256 | How to Grow an Impact Business in a Challenging Economy with Paul Zelizer
This week on the pod is our montly solo episode with Paul Zelizer. Paul is the Founder & CEO of Awarepreneurs and the host of the popular Awarepreneurs podcast. He's also been a coach for social entrepreneurs and conscious business owners for more than 15 years.
How to Start a Business During a Recession and Thrive: Interview with Paul Zelizer, Founder and CEO of Awarepreneurs
NOTE: While it’s not perfect, we offer this transcription by Otter.ai for those who are hearing impaired or who don’t find listening to a podcast enjoyable or possible.
Hi, this is Paul Zelizer, and welcome to another episode of the Awarepreneurs podcast. This podcast is all about the intersection of three, conscious business, social impact, and awareness practices. Three times a month, I do a deep dive interview with a thought leader in this intersection. Today, once a month, I do a solo episode, all about helping you grow your impact business. Before I get into the topic, today, I have one request. If you could go over to Apple podcasts or whatever app you're listening to the show on, hit the subscribe button, do review, it helps tremendously. Thank you so much for considering. Today our topic is How to Grow an Impact Business in a Challenging Economy. And it's with yours truly. I'm Paul Zelizer on the host of the aware printers podcast. And I've been an impact focus business coach for almost 15 years now. So before I get into some of the tips and strategies, I just want to acknowledge, you know, we're dealing with some turbulent economic time, in most places around the world, inflation is higher than it's been for a long time. And you're hearing people talk about recession. Add to that, we're seeing levels of COVID Rise up and up and down for a long time. We've got political polarization. And in general, people are feeling like uncertain and being more careful with their money. Can you even grow an impact business in this moment, I wanted to give you three examples I live in the US. So these are names that most people in the US would be familiar with. But even beyond pretty good sense that people might have at least heard of some of these brands. And even if not just know, these are very well known brands throughout most of North America.
Paul Zelizer 01:54
In 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression, one of the biggest economic events of you know, hundreds of years, there is the cosmetic company, Revlon, they launched in 1932, in the middle of the Depression. And today, they're one of the best known cosmetic brands all across the planet. And another time of economic challenge 1975, a little company named Microsoft launched, they make Microsoft Word, they bought LinkedIn not too long ago. So you know, these, this was a time where there was both inflation and a stagnant economy. And that leads to a complicated set of dynamics, including people being very careful about what they're buying, and what they're investing in, bringing on new employees, to companies, etc, etc. And then the last example, I have another worldwide brand that many people would have heard of is Airbnb. Airbnb started in 2008. And in many places around the world, there was an economic meltdown in 2008. One of the examples I give to somebody who, you know, maybe wasn't alive back then or, you know, wasn't paying a lot of attention to the economy is that here in the US, some of our largest US carmakers like Chevrolet and other Ford, other companies, they had to get hundreds of millions of dollars from the US, US government, or they would have gone out of business, the taxpayers footed, that bill was called too big to fail. And without that kind of money, these ginormous companies that have been part of the US economy for a really long time, wouldn't have even survived. And that's when Airbnb launched and today is, you know, in a class by itself in terms of having an alternative kind of, they call it disrupting the hotel industry or the travel industry, right. Not that these are impact brands. But these are brands that a lot of us listening to the show, can, you know recognize and if you think about the times 1932 1975 and 2008, these were really turbulent economic times. Now, of course, we're in a different time here in 2022. But I just wanted to give you a sense that it, of course, is possible. And in some ways, it really invites us to go deeper into the fundamentals and launch a stronger company. But if you are going to launch a business, or you're trying to grow a business in 2022, I have a few tips for you and some suggestions about how can we do it in a smart way. At the very least in launching a business. If it's maybe a service business, you're going to be putting in time a lot of energy, certainly some money in your reputation at stake and I want you to be wise about your investments. If you're launching a product business, the InVEST segment can be even higher. So when you're working on growing a business in this economy, I have a few suggestions about how you can do it in a smart way. And some things to put into place that are going to be much more likely to helping you won't start or grow a business in this complicated economic times more successfully. The first strategy, especially if it's going to be an impact focused business, is to really know your why. And when I say know your why I'm talking about two very specific things. Number one, I want you to be clear and be able to articulate your core values. And those sometimes you'll see companies have 12 or 15 core values on the wall, I think when we have that many becomes quite almost meaningless. It's like it looks pretty on the wall. And maybe we recite them at a company meeting or something like that. But if you really want to use your core values in a daily granular way to help you make decisions, and also help people understand what's important about your company, then keeping them to three, four, maybe five Max, that's going to be something that you can leverage, I am not looking at a website, they are not written down. And I can tell you,
Paul Zelizer 06:26
and I can tell you off the top of the head, what the core values for where printers are. Number one is social entrepreneurship. Number two is community. Number three is inclusion. Then number four is wellbeing. Again, I'm not looking at that written down anywhere, these are things that I can remember, I use those core values to decide what topics go on the podcast, who our guests should be, do I take a sponsor on or not? What our master classes are going to be focused on for a membership, community, etc, who to collaborate with, etc, etc, etc. And if you want to look, I'll put a link in the show notes. There's also a two to four sentence description of what I mean personally about those core values. So I am a fan of, you know, giving a little context and a bit of a narrative what they mean to you. But those core values can help you it's like a hand on the rudder. And being really clear about how you're steering your ship. As an impact founder is incredibly important. When things are a little leaner, and a little more turbulent, you wouldn't want to go into a storm in a sailboat not having your hand on the rudder or on the wheel. That's what your core values are, everything gets steered by them. The second part of your Y is what I like to call your impact steam. How are you trying to make the world a better place in some granular way? For me, it's about social entrepreneurship, I think business is one of the most powerful engines on the planet. And to use it for good is the best way I know how to help turn our ship, as a family and human family and living on this beautiful planet. There are some ways I think we're off track, in terms of what we're doing with climate in terms of what we're doing in terms of justice and equity on the planet. Harnessing up the engine of business, is something I'm really, really passionate about. And that's the impact I want to have. It's to grow more impact oriented entrepreneurs who are also really passionate about using business for good. But that's my impact statement. What's your impact, Steve, in a challenging economy, and especially what's going on in our world right now. There's a lot of people talking about social impact. Facebook has a social impact, you know, team, and so does Walmart, and so does pay Pam. But when I'm talking about social entrepreneurship, I have a deeper meaning I talk about going beyond thin veneers. And you got to decide like where you are in that continuum. And I think a lot of people are really hungry for businesses that have thought well about how they want to make the world a better place, and then how they bake that into the actual product or service that they're offering. So that would be my first suggestion. Number one, know your why your core values and the impact you want to have and be really clear about them and look for ways to help to let them help you steer and to bake them into the products and services that you actually offer in the business and 2022 with the economy we have think that's really going to work in your favor. The second suggestion I have for you, is to be clear on your who, who is the ideal client or customer for your product or services, and then to join them in their ecosystem. So what do I mean about your this would be fairly standard marketing advice. Part A of it, is to be clear about the demographic and psychographic. Let's break down those words. The demographic would be things on a census, things like maybe your age, or your address, like what your zip code is, or what you do for an occupation, or you know, your race, or the religion, your gender, things like that would go on a census that you could check a box or fill in a box, what year were you born, right.
Paul Zelizer 10:54
And that's what demographics look like. psychographics are more things on the inside. Values, like we talked about earlier, attitudes about how you approach life, maybe things you do for hobbies, when you're not working. These kinds of like how you think about an approach your life are also have grown very significantly in the world of business and marketing to help us understand our clients and customers. So that part's really traditional, what I'm recommending there, number two, be really be drilled down. And when I work with clients, one on one, I really encourage people to get at least a half a dozen, nuanced, both demographics and psychographics. On just you don't have to write a book, a couple bullet points, like at least six, and I would encourage some of them be demographics. Maybe you work with more people in you know, more women than men, or maybe people in certain cities, or people in certain occupations. And then some of the psychographics how your people are wired, what they care about passionately, that's not as, hey, we have the same skin color, we're live in the same part of the city. Then the second part is less traditional advice. But I think it's super important, which is I really encourage you to join their ecosystems. Once you know who you want help, where a lot of businesses go wrong, in my opinion, especially when economic times are hard. People we're very social creatures as human beings. And we like to gather in communities, whether that's online, offline, or both. Go find your people go connect, go join the communities, of the people you want to serve. Let me give you an example. More recently, I've been doing more work in the climate Space Climate Solutions, climate entrepreneur space, I think I've talked about it before. And I don't know a month and a half ago or so, I was invited to be a climate scout for a wonderful organization that provides funding to climate entrepreneurs called Enduring planet. Like I'm just more in that space, not that I wasn't doing anything there. But I'm doing more in that space. And this morning, I went and listened to a pitch gathering where a number of climate entrepreneurs were sharing their businesses, and there was a different climate tech fund that was, you know, going to vote one of them the top pitches, and use that information to recommend that their community fund was on that call, I was listening, I wasn't there formally. I wasn't a judge. I wasn't pitching them as being part of the ecosystem. And just learning about it. I posted on LinkedIn that I was going to it just a little example. But you can see I'm being more intentional about being a member of the community. This podcast is also a great way to be in the ecosystems of impact entrepreneurs, people, you know, pitch me to be on the show when they pitch I not only, you know, hopefully I get on as many as I can can't have everybody. But even if I can have somebody on, I might introduce them to another podcast. Or maybe introduce them to somebody who I think might be interested in what they're offering. And when the episode goes live, there's back and forth in sharing the episode. And I have a good portion of our guests I stay in touch with for me largely on LinkedIn. And I intentionally try to cultivate relationships with those people who are willing our guests as like, let's see if we can help each other in a wonderful ecosystem kind of way. We'd love to see more people who are wanting to start or grow for their impact oriented business, recognize how valuable to be part of an ecosystem and to contribute and invest in those relationships. And not wait until things are really, really slow. You know, they're burning through their startup bonds. And they're burning out because they put so much work into the product or the service, but they haven't invested in their ecosystem. As soon as you get clear on who you want to help, you have some language about your core values. Even if your product or service is still in the fairly early stages of iteration. It's not too soon to get involved in joining the ecosystem and providing value there, it will help you tremendously in terms of growing your business. The third suggestion I have is to be consistent.
Paul Zelizer 15:55
I have seen over and over again, impact entrepreneurs get really product focus. Sometimes in the startup world, people call it falling in love with your solution, whether the product or the service. Now, of course, we want to be careful, in a full of care kind of way, making sure that the things we're bringing into the marketplace that we're offering our clients or customers are really good things and hence I'm going to talk about that in just a little bit. But being a part of an ecosystem, doing some things in terms of growing your brand awareness. Again, this podcast is one of the primary things I do for example, but Maybe for you it's you have a YouTube channel, or you're part of a community that meets in person in your city. Be consistent with those things. In the book, The Lean Startup, which is one of the more reference to book about growing a startup on planet Earth, they talk about get out of the office, I'm calling him more be consistent here. And I mean it being consistent in a very relational way, tending to your relationships through your content, through being in networking gatherings. Or if there's a conference that's really important in your space, to be consistent with those and not go into getting so focused on your product or service that you stay in the office, you put on blinders, you're not connecting with the real humans, that could be using your product or service, but don't know about it, because you're hiding in the office, working on some new feature, or an addition to the service, or maybe an invoice more advanced form for a slightly different segment of your ideal clients or customers. I'll give you an example. Just this morning, I got an email from one of my private clients. And one of our action steps for their session after we had met last time was to go have a conversation of several people. We called it market research. It's like relational market research. This is an informational, meaning it wasn't heavily sales focused, it was just ham launching this new thing. It's for people like you. And I wonder if I could get some feedback on this thing about, um, you know, bringing into the marketplace. And it was super helpful for this person, right? They got out of the office, even though it's fairly early on in the journey, this person is an incredibly experienced entrepreneur. But they're launching something new. And they didn't wait. They didn't stay in the office. There consistently had been meeting with people like that. Not only did they get great feedback, but they also got great language about how this can be framed about what's useful and who it's for. That was so incredibly helpful. I wish you could see the energy and the enthusiasm and the number of exclamation points, right. So this person's form of being consistent is to do some of those one on one meetings with people and get some real world impact. I'm sorry, input on what they're offering. So to do that consistently, and to prioritize the relationships with people who are either exactly your ideal client or customer or adjacent to you and to be in conversation with them and in the ecosystems and doing the things that keep you in that conversation. Make it a priority. So I have two more tips for you. But before I get into those, I just want to take a break and hear a word from our sponsor. And today, I am the sponsor of this podcast through my consulting services at Paul zelizer.com. What I do there is I work one on one with people who have an impact business that they want to grow and when you're in that situation You oftentimes have a number of questions. But sometimes you have like, two or three, maybe four very precise questions about growing your impact business in these complicated times. And you don't want to sign up for a six month coaching package that's going to cost 1000s of dollars.
Paul Zelizer 20:23
solution I wanted to highlight for you today is for somebody who's in that situation have a few key questions. I would love to have a thought partner and somebody who knows the space. And I don't want a really long coaching or consulting gig. Is that even a thing? And the answer is yes, I call it my strategy session package. And what we do is we gather some data before we meet, and we do a 90 minute deep dive session to really help you understand what are some of the choices that are available to somebody in the exact step of the journey that you're on in terms of growing your impact business? And what would be some of the likely outcomes, or at least when other impact entrepreneurs have faced those decisions and made certain choices? How did it work out for that. And then we have follow up by email for at least two weeks to really help you get support in implementing the plan that we come up with. And it's called my strategy session package, there's a link in the show notes. And I'd love to hear from you if you think it might be a fit for your business. So welcome back to the second part of the show. And I've got two more tips for you. The fourth tip I want to make a suggestion to do when you're working on growing an impact business and challenging economic times, is to develop a funding plan. So whether you're brand new and doing your first ever startup, or you're like the entrepreneur, I told you earlier who's launching something new has been in business has had several businesses that have done very well, but is now launching a new focus to their business. What I really encourage people to do is to have a baseline of how you're going to fund I like to encourage people if you can to think about at least two years. Now, there's a couple of different ways that people can do that. And not everybody has as ideal a situation as what I'm describing here. But if I'm going to make a recommendation, let's at least go for something that's going to allow you some ease and some grace, as you're working on growing your impact business. It's really hard. At the end of every month, you're biting your fingernails or you're like wondering how am I going to put gas in the car or figured out transportation? Or how am I going to get food for my family? How am I going to keep a roof over my head or my family's had, that's a lot of extra stress for a startup founder to be dealing with on top of the already, you know, it can be quite a roller coaster in launching a business. So the three most common ways that people develop a funding plan, the sources of funding that most startup entrepreneurs use, number one, some people self fund, and I'll talk more about what that means. But in other words, you don't take one of these other strategies of having people either giving you money, because it's a loan or giving you money because they're going to do that in exchange for part of your company called equity. But rather, you're going to sell funds through either things like saving the mind or saved. Some people, you know, access retirement bond, or another common self funding strategy is via job this is actually the single most common ways that people fund a startup is by having a job and you're working on that job for your paid like yours, what allows me to pay the bills or at least pay some of the bills and stretch out my saving. And I'm also going to work on my startup and just knows that at least some of your monthly needs are coming in and you have a steady, reliable source of income coming in while you're building your startup really can help you grow in a much more sustainable, relaxed, enjoyable way. When I launched my business 15 years ago, I had a very kind of unique federal contract. It kind of came out of the blue. I was burning out as a social worker, but somebody was in a challenging situation and they needed somebody for a temporary well paying part time about 25 to 30 hours a week federal contract and it was Like a godsend, I didn't know how I was going to fund what I was working on. And in doing some of the infrastructure investment, and the learning I needed to do, being in business was not my original training, right. And this contract came along, and I could work 2530 hours a week, pay the bills at a, you know, moderate level, we
Paul Zelizer 25:20
were not living extravagantly at all. But it was a lot, it allowed me to both pay the bills, and make the investment I needed as a new entrepreneur, to launch my company and to grow my company. With a degree of ease that that hadn't been there, I would have been, you know, what was already a complicated, stressful situation would have been much worse. That's an example of self funding, some combination of using a job or contract, whether it's part time or full time, and or savings that you have, and giving yourself some runway. So you have again, I'm recommending two years, if you're not in a place where your business is covering those basics, to give yourself some time, so that you're not making rushed, and really, very short timeframe kind of decisions, those kinds of decisions in the impact world oftentimes don't go so well. Whereas longer timeframes where we're like, Alright, I got two years, that doesn't mean, you don't work on things diligently you do, but you work with a different kind of timeline, and less panicked energy. So that would be one possibility, the most common way that most people will start a business. The other way you can get some funding in place for a funding plan is either some kind of loan, maybe there are folks in your circles, who would like to invest in a great startup idea or like to help you grow. And that would be in a loan situation. Sometimes those loans are secured. Some entrepreneurs will use their house and a retirement fund to say, hey, look, I believe in this. And if there was to be a challenge, and I couldn't pay you back, we could access some of the funds in my home, or you could access some of the funds of my retirement. Hopefully you don't have to go there. But that's called a secured loan. And in other cases, people might charge you higher degrees of interest, recognizing there's a risk, but that they would be willing to loan you that money with that higher degree of return. And you wouldn't have to do a secured loan. So you know, you each situation is different, but alone to help get you funds to grow your business, again, to have a window and have some money in the bank. So you can pay the bills, both your personal bill and the investment you need to grow your business. The last strategy that people use is equity funding. In other words, investors give you money that you can use to grow your company in exchange for a certain percentage of that company. I'm going to go into a ton of detail about that here. But if anybody has questions, I'm happy to share resources, just send me an email, through just getting ahold of me through the AWARE printers website, our contact page and tell me your situation and you're trying to understand either what it looks like to get a loan in terms of funds to grow your business, or what it might look like to how equity funding works. Anyway, I might be of help to help you, you know, just get an understanding, I do what I can with the time I have a where printers.com, go to our contact page. And just be in touch a little bit about your situation. But again, the fundamental idea, the baseline idea, is develop a funding plan, get some money in the bank so that as you're working on growing in these turbulent times, you have a longer runway more than just a month or even three months at a time. You're looking ahead a couple of years. So as you're doing the next step, which I'm going to tell you about in just a second. It's called improve continuously
Paul Zelizer 29:09
working on your iterations working on making your product and and or services better. deepening your connections with your ecosystem. People who can make referrals help you find people who are really excited about your products or services, you've got some money to pay the bills and to live a relaxed, enjoyable life, even as you're growing company. That's number four. And number five already told you it's improved continuously. One of the things that I think is really important in an economy where there's you know, some challenges is to make sure you're working towards the best product, the best service that you can possibly offer him rarely when we first come out is it, you know hasn't been developed to that point. So where ever you are in the path of your actual product or service, to be really passionate about key making it better? Is there a new feature? Is the user experience? If it's something online? If it's your services, the quality of what you're providing? Or is there new information that you know needs to be baked into what you're offering to make it even better? Where are you offering something that's based on information that's 10 years old? Or even five years old? Right? How can you, in the words of Jim Collins who read a wonderful business book called from good to great, how can you take your already really good product and work towards making it even better. And again, part of the earlier number four suggestion is to have some funding in place. So you can have some of that runway, you have a little bit of time. And you're not just constantly focusing on sales and marketing. Yes, you want to do marketing and sales. But you also want to keep thinking about making the product better each month, each quarter each year. And if you build in that norm, that you're continuously doing that you're just working on making it better all the time, as opposed to like, well, this is pretty good. And now there's food in the refrigerator. And I like to joke about putting your feet on the coffee table, and you just stop. And a lot of businesses do that. They get complacent. They get a certain degree of sales. And they think, okay, cool, we can do the rest. Rather than not, I like to be thinking about little improvements. Late in 2021, I got this podcast mic that I'm using. Now, even though the mic I had had was pretty good. This is a much better mic and I invested in sound quality, I did a number of things, to make the sound quality of listening to this podcast a better experience. And when I got some information that there was a better option than what I was using, even though it's it's my backup mic, I'm grateful for that mic, I used it for a lot, and I made the choice to invest. I want to keep learning, I want to keep offering something better for you, our listeners. So again, just to run down those five strategies, again, in summary, number one, know your why very specifically your core values and your desired impact. Number two, be clear on your who, the demographics and psychographics In other words, the outside things and the inside things, and join their ecosystems, connect with them provide value, show up in the community. And don't wait until you have that super polished product or service and then wonder why nobody's buying it.
Paul Zelizer 32:49
Number three, be consistent. Show up regularly. Do the things you do to have people understand who you are, what you're passionate about your core values, the impact you want to make in the world. And those communities that you're part of, be a part of them consistently. Get out of the office, connect with your people, even as you're iterating and making your product better, don't get stuck in the office blinders on, I'll go figure out how to sell this thing later. No be consistent part of your community as early as you can, in this process of deciding to grow your business. Number four, develop a funding plan, ideally, two years if you can, using some of those strategies I mentioned before either self fund with this be an opportunity if you have some savings. Or if you can set up so you have a job that doesn't take all your energy, and can use that as your baseline, and then be working on growing your business as you go from there. Or if this is time to think about a business loan, or think about some equity investment, finding some way to have a funding plan as you're working on the things that you're doing to grow your business. So you have some runway to do it. And lastly, to improve continuously. Don't put your feet up on the coffee table. But how can you make your product or services better each month? What are the small and not so small things that are going to make it more helpful to your ideal client more comprehensive, more impactful, have a more significant positive impact in the world. Work on those five things and even in challenging economies. I think as a founder you can make a tremendous difference in the world and help your business grow. So that's what I got for you. I'll put a couple links that I mentioned in the show notes. And before we go I just want to remind you in our interview episodes, we love listeners suggested time topics and guests. If you have a topic that you'd like to see us cover or gas do you think would be fabulous for the show? Please go to the AWARE printers website, go to our contact form. And you'll see that we have three simple criteria that we use about who we want on the show and who we invite on the show. And if you've got something that meets those criteria, please send your ideas in. So for now, I just want to say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care in these intense time. And thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for In our world.