Your Mark On The World

Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1QXKiMC. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. In the past, I have observed that the best entrepreneurs are not the ones who see the glass as half full, but instead are the ones who see it as “almost full.” Vanessa Bartram is that sort of entrepreneur. One who quiets her doubts and charges ahead. And she does it with an eye toward changing the world. In 2008, Vanessa launched what has become a $2 million per year staffing firm, focusing on paying fair wages and alleviating poverty. She says, “I was interested in social change from the time I was 12 years old. But having two entrepreneurs as parents made business my natural ‘toolkit’ for working on those issues. We absorb and embrace what we hear about around the dinner table. I tried several different avenues to social change – non-profits, development agencies, fo

Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1NQyviZ. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. CNN Hero Chad Bernstein is a career musician, professor and founder of Guitars Over Guns, a nonprofit that helps at-risk youth connect to adult mentors through the arts. Drawing on his decades of work with kids, offers these three key insights for being an effective mentor to a child. Be the adult in a child’s life. The single most important factor in a child’s success is a relationship with a caring adult. Finding an avenue through which we can connect with youth. The arts are a great potential avenue, but meeting a student at their point of interest and respecting that is the key. Show up and listen. There are two keys to building trust between a mentor and a student: First, show up and be present. There is no replacement for time and consistency is key. If you contin

Read the full GoodCrowdinfo article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/240Ctmb. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Patch of Land is a sponsor of the Your Mark on the World Center and GoodCrowd.info. Crowdfunding always looks easier than it is. Very few–if any–of the crowdfunding campaigns famous for raising millions of dollars got there without tremendous planning and hard work. Many people still cling to the “if you build it, they will come” model that has been proven to fail. Patch of Land provides financing for people wishing to acquire a home to refurbish and sell. Here are some tips provided by the co-founder and Executive Chairman, Jason Fritton: Explore the FAQs and Resource Center — real estate crowdfunding and marketplace lending are new to many people, so we provide a ton of information for investors, borrowers and the general, curious public. Everything is available on our resour

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1SCEoCK. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Mark Eaton spent 12 years in the NBA, renowned for his defensive play at center. After retiring from the Utah Jazz, Eaton became an entrepreneur, opening a successful restaurant and becoming a nationally recognized corporate speaker. He offers four keys for successful teams that are as relevant for social entrepreneurs and their teams as for any other organization. At seven feet four inches, Eaton dominated opponents in the NBA, was twice named NBA Defensive Player of the Year and broke the league record for most blocked shots in a single season. He was also selected to play in the 1989 All-Star Game. After his playing days were over, he became a radio and talk show host and opened Tuscany, a highly-regarded restaurant in Salt Lake City. More recently, he launched 7ft4.com, his trai

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1pIjkCm. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Jacob Allen is the partner with Cicero Group who manages the social impact practice, Cicero Social Impact. The firm, with 70 consultants and nearly 200 analysts, seeks to compete with Bain and McKinsey. The impact practice serves national and international impact organizations, including the George W. Bush Institute and the Clinton Foundation, along with the Prudential Foundation, United Way and Mary’s Meals. [Jump to page 2 to watch the live interview.] Allen shared three tips for having greater impact with me. First, he notes, “To change the world, good intentions and lots of activity are not enough.” Allen’s insights come from 15 years of impact experience, including work with Goldman Sachs, the Alzheimer’s Association and the Nature Conservancy, among others. Tip 1: Do your ho

Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1S7SvQ8. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Can you imagine how it would feel to be so far behind your grade level in reading that you don’t dare pick up a book? What if every book you did touch were about people you couldn’t relate to, people with life experiences so foreign you might as well be reading about martians? D. Lacy Asbill, the co-founder of the B-corp Moving Forward Education, discovered that there are millions of kids like this in public schools in the United States and did something about it. She summarizes the problem, “There is no question that the public education system is struggling to support students, and particularly low-income students of color. Schools need radically updated strategies to engage, motivate, and empower students who face the challenges of systematic poverty and racism.” La

Read the full GoodCrowdinfo article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1WrZtVs. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Seed Equity Ventures, one of the sponsors of the Your Mark on the World Center and GoodCrowd.info, has noted exciting progress with two of its portfolio companies. The crowdfunding type investment bank for startups reported this week that two companies, DemoChimp and Micro Benefits, in which its investors had participated in seed rounds last year received large follow-on investments already this year. Utah-based Consensus, formerly DemoChimp, announced on April 5, 2016 that it had received a $4.2 million Series A funding round from Peak Ventures and super angel Nobutaka Mutaguchi. In a statement, Consensus explained: CONSENSUS makes it possible for sales and marketing professionals to create interactive customized demo videos that give each buyer an overview of a product’s valu

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1SmbUAh. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Chris Grandpre, Chairman and CEO of Outdoor Living Brands, has a few words of advice for social entrepreneurs. Grandpre earned his chops in consulting and investment banking before leading the formation of Outdoor Living Brands in 2008 with its four franchise concepts, including Mosquito Squad, an outdoor pest control business. For years, Mosquito Squad has partnered with Malaria No More, a 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit working to eradicate malaria. Martin Edlund is co-founder and CEO of the $14.4 million 2014 revenue nonprofit, Malaria No More. With just 35 people in half a dozen offices scattered around the world, he says, ”Despite our small size, we help to mobilize billions of dollars in global financing for malaria from the US, UK, other global donors, and endemic country sou

Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1RP3dLi. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Janice Schacter Lintz is the woman behind the successful effort to get effective accommodation for deaf and hard-of-hearing people in all of New York City’s new Taxi’s of Tomorrow, a feature that had been in London cabs since 1988. Janice, founder of Hearing Access & Innovations, is a “won’t take no for an answer” kind of activist who offers up her three point plan for changing the world here: First, Don’t Be Afraid To Ask For What You Need Many places will tell you that you are the first dissatisfied person in order to discourage you. They are just trying to get you to go away, so don’t let them deter you. Be persistent. Be fearless. No one can fire you as an advocate so you have nothing to lose as long as you are accurate and do not lie or distort the truth. Getting o

Read the full GoodCrowdinfo article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1q7DR40. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Anyone who has launched a crowdfunding campaign wishes there were a way to make it easier to get attention. Setting up the page is the easy part. Making a video is the fun part. Getting people to watch the video on the page and then make a pledge is the challenge. Josef Holm, an entrepreneur who thrives in the crowdfunding space, last year launched Krowdster to address the big challenge. Josef empathizes with entrepreneurs trying to raise money via crowdfunding. “While crowdfunding democratizes the access to capital, the sheer cost to hire a professional crowdfunding consultant, buy facebook ads and do all the things campaigns need to do to stand out from the hundreds of campaigns that are launched every day is simply too high for most crowdfunders.” Josef created Krowdster for

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/25WbFli. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. In the past, I’ve covered cookstoves five times, excluding the time I went to Nepal to help locals install cleaner cookstoves in village homes up in the Himalaya. We’re here again, but we’re turning our focus on the business model rather than the cookstove. For social entrepreneurs who really want to make a difference for people in the developing world, helping locals to import technology from elsewhere can be counterproductive because cash leaves the local economy and opportunities for entrepreneurs may be limited. Anthony “Tony” Robinson, not to be confused with Tony Robbins, is a professor at undefinedTrinity College Dublin in Ireland; his research into energy and thermal conduction has helped him design a simple stove that generates electricity while a family cooks on the stove.

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1qIElOK. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Lisa Curtis is a serious social entrepreneur. Since she started her career as a Peace Corps volunteer, she has been all about doing good. Her company, Kuli Kuli, which sells products with moringa (don’t feel bad if you’ve never heard of it; most people haven’t) sourced from West Africa. It takes optimism to face all of the challenges associated with selling a new food; she shares three secrets to her success. Curtis tells the story of how she started eating moringa as a way to supplement her diet after her Peace Corp stint left her malnourished. Later, she would launch Kuli Kuli to provide others with the health benefits and to support and grow the women’s cooperatives in the tropics where she sources the moringa. Kuli Kuli’s products are carried in more than 800 retail outlets, inc

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/23ng2ne. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Dr. Julian Maha founded KultureCity about three years ago, shortly after his son was diagnosed with autism. The diagnosing physician, Maha says, told him his son would likely have to be institutionalized. Motivated by that challenge, Maha set out to create a nonprofit that would actually drive greater impact in the lives of those affected by autism. Maha really believes he is completely reinventing the model for nonprofits. Last year, Microsoft MSFT -1.15% launched Windows 10 with the #UpgradeYourWorld campaign I covered here. KultureCity was one of ten nonprofits recognized by Microsoft as part of that campaign, suggesting that Maha has created something different from typical nonprofits. Maha asserts that the innovations he’s implementing at KultureCity make him “a true social ent

Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1Y1f78D. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Octogenarian Cheri McDaniel is doing more good for the world at 87 than most people do in their prime. She recently completed her memoirs, He Lays the Stones For Our Steps: Living Life Abundantly in the Face of Adversity. Cheri was born in humble circumstances and became a successful entrepreneur–at a time and in a place where that was unusual for women. Living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana she was the only woman home builder in town. Later, she launched and ran an antique shop with European imports. Initially, she launched the store with her daughter but took it over full time and gave up home building when her daughter had quadruplets. Cheri’s life really began when she retired at 75. “After successful careers, I’m using my life lessons to engage in humanitarian efforts t

Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1M1erza. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Filmmaker Chiara Tilesi is the founder of We Do It Together, a nonprofit production company focused on the empowerment of women. Chiara sees huge gender disparities in Hollywood. “Women are vastly underrepresented in the film industry. Only 7% of the directors of the top 250-grossing Hollywood and independent films are women; Female characters made up just 13% of the protagonists in the top 100-grossing domestic films in 2014; the Sony e-mail hack revealed that female leads were being paid a fraction of their male counterparts.” Chiara believes that cinema has the power to change “the deep-seated perceptions about outworn female stereotypes, pervasive in the film industry, and the world.” “We Do It Together was founded to harness the capacity movies have to influence a

Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1TiUDsw. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Aseda, a producer and distributor of honey, chocolate and shea butter, has a mission to protect and build bee populations globally in the face of declining numbers in the developed world. Co-founder Bessie McIntosh says, “Bees are disappearing in the developed world at an alarming rate. Here in the US, we have seen an overall decline of at least 30% of our bee population. Gone. In some areas, we have lost over 70% of our precious bees. It has gotten to the point that farmers in the US import bees from Australia to tend to our country’s pollinating needs.” The problem, which is not well known or understood, could potentially lead to an existential crisis. Many of our food crops require a pollinator, Bessie explained to me, and if we don’t have enough bees, we won’t have

Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1M12l9f. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Matthew Barnes, partner at ASG Advisors, is a social entrepreneur who spends his time helping other entrepreneurs and business leaders add purpose to their profits. ASG Advisors is a consulting firm that helps companies implement effective corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs. We’ll be talking to Matthew live so you can learn much more, but in advance of our live interview he provided four themes that guide his work and that will be the subject of our discussion. Theme 1: Intentionality – corporate community engagement efforts have moved away from the passive, transactional nature of the past to a fuller engagement with community actors to partner on things that can have a real impact. Deeper thought and research inform this approach. Theme 2: Ownership – this

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1MM2SGS. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Kara Goldin talks about sugar as if it were a bad thing–a very bad thing. Goldin, the founder of $30 million beverage company hint®, launched the company in 2005 after developing the unsweetened flavored water in her home kitchen as a healthy alternative to the sweetened juices she had been buying for her kids. Goldin approaches the subject of sugar and sweeteners with the subtly of a presidential stump speech. “People ask me ‘who’s your biggest competitor?’ It’s the sugar and sweetener companies. They will use any food or beverage to sell their ‘drug.’ And use any language to make it seem healthy,” she says. The former AOL AOL +% executive doesn’t like diet sweeteners much more than sugar. She proclaims, “Almost 1/2 of Americans have type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes. That’s up 27%

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1WN1Akz. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. As I’ve been covering social entrepreneurship and impact investing for the past several years here, I’ve watched and come to know Village Capital as one of the real leaders in social entrepreneurship. Their peer-selected investment model is unique among the accelerators and incubators I’ve covered. Last week, Village Capital announced the formation of VilCap Communities, an effort to radically expand the peer-selected model. Ross Baird, Executive Director, is on a mission. Last week, he published a piece that was highly critical of the Silicon Valley model for venture finance. Afterward, he told me, “The way we fund new ideas today is broken–we send billions of dollars to a few people in a few well-off cities, who fund people they know and who are in their networks. As a result, 78%

Read the full GoodCrowdinfo article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1YY6RXP. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Todd Crosland, CEO and Founder of Seed Equity Ventures, which sponsors our work, is a Finra-registered broker dealer that provides investment banking services, especially capital raising, for startups. Todd says that the firm reviewed about 600 submissions in 2015 and put up eight for funding on the company’s international crowdfunding platform. In other words, the firm can be as selective as any venture fund in the country. Today, I asked Todd to explain the Seed Equity Ventures investment criteria so interested entrepreneurs can tune their submissions before sending them in. Here’s what he gave me: Proven Management. The management team is one of the most important considerations we look at when evaluating companies. In particular, we look for solid founders that have a prove