population.
While she had been helping them find bottles for years, her work in the dump took on a new meaning considering her financial struggles as a now single parent.
“I’m actually in the same boat as these people. It looks different on the outside, but financially, I was just as vulnerable…I had such empathy for the cycle that they were caught in. It was through that empathy that I started to see the people there and the dump itself differently. I noticed the tires.”
The tires weren’t new, but her perspective was, and that shift would lead to her moment of divine entrepreneurial inspiration.
Lightning Strikes
“What’s with all the tires?” people would ask when Christal would bring them to the dump to work. Usually, she would shrug it off, claiming ignorance as they got to work. One day, she said those famous last words many social entrepreneurs have uttered before:
“I don’t know, but someone should really do something about it.”
A few weeks later she walks out of her apartment, says hello to her neighbor, and notices her sandals. Christal said she had a “total girl moment” saying she loved them and asked where to find a pair. Her friend said she bought the handmade leather sandals in Cuba and handed one to Christal for closer inspection.
That’s when lightning struck: she could be the person to “do something” about those tires in the dump. The sole on the sandal she was holding was no better than what she could create using those tires through upcycling and a little ingenuity with the help of local artisans.
Upcycling Ideas and Resources
Christal is the first one to tell you this was not a new idea; many organizations worldwide use upcycling to help impoverished communities create goods, including sandals which she had seen from Africa and Central America.
Those were never her style, but she realized she could create something to her tastes that would address the tire issue, employ local artisans, and provide an income for her and her daughter.
She visited a small artisanal shop to ask the local shoemaker if he could help her create a prototype. When she explained how wanted to use recycled tires as the soles, he looked at her like she had lost her mind.
The next day he sent her a picture of a simple leather sandal, and he told Christal he found someone who knew how to work with tires. Everything was falling in line from a manufacturing standpoint; now, she just needed to find the money to start her business.
Posting a Plan: You’ve got to start somewhere.
Christal was still barely making it by with her income as a speaker so as a single mom, there wasn’t a dime she could commit to this project.
She knew her crazy idea could work thanks to her Haitian artisan friends so she went to her apartment and using Post-it notes, created the business model on her kitchen wall. She decided on the “Brave Soles” name, visualized her brand and mapped out a timeline based on her research.
She determined that $250 is what she needed to start. Thanks to a generous friend, she got $1000.
Then, she got to work.
Brave Soles Takes Off Running
That next day she started making shoes. Over the following six weeks she set up a Shopify site, had people wear sample sandals to gain feedback, and took some amateur pictures of her products at a local coffee shop.
On June 7, an organic Facebook post using these pictures introduced her brand to the world. This post generated 40 sales in one day.
She knew she was on to something.
At the time, she didn’t have the inventory to fulfill the orders, so she knew it was time to ramp up production. The good news was, her customers were aware they were buying more than sandals and were willing to wait for their order.
Microloans
This vision of co-creating with other entrepreneurs would initially come at a cost for Brave Soles. While the local community wanted the work, suppliers lacked the resources and machinery to do it.
Christal developed a microloan program so these suppliers could purchase what they needed. It was a win-win; Brave Soles would be their first customer and they would now be equipped to take on new business from others. She realized that this microfinancing initiative was an essential part of her story:
“We’ve created a microloan program to give people a chance to participate in our story…and one of the things I’ve come to realize thanks to feedback from our customers is that when they talk about us online and social media, it always comes back to ‘I love that I know the story behind what I’m wearing.’”
Telling the Brave Soles Story: The Ambassador Program
Christal says this story-based selling is nothing new, but there are new and unique ways to share their story worldwide. Today, the Brave Soles Ambassador Program has representatives located throughout the world ready to sell her products and her cause to their local communities and online.
“I stumbled into the idea because people were telling me how excited they were about Brave Soles products and how they loved our story and wanted to know how they could help us succeed. I realized there’s a model for people to share a part of our story through an independent sales program…and it needed to have an element that for everyone was transformational, not just transactional.”
Christal and her team have developed several ways for ambassadors to help sell their brand worldwide using startup packages, trunk show sales, and peer network groups.
She credits the success of the Brave Soles Ambassador Program to her global sales representatives who share her passion of helping people discover ways to think and buy differently. Christal and her team are challenging the notion that one person can’t make a difference with their dollar, and that you can fulfill your need and help others simultaneously by purchasing a beautiful item that has a remarkable story.
It Takes Village: Gathering Other Brave Souls
Christal believes that it takes a village to create a successful social enterprise, and that village can sometimes come at a cost. Since she founded Brave Soles, she has relied on a council of advisors and mentors that have helped her company thrive and in return, she has supported others.
She believes there is value in “putting yourself out there” in a way that is comfortable for you. If you are beginning as an entrepreneur, it may be taking advantage of local groups and free events that provide networking opportunities. As your business grows and you want to expand your network, you can seek out paid opportunities like startup incubators or becoming a member of a local association related to your industry.
She said it’s these relationships with others that has helped create the social impact she envisioned:
“I gathered a council of advisors and mentors around me and participated in some startup incubators that were healthy ecosystems made up of people like me who were experiencing the same kind of journey, and I know it’s why Brave Soles has been successful. Our success as a brand has been a team effort.”
The Journey Ahead
Today Brave Soles sources materials from landfills to create sandals, shoes, handbags, and more. With success has come expansion with suppliers now located in the Dominican Republic, Argentina, and Mexico. Christal’s dream of co-creation continues as Brave Soles currently employs cutters and sewers from these areas to help craft these handmade items.
Christal intends on pushing outside her comfort zone to seek new funding sources. She initially raised money from a private investor and now realizes that as her business grows, she needs additional funds to support that growth.
She encourages social entrepreneurs to be brave when asking for funding; to realize that as your business evolves so too will your budget and that’s a good thing if you can plan accordingly and think long-term. As she gears up for her next pitch, she relies on her previous experience and is reminded that it’s her story and passion that sells, and there is always someone looking for a reason to invest in humanity.
Action Steps and Takeaways
Know Why You Are in Business
Social entrepreneurs are passionate people working for both an income and a reason. What’s your reason? Why does it matter? What returns from your work would you like to see?
These questions may seem like a mundane exercise as you make big plans to affect social change, but they are essential to have as a new startup to remind you why you’re in business in the first place. Passion can be misplaced when other issues arise that our bleeding hearts want to address; these answers will help keep your business heading in the right direction and most importantly, viable.
Stick to Your Values
Now that you know who you are as a business, what do you stand for and how will you relay those values to your audience?
Storytelling has been integral to the Brave Soles brand since its inception and can help tell yours too. Christal’s experience with Live Different, her time spent in the garbage dump, and her personal struggles have all added to the Brave Sole brand in different ways, and the brand story keeps evolving as her business continues to grow.
How will you use storytelling to your advantage? You are selling more than products or services; you are inviting people to participate in your brand and affect social change. Using storytelling to communicate your passion and values can help create the continuous transformative sales you want rather than the one-time transactional sales you may receive.
Ethics Matter
People may love your product, but they will talk more about the experience with your brand rather than what they received in return for their money. Remember that! Love always wins so even when it’s hard to be kind, remember your mission is worth it.
Alain Sylvain is not just a hardworking creative entrepreneur, he’s the founder & CEO of Sylvain Labs. Sylvain Labs is an innovation and brand design consultancy that solves complex business problems for some of the biggest brands in the business (Airbnb, Spotify, Google, BlackRock, Patagonia, Pepsico, Calvin Klein, GM and BuzzFeed, to name a few). Their tools are ‘science and whimsy’. Their driving mission is to leverage the might of corporations for the greater good.
As we know, big business can destroy or protect our precious blue marble of a planet. Many (most) big brands are truthfully leaving dangerous footprints on our earth. Alain has made it his mission to ensure that Sylvain Labs takes that fact and leverages it, using product innovation and a global culture of unavoidable mass consumption as a key tool.<
Sylvain Labs was also just named a Certified B Corp (you can see their Impact Report here), which is something that’s resulted in a workplace culture heavily rooted in like-minded values and employees that constantly press themselves to find the social connection to their day to day work.
Alain has also taken a stand in the form of brand purpose with several clients (including the WNBA, Waze and BlackRock), addressing many of today’s societal issues head-on with his strategy work. He’s not afraid to stand up as a CEO activist (he has much to say about the matter and modern CEO roles) and encourages his clients to do the same.
In this interview explore how he started Sylvain Labs, their approach to product innovation and why becoming a Certified B Corp was important to his business.
