Your Mark On The World

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1KtIgrv. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Wheels Up is a membership-based private aviation enterprise founded by Kenny Dichter, a successful entrepreneur. Recognizing the suffering that so many families experience due to breast cancer, Dichter is using a clever campaign to bring more money to the cause. [Jump to page 2 to watch the live interview.] Dichter explains, “As we all know, breast cancer affects one in eight women in America and that unfortunately means it touches all of us. Statistically, we all know someone’s mother, wife, sister, aunt, cousin or friend who will be diagnosed.” Wheels Up has launched a program around a pink plane from the Wheels Up fleet to serve as the centerpiece of the campaign to raise funds to fight breast cancer. The program is in partnership with Textron Aviation; they join other notable c

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1KrpcKu. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Former Haitian Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe recently announced the formation of a foundation named in honor of his father, The Dr. Louis G. Lamothe Foundation. The Foundation will fight social injustice in Haiti and complement the work he is already doing through LSL World Initiative. “The Dr. Louis G Lamothe Foundation is an organization that aims to carry on my father’s work as a socially responsible activist in the fight for an inclusive and united Haitian society,” Lamothe said. “Decades of poverty, squalor, violence, economic insecurity and dictatorship have ravaged our country. As a result, Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere with a limited capacity to respond to the effects of political and social instability and natural crises. This Foundation is

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/20XvUiL. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Last fall, the SEC issued long-awaited rules for investment crowdfunding. FINRA also issued its rules. The new rules become effective on May 17, 2016. It’s time for entrepreneurs to start thinking seriously about whether and how to take advantage of the them. I’ve invited three experts to comment and offer suggestions. Richard Swart, CSO of NextGen Crowdfunding, notes that “Regulation Crowdfunding is far from perfect – but it will allow the first inning of retail equity crowdfunding to begin. Expect legislative changes soon, but at least we now have opportunity for local and community oriented crowdfund investing.” “The single biggest misconception about Regulation Crowdfunding is that is is somehow an alternative to Venture Capital,” he adds. “Regulation CF will function at the se

Read the full GoodCrowdinfo article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/20nREDX Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. What if a fashion brand spent its advertising budget on solving social problems? David Eros and Atila Uri, founders of ch8se, believe that the answer to the question is that such a brand could change the world. The key, they say, is for you to choose ch8se. David explains, “ch8se wants to fight some of the most pressing social and environmental problems, such as deforestation, child hunger, unemployment, low education rates and lack of access to clean water, with our primary focus being on the developing countries, where the need for help is the most pronounced. Considering the monstrosity of these problems, we have no illusions of being able to solve any of them, we just want to provide people with a new way of contributing to a global solution.” Atila notes, “We are basically t

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/20Pk225. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Each year, Capgemini, in partnership with RBC Wealth Management, conducts a formal survey of high net-worth individuals (HNWIs) and shares the data publicly. One of the striking features of the report in recent years, is the increasing interest among wealthy individuals regarding social impact. David Wilson, head of the strategic analysis group for Capgemini’s financial services strategic business unit gave me three highlights for consideration. If you are a wealth manager, pay attention! Be Aware: Social impact (defined as “an investment of time, money and/or expertise with the goal of generating positive social impact, which may or may not have a financial benefit”) is highly important to High Net Worth Individuals (HNWIs). However despite their interest in driving social impact,

Read the full GoodCrowdinfo article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1KZ0wna. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Dave Chase, Managing Partner of Healthfundr, an investment crowdfunding site for healthcare companies is well positioned to offer insights for investing in the industry for impact. He’s provided three keys for investors, employers and the healthcare companies and their patients: Problems breed opportunity: As Peter Diamandis famously said, “the world’s greatest problems are also the world’s greatest business opportunities.” Studying the ongoing collateral damage from wasting over $1 trillion every year (just in the U.S) makes it clear that healthcare’s status quo is the greatest immediate threat to the American Dream. The great news is that the solutions to fix the mess have all been created, proven and modestly scaled, they just haven’t all been brought together. The companies d

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/20KpDGP. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. According to an NREL report, about half the cost of a residential solar installation is non-hardware soft costs. Reducing those costs is the mission of Sighten, a software tool set for solar installers. [Jump to page 2 to watch the live interview.] Co-Founder and CEO, Conlan O’Leary explains, “To date, most solar companies and financing providers have had to use horizontal software like Microsoft Excel or had to build software of their own. Those approaches were ultimately too unwieldy, inefficient and not scalable.” “As the solar market has become more competitive and profit margins have been squeezed, the industry has recognized that significant efficiency gains are needed. Recent years have seen a growing focus on reducing soft costs, but only marginal progress has been made,” h

Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1KYQ3Im. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Janet Salazar, CEO and Co-Founder of Impact Leadership 21, says “women are marginalized” not only by men who actively oppress women, but in effect, by the men who fail to show up in their defense. She identifies the problem as including the “lack of engagement from men in leadership and influential positions to accelerate gender diversity and women’s equal representation at the top level across sectors.” Janet was introduced to me by Vince Molinari, the CEO of Gate Global Impact, our sponsor. “Men are part of the solution. Men are critical in accelerating women’s leadership and achieving gender equality at the top leadership,” she added. Janet is working to engage more men in the discussion. “I created ‘Conversations with Men,’ a forum to engage men in leadership and

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/20FsXmG. subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. It seems that hardly a day passes without headlines about unarmed black men being killed by police in our country. If there isn’t a new case, we’re trying an old one either in court or in the media. [Jump to page 2 to watch the live interview.] Ben Hecht, the CEO of Living Cities, a nonprofit group that makes and facilitates impact investments in cities around the country, including my own here in Salt Lake City, explains the broader problem: US cities are places of great opportunity, hope, change, resilience and energy. Unfortunately, they are also places of great inequality. Home to more than 80% of the population, cities reflect the incredible income, wealth and educational disparities between rich and poor, white and people of color. These disparities not only threaten to hold

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/20vvGiD. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Katelyn Dalton was a homeless addict. She considered herself to be “unemployable.” [Jump to page 2 to watch the live interview.] She says she was hurt and frustrated when she was rejected by prospective employers who rejected her application even when they said they were hiring. She boasts, “ I overcame it with self-perseverance and the support of social enterprises giving me the support and tools necessary to be successful.” The social enterprises she mentions were supported by REDF, a nonprofit that supports social enterprises that employ the “unemployable.” Founded in 1997 by KKR’s George Roberts, the organization is led today by Carla Javits. Dalton explains what it felt like to re-enter the workforce. “When I finally learned that I had the ability to be successful, I was wort

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1KZ5a4x. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Over the past several years as impact investing has captured the attention of the world’s wealthy, people started by asking “what is impact investing?” Today, the question more people are asking is “how do I do impact investing?” [Jump to page 2 to watch the live interview.] The Global Impact Investing Network, co-founded by Amit Bouri who serves today as the CEO, sits near the center of this discussion. The GIIN (pronounced like jean or gene gin, as in gin and tonic) is building a database of impact measures in hopes of creating a resources that will help standardize impact measures. Investors of all sorts are relatively good at measuring return on investment. Many investors, myself included, check their portfolio values daily. Some monitor them throughout the day–even if they are

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/20oZ1Ls. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Last fall, the IPO market “fizzled” and 2016 has seen the broader market fall well into “ correction” territory (representing more than a 10% drop from the peak). That hasn’t stopped Elio Motors from raising over $16 million in a “mini-IPO” with help from StartEngine. Elio Motors, founded by Paul Elio, is developing a sub-$7,000, three-wheeled vehicle that seats two people and gets 84 miles per gallon. Last summer, Elio “tested the waters” and found interest of over $27 million (a spokesman says the tally reached $45.6 million). With the SEC’s official sanction, Elio launched their regulation A offering, something of a cross between a traditional IPO and investment crowdfunding, just as the market began to stumble. Elio explains that as with a traditional IPO, the shares will trade

Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1SxlbpY. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Tracy Saville, founder of My Swirl by Queentia, is a social entrepreneur who has completely bought in to the idea that the best way to see the future is to create it. She offers three keys to living in the future: Think people, planet and profit. The most valuable global brands and companies in the new economy will be those built on enlightened and “for the human race” principles; companies operating with authentic triple bottom-line values and culture. To capture the new economy consumer in a climate-crisis world, it will take the world’s companies commitment to new human-centric values. The world is at a tipping point in its gender inequality. We’re moving past revolution to evolution – from table-leaning to table-building – from fighting to change our male-centric eco

Read the full GoodCrowdinfo article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1ZNi2XK. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Chris Harden and Jeremy Scheinberg created Trobo, a robot that is an educational toy focused on teaching young children STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). They successfully raised $61,000 on Kickstarter. Here’s how they did it. Chris explains, “We got started at an event in November 2014 called ‘Startup Weekend.’ It’s a 3 day weekend where you pitch a brand hew business idea, form teams, and create as much of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) as you can. You also go out to a market place and get feedback, specifically to determine whether people would buy and how much they would pay.” The biggest challenge, Chris explains, was to actually do what they’d promised with finite resources. Our biggest challenge to overcome how to turn a $61K Kickstarter into what is now

Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1SxfCYt. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Pierre Hines recently won a $20,000 grant from the Atlantic Council in recognition of his remarkable nonprofit startup, Caribbean Returning Nationals Foundation, which he joined to support economic development in Caribbean countries. The organization was founded by Arlene Graham. “‘Brain drain,’ the process by which a country loses skilled labor through emigration to developed countries, is a significant challenge for Caribbean countries. Many countries have lost more than 70 percent of their educated workforce,” Pierre explains. For Pierre, this is a personal cause. “I am one of 1.2 million children in the United States with at least one Caribbean-born parent. My Jamaican father and his entire family immigrated to the United States in the 1970’s, and that decision is o

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1Rx2kv2. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Dr. Andrew Weil is the Harvard-trained physician who led the holistic health revolution of the last fifty years. Whatever you think of alternative medicine, he has been successful at building a following and a community. Recently, Dr. Weil created The Weil Foundation to fund educational programs at medical schools around the country, teaching integrative medicine. Dr. Weil explains the healthcare problems we face today, “We are all suffering from a broken health care system and medicine that is too dependent on expensive technology and pharmaceutical drugs that often cause as much harm as benefit.” As a solution to this broken healthcare system, Dr. Weil is funding education of alternatives. “I am training physicians and allied health professionals in Integrative Medicine, which em

Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1TF2AFO. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Steve Grizzell, one of the most experienced venture capitalists in Utah is heading to Egypt to help create an ecosystem for entrepreneurship to provide more jobs for young, educated people. He hopes that the model they create in Egypt can be exported to other developing countries. Steve, who runs InnoVentures Capital, says, “Traditional businesses are not creating enough jobs anywhere in the world. This is particularly true in developing countries with a large population of young educated people. The solution being pushed is entrepreneurship. But entrepreneurship occurs within a much larger system. How do you create the system?” He says he’s designing a system to fund entrepreneurs. “I’m attempting to create a funding structure from seed to private equity. I am also try

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1Oq7wel. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Water.org is leading a revolution in the provision of clean drinking water in the developing world, turning the recipients of charity into regular water customers through microloans funded by impact investments. [Keep reading or scroll down to find the video player for the live interview.] Gary White, CEO of Water.org, explains the problem, noting, “The poor are not a problem to be solved, they are the solution. I see constant innovation in the financial sector—new models, new products. Water.org is applying that kind of thinking to the philanthropic sector—creating new opportunities for private and philanthropic capital to make systemic change. Access to water and sanitation has been the focus of charity. But there’s a market-based solution. We realized that if we could provide the

Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1ZO05oj. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. “My story starts with a near drowning when I was 15 years old. This experience clarified in my mind the urgency to make an impact while we can,” begins Tony Loyd, the podcaster who produces “Social Entrepreneur.” He continues, “As an adult, I was successful by many standards. I was an executive with a handful of Fortune 500 companies. However, at times I was conflicted. Some of the companies that I worked for had a powerful mission, but a toxic work environment. Other companies had a wonderful environment with great camaraderie, but their mission was not producing the kind of world I want to live in. I have been asked by these companies to lobby for causes that went against my values.” He explains how he made the leap to podcasting, “In late 2013, I had a crisis of cons

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1TF5Q3Y. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Franky Imbesi and Nissan Bahar, social entrepreneurs working in Africa, have created a new app that will pay you to walk. Rather that use computing power to “mine” bitcoin, the app allows you to generate Bitwalking Dollars by walking. The practical limit to earnings is about $3 per day. That probably won’t motivate many people in the U.S. to walk more, but for people living on a few dollars per day and walking and hour or more to and from work each day in the developing world, this could be life changing. Bahar notes that problems go beyond not just having money, but access to the banking system. “Large populations in the developing world are still left unbanked. They don’t have the opportunity to access currency and take part of the global economy.” “Inspired by the words of Nelso