342 Radical Business with David Gaines

Hi. This is Paul Zellizer, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help you increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app, it helps more people learn how to have positive impact through values based business. Thank you so much. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce you to David Gaines and our topic today is radical business.

David is the CEO and chief visionary for La Terreza Coffee and the author of the newly released book Radical Business, The Root of Your Work and How It Can Change the World. I'm also honored to say David interviewed me in October of last year for the Social Enterprise Alliance podcast when he was just recently stepped down from being board chair after a long term there, and we also got to connect in person when David was recently here in Albuquerque for an event called creating a community of business for good, which David was the key speaker and organizer and helped us connect with each other in just a beautiful way. David, welcome to the show. Yeah. Thank you, Paul.

It's such a pleasure to be here.

It's great to be here, and thanks for all the great work that you've done. I'm excited to introduce you to our listeners. But to wind back a little bit, David, give us a little bit your origin story as a social entrepreneur, not what's on the ground now, but how you got entrepreneur, not what's on the ground now, but, like, how you got started. Yeah. For sure. It's always an interesting question. You know,

it's such a foundational one too. But, you know, at the end of the day, I used to have a small business. Really, what I did for myself was create my own work so that I could volunteer how I wanted to to volunteer. And so I did that for a long time, but, eventually, what drew me in was to the world of coffee. So let let's hear the coffee is a coffee roasting business that I own in Cincinnati, Ohio, and coffee is just really a fantastic way to have a business that has social impact in so many different ways. I think many coffee roasters today have these origin stories of who is the farmer or what how do we have a living wage? What's the next step beyond, like, fair trade? But what's really that relationship look like? What does what's needed in the local communities around the world that are producing coffee? So you have that aspect, and there are so many coffee roasters that are keyed into that. But coffee as itself is just this connecting drink, you know, and we our our DNA as a business is how do we supply independent coffee shops and really empower that local owner. Well, every one of those local owners, the reason why they start coffee is to better their community, to have deeper or more authentic conversations, to maybe even lower the political temperature in the room a little bit.

Like, we have so much in common, but we have lost the art of dialogue, and so that's usually the heart of why people start a coffee shop in the first place. So there's this some there's just something magic about this beverage and the amount of social impact that it can have.

I can't remember which podcast it was. I'll see if I can track it down. But they were recently talking about it was a writer who was saying that the age of enlightenment, you know, like, coming out of the Middle Ages, which is a really tough time for humanity in many ways, that coffee and coffee houses in particular were key to the age of enlightenment, to like the beginnings of of trade and more robust thinking in new ways. And it was literally the there was the drink coffee, which does some super interesting things to our brain. I'm a I'm a, you know, neuro geek. So it's, like, very cool to see what coffee does to the brain. But it was the fact that there were these 3rd spaces in communities that, you know, wasn't home and it wasn't the church where Yeah. And those are both great things, but there was no other place for humans to really gather other than, like, a tavern and that has a different association.

Right? It was like Right. A place where you weren't trying to kinda check out at the end of your week or forget your troubles, but or celebrate something that happened in your small world, but really to connect with other people in your community. Classic. Right?

Yeah.

Like, I've got about 5 emails in my inbox right now. Hey. We should go get a cup of coffee. Right?

That's right. That's exactly right.

And you stepped into there. One of the things I know about you, David, is one of your passions was wasn't just coffee as the drink and also the community part, but you have a particular passion for women's entrepreneurship and women growers of coffees. Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah. Well, so real quick, the name Laterza, that's Italian. So that's our way to say, hey, Italy. We really appreciate what you did over there. Inventing this espresso culture and, you know, even tapping into that enlightenment, you know, up to that point, also in human history, beer was the safe drink of choice, right? Water was causing people to be sick. And so when coffee was introduced, now all of a sudden, that's another reason why there was this, like, age of enlightenment. You're starting the day off with something that wakes you up rather than something that immediately, you know, slows you down a little bit. So what drew us into this story of women empowerment is,

you know, really, and

I think you and I have talked about this at the heart of social entrepreneurship is still this idea of entrepreneurship. You still want to have an amazing product that meets the market demands, that does all these things, and we were drawn to this coffee out of Honduras. Our head roaster has won all kinds of international awards. He's from Uganda, has competed in the World Barista Championship. So when we get samples of coffee, it's pretty rare that we're impressed. And, so all of a sudden, we get the sample, and that happens often. We roasted it, and he said, Dave, this coffee is really good. Let's, find out what's going on.

It turned out to be a woman owned producer, 4th generation, and, you know, so I made contact with her. Tell me your story. She was the first woman in her family to be a producer and the first one to take her family's coffee from conventional coffee to specialty coffee. And that's the world that most new roasters are in is this idea of specialty coffee. Just so a lot more intentionality that happens on the farm. It's a higher quality product, and there's a lot of subtle tasting notes. It's it's much more like a a wine experience in coffee. So this quality of coffee is what drew us in, but as she's telling me their story, it's like, you know, obviously, if you produce a higher quality product, there's more income.

And the first thing that she did to with the with the extra income that had come in from this new way of producing coffee was to build a school. And, you know, that story, empowering other women producers. It's not that there aren't men out there that have that communal spirit, but it definitely lies a lot more within women and and femininity and, you know, when they're just much more communal. And so when you empower women in 2nd and third world, that's a very common story. So that has definitely been something that has now been, for us, a little bit more seeking out because there's these additional ripple effects. You know? And I think that's one of my favorite parts about social entrepreneurship too is this is all a for profit standard trade agreement. Right? Her quality is what drew us in, but but there's this social impact that she's doing. We are making sure that there's a a living wage paid to her and her producers, and then the ripple just keeps on going.

And when you empower women in the supply chain, especially within coffee, it just it keeps going and going and going. It's really, really fun.

I wish you could see listeners. We're an audio only podcast, but there has a big smile on his face and his eyes are all lit up. I think he's kinda passionate about that.

Yeah. A little bit.

Yeah. So give give a sense, like, when was this that this got started for you?

Yeah. So I've been a part of Coffee World for 11 years, and, you know, again, the relationship is what drew me in and how much what coffee could do. We've been in relationship with this particular producer for about 8 of those years. And, you know, it's been really fun. So, yeah, I mean, right now, what we're doing is continuing that ripple. So I what we're working on with her right now is this year, how do we help her buy a sample roaster? It's the exact same one that we have with an iPad, with Internet service so that we can roast in real time. And then her objective is to empower the other women producers in her region. You know, just because like, when she took her product to market, she thankfully was very well educated and, you know, had knew her background, had coffee experience, had a court horticulture degree, so was offered a price for her coffee that was below market value, but she knew what she had and was able to appropriately negotiate the right pricing.

So not only is she able to empower women producers, and we can help through that sample roaster project, But now there's also an immediate fair exchange for the coffee that's being produced.

So that's about 11 years ago. Really started leaning into more of the impact end of the business 8, you know, years ago. And I like to joke, I think like a lot of us, David, you you put your toe in the water and now you're, like, way over your head. Right? This is your life. You've written a book. We're gonna get to that in just a second. But somewhere along the way, you got involved with this organization called the Social Enterprise Alliance enough to the fact that eventually they asked you to be the board chair. Tell us about SEA, what you did there, why you got involved, and you still are involved.

And what somebody who's interested in social entrepreneurship needs to know about the organization.

Yeah. Well, I got involved at the local level. I think like many organizations that are social impact minded, it usually starts in some kind of chapter based model or very geographically based. So I got involved at the local level, eventually joined that local board, eventually became the board chairperson for Cincinnati, and my favorite aspect about Social Enterprise Alliance is that last word, alliance. There in Cincinnati and this is true nationally too. There's just so many organizations. We had several religious or faith based organizations kind of keying into the idea of social impact. We have a local conscious capitalism chapter.

We have a local b lab chapter, some regional chapters of stuff, and and it it felt like that we were just not connecting, and it was always really surprising to me that we weren't. So I joined SCA. Basically, like, once I I really started to ask myself the question, I got involved with coffee. It it filled my soul. It like, I I could do for profit income earning work and make a positive difference at the same time. And so when I went to, like, a chapter meeting for SCA, I was like, oh, these are my this is my tribe. I'm not alone. And that and that connection point was really valuable.

But as I got more and more involved at the local level, I I just felt like we should lean into that alliance word.

How do we

align us all together? How do if someone is doing something really amazing, they're not my comp competitor even though we're, like, doing the same things or separate organizations. They are my collaborator And so I really tried to lean in hard on how do we bring everybody together? How are we aware of what we're all up to? And how do we build the community within the region and instead of, you know, being so siloed from each other?

Certainly, there were conversations when you're here in Albuquerque. Some of us knew each other and some of us were like, we I I've been hearing your name, but we should talk. We should go get coffee. I mean, I'm joking, but I'm not. Like, literally. Yeah. I think I walked out of there with a half a dozen coffee, you know, appointments to get together with some folks that we had been hearing each other's names sometimes for years. So I yeah.

SEA is certainly doing a great job. And you became the board chair. So you moved from the local level to the national level. Tell us a little bit about that. Mhmm.

Yeah. So, really, the organization, I think, just needed some new stability. We were trying to think through what does a chapter model look like. At the end of the day, we decided that really wasn't the best fit because just legally, the way to do it, everyone had to form their own local board, and it just has so much energy. You know? And a lot of local chapters, they just couldn't even staff the board, let alone do the actual work. Right? And and so the work that I really was most proud of with my time serving as the board chair was eliminating the chapters, but still kinda keeping the idea of how do we still connect? How do we, you know, what what is the purpose? How do we create that value proposition from a national level so we can generate content, so we can make sure that people are connecting to one another? And, you know, I think there was some stability that was able to be provided during my term, and now, really, the reason why I stepped down is I wanna further that chapter idea. How do we still encourage the local gatherings without all the logistic legwork and requirements that a chapter requires? So Albuquerque was a little bit of a test for that, and I think my work over the next year or 2 is gonna be, you know, getting these local gatherings together where it doesn't matter who you are, what social impact organization you may or may not be associated with, but how do we really empower the entire ecosystem at that local or regional level so that they can be part of something bigger than than all of us together? You know, the the collective is is just so so powerful when we can gather.

Yeah. It was a great gathering, and I'll put a link to the SEA website, and you can go find David on LinkedIn and other socials to see where you mentioned LA is coming up and maybe Boise. So Yep. There's you can follow David and or the SCA and get a sense of where that might be happening next, and please tell your friends to go check it out and build community. Along the way, David, you you kinda got a top level. I I see this a lot. Right? I think this podcast has helped me in similar kind of way. You you sit in a role and you start to hear things that are going on in different communities around the world.

Right? And what's happening in Albuquerque? What's happening in Cincinnati? And then you're talking to people in LA. I don't know if you've talked to other people. I certainly have in other countries, in Africa, where the state of social impact is in businesses or Asia or Europe or whatever. Right? And I want you you had that sort of bigger view being in the organization, and eventually you said, it's time to write a book, a book called Radical Business. Tell us about the book and why'd you write it.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it began as my own question. And then as I started to meet with other people, you know, and even all these organizations, we kinda have our own definition, I think, of what it means to have social impact. And and for me, you know, my personal journey is, like, I got involved with Latera's. I was like, this is amazing. We're quote unquote a good business, and then I asked a pretty a very complicated question. Well, what does good even mean? And, boy, that's that's really the question that started the book.

You know, just hundreds of conversations and reading the research of here's what SCA's definition is. Here's what conscious capitalism's definition is and, you know, hundreds of other organizations really. We all have our own take on it. And the more I wrestled with that question, I realized that good just isn't this binary word. Like, it's not a this or that, you know? And I think we we like to think in this or that. You're either a Republican or you're a Democrat. You're either for me or against me. And and, of course, real life is much more complicated than that.

And but I kept finding ourselves, like, asking good in the same way, and I where I got stuck often was traditional businesses that like, I remember meeting a local candle maker here in Cincinnati, and she was soy based candles, and she was telling me where she was buying the soy was a farm, you know, 30 minutes away. And she only used essential oils for her candles because she really cared about the indoor air quality and, like, all these things. I'm like, wow. You're a social entrepreneur. And she's like, well, no. I don't give anything back. I'm like, no. No.

No. That's only one way to do this, but you're you're having this positive impact. She teaches classes. She teaches parents how to have safe environments in their homes and that's kind of where I kept getting stuck. If you look at the root of what many people's work is, there is something that is tip usually benefiting in some way, shape, or form. Even in in the most core, like, Cincinnati is home to P and G. We're home to Kroger. So 2 huge companies.

And and, you know, like, if you put a grocery store in a in an area that is a food desert, we would often call that a social enterprise. And sometimes it would be set up as one specifically and sometimes not. And Kroger would get a lot of articles written negatively about it when they would not put one in, you know? And and to me, it was just this interesting thing to observe where it's almost because grocery stores are relatively normal for most people. We are not considering that having social impact, but when they don't exist, then we do. And so now there's an awful lot of negative things that Kroger does in the world and lots of people that are appropriately writing about that stuff. But also, Kroger has is providing a service. They're at the core of what they are is providing a resource to the community. They have this amazing foundation that they started a few years ago called 0 hunger, 0 waste, which is tackling both the food waste in our country as well as the hunger issues in our country.

And even though they're they live in corporate America and they have many corporate sins, there is an awful lot of impact that they're having positively. And I just kept saying, what? I just wanna have the posture of how can I help? How can I help Kroger have greater impact? How can we get to 0 hunger, 0 waste? And and that's why I ended up writing the book Radical Business because the word radical in Latin means root or origin. And every cat every time I kept coming back to the root of what we all do. You could be a website designer. You could be a podcaster. You could be, you know, so many things. The core root is often bettering the world. So that's yeah.

Good is just really a tough, tough, tough one. And, you know, I mentioned, like, giving back and this person said, well, I I don't give back. I'm like, well, okay. You know, again, that's complicated. You have a business that might give back 10%. Well, what about the one that gives is buy 1, give 1? What about, you know, just all these different things and then even though I add another layer and we're seeing this right now, you know, organizations are gonna gravitate towards specific social causes. I think there's a ton in this world that we can all align with. Anti human trafficking.

Yep. Let's fight that. Clean drinking water for the world. Yep. Let's fight that. But then you get into some political topics like, you know, right now, we're working through abortion laws being reworked, and organizations are taking stands on both sides. Both would argue that they're having some kind of social impact through supporting one side or the other, And that's where it gets really complicated really quickly. They're both saying good.

I certainly have an opinion, and I'm glad that a company is forthcoming with their stand. So I know as a consumer where I can spend my dollars. But it's difficult for me to say, well, this one's good and this one's bad when it's my opinion Dave's opinion about which one's good or bad. It just gets complicated really quickly.

Well, that's why you wrote the book. Tell us a little bit about what's in it.

Yeah. Well, the more I push into that, this idea of root, the more I I kept going back to, honestly, like, could it be as treating other people the way you wanna be treated? Like, so that's kind of another rude idea. And I I just kept gravitating towards that. Good is complicated, like we just talked about. But if we all have this posture, time of treating other people the way you wanted to treat it. So, essentially, I'm like, well, okay. If that's true, then who are all the people that I interact with? In in Dave's world of coffee, my story starts with the producer. So it's like looking at our supply chain, and then I just said, well, alright.

Who's everybody else? I'm if I'm about living wages in Honduras, clearly, I'm about living wages here in Cincinnati. But, honestly, when I in 11 years ago, there were an awful lot of maybe 3 or 4 coffee houses in Cincinnati that had really amazing origin stories. Here's the farmer that we're working with. Here's the living wage conversation. Lots of pictures. And they had volunteer labor at the coffee shop. I was like, well, wait a minute. How how are we about living wages in one part of the world, but we're not about living wages here? You know? So very quickly, you realize, like, supply chain is a people group, but my team members are a people group.

And it's, of course, beyond money, but, you know, what's a true work life balance? How do we handle conflict resolution? Conflict is actually really good and healthy, but how do we adopt that as a posture, as a as an organization? So pushing hard into this idea that our team members are part of, you know, another people group. And then from there, I started just like, okay. Here's these 2 who just who is everybody else? And I kept asking the question, and it took me about a year just to really land on. It's it's partially my customers. You know? We have a really amazing product, but we try not to be pretentious with it. We just want people to have buyer cop and, you know, another layer of that is we were very careful in our marketing. We did not want people to buy our story. We wanted to buy our our to the people to buy our coffee because it was amazing, which, of course, then had a great story too.

So, essentially, we were saying, hey. It's quality first, social mission second. Now they were, like neck and neck but very clearly in that order and the reason why is because we didn't want anyone to make a guilt purchase. We wanted this to be like ongoing, you know, and then that ultimately helped the producer more than, you know, just a one time purchase where someone felt good. Well, the core of that idea is treating other treating our customers the way we would wanna be treated. I don't like to be manipulated, and I certainly didn't wanna manipulate anybody else. So really striving for that excellence in in the work that we did was a huge part of that. So very quickly became the realizing our customer base was a people group.

And then there's 3 out 4 others, 7 total. So the the 4th one that hit me was my competitor. I'm like, oh, and that one hurt because I think I had just lost a, you know, a brand new coffee shop was narrowing it down to a couple different roasters, and I didn't win. But, you know, you quickly realize that, well, my my producer friend who won, I know them. Their phone number's in my phone. Like, I can reach out if I need something, and they're providing for a family. They have this great origin story as well, you know, and then realizing like, you know, my competitor is a human being who is providing for their family, who's doing some of the same work, who's very passionate in the exact same ways that I'm passionate. And so on one hand, they are my competitor, but on the other hand, they're another human that's trying to make the world a better place.

And that's when I really started to take it seriously, and and I think in no. Actually, I know. I'm recalling exactly the where I was sitting in that moment, and that's when I realized that there's a book that needed to be written about it. So from there, it was like, well, who else? You know, we would we our community is people group that we touch, so not everyone that's near us was buying our coffee, but they're still my neighbor. So how am I plugging in into the community? How are we working on the environmental issues of the day? Because we all share this planet. And then finally, I think this one was the most surprising, but and and, honestly, I would argue that it's the most important. But true self care is really, really critical to to social entrepreneurship. I think so many people that I know now, you know, thousands of people at this point that are social entrepreneurs are really wired.

We're wired to help other people to to offer what we can to the world, and we're really great at that. And that should be applauded and celebrated. But we do tend to not take care of ourselves very well, and it's that old adage of the oxygen mask on the airplane. Put yours on first. And I think it's it might be the hardest one and the most important to really think through that self care in an appropriate way. And so, yeah, so I call these like 7 seeds. Here are the 7 seeds of social impact. So, your supply chain, your team members, your customers, your community, your competition, the environment, and self care.

And if we could all start to like look at those and measure them, where are we at? Well, you know, what's one thing that we could do a little bit more in each of the areas? And and if we have that posture, then all of a sudden to me, social entrepreneurship is more about a journey rather than I am 1 or I'm not. It's it's I think we all are. Where are we at? How do we measure it? And then what's the next thing that we can do over the next year or whatever?

Beautiful. So in a moment, David, I wanna come back and get your recommendations for somebody who's newer in the social entrepreneur space as well as some ideas for somebody who's been out of a little while and it's moving towards scale. Before we do that, I just wanna take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor. Are you passionate about making a difference, but feeling stuck on how to take your mission driven business to the next level? You don't need a lengthy coaching program. You need targeted advice from someone who understands the unique challenges that social entrepreneurs face. With my strategy session package, we'll focus on your most pressing decisions, whether it's clarifying your value proposition, optimizing your marketing strategy, launching a new product or service, or adjusting your pricing to align with your mission. These sessions are perfect when you know the direction you wanna go, but you need someone with experience to help you get there. If you're ready to unlock your potential and amplify your impact, book your strategy session now.

The link is in the show notes. So welcome back, everybody. I'm here with David Gaines, second part of our interview. Our topic today is radical business. Also, the name of David's new book. Go check it out. Link in the show notes. And you're giving us some of the, 7 seeds you call them.

David, some of the things you've noticed, some repeating themes and lessons from being in relationship now with thousands of social entrepreneurs. And what I was curious about in the second part of the show, I'd like to get a little more granular. So having seen all these examples and 11 or 12 years in your own journey, one of the buckets we have 2 main buckets of audience and the second's a little larger than the first which is not typical. But the first bucket is somebody who's newer to social entrepreneurship. Right? They're they have an idea, maybe it's up and running. It's maybe it's not even, you know, doesn't exist off the napkin yet. Right? And they're they're very early on. And having seen thousands of examples, I think you probably have seen a few things that don't work so well and some things that probably do work better or at least more likely to contribute to success.

For that granular, I have a specific business, and here it is on my napkin or in my business plan. What would you say to that person? That's still pretty early on in conceptual level, but it is a specific thing, a specific business, not just a general, I wanna help the world, but I have no clue.

Right. Right. Yeah. No. That's a fantastic question. I really do view just all business has the potential to be a social enterprise. So wherever you're at, you know, what's that social impact that you wanna key in on? And then you just take that first step. With that being said, though, I think one of the more foundational things that I've seen help any business is is this concept of the the hedgehog concept.

So, within the book From Good TO Great, which that's a foundational book that everyone should just be reading. Yeah. And rereading. Like, that might be the answer for my next half too. Like, if you're already doing something really well, I guarantee you if you reread that book, you'll find a new truth to to gravitate towards. But this idea of the hedgehog concept, it comes from a fable, and it's it's basically the hedgehog the story is the hedgehog and the fox get together. And they it looks like on paper. The fox will always beat the hedgehog.

It's smarter. It's more cunning. It's attractive. It's fast. It's nimble. It has all the tools. The hedgehog can do one thing and it just does that one thing really well. It can roll up itself up in a ball and protect itself.

So the fable goes is every time that the fox and hedgehog get together, the hedgehog is the one who wins. And so this hedgehog concept in the book, if you haven't read it, is it asks 3 questions. What can you do that no one else can do? What can you be the best at the world at? What can you do when it how do you're measuring success? And and what are you doing that's driving your passion? What's the fuel behind it all? And so, you know, the passion is typically that social impact piece is where I'm finding it. So if you can really narrow in on those three how are you what can you be the best in the world at that is complementing the passion that you have and then figuring out what that measure of success looks like, the 3 those 3 questions are just fundamental to to setting the stage. So when it comes to social impact or social entrepreneurship, you like, you said it yourself. Like, we all wanna just save the world. Well, what's one thing? You know, just really do the one thing and just nail it. You know, if you can focus your energy there, it's very easy for the rest of social entrepreneurship to infect every other aspect of your business.

Just really to focus in on that one area of impact is is probably what I would suggest to people getting started.

Love that, David. And and I'll just cosign that, you know, to that earlier stage social entrepreneur or that person who's like, I wanna help the world. What do I do? Right? And and the thing I often times say is get good at something. Right? Your skill, your entree into the world of social entrepreneurship was coffee. And you said to yourself, you got really bad not making good coffee. And I was laughing when you said the book could degrade. I remember in 2009 when I went to Zappos, they were interested in the conversation of social entrepreneurship, and the leadership team was on then Twitter. Now, x.

I hate that name, x, but I'm a reporter. Right? And and we were taught. It was a very small group in 2009. I was talking social enterprise and impact in business. And and I got invited there, and and that was when I first heard Good to Great. So I need to go read it again. But they're like, you have to get good at selling shoes whatever your equivalent is. Right?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Like, you need a thing. And if you don't have a thing, then you have good intentions, but you can't really roll up your sleeves and help somebody in a very specific if you know shoes and somebody tells you, you know, I'm a runner and my foot's kinda narrow, and I have a high arch, you can say, Nikes or whatever the brand is. That that that is the right fit. If you don't know shoes, it's really hard to leverage that thing that people need a lot. I'm a runner. You buy a lot of shoes when you're a runner. Right? To help somebody make certain choices that are aligned with both their needs and their values. So so I love that granularity of the hedgehog, you know, myth.

And it was like helped me realize because back in that time, I was still pretty wide angle and that was some of their feedback. And I was there on the day they were handing out t shirts to their employees saying, thank you for making us a $1,000,000,000 a year company. And they were leaning into or sort of on the edge of how they could have more positive impact, which is why I was in the room. Right? And that was that was one of my dig ahas, and it came from their leadership reading that book, and they say, Paul, when you go home, you were going to buy a copy of this book and read it. So I need to reread it again. But that was one of the core insights that helped me back in 2009 when I was very, very, very early on, and it came from that book. So I wanna cosign anybody's listening and is, you know, in that early stage and you haven't quite figured out what your one thing is, that's a great resource to help you kinda wrap your head around why it could be really important. It doesn't mean you have to stay with coffee or shoes or whatever, but get build your muscles in one arena and then you can expand.

Right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love that example too because, you know, it's wherever you are, just start. You know? So let's say you work at a running shoe. Like, think about starting a 10 k or, you know, you're you're helping people get better in shape like the couch to the 5 ks program. People who want to become healthier but have nowhere to start. Think about those kinds of programs typically have a good give back.

Hey, we're going to raise awareness for whatever and here's our running for the day. So there's there's all of these things that you can do. You might be I I always use these words very cautiously, justa. I might just be an employee at whatever shoe company. So I use that word cautiously because I don't think that anyone is just a. You know, the truck driver that brings my coffee, he's a part of my story from Honduras to Cincinnati as much as anybody else is. And the more that he looks at his or she looks at their passion within transportation, he's they're completely unaware of the impact that they're having, but they are critical part. They they we wouldn't exist without that person.

So that's I love that story because everyone can start wherever they're at.

Yeah. 2nd audience, and this is sort of one of my one thing to be fully transparent. This podcast has a disproportionate number of folks who've created a degree of scale in their business that's values or purpose based. And people one of the reasons people listen, one of the people one of the reasons people connect with me and it's kind of one of the thing I'm known for is the people who are in that growth stage. Okay. You're up and running, you got your coffee shop, or you got your shoe store, you got your sustainable ag business, or you got your app, which is gonna help people make climate optimized purchases for their needs. Whatever your thing is, it's up, it's running, it's bringing in revenue, and now you're kinda like, it's time to really lean in. It's like, it's it's working but it's suboptimal.

And I don't mean that in any judgmental, but this is what people tell me when they're like at this phase. It's like, it's going pretty good, but I'm working too many hours of self care is that you talked about, David, like social entrepreneurs. Many of us don't have formal business training. My original training is in community mental health. Or even if we do, the research is telling us that a lot of business mindsets and teachings and traditional wisdom don't go one to one into the impact space. So even in those who do have it, it's it's not it's not quite humming along. Right?

Right.

But it's up, it's running, it's paying your bills. You have a team of 3 or 5 or 7 or 12, and it's bringing in enough to pay the bills. But you know both on an impact space and also in a revenue space, it's not yet dialed in. What would you say to that person?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll speak to the revenue side real quick. Like, whenever I find have found myself stuck, that's actually maybe that's why I recommend the hedgehog so often. I really do go back to that. It's a good refresher anyway. You know, what is that thing? Are you still on track? Are you measuring the right thing? Is there something new to measure? Does it still speak to all your passions? So that's pretty actually a good place to start Anyway, I also just love this concept that is a journey. And, you know, when I started to lay all these out, you know, the reality is we were doing, like, one thing in the environment.

And then we had, like I I was leasing a warehouse. Our local electric company came in. They said, hey. You should change everything over to LED lighting, and and it's only $5. I'm like, yeah. I I just bought shirts made from source from women who've been rescued from the human sex slave trade. And, you know, I'm like, I don't have $5,000. I wasn't paying myself a salary at that moment, so self care is definitely out the window.

You know, it's like, man. So it was really easy for me to see what I couldn't do in terms of my social impact. But it did force me to say, well, what can I do? And really push into that question. And and at that moment, we didn't really have enough formal recycling program, and I was able to, for $50 a month, get a recycling dumpster next to the dumpster that you know, the regular traditional dumpster. And so we launched a recycling program, and my neighbor was allowed to use it. And, you know, it was something I could do. What I realized is when I thought about where I wanted to take my impact, you know, my revenue is directly retied to the impact that I can have. And then that's that engine.

Like, it is the engine. That's what I love about this concept of social enterprise. The revenue is what drives the whole thing. So we gotta make sure that our revenues is strong and can grow and is on the right path. But when I think about the impact that I'm having, it it is also just so critical to have that one step at a time mindset. I'm I'm still nowhere near the impact that I wanna have with my organization. We're doing things like in the next 5 years, I wanna become employee owned. And so we've begun the legal process of of that.

So I can't get there now, but what I did do is I have 3 key employees, and I gifted them 1%. So are we an employee owned structure? No. But everybody who works for me full time now is at least an owner on some way, shape, or form. So here's what I can't do. Okay. That's fine. I'm on the path, but here's what I can do. And, you know that that helps me just do the one thing at a time and and I you know so if I think if you name whatever social enterprise that there is you could be the the most like profits good, Your your impact is solid.

I guarantee you still have a planning to go on the journey, you know, and it's like, what's the next thing I can do? Maybe it's maybe it is helping my competition a little bit more. That's that's a scary one or there was there's a local restaurant group I was meeting with their overall manager, like, the restaurant manager, and they have multiple occasions. She told me she was working on their 10 year plan and, you know, just was talking about that. And, you know, and just in my head, I was like well, and in that moment too, just, well, what if 10 the next 10 years isn't let's try to double how many restaurants we have. What if it in the food and beverage industry, what if they could tackle and lead by example what employee self care looks like? You know? And and what what's like, we've last year and I still need to adjust it. There's some tweaks to it, but we implemented a 4 day work week in coffee production. Right. And it was scary, but our we measured everything before we got started, and we measured thing everything after, and we haven't dropped off production.

So, you know, it's like, how do we take that risk? What's it look like? Maybe we need to be thinking of different metrics of what success even even means. You know? What if it what if they have the restaurants that they have and don't grow but really become the most healthy team in the city. Now all of a sudden you're attracting the best talent. Like, there's so many other ways to measure success. So I don't know. I I started to ramble there for a minute, but I think it's maybe just thinking of the whole thing still as a journey and what's the next area of success look like in in whether you're thinking about impact or your revenue growth.

I I love where you're going with this, David. Somebody who was at the event and spoke at the event here in Albuquerque, Megan Bott from Positive Energy Solar. There's an episode in the can. It'll be live before this one goes live. And she and I stayed in touch. She was one of those people like, we need to talk. So we've talked and I interviewed her. Positive Energy is a worker owned b corp here in New Mexico.

A 120 employees and as I was talking to her about it, she's like, if you go on their website right now, there are 120 people, there are no job openings. Right? And they almost never advertise because they hire a lot from within. And whenever there's a job opening, it goes completely viral because people want, like, in a time in 2024 when most businesses are like, I can't find anybody. My employees are disengaged. Nobody wants to work anymore. Like, they are rocking and rolling. Right? Yeah. And they they, like, attract the best talent.

People stay there, and, like, entrepreneur, they come up with new ideas, her job. She pitched it to the owners of the company. It didn't exist before. And, you know, super cool things are happening. But what made me think about them is she told us there's always gonna be a New Mexico company. So New Mexico is a relatively small market. They're not trying to expand to Colorado or Texas or take over the US. They're here to serve New Mexico, which is a relatively small market, but it just fits and they're comfortable with the side.

They they wanna grow and serve as many people here do the best possible work they can do in the place, but they're not trying to become the largest solar company in the planet. They have a very precise mission that they're doing with great care, and they're doing great as a company. And part of the reason is because they can attract the talent just the way you describe. They're they're very precise in what their impact look like, where they wanna have it, and how they wanna serve the community that goes way over and above. We sell great solar systems, which they do. But it's so much more than that. So that that's an exam. A 120 company, like, that's a good sized company.

And as a worker owned company, they feel like that's an optimal they don't want to get too much bigger because it's gonna be harder to do some of the impact things that go over and above solar. If they were a 20,000 person company, they just don't feel like that's a good fit. So that was an example of a organization recently in my world where I was like, wow. They're doing something very interesting.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, and what I really love about that too because I've wrestled with that, and I and we really started to see growth when I took my foot off our accelerator. Like,

I think we are who we are.

You know, we settled into our skin. We knew our we really discovered our very specific audience, and and we turned a little bit more inward in that employee care. And, again, we're, like, still at the beginning. There's tweaks I wanna be making and and all the things. But another thing that I realized in that is the deepest impact I will have as someone who wants to make the world a better place is gonna be with the people I work with on a regular basis. Right? So let's pretend I did everything else well. Like, money is not an revenue is not an object or, you know, whatever. I I'm having all the social impact.

Here's all the places in the world. But if I have an exhausted team, you know, they're eventually gonna be like, Dave, I really don't care about that farmer in Honduras. I really, you know, I really need some time off.

Mike could go to summer camp, and I can't afford it. Right?

Right. Right. So that's why, like, things like conflict resolution policies, like, just even the idea, like, we've when we hire people or just we let people know, like, hey. In our employee handbook, we are gonna talk about conflict, and we think it's something that's really healthy and good because the best ideas can come out of conflict. So I know it's hard. It's not like we like it, but at the same time, we use see it as something good. That alone is a posture that we embody at our, you know, within our team, and we're 10 people. But that policy has positively impacted people's, like, marriages.

Right? There's these principles that we live with, you know, setting our budget. That helps their outside world. So the impact that I can have on the deepest level is always gonna be with the team members that I'm working with. And so that was a big shift for me as I thought about social entrepreneurship as well. It's, you know, there's there's just different levels of impact that we can have. And let's not forget the people that I'm standing next to every day.

Beautiful. I love it. So, David, talk to us a little bit about you're you're not somebody that moss grows on your stone. Right? You're you started in copy, and then you went to, like, SCA, one of the biggest organizations in the US for social impact in business. And then you wrote this book, and go check it out folks. It's a great book. Link in the show notes. Like, look ahead 3 years from now.

What do you think, Dave, what does your work look like? What are you growing into?

Yeah. Gosh. Thank you for that question. Yeah. You're right. I I don't know if I know how to slow down. I am working really hard because I I do see that the more I slow down, the more actually, it's weird. It's a weird equation.

The more productive I become. I have actually been starting to work on another book about how we connect as humans. Again, like, through the lens of coffee, the first book was written through the lens of coffee in my experiences. It has lots of case studies, but, ultimately, it's my story. Through the lens of coffee, you know, that's again, we talked about hint at the beginning, this idea of the 3rd place, how we all connect. So I've been working on a book with that, and I'm teaching that. The reason why I'm gonna be in LA and New New Orleans and Minneapolis this year is I'm teaching at some coffee trade shows, and it's about this. Like, how do we create that healthy third place? So I'm writing a book on that, but I've realized though as people have been reading this first one, I'm getting a lot of people that have read it that are like, I'm not a business person, but I love what you wrote.

Could how do you find the companies that you are talking about? So I've begun to work on us. I will now be the 2nd book, and I think it will be called radical consumerism. And it's really empowering the consumer, and there's a framework very similar. There's 7 seeds of impact that we can all have and how do we speak that out. So so those that's one big piece of the work and and with the writing, again, I I hinted at this at the beginning, but I'm really passionate about that local ecosystem. You know, if we can share best practices with one another, if we can be advocates for the sector, if we can buy from each other like procurement policies, and and ultimately, it it does sound simple, but it's just so important. If we know that there's others who live next to us, who are in our states or regions that are doing some amazing work and you don't feel alone, like, that fuels you. So I'm really passionate about getting these local economies connected to one another, trying to tear down the silos.

I would say that that's the most the thing I'm most passionate about right now is is as I am traveling and speaking, trying to gather whoever, if you're doing anything in social impact, the the startups to the to the people that have been around for 50 years. Like, how do we really invest in one another, know that we all exist, support one another, and then to me, that's when this thing becomes a movement. It feels like I always use this analogy when I'm describing these local gatherings. It's like we're all playing the same sheet music, but there's no conductor. You know? And so it's like when you go to a show and you're an orchestra's warming up, it's just noise in the hall. But when we can organize ourselves and we can have a conductor and all of a sudden we start playing that sheet music together, then that's when it turns into this beautiful song. And I think that that's where we're at as a sector. The social impact or the social economic sector is gonna just explode because we're gonna start playing together, and then the world will hear it as a beautiful piece of music.

So that's what that's what really lights me up right now.

And listeners, again, got to see Dave in action, and we are we're staying here in Albuquerque. A bunch of us have stayed in touch, and good things are coming out of it beyond the scope of this podcast. But just if you are in a city or region, and you're like, we have the players, but it just hasn't quite catalyzed into a thing. Right? Highly encourage you get in touch with Dave and, like, say, hey, you know, Can you help do some of that magic that you're so good at, mister Conductor? I've seen you play that role. You're really good at it. So, yeah, reach out to me very much. Come to our city, please. We need you.

Yeah. I can hang out with you all day. And I know. I know you're busy. I'm busy. Our listeners are busy. Everybody go check out the book. Highly recommended.

Check out David's website. I'll put everything in the show notes, the SCA Alliance, etcetera. So all that'll be in the show notes, Dave. If there was something you were hoping we were gonna get to in this interview and we haven't touched on it yet, or there's something you wanna leave our listeners with as we start to say goodbye, what would that be?

Yeah. Well, I'm glad we got to talk about that local because that's, like I said, the thing I'm most passionate about. But I would love just to say take a moment to all your listeners and just say thank you. This is can be awfully thankless work. We are tired, but your work matters. So if you're listening to this I mean, just even in this hour commitment that we just had, You've you've taken time to make your work better and having having more impact. And I just really appreciate there's just so many of us that are doing some amazing things. And so just from the bottom of my heart, I I think you, the listener, to for whatever you're doing, just keep up the good fight.

And, yeah, thank you.

David, if Sony wants to get a hold of you, where should they go?

Real easy. So just davidgains.com, and you can email me, david@davidgains.com, and that captures all the things.

Great. David, thank you so much for being on the show and for the great work that you do.

Thank you so much.

So listeners, everything in the show notes, go get the book. It's worth it. Highly encourage you. And go check out David's other offerings and things that he's doing. Go follow him on LinkedIn or our social media platform of your choice. And I wanna remind everybody, we love listeners suggested topics and guests. Just had one this morning. Somebody, one of you awesome listeners said, Paul, you need to interview so and so.

I love when that happens. I'm not like desperate for guests in any way, but this is your podcast. I do this for you. So please tell me the story that you wanna hear. You can send them in on the Awarepreneur's website. We do have 3 simple guidelines to give you some idea what we're looking for and you can go to the contact page, find those guidelines. If it feels like a fit, send in your ideas. Finally, I just wanna say thank you so much for listening.

Please take really good care in these intense times, and thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in our world.