Interview with founder of Ninja Outreach, David Schneider
In this interview, we talk with the founder of Ninja Outreach, Dave Scheider, about his experience building a SaaS and why he sold it when he sold it. Many entrepreneurs don’t consider their exit strategy and we want to get you thinking about this because you should always have a plan.
Now that David sold the marketing software NinjaOutreach, he runs a new company called LessChurn which is a Conversion Rate Optimization software for SaaS and Membership Sites.
David has some great experience being on the front lines and hustling as an entrepreneur and shares some very valuable insights we can all learn from in this interview.
For a great entrepreneurial idea to grow into a successful and thriving business, there is often a window of opportunity that is momentarily open. Successful business people know how to take advantage of that window of opportunity even when traditional business wisdom advises the opposite.
Vangst Staffing is today the number one recruiting resource for the rapidly growing cannabis industry across the United States and Canada. Since originally launching in 2015, they have connected around 5,500 candidates with professional employment opportunities in the rapidly emerging cannabis industry, and will most likely participate in helping to staff a large part of the quarter million jobs that are expected to materialize in this industry within the coming years.
The resounding success of Vangst, however, didn’t happen overnight. Rather, it was the brainchild of a young entrepreneur who believed in her business proposal even when the emerging industry still was in its infant stages.
The growth of Vangst from a one-person startup with zero clients to the number one recruiting agency in one of the fastest growing industries on the continent offers several helpful business insights, strategies, and ideas that other entrepreneurs would do well to replicate.
Identifying Unmet Business Opportunities
In 2015, the cannabis industry was still stigmatized and branded as a fringe industry dominated by a select group of people on the margins of society. Karson Humiston, the founder and CEO of Vangst mentions that when the company first started, almost no professional from the pharmaceutical industry would have considered a career within the world of cannabis. Three years later, however, Vangst is successfully connecting professional pharmacists and other professionals with high paying jobs in this industry.
What changed?
As state legislatures across the country began to legalize both medical and recreational cannabis, Karson was able to foresee the growth opportunities in this market. While others scorned the emerging cannabis industry as nothing more than a few marihuana farms and dispensary shops, she was able to anticipate the market.
As cannabis slowly became legalized across large portions of the continent, acceptance would grow and people would discover the benefits associated with this previously stigmatized plant. Karson understood that past prejudice would make it hard for professionals across the industry to discover and take advantage of this emerging job market. Similarly, companies that operated within the cannabis market would also find it difficult to find quality employees for their growing businesses.
Thus, Karson´s idea of creating a staffing agency and recruiting resource specific to the cannabis industry filled a need in an emerging market that most people continued to avoid because of inaccurate perceptions about the industry. Today, lots of qualified individuals from a wide range of professions are looking at the cannabis industry as a potential career option. There are jobs available for botanists, executive assistants, chemical engineers, and dispensary store managers, to name just a few of the potential job openings. Vangst was able to get a head start on the industry and firmly establish a quality business service for both employers and potential employees in this industry.
Persistence and Tenacity
Identifying emergent markets is one part of the Vangst´s success story. However, it took a healthy dose of persistence and tenacity to see the business idea through to success. After going to an industry tradeshow and identifying the possibility for a cannabis industry staffing agency, Karson spent well over a year waiting for her first client. “I remember thinking that every day I would wake up and think that today is the day I´m going to get my first client,” Karson mentions.
She followed up with companies that she met at the tradeshow, relentlessly called the contacts on her list, organized meetings with these companies, and was mostly rejected. Finally, one cannabis company offered her an opportunity, mostly because they were impressed that she had continued to ask for a meeting after several prior rejections. Karson mentions that “somehow I was able to find them their accountant…and they referred me to some additional cannabis companies.
When you can get that word of mouth referral from a big brand…that is really what it took to go from zero clients to several clients.” Karson believes that entrepreneurship is about believing in a business idea and sticking with the plan.
“You have to believe in what you´re doing…and I was not willing to give up until I got a client. Setting goals and going after them…is the big differentiator between companies that can get off the ground and companies that inevitably fail,” she offers. “It comes down to giving up.”
Direct Outreach
While Vangst did build a small website that explained the services they offered, they didn’t simply sit back and wait for the phone to start ringing. Rather, Karson and the first members of her team would incessantly make phone calls to leading companies in the cannabis industry. They believed in their business proposal and wanted to contact directly people who mattered within the industry.
Amanda Guerrero, business development manager at Vangst, was one of the first employees that Karson hired. Amanda wanted to explore the Los Angeles cannabis market and was given free reign by Karson to try and create a new market on the west coast.
She would spend lots of time at networking events and developing strong relationships with people in the industry. Amanda shares that getting out there and spending lots of time in front of people who matter in the industry was essential for business growth.
“Being able to stick your hand out…takes a lot of confidence and grit, and it´s not a very comfortable position to be in…if your personality doesn’t lend itself to being outgoing.”
Instead of just sitting behind the phone, the hustle involved in going to conferences, setting up meetings, and introducing yourself to complete strangers was fundamental for strong business development. “The more that you introduce yourself to strangers the fewer strangers you’re going to have when you go back to visit,” Amanda adds.
As Vangst looks to expand into the Canadian market, Amanda has spent much time going to Toronto and other Canadian cities in search of companies and allies that will be willing to work with Vangst.
A Focus on Relationships
Vangst believes that relationship building has been the key to their success. Early on, the purpose of spending long hours at networking events wasn’t to find short-term success, but rather to build long-term business relationships.
Amanda´s time spent trying to expand Vangst´s influence in Los Angeles did not yield any immediate fruits. The market wasn’t ready and legal barriers still existed. However, the time and energy Amanda spent developing relationships with key players in the local cannabis industries planted seeds that later blossomed into long-term business relationships once the market did emerge.
When the company was just beginning, Karson mentions that Vangst was essentially offering a free service to their clients just to get their foot in the door. The extremely low entry offer was a business strategy aimed at building trust and letting their clients discover the quality of the service that they provided.
As Vangst has grown from a one-person startup to a company with over 50 employees working in markets across the continent, Karson wanted to make sure that all employees shared the main value of focusing on relationships with clients and maintaining the individualized component of the business service they offered. Making sure that employees´ goals are aligned with the long-term vision of the company is a fundamental strategy to help the company maintain one of the original elements that helped it succeed.
Business Insights and Strategies to Learn From Vangst Vangst
Vangst has almost singlehandedly built a community of entrepreneurial people that want to get involved in the emerging cannabis industry. Over 160,000 people are currently employed full time in the cannabis industry and that number is expected to triple by 2020. Their sound business strategy and philosophy has made Vangst poised to continue to be a major player as the cannabis industry continues to grow. Other entrepreneurs would do well to learn from Vangst´s experience, namely:
Identifying unmet business opportunities in an emerging (though overlooked) market
Persistence and tenacity even when the market appears to be non-responsive
Direct outreach towards major players in the industry
Change Creator has interviewed well over 100+ conscious leaders and entrepreneurs. So, we decided to work with some of our awesome partners to dig through them all and pull out the best marketing secrets we could find.
What we found are true marketing principles every conscious entrepreneur should know.
The bonus we mentioned is at the end, don’t forget to check it out, you will love it!
4 Expert Marketing Secrets For Conscious Entrepreneurs
These are in no particular order…
1 – Break the mental chokehold and changing your inner-story.
By Tony Robbins | Entrepreneur, author, philanthropist
We all have different experiences and tell ourselves different stories. Whether you hear a story or you tell yourself a story, it will have a deep impact on the external results you produce.
“I’ve been in this game for nearly 40 years. I’ve worked with millions of people from more than 100 different countries across the world. Across the board, the number one problem business owners face when they are trying to grow their company is always the same. When a business is struggling, most business owners shift their entire focus to strategy.
But 80% of the time, the chokehold on the business is actually the owner’s psychology.
Of course, the strategy, the skills and tools – these are all critical components to creating real and sustainable growth. But knowledge alone is not power, it’s simply potential power. Execution will always create greater results than theory. And execution starts with your psychology. Because there is only a limitation when you buy into it. The whole game of business is about taking a vision and turning into a reality. If you are feeling disempowered, then you are accepting an unspoken assumption.
As a business owner, your job is to break down the limitations holding you back. Henry Ford said, “If you think you can do a thing, or you think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.” Because the minute you start believing that the problem is true is the minute you start inhibiting your growth.
ACTION TIP
Is your story limiting your life? Your business? That inner game is key in any kind of story marketing. What you tell yourself about your business is what others will either be drawn to or put off from. Before we get into the more strategic marketing tips, think about how you talk about yourself, your brand, your mission.
2 – Create content that shares what you uniquely know, not just highly researched data.
By Victoria Fine | Founder of Finally
Content marketing is a term you hear a lot these days. Companies are finally starting to recognize the value of creating content that helps market and sell their products, especially online. There is no better expert when it comes to content marketing in the social impact space than Victoria Fine, who was the founding managing editor at Huffington Post Impact and Education.
When we discussed how to strategize content for impact companies, Victoria talked about sharing your personal stories and expertise:
“So when people are considering their own content, I like to encourage them to think about not just the message they have to tell, but all of that shared expertise and insight that has been pulled together through an entire time and the career that they have been in in the past.”
Share your expertise. People want to know the challenges you face, how you overcome them, the successes you had and how you won them. We all are teachers and we are all students.
ACTION TIP
Lean into your skills. When creating ‘free gifts’ or incentives for your audience to build an email list, consider what skills, talents, or experiences you bring to the table that can solve an immediate problem for someone. What can you teach? You don’t have to be an expert. You just need to know something that someone else does not. Or, just interview an expert and offer something valuable to your audience!
3 – Be vulnerable, share your big failures.
By Russell Brunson | Founder of Clickfunnels
Storytelling was a huge factor in how Russell Brunson, Founder of Clickfunnels, got his company the edge over the competition. Not only did Russell go out and speak directly to his audiences, but he also wasn’t afraid to talk about his big failures, including his bankruptcies — all in the name of connecting with his audience.
“I think that the more that we’re willing to open up and be vulnerable and share those things, it connects people with you. And then when a competitor comes out with something similar, the usual… better or cheaper, whatever, people aren’t going to be like, ‘oh, I’m going to leave because this has this feature. This is better and cheaper’ It’s like no, I like I’m going to go with Russell and the vision and mission, because of that they stay connected with the company and everything else.”
ACTION TIP
Vulnerability is an important part of genuine marketing in a digital world saturated with junk. Don’t be afraid to tell your audience about your most vulnerable experiences. Your story is powerful. Connect with your customers on a human level to develop a loyal audience that trusts you.
3 -Get outside of the building. Talk, talk talk. Listen Listen Listen.
By Gavin Armstrong | Founder of Lucky Iron Fish
Lucky Iron Fish manufacturers just that, small fish-shaped blocks of iron. The simple product is one in high demand for its health benefits. Simply drop the Lucky Iron Fish in any type of boiling water to infiltrate it with iron nutrients to combat iron deficiency.
Lucky Iron Fish started in Cambodia when the founders saw the need firsthand. Given the product is something people put directly into their food, the team had to establish trust in the communities and design something that was culturally sensitive. Gavin shares more about his thought process in his interview with us:
“We can design everything we want in the lab back home but if you don’t have something that’s going to be compelling for the end user, it’s not going to go anywhere…. It was critical for us to spend a lot of time understanding the market before we moved into it.”
ACTION TIP
Consider how you can get to know your customers even better. Plan a time to go visit with a few and spend the day observing and asking questions. Set up time to talk over Skype. Whatever you have to do to start talking to them right now. And don’t stop, this is an ongoing process for any impact entrepreneur. It’s ESSENTIAL.
GET YOUR BONUS: 18 Marketing Secrets From 100+ Expert Interviews
Yes, we have more for you with action tips and all!
Welcome to our first annual top 15 podcast interviews list.
We’re really excited to close out the year reaching well over 100+ interviews with incredible entrepreneurs impacting the world, all in their own unique way.
The Change Creator Podcast highlights the new revolution of business and how people are truly changing the world with their unique expertise. Discover inspiration, hope for building a better future, and the strategies to create your own legacy – to be a Change Creator.
We talk to a range of experts, not just social entrepreneurs or marketing gurus. We interview Nobel Peace Prize winners, award-winning social entrepreneurs, marketing experts, celebrities, and young activists on the front lines building a life that matters to the world. This diversity is important as each person has expertise that we can learn from to excel as an authentic and conscious leader.
While we are selecting the best of 2018, this is not a competition.
Our intention is to offer you a little guidance if you don’t have time to listen to every show and offer some deserved recognition. We believe that these select interviews a lot of important value and should not be overlooked. To determine who is on the top 15 we consider audience feedback and content value.
In addition to the interview, you’ll find related materials such as books, articles and magazines to explore deeper.
Without further ado…
THE TOP 15
The below list is no particular order.
1 – Jay Shetty: Understanding Storytelling and Creating Content That Drives True Impact
Shetty is a smooth talker with a lot of wisdom to share. I really enjoyed this conversation and I know you will too. He’s an entrepreneur impacting the world on a global stage by leaning into his unique genius on Youtube – storytelling. From Monk to online influencer he has reached billions of views with his work and is continuing to grow.
Eager to understand storytelling and his process, we connected with Jay for this incredible discussion. In this interview, you will learn what storytelling really is about, how he selects content, how he approaches it and even the equipment he uses.
2 – Muhammad Yunus (Nobel Peace Prize Winner): Solving Big Global Problems with Small Steps
No matter how many interviews I had under my belt, I was still nervous about this one. We met Yunus in San Francisco and were able to weasel our way into an interview for a great cover story with Change Creator Magazine. I plowed through his incredible book, A World of Three Zeroes, to prepare myself. Once we connected on the phone it was all smooth sailing and became one of my favorite interviews so far. He’s full of experience and passion which just become contagious. You will leave this interview ready to take on the world.
3 – Seth Godin: What it Takes to be a Leader of Tomorrow
Timing is always important and over a year ago I reached out to Seth Godin and the timing was not right, I got shut down. Almost a year later I felt the time was right and tried again. He got back to me in about 5 minutes and when I asked when he was available for the interview, he replied saying, “How about in an hour.” Whoa! I didn’t want to say no but didn’t have much time to prepare for this one, haha.
Godin has always been an inspiration to us here at Change Creator. His unique way of thinking about business is one thing, but he’s also always ahead of the trend. The idea of storytelling is booming today as a key to marketing but he wrote that book in 2011. He’s great at using anecdotes and metaphors to help people clearly understand new things. So what does the leader of tomorrow look like? Find out in this compelling interview.
4 – Guy Kawasaki: Pulling Back the Curtain on Startup Success
When I told Guy Kawasaki that I was hesitating to do more videos he simply said, “man up!” I had to laugh and agree with that. Guy is a straight shooter with a ton of experience and knowledge to share. He tells it like it us and offers really important truths about getting feedback, sharing ideas and what makes a startup tick.
We wanted to better understand the startup word from his perspective because he’s seen so many pitches and worked with many brands. You’ll enjoy his personality and get a lot of solid takeaways that should empower your own startup.
5 – Victoria Fine: Content Strategy For the Social Impact Space
Change Creator produces a hefty amount of content between the magazine app, website and the podcast. You can say we are content strategy nerds. We were introduced to Victoria who is the queen of impact content. Currently, she’s the founder of her own company, Finally. But historically she was the founding managing editor at Huffington Post Impact and Education. The director of a strategy at Slate and the first managing editor at Upworthy. This is such a great discussion as content is critical to any marketing strategy today, especially in the impact space. She’s also a contributing expert to our Captivate program on storytelling for marketing.
6 – Mona Amodeo: How to Build a Brand That Matters Today
Personally, I have always been a geek about branding. What makes good branding, why, how does it work? Building a solid brand was instrumental to Richard Branson’s success. And, I know it’s a huge part of any impact business today too. That’s why I connected with Mona, this is her world and her expertise.
In this interview, we explore what it takes to build a brand that matters. These are insights you can take away and apply to your business. Good branding goes far beyond visual appeal. Hold on tight and listen closely to this one.
7 – Christal Earle: How This Creative Brave Sole is Changing Lives One Tire at a Time
When you hear a great story you become a marketer for that person because you tell it to others. That’s what happened here. Christal’s story is emotional in a big way. It pulls you in and offers many lessons for life and entrepreneurship. We liked it so much that even used it in our course, Captivate, and featured a story in Change Creator Magazine, issue 21.
Get ready to learn about courage and perseverance.
8 – Art Barter: Transformational Leadership That Gets Big Results
Great leaders don’t tell people what to do they inspire people to do what needs to be done. Art took a $10M per year company and in a few years, time turned it into a $200M company. We had to know how he did that. His secret is all about leadership style.
Explore what servant leadership means and steps you can take to become a more effective leader that gets real results.
9 – Kathleen Kelly Janus: Secrets to Scaling Your Social Venture to over $2 Million
She interviewed over 200 social enterprises to learn why some reach $2M in revenue per year and other don’t. Kathleen is a social entrepreneur, author and lecturer at Stanford University’s Program on Social Entrepreneurship. This was something we wanted to learn more about!
She’s sharp and has a lot of great insights to share around this topic. Her book Social Startup Success is a must read for anyone in the impact space.
10 – Rick Alexander: Everything You Need to Know About Becoming a Benefit Corporation
Sure, legal talk might seem boring but it’s a huge part of the business and something most of us ignore. As more people are starting to become a B-corp we thought it might be a good idea to learn how that impacts investing and other areas of the process.
So we connected with the head of legal policy at Blab, Rick Alexander. Who better to talk to and he shared a ton of important insights every Change Creator should be aware of, especially if you’re considering a B-corp status.
11 – Russell Brunson: How to Build a Loyal Audience and Self-Fund Your Startup
He kept showing up in my Facebook feed a while ago and finally I decided to listen to what he had to say. Long story short I got his books and they rocked. We had to talk to Brunson about marketing. In this interview, he talks about self-funding but also how he visits Kenya each year to help build schools. His company, Clickfunnels is crushing it now.
12 – Jake Orak: Tackling E-commerce Challenges Like a Champ
After our first magazine cover with Jake, we ran this second interview just about a year later to see what’s been going on with Ethnotek, and he faced some big challenges and successfully navigated them. Finally, our team met Jake at SOCAP 2018 in SanFrancisco. We had a blast!
In this interview, Jake shares some of his war stories which offer a ton of important advice.
13 – Sarah & Kevin: A Creative Marketing Strategy That Helped Raise $2.6M in Funding
We were introduced to Kevin and Sarah by someone in our network who thought they were doing great work. And they are! As founders of the Dyrt, they are dominating the campground “find and review” market. They used creative marketing strategies to build their base quickly and share great tips for landing the big investment.
14 – Ryan Foland: How Mastering Communication Can Change Your Life
If you want your message to connect with people you have to learn how to communicate clearly. Sure we all talk and communicate but conveying an idea so someone understands in just a sentence or two is an art. That’s I spoke with Ryan, this is his speciality! He talks about steps you can take to be more powerful as a communicator and his process for doing so.
15 – Emilio & Samantha: Turning a Passion for Minimalism into an Impact Business
This was a unique discussion with two people are not just downsizing how many things they own. They are helping people live a more extraordinary life and scaling that impact through online programs and books such as, A Recipe For An Extraordinary Life.
Think about all the experience the 15 people above bring to the table. When you want to expedite your success you need to be open to learning from others. That’s what Change Creator Magazine and Podcast are both about.
Read, listen, learn, grow.
I hope this list is helpful, I know you’ll find the interviews empowering.
Interview with ex-marine and high-performance coach, Paul Gowin
In this inspiring interview, we talk with high-performance coach and ex-marine, Paul Gowin, to better understand what it takes to break through barriers in your life and live your dreams.
Growing up in eastern Montana, Paul Gowin took a break from college at the University of Montana and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps.
Performing duties as a Marine Bandsman Saxophonist and later as a Military Police Officer in Okinawa, Japan, Paul was selected for an officer commissioning program in 2007.
Graduating from the University of Arizona, Paul accepted his commission as a Second Lieutenant in 2011 and later saw duty in Virginia, North Carolina, and Helmand Province, Afghanistan.
Incorporating the leadership development techniques honed across a 15-year career in the military, Paul is also a leading Certified High-Performance Coach™ through the High-Performance Institute.
Paul has coached thousands of people from many different ethnic backgrounds over the past 20 years.
If you want to learn more and work with Paul you can connect with him here
When you think about what a story is, those probably come to mind immediately.
The truth is, the art of storytelling goes much deeper and is applied to just about everything in our lives.
Today, as entrepreneurs trying to truly make a positive difference in the world, the art of storytelling is more important than ever if you want to connect to your audience.
But first, it helps to understand that our brains have been hardwired for storytelling. It’s how to take a lot of data picked up from our senses and start making sense out of it so we don’t go crazy.
I’m a storyteller. You’re a storyteller. We are all storytellers.
We can all also say that we know how to draw, it’s innate. Give a child a pencil and through instinct, they will create a stick figure. Not the prettiest drawing but a drawing nonetheless. However, to reach a level of excellence, we must learn about the depths of any subject and practice…a lot. Maybe you’ve heard about the book by Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers? He found that someone must learn and practice for 10,000 hours give or take a few to become an expert.
Why Your Business Marketing Might Not Be Working
As founders, we have to figure out how to get traction which means find our audience and getting them interested in what we are doing. How to connect with them.
Not always an easy task.
There are many variables that impact marketing results.
But let’s get to the root of it and talk about some BIG barriers and trends you must be aware of to learn how to connect with your audience.
1 – Know What You’re Up Against
Over the years people have faced all kinds of marketing tactics. Everything from false claims, to interruptions, popups and completely irrelevant display banners that are shoved in front of them.
This has conditioned people to hate advertising on many levels which means their guards are up. They don’t want to be interrupted or fooled.
Here are some examples of what I’m talking about…
2 – Interruption Marketing
How many times in your life has a commercial or ad showed up in the middle of something like a TV show or video, and you say to yourself, “dammit, I hate ads!”
Maybe you were on a website and some popup shows itself and looks like malware virus that is spam? Yup, that led to more people saying, “I hate advertising.”
That is what we call interruption marketing.
In 2016 the global number of people using ad blocker software jumped to jumped to 615M! Adobe showed that $41B in ads would be blocked in 2016. The fact that people are growing more concerned about viruses and security will only continue ad blocking to grow.
3 – Display Ads
What about those classic display ads?
Well, simply put, people have learned to ignore them.
A study done by Infolinks found that “after being asked to recall the last display ad they saw, only 14% of users could name the company, the brand or the product. This suggests that brands are wasting millions of dollars in ads that consumers don’t remember or even notice.
Related: Download 18 Marketing Secrets From 100+ Expert Interviews!
Why Storytelling IS Marketing More Than Ever Today
As the internet has become more saturated over the years brands continue to find ways to jam advertisements in front of us. We are hit from all angles and after years of fake bullshit ads we not only learned to reject them as skeptics but we have started to crave a human touch with real authenticity.
You know you ‘have to’ spread the word about your business in order to have a big impact and generate great revenues… but it feels difficult, overwhelming, salezy, and unethical even?
When you put your story at the heart of your marketing effort, this authenticity bridges the gap between you and your audience. You can say less and have a much bigger impact – once you master the art of storytelling.
Once you find the right words and the best way to share your story you will attract your ideal audience. It will resonate with them on a deeper level so they are attracted in a real way that earns their trust.
“If what you’re doing matters, really matters, then I hope you’ll take the time to tell a story. A story that resonates and a story that can become true.” ~Seth Godin
3 – A Look at The Magic Behind The Art of Storytelling
Storytelling is not just an art, it’s a science.
Good stories literally change the chemistry of our brains. So, before you practice you must understand what makes it work.
Humans are emotional creatures and as you probably already know we have the ability to empathize with others. Empathy is important for social creatures because it allows us to understand how others are likely to react to a situation.
When you wrap your story in meaning and shift in values you can erase the skepticism we discussed earlier and start earning trust.
There are many types of stories entrepreneurs can tell – founder/origin, company, product, consumer…etc.
All great stories are the same. What that means is they flow according to a structure defined as an arc. It’s known as the dramatic arc.
The dramatic arc according to Gustav Freytag includes six key parts that empower stories for the most impact:
Exposition (inciting incident): The exposition is like the set-up of the story. The background information that is needed to understand the story is provided, such as the main character, the setting, the basic conflict, and so forth.
The exposition ends with the inciting moment, which is the one incident in the story without which there would be no story. The inciting moment sets the rest of the story in motion.
Rising Action: Rising action is a series of events and actions that move to story to a climax. During rising action, the basic conflict is complicated by secondary conflicts, such as obstacles and challenges that frustrate the main character’s attempt to reach their goal.
Climax (turning point): The climax is the peak of the action and the turning point in the story. After the climax, everything changes. Things will have gone badly for the main character up to this point; now, things will begin to go well for him or her. However, if the story is a tragedy, the opposite will happen after the climax; things that have been going well for the main character begin to go bad.
Falling Action: During the falling action, the conflict unravels with the main character either winning or losing. The falling action might contain a moment of final suspense, during which the final outcome of the conflict is in doubt.
Resolution: The story ends with the resolution, in which the main character is better off than at the beginning of the story. However, the tragedy ends with death and sadness, in which the protagonist is worse off than at the beginning of the story.
When we interviewed social entrepreneur and founder of Brave Soles, Christal Earle, she told us something interesting:
“…and one of the things I’ve come to realize, and the feedback that we get now, when people buy our stuff, and when they talk about us online is they always say, like, “I love that I know the story behind what I’m wearing”. […] People want to be connected to what they own, they want to have a sense of pride in those choices.” ~ Christal Earle
This is common for impact brands and social entrepreneurs. People today are demanding morals be put back into business and they want to connect with your mission and origin story.
The story is what people remember and talk about. They buy the experience and story, not just a product.
4 – The Experiment
Paul J. Zak pioneered research in the field of neuroeconomics (a field that seeks to explain human decision making, the ability to process multiple alternatives and to follow a course of action) and works on storytelling with the Department of Defense to help them understand why stories are so persuasive.
In this video, they share some of the fascinating experiments they did to learn about the science of storytelling.
5 – Final Words & Next Steps
I have personally interviewed over 100+ impact entrepreneur experts and when it comes to marketing something has always stood out – The importance of understanding human psychology and how people work.
It’s a lifelong learning process that you continue to figure out and learn how to become excellent.
While one article cannot teach you how to be a master storyteller, I hope that it has opened your eyes to the trends of marketing and the potential behind the art of storytelling to connect with your audience today.
Change Creator is here to empower socially-conscious founders like you to take your passion and successfully make a difference. Because the world needs you.
We believe that storytelling is one of the most important skills to master today in order connect with your audience and scale your impact.
This is why we partnered up with other impact entrepreneurs and experts to create, Captivate. A program designed to put your story at the heart of your marketing.
Now, you have the can of paint but you must learn how to create your masterpiece.
Related: Download 18 Marketing Secrets From 100+ Expert Interviews!
No matter how many entrepreneurial platitudes out there tell us differently, when you are in the weeds, struggling to get your idea off the ground, it can be tough to see the positive side of big mistakes.
Yet, why do so many really successful people talk about their toughest lessons or their biggest mistakes? Or do they? Well, they do now.
Whether you are in the middle of a big failure story of your own, just starting out, or even on the verge of a big breakthrough, you are going to find value in these key business growth lessons.
He shares his toughest lessons on the front line of a growing marketing company.
Today Austin is a bonafide public speaker with over 50 events under his belt this year alone. He and his partners have established a few dozen solid clients and are well into a 6-figure business this year, poised to continue to grow as they prove out their business model.
Social media marketing can be extremely competitive and proving out your ideas and talents can be an uphill battle, but as Austin shows when you find that ‘sweet spot’ in the market and establish your personal brand, the sky’s the limit.
Here is Austin’s story in his own words
When I first started my business (around 8 years ago) I was young and dumb. I was trying to sell social media marketing to a small town in upstate New York area. I knew social media was going to be big but I had no connections, no experience in sales, and the market didn’t care.
The beginning of my journey as an entrepreneur started 8 years ago in a little town in Upstate New York. This little city operated in an old-school analog mentality where Newspapers ads, radio, and good old boys networking clubs reigned. I started selling social media marketing with no experience in the industry, no sales experience, in a market that didn’t really care. Their thought process was “what I have done in the past works, why would I change it?”
When to pivot. When to stick to your guns.
I also didn’t pivot fast enough to a product that the market would want.
At the time, the market only understood vanity metrics (follower growth) at the time, and I wasn’t comfortable selling just follower growth and would shoot for bigger all-encompassing projects. Instead of getting smaller projects and generating cash flow. This lead me to not making enough revenue to keep my apartment and I ended up homeless. It was a real wake up call to set my ego aside and give the market exactly what they want even if it’s not what’s best in the long term for them and build them up later.
From my failure, I learned 3 vital lessons as an entrepreneur.
3 Vital Lessons as an Online Entrepreneur:
1. Keep cash flow coming in from the get-go.
I learned that it’s better to have multiple small client projects that give a rolling cash-flow then to shoot for big projects. Having 10 clients at $500/month is safer than having one client at $5,000/mo. You are beholden to that single client and have no leverage in negotiations. Whereas if one out of the 10 client’s isn’t working, you can drop them and replace them.
2. Clients don’t know what they need, that’s why they hire you.
Client’s don’t always know what they actually need and that is okay. Start by solving their first pain point, for me, this was vanity metrics and follower growth. Once that first pain point is solved a new one will crop up. Be ready to solve that, as they will turn to you if you are doing a great job with the first one.
3. Values and impact matter more than money.
Cash flow is important but my values are more important. I have gone from homeless to a live streaming influencer with an audience of over 1 mil. There were times when I could have “sold out” but my values were and are too important to me. You don’t have to sell your soul to make money but you do have to work your butt off.
Do Things Differently to See Different Results
To overcome my massive failures I did a number of things differently. These changes helped me go from broke, homeless with .43 cents to my name, to who I am today. The mentality shift helped me also figure out how to change my business model. Instead of focusing on those big 5 figure sales, I focused on many smaller sales that are easier to manage. Then grow those clients as their needs expanded.
For Instance, clients are now looking at their Instagram as a massive marketing tool. Rightfully so as Instagram is one of the top social media tools we use and is owned by Facebook. Most clients come in looking for follower growth when in reality they want to generate revenue. After they start growing 2-3k followers a month they inevitably say they are looking to generating leads and sales. Each time they have a new need, I have the ability to address it and they have faith in the service I provide.
Struggling to get your idea off the ground? Here’s some advice:
I recommend taking a page from Product Hunt creator Ryan Hoover. In his post talking about how he created Product Hunt, he shares how he created an MVP of his idea off an email list. This allowed him to rapidly test the idea and get initial feedback.
I would also recommend that everyone finds a storytelling platform that works for them. Each brand is different, some use Instagram stories, other work on Facebook really well. For myself, I learned that public speaking and live streaming is where I dominate. Once you have your platform, obsess over becoming great at it and enjoy the ride. What you think might work and what actually works sometimes are drastically different.
How Austin Turned Things Around:
I moved down to NYC and slept out of my car while I got back on my feet. Being in a bigger more competitive market allowed for more opportunities and I later became well known in the live streaming space. I now live stream to over 1,000,000 followers weekly. I strive every day to grow my business in a much larger market, with a much larger following.
What Green Story is doing is something most aspiring entrepreneurs dream of as a solution but are not sure how to execute such a big idea. He leaned into his experience and passion to answer a key question – How do we tip the scale from an unsustainable economy to a green economy?
In this interview, we talk about the steps they took to build their technology and how it all works. Their experience of ups and downs offers great lessons for all entrepreneurs in the social impact space.
Akhil and his co-founder Navodit envisioned creating a level playing field for companies with green and social products. They would demonstrate the long-term value of these sustainable products by connecting people with the positive impact of their purchase.
By demonstrating, through sound research and data-driven visuals, the long-term value of green products, companies would finally be able to compete with conventional products in the short term.
Green Story’s embeddable calculators and shareable graphics are flexible marketing tools that translate the tangible data of LCI reports into digestible, engaging digital content. The creation of a customized and repeatable asset suite blends seamlessly into a client’s digital sales funnel and helps their customers identify, trust and ultimately buy sustainable products.
Akhil focuses on business development and marketing at Green Story. With over 8 years experience in the field, Akhil is a recognized expert in sustainability and renewable energy with a particular focus on market analysis.
In this interview we talk with Adam Capes, the founder of Getaway 2 Give. This is a really interesting discussion about his unique model that raises big money for while creating meaningful memories for people. It offers a fresh perspective that should spark some creative thinking for you entrepreneurs.
They currently partner with schools, nonprofits and charities who need help raising money, which you can learn more about here.
Getaway2Give is changing the way non-profits raise money and people think about vacations. Their mission is to be the best in the country at helping charities and schools raise money, and they’ve helped raise over $10M so far.
Adam began his journey to being a Social Entrepreneur as co-founder and president of a luxury residence fund called Equity Estates. This fund was one of many playing in the crowded destination club space and one of the few that survived the economic downturn. He helped raise $60M for this unique equity-based fund where members own the homes they vacation in.
At one prestigious gala in Aspen, Colorado, Adam had an “Aha” moment and decided to start Getaway2Give to help change the worlds of fundraising and vacations. Adam says, “At Getaway2Give, we’re incredibly passionate about two things – helping charities raise significant money and the lasting importance and memories made from meaningful vacation experiences.”
GET INVOLVED
If you want to partner with Adam’s team to raise money or just want to learn more about the work they do to get involved just stop by here at his website.
Interview with Samantha Kristoferson and Emilio Jose Gracia
Samantha and Emilio are full of energy and have a certain zest for life that is contagious.
After their interview, I got a copy of their new book, A Recipe For an Extraordinary Life.” It’s an easy read that offers a lot of great insights and inspiration. They don’t just help you declutter your space but also your mind.
In this interview we talk about how they turned that passion into a business.
They are the Co-Founders of KW Professional Organizers, providing speaking, 1-on-1 help, and online courses for individuals who are ready for a change.
Decluttering is their genius. Physically, mentally, and emotionally. They want to help you remove the things you don’t need to be doing and focus on what really matters to you.
They have been fortunate to be the catalyst for positive change in hundreds of individual’s lives and influenced thousands through their blog, videos, books, courses, media appearances and speaking.
In this refreshing and inspiring talk business expert Rick Miller shares his strategies for unlocking your personal and professional growth.
Rick Miller is an author, and speaker who has spent over 30 years as a business leader and go-to Chief, serving as President and/or CEO in Fortune 10, Fortune 30, non-profit, and startup companies.
Today, he works with Chiefs across industries and speaks regularly about a simple, unconventional, research-based strategy and tool that enables all Chiefs to drive sustainable growth.
Rick is a Chief not because of his many high-ranking titles, but because of his ability to bring out the best in others—and in himself—using the choices he developed in his Power Compass, a road-tested sustainable growth model he created over the course of his successful career, and which he
shares in this book and continues to use with his clients.
Rick has been in demand for the past ten years as a confidential adviser to many of today’s most senior executives and is extensively connected within the global business and leadership communities. Rick continues to serve senior executives by offering broad business experience in six specific areas: customers, competitors, costs, capital, communities, and culture. Rick helps senior leaders ask the right questions.
Finances have to be sustainable, and able to support the core work of the organization. This basic principle applies equally to for-profit and non-profit enterprises. Funding sources and financial structures, however, are quite variable.
Non-profits are typically funded by a number of vehicles. The majority of funding comes from fee-for-service or product. They also can access donations and gifts, corporate and foundation grants and gifts, government grants, and some interest income from estate gifts and investments. It is typical to have less than 50% of the annual operating budget from sources that are grant or gift based, as these funding sources are time-limited.
When working for or starting a non-profit, it is worthwhile to think carefully about how one feels about money and fundraising. Many people involved in the work of non-profits find themselves working at fundraising activities on a regular basis. Successful fundraisers consider money as a tool, one that has no intrinsic power or worth other than what it can be used for. This is not the typical view of money in the modern world.
We give money the power to give a thumbs up or a thumbs down to our dreams. We let money tell us who we are, and our identity is formed, in part, by our access to money. In its most basic form, however, money is a tool. Just like a good shovel, how effectively it works depends entirely on the person wielding the shovel.
For fundraisers, allowing foundations and corporations and individuals the ability to participate in the grand adventure of your non-profit is a way they can use their money for something that will give them great joy and pride.
So non-profits spend more time dealing openly and directly with money, and how to get enough to do the core work of the enterprise. Resources are spent for grant writers and those who need to complete the extensive reporting that accompanies government grants. Recently, the FASB, the Financial Accounting Standards Board, updated required accounting practices for non-profits, so the paperwork burden remains significant for both types of organizations.
A non-profit is not constrained from making a profit. For many organizations, making a profit for fees for service or product means less time spent fundraising or writing grant proposals. The difference is that non-profits turn the profits back to the organization– to employee salaries, to new services, to emergency funds. For-profit enterprises are not constrained by how they manage their profits. They can turn the profit toward a social enterprise, or into building the business, or however, they choose.
Non-profits have governing boards, with requirements for regular meetings, voting on decision making, and other cooperative management practices. For different types of organizations, the corporate governance structure is different. For example, a large state university system will have a different organizational and decision-making structure than a small community food bank. But they all need a group of people who serve to make decisions in concert.
Non-profits can be community service organizations, such as hospitals, universities, or large foundations and trusts; they can be smaller as well, but the requirements for governance and record keeping has meant that small charities and service organizations tend to group together under an umbrella organization that can provide the structure needed to meet tax and regulatory requirements.
A for-profit enterprise can be started and managed by one person, and that person can use the work of the enterprise, and profits, in any way. Businesses can be sole proprietorships, partnerships, LLCs, or other business legal models.
A business structures their finances so the core work of the business is supported by revenue, and profit can be allocated for business growth or a social enterprise. The lack of constraints on a for-profit business structure means an enterprise is agile and can respond quickly to opportunities and change.
Many businesses with social enterprise at heart are for-profit businesses, and they support their particular cause with a vigorous and sound business model.
It was an honor and a lot of fun to talk with the legend, Seth Godin.
He’s a no bullshit kinda guy who’s sharp as a nail. We dig into the idea of leadership to help uncover what really makes a great leader and how has it changed over time.
Seth Godin is an author, entrepreneur and most of all, a teacher. He’s the guy that taught us storytelling IS marketing!
“Marketing is no longer about the stuff you make, it’s about the stories you tell.” ~Seth Godin
Not only is he the founder of altMBA – a one-month online leadership and management workshop with a hands-on curriculum. He’s also launched one of the most popular blogs in the world and wrote 18 best-selling books, including The Dip, Linchpin, Purple Cow, Tribes, and What To Do When It’s Your Turn (And It’s Always Your Turn).
Though renowned for his writing and speaking, Seth also founded two companies, Squidoo and Yoyodyne (acquired by Yahoo!).
By focusing on everything from effective marketing and leadership, to the spread of ideas and changing everything, Seth has been able to motivate and inspire countless people around the world.
In 2013, Seth was one of just three professionals inducted into the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame. In an astonishing turn of events, in May 2018, he was inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame as well. He might be the only person in both.
We also talk about how entrepreneurship is the least risky venture you can take in your life, what do you think he said?
Other areas covered…
What’s the difference between leadership and management?
Is there old leadership habits that we are breaking?
What drives and motivates people nowadays?
What is imposter syndrome? Is it possible to escape it?
How you can make a difference through leadership
What’s altMBA doing differently?
What’s the best way to learn?
How do I enroll people in my ideas?
And much more…
“No matter what you do, your job is to tell your story.” ~Gary Vaynerchuck
What if you could start to truly sharpen your storytelling skills to grow your business to that next level?
What if it meant 2 more clients a month or a few dozen more sales (likely way more)?
Our team knows how important this part of ANY business is, so we partnered up with several experts and created a program to help. Not only is it a great community, but there is a full signature course called, Captivate, which is designed to help impact entrepreneurs learn the science of storytelling to attract the RIGHT audience and grow their businesses.
Suddenly, I noticed it was everywhere. I’m not just talking about the ads that creepily follow us all around the internet. It’s one of those situations where you talk about something and it becomes the focus of your intention. Maybe you have a small epiphany or revelation about the idea which really puts it front of mind. Next thing you know, you just start noticing people talking about it or articles written about it. Then you say to yourself, “I never noticed how popular this is.”
In my case, I’m talking about the art of storytelling. We all know that a good story can captivate and motivate people. They connect more with it emotionally. But depending on where you are in your life you can hear that and say, ‘yeah cool, makes sense,” and that’s it, you think nothing of it. Or, you might say, “actually, this is really interesting. Let me dig into that more.”
Sometimes you think nothing of it and then a few years later you have a fresh perspective and it hits you much differently and you have a small revelation (Usually triggered by a life experience) about the idea and say, “oh shit, now I really get it.” The information was just as profound before but you just didn’t connect with it. Many times the insight sounds basic and logical so you overlook it a bit. But what seems simple on the surface does not mean there isn’t complexity when you dig a litter deeper.
Our job as Change Creators who want to help others, by teaching what we know, is to help you save time and get to important conclusions faster.
As a media company with a digital magazine app, we are always telling stories. We use information to inform people, educate and make a difference in the world. But these insights are relevant and important to all people, especially in today’s evolving digital landscape.
Since my small revelation, I have personally interviewed several incredible people to help us all better understand this art of communication and storytelling, so we can all learn how to master it faster.
To avoid information overload, I’ll start with 3 important insights you should think deeply about, especially if you want your business to succeed.
1 – Be Intentional and Don’t Get High on Your Own Supply
Here’s a quick clip where I mention how stories and personal experience made Salvador Dali great. This ties into my comment about seeing story everywhere now and it’s a segway into the next video segment from Jay Shetty.
Jay Shetty is on a mission to make wisdom go viral and so far he has been very successful with over 2 billion views of his videos. What makes them so impactful? In our discussion, we explored that very topic and got a better understanding of how he thinks about storytelling.
I have to give the credit for the art to my art teacher from when I was like, I guess in my teens, 11 to 18, I had one art teacher at school and always on my favorite subjects are in design. And whenever we do a piece of art, he does it like whether it was a painter I was terrible at painting was pretty good at graphics, I was terrible at fine too. But anytime we would draw something or put a collage together, or do something graphically, the number one question you need to go to me is, why did you do that? Like, why is that color next to that color? Why is that item on top of that item? Why is that juxtapose next to that? Like his question will be like, why did you do that?
And if I didn’t have an answer, I get a low grade and he had an answer, even though it didn’t look visually as good I get a good grade because his whole point was a mountain, meaning it was always about
Are you meaningfully connecting our colors and designs and objects and the and visions? Or are you just doing it because it looks good?
And I think that’s a beautiful way of looking at storytelling. Are you trying to tell a story so that it looks good? Or are you trying to tell a story because it’s going to be meaningful to the viewer.
So the way I explained this is that there are two types of storytellers. There are two types of creators. Imagine a spectrum. Imagine one end of the spectrum and the other end and one of the one of the spectrum you have selfish creators, what I like to call selfish created. These are people who create simply for themselves, it’s the people who get high off their own supply, right?
It’s like you made a video or you wrote a book just because you thought your idea was amazing, right? You think what you have to say, is so amazing that you make a video that you enjoy, and maybe a few of your friends tell you, it’s good. And maybe there’s a niche for you that you can grow into your selfish creator. You’re only making videos because you feel like making them for yourself.
That’s one end of the spectrum. Nothing wrong with that. No judgment. Just sharing how it works.
The other end of the scale, you have what I call sellout creators. So sellout creators only tell stories that they think people are going to love. They only tell stories that they think are going to go viral. They only focus on stuff that they think is going to get likes and what happens very, you may even get likes, but you won’t feel fulfilled inside you may even get followers and views you might not you probably will. But even if you did you still want to feel like you’ve made an impact or anything right? And that’s why when I talk about is being the best storytellers are selflessly self-aware, self-aware, self-less self-aware and selfless.
So what I mean by that is, the best storyteller has the deepest understanding of people’s pain and problems, because they’ve either lived through them themselves, or they have lived through them with others. And then their focus is on saying, how is the best way of communicating this and it may not be a video, it may be a written piece, it may be a whole book, it may be a speech, it doesn’t have to be the same format and then really figuring out how does this connect with people.
So I always say to people that I, I spent the last 12 years of my life sitting with people listening to their problems. When I was a monk, I used to coach people for free for no money for more hours in a day than that I could possibly do. And I would sit them and just-just discuss their problems and help them out of it. And that gave me a much stronger understanding of human behavior. So for me, storytelling is a deep understanding of human pain, human behavior, and then the most, most ideal format for communicating that
2 – How You Tell Your Story Can Make Or Break Your Business
What do you really need to consider when you think about your branding for an impact business? Mona Amodeo is a branding expert in the impact space and we had a chance to connect with her to discuss. Not only does she emphasize the importance of story for branding but she breaks it down in a way that helps us all understand how the moving parts come together.
This all comes together to prove out that story is the foundation of successful marketing. We call it StoryMarketing!
Is your brand attracting the right audience? Do people want to get behind your cause? What do people think about your brand? what’s your reputation?
Adam G. Force
What’s the first step in understanding…well is my brand…Like…Is it saying the right thing to people? Is it attracting the right people? What are the like, I guess, preliminary or early stepping stones and thoughts around branding that needs to be considered for somebody?
Mona Amodeo
Well, I think if we think in terms of this, if we just kind of put if you can imagine three circles, interconnected circles and circles being first your business plan, what is it you’re trying to do? What are your goals? What are your dreams? What are your hopes?
The second circle, in that that’s kind of your intentions, right? The second circle comes to this idea of the brand, which really defines why you matter. I mean, every organization has to answer this question, Who are you and watch it, I care. And ultimately, your success or failure will depend on your ability to do that branding helps you shape that story. That sense of this is who we are, this is what we do. This is what we believe. And most importantly, this is what we can do for you in a way that’s different unique than other people.
So that second piece branding is that middle piece between your intentions of your business plan and your actual building the tribe I call it of people who really want to be connected.
You know, ultimately, though, Adam, what we’re really trying to do here is we’re trying to use branding as a vehicle for creating a reputation.
3 – Stories Create Chemical Reactions in the Brain
I personally made this video to stress a really important point. As a human behavior nerd, I loved learning about the chemical reactions in the brain because what it revealed is that external conditions (story) create a reaction that shapes someone’s behavior, how they respond. This is the most important part of marketing which makes this lesson 100% essential to master.
I recently came across a fascinating experiment. And it has two parts. One they wanted to understand does telling a story over video has the same impact on people as telling a story in person. The answer is yes. Two, they wanted to understand people’s reactions to the video. So they created two stories on video. One was about a little boy and his father, the little boy has cancer. The father is very emotional about it.
The second story was about the same little boy and the father. And they’re just walking through the zoo. Okay, so in the first video, people had a massive neurological change. And this is really important to understand because that neurological change is a reaction to the story. And when that neurological change happens, the human behavior changes, for example, you might be more willing to donate to a charity, the second video, people a dream halfway through, they were not hooked, they were not engaged. There was no emotional factor that pulled them in. And it’s that emotional factor that they find that creates a chemical in the brain called oxytocin. And that drives empathy. It drives people to be more cooperative.
So when you’re struggling as an entrepreneur, and you’re not being heard, especially by the most important people, the one percenters of your audience, I would highly, highly recommend starting to take more notice about human behavior.
Because whether you’re telling a story to get people to love your brand, or you’re trying to sell a product or get somebody on your team, or even get your wife to go out to a certain restaurant, you’re always selling and you can sell better when you know how to communicate because you understand human behavior. When you understand that human behavior. You could shape your story to be more effective.
In this interview, we talk with PR expert Jackie Herskovitz Russell to understand what makes great PR for your impact company. This is a vibrant and powerful conversation that provides a lot of important insights.
Jackie started Teak Media in an effort to generate good news overall, and more specifically, to bring positive and profitable media attention to nonprofit organizations and socially responsible companies.
As a former reporter for daily newspapers, including the Eagle-Tribune and Connecticut Post, she understood the power of the media and wanted to leverage it to help nonprofits and responsible businesses grow, raise money, change public policy, and continue their good work.
Today, even big companies are learning that good business is more profitable. This is what the people demand.
Some of the questions and topics discussed:
Why is teak pushing for businesses to tackle the triple bottom line?
What is the “so what” concept and why is the critical?
Business has caused problems and now they are trying to clean up a mess, can they go full circle?
Should a business stop what they do if they are creating products that end up causing social challenges?
How is business slowing transforming today and what can we expect moving forward?
What should a company do to keep the public clear about their efforts to make things better?
When is the right time for a company to start considering PR?
What steps does Teak take to establish the relationship and craft their impact story?
Do they work under a results-based model?
What kind of story becomes newsworthy? Are there key elements that stand out?
What’s the formula for a great that gets picked up?
Plus so much more!
Looking for great PR, visit Teak Media and learn more.
As the old stigmas melt away there is what some people call a green rush in the new emerging market of Cannabis. But is it really a green rush? In issue 19 of Change Creator Magazine talk to the experts in the space and uncover the social impact of this new market.
Vangst is one team doing it right as the number 1 recruiter staffing the cannabis industry.
In this interview, we speak with two incredible people, the founder of Vangst, Karson Humiston and their Business Development lead, Amanda Guerrero.
Karson started the company in 2015, after attending a cannabis trade show where she recognized the huge need marijuana companies had for employees in every position: chemical engineers, botanists, marketing managers, outside sales representatives, accountants, retail store managers, and so on.
Since that trade show, Vangst has seen great success but only due to a lot of hustle. According to an article in Forbes they grew 567% between 2016 and 2017 and has continued to climb ever since.
We uncover how they got started, what it took to get traction and how they see this new market.
Some questions and topics covered in this interview…
How Karson learned about this new need in the market and why she took action?
What led Amanda to join Vangst as the business development lead?
What were the early steps to start getting this company off the ground?
What are the biggest differentiators of companies that fail and those that get off the ground?
How Amanda planned her business development strategy to penetrate the market.
How important is it to be outside the building connecting with people in person during early stages?
What has been the biggest challenge so far?
How did they approach their fundraising round and what made it work?
How do they think the cannabis movement is impacting people?
What are some pain points or opportunities they see in this space?
In this interview with we talk to a tech and human behavior expert who is a successful entrepreneur and founder of ConveYour.com, the #1 Micro-Learning platform for influencers and companies.
The focus of this discussion is engagement. The magic word for any business.
As a futurist at heart Isaac is on a mission, enabling brands to authentically connect and inform at scale with over 105 million in combined revenues from the companies he’s helped build.
His success comes from understanding the relationships between human behavior, business and technology. This expertise has helped celebrity influencers and companies to transform their knowledge into humanized digital training.
His recent background includes, cultivating a vineyard, keynote speaker, digital marketer, and EdTech disrupter through the pioneering Mirco-Training technology, ConveYour.com, the platform that’s improving the way influencers and organizations connect and train their people.
He brings a visionary mindset to his family by creating a legacy raising and educating their 7 children with his wife Angie Tolpin of Courageousmom.com.
He refuses to waste his life achieving the world’s definition of success that leaves so many empty but instead does what matters through the projects he’s involved with, those he serves, and the family he leads.
Questions and Topics Discussed
What types of developments and approaches have dramatically increased engagement?
Should you use text messaging to engage your audience?
What frequency should you be contacting your audience depending on the medium?
How do you avoid overwhelming your audience?
What steps should be taken to create more efficiency so you don’t lose new customers?
What do you need to know about the human learning experience to motivate users?
What are micro-courses and why do they work so well?
What are some of the key insights learned about the challenges people have when creating a course?
What successes should we all be aware of when considering course development?
What steps should you take to market your new products and courses?
The world is rapidly changing around us and we all play a part in the future that is created. In this article, you’ll explore great tips for living a happier and healthier life that is more intentional.
According to the World Health Organization, 13 million deaths annually and nearly a quarter of all disease worldwide are due to environmental causes that could be completely avoided.
The conditions of our environment play a substantial role in the well-being of humanity and all life on earth.
While it’s easy to feel like our part individually is insignificant it’s important to remember that we’re all part of a bigger system. We are nature.
Taking care of nature is the same as taking care of ourselves.
Health issues such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cardiovascular disease, and stroke can all be triggered by poor environmental conditions.
Business is one major tool people use today to help create large-scale positive change. But we can’t stop there or rely only on business. Part of living an impact lifestyle means to live consciously. This means we need to become aware of small daily actions and make smart decisions. This can be tough sometimes because it’s like breaking old addictions.
You matter!
Here are some steps you can take to start living a more conscious impact lifestyle today.
The Food We Eat
Food is an everyday necessity of life. It’s also a business. How those businesses operate matters and so do the choices we make. Every dollar we spend is like a vote for the world we live in.
Opting for local, healthy, environmentally responsible food helps promote both personal health and overall health of the community.
Production, processing, packaging, and transportation of food is highly dependent on the use of fossil fuels and chemical fertilizers. These can greatly harm our health and the health of the environment.
Today, if you walk through a grocery store and just take a moment to look around a notice how much plastic surrounds you, it will blow your mind.
Sustainable food systems operate in a cycle of sustainable production and support. Farmers can make their food more sustainable by limiting pesticide use and treating their animals humanely and responsibly. Consumers can select food produced close to home and reduce the impact of our food system on the environment by lessening the distance food travels from farm to table.
When buying food consider these tips:
Buy local produce.
Buy fairtrade products
Buy “B-corp” certified products
Support and preserve rural communities.
Don’t use a plastic bag for every single fruit and vetable you purchase. Wash your produce at home.
Eat less beef and other animal products (Beef is a leading cause of deforestation, air pollution, and water pollution)
Avoid products in plastic containers; look for paper and glass which are biodegradable or recyclable.
Never buy plastic water bottles (25% is tap water in a bottle anyway)
Only buy eggs that are “Certified Humane”
Buy organic to avoid supporting the use of pesticides and toxins
Look for items locally grown
Buy fish that is sustainably caught and not overfished (see www.fishpeopleseafood.com)
Transportation
It’s exciting to see the shared economy become more popular. This includes programs like Zipcar, shared bicycles stations in big cities, and even Uber.
Pollutants released by vehicles greatly increase air pollution levels and have been linked to adverse health effects, including premature mortality, cardiac symptoms, exacerbation of asthma symptoms, and diminished lung function. Have noticed that more and more people now have allergies or asthma?
To minimize the damaging impact of our current transportation choices, try adopting more sustainable methods of travel when possible. With hundreds of millions of cars on the road in the US alone we are growing rapidly.
According to the Bureau of Transportation 77 percent of people drive alone still. And at the same time production is booming. According to the International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers, there were over 72 million cars produced in 2016 globally. As of May 2018, 29 million cars have been produced so far.
Watch this TED Talk from Bill Ford (grandson of Henry Ford), talk about the future and gridlock.
Sustainable homes are not only better for the planet, but offer opportunity for saving some cash. These solutions might require a little investment up front but you’ll make it back over time in savings.
Tips for saving energy:
Consider solar roof panels that look great – https://www.tesla.com/solarroof
Make sure your home is well-insulated to conserve energy and spend less on heat and air conditioning.
Use a programmable thermostat to time your heat and air conditioning for when you are in your home. These can shut off while you are away, saving both energy and money.
Weatherproof your home. Caulk, seal, or weather strip outside openings to prevent air leaks.
Conserve water by installing aerating and low-flow faucets and showerheads.
Choose garden plants that don’t have a high demand for water.
Looking for a major upgrade? Tankless and on-demand water heaters can save up to 30% of energy compared to standard natural gas tank heaters.
Safe Products
There are many stages in a product’s life cycle, and each one can negatively affect the environment if not managed correctly. Companies may adopt poor practices because it’s cheaper and each year they need to show an increase in the bottom line.
In response to destructive practices William McDonough and Dr. Michael Braungart published Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, encapsulating a journey of discovery about materials as biological or technical nutrients and their use periods and evolution. They created a framework for quality assessment and innovation: the Cradle to Cradle Certified™ Products Program.
The Cradle to Cradle Certification process spans over five categories: material health, material reutilization, renewable energy and carbon management, water stewardship and social fairness.
Before making a purchase, consider the full impact of the product’s material, manufacturing method, and usage. Know the full extent of what you’re supporting. Products can tie to deforestation, pollution, child labor and other challenges none of us likely would choose to support if we knew about it.
To convert raw (or recycled) materials into a product, elements are processed, shaped, and manipulated. These steps consume energy and deplete nonrenewable natural resources. For example, plastic products are made from petroleum, a finite resource.
All the plastic ever made is still here today and will likely never go away. Maybe in a 1,000 years if we’re lucky. It’s filling our oceans, poisoning our food and killing eco-systems. About 8 million tons of plastic trash land in our oceans each year.
Additionally, many products affect the environment throughout their useful life. Using these items responsibly can reduce their environmental impact. Any equipment with a plug requires electricity to operate. To prevent wasting energy, turn equipment off when not in use.
At the end of a product’s useful life, consider what parts may be reused and how to dispose of the product or its components responsibly. Plastics, glass, paper, and other materials may be recycled. Many manufacturers will take products at the end of their lifecycle. Check with vendors in your area for specifics on disposal practices.
Some tips to save money and the planet:
Save your plastic bags and reuse them
Shop with reusable bags
Look for 30% or greater post-consumer recycled content
Buy 100% recycled paper towels and other paper products
Never buy plastic plates, forks, knives or cups
Only buy soap that does not use palm oil or sources it sustainably such as Dr. Bronners. (Palm oil is a major drive of deforestation)
Look for products made of biobased content (composed of biological products such as plant materials)
Avoid animal-based products
Look for b-corp certified
Look for fairtrade certified
Buy products that have minimal life cycle costs
Buy products that have minimal risk of toxic/hazardous chemicals
Look for products that are durable or have a long product life
Ask yourself if what you’re about to buy is necessary
Electronics
Electronics impact the environment and human health. Fabricating and shipping electronics use water and energy, and often create industrial waste. The disposal of electronics results in a massive amount of waste going into landfills. Toxins, commonly found in electronics, can leak into the soil or release into the air through burning.
Each year our planet generates about 50 million tons of electronic waste. This includes everything ranging from batteries to mobile phones and children’s toys. Here’s the thing, while this material may have been tossed away that does not mean they’re not without value. Actually, the United Nations estimated the total worth of all that e-waste at $55 billion, thanks largely to the trace amounts of gold, silver, and other metals they contain. The problem, though, is getting them out.
There are specialized centers that can safely dispose of these products to avoid toxic leakage and may be able to recycle some of the material. Many manufacturers will also take old products to recycle their parts.
Only through management over the entire life cycle of electronics can we mitigate the overall negative effects on our soil, water, air, and health.
Check for special programs in your area to recycle:
Batteries.
Old laptops or phones.
Printers, keyboards, and other computer accessories.
Victoria Fine is an energetic and passionate leader in the social impact space. Her experience in the content strategy and business growth is outstanding.
Before her current role as the CEO of Finally, a growth hacking company, Fine spent time as the director of Strategy at Slate where she launched new platforms and growth plans for an audience of more than 25 million people.
She was the first managing editor at Upworthy, where she built the distributed editorial team to more than 40 people and grew traffic at the publication 10x.
She was the founding managing editor at Huffington Post Impact and Education, where she raised thousands of dollars through social impact reporting.
Victoria also co-built The Tiziano Project, a digital media nonprofit that was rated by Fast Company as one of 2014’s most innovative companies and was supported by the Knight Foundation and Google.
Lastly, she has published several books, taught at major universities and received awards and speaking honors from SXSW, the Webbys, and the UN, among others.
In this interview, we discuss questions and topics such as:
What did she learn at HuffPost, Upworthy and Slate and how were those approaches different?
Where do young brands start to tell their story in an effective way?
What is a big challenge faced by entrepreneurs in the social impact space?
What are some of the common challenges she has seen among brands when creating a content strategy?
Considerations when building a team.
Should you focus on viral content or organic for traffic?
There’s something happening as we speak. People are starting to perk up and take action against plastic pollution which is suffocating our planet.
Change Creator is passionate about getting rid of plastic pollution and we follow new innovations closely. This is also why we recently interviewed the founder of S’well, Sarah Kauss. Her work building a premium water bottle brand in an effort to combat plastic bottles is impressive.
These innovations are very important because when you stop and look around, plastic is everywhere. And the worst part is that it’s not really recyclable and it’s definitely not biodegradable. Every bit of plastic ever produced is still with us today and will be for 1000 more years.
Here’s our list of the best plastic replacement innovations today.
1 ‘Ooho’ by Skipping Rocks Lab: The Edible Water Pod
Plastic water bottles might feel convenient but they come with huge costs, socially and environmentally. Actually, you end up paying a premium for water that 25% of the time is just tap in a bottle or it has added chemicals from production or leaching.
The consumption of non-renewable resources for single-use bottles and the amount of waste generated is profoundly unsustainable. The aim of Ooho is to provide the convenience of plastic bottles while limiting the environmental impact.
This little pod is just that, it’s little and may not have the same practical use as a plastic bottle, it will have different applications. Everything starts somewhere and this is a truly a unique innovation that is going in the right direction. There are many ways this could help people and of course take a lot of pressure off our environment and food chains.
At the moment Ooho is mostly being sold at events, while they get their fully-automated production machine up and running.
An entrepreneur from Bali, disgusted at the rubbish littering the famous holiday island Bali, is trying to tackle the problem with alternatives to conventional plastic.
Every year, an estimated of 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide. Avani’s non-toxic cassava-based eco bags should be considered as one of the solutions to mitigate this horrible worldwide epidemic. Avani bags are a bio-based alternative that becomes the ideal replacement for petroleum-based plastic bags.
Through years of preparation prior to its launch, Avani has successfully embarked on its mission to replace disposable plastic products which take hundreds and even thousands of years to be decomposed by Mother nature by using renewable resources made from plants. Parallel to that, placing sustainability as its core business values, Avani is committed to exercising good corporate governance by adopting the Triple Bottom Line approach in assuring the sustainability of its business.
While water bottles themselves are not a new innovation, the approach S’well has taken is which is why we were eager to interview their founder, Sarah Kauss. She has built a premium brand on the foundation of a very strong story pushing a mission to replace water bottles.
During today’s awakening around plastic usage, this could not have been a better time for S’well to pop up.
It’s S’well’s ongoing mission to create products that are both beautiful and eco-friendly, that infuse innovation with inspiration, and that continues to give back to communities in need.
S’well is a proud partner of UNICEF USA, committing $800,000 since 2015 to help provide clean and safe water to the world’s most vulnerable communities. Through 2018, S’well is focused on supporting water programs across Madagascar – a country where nearly 50% of the population lacks access to clean drinking water. We’re supporting UNICEF’s efforts to build infrastructure, educate families on water-borne diseases and promote national reform to make a sustainable, long-lasting change. To learn more visit: www.unicefusa.org S’well also supports BCRF and (RED).
Learn more about how Kauss has built such a successful movement in our exclusive interview.
Let me tell you a secret. Your branding matters more than ever today. It’s more than visual and using the right colors. It’s grounded in your intent, your story, your purpose. Everything you do is a reflection of your brand.
In this amazing interview ,we talk to a mission-driven branding expert who can help you transition into a brand that matters. But first ,you need to understand how branding has evolved for today’s world.
Her name is Mona Amodeo, Ph.D.. Amodeo helps organizations transform into brands that reach beyond short-term vision to new levels of possibility. Her expertise brings simplicity to the complex process of building, managing and maintaining brand reputation.
Mona’s mission is to elevate brands that make the world a better place through a collaborative, strengths-based stakeholder engagement process she developed from her personal relationships with some of the brightest minds in organization change, identity dynamics, positive organizational psychology, entrepreneurial leadership, sustainable business and marketing communications. This process—aptly named Branding from the Core®—is a multi-disciplinary approach to strategic brand development.
She inspires audiences across the nation as a keynote speaker, making recent stops at Harvard and the United States Green Building Council, just to name a couple.
Mona holds a Ph.D. in Organization Development and Change; and is recognized as an expert in the areas of brand identity, organization development and change, community engagement and sustainable business.
In this interview, we discuss questions such as…
How has branding changed over the years and what does it mean today?
What do you need to consider today for your brand and what steps can you take?
What kind of brands are consumers backing now and why?
What are some of the fundamental questions you must answer for your brand?
What is the difference between convincing and connecting with your brand?
We all find inspiration from different places and need to hear certain things more than once.
He went from being a monk to a social media influencer who’s mission is to make wisdom go viral.
His videos have been viewed billions of times and it’s because he knows how to tell stories that connect to the human condition.
His name is Jay Shetty and his infectious storytelling landed him on the Forbes 30 under 30 list and was noticed by Arianna Huffington who hired him to host Huffpost Lifestyle.
How do you create impactful content that cuts through the noise? To find out we spoke with a master storyteller. Someone who made the @forbes 30 under 30 list, has billions of views for his videos and was the host of HuffPost Daily.
His name is Jay Shetty and he is making waves on his mission to make wisdom go viral. His videos are so powerful that even Arianna Huffington took notice and invited him to be the Host of HuffPost Lifestyle in New York. Jay moved to New York in September 2016. Jay moved on from HuffPost to create his own viral video agency and grow his brand.
In our exclusive interview, Shetty shares his in-depth strategies to help you create more impact with your content.
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.
Are your product and mission symbiotic? What is your ethos all about?
Two years ago, Jake Orak was on the cover of the very first edition of Change Creator Magazine. We decided to catch up with Jake to find out where he is with his company, Ethnotek, today.
Now he shares some of the major challenges they faced, how they overcame them and incredible lessons we can all learn from.
In this segment, we discuss the question:
“How do you lean into your social mission to stand out?”
Seth Godin is one of the most engaging speakers in the world. He takes the stage and quickly grabs your attention with stories that inspire you and ideas that jolt your worldview.
This talk is no different as he explores what leadership looks like today during a changing system today.
Where does the magic happen?
Most people think we need to address the external stuff, strategy, tactics, tips, if we do that enough it will be a lever to help people change their internal narrative. As people trying to make a difference we are addressing the internal and along the way, people become enrolled in getting the tactics and strategies.
The systems we are playing in are changing faster than anyone may realize. As we went from vinyl records to digital formats the system changed but there is more music than ever. Some will see this as a blank slate other will feel lost.
The Four Letter Word “More”
More market share, more sales, more revenue. The word “more” leads to mass marketing which means average stuff for average people. This is problematic. Most of the people you’re trying to reach don’t have the problem you’re trying to solve, or they don’t think they do. It has been stated that the average consumer today has the attention span of a goldfish. So we are treating people like goldfish so we dumb down our products and message. But these are human beings and we are just making the problem worse.
Sort By Price
Mass marketing means people will be hit over and over and interrupted by ads as products fight to stand out. But now, every digital good aimed at the masses will be subject to sort-by-price or distance…etc. They will choose the cheap one because they are all the same, they are all average. People no longer want to hear from the marketer anymore.
Compromise
As more clutter of average products saturate the market and fight for attention the desire for more or to see the line graph go “up and to the right” leads to compromise. The bad news is that you cannot interrupt yourself into success. This is a losing situation.
Normal Distribution
Everyone in the world can engage with you but at the same time, everyone in the world is your competitor.
But when you’re going to the market with your product you must understand that not everyone, the mass market, cares.
There is a law of distribution to consider.
Referencing distribution chart shown below there three key areas. This will apply to any population.
The first part is a small percentage of early adopters who care.
The middle is the average person who could care less.
The final part is the people who are last to the party. As Godin states, they are the people with the “12” still flashing on their VCR.
“If you’re seduced by the mass-market mindset you’re going to be confused for a long time to come.” Seth Godin
Where Is The Magic?
Godin goes on to explain that he believes there are multiple steps of what we make when we make something important.
Those steps include:
Transforms from the people you reach to create an identity and drive loyalty (loyalty means they would pay extra when they have a choice)
Some of those people will tell friends
You shift the culture of a group
Linkages and Storytelling: The Stories You Tell Matter
Understanding how things work together is essential for growing your movement or business. Godin shares a bowling analogy by explaining that when the pins are moved 1 inch farther apart from each other you will never roll a strike, but if you move the pins 1 inch closer to each other you will roll a strike every time.
So where does it all begin? When do people first engage? Well, it’s with the story you tell. Nobody knows and if they will personally be happy with a product until they try it. Whatever course, product or craft you make starts by engaging people with a story.
We all want to make something special but over time we start making things more normal based on feedback and other external forces. As we make things more average you will fight on Google, Amazon, and Facebook. Companies that prey on people making things average because then you have to fight for attention. People tend to lower price or even raise the price but sort-by-price is a game you will never win.
Smallest Possible Audience
The way to win is to target the smallest possible audience that you can live with. They will be ignored by competition and the bigger stuff takes care of itself.
Two questions you need to ask:
Who’s it for
what’s it for (change you’re seeking making)
This leads to how you tell your story.
Where to Begin
We have been taught to aim for the middle because that’s where most people are but those are people that don’t care. Today more than ever before, we can find the people on the edges. The people who care.
Always start at the edge with interesting people.
All the products you know so well today started on the edges because that’s where you begin, with the interesting people.
Average is nice but not beautiful – the edge is beautiful.
Final Words
Tribes share a vision and goals, way of being in the world. There is a role for each person in this world and we like being in sync with the people around us. But we have to stop doing what we were told and take a stand as a leader.
It is important to remember that if failure is not an option, neither is success. Innovation is failing over and over until something works.
While it might be scary you must leap into the void because that’s when you’re most alive. It always feels too soon, you will always want more proof, or to be more prepared.
Sure, you can be prepared but you can never be ready!
When I decided to take my life in a completely new direction that’s all I knew. The missing part was what direction I wanted to go. If you are thinking, “I want to start my own business but don’t know what to do” then this article is for you. This is my real deal life experience here, so keep reading.
I wanted to be my own boss. I wanted the work I spent my valuable time each day doing to actually matter. Not just to me but to the planet. I didn’t want my earnings capped by a salary anymore.
I wanted to start my own business but didn’t know what to do!
Now what?
At the time I was a heavy reader of magazines and books but also listened to podcasts. Always looking for inspiration and trends.
When I learned about the idea of social entrepreneurship I was all about it because it aligned with my values. Using business to tackle social problems. The activist in me said, yes please, that’s what I want to do!
Of course, at that time, there was very little information about pursuing that form of entrepreneurship. Not even one magazine. There was no Change Creator Magazine.
But I did find a book called Making Good by Billy Parishwhich became a bible for me. Parish’s story was inspiring. He hiked the Himalayan mountains and witnessed a melting glacier first hand. After that personal experience, he was so inspired that he dropped out of Yale and began his journey as a social entrepreneur and was very successful. He shared his ideas and perspectives which to me were of great value.
Paralyzed
I learned that there are tons of ideas out there. Broken systems that need fixing. Social problems that need to be solved. Local or global, it was endless. They are all business opportunities!
Did this help make it easier for me now? No, actually it was tougher because I had so many ways I could go but I couldn’t decide what was best for me to pursue.
After a while, I realized my hunt to pin down the right idea led me to become paralyzed. I had no progress. No new developments. Nothing.
Starting Without a Real Plan
It got to the point where I decided to just start something.
The first thing I pursued was plastic pollution. Plastic water bottles drive me freaking nuts! My thought was to create something that could replace the plastic bottle and that was a hemp water bottle. I found that other containers were made from hemp because it’s so versatile.
I spoke to hemp experts and found that while a bottle can be made the challenge is water absorption over time. I found a solution to that problem from an FDA approved food product designed by some folks at MIT that could coat the inside of the bottle. It would then prevent the water absorption like a repellent. But it wasn’t on market and had some years to go before it could ever be used in scale. Plus, nobody at MIT would return my emails.
In addition to that, I found out that manufacturing would be a huge cost. If you wanted a water bottle company to take on the task of using hemp, it would require a ton of different equipment for processing. This means big cash.
I decided this path wasn’t for me and crossed it off the list.
Because I cared about so many different topics I created a blog called The Blue Dot Post. I started waking up each day at 4 am and wrote articles, hundreds of articles! I got some other great people to work with me and contribute and after a year I didn’t really know what this thing was yet or how to monetize it.
I took audience development classes, writing classes, and learned a ton.
I knew I had to get more niche and decided to focus on deforestation. This led me to guest posting which was a great experience that taught me a lot as well.
During this time I also did volunteer work that gave me exposure to new things and helped me develop a lot of skills I use today as an entrepreneur.
But I never really created a business, just a hobby.
Finding Clarity
A combination of things led me to clarity.
Working for other people first for experience
Doing volunteer work
Just starting and trying things so I can cross them off the list if they didn’t
Ongoing education (reading, research, podcasts)
Self-inventory exercises
After two years of writing, reading, and learning I picked up a book called 6 Months to 6 Figures by Peter Voogd. I needed to figure out how to make money with my ideas but this actually gave me solutions to finding the right idea.
Peter does a great job of providing exercises I now call, self-inventory, to help you narrow down what is not only important to you but what would make the most sense for you to pursue. There’s a difference.
If something is important to you that does not mean you have the experience or skills in that space. You can pursue it and succeed but it might take much longer. If you have skills doing something specific that doesn’t mean you love doing it.
After going through the exercises I gained clarity on what was important to me and how to think about using the skills and experience I already have.
For example:
Your values
Past experiences
Skills
Gifts
Frustrations
Reasons for starting the business
This process is something we do in our mentorship program now because we found it to be so valuable.
Digging deep into your self-inventory is helpful in shaping your narrative. This means the business you create will have a story behind it which makes it an authentic reflection of you. That story is so important to the business and can be really tough for people to pin down. This process helps a lot.
I worked at WebMD for over 10 years which is a publishing and digital media monster. As Director of Strategic Marketing, I not only knew the media space but I was savvy in creating smart content marketing strategies.
If you can think of Venn-Diagram that highlights key information about yourself then you can imagine there is a point of connection for them in the middle.
Instead of becoming a social entrepreneur who makes a hemp water bottle or saves the rainforest I created a media company for purpose-driven entrepreneurs that would offer generation to generation learning and peer to peer learning. The best way to learn how to change the world is from those that already are!
That is when Change Creator was born. How I came up with the name is another story.
This media company, of course, included Change Creator Magazine, the first magazine app for purpose-driven entrepreneurs on iTunes and Google Play, because it’s something I always wish I had to when I was figuring things out.
Today, I have interviewed people like Tony Robbins, Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, Arianna Huffington, Guy Kawasaki and many award-winning social entrepreneurs such as Taddy Blecher. They all provide strategic insights into building meaning businesses that matter to you and the world.
How to Manage the Risk (The Balancing Act)
Nobody wants to dump a ton of time or money into something and lose it all. Not when we have a boatload of student loan debt and other expenses.
The reality is that you probably will have to straddle two jobs for a while. The one that pays bills and gives you experience and the other that is your journey to be your own boss.
It’s really scary to start spending your money on software, conferences, and even classes. Thousands of dollars can go quickly. But here’s the thing. You have to be willing to invest in yourself to grow and change.
Here are a few things that really helped me cope with the fear and risk of taking a leap:
Once you have a business concept that is a fit for you and there is a plan in place. I highly recommend you find a co-founder! This will greatly increase your chances of success but you must find the right person.
Here’s an example of the document I use to track my money. (These are not real numbers)
There is no Time Like Now
According to the 2017 GEM report, in the US, 27 million working-age Americans are starting or running new businesses. A 16-year record high!
There has never been a better time to take bold self-directed steps in creating your own impact lifestyle.
The activist spirit is infused in the new entrepreneur.
People today believe businesses have a moral obligation to prioritize social profit alongside of financial profit. This is a huge transition taking place right now.
There are new models for business and life taking shape while technology is creating opportunities that never existed before.
More people are saying, “I can help change the world too!” But they don’t know how to navigate these new uncharted opportunities.
It takes effort and discipline to create a new life.
The true purpose of life is whatever you make it!
I hope sharing my experiences has helped you in some way. If you know someone that could benefit from this info please pay it forward.
As the CEO and cultural architect of Datron World Communications, Art Barter transformed the organization from a $10 million company to a $200 million company in just six years after taking ownership of the company and converting the leadership style to servant leadership.
He says servant leadership is powerful because it leverages influence rather than fear to accomplish a company’s goals. Art believes the word ‘servant’ implies action. And action is what is needed in leadership today–action that puts others first, not ourselves going beyond the effort of making money in order to make a greater impact in the lives and communities around us.
He believes when leaders shift their mindset and serve first, they unlock purpose and ingenuity in those around them. Resulting in higher performance with engaged, fulfilled employees and overall strong relationships and compassion for one another at every level in the workplace.
Today, Art helps others discover and benefit from the power of servant leadership through the Servant Leadership Institute.
Some of the questions and topics we discuss:
Where did he start and how did he get where his is today? (from janitor to leading a $200m company)
What is servant leadership?
What is the power model?
What was the big change he made and how did employees take it?
How is his impact model structured and how does it motivate people? (They have given $16m to causes)
What factors contributed to his success in scaling the company from $10m company to a $200m company?
How do you balance serving people and making money?
What does a good leader to manage people effectively and get them to do their best?
How do you start creating a mission-focused culture from the start?
Hold on to your seats for this passionate conversation about finding purpose and building your personal brand.
Dov Baron is a best-selling author, headline speaker for global conferences on leadership, influence, business and embracing purpose-driven authentic leadership. He has been speaking internationally for over 30 years.
Baron’s podcast is number one on Change Creator’s list of top leadership podcasts to listen to right now which you can check out here.
Baron is also one of Inc. Magazine’s Top 100 Leadership Speakers to hire, a master storyteller and considered by many as one of the leading authorities on Authentic, Purpose Driven Leadership.
He’s the man with a finger on the pulse of the evolving world of NextGen leadership.
The Change Creator team met Sonya Renee Taylor during SOCAP, September 2017, after her stellar performance on stage that shook the room. She’s a vibrant poet leading a movement for social change as the Founder and Radical Executive Officer of The Body is Not An Apology, a digital media, and education company promoting radical self-love and body empowerment as the foundational tool for social justice and global transformation.
This interview will inspire anyone who might have a little doubt about themselves and needs to understand their own power. We walk through the steps she took to start conquering her own inner game and what it took to build a movement using social media.
Sonya’s work as a highly sought-after award-winning Performance Poet, activist, and transformational leader continues to have global reach. Sonya is a former National and International poetry slam champion, author of two books, including The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love (Berrett-Koehler Feb 2018), educator and thought leader who has enlightened and inspired organizations, audiences and individuals from boardrooms to prisons, universities to homeless shelters, elementary schools to some of the biggest stages in the world.
Sonya’s work has been seen, heard, and read on HBO, BET, MTV, TV One, NPR, PBS, CNN, Oxygen Network, The New York Times, New York Magazine, MSNBC.com, Today.com, Huffington Post, USA Today, Vogue Australia, Shape.com, Ms. Magazine and many more. She is a regular collaborator and artist with organizations such as Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Advocates for Youth 1in3 Campaign, Association for Size Diversity and Health, Binge Eating Disorders Association (BEDA), Greater than AIDS Campaign, Yerba Buena Cultural Art Center and numerous others.
Some of the questions we discuss:
What is radical self-love?
What does self-love have to do with sustainable social change and community?
Where do you current belief patterns come from and why is it so important to change some of them?
How do your beliefs impact the external world?
How did she start turning this idea into a business?
What steps did she take to start scaling a movement on social media?
How did she keep the integrity of her message by creating a process?
Where did she find interns to help her grow the business idea?
What was her experience like working with interns?
This article was written by Luke Bilton and originally published on Innovation Enterprise
2017 was a year for high profile casualties in digital publishing, with Vice, Buzzfeed, and Mic all missing ad revenue targets and cutting jobs. Mashable sold to Ziff Davis for $50 million, less than 1x annual earnings and a huge drop from its $250 million valuation just one year earlier.
The Google and Facebook ‘duopoly’ now eats up 63% of all US digital advertising and this has taken its toll on ad-supported digital media. Facebook’s algorithm changes turned off the traffic tap, making a big dent in audience numbers for publishers reliant on social referrals.
Print circulations continue to fall by around -6% yoy in the UK. Time Inc was split and sold-off to Meredith and private equity. NME closed a month later after 66 years of publishing and Conde Nast closed Glamour, the tenth biggest-selling title in the UK. While both titles continue in website form and with occasional specials, these are significant bellwethers for the health of the magazine industry.
Innovation Feeling The Burn
Underneath these headlines, publishers continue to innovate – monetizing audiences through ecommerce and branded content, adopting the use of new technologies, developing new content formats and distribution channels.
The New York Times recently said it was more than halfway to its goal of doubling digital sales to $800m by 2020, thanks to online subscribers surging to 2.6m. The Guardian’s own paywall strategy is helping it to turn around its considerable losses to the point of breaking even next year.
The news itself is going through something of a renaissance. Despite claims of ‘Fake News,’ it is journalists, not opposition parties, who are holding governments to account with the Windrush Scandal, Cambridge Analytica, and similar scoops.
There is, as ever, a lot going on.
This summer, the Digital Publishing Innovation Summit will be returning to both London and New York. The summits are designed to give publishing execs the actionable information they need to chart a path to revenue and audience growth.
If you would like tickets to either event, use the code SURVIVAL for 20% off two-day passes.
Here are some of the highlights:
Digital Publishing Innovation Summit, London June 26-27
A taster of the full agenda:
Monetizing Media
With digital advertising under greater pressure than ever before, learn how publishers are finding success through branded content and paywalls.
Dennis Publishing’s MD of Digital, Pete Wooton, will talk about revenue diversification across digital channels. Future Publishing will show they are monetizing their media audience with eCommerce. Tamsin Creed, General Manager, Private Media will be presenting how to pivot to a paid subscription or membership model.
Branded content experts who will share their best practices include the Head of Digital, Commercial Content at Hearst, the Director of Branded Content, EMEA at Quartz and Head of Digital at MailOnline.
Serena Guen, CEO of SUITCASE Magazine will discuss what it takes to launch a successful print magazine in the digital era.
Content Creation and Distribution Strategies
As the digital landscape grows increasingly crowded and social platforms shift, we shine the spotlight on how forward-thinking publishers are evolving their approach.
Experts in trending content from BBC, Telegraph, and MirrorOnline will reveal how social listening is influencing marketing and product decisions, while Cristy Garratt will talk about how CNBC have used online video to find new audiences.
Steve Rayson, Buzzsumo will be presenting new research into publishing in the era of ‘content shock’ and changing distribution channels, including an analysis of the impact Facebook’s recent algorithm changes has had on publishers.
Emerging Technology Platforms
Which technologies should publishers invest in to make the most of the opportunities presented by AI, voice and the data that unpins it all?
New research from Wessenden Marketing will show how UK’s major media companies investing in digital and where they are getting payback, giving you real numbers to benchmark your business against.
James Hewes, President & CEO of FIPP will be leading a panel discussion on new tech adoption and finding new platforms for engagement, which will feature participants from HuffPost, The Economist and Labiotech.eu.
Digital Publishing Innovation Summit, NYC July 18-19
New York publishers are making some of the biggest moves in the world to reinvent the business of news, and this year’s agenda is packed with publishing’s most influential leaders. See the full agenda here.
Meet the pioneer’s re-inventing news
Kourtney Bitterly, Head of R&D, The New York Times, will reveal how they are adopting and monetizing Voice AI .
BuzzFeed President, Ze Frank, Time Inc’s Editor-In-Chief, Mike Guy, and Vice publisher, Lars Bengstom, will talk about reaching audiences at scale through new approaches to content and social platforms.
Francesco Marconi, R&D Chief and Head of the Editorial Lab, The Wall Street Journal will show the WSJ is applying media science methods to empower ambitious journalism.
Jeremy Gilbert, Director of Strategic Initiatives, The Washington Post, will show how they are reimagining the election night experience,
Jesse Angelo CEO & Publisher, New York Post will show they are evolving their organisation.
New revenue streams
A series of talks will cover new approaches publishers are adopting to monetise their media business:
Brandon Berger, Chief Business Officer, the Skimm will talk about the new digital revenue streams and Dan Lagani, President & Chief Revenue Officer, Diply, will discuss powering up social commerce.
DailyCandy Editor-in-Chief, Dana Levy Founder, will show how she turned an email newsletter into a $125 Million Business.
Digital transformation stories
Modernising established brands for the digital age is a key theme at this year’s event.
Nathan Lump, Editor-in-Chief of Travel + Leisure, will explore the genuine opportunities ‘legacy’ media brands have in today’s world of commoditized content, and the pitfalls they must avoid if they hope to remain relevant.
Subrata Mukherjee VP, Product Management, will go inside For Dummies’ digital transformation journey, as they move from books to taking content directly to the learner.
Michael Villaseñor, Hearst Newspapers, will talk about how they have shifted their thinking from individual brand websites to a network that use a shared, flexible UX product framework.
Hopefully you know by now that video is a part of the online marketing future. That’s where people spend their time and that’s where big online brands are leaning into. Any technology trend or new development such as Facebook Live and Facebook Watch will be favored by Facebook. They will give you more reach if you use those tools because it’s their next big thing.
Consider this, by 2019 it is expected that Facebook will be 90% video! Think about your own behavior. Do you stop to watch videos that have text subtitles mostly or do you open articles?
Experts like Neil Patel test strategies all the time and he’s got some great tips to share that will help you make your videos have a better chance of going viral. They do weekly marketing videos jammed with great advice. This stood out because video is such an integral part of the online marketing future.
I realize that video is not everyone’s sweet spot but sometimes you have to find ways to break into new areas you might not be comfortable with. And you will suck for a while…but that’s part of the process. We all start that way.
So what do you need to know?
1 – Never share a Youtube video on Facebook
Something Facebook thrives on is their engagement rates and they are always looking for ways to get people to spend more and more time on Facebook. Any link out of Facebook is not favored by them.
This means you need to upload the video to Youtube and Facebook natively.
Neil has found they will likely get 20-50 times more views by doing this than if you used the Youtube link.
2 – A Video Length of 5-10 Minutes Seems to Work Best
This is one of the more interesting tips in this video.
We have all probably heard that shorter videos are better because people don’t stay and watch. We all now have short attention span, right?
Well, that’s not the case here.
Again, the goal is to get people engaged and videos between 5-10 minutes work best on Facebook.
But it’s important that your creative is good and you target the right people. If your video is relevant to a certain region of the the country or world, target them specifically.
3 – Make Sure You Have captions or subtitles included in the video
As I mentioned earlier, you most likely stop regularly to watch a video but don’t always click it to hear the sound. You just read the text on screen, right? If it gets really interesting you might pop it open.
This is critical to hooking people who are just curious and getting them to engage. If you don’t have the text on screen they may not even give you a shot.
Neil found that videos get 30-35% more views and engagement when they included the text on screen. Makes perfect sense, right!
4 – Presentation Matters
You might think they’re talking about the quality of the video. Honestly, I personally had a nice DSLR (Cannon) but for the sake of simplicity I moved over to using an iPhone because the the quality is great. Keep it simple. You don’t need $10k of studio gear. iPhone and Lapel mic does the trick.
But they aren’t talking about quality, they’re talking about how you present yourself.
Russell Brunson calls it the “attractive character.” Present yourself with enthusiasm, emotion, show passion for what you do, be authentic. These are traits of great leaders and entertainers.
If you’re boring then anyone who sees you will be bored. Nobody is a master of this art right away. It takes practice.
Hopefully at least one of these quick hit tips are helpful. Pass on the knowledge to someone who you think might benefit from these tips!
In this interview Adam talk with Kate about nonprofit boards. Oddly, enough this seems to be a much overlooked area when considering social change. Yet, it’s full of potential for impact.
We talk about the traditional role boards have played along with their shortcomings. Kate explains how this is changing today and what she’s doing to help reshape the role boards and their members play. This is a really exciting topic and a powerful way to become a leader who drives real social impact.
Who is Kate Hayes anyway?
Hayes oversees programming for a dynamic group of emerging business leaders who are dedicated to realizing their full potential as agents of social change.
Prior to joining Echoing Green, she worked as Director of Evaluation and Program Impact in the national office of Minds Matter, where she developed new systems and methods for evaluating organizational success. While at Minds Matter, she led several new initiatives for engaging alumni, scaling the organization, and training 1,700 skills-based volunteers across the United States.
Kate currently sits on the Executive Committee at the Northfield Mount Hermon School, where she also serves as Chair of the Young Alumni Committee.
Some of the questions we discuss:
How did Kate get involved with Echoing Green and her mission around nonprofit boards?
What do boards traditionally look like and what do you want them to transform into now?
How do you make sure the new functions of a board happen effectively?
Do board members think big picture or roll up their sleeves to help with the details?
How can you drive true change by joining a board?
Who is the right person for a board and how big are boards typically?
Gary Vaynerchuk continues to storm stages around the world not just building his personal brand but to impact people’s lives by helping them understand the incredible time they live in right now.
Change Creator has said it before and I’m going to say it again now, there has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur…if you’re willing to go all-in.
In this one hour video, Vaynerchuk passionately shares his insights around two key components for success:
Mindset
Facebook & Instagram
The Essential Foundation
While he hates to talk about the nontangible mindset factor he makes it clear that it is the essential foundation for long-term success.
“Too many of you are about to take fucking notes right now and think it’s about a Facebook ad, but if your foundation isn’t right you have no shot at long-term success.” ~Gary Vaynerchuk
He explains that so many people are in the “excuse business.” I could not agree more and it’s a huge challenge for people.
It reminds me of an interview I did with the founder of Addicted 2 Success, Joel Brown, I brought this very topic up to hear his perspective.
At the time I had many conversations with people who told me they wanted to start a business of their dreams or make a change they desire in their life but said the didn’t have time because they are busy with family, kids, whatever it was.
I asked Joel if those life situations were reasonable or excuses.
His answer was:
‘Unfortunately, those people are making excuses and the sad truth is not that they don’t have time, it’s that they aren’t willing to make the time.” ~Joel Brown
The hard truth Vaynerchuk shares is bold, honest and unfortunately, spot on – a lot of things can happen in life but the world just doesn’t give a shit.
So what has worked for Gary?
Well, simply put he states what worked for him is – optimism, gratitude and overall, a positive mindset.
Black and White
From Vaynerchuck’s perspective, life is black or white – you can be on the offense or the defense.
It’s a really simple way of putting it but sometimes keeping things simple is the best way to put it. You can walk through life creating reasons “why not” or you can walk through life creating reason “why yes.”
Sounds simple, right?
These perspectives are easy to understand but most will not consciously put in the effort to shift their thinking.
The problem is that you are deeply conditioned through all the years of your life. They way you think now is not something you just flip the switch on and change. You have to work hard at it.
The optimistic outlook he talks about is important and fundamental to long-term success because it will shape how you make decisions and the results you get.
Most of what Vaynerchuk has shared in 2017 was based on a USA perspective but during this talk, he shares fresh insights. While everyone tends to lean their marketing towards the USA as the biggest market he has found that Australia and New Zealand have a market with a 20%-40% higher consumption rate.
Don’t Judge
Nobody wants the new technology to come along and change everything we know. A lot of people hate change. I’m sure you have heard a member of an older generation say things about how it used to be or that kids today have lost the ability to connect in person.
Vaynerchuk makes the point that you can sit around and judge kids for being on the phone and not connecting the way people used to but at the end of the day, nobody cares. If you don’t adjust you will be totally left behind.
New Reality
The world is being lived through the smartphone today and that is the reality.
Years ago it was newspapers, Tv, and radio. Today its blogs, video, and podcasts. It’s the same idea but people are putting their attention in a different place.
Anything you want to do in life today as an entrepreneur requires a person’s attention – written word, audio, video. You must figure out where the people you want to share it with are and then you have to share the content.
We have all heard the hype of video. So does that mean you should become a video master? Not necessarily.
Vaynerchuk stresses that you have to be self-aware, who are you and what are you good at? Do what you’re good at!
Facebook & Instagram
Facebook and Instagram have massive audiences and the ad product is deeply underpriced right now. But it won’t be forever.
Vaynerchuk states that if you do not spend 2018 obsessing over how to succeed on Facebook and Instagram you will lose.
When Vaynerchuk was building his father’s liquor store google AdWords came out he has one big regret that offers a powerful inight. He bought every wine term for five cents a click and was getting customers for 40 to 80 cents which was worth $10-$15 to him. A huge win! But his regret was that he built his father’s company to a $60 million company but feels if he was smart he would be built it to a $250 million company. Why? He goes on to explain, at that time if he was smart he should have taken all his energy and money out of print, radio, and direct marketing and gone all in with AdWords.
From 2002-2008 guess who did go all in on that platform? Amazon!
Another great example he explains is the company called, Wish. A few years ago a few former Google engineers started the company and all they did was run Facebook ads. They were the biggest Facebook advertisers for the last five years and have exploded!
shopping app called wish – biggest facebook advertising in last five years
Nothing Lasts Forever
It’s important to understand that this opportunity could turn into a regret if you don’t take action because it will not last forever.
He estimates that you have about another 12-18 months before change happens. The biggest companies in the world are not spending enough money on these platforms. However, Vaynerchuk explains, once big brands like Mercedez Benz, Budweiser, and Coca-Cola get their act together moves their budget from old traditional marketing over to Facebook, you will no longer be able to spend $4 on a CPM (cost per thousand). It will become $86 for a CPM.
Facebook and Instagram are marketplaces. If you want to promote in their feeds you have to pay to play.
At the same time, as years go by people will get so tired of seeing ad that it will be hard and harder to get them to click and that will jack the price too.
This is a micro-moment – it will pass – you can act on it or look back later with regret.
While Vaynerchuk believes if you’re not spending 65% of your cash on Facebook and Instagram you’re leaving money on the table but he makes a few key points as to back that up with three key points before people go ham on these platforms:
The creative and copy matter – if they suck you will lose
Start with small budgets, test the creative and copy and then invest more on the winners.
You have to be the practitioner to be successful – learn it yourself, don’t pass the work off to someone esle.
Context is key – make your ad relevant such as localization – speak to specific people
It’s a science my friends, and you have to run tests.
Final Thoughts
Vaynerchuk shares a lot in this video and we tackle some of the key points here.
Being a successful entrepreneur is a skill set. You need to get yourself in the right place mentally and it takes a lot of work. Not just work, but smart work.
As we always say, the number of hours you work doesn’t matter as much as the quality of those hours.
Knowing what to do is far different than taking action and executing.
This article was originally written by Bill Kramer and published on Next Billion.
Eight men are as wealthy as the poorest half of the world, according to Oxfam. If you have worked on poverty issues at all, you know the general outlines of inequality. Nevertheless, it still has the power to shock the conscience.
We can highlight a few of the facts in the Oxfam briefing paper, “An Economy for the 99%”, published in January.
The report deserves your attention:
Today, the top one percent owns more wealth than everyone else combined;
In the U.S., the bottom half of the population has seen zero income growth while the top
one percent has seen a 300 percent increase over the past 30 years, according to Thomas
Piketty;
Intergenerational transfer of wealth by just 500 rich people over the next 20 years, $2.1 trillion is more than the GDP of India with its 1.3 billion people.
How did we get here? And, one a related note, how do we get out of this unsupportable situation? These are unquestionably critical and pressing questions for those of us “in the business,” but it’s fair to say that they should be equally important to everyone, for the accelerating pace of inequality and poverty increases crime and instability, fosters social unrest, and severely hampers efforts to reverse course.
So, let’s address the first question. The Oxfam briefing paper, as well as many other observers, lays the responsibility directly at the feet of an ideology, neoliberalism, which has provided the energy and justification for economic policies whose results are now on display. Neoliberalism (and Keynesianism) is a relatively new phenomenon. It emerged largely from the ashes of World War II, as the victorious capitalist states, relying on the recommendations of a small group of neoclassical economists who put their faith in corporate capitalism to rebuild the devastated economies of Europe (and to a lesser extent, Asia) in the face of a perceived communist Soviet threat and, just a few years later, a similar threat in the People’s Republic of China. Neoliberalism got a huge boost
in the U.S. in the 1970s through the economists at the University of Chicago, starting with Milton Friedman.
Some of the principal tenets of neoliberalism include:
The goal of the economy and business is to generate financial wealth;
The freedom of the individual (person or corporation) is the primary societal
value;
The government should be small, limited to protecting individuals and corporations
and their private property;
If we just let the free market sort things out, all will be well.
One of the fundamental, but usually unacknowledged assumptions of neoliberalism is that man is selfish and that the markets are an efficient way in which to channel that basic human trait. The pursuit of profit is a handy and useful stand-in for such selfish behavior. It’s a simple and neat narrative: “Hey, we were made this way, so go with it.” While there is no doubt that self-interested behavior is common, considerable research points in the opposite direction. The old narrative was based on assumptions that scientists now reject.
Psychologists, evolutionary biologists, and anthropologists and others find that we seek to meet our needs. But more than that, people seek goodness, connection and caring; we desire to be rewarded for meaningful contributions with a decent living but are not primarily motivated by acquiring wealth.
Our capacity for—indeed, need for—social behavior in the community begins to point us to an alternative philosophy, one that goes beyond the raw, monomaniacal pursuit of profit, one that measures human progress in ways other than GDP. The Oxfam report puts it this way: “We need to measure human progress using the many alternative measures available.
These new measures should fully account for the unpaid work of women worldwide. They must reflect not just the scale of human activity but how income and wealth are distributed. They must be closely linked to sustainability, helping to build a better world today and for future generations. This will enable us to measure the true progress of our societies.” Good sentiments. But where to start turning words into action?
As it happens, there are a number of folks focused on just that, and I am working with some of them. One is L. Hunter Lovins, founder of Natural Capitalism Solutions. With Paul Hawken and Amory Lovins, Hunter was the co-author of “Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution,” which has sold more than 2 million copies since its 1999 publication. That book imagined an economy
in which the biological realities of the natural capital—resources and living systems—were fully valued. It staked out a vision of a sustainable economy and the industrial revolution it could power. The conclusions of the Oxfam report owe a good deal to the natural capital framework.
Entrepreneurs and academics, inspired by “Natural Capitalism” and other foundational works, have been cultivating their own vineyards—the financial system, systems theory, ecological systems, and more—to better understand the dynamics of a new economy.
These empirical studies and theoretical frameworks are coming together under the general umbrella of “regenerative future” studies. The regenerative future is a world in which, when natural systems are fully understood and valued macroeconomically (by companies) and macroeconomically (at the national and global level), we will be in a position not just to sustain ecosystems and everything that is dependent on them, but, in fact, to begin to restore them to optimal health and productivity.
Each actor in this new realm, from his or her own perspective, is seeking to understand the inter-relationships of many disciplines that previously were considered separate and to bring them together in ways both academically stringent and real-world practice.
John Fullerton, for example, after a career on Wall Street with Morgan Stanley, has turned his mind to what he calls “regenerative capitalism.” He has created the Capital Institute to carry out the work of translating his years of investment experience into a holistic approach to a more sustainable future, without turning his back on the capitalist system.
Or take a look at the work of Robert Costanza, the “father” of ecological economics, a trans-disciplinary approach which is, in his words, “a bridge across not only ecology and economics but also psychology, anthropology, archaeology, and history … necessary to get a more integrated picture of how humans have interacted with their environment in the past and how they might interact in the future … an attempt to look at humans embedded in their ecological life-support system, not separate from the environment.”
An Oxfam senior researcher for many years, Kate Raworth, now working independently (a “renegade economist,” she calls herself), has been developing “Doughnut Economics,” the deep empirical study of planetary boundaries, which she describes this way: “Humanity’s 21st century challenge is to meet the needs of all within the means of the planet. In other words, to ensure that no one falls short on life’s essential needs (from food and housing to health care and political voice) while ensuring that collectively we do not overshoot our pressure on Earth’s life-supporting systems, on which we fundamentally depend. The Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries is a playfully serious approach to framing that challenge, and it acts as a compass for human progress this century.”
Many more could be added to this short list. But the point is made: Serious, practical and smart people are working today on an alternative approach to neoliberal ideology and policies. I find this work to be a compelling complement to the work that Al Hammond, Rob Katz, and I, along with other colleagues, did at the World Resources Institute as we tried to better understand low-income communities and their relationship to their own, and broader, economies. We looked through the lens of business engagement with poor communities.
Regenerative economics is a significant extension, focused not on business models but on systems and frameworks and the necessity for new, non-neoliberal narratives.
For myself, I am totally in synch with this idea, attributed to the novelist William Gibson: The future is already here; it’s just badly distributed. What we need to do now is find, aggregate, and communicate the positive future that is already happening.
This article was written by Sam Ford for Change Creator Magazine.
Creating Sustainable Change
The business world is driven by frameworks. By concepts. By new ideas with pithy titles, whose core concepts can be stated in an executive summary. By metaphors.
The people who author them may make their living writing books, giving talks, and doing the consulting that surrounds it — to attempt to change the way people see their professional lives and see their concept become part of business parlance.
The greater business consulting industry that surrounds this infrastructure grabs onto some of these concepts and attempts to translate them into wider business practice. With case studies. With benchmarking. With trademarked names and proprietary methodologies. And “change agents” within organizations sign up to do the yeoman’s work of trying to adapt old systems to begin utilizing new ways of thinking.
These interventions can be important work. These frameworks may, in many cases, introduce useful ideas. But the business world loves a good metaphor so much that we’ll very quickly stretch it far past its usefulness, to the point it does more harm than good. And we love a good business phrase so much that we’ll quickly turn it into a buzzword.
Soon, it’s been taken far past the boundaries of its original meaning, and well-intentioned consultants and “change agents” risk finding themselves looking for nails for their hammers, or suddenly imagining everything is a hammer, or
imagining that everyone needs a hammer. (I think my metaphor just outlived its own usefulness.)
As a business consultant myself, I know how this goes. I risk contributing to the pollution. I might even profit from it in the short term. But how can concepts and metaphors have power without becoming over-utilized buzzwords? We must insist on, first, understanding the depth with which a concept adds to our meaning, and the degree of elasticity it has. And we must realize that every ecosystem is unique and that frameworks imported in won’t naturally fit wholesale.
Striking these balances is crucial for those striving to be meaningful “Change Creators.”
And one of the people who has most shaped my thinking on this — on seeing the power for change within capitalism to make it more responsible, to make it regenerative — is Carol Sanford.
Carol Sanford: “The Responsible Entrepreneur” | Talks at Google
True Corporate Responsibility
I first met Carol in 2010, in the most unexpected of places: the comments section of Fast Company. I’d been writing about why people in marketing, and in business leadership, were often conducting practices that were against their own long-term business interests, for the sake of short-term gain.
Soon, I learned about Carol’s history of doing deep, systemic consulting with businesses, ranging from Fortune 500 leadership to early-stage entrepreneurs. Her frameworks challenged accepted corporate lore and buzzwords. They demanded that people ponder how language and metaphors matter deeply and that the systems we use for understanding things shape (and distort) what’s possible. But they also dared say that it’s in the best interest of the capitalist to act and behave responsibly, not just responsibly and socially conscious as a fad or as a byproduct.
She didn’t just come armed with theories. She was prepared to demonstrate how it had worked when it was really given a try. When it wasn’t a surface-level retrofit to the system that already exists. When it wasn’t just adopted wholesale from the outside. And when it was holistic, and past this quarter, in its way of
thinking.
In The Responsible Business, Carol’s 2011 book (for which — full disclosure — I wrote a blurb for the back cover), she lays out a premise she calls the pentad: that truly responsible businesses are responsible to their customers, their co-creators, the earth, the communities they’re part of, and their shareholders…but, crucially, in that order.
It’s been a way of thinking that has guided my work ever since, in part because it provides a framing for something that seems like we should have known all along. Perhaps it’s, as Robert Penn Warren once said of Dixon Wecter’s
The Hero in America, “This, however, is what we always say about even—about especially—the most original and important books after they have appeared. Once written, they always seem so obvious and inevitable.”
Since that time, Carol has built on that thinking in her argument for regenerative organizations. This approach is focused on how living systems work, how they regenerate themselves in an evolutionary way that keeps them viable — and how that sort of logic can help shape organizational design and growth.
As Carol says in her interview with Adam, thinking in a socially connected and regenerative way is partially about finding our way back to the core of what comes naturally to our species, and divesting ourselves from toxic practices that have gotten in our way.
It’s also about helping organizations engage in long-term thinking. Carol’s work has focused on sustainability — not only in the environmental sense, but in the organizational sense. How do you keep companies fixed on what makes the most long-term sense, on what’s in the best interests of the organization beyond this quarter or fiscal year?
This takes us back to the pentad, and the argument that working toward long-term goals is ultimately in the best interests of shareholders, or at least shareholders that truly are invested in your company. Carol puts strong emphasis that this is about a core logic that must be adopted uniquely for every organization, not produced at mass scale. This is about enacting true change.
Negative ROI
With that in mind, and inspired heavily by Carol’s work, here’s the change that I’m spending my time advocating for these days. When organizations think about the strategies for communication and for engagement with the various
stakeholders about whom they care, how do they consider negative ROI?
When it is used, the phrase “negative ROI” typically refers literally to the fact that a project lost money. But I’m adapting the phrase to emphasize another, even more fundamental problem with how organizations typically think about their return on investment.
How do organizations account for whether/how their investment might have had negative consequences that are hard to see, and how do those negative effects (to reputation and the relationship to key stakeholders) account
in the final equation of whether an initiative was successful?
If your measures of success don’t account for the potential negative effects of your actions, then you may count as a success an initiative which has significantly damaged your organization. If you don’t count negative ROI, then any thinking about long-term reputation might seem like a cost center in the equation you use to track the success of a particular initiative.
Consider this example, for instance, from the publishing industry. For commercial publishers, ROI typically will ultimately translate back to advertising dollars earned. An investment in stories, and the marketing of those stories, drive audience acquisition. Those audiences are sorted, counted, and sold to advertisers. The ROI will look at how much a story, or set of stories, and their promotion cost, relative to how much revenue they brought in.
Let’s say a particular story drove a large number of clicks/visits and thus brought in a significant amount of advertising revenue, relative to what the piece cost. But, what if that successful story drew much of its audience because of a clickbait headline? What if the predominant image promoting the article was built around a cultural stereotype heavily offensive to some audience members? What if the article actually had little to do with how it was positioned on social media?
In a “classic” calculation of ROI, that wouldn’t matter. With “negative ROI” calculated, too, however, organizations would have to ponder the potential damage from the number of people who were annoyed by the clickbait headline, the number of shares of the article that were from people who were outraged by the offensive stereotype, or the number of people who vowed never too be fooled again when they realized the article they were led to had little to do with the headline they clicked in their Facebook feed.
Here’s another example, built on some research I did a few years back with Peppercomm and The Economist Group. In our survey of business executives’ opinions about content they received from companies, 71 percent said they didn’t like content they received from B2B brands because it “seemed more like a sales pitch than valuable information.” Meanwhile, 70 percent of B2B marketers we surveyed said that they measured the success of their content marketing by tracking it back to “calls from customers and prospects.” In a classic calculation of ROI, the cost of the content is weighed against the new business which could be directly tied back to it. In that case, it’s no wonder that a company might include a strong sales pitch in their content, if direct sales is how ROI would be calculated.
Conversely, a calculation that also includes “negative ROI” would have to account for, or at least acknowledge, whether some audiences were turned off by the content. The accretion and erosion of trust.
In some cases, of course, businesses are not so worried about negative ROI. A partisan news site might be totally fine with turning off audiences outside the circle of people they’re trying to reach. That Nigerian prince is okay if 99.5 percent of their audience knows they are a scam artist, as long as they find enough people to dupe in their email blast; he’s not worried about his long-term reputation.
Negative ROI is also difficult for many organizations to think about because the effects cannot be easily quantified. It’s simple to calculate money spent. It’s simple to calculate money made. If you can draw a direct line between
the two, or even imagine a direct line between the two, then the math can be done quickly. But, just because the math is easy, it doesn’t mean your calculation is accurate.
However, the biggest challenge for calculating for negative ROI is that the effects are seldom immediate. Rather, we have to think about reputation, and trust, in terms of a gradual accretion or erosion.
Brand trust, and reputation is earned slowly. Customers don’t typically develop immediate devotion. The consistency of your product or service, the resonance your marketing and communications might have over time, and the quality of your customer’s interactions with you all ultimately shape the trust you have in a brand. Each new experience with your brand is a chance to accrue a bit more trust and loyalty.
A startup is well aware of how much work it takes to build a following. As they build up those layers of trust, though, it’s easy to quit focusing on the accretion process so closely. Brands take loyal customers for granted. They frequently focus more on the continued acquisition and less on maintenance. And, thus, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that every interaction is also a potential occasion for eroding some of that trust accrued.
One of the main reasons erosion is hard to notice is because its effects are seldom seen over the course of one business quarter. Sure, there’s occasionally a major crisis that may cause sales or stock price to plummet. But
the erosion process is typically much more gradual than that. It would take a longitudinal focus to see these trends. And companies seldom have the patience for that.
Actionable Steps and Takeaways: Four Tips for Tracking Sustainable Change and True Responsibility
If you are fortunate enough to build or work for an organization that has accrued enough trust and positive reputation to be successful, consider yourself a steward of that reputation. And, if you’re building a new organization from the ground up, how do you build it in a way that adheres to the concept of building a regenerative business, and so that you are making your decisions in a way that prioritizes your various stakeholders appropriately?
1. Think as Teams, Not Individuals. Humans Are Social Creatures.
Organizations are comprised of collaborative relationships, both within the company and around the company. As you build and maintain your logic and metrics, and your plans for growth, do so in a way that looks at the collaborative potential for your team, rather than individual goals.
2. Keep Your Priorities Straight.
Carol Sanford’s pentad is immensely useful in its stability. Are you prioritizing all your stakeholders? And are you
keeping those priorities in the right order? An environmentally friendly product that doesn’t solve customers’ problems won’t be viable in the market. A decision for the immediate benefit of your shareholders that has tremendous negative impact on your employees and co-creators will adversely affect shareholders who have a long-term commitment to the company.
3. Find Ways to Keep Track of Negative ROI.
Even if it can’t be qualified, find ways to include a check on negative ROI for your company investments.
Despite the allure of its simplicity, the equation is never as simple as money spent versus money earned.
4. Keep Stock of Your Accrual of Trust.
Build methods to check in on your reputational health on a regular basis. Taking your reputation for granted
will bring you long-term pain, even if you don’t feel it immediately.
Some people start businesses to get rich. Others see it as a way to fulfill their passions. But for an increasing number of entrepreneurs, business is a vessel to impact lives and do something meaningful.
Jacquie Berglund is a seasoned social entrepreneur. Her B-Corp beer company, FINNEGANS, was the first to donate 100 percent of its profits to charity and it is now linked to all manner of good causes. Like so many like-minded entrepreneurs, Jacquie is redefining business and what it means to be successful.
What It Takes to Be a Social Entrepreneur
Despite not growing up in an entrepreneurial-minded family, Jacquie Berglund had an instinctive feeling that she would become a business owner. Furthermore, she had a deep yearning to help improve the lives of those in need.
After observing her parents struggle through life as “working poor,” Jacquie became sensitive to the needs of people in similar situations. She was frustrated that despite the U.S. being one of the richest nations on the planet, a large portion of the population fell into the category of working poor.
Witnessing what her parents went through and knowing that so many other people experienced even worse hardships was one of the main factors behind Jacquie’s ambition to start a company. But, unlike so many entrepreneurs hailing from humble beginnings, Jacquie’s reasons for starting a business were far from self-serving.
If there is one trait that all social entrepreneurs have in common it is an innate desire to make the world a better place, or at least some aspect of it. For Jacquie, poverty was the number one concern.
Combining Passion with Profits and Success
Businesses represent aspirations of the owner. For some it is achieving maximum profits, for others, it is about realizing a lifelong passion. A few seek to combine the owner’s passion for a good cause with natural business practices of profit maximization and success.
A benefit corporation, which is a relatively new concept, allows entrepreneurs to legally and simply integrate their charitable goals with business operations. It means that they do not have to choose between a non-profit and a for-profit entity. In other words, a benefit corporation enables the best of both worlds.
There are several different ways to describe a benefit corporation, but the following, from CTBC, sums it up most succinctly:
“The benefit corporation is designed to accommodate a growing number of entrepreneurs and investors seeking a form of business that allows them to pursue an expanded mission that embraces societal good along with profits.”
That category of business was the perfect fit for Jacquie Berglund’s beer company – the company that would become her primary tool for to impact lives.
Business and Charities, the Perfect Match
FINNEGANS, Jacquie’s now thriving beer company, started out as Kieran’s Irish Ale – a charity beer born when both Jacquie and a previous employer, Kieran Folliard, sat down to determine a “giving strategy.”
With the idea of promoting a beer for charity fresh in her mind, Jacquie heard a presentation from Billy Shore of Share Our Strength. Amongst other things, Billy spoke about his for-profit consulting firm that was used to support his non-profit venture. That revelation sparked an idea within Jacquie. She would start making beer and direct the profits towards the good causes with which she was increasingly passionate.
Alcohol and good causes are seldom in association with each other. But FINNEGANS is a good example of how any business idea can be used to combine with charitable causes. Since 2007, FINNEGANS has experienced 30 percent annual growth. The brand is now present in some 1,500 restaurants and bars throughout Minnesota, Wisconsin, South Dakota, North Dakota and Iowa.
That growth has had a direct impact on the charities, local communities, and causes that FINNEGANS serves. Jacquie’s boldness and vision that led to the marrying of the two ideas – beer and charity – has had a positive effect on the lives of thousands of people.
How FINNEGANS Does It (The Hybrid Model)
FINNEGANS Inc. is the for-profit arm of Jacquie Berglund’s brand. Through that company, profits are filtered to its non-profit counterpart, FINNEGANS Community Fund. The fund is used to acquire fresh produce for people in need, provide accommodation and support for the homeless and at-risk youth, and support a host of other causes.
Jacquie was the sole employee of the company from 2000, when the company started, until 2009 when she could finally take on four additional members of staff. If not for her determination, persistence and a small team of devoted volunteers FINNEGANS might not have gotten to where it is today.
Beer is not the only thing fueling FINNEGANS’ mission. Jacquie spearheads several other fundraising initiatives, including the recently launched Reverse Food Truck where food trucks are sent to cities.
Instead of delivering food, however, these trucks collect non-perishable foods for the food shelves as well as cash and credit card donations. This initiative is another world’s first for FINNEGANS,
Jacquie refers to the FINNEGANS quest as “turning beer into food.” But budding social entrepreneurs can use the concept to funnel any business idea into serving a good cause – turning cupcakes into clothing is a social business idea just waiting to be exploited.
The story of FINNEGANS and Jacquie’s mission to alleviate poverty does not end here. There are bigger, bolder plans on the horizon. Currently, the final touches are being applied to what Jacquie is calling a “Brewtel.”
The Brewtel is a large brewery with hotel and conference rooms – “a kind of Willy Wonka factory for beer”, as Jacquie puts it. It will be a hub for the FINNEGANS brand and a place from which to spread the brand’s story to a wider audience.
There are also plans to start FINNovation Labs; an incubator for social entrepreneurs that will provide training, funding and launch support.
What are You Passionate About?
The FINNEGANS journey has been long and arduous. But Jacquie possesses amazing courage and stick-to-itiveness. She says that every social entrepreneur will face unique sets of challenges that will test their character.
One of the biggest challenges of operating in this space is getting access to financing. But, Jacquie hopes to see a shift in focus by the financial institutes shortly. That seems likely to occur as more social business’ become successful. Until then, social entrepreneurs will have to become “professional bootstrappers” like Jacquie.
She started FINNEGANS with only a dream and $500 in her bank account. With such constraints, you need to be extremely passionate and persistent to achieve your goals. Only a high level of passion and strong character will enable you to stick to the task when things inevitably become challenging.
Jacquie says that the first step towards setting up a social business is to figure out how you will fund the venture long term. Sustainability is especially important for social businesses. The groups and causes that you will serve often grow heavily dependent on the services, which if not sustained, could cause devastation.
It is also vitally important that you surround yourself with people that know you and can support you in many different ways. Jacquie herself had a “fantastic support network” from the outset. Without which, she says, it would have been almost impossible to have had success with FINNEGANS.
Social entrepreneurs, like Jacquie Berglund, are tackling the world’s biggest issues by building successful businesses. It is a relatively new and novel concept, but one deserving of attention. If you have a strong passion for a cause as well as a knack for business, you might just make a great social entrepreneur and end up changing the world.
Exclusive interview with Nobel Peace Prize winner and Issue 13 cover story, Dr. Muhammad Yunus.
In this interview, we talk with Nobel Peace Prize winner, Dr. Muhammad Yunus who is the Godfather of Social Business tackling poverty head-on. Discover his secrets to success, advice to new Change Creators, and what the future holds.
He is known as the “Banker to the Poor.”
“Poverty does not belong in civilize human society. Its proper place is in a museum.” ~Yunus
Dr. Yunus established the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh in 1983, fueled by the belief that credit is a fundamental human right. His objective was to help poor people escape from poverty by providing loans on terms suitable to them and by teaching them a few sound financial principles so they could help themselves.
From Dr. Yunus’ personal loan of small amounts of money to destitute basket weavers in Bangladesh in the mid-70s, the Grameen Bank has advanced to the forefront of a burgeoning world movement toward eradicating poverty through microlending. Replicas of the Grameen Bank model operate in more than 100 countries worldwide.
Dr. Yunus is the recipient of numerous international awards for his ideas and endeavors, including the Mohamed Shabdeen Award for Science (1993), Sri Lanka; Humanitarian Award (1993), CARE, USA; World Food Prize (1994), World Food Prize Foundation, USA; Independence Day Award (1987), Bangladesh’s highest award; King Hussein Humanitarian Leadership Award (2000), King Hussien Foundation, Jordan; Volvo Environment Prize (2003), Volvo Environment Prize Foundation, Sweden; Nikkei Asia Prize for Regional Growth (2004), Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japan; Franklin D. Roosevelt Freedom Award (2006), Roosevelt Institute of The Netherlands; and the Seoul Peace Prize (2006), Seoul Peace Prize Cultural Foundation, Seoul, Korea. He is also a member of the board of the United Nations Foundation.
It was truly and honor to speak with Dr. Yunus and ask him pressing questions about social business and the future of the economy.
Businesses need to promote themselves, be in front of their eyes (target market) at the right place and right time. Being online for acquiring customers today is nobodies guess. If you have been in this for some time, you must have asked yourself this obvious question. Clickfunnels vs website: do I need both?
Which is better, a Website or Clickfunnels? Do I even need a website anymore?
Websites are seen by many as a natural choice when getting online. Websites help businesses have a dedicated address to be found online and interact with the customers. Just like a physical address… the website is your online address (www.yourbusiness.com).
You dress up your website with pleasant “get up” in terms of look and feel, introduce your business, its products, and services and even give pointers for people to buy and try out your offerings.
Websites by definition are generally 6-10 related pages, contain clear navigation links and the intent is to tell you as much as possible about the business including products and services. Websites may be designed on coding elements on HTML/Java/JavaScript/PHP etc. or by using a CMS (Content Management System) like WordPress.
So how does this differ from pages created with Clickfunnels?
Clickfunnels at the core does contain a “web editor” with which you can create or edit pages within Clickfunnels on the fly. This makes creating web pages so simple that many people actually go and develop a complete website on Clickfunnels. But then that’s not what Clickfunnels is actually intended for…
Clickfunnels is a funnel creation application. Funnels are generally characterized as a lead generation and conversion tool. Helping you create landing pages (also called squeeze page) which capture leads and sell your products or services online.
As you might have figured Websites and Clickfunnels do have a range of similarities and dissimilarities. In this article, we will attempt an in-depth comparison so as to fully understand how these compare as a utility for customer acquisition.
Let’s talk about Traffic… We can categorize traffic into two main types:
Inbound and Outbound Traffic
Inbound traffic is generated when people visit your website while actively searching for pertinent information mostly on a search engine like Google. They search a term on Search Engine and land on your website by clicking a result that appeared mostly in the first 10 pages. This happens as your webpage was optimized /relevant to that keyword in the eyes of Search Engine.
This is the organic mode of traffic generation and involves SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) or SEM (Search Engine Marketing). Websites are ideal for ranking on search engines as they support many of the requirements that enable search engines to understand relevance, quality, and usefulness of the content created.
Outbound traffic, on the other hand, is traffic that is generated mostly through paid advertising and may involve PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising on advertising networks like Google Adwords, Facebook ads, Twitter or Linkedin.
Paid traffic is greatly different from organic traffic as the visitors are directed to your website from an ad that is put in front of a prospect via targeting methods available on Advertising networks. In this scenario, the focus is on acquiring leads or possible sales that over a period help you recoup the advertising cost.
Simply put you will use a Website or Clickfunnels based on the traffic you want to leverage…
A website, in the long run, should allow you to create content that helps you rank on the search engines and generate organic traffic. Clickfunnels on the other side is a tool that will help you convert paid traffic and focus on ROI.
That being said you may use one in the place of other if you want to… But then you should ideally use an application for the purpose it is designed for. Let’s look at specific characteristics of these two options compare and how best you can use them.
Clickfunnels vs website: The comparison
1. Domain
Your website would essentially have a unique domain that you booked for your website example www.yourbusiness.com.
This will not be that case with Cickfunnels…here you will share the same domain and your landing pages will resolve on a subdomain like www.yourbusiness.clickfunnels.com.
It’s also worth mentioning that you can make the Clickfunnel pages appear in your website domain like www.yourbusiness.com/myclickfunnelpage but then you will have limited options to optimize that page for SEO.
The advantage of having unique domain name is that you can brand your domain. Develop focused content aligned with your SEO strategy. This shall help you engage with your website visitors, generate inquiries and even sell your products or services online.
Now if you are looking at capitalizing paid traffic and getting too aggressive with your online promotions. (It also depends on what type of products or services you are promoting) being on Clickfunnels subdomain is a real advantage as your actual domain is protected. This makes Clickfunnels a great choice for testing new landing page design concepts, products or services.
2. Landing Pages
While you can always get conversions from a website. It’s been proven landing pages help you convert better.
Clickfunnels gives you a design option that is focussed to convert visitors. Doing the same thing on the website shall take a lot of time and may even have big technical constraints.
Websites are not effective at getting conversions as they are generally designed to keep the visitor glued (allow them to move from one webpage to another find more and more interesting stuff to lower bounce rates)
Clickfunnel Landing pages, on the other hand, are CTA (Call to action) oriented and have one single focus on capturing leads or converting them.
A landing page or any funnel pages unlike website page carry minimal distractions and are designed to “squeeze” the visitor into sharing more information or completing the sales process.
3. Online Marketing Funnels
While it may be difficult to design funnels on a website… Clickfunnels is created for the very purpose. You can create advanced sales funnels literally on a click of a button.
The biggest advantage is with Clickfunnels you don’t have tie every end of your conversion funnel… it’s done automatically.
Talk of Autoresponders, Payment Systems, Upsells or Down sells all is inbuilt within Clickfunnels and all you got to do is configure them once.
Clickfunnels gives you multiple templates and funnels that you can utilize at the click of a button. Not just that it packs almost all the features you might need to setup, test and optimize sales funnels. You can also try Clickfunnels free for 14 days!
4. A/B Split Testing and Full Funnel Conversion View
AB split testing involves creating two versions of the same page and running traffic to see which converts better.
Clickfunnels makes this extremely easy along with providing analytics to decide the winner. Doing split testing on websites is possible but extremely cumbersome.
Clickfunnels also lets you have full funnel conversion view at one place. This allows a lot of clarity on sequence and ability to select/edit and develop a consistent experience for the visitor all through the funnel.
5. Change of Funnel Order on the Fly
Clickfunnels lets you change the funnel order on the fly. This is almost magical as you can change different funnel steps with a few clicks. Add or remove types of pages within the funnel sequence. This is a very advanced feature. Imagine a graphical user interface to do all the work for you at the code level!
Changing funnel order on a website is extremely cumbersome (even if you created a funnel) as it would involve code changes on every page and would be a nightmare for troubleshooting.
6. Easy Page or Funnel Replication/Sharing of Funnels
Again on Clickfunnels, you can replicate a funnel or page with a click of a button…and not just that you can share the whole funnel with another user.
This is unimaginable on a website.
One thing to appreciate is both the options (Website and Clickfunnels) ultimately help you to build “webpages”. CMS Application like WordPress greatly reduces the code level intervention needed to build websites. You may use plugins that greatly enhance website features. But an application like Clickfunnels takes this to entirely new level.
Now that you know how the Website and Clickfunnels compare…The other question that a lot of people ask is…
Do I need both?
And the short answer is Yes!
A website, when used with Clickfunnels, can get you best of both the worlds. It can help you leverage testing done on paid traffic and get the same benefits from organic traffic. A lot of successful businesses do that…
But at the end, you need to make the call based on your current needs. Ask yourself what type of traffic you are looking at generating.
You can start with Website first if you want to drive organic traffic and capitalize on free traffic from search engines.
Start with Clickfunnels if you want to test product/services in your target market and start earning revenue right away. Drive paid traffic and then expand based on what you find viable in your testing.
The book is a step by step guide to building your brand, plus 23 tools and exercises, 14 case studies of successful change making brands and 7 guest essays.
Today, the Brandling combines the power of tools, training and tribe to support change makers in building the brand they deserve.
The company was founded on one simple truth. Great ideas for change are evenly distributed. Knowledge and quality resources on branding are not. They asked themselves: how can a family starting a fair trade lemonade factory in Sierra Leone, get access to the same branding knowledge as a company like Coca Cola? Answering that question has taken us on a journey we would have never believed possible.
If you have not heard our first ever interview with Anne about branding you should check it out. Just click here.
Some of the questions answered in this interview…
Why is this book important?
Why did you create a third edition?
Who picked up your third edition?
Who is this for exactly? Is this information relevant for larger companies who want to reframe their strategy to have more purpose?
How many case studies are included and why are they so important?
What are some common challenges early stage companies face with branding?
What are some of the biggest epiphanies you’ve had through your branding work?
32In this 1-hour video (above) you will hear leading impact seed funds talk about specific investment strategies and how their focus on impact boosts performance. Don’t worry, we break this video down for you and highlight the key takeaways below.
As the world of business continues to take on a new form new opportunities for funding purpose-driven startups are rising.
Historically, accelerators and incubators addressed funding for purpose-driven companies, producing a group of early-stage startups on the hunt for seed money. Over time, many of accelerators have transformed into seed funds as the field has matured.
The Change Creator team attended SOCAP in 2017 and found priceless insights from this this panel.
Most of the VC firms on stage have been working in the impact space for over 10 years and there has been a lot of evolution during that time.
Years ago there was very little early-stage capital and that has changed quite a bit.
Wes is Managing Director and Founder of Better Ventures. He’s the resident “numbers guy” and enjoys helping startups figure out how they’re going to make and raise money. Wes has 15 years of venture capital and financial advisory experience with Good Capital’s Social Enterprise Expansion Fund, William Blair, and Ernst & Young’s Mergers & Acquisitions group. He earned an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and a BBA from the University of Michigan. Wes has volunteered with organizations around the globe, which has fueled his passion for applying his business skills to build a better world. He lives in Oakland, CA with his wife and two young kids and enjoys road cycling in the East Bay hills and Sunday trips to the farmers market.
Julie is a co-founder and Managing Partner of the Urban Innovation Fund, a venture capital firm that invests in the future of cities. The fund provides seed capital and regulatory support to entrepreneurs solving our toughest urban challenges – helping them grow into tomorrow’s most valued companies.
Shantel is the General Partner at Reach Capital which supports the most promising entrepreneurs developing technology solutions for challenges in early childhood, K-12, and higher education. We invest in early-stage tech tools, applications, content, and services to improve educational opportunities for all children.
Tasha Seitz is a partner with Impact Engine, a venture fund that invests financial and human capital in early-stage, for-profit technology businesses that are improving education, health, economic empowerment, and resource efficiency. Tasha has two decades of venture investment experience as a partner with JK&B Capital, a technology venture capital firm based in Chicago with over a billion dollars under management. As a partner, she has been responsible for identifying, evaluating and making investments in early-stage start-up software companies, serving on the board of directors, managing growth, coaching and hiring executive teams and managing investments through the exit.
Brian Dixon focuses on identifying and evaluating early-stage investments along with helping portfolio companies grow effectively. Brian joined Kapor Capital in 2011 after spending two summers as an MBA intern and was promoted to partner in November 2015. He is committed to making sure entrepreneurs of all backgrounds have access to advice and capital in order to make their business succeed.
Are you an impact fund and how do you think about “impact”? (7m28s)
Impact can either sink your ship or help make it rise up states, Wes, as he sets this question up.
Brian jumps in up to explain that when they are making an investment they want to know how something is going to make a difference.
They put structure around it to ensure they can define what the impact will be over a period of time.
Julie makes a great point about the word itself by stating that the definition has become very diluted. In initial screenings of a potential investment she wants to know that the entrepreneurs are in it for the right reasons. In the end, actions speak louder than words.
The way impact is evaluated has progressed over time, according to Shantel. Her teams look at who they are impacting, usage penetration, satisfaction, and lastly if it’s improving student outcomes.
Actually, many entrepreneurs won’t even identify themselves with impact. Why? Because they worry about the baggage or challenges associated with the world. It’s a charged word. For example, some investors have an immediate reaction to believe that if a company is focused on impact they are not focused on market return. This has led a shift to entrepreneurs stating they are ‘impact’ curious.
Julie’s team is a market rate driven fund and they are 100% purpose-driven. But many of their entrepreneurs will not self-identify as impact because they worry about the challenges of that word. In some investors minds, it triggers ideas such as being concessionary or not market return driven. You want to lead with things like market rates.
Many of their investors would not identify as impact but more-so, impact curious.
When you evaluate a deal what is more important to you between the team or the market and what else do you look for? (13m25s)
In early stages, it’s important to focus on the team because they are driving the company, states Shantel. The right team will figure out the market and should have a big vision.
Julie agrees with Shantel but shares a great point stating that many times people talk about investing in a team but what does that really mean? It’s common that in Venture Capital you see affirmation bias where many of the same faces and names get funded over and over. When she looks at a team she really tries to place a large stake on execution…
“[…]so showing that even when you’re early stage you can still have traction, you can demonstrate that you’re hungry, scrappy and working really hard at starting to have a lot of market penetration in an early stage – for us thats really the most important thing”
Tasha agreed with Julie but added a little to that by explaining she also looks for entrepreneurs targeting large markets or where they see market adjacencies because they are trying to drive and attract a financial return. So many companies have great products and even great teams but if there isn’t a big market opportunity its just hard to grow a big valuable company.
For us it comes down to the “why,” claims Brian. Why is it a problem you want to spend the next five years addressing? That doesn’t get his team to invest but it sparks their curiosity to look more closely. They will take a closer look but you must have a product established, at least an minimum viable product (MVP), and some type of revenue. This does not mean you have to be profitable. It means you have sold something and proven people will buy it.
Everyone on stage agreed that it’s near impossible to raise money today without a product for seed round and revenue for series A.
It’s important to recognize that the world has changed dramatically. As Tasha points out, today, it does not cost a lot to create an MVP. Entrepreneurs can get a long way without a lot of cash today. It may not be a final product but you can get something done – they want to see you get scrappy.
A great example Julie shares is about an entrepreneur that pitched them and was way too early. Their idea was to make city commuting better. The pitch had passion they liked but it was too early. Two weeks later the same entrepreneur showed up at their office again saying, “I did it.” He starting driving around town running tests and not only demonstrated his ability to get things done but starting providing his idea works and made financial transactions. His company is called Chariot and less than two years after Julie’s team invested they sold to Ford.
How do you think about portfolio construction? (22m)
There were a few interesting points made during this segment that are helpful to understand.
The strategy of each fund changes over time-based on the landscape.
For example, Shantel’s team used to plant many small investments all over the place as one-off investments. But today, they identify a couple seed deals and reserve cash to double down later with winners by doing a follow-on investment. On the on side of the coin teams like Tasha’s don’t have a lot for follow-ons.
Some funds are ownership stake driven but others they are multiple return driven. They focus less on the size of their equity pool and more on the ability to make a big return.
What is the investing landscape? (25m)
Most of the funds are open to convertible notes and SAFE models. This is more common for early phase. The biggest challenge with convertible notes is that with different caps things can get very mess. This means price models are important to help give everyone clarity. Entrepreneurs must be conscious of time and if things are messing and complicated it’s a huge time suck that nobody wants.
80% of Brian’s deals come from convertible or SAFE. They try to educate entrepreneurs about the pros and cons. SAFEs are easy to do because it’s just 3 things to select.
Tasha followed that up stating that they do a lot of SAFE and convertibles but not without a cap.
What’s broken or doesn’t work with the VC model as it relates to purpose-driven entrepreneurs? (29m)
We’re really thinking about the exit outlook, stated Shantel. Now it’s M&A and mainly PE. For example, one company they worked with did a management buyout and became an employee-owned company. They are looking to explore more unique exits like that.
Tasha’s team has been considering alternative structures for liquidity. Right now, the percentage of funds fully liquidated after 10 years is just four percent!
There are a few more talking points in this segment about their structure and liquidity but I think it’s something you can listen to directly in the video.
What are the do’s and don’ts of fundraising? (35m)
Here I just bullet out the do’s and the don’ts that the panel shared which really offered some valuable insight any entrepreneur should know when raising funding.
The Do’s:
Know how much you need and why
Have the team pulled together or show up with the team and hires you have already identified so that when you raise the funding they will convert to your team.
Show you spent some time on the product, MVP.
Show real customer data
Show your impact in the next year and 5 years
Do your homework and know who you’re talking to so you can convince them they are the right fund
Cold emails are fine but personalize them, make them unique
The Don’ts
Don’t raise multiple rounds at once such a seed and series A. It creates confusion for the investor and makes them feel you don’t have a real plan in place. This does not mean you shouldn’t think ahead and know how many rounds you need. Just avoid the confusion.
Don’t cold email an investor with a generic template or CC the whole group
What do you think about equity crowdsourcing? (40m)
Brian’s team is invested in Angel list which he thinks is a great resource if you already have traction. It is not an approach to take to start your fundraising. If you have already raised $750k of a $1M goal, then you might use something like Angel List to close the round.
What is the difference between pre-seed and seed? (48m)
Today’s seed round is yesterday’s series A round.
Seed rounds are now landing around $2M-$3M and sometimes even as big as $4M-$5M.
Pre-seed is what used to be seed so there has basically been a shift in the models. Pre-seed is really early but they have a founding team, MVP, but are just starting. Before pre-seed entrepreneurs commonly leverage accelerators and friends & family.
Shantel made a very interesting point by calling out that today there has been a shift to multiple seed rounds. This was new to us at Change Creator and something to explore more.
An important point Wes made during this segment is to avoid “bridge rounds”. Basically the idea that you have not gotten as far as you thought you would and need just a bit more cash to get there. You have to show progress.
Some Final Thoughts
These are exciting times and the impact investing space is not only growing but it’s constantly evolving during these transitional times. The way we approach and think about business is changing, it’s in transition, and these changes reflect that evolution.
Today there is no excuse to not have an MVP and some demonstration of revenue to prove out your idea. This is essential to be considered and taken seriously.
Nobody wants to invest in a small vision, so please think big and be prepared to demonstrate how you’re going to bring your vision to life but also the impact of doing so.
When connecting with an investor it does pay to get a referral or meet in person, big time! But that does not mean cold emails are off the table. When done right it can work and most of these funds are open to cold emails. Actually, they have benefited quite a bit from cold emails so don’t shy away.
A Focus on Relationships
