Proven Strategies to Grow an Audience on Facebook with Rachel Miller

Interview with author and founder of Moolah Marketing, Rachel Miller

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Rachel Miller has a big heart and is a marketing shark!

So much fun to talk to during this episode as she shares the secrets behind an impactful Facebook strategy to help you grow an engaged community.

Our team has learned a lot from Rachel and stand by her teachings.

Not only is she expert in Facebook marketing but she’s an author with two books that have sold over 100,000 copies EACH!

A little about Rachel…

She calls herself a mom who is a coffee-chugging, extrovert. She’s been building pages for over a decade, some into multi-millions in fans which she, of course, used to promote her wildly successful books.

She appeared on Good Morning America to discuss her viral video and has spoken to crowds in the thousands.

But what she loves the most is seeing others do the same thing.

You can check out Rachel’s books here:

The 101 Coolest Simple Science Experiments: Awesome Things To Do With Your Parents, Babysitters and Other Adults

101 Kids Activities That Are the Bestest, Funnest Ever!: The Entertainment Solution for Parents, Relatives & Babysitters!

Full Transcription of Interview

(Note, there might be some errors below. Transcribed by https://otter.ai)

Download a PDF of the full interview here!

Adam Force 0:11
What’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the change credit podcast show excited to have you here. If you guys missed last week’s episode, we spoke with Sydney Sherman, a really great conversation. She’s building an online marketplace that is helping combat poverty through the things we buy. But she talks about her, you know, challenges and successes of actually building an online marketplace and what that’s all about. So, this could be really interesting for anybody in the online marketing space, a lot of key lessons and insights there in the e commerce world. So today, we’re going to be talking with somebody that we’ve been connected with for a little wild in 2019. And she is a super duper rock star. And her name is Rachel Miller.

So she’s been on a tear lately, and she is about mom of six children. She’s, you know, adopted a bunch of children, and she’s doing amazing things in her family life. And we love her for that. And she’s also running several businesses. So you know, you have to ask, scratch your head and say, how do you how do you become a mom of six children run several businesses successfully, and have time to actually enjoy anything else in life, right? But this is what she does. And she’s really, really good at it in her business that we found out about her for his moolah, which is all about helping you grow your Facebook audience, right. So if you have a business, you got a business page, and you’re using the Facebook ecosystem, Rachel is the guru on how to grow an engaged audience. And we’ve learned a lot from her and her strategies. So we’re going to talk about all that with Rachel in just a minute.

For anybody that doesn’t know already, we’re very excited because just around the corner, we’re going to be releasing the next edition of changes magazine, June 15, with the one and only Blake Mycoskie. Blake is a super Rockstar founder of Toms, for anybody that just happens to not know he’s also the creator of the whole model, the one for one model. You know, you buy a pair of shoes, you give a pair of shoes to someone in need. And we get into some really great conversation with Blake so that cover story is going to be killer. So keep an eye out June 15. That will be coming out with Blake Mycoskie.

If you haven’t checked out issue 27 of change career magazine, we had NASA rain shake. She is a incredible woman credible, incredible. She’s very inspiring. She’s from Nepal, she was actually a child slave. You know, she worked in terrible, terrible conditions for years. From 4am to midnight, she found her way into education. And she was able to start two businesses now to combat child labor and support women in Nepal. Her story is very, very inspiring. And we met her over in Toronto, this is how we got connected at the by good feel good Expo. Lots of good socially conscious consumers, manufacturers and entrepreneurs. And she was there doing a speaking engagement and also telling people about her products and businesses. So a lot of fun. We had a video interview so you guys might have saw some of those clips flying around Facebook. Yeah, so check out issue 27 really good stuff.

We also had Laura Gassner outing, she was just on Good Morning America. And she has an incredible book called limitless. And the article in issue 27 is called pushing your boundaries, she will light a fire under your butt. So you’re going to want to check that out. Alright, guys, we’re gonna jump into this conversation with Rachel.

This was actually our first video interview we ever did, we did it over zoom, we actually found that that the audio quality is not our favorite. So bear with us. It’s not the normal, but it’s also not bad. So everything is good. Just want to give you a heads up on why there’s a little bit of a difference there. But you will also get to see some of the video clips flying around Facebook as we put them out there with Rachel talking about some of these key points. So make sure you follow us on Facebook guys. And if you want to learn how to put storytelling at the heart of your marketing, join us in our group storytelling strategies to grow your impact business. Lots of good stuff going on there. Okay, guys, let’s jump into this conversation with Rachel Miller.

Unknown Speaker 4:25
Okay, show me that. Hey.

Adam Force 4:30
Hey, Rachel, welcome to the change creator podcast show how you doing today?

Rachel Miller 4:34
I’m good at I’m thrilled to be here. Thank you so much for hosting me.

Adam Force 4:37
Absolutely. Well, you’re welcome. So much. I want to pick your brain on and I know our audience is dying to hear from you. You know, the Facebook guru over here. I love that focus. I love what you’re working on. There’s so much power and value in marketing on Facebook. So before we get too deep into this, tell us a little bit about what you’re working on. Now, what’s the latest one?

Rachel Miller 5:00
Well, I just I have a course. And that’s pretty much it. I don’t have like a massive value letter, I have one product that I give people a lot of value in. So that’s my my marketing philosophy is to help people make the biggest impact on the world with their own businesses. And the fastest way that I can do that isn’t Of course. So that’s what I do.

Adam Force 5:23
And yeah, watch for it. Because, you know, guys, look, I’m gonna say something here. She’s a marketing shark, you’ve got to be, she will suck you into this vortex of I gotta have it. And that’s it, you’re done. But the good news is,

Rachel Miller 5:39
the thing is, I don’t just do this for me, I have websites, I’ve created multiple websites, and they’re still running today. And they’re still earning, and they still bring in people. So it’s, I have that business and in addition to the business where I teach people how to do it.

Adam Force 5:53
So I’ll Break That down a little bit. So I know you have you been in like the marketing website kind of world for quite a while. So if you could just tell us a little bit about how you converted from that world, I guess you think you’re still in it? Where did it start? And how did you get into your massive Facebook page strategy stuff?

Rachel Miller 6:12
Yeah, I began as a mommy blogger, and I had to quit my job as a teacher because we had too many kids that couldn’t afford daycare. And that was like heartbreaking for me, because I was like, in with people all day. And now suddenly, I couldn’t be with people, the world was going to end. Literally, I was probably like saying the world was going to end. Anyways, you know how it gets if you’re like a key person and I felt caged in. So my husband came home, he’s like, you can apply here, here, you can interact with people on a blog. And at the time, we didn’t even have a car for me, because that’s how tight things were we My car broke down and we couldn’t fix for the repairs because I wasn’t working anymore. And we had these babies. So I’m saying he’s like, get a block. And I don’t know, if you meant to get a blog like so you can, you know, help us pay for the grocery or, you know, get a free movie ticket, because you’re an influencer? I don’t think I think that’s kind of the level he was thinking it was going to be I don’t think he meant for it to, you know, meet a scale into a business of getting 10 million page views a month and like a 2.2 million fan base page. And then the second or third families aged two more families ages to Pinterest accounts. And he’s like, now he’s like, so you’re going where? And you’re speaking where when? Oh, ok. Ok. I know he was not anticipating any of that. But God’s grace, it’s happened. And yeah, we are we get to I have businesses, I’ve got two best selling books that my businesses have been able to create. And then and when I say best selling, I don’t mean like a New York Times bestseller because it only takes 1000 copies to get on New York Times bestsellers. I sold over 100,000 copies of each. So yeah, it’s I’m like we’re

Adam Force 7:55
talking topics of those books, just so we get a sense of what kind of category we’re playing

Rachel Miller 7:58
in activities, kids, kids activism parenting. Yep,

Adam Force 8:02
I have no,

Rachel Miller 8:04
I have six kids. So out there, I’ve got six kids. So I’m able to do this working mostly part time. So I don’t know very many other entrepreneurs that work under 35 hours, guaranteed every week. And that’s kind of where I am because I have the kids. So I’m working as full time as I can.

Adam Force 8:23
I mean, wow, I don’t know how you do it. Because I you know, I know people have one or two and they are having a difficult enough time.

Rachel Miller 8:33
I find it makes life fun. And honestly, I would not be the mom I am without my business. And I would not be the business owner I am without being a mom, because it helps me focus my business. So I can get a lot done. Because I have all these deadlines of these little bodies that are saying, Mom, you need to come do this, we need to go here. So I have because you’ll just shorten your amount of work time I think I get more done. But then in addition to that, I say saying because I have a job. My life is not like my children because I you can wrap your identity up and your kids. And for me that was that was stifling me. And it was it was making me go crazy. And I can stay sane. And I wouldn’t say that I literally went more sane, because they’re also

Adam Force 9:13
your fulfillment team. I saw the photos.

Rachel Miller 9:17
They’re awesome. That’s fantastic. So somebody said we should, I should outsource that I’m like, but then I wouldn’t be able to get tax write off for me

to work. So this is a win.

Adam Force 9:29
Like a true business mind.

So okay, so I’m curious, let’s let’s dig into some of this a little bit. And I know a lot of people listening here they have they get frustrated, they get frustrated with Facebook, because well one is so powerful, but it’s also complex, right? So there’s a lot of different things you can get sucked into $50 a year hundred dollars. So am I doing this? Right? I did. So you know, it like if you can just give the one on one. How did you start getting knowledgeable about what works? and what doesn’t just trial and error? Like Where did the marketing expertise start to grow for Facebook?

Rachel Miller 10:06
Well, I think it started before I was in Facebook. So how many of you, I guess your everyone in the audience?

I don’t know why I’m saying that. Um, but anybody who’s here Seriously, though, like, raise your hand like, you know, verbally let let Adam know. Are you a people watcher, because if you’re one of those people who when you go to the diner and you like hear the ladies to two booths over who’s talking loudly, and she’s telling her story about something, you’re like almost drawn into her life, or you’re imagining what she’s doing later. Or, you know, if you’re a painter people watching, you’re like, I’m kind of pigeon holing all the people that you see around you, if that is who you are, you’ve got the perfect, you’ve got all the skills you need to become me. I’m that’s what I did in college. And I think that skill that I developed in college led me to become a really good marketer. I started I grew up in the night, so, and I was homeschooled. So but so we’re talking like homeschooling was just legalized. I knew like six other people that were homeschoolers. It was like, teeny tiny group. My I mean, like, my social circle was like, non existent. And, and I’m an extrovert, right? So as soon as I could, I left and I went to college, and in college, I realized like that, how everyone else knows who Michael Jackson is. and sweet is like, this is like everyone else comes in boys. Everyone knows Michael Jackson. And they’ve got these dance things. And you don’t know who any of these boys are. And yeah. Anyways, I didn’t know what clothes to wear. So okay, I was starting at like zero when it comes to social skills. And so I sat and I watched people, and I watched what do people do to get reactions out of people? What kind of reactions are positive reactions? What do those popular kids do? That everyone walks to them? Why? Why what what are they saying? What kind of actions are they doing? I noticed something that now I know is like nearing where if you lean in when they lean in, if you move to the left, you know, if you do those actions, people respond to you. Well, guess what we do in marketing, we are our audience, we literally get to know our audience, and we mere their actions. It’s the same type of tricks that we do in a party to get interactions. When we go to a party, we don’t start instantly talking about ourselves. That person does that. Well, in marketing, how many times do we have ads fall flat? Because we start them we start the relationship, spouting out all these facts, and why they need guys like running over here at the party like Dude, I just I didn’t. I was at a party and a guy named Rob. I love Rob, because I love Rob, Rob gate kept trying to give me his his card so I could buy his refrigerator surface. And I’m like, dude, I don’t actually need refrigerator service right now. I think I’m good. I swear to you, I’m good. And he could not let it go. He was like you need was like I so I like literally kind of bailed the party because him following me try to tell me about these refrigerator, refrigerators. And how if I promote him, then he gave me a free refrigerator. And, and you know, all this stuff, right? We don’t want to be that person. We don’t want to follow people around. Yeah, annoying way. Yeah. And just like we do in life. So if you’re a people watcher, and you’re watching the poor girl getting chased by Rob, the refrigerator salesman, and you know what that feels like, you know, you’re able to see that situation. And if you can see that situation, a real life, you can see that same situation online. And you can rescue those people and you can be their friend, you can be their loud speaker, you can be that that popular person online, with your business, loving people serving people and selling to them.

Adam Force 13:46
Well, I love what you said about the refrigerator story, because it’s really important, like what people miss is that when it comes to sharing what you have to offer any kind of story, you know, we’re really into the storytelling stuff. And when you talk about connecting with somebody, there’s also the factors you have to consider a time and place. So if your timing is off, and the place is off, like it’s even if you have the right message, it’s gonna fall flat. So I love what you said,

Rachel Miller 14:13
I noticed this myself, okay. Um, I often we go right to the solution. And we want to tell our audience about the solution before they brought it bought into the fact that they have a problem. So we also have to go right for that I’m going to solve your problems. I’m going to solve your problems. Here’s the pain that you have. Let me fix it for you. And what is that? If somebody comes to us, like, oh, maybe my mom and says, I’ve got a solution for this problem you have you just need to fix it these ways, like your kids. drive me crazy this way. Well, if you did these five things, your kid wouldn’t bother you so much. How many of us have heard our our mom or mother or grandmother say those things and rolled our eyes? Yeah. Okay. It’s the same thing we do with our ads. And I fell for this because I I’m Ashley black actually bought I think appreciate that dream, like spacing for a second here. But she has this thing for cellular lice it cellulose in women like with fat dimples, okay.

100 pounds. So in my mind, I don’t need this product, right.

But she doesn’t talk to me about my problem have how she’s going to fix my problem. She talks about chickens, and how there’s this thing with chickens and how they fit. And next thing you know, I’m watching this product demo

about chicken fat. And before long, I’m like, you know, I might have a problem with dimples.

You had come to me with a problem. If she had come to me with a problem. I would have like run like this marketing’s way off by like $80 worth of stuff. Because she didn’t sell me the solution. She sold me on to the problem first. So in not in a way that says you have the problem. But more like other people have this problem. Don’t worry about you. Yeah, don’t worry. We’re not talking about you. Were talking about these other people. Yeah, exactly.

Adam Force 16:06
And they do start relating and it starts resonate.

Looking at myself going

Rachel Miller 16:10
you know what, I might be 100 pounds, I still have those dimples. Personally.

Adam Force 16:19
Well, and it’s and you know, one of the things that we had an expert come in that kind of worked with us on some of the stuff that we’ve been doing. And they talk about exactly what you’re saying, which is kind of like having these persona ones. Right? Here’s your audience, right? But are they already? Where are they in the funnel? Meaning do they already believe that there is a problem or, you know, if they don’t, then you have a totally different messaging. So you can get them there, right. And I think you’re just hitting the nail on the head. And it’s this whole game of psychology and the more you can understand where someone is that is in your audience, the better you can serve them. And that that’s, you know, right, the way you think about is how am I helping them and getting their

Rachel Miller 16:54
test? And if you know your audience really well, then you Next up is Do you love your audience? If you can love your audience, well, how do you love them? And that’s that is by serving and selling to them. So I see serving and selling is kind of the same thing. Yeah. Because when you serve them, you’re going to serve them in a way that most helps them take action. If I spent $2, on the cellulose tool, would I actually use it? know, if I spent $180 on the cell us tool, I’m probably going to use it. Yeah, he’s getting me to have action in my life and see a transformation. Because I’m using whatever that tool thing is the facial blaster, that’s what I was. Because I’m using that because I spent enough money to have the buy in for it. So we if we love our audience, and we’re not just going to just serve them by giving them like

Adam Force 17:42
things for free. We’re going to serve them by selling to them so that they can have a transformation in their lives. Yeah, no, that makes sense. So So let’s dive into the Facebook world a little bit more for people. And you know, we have these Facebook pages. We have Facebook groups, and then maybe the private things they buy your membership. Of course, you might have this like private stuff. So let’s define them a little bit for people because I think there’s a misperception of

Rachel Miller 18:09
geeky on you. And I like chicken scratch to now, let’s go through it like,

Adam Force 18:13
what is the page? Like? How should we think about a page and the purpose it serves versus a group and so on, so forth? And if you can maybe walk through some high level ideas just

Rachel Miller 18:23
on Yeah, well, I kind of think, well, I sketch it out. So I know that some of your audience is listening, but I’m like a visual person. So I like just ignore my doodles, but I doodle it out for people. So if you’re listening later on the podcast, and you want the screenshot, maybe hold a screenshot, or something, I’ll send it to you. Okay, guys. So we’ve got five different elements of Facebook, it’s not, it’s not just groups and pages, there’s so much more to Facebook. And as businesses, we kind of at least need to be aware if not having our fingers and all the pies. And so we’ve got our personal profiles. And like we’re asking, How do I optimize? These are what do we do with our messaging, our story on each of these with personal profile, I want to establish trust with my audience. So that is, who am I best able to connect with? Who am I best able to serve? And for me, I relate best two families, because I’ve got a big family. And I understand like the struggles that families have, in a way that I don’t understand the single 22 year old guy. So in comparison, that’s who I’m trying to track. So what do I do on my profile? To make me attractive more to families? Am I going to have a funnel that says, do this and get rich and have freedom? Well, maybe, but they’re kind of tied to their family. So they’re more for security? What can I do on my profile that establishes trust in who I am, I’m not using my profile as the funnel for them to enter my content. I’m using the funnel my profile, as when they engage with me in groups, when they engage with me on my page, and they go back to check me out and they’re stalking me. What do they see that’s going to make them love me more. And trust me more. So that’s again, at the party, I’m not going out there with the funnel that says, I sell these five things. I say, this is what I believe in, I have manifesto statements, I believe I’m a I’m a believer, I’m a Christian, I have a lot of kids, I’m married and happily married. And I can’t help myself, I start a lot of businesses. Those are the things I want people to to see of me first, so that they love me and trust me more. And so so that’s what I use my personal profile for. And so after do, we got our personal profile off. Now we’ve got groups, groups, because we as people, when we’re building our pages, we interact in groups. As we’re interacting, I like to do it a tactic called friend segmenting. So anybody that I’m interacting with in groups, I add them to different lists, so I can re target them later from my personal profile. So that’s when tactical user group says or when I’m in other people’s groups, and then later on, I’m going to create my own group. And whenever I’m creating a group, I like to create the group with the keywords that the group is about. So an almost like a club name of possible. So I’m dog lovers of America, or dog walkers of America. So you’re about dog walking in America. So people know exactly what they’re getting when they go to the group. I don’t like calling them something like x and x tools. Well, I don’t know what x and x tools is. So why would I join your community? So I said it’s tools might be amazing software product for for small businesses. Instead, I would say, small business hacks to make life easier. Whatever it is that you are your promises. That’s what I would call your group. And then

Adam Force 21:42
you said you would actually save men people? Are you collecting email through? Oh, he was saying this is for other groups. So how are you actually?

Rachel Miller 21:50
Yeah, I say no, just my personal profile using interest list. It’s one of the hacks I teach on Facebook.

Unknown Speaker 21:55
Hmm. Okay.

Rachel Miller 21:57
So we’ve got a personal profile. We’ve got groups, now we’ve got pages. The thing about pages is we get to run ads from pages we get to collect audience of pages, we get to segments more with pages. So I you can’t have a business without a page. I don’t believe I don’t believe Facebook. Can you sell your personal profile? Yeah, but if you do that all the time, you’ll get in trouble. And you can get your account man. Yeah, in a group. Well, you can’t retargeting you can have it easily hijacked, you can, you can have a rogue moderator kind of take over the personality of your group, you need something that you can control the direction of the group. And when I believe the group, bring them back, because they forgot about it for three weeks, and they still want to be there. They just forgot to open it because they were on vacation. And you have to bring them back into it. So that’s why I think a key just super important. And again, I’m not going to call my page XRS tools, right, as anyone knows what that is. I’m going to call my page, what my reader calls themself. So this is what I would call a club was a search term, an SEO kind of search term. I’ve got my page, I would call what my reader defines themselves as readers, my readers aren’t going to call themselves Rachel Miller. But my readers of my mom’s side, they might call themselves quirky moms. So that’s why I called my page quirky moms. I actually have a cat audience of almost 200,000 people. And I call it the crazy cat ladies tonight. Because who who do I attract the most crazy cat women. So they were crazy cat lady like a badge of honor. It’s not a negative term for them. It’s a badge of

Adam Force 23:34
honor proud of that.

Rachel Miller 23:36
They’re proud of it. They’re glad to be a crazy cat lady. So for them, I call my page that because that’s what they want the world to know of them. Why do I do that? Whenever someone first sees our page, the part of our page that they see is the profile picture and the name. So you want those things to be something that they instantly connect with as guess that’s me, or Is that me? recast like no, you’re not my crew. You’re not you’re not my home. I wanted to be an instant yes or no. Oh, so

Adam Force 24:05
I’m going to challenge that just a quick second. So you have a page though for moolah marketing and it’s mobile marketer. So nobody probably caused them a bull market. I do that

Rachel Miller 24:14
as well. Do they call themselves moolah? Do they call themselves a marketer?

Unknown Speaker 24:19
I don’t know.

Rachel Miller 24:20
Would you call yourself a marketer? Yes, I would say yeah. So I have to use I can’t just call myself a marketer, like the page alone isn’t enough? Um, do you like making money as a marketer? Yeah, no, it makes sense. Okay, gotcha. So that’s why I did that name. Now, could I have named it better? Yes. But at the time, I didn’t think I was just about Facebook, I thought it was going to be about helping people build all audiences to make money. And then I started teaching my audience. Because here’s the thing is I actually grew multiple audiences to multiple hundreds of thousands on Pinterest, I’ve grown a YouTube channel to I think we got up to like, 45,000 in like a very short period of time, before I left that already organization, I grew an Instagram account 224,000 in a very short period time before I left that organization. So I was like, you know, I had a lot of skills to build multiple audiences. And I tried to teach all of them and what did people say? Yeah, right. Um, thanks for telling us that tip about Pinterest. What we really want to hear is what you told us about Facebook. And so once I realized that my audience really loved Facebook from me. And you really want to be known for one thing, I pivoted into just Facebook. So I listened my readers, and they told me Hey, look, you’re great. You got some great tips about Pinterest, but nothing really original there. But what you’re doing on Facebook, what did you do here? Yeah, it was what people wanted. So if I could go back in time, I would switch it to something Facebook, but I can’t put Facebook in the title of the page without any trouble with trademarking. So it’s like, I have to find some way to do that. The only problem is, you know, you use your I’m sure your business has evolved a little bit. And so yeah, what do you think it’s going to be might not end up being where you end up,

Adam Force 26:00
happens all the time happens?

Rachel Miller 26:01
Yeah, we’ve got our page, our profile, we’ve got our group that and we’ve got our page. Now, that’s not everything. So a lot of times, we think, like, oh, if I just have my profile, and I interact in groups, and I’ve got a page, my page interacts in my groups, I’m done. And I could just share my content. And I mean, you’re good. But you’re even better if you add the rest of the spokes of the ecosystem, and the rest of spokes to the ecosystem, our messenger chat, and off Facebook. And what I mean by that pixel fires, so that would be your email list that you’ve collected custom audience of your email list, your website traffic, Facebook tracks the engagement on your landing pages, and that actually comes back to your page and affects your ad cost and your ad engagement, your scores on your page. So adding things like so far we did this, we added a bar where people could slide it was a moving my hands if you’re on a podcast, guys, just wave your hands with this bar in front

Adam Force 27:00
fan gestures.

Rachel Miller 27:02
So there’s like a bar and you could raise the money or lower the money and it causes like this little like calculator thing to work. When I did that, on my website, my landing page, it cause my ad rates to plummet. So my, my cost for ads, as they like, with so low, I’ve never seen him so low before. And it’s because my page was getting people to play around on it and Facebook like, Whoa, the people really want to play on this landing page. So we’re going to not just it starts at 25 cents a click, we’re going to get two cents a click on this one. I don’t remember exact numbers. Yeah, it was to sense it might have been before but it was really I was like 26 cents to that number. I was just like, this is free, like, free to you know, this

Adam Force 27:44
activity. So they see activity on a page like people are interested.

Rachel Miller 27:48
And as we wait, yeah, I had better ads delivery and at my cost went down. So for you know, that is that tells me it’s not just one of these things, Facebook, and then that also affected my ads on my page and affected my content on my page. Because my my page and my website were connected. So know for you guys that these are all part of a system. And if you can get engagement in one of these, you know how to get engagement and the other, the way that you have a conversation in a group is assuming you’re gonna have a conversation with someone over messenger. And the same way you share content from a page into a group is the same way you’re going to build your email list into your group, or on your profile or all of those things. If you know how to work, one will add another one. And once you’ve got that one game, then down at the next part of the ecosystem and

Adam Force 28:35
do it all at once. Yeah. Yeah, that’s awesome. And I guess a lot of people struggle to with, you know, what is the end. And I know I’ve been through your program. So I know these things, but I want to talk about it a little bit for people listening. And it is the targeting aspect. I think people struggle with how they should be targeting. And it comes down, I know, you talked about interviewing people, we share that with our audience, as well, as you know, you got to talk to your customer. I mean, this makes all the difference in the world, like we had some sales for our program. And if we didn’t talk to them, we would not have realized, like where they were coming from where they were in their business that made sense for us, like, you know, to for someone who bought that kind of product. So I think the same thing applies here. And I know you talked about looking at people’s likes, you know, when you go to their page guy and get a sense, I want to talk a little bit about interpreting that information. So if you see a lot of public figures, and you see that they’re into music and entrepreneurship or very left leaning, you know, news, how do you interpret it? And how many interests and targeting is too much or too little? and all that kind of stuff? Is it? Is there any rules for that?

Rachel Miller 29:46
I like generally to have my original art audience I target to be about a million people. So when I’m picking a general audience, and no, okay, whenever I’m teaching people how to target, we start with your message. Because if you haven’t the wrong message, well, your targeting is going to fall flat no matter where you try. So you have to first before we even go into targeting who the right people are. Test your message. If your message doesn’t convert, well, it might not be the audience, it might be that you need to work on your message first, because you can have the best most audiences cat people. But if you’re talking about cat food, you’re going to push them away because cat audiences really like their own special cat food, like every cat has. The believes that they’re passionate is the best. And they’ll tell you why. So if I’m coming at them with cat food, I’m going to even though it looks like it’s the right audience, I’m going to push them away, and they may even unfollow on my page. Yeah, I’m speaking something that they see as offensive. So if you’re off on your messaging, you have to test with your audience. Don’t assume I’m a cat food, my audience is cat people, I’m going to put this to them like this, and they’re going to love it. Don’t assume that because you might end up falling flat on the next success. So check your message first. And I took my message with an audience of a million, because I can see it’s enough of a general pool that I can do an engagement ad and see does this actually get engagement? Or does this get all the wrong engagement where I get a lot of angry faces and I all I can test a message easily with a general audience. And then after my million audience, yes, I could let Facebook find the right people. But that takes a lot of ad spend. And I’m personally like a nice, I want to spend my money on like, in a little while we’re gonna be doing a promotion for chickens. And I want to build a school in Kenya. I want a promotion for chickens. I’m buying chickens for people and you saw. Yeah, so I want to do I want to do things that matter in the world. I don’t want to spend my money giving it to Zuckerberg to test. You’re like me, and you don’t want to give it to Zuckerberg to test. The next thing that you do is what I call a game of I spy. So just like when we play I spy when we’re kids and we sit in a room and it says obscure blue book on the left counter, you know, whatever that is, right? No one’s going to think of that product. But how many times do we say okay, is it the clock? Is it the zebra toy underneath the couch? Is it? No, don’t do that. Is it on the left side of the room or the right side of the room? Come on. Okay, is it white? Where is it a dark color? Okay, like, imagine the color spectrum? Is it light or dark? Come on. Okay, okay. It’s a dark color. Great. Well, is it closer to the TV or farther from the TV? TV? Okay, so now we’re getting near narrowing in and eventually I’ll find out that the target audience or the target product is that blue book on the counter there. But I would have never got there. If I just hit as a sniper all like one thing here. And one thing that Right, right, but I get it, yes. But it’s kind of like luck or chance. So what do I like to do, I like to spend separate them into batches, and then test each batch until I can funnel down to my perfect people. And usually I can get the test done in usually six to nine tests, I can be at a really close idea as to what will convert, I know the messaging. And I know the audience, and I can now create more content just like that, and keep trying to beat my previous win.

Adam Force 33:19
Yeah, they Yeah. And then, you know, for some of us that kind of stuff, it takes a little patience and a little organization.

Rachel Miller 33:27
I don’t I don’t think of myself as super organized. So I only run three tests at a time because I’m not one of those organized people. And my brain can only do three at a time. Now I’ve had students all of my tactics and then do 21 at a time, which I say, Well, good for you. Rest of Us, we do three at a time. And it just takes two or three days. And so we in 18 days, we’ve got we’ve got enough of a data that we can

Adam Force 33:49
Yeah, yeah. And are you doing? Do you do like batches of like an ad set of three or four different like creatives or gym? I mean, messages?

Rachel Miller 33:59
No, I do want that’s it one add one. That’s that one. And then if it’s successful, then I’ll duplicate it and do multiple creative. Yeah. Why do that work? If it’s not successful? Yeah. All right, for me, and if there’s so many things to look at, I get confused. So I don’t want to see three creatives in each one because I’ll get confused. So I just want to see which one’s the winner. And then that winner I scale by adding those extra creatives, but until I’m ready, like, I don’t see how many guys get decision fatigue, you know, exactly where the same thing every day and what good girls do that totally not fair.

White t shirt for the rest of my life.

Yeah, so anyways, he or his great t shirt, he worked gray, gray something right. But my point is he said something that we all struggle with the decision. Yeah, that decision until you have to. So I just do the three test one, add one add set. And then if it’s successful, then I duplicate then I clone, then I you know, scale it, we add more and spin to it. And we you know, take it to the races.

Adam Force 35:05
Yeah. Is there any do you have on the top of your mind? Like so if you were going to do message testing? for people to understand like, well, what is how do you test the message? Is it a mean? Or an article title of video? And what kind of messages? What makes the messages different? Is it just what the audience might be thinking at the time like,

Rachel Miller 35:25
I want to my first message that I want to test is what they call themselves? Because how can we sell our software tool if we’re selling it to small businesses that are accounting firms, when you don’t realize it that small businesses accounting firm really defines themselves as

empty nester mom who happens to have an accounting business, because she doesn’t actually care too much about counting.

So if you can sell to her as the empty nester who needs purpose, and her county becomes her purpose, your message will sell your ads will sell a lot better, you will speak for her and you will sell far. And actually we’ve seen that happen in our audience. We have one student, this last round, who grew her audience to 160, middle age accounting firm owners, cool women, over 45, she has 160 of them, she spoke that you can regain your purpose and make an impact through your business as an accountant in the financial services market. And she has 160 people on her page, I’ll offer them a product and has $10,000 recurring revenue coming in every day, in the first four weeks of the course that I taught, yes, this last round, it was insane. 10 she did that because she spoke the message of who her audience was, she didn’t go out and say accounting professionals, these accounting professionals get really bored with accounting and their kind of bored with their life right now. And their kids just moved out. And that’s really what they care about. When she spoke to, hey, our kids moved out, that doesn’t mean we’re done. Like, come on, let’s get our new kid is going to be our business. And we’re not going to be an accounting business to be in the impacting business. For market that way, her business exploded and exploded because it only brought in the right people. She didn’t want anyone. She asked me not to share her page with people, because she doesn’t want people visiting her page that are not 45 year old women accountants who actually within this country of Canada, like that’s all she wants.

Adam Force 37:37
Yeah, that’s really interesting. I love hearing you know, and you can hear Gary Vee and all these guys talk about this too. It’s like, everyone’s so obsessed with vanity metrics of big numbers. But the big numbers don’t matter if they’re not engaged, right. So they’re

Rachel Miller 37:48
not knowing her audience is a page, she doesn’t have a group, it is just a page. And they love her. Because she talks to them. And they’re on her page talking. I mean, like she gets 33 comments on a post, it’s a malaria.

Her people, they relate

to that audience and talking the exact message, instead of trying to sell them an accounting tool, talking to them about Hey, guys, as accountants, we just lost our kids. So what does that we lose our kids but like, what does that mean in life? As we’re transitioning ourselves in our business? Yeah, no one’s talking like that for them.

Adam Force 38:24
And she’s inspiring, like hope in a sense of like something fresh, something interesting. And they’re kind of like at that crossroad in their life. And she’s, you know,

Rachel Miller 38:34
the transition. It’s like, you know, like that the coming of age story that teenagers have. Yeah, you can have it again, when your mom

Adam Force 38:40
Hey, never too late. Yes, they’re bringing up hearing that though I love hearing that. And big believer in that focused group, high high engagement, numbers don’t matter.

Rachel Miller 38:52
The thing is to that same tactics that Samantha’s using to win her hundred and 60 people are the same tactics that Allison’s using right now. And she’s got 9.8 million on her post. So she’s most likely going to hit 10 million today on her content. That’s crazy. I have noticed that the mom category is like, just, that’s because I relate better to moms. So when I’m training people, the people that put when I tell them into place more quickly, tend to be mom and women. So that’s I’m not trying to like, could guys do this? Yes. Our guys on Facebook talking all day long. Yes. Yeah. But for some reason of my students, the ones who, without arguing, tend to be more women. been taking my courses, but I do target my ads to women. So when I give all my examples, almost all of them are women. Yeah. Adam and Damon and Greg. They’re three of my stories. So I guess I have some men in there. Sorry. I know. You’re on your show. I don’t I’m not trying to bash

Adam Force 39:57
believable.

Rachel Miller 40:00
Totally wrong.

Everyone attracts their tribe. And my tribe happens to be women. So

Adam Force 40:06
yeah, yeah, no, of course, of course. I just noticed that. Like, I’m like, oh, there’s someone’s like a moolah when and I’m like, let me guess it’s a mom pays a guarantee

Rachel Miller 40:18
that I helped them on page. But it also helped HGTV shows, I’ve helped the largest Facebook person in the entire world, who is in the pet space, I’ve helped and he sky, I’ve helped one of the people in Shark Tank. I’ve helped all I felt a wide variety of businesses, fortune 500 companies, the ones I care, love, and get all excited, I’m not gonna tell you about the time I helped an apparel company that their shoes go viral. Because for crying out loud, they had enough money on that ad. But it did go viral, they had something really, really wrong. And nobody else has a kind of money on ad campaign. So not nobody a couple other my clients do. But it’s not those stories don’t make me actually cited. Yeah, the mom who you know, was has a about to go to be divorced. And she suddenly needs to have an audience so she can pay for like life with her kids. And so her kids cannot can go to that soccer plant camp, that they’re planning on going to the summer, and not have that taken away from them in spite of the divorce. And she’s very motivated to make sure she grows an audience. I’m motivated, really to help her

Adam Force 41:24
make that happen. So I love it. Now listen, we’re running low on time. And I have one selfish question that I’m going to throw at you because this is the end of the funnel says people build their audiences get the pages chat with you, Mr. Now we have a product and we want to sell something, you know, you have the conversion objective. You know, when the how much money that because that one ever behaves differently I have personally noticed, then, you know, engagement traffic and stuff, I

Rachel Miller 41:53
love engagement ads, and I sometimes even use them for conversions.

Adam Force 41:57
I was that’s where I’m kind of going I’ve noticed some time the link clicks and stuff might even be a more cost effective and engagement than it is with the conversion. We have seen on our team just to be transparent, like, you know, 20 $30 can go by before you start triggering that conversion objective. And you’re like, wait, something’s not connecting, I’m going to bail. So it’s like, how much do you spend before you start believing in the effect of it?

Rachel Miller 42:24
I spend on for conversion that I spend until I get 2000 views 2000 views landing pages up to 2000 clicks, because then I’ll know if that traffic is converting. So okay, it’s 1000 views, I can kind of have a guess. Because I’ll know I’m thousand people 100 of them went on and took this action and click through well, then that’s that’s a test. But I can know for certain by 2000. So by 2000 if I have not wiped out though the losers and promoted the winners, then usually for engagement as I usually do 100, because out of 100, I can check an action. So I don’t 100 I would expect to have say 20 clicks or 20 actions of that may not be a buying audience. That’s why I want to get 1000 on the actual ad because that might give me 200 people that clicked and of the 200 people that clicked 10 of them purchase so that that gives me enough of a numbers to be able to see the ratio. Are you

Adam Force 43:23
saying reach 2000? People?

Rachel Miller 43:25
Yes. So when your ad your ads gets to 2000. You know, those all know, by the 2000 mark, if it’s if it’s flunking in a conversion, or if it’s if it’s Yes, in an engagement, and I don’t need as many people to see if you’re taking action. So I don’t because you need a larger range of engaged people to be able to tell if they’re going to be a buyer. Because just because they’ve engaged it might be the wrong timing, like they’re in the grocery line, and they’re checking out their groceries, and then they’re not in a position where they can buy it right now. So that doesn’t mean it’s a loss that we add still a win. But it’s not a conversion ad. So it might so it takes more of those people to catch them in the right. mindset feels it works.

Adam Force 44:06
Yeah, I wonder if going desktop only would help that.

Rachel Miller 44:11
Oh, well. I mean, how many people are on their phones, though? Yes, you actually get a higher conversion rate on desktop. But for me, I buy so much stuff on my phone now. A lot of my people are like me, so but because of that I do have PayPal, because I’m too lazy to get off my button and go type it into my phone. Yes, yes. Make sense. Here. I want to have a one click Buy. So either sell or Apple Pay. I try to have that and everything

Adam Force 44:38
comes in handy. But listen, I want to be respectful of your time. This has been a lot of fun. And I appreciate you being part of the show. So Rachel, where do people learn about what you’re doing? Find out about how they can work with you and get involved in your program.

Rachel Miller 44:51
Yeah, I have a free Facebook group. That’s my primary like place I drive people to and tell people give people advice. And that’s Facebook page strategy. So if you type that into Facebook, you should be able to see my group there. And the girls big hair. And if you want to follow my Facebook page, it’s moolah marketer, and if there’s any changes on the algorithm, I tend to talk about that on Google marketer Facebook page. Okay. Okay. Awesome. Well,

Adam Force 45:13
there you have it, everybody. Lots to learn from Rachel highly recommend the group. The course is also very good. So Rachel, congratulations on everything. And your books too, because they’re super cool.

Rachel Miller 45:25
Thank you so much for having me on today.

Adam Force 45:27
You’re welcome. We’ll talk soon. Thank you. That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the change. Create a revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews, and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play or visit change creator mag calm. We’ll see you next time where money and meeting intersect right here at the change creator podcast.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Building a Company Culture for Your Startup Where People Thrive: Moe Carrick

Interview with coach, author and entrepreneur, Moe Carrick

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One of the important parts of any companies success is the team and the culture that is created for the company. The best time to begin creating a great company culture is at day one if possible. As you build your team and bring new people on to be part of the journey, you want to have your culture that will help them thrive.

Moe Carrick offers a fresh, honest, and direct roadmap for leaders everywhere who seek to make their workplace fit for human life as she says. And, she offers advice for workers and encourages them to be their authentic selves, something we truly love at Change Creator.

Her message resonates with leaders in all organizations, at every level, as well as those in development, HR, OD, coaching, and consulting who advise others about organizational culture, leadership, structures, and teams.

Moe’s book Bravespace Workplace: Making Your Company Fit for Human Life shows us the truth of what it takes to make companies bring out the absolute best in human beings, despite our messy, imperfect, needy, demanding, and complex habits, needs and issues.

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Discover Your Innovative Angle to Scale Your Impact Business (interview)

Interview with Jessi Honard & Marie Parks, founders of Northstar Messaging

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This is dynamic conversation since we have three people on the line who all love content strategy and storytelling!

Jessi and Marie both are rockstars with a lot of great experience to share. They are also contributing experts to our signature program, Captivate.

Their company North Star Messaging + Strategy is a full-service messaging and copywriting agency.

Since 2010, they have supported successful businesses in sharing their message with their audience. From personal brands to nonprofit organizations and universities, they work with thought leaders and entrepreneurs to develop strategic messaging, hone their brand voice and create compelling content.

Here’s a little background about them…

Jessi kicked off her career as a high school teacher and then moved into marketing. Her writing has found its way into the pages of magazines and onto the walls of museums, and she’s passionate about sharing the power of clear messaging and strategic content with the world.

Since co-founding North Star with her hiking buddy, Marie, Jessi has helped countless business leaders hone their messaging in a way that fits their needs and connects deeply with their audience. She advocates for the power of clear strategy, concise language, and a solid dose of authenticity and realness.

Marie got her professional start in the nonprofit sector as a grant writer, where she learned to merge heart and logic in her writing. She’s carried those skills to North Star, along with the values of respect, transparency, and communication.

Call her a romantic (or a nerd!), but Marie believes the pen is mightier than the sword. Messaging has the power to drive thought leadership. When we showcase our expertise, innovation, and influence, we inspire growth in others and ourselves. This is the crux of what she teaches through speaking engagements, courses, and workshops.

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Starting a Social Enterprise and Landing Funding with Justin Goodhew (Pitch Deck Inside)

Interview with the founder of Trellis, Justin Goodhew

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When Justin reached out to us we were enticed by the work he was doing and the steps his startup has taken so far to grow.

In this interview, we talk about starting a social enterprise and raising funding. You’ll hear why he was fired from his volunteer job (didn’t know that was possible!) and some of the key steps he took to get started. Have you heard of Startup Weekend? Well, if not, you will now because Goodhew not only found inspiration there but he highly recommends it for any aspiring or active entrepreneur.

You know you’re doing something right when you’re able to get someone to invest serious money into your startup. He put together a pitch deck, very diligently, and started shopping it around with his strategy. In just a few months, which is usually not the case, he found someone willing to put money down.

While he was looking for a few hundred thousand to get rolling, he landed $600k (an update since this interview took place).

About Justin

Justin is a technology entrepreneur and an aspiring social entrepreneur. He is the founder at Trellis.org; a social enterprise connecting passionate people to charities.

Justin started in technology by co-founding his own application development company called Biznas Innovations Inc. Biznas built large internal business apps for Fortune 100 companies and smaller B2C apps for startups in Kelowna and Silicon Valley.

Are you curious what his pitch deck looked like?

Well, he was kind enough to share it so you can learn from what worked for him. Now he can’t do the pitch for you but this is a good framework to get you started.

Review the Pitch Deck Here

Learn more about Trellis @ https://trellis.org/

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Strategies For Building an Authentic and Lucrative Business with Michelle Ward (interview)

Interview with creative business coach, Michelle Ward

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Michelle Ward is fun, energetic and smart. She’s also a fighter who overcame breast cancer twice.

In this conversation, we dig into important lessons from her experience and what it takes to start building an authentic and lucrative business.

Michelle has been offering dream business guidance for creative women as The When I Grow Up Coach since 2008. You may have seen or heard her in New York Magazine, The Huffington Post, Etsy, Newsweek, Freelancers Union, USA Today, the Forbes Top 100 Websites for your Career List or 150+ other media outlets.

She’s the co-author of The Declaration of You, which was published by North Light Books, and the teacher of Create Your Dream Career and Ditch Your Day Job, which was watched by tens of thousands of people live on CreativeLive.

When she’s not coaching, teaching or speaking, she can be found building a fort for her little girl, sitcom-binging with her husband, or belting out show tunes.

Today, Michelle helps hundreds of people live there best life. She knows what it takes, has a lot of experience and a track record that shows it.

This interview will offer you a lot of little gold nuggets and a big boost in motivation.

Here’s quick video from Michelle…

You can also learn more at: whenigrowupcoach.com

Fair Trade Fashion Startup Strategies and Lessons with Maureen Dunn Fetscher (interview)

Interview with Mata Traders founder, Maureen Dunn

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Maureen has a lot of great experience and insight into the fashion world and has done extensive travel around the world that has inspired her.

In this interview, we talk about ethical fair trade fashion, e-commerce and startup lessons.

The Mata Traders mission is to ‘fashion a better world’ by creating designs that celebrate a woman’s originality and empower her to use her dollar for a change. We merge uncommonly vibrant style with fair trade practices to make an impact on global poverty – bringing fair wages to artisans in India and Nepal.

They partner with several fair trade organizations in India and Nepal that train and employ hundreds of artisans in marginalized communities, with a focus on gender equality and empowering women.

At the cooperatives, their garments are individually stitched in small workshops, with one seamstress creating an entire garment rather than being part of a production line.

Many Mata styles are then carefully finished with hand embroidery in the women’s own homes. Their training starts with hand sewing, moving on to simple machine patterns, like bags, and eventually mastering the sewing machine. Showing leadership skills offers the women a chance to become head of their sewing group or get promoted to positions like trainer, quality checker, materials buyer, or assistant production manager. In a country as socially stratified as India, this type of social mobility in the workplace is a rarity.

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Laura Gassner Otting: Carve Your Own Path and Live Your Best Life (interview)

Interview with author and professional speaker, Laura Gassner Otting

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This was a really fun conversation. Laura is full of energy and is not afraid to tell you like it is. On top of being an author and speaker, she’s a big-time straight shooter which I personally love. If you’re feeling stuck where you are she’s got advice that will help.

What if success doesn’t equal happiness? Many of us spend our lives pursuing a singular idea of success, one that was created for us by someone else. We give votes to those who shouldn’t even have voices and strive to go faster and faster even as we find ourselves falling further and further behind. We chase gold stars, we check all the boxes, we lean in – and yet we still feel incomplete. When we don’t define success in our own terms, finding our purpose and carving our own path becomes impossible. So how do you break the cycle so that you can live your best life?

The invigorating new book, Limitless: How to Ignore Everybody, Carve Your Own Path, and Live Your Best Life by confidence catalyst Laura helps you discover your consonance — how you align what you do with who you are — to achieve your limitless potential.

With lessons learned over 20 years of interviewing hundreds of nonprofit, corporate, and government leaders, all of whom were in the midst of massive career change, Gassner Otting helps readers discover their greatness and encourages them to forge ahead and become the best versions of themselves.

Get our FULL feature story with Laura in Issue 27 of Change Creator Magazine”

Take the Limitless Challenge: We can set up a personalized page for your audience to take an assessment and learn what is stopping them from becoming limitless, and what they can do about it.
http://www.LimitlessAssessment.com

You can learn more at https://lauragassnerotting.com

Watch Laura’s TEDx Talk for more inspiration!

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How Kind Karma Launched Their Ethical Fashion Social Business (interview)

Interview with the founder of Kind Karma, Laurinda Lee

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In this interview we talk with the founder of Kind Karma, Laurinda Lee, about how she launched Kind Karma, lessons learned, and processes that helped her grow her social business.

The first few years running your own business are no easy task.

Laurinda started crafting jewellery when she herself was a youth but it wasn’t until last year that she decided to implement those skills towards building a business.

Surrounded by entrepreneurs, starting a business had always been a lifelong goal but for her, giving back and ensuring positive community impact were the ultimate motivating factors and so, she adopted the social enterprise model to craft her own form of change.

Today, Kind Karma Company partners with local organizations with similar goals to employ local at-risk and transitioning homeless youth to handcraft quality jewellery.

Proceeds from all sales are returned to employees to support their individual goals and aspirations with the hope that as these youth transform into successful adults, they too, will have the ability and motivation to continue to pay kindness forward.

 

How Gerard Adams Sold Elite Daily for $50m and Became The Millennial Mentor

Interview with Gerard Adams

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Gerard Adams is on fire.

He is full of inspiration, energy and strategic insights. This discussion was a blast and I know you’ll get tons of key takeaways from it.

In this interview, we talk about how he actually built the media company, Elite Daily, and then sold it for a cool $50m. There a lot to this story. Adams has gone through his own transformation after losing his first fortune. Only through hard work, mentorship and persistence did he get it all back.

Today he’s known as the Millennial Mentor helping others build their dreams.

A defining moment for Adams was when he spent time with Tony Robbins, a renowned speaker, entrepreneur, and mentor (issue 8 of Change Creator Magazine) who has had a world-wide impact. Tony says, “Success without fulfilment is the ultimate failure.”

That statement has become a driving force for Adams. A materially rich life without purpose and fulfilment is an empty dream.

Want Adams to help you build your dream? Shoot him a DM on his Instagram and mention Change Creator.

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How Zoetica is Helping the World Go Waste-Free

Interview with Zoetica Founders, Karen Hoskin and Elizabeth Smith.

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In this interview with Zoetica founders, Karen and Elizabeth, we discuss their mission to free society from convenience trash and plastic. Learn how they came up with their innovative solution and run operations from the ground up. In this discussion, you’ll hear helpful insights about starting a social good business and how to manage e-commerce, especially during the early years.

Karen and Elizabeth know that once you begin observing, you notice the crisis of convenience trash everywhere around you. Stand outside any office buildings in downtown San Francisco, LA and New York and observe first hand how many disposable coffee cups, to-go containers, plastic forks, straws, and plastic bags are used and tossed every day, all day. We had to ask ourselves the hard question: who is going to fix this?

They decided they couldn’t sit around waiting for some politician to pass an ordinance. No, they took action to solve the problem themselves in their own way. In comes Zoetica! Lifestyle change has never been easier.

About Karen

“I began traveling for work in 1991. Every day for years, I was heaped upon with throw away trash: plastic shopping bags, coffee cups, cutlery wrapped in plastic, to go containers, straws, plastic water bottles. I began to feel like the Native American in that old 1970’s commercial with the tear streaming down his face. The trash cans filled with single use waste hurt me. The litter left around the airport lounges and hotel lobbies hurt me. I needed to make a change. Today, I refuse an average of 19 to 20 pieces of single use trash each day on the road and 5-6 when I am home. All it took was making a pledge, reorganizing my life with systems and sticking to the Zoetica zero waste lifestyle – no matter what.

I have been an entrepreneur for almost 20 years. I am currently the owner and founder of a craft distillery called Montanya Distillers. Zoetica is my first social entrepreneurship project and my first time partnering with another female business owner. It is an incredible blast and so empowering. I believe one day Zoetica will come to represent a lifestyle that we all live to keep our planet habitable for our children.”

About Elizabeth

“I am fortunate to have spent time in many beautiful places on this planet. I enjoy exploring wilderness areas and diverse cultures in this world. Travelling has awakened me to so many issues affecting our planet. Watching the destruction of our planet is heartbreaking for me. I am often left with a feeling of helplessness in not being able to change what we are doing to our only life-support system.

In those moments, I remind myself to examine my own life and the choices I make on a daily basis. It all begins with being the change you want to see. Convenience trash such as plastic water bottles, utensils, coffee cups, and straws are literally choking our planet. Every piece of plastic we have used is still here. Plastic just gets broken into smaller and smaller pieces, eventually penetrating our oceans, our soil, our food chain, and our drinking water. The production and disposal of these products are affecting our planetary health worldwide. This convenience trash is not going “away”. There is no “away”, and no one is going to clean it up for us. It is up to each of us to create solutions and find new ways to make a change. Convenience trash is not the only issue facing us but it is one problem I can take on as an individual.”

Start going waste-free and check out Zoetica here.

 

How Edovo is Disrupting The Prison System in a Big Way: Brian Hill, Founder (Interview)

Interview with the founder of Edovo, Brian Hill

I was sitting in what could be considered a lounge area at a conference in 2018. There was this guy sitting on a little ottoman next to me. I decided to bullshit with him a bit and see what he was working on. That’s how I met Brian Hill, the founder of Edovo, and learned about the amazing work his team is doing.

Brian is not the kind of guy that is worried about being in the spotlight or news. His focus is to change an old broken system that is doing more harm then good – the prison system.

Every year, 12 million people in the U.S. will see the inside of a jail or prison cell. Although education and communication with loved ones are well-documented ways to keep people out of jail, most prisoners don’t have regular access to programming on the inside.

Edovo builds technology to support positive outcomes for incarcerated individuals and their families. We offer a digital platform to meet the education, communication, and rehabilitation needs of justice-involved people and their loved ones.

We are passionate entrepreneurs, technologists, operators, and educators with a firm belief in a smarter, safer justice system for everyone. We work with empathy, integrity, and collaboration to champion this vision.

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Joel Solomon: Secrets From an Impact Investor Leading the Clean Money Revolution

Interview with Impact Investor & Author Joel Solomon, Renewal Funds

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This was an invigorating conversation.

Joel is full of wisdom after 30+ years of experience in the impact business space.

Why are things the way they are, where are they going, what can we do to all help, what do impact investors look for from entrepreneurs? Those are just a few of the questions we answer in this discussion.

As the founding partner of Renewal Funds, Joel manages over $98M in assets supporting companies that are shaping a better future.

Renewal Funds is Canada’s leading “mission venture capital” investment firm supporting early growth stage Organics and EnviroTech companies in Canada and the USA.

The Fund has over 150 individual, family, and foundation investors mostly split between Canada and the USA, with several in Europe and Asia. The goal is above market financial returns from a portfolio of companies offering positive societal advances. Renewal Funds dynamic team is led by Paul Richardson, President and CEO, and Joel Solomon, Chair, with crucial backing from Carol Newell.

Renewal Funds has been named a “Best for the World Funds” by B the Change Media, for setting the measurement and management bar for impact investing. It has also been name a B Corp for “Best for the World Company.”

What caught my attention was his book, The Clean Money Revolution. It’s inspiring and very much aligned with my values and led me to meeting Joel.

I would highly recommend checking it out!

Here More From Joel in this Video

How Love is Project Generated $1.2M Spreading Love With Bracelets (interview)

chrissie lam change creator love is project

Interview with the founder of Love is Project, Chrissie Lam

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#LOVEISPROJECT CONNECTS SOCIALLY CONSCIOUS CONSUMERS ACROSS THE WORLD WITH A MESSAGE OF LOVE.

It grew out of a simple desire to find out what love means to people around the world, and how despite circumstance or history, love unites us all.

During founder Chrissie Lam’s extensive travels around the world, she heard the needs of local communities and saw an opportunity to partner with female artisans to create beautiful jewelry while empowering them and their families.

Many artisan groups create beautiful products but are unable to realize the potential size of their market because of a lack of resources, trend-right products, marketing knowledge, industry connections, and lack of funds which hinder artisans’ abilities to successfully scale a business. Having worked in fashion for over a decade, Chrissie understands the need to bring unique products to consumers with an appetite for new and interesting things.

A growing group of socially conscious consumers is looking for brands with social impact and inspiring stories. The #LOVEISPROJECT solves the problem of availability of socially conscious merchandise for consumers by generating creative, inspiring concepts to help create a mass market for beautiful products with high growth potential.

Chrissie found artisans – with local NGOs and social enterprises to manage productions and QC. Each bracelet designed is unique to each country’s culture and resources, while each collection evolves the concept of love.

The narrative continues from country to country, creating an ethical supply chain of economical empowerment while inspiring and connecting people with a message of LOVE.

Check’em out here to learn more!

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Putting Impact on Auto Pilot With A Funnel Marketing System: Michelle Evans (interview)

michelle evans change creator

Interview with funnel marketing expert, Michelle Evans.

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In this interview with talk with funnel marketing expert Michelle Evans to learn how she went from a cosy job at Microsoft to making her own schedule as an entrepreneur building funnel systems.

We wanted to learn how she help busy entrepreneurs free up their time to work on their most important tasks. Well, smart funnel systems that automate your process is a big part of that and what she does best.

Get her best advice and start building smart systems that work for you.

Michelle got the entrepreneurial spark at a young age. Today she works with a fantastic community of business owners – coaches, consultants, experts, speakers, authors and solopreneurs – using her 20+ years of successful marketing experience to create client-generating, income-producing, stress-reducing marketing funnels.

On top of it all, she family loving mom who has 3 active kids running around.

As Marketing Strategist she basically helps business owners make more money.

She says she has a proven, strategic approach to marketing that works. An approach you can learn. An approach where you do the work once to set it up and then let the system run. 24/7.

No more losing money on bad marketing. No more creating content that is lost and abandoned in the far, forgotten dusty corners of the internet. No more navigating the overwhelming and confusing world of marketing alone.

If you want to check out her work or even borrow her brain, just pop on over here.

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How Somya Munjal is Creating Social Change Through Socioeconomic Empowerment

Interview with Somya Munjal,  founder of Youthful Savings, Managing Partner of CPA for the People, LLP and the Creative Director of Audacious Endeavors

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Somya is full of energy and ambition. I’m pretty sure nothing can stop her! Our conversation will inspire you and provoke new ideas. It’s amazing to see what one person can do if they put their mind to it.

Somya has one clear mission in life – socioeconomic empowerment.

By working hard, understanding the economy and collectively transacting consciously, she believes all can be empowered and live a better life. She is a social entrepreneur with a passion for helping people through financial planning, education and impact-driven entrepreneurship. She is the founder of Youthful Savings, Managing Partner of CPA for the People, LLP and the Creative Director of Audacious Endeavors. She is a Certified Public Accountant and a FINRA licensed financial advisor. Her social enterprises focus on fiscal and monetary policy reform through the empowerment of people.

Somya is a member of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, Southern California Mediation Association and an active volunteer with the Centinela Youth Services restorative justice programming. She is dedicated to solving socioeconomic issues and appreciates the opportunities of growth that solutions-based, action-oriented thought communities provide to her mission.

Somya is a firm believer in affordable education as an agent for change. She paid her way through a Bachelor of Science in Accountancy, Master of Science in Accountancy, Master of Business Administration in International Business and is currently pursuing a law degree. Somya credits her academic success to her parents’ zeal for education which then gave her the courage to pursue social entrepreneurship as a career. She realizes that not all youth are as lucky and hopes to inspire every youth she encounters to become the best version of themselves, have the confidence and resources to pursue higher education and serve humanity at large so the world can become more kind and equitable.

 

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Looking to Nature and Tech to Solve Social Problems with Shel Horowitz

change creator

Interview with best selling author, Shel Horowitz.

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I had a great talk with award-winning author, speaker and ethical marketing expert, Shel Horowitz. We cover a range of thought-provoking topics that will inspire you and your impact business.

A bit more about Shel.

For over a decade, Shel Horowitz, “The Transformpreneur,” has been showing business owners how to be more profitable by being green and ethical. Shel shows businesses how to go green affordably and effectively and how to market that green commitment to winning new customers, turn those customers into fans, and turn those fans into ambassadors for you.

Recently, he’s focused on the profit motive as a powerful tool for turning hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance.

Shel is an international speaker, transformational business consultant, and the multiple-award-winning author of ten books, including the long-running category bestseller Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green and the newer Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (both co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson, Father of Guerrilla Marketing).

Check out one of Shel’s best selling books…

shel horowitz change creator

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Building a Massive Audience Through The Power of Storytelling with Jay Shetty (interview)

Interview with Jay Shetty

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In this interview, he shares strategies, tools and insights that he has never shared before and you can’t get anywhere else. Don’t miss this one!!

Jay Shetty is a rising star who has carved out his path by mastering the art of storytelling. Shetty was listed on the Forbes 30 under 30 list, has billions of views for his videos and was the host of HuffPost Daily.

He now works with the biggest brands in the world. He has been invited to keynote at leading companies including Google, L’Oreal, Facebook, Coca-Cola, HSBC, EY, Microsoft and Accenture. In 2016 he won the ITV Asian Media Award for Best Blog and came 3rd in the Guardian Rising Star Award in 2015.

His authentic marketing style is exactly what the saturated digital market requires today. We had to learn more about how he does it!

How to Go Lean and Innovate Social Impact with Eric Ries and Ann Mei Chang (Interview)

eric ries and ann mei chang change creator

Interview with Eric Ries and Ann Mei Chang

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This is a really unique interview because we were able to pull the two leaders of the Lean movement together at the same time. I personally read Eric Ries book, Lean Startup when it came out and it was transformative. Since then his ideas of taken hold of the startup world. Before that Eric worked with Ann closely, and now Ann is taking on the social impact space with Lean Impact. Eric wrote the forward and the book is amazing as it takes the Lean Startup principles and molds them for social impact. The insights and stories are priceless!

If you don’t know Ann and Eric here is a bit more about them. Don’t miss this interview, its packed with insights and they made our issue 23 cover story for Change Creator Magazine which offers a deep dive into their lessons that will help you become more effective as you grow your own impact business. If you don’t have the app, be sure to download it on iTunes or Google Play or just visit us on the desktop app here.

ABOUT ERIC

Eric Ries is an entrepreneur and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup, which has sold over one million copies and has been translated into more than thirty languages. He is the creator of the Lean Startup methodology, which has become a global movement in business, practiced by individuals and companies around the world. This methodology was the inspiration behind his founding of the LTSE and his books The Leader’s Guide and The Startup Way.

He has founded a number of startups, including IMVU, where he served as CTO, and he has advised on business and product strategy for startups, venture capital firms, and large companies, including GE, with whom he partnered to create the FastWorks program. Eric has served as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Harvard Business School, IDEO, and Pivotal, and he is the founder and CEO of the Long-Term Stock Exchange.

ABOUT ANN

Ann Mei Chang is a leading advocate for social innovation and author of LEAN IMPACT: How to Innovate for Radically Greater Social Good (Wiley, Nov. 6, 2018). As Chief Innovation Officer at USAID, Ann Mei served as the first Executive Director of the US Global Development Lab, engaging the best practices for innovation from Silicon Valley to accelerate the impact and scale of solutions to the world’s most intractable challenges. She was previously the Chief Innovation Officer at Mercy Corps and served the US Department of State as Senior Advisor for Women and Technology in the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues.

 

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Connecting Social Enterprises with Buyers and Consumers: Rafik Riad, Buy Good. Feel Good. Expo (Interview)

Interview with Rafik Riad, founder of Buy Good. Feel Good.

One of the most important growth channels we have found at Change Creator is through strong partnerships. What has been most fascinating is how easily we can become stuck behind the desk working in the business rather than getting out to conferences and working on the business. One day at the right conference can be a game-changer based on who you meet.

Rafik Riad is originally from Egypt and has studied and worked globally on policy design and project implementation in the field of international development.

In 2011, Rafik founded SALT, a fair trade social enterprise that worked with communities in Africa and Latin America. Rafik’s appreciation for social enterprise led him to found Buy Good. Feel Good. in 2014.

Today Buy Good. Feel Good. is North America’s largest marketplace dedicated to connecting social enterprises with buyers and consumers.

Here’s a great example. We interviewed the founder of S’well water bottles, Sarah Kauss, for Change Creator Magazine issue 17 and found out that in one year she attended 17 tradeshows where she made all her big distribution deals. Today, S’well has reached over $100M in revenue. That’s certainly worth the price of admission!

We love the work Buy Good. Feel Good. is doing and are the official media sponsors for the 2019 event. And of course, our team will be representing in Toronto this April to attend the Buy Good. Feel Good. event as well. Maybe we’ll see you there?

Learn more and register to attend the event here.

What can you expect?

This is where good people motivated to push the world in the right direction through responsible business and purchasing will convene. Full of energy and excitement you can expect to connect with ambitious entrepreneurs, distributors and buyers alike. You might be one conversation away from changing your business forever at Buy Good. Feel Good. Expo. As they say, surround yourself with good people and good things can happen — but you have to put the effort out.

The event goes for a couple days starting on April 12, 2019 and ending on April 14, 2019.

Nows the time to start planning and reserving your spot an exhibitor.

Learn more and register to attend the event here.

How Sylvain Labs Creates Product Innovation for the Greater Good

Interview with the founder and CEO of Sylvain Labs, Alain Sylvain

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Alain Sylvain is not just a hardworking creative entrepreneur, he’s the founder & CEO of Sylvain Labs. Sylvain Labs is an innovation and brand design consultancy that solves complex business problems for some of the biggest brands in the business (Airbnb, Spotify, Google, BlackRock, Patagonia, Pepsico, Calvin Klein, GM and BuzzFeed, to name a few). Their tools are ‘science and whimsy’. Their driving mission is to leverage the might of corporations for the greater good.

As we know, big business can destroy or protect our precious blue marble of a planet. Many (most) big brands are truthfully leaving dangerous footprints on our earth. Alain has made it his mission to ensure that Sylvain Labs takes that fact and leverages it, using product innovation and a global culture of unavoidable mass consumption as a key tool.<

Sylvain Labs was also just named a Certified B Corp (you can see their Impact Report here), which is something that’s resulted in a workplace culture heavily rooted in like-minded values and employees that constantly press themselves to find the social connection to their day to day work.

Alain has also taken a stand in the form of brand purpose with several clients (including the WNBA, Waze and BlackRock), addressing many of today’s societal issues head-on with his strategy work. He’s not afraid to stand up as a CEO activist (he has much to say about the matter and modern CEO roles) and encourages his clients to do the same.

In this interview explore how he started Sylvain Labs, their approach to product innovation and why becoming a Certified B Corp was important to his business.

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Building a SaaS and Selling it When The Time is Right with David Schneider (interview)

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.

Start Realizing Your Dreams! Paul Gowin, High Performance Coach (interview)

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

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How To Build Smart Tech That Increases Sustainable Purchasing (interview)

Interview with Green Story co-founder, Akhil Sivanandan.

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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.

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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 sustainability

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.

Feeling inspired? You might also want to check out, I Want to Start my Own Business But Don’t Know What to Do.

Visit Green Story here to find out how they are helping brands like Brave Soles, Tamga Designs, and Ungalli.

How This Entrepreneur’s Model Helps Raise Big Funding While Creating Meaningful Memories (interview)

adam capes

Interview with the co-founder of Getaway2Give, Adam Capes.

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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.

Turning a Passion for Minimalism into an Impact Business (interview)

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.

>> You can grab a copy of their book here.<<

Unlock Your Professional and Personal Growth with Expert Rick Miller

Interview with Rick Miller

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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.

He calls it the Power Compass.

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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.

Check out Rick’s latest book!

Seth Godin Exclusive: Why Traditional Marketing Doesn’t Work Today

Exclusive Interview with Seth Godin

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.

What are the Ingredients to Great PR for Your Impact Company?: Jackie Herskovitz Russell (Interview)

Interview with the founder of Teak Media, Jackie Herskovitz Russell

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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:

  1. Why is teak pushing for businesses to tackle the triple bottom line?
  2. What is the “so what” concept and why is the critical?
  3. Business has caused problems and now they are trying to clean up a mess, can they go full circle?
  4. Should a business stop what they do if they are creating products that end up causing social challenges?
  5. How is business slowing transforming today and what can we expect moving forward?
  6. What should a company do to keep the public clear about their efforts to make things better?
  7. When is the right time for a company to start considering PR?
  8. What steps does Teak take to establish the relationship and craft their impact story?
  9. Do they work under a results-based model?
  10. What kind of story becomes newsworthy? Are there key elements that stand out?
  11. 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.

How Vangst Broke into The Emerging Cannabis Market and Skyrocketed Growth (Interview)

Interview with Karson Humiston and Amanda Guerrero of Vangst.

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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?

Visit Vangst for more information.

How to Drive More Engagement With Smarter Execution

Interview with the founder of ConveYour.com, Isaac Tolpin.

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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?

 

 

Understanding Content Strategy for the Social Impact Space: Victoria Fine

Interview with the founder of Finally, Victoria Fine.

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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?

Plus so much more!

How to Build a Brand That Matters Today: Mona Amodeo, Ph.D.

mona amodeo change creator

Interview with the founder of idgroup Branding, Mona Amodeo, Ph.D.

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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…

  1. How has branding changed over the years and what does it mean today?
  2. What do you need to consider today for your brand and what steps can you take?
  3. What kind of brands are consumers backing now and why?
  4. What are some of the fundamental questions you must answer for your brand?
  5. What is the difference between convincing and connecting with your brand?

Plus so much more!

Read the full article on Mona Amodeo’s strategies!

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Jay Shetty: What is Storytelling and What Makes a Good Story?

jay shetty change creator

Interview with Jay Shetty.

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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.

How do You Lean Into Your Social Mission as a Way to Differentiate Your Business? Jake Orak, Ethnotek Bags (Interview)

ethnotek bags change creator

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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?”

The full interview is available in issue 17 of Change Creator Magazine.

From Broke College Student to Multi-Million Dollar Business Owner: Nathan Hirsch Interview

man looking over cliff

In this interview with Nathan Hirsch, we cover a lot of topics! If you want to learn how to bootstrap and grow your business and get to the multi-million dollar level, then this podcast is for you.

Who is Nathan Hirsch?

Nathan Hirsch is the Founder and CEO of FreeeUp, a marketplace connecting business owners with the top 1% of freelancers in eCommerce, digital marketing, web development, and much more. Interested in being a client or partner?

Reach out to him anytime. Mention Change Creator and get $1.00 off your first hire’s rate for a lifetime!!! https://calendly.com/freeeup-nathan

He built FreeeUp to address the frustrations I had. FreeeUp receives hundreds of freelancer applicants each week to join the marketplace. Through interviews, they vet the freelancers, take the top 1% (based on skill, attitude and communication), and make them available to our clients quickly whenever they need them. On the backend, they have 24/7 support to make sure people have a good experience. Lastly, they have a no turnover guarantee covering replacement costs if the freelancer ever quits. FreeeUp has been growing rapidly since and is now a leader in this space.

Here’s a breakdown on what you can expect in this Podcast:

  • Learn how Nathan started his dropping shipping Amazon-based business in his college dorm
  • How he grew that business to a multi-million dollar business in just a few years
  • The toughest lessons he learned along the way

“I was on top of the world, I had decided to take a much-needed vacation after a year and a half of my business. I had trained a manager to run my entire operation and trusted this person to do the operations when I was away. The second day of my vacation I get a call from my largest (and almost primary) supplier saying that they no longer wanted to work with me. That same day, my go-to manager quits on me. Oh, and I also found out that I was a victim of identity theft.”

  • Learn how Nathan took his passion for finding good people and created a new freelancer platform that is disrupting the industry called FreeeUp
  • How he grew FreeUp to a multimillion-dollar business (Did we mention he bootstrapped this too?
  • His best advice for the areas of the business you need to invest and hire first. Here is his top 5:
    • Customer Service
    • Bookkeeping
    • Graphic Design
    • Web Development
    • Content Development

Take it from us, this guy knows how to create a business from scratch, make it grow and find the best people to get you there and he’s sharing his insights with us on the podcast. Here’s Nathan in his own words about the start of his journey:

In 2006, I founded my first online venture out of my college dorm room, selling and buying student textbooks. I rapidly scaled my e-commerce business, bootstrapping from a $20 student – cause initiative to a multi-million dollar e-tailer clocking in revenues in excess of $30 million on Amazon across a 6 year period while serving over 10,000 customers.

I have never had a “real job” besides being a high-school Intern at Aaron’s Inc, a large retailer headquartered out of Atlanta, GA and later with Firestone Corporation in 2006 where I successfully handled a whole suite of critical deliverables from exceeding sales targets, leading the District Credit Card Sales process and managing critical customer touch points. The intensive Customer Service Training at Firestone inspired me to incorporate key elements into both Portlight and FreeeUp.”

If you want to scale your business, learn how to hire the right people, this interview is for you.

Transformational Leadership That Gets Big Results

Exclusive interview with Art Barter

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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:

  1. Where did he start and how did he get where his is today? (from janitor to leading a $200m company)
  2. What is servant leadership?
  3. What is the power model?
  4. What was the big change he made and how did employees take it?
  5. How is his impact model structured and how does it motivate people? (They have given $16m to causes)
  6. What factors contributed to his success in scaling the company from $10m company to a $200m company?
  7. How do you balance serving people and making money?
  8. What does a good leader to manage people effectively and get them to do their best?
  9. How do you start creating a mission-focused culture from the start?

That just scratches the surface!

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What Does it Take to Find Purpose and Build Your Personal Brand: Dov Baron

Exclusive interview with Dov Baron.

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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.

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Some of the questions and topics we discuss:

  1. How did he start booking initial speaking engagements?
  2. What value has public speaking brought to his brand?
  3. Why people do things they don’t want to do
  4. The mistake of jumping into entrepreneurship (Key considerations)
  5. How do people find real inspiration and ideas for their business?
  6. Why is Dov focused on helping people find purpose and what does that mean?
  7. What actually motivates people?
  8. How does Dov help people start finding their purpose?
  9. What is self-knowledge and why role does it play?
  10. What did it take for him to write his first book and what has he learned since to become more effective?

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Turning an Idea Into a Movement For Social Change: Sonya Renee Taylor

Exclusive interview with Sonya Renee Taylor.

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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:

  1. What is radical self-love?
  2. What does self-love have to do with sustainable social change and community?
  3. Where do you current belief patterns come from and why is it so important to change some of them?
  4. How do your beliefs impact the external world?
  5. How did she start turning this idea into a business?
  6. What steps did she take to start scaling a movement on social media?
  7. How did she keep the integrity of her message by creating a process?
  8. Where did she find interns to help her grow the business idea?
  9. What was her experience like working with interns?
  10. How did she raise money for her idea?

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Why You Should Consider Being on a Nonprofit Board: Kate Kayes (Interview)

Exclusive interview with Echoing Green Director, Kate Hayes. 

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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:

  1. How did Kate get involved with Echoing Green and her mission around nonprofit boards?
  2. What do boards traditionally look like and what do you want them to transform into now?
  3. How do you make sure the new functions of a board happen effectively?
  4. Do board members think big picture or roll up their sleeves to help with the details?
  5. How can you drive true change by joining a board?
  6. Who is the right person for a board and how big are boards typically?
  7. Should your nonprofit have a board?
  8. What does great leadership look like?

That just scratches the surface.

Listen to the interview for more.

Interview with Muhammad Yunus: Taking Small Steps for Big Social Business Impact

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.

In this interview, we ask questions such as…

  1. What was the inspiration for your new book, A World of Three Zeros: The New Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Net Carbon Emissions?
  2. What causes people to have self-doubting beliefs when considering entrepreneurship?
  3. Where does someone who takes a micro-loan get their insights to learn how to start a business?
  4. Is the money system the ultimate old road that we have to change?
  5. Is there ever a place in the future for a different economy that does not use money?
  6. If you’re addressing problems like plastic pollution or deforestation is there always a way to make money?
  7. As more people start social businesses do you see common characteristics between great leaders?
  8. Will automation help spike social business?

Plus so much more amazing discussion!