265 | When to Move Fast vs Slow as a Social Entrepreneur 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.
Social Enterprise Growth: 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.
SPEAKER
Paul Zelizer
Paul Zelizer 00:01
Hi, this is Paul Zelizer, 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 profits and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you can hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app, it helps people learn how to have positive impact through a values based business. Today, our guest is yours truly - it's time for our monthly solo episode. And our topic is When to Move Fast vs Slow as a Social Entrepreneur. I am the founder of Awarepreneurs and the host of the Awarepreneurs podcast, this will be episode number 265. So it's one of the longest running and more highly regarded social entrepreneur podcasts out there.
So I'm going to start with two stories. The first story is I had a meeting yesterday with a wonderful young new founder, who is describing his situation we were talking about, you know, getting funding and what his idea was, etc. It's a platform to help impact focus businesses, make more sales and grow their businesses. In other words, a platform for social enterprise growth. And as we were exploring his situation, it was pretty clear. He had a time limited runway, it was bootstrapped. And most of the money was going towards building his platform. And you know, he only had so much money in the bank, and he needed to get more money and be ready to grow this thing fast enough that investors would be interested in. So obviously, you can get a sense of the pacing, right, there were some factors that were contributing to a certain pace. And that's not an uncommon situation. I also wanted to bring into the conversation before we get into three very specific tips that I think can help you find your right pace, if we can use that language. One of the things that research is telling us is that and I'll put a link in the show notes to this research, that traditional accelerators, you can hear right in the name, what does an accelerator do, it's there to help businesses grow faster, oftentimes get funding, grow faster, build out a team learn how to market much more effectively. And really, the Silicon Valley ideal is what is called hockey stick growth, right really quick, steep upward growth curve. And that's oftentimes what is focused on in a traditional accelerator. This research says that when that approach is brought to a business that's focused as much on making positive impact as it is I'm making profits, that the failure rate of those businesses goes up significantly, when they take part in a traditional accelerator, many of them after one year do not exist anymore. Pretty significant recent research. And I think as social entrepreneurs, it really behooves us to pay attention to what's going on there. So in this episode, I want to explore that, we oftentimes will have both internal and external factors, like, you know, what our runway is, with the funding we have, what people who are supporting us, whether that's investors or family or a spouse, or how long we continue to have a job that's funding our daily expenses, and continue to work our business starting it as a side hustle and trying to grow it right. There are these very real external factors that we need to pay attention to. At the same time that I think there's also some factors that are unique to social entrepreneurship, that we're going to talk about, like the communities we tend to be excited to serve. If we only take the traditional, faster is better, we can get ourselves in trouble. So how do we thread that needle? What do we do about pacing? Ah, don't worry. Got Your Back. We're going to talk about that today. So this is, you know, a complicated new, nuanced situation. But I think three primary factors can really help us kind of wrap our heads around social entrepreneurs, what might be a good way to think about pacing in my particular situation. So let's talk about what those three factors are. And then we'll dive into each one. The first one is your financial situation, what's going on there? The second one is your community and the trust you have with that community? Who are you trying to serve? And what are the factors there that you need to pay attention to that can really impact whether you're going to succeed or whether you're gonna be one of those folks who try to grow really fast and then fail? Because of some of the things we're going to talk about? The number three is your product market fit, where are you When,
Paul Zelizer 05:00
you know, understanding who you want to serve, and having a product or service that they're really excited about, say, Wow, this is really for me. And when you put those three things together, and you do an assessment, what's happening in each of those areas, I think it can really help you find a relationship with paste. That's not somebody else's ideal. What Fast Company Magazine or, you know, Harvard Business School, or what Stanford Business School thinks you should do. But what's right for you, your situation, your financial realities, and the community that you want to serve. So let's go through those one by one, your financial situation. Now, there's a wild discrepancy between the various ways that people fund their businesses, when they're trying to start and impact business, there's also a very large range of what people need in terms of getting it up and running. Is this a tech product that has a lot of needs a big build out and a big team to run it? Or is this more like a service business of one or a few people starting delivering services that you can grow and you know, you have big ambitions of helping people. But in the beginning, you don't need to spend millions of dollars or hundreds of 1000s of dollars, simple website, some attention to basic, you know, getting a LLC started and some basic legal self care and a website, and you're up and running, like, where are we talking on that spectrum? So being wise about number one, like, what are your projected costs of getting it up and running at different levels of scale of helping people and the kind of revenue you want to make? And if this is a great place to talk to some people who you know, have been in business for a while and can help you come up with a basic business plan or a simple revenue plan? Like, where are you now? Where are you wanting to be? And what's it going to cost in both the build of that product or service business, like this entrepreneur, I talked to yesterday, right, needed to build out the actual platform, the tech platform that was going to allow this business idea to be viable, and that's going to cost money for engineers, and people working on user experience, and testing all that, etc, etc. versus some of our members and aware printers have more of a service based business. I recently did an interview with Leilani Qure, and be the change HR, right. They're doing HR services and consulting. And, you know, they have to take a lot to learn and to get the experience in the training of learning HR, but it's more of a consultancy model and a training and workshop model. And so the cost of that kind of business is going to be significantly less than somebody who's building a very robust tech platform. So that gives you some idea of what I'm talking about. And when you think about where you are, what's it going to take for this to be a full time, quality of life business? Depending on again, where you are and where you need to be. The technical term that people use is the runway, how much money do you need to have in the bank, almost nobody starts a business that it's full life full time viable from the day you start it casually, that happens, maybe you had a career in corporate and you leave and you take a bunch of clients with you into your new business, etc, etc. You start something as a side hustle, and then leave your business, corporate job, when things are going really well. But most of us are going to have a runway be mindful of what that runway is from when you start really lean in in a significant way. And when it's like full time, quality of life, living really well, the moment to excel, celebrate and enjoy. And there's a timeframe there. So get some help planning that timeframe? And how do you take care of yourself financially. So you're not trying to push the business faster than it is really realistically able to grow? Especially consider some of these next factors that we're going to talk about.
Paul Zelizer 09:27
The second main bucket that I'm going to encourage you to pay attention to when you're thinking about what's the right pace for you and your business, is the community you want to serve and the trust you have in that community. And this when we go back to that research that I talked about earlier, this is one of those factors that really contributed today, the thinking of the researchers about what that higher failure rate was like, think about it a lot of us who listened to this podcast and care about social entrepreneurs Do we want to help marginalized communities, whether that's women and girls who have been in a human trafficking situation like BE THE CHANGE HR, or communities of color, or people in developing countries and developing economies that don't have the same access to resources, that to as a community, we tend to be passionate about. And many of those communities and the individuals in those communities have had significant experiences of trauma, and people burning their trust. All sorts of ways beyond the scope of this podcast. Well, here comes Mr. or Mrs. or non binary person with a great idea, social entrepreneur, how we can help and I've got this great product, I'm building this great community, I've got these great workshops that can help you have certain outcomes, there's a good chance that somebody in their communities, collective experience, has brought an idea and has said, we're going to help and, but that's to the education system, or community policing, or whatever it was, somebody has probably told that community that they were going to help them with good outcomes. And it didn't wind up with the outcomes they were hoping for, let's just say that, right. So we've got to work on the, you know, building trust, and helping understand who we are, what our values are all about, and what this product or service are the products and services that our social entrepreneur business our impact business is going to help them with. And that doesn't happen in a one time conversation takes time. One of my mentors when I was in my mental health career and doing a lot of community organizing with the Pueblos, the tribal organizations and communities here in Northern New Mexico, they taught me that Paul, you should move at the speed of relationship, move at the speed of relationship. And particularly as a New York Jew, who is coming into communities, let's say like Taos Pueblo, that is the oldest continually inhabited building. In North America, people have been living in that building for 1000 years, right. And they've seen a lot of trauma. And a lot of people who have promised to help them that turned out to whether intentionally or unintentionally having negative consequences on the community to get a sense from going here. And this is why a traditional hockey stick growth Silicon Valley just, you know, accelerate, accelerate, accelerate mindset can really do harm to the positive impact and the kind of growth that our businesses are the best fit for our kind of businesses. So sometimes we have financial pressures, our own internal Money Story, in our investors, our family, maybe a spouse who's not an entrepreneur, and there's like, floating the family financially while you're doing your thing, or our boss had a full time job. And we have this side gig that we're trying to grow into a full thing and well meaning people who are like, Why is this taking so long? I don't like this, when is this going to be viable, how much money you're making, right? And they have communities and people that we want to help, that might have had lots of experiences of their trust being burned. And you know, the pacing that's wanted there, sometimes different in those different buckets. And that's a balancing act that we need to pay attention to. But what I'm trying to do is at least give us a choice and understanding about what those factors are. So you can be wise and find a balance for your particular situation. The last factor I want to highlight I want to encourage you to think about is what we call in the industry product market fit.
Paul Zelizer 14:16
So you want to make sure that you're thinking up here who the people in the communities you want to help with your what the product or services that you've designed to have the impact you want to have. When those things go together really well. magic happen. Right? If you can, if you're not driving or you know, you're not in a public place, I might even ask you to try this experiment. So take your left hand and just spread your fingers wide and hold it out in front of you. And then take your right hand and spread your fingers wide and just hold it out in front of you. And then bring those two hands together and interlace the fingers of your left hand and your right hand. So that's like A embodied experience of product market fit right the left hand, let's call that your who the people in the communities you want to help. In the right hand? Is the product and or the services that you're you've designed to help them with the outcomes you want to help. When those two things go together well, like most people's hands and their fingers intertwining, right, they're literally it's the same body, they're there, they go together, well, they fit together, when when your products and services slide into the communities and the people you want to help. It's that kind of a natural fit. It's really there's just a lot less friction. People are like, I want that. Can we have more of that? When's this gonna happen? This just happened yesterday, for example, we did a through were printers, a impact podcast, networking gathering, in about two dozen people show up people a podcast, we're about, you know, having impact and making the world a better place. And we brought people together. And it was a fabulous meeting. And people were like, why can we do this? Again, this is awesome. It didn't. Today, I've spent a bunch of time talking to individual people that I want to collaborate with to bring that about, but the community was ready people felt like yes, I've been looking for something like this, it was a good fit. And there's a sense of people that we want to help are already feeling like, I wish I had so many of them said, you know, I know podcasters. But they don't necessarily have the impact focus, and I know, social entrepreneurs, but they're not necessarily very excited about podcasting, and how people like all together who do this, and you know, people were sharing, hey, I got this guest for you. And we should connect you with so and so like the emails have been lying today. It's been awesome to see, right? That's what it's like, when you have product market fit in your business. When you don't yet have product market fit, then there's just a lot more friction, you try to explain what you're doing. And people look at you funny, or they just say, Oh, that sounds great. But they won't buy or they're pushing back on the price. And they're hemming and they're hiring. And they're going back and forth and asking you all kinds of quality about this feature, can we lower the price or, you know, if there is a lot, a lot of friction, it's just taking you a tremendous amount of energy, or you're just getting crickets, when you put something out there to the people you thought would be really a good fit, then you just got some tweaking to do that product market fit isn't very great. And if you're like I'm going to ramp up and do a giant marketing campaign and shout it from the rooftops and grow really fast, it's likely to be a painful journey is not likely to go very well, because you don't have that product market fit yet. So these three factors, again, they are your financial situation, your community trust. Let me go back to the earlier example I use in the impact podcast, networking gathering, I knew at least two thirds of the people who came and some of them I've known for at least a decade, right. And there's a pretty good lot of them knew each other some better, some worse. But there was already a sense of like, we kind of know each other at least enough of us that the level of trust was quite high in that room. So not only was the thing we were offering a networking event for people like this, but also the trust was high. So it just wanted to give an example of that. And then the third bucket is your product market fit. So I think if you pay attention and just do an honest assessment, where are you? What are the factors in your financial situation? What's going on in the community you want to serve? And how much trust do you have with key people in that community leaders
Paul Zelizer 19:04
in that community influencers? What's What's that like? And just try to be really honest with yourself? And three, what's your sense of the product market fit? You know, do you have clear products? And do you have clear services? Are you getting feedback on that? What are people saying about them? If they're currently for sale? Like what are sales like, what's the percentage of your conversion rate is a 2% conversion rate or 80% conversion rate, right? That matters? Again, it's going to be different for each kind of product or service, but you get a sense of what I'm pointing to here. If your product market fit is good, you have good community of trust, your financial situation is such that you want to move faster, right? Well, that looks like some green lights there. If your community trust is very low, people don't know you or don't you know you that well and there's been A lot of experiences of people burning trust and not following through and a lot of trauma in your product market fit is love. People don't understand what you're doing yet, or they just haven't heard about it yet. Then, you know, even if your financial situation feels a little heated, you're not likely to get good results if you rush only on the basis of your financial situation. And this is why social entrepreneurship can be a little more complicated. Now, hopefully, these three buckets if you do an honest assessment, I think there is a way to balance this out. There's no one size fits all answer, but I think it's being mindful of these three areas. And if you do that, think you can find a piece on there, fast versus slow continuum, or just I like to just think about it as a right piece. Kind of borrowing from the Buddhist idea. They talk about, you know, right sizing things and right speech, I love that framing, right. So think about right pace, and finding the right piece for you. I hope this episode can contribute to that. And if you could use some help, and you don't want to sign up for a really long, six months or a year long coaching program, I offer a One Time Strategy Session package where we can really dial in to one or two big questions like a pacing, what's the right pace for me? And how do I do this in a way that pays attention to your financial situation. And these other factors like the community you want to serve, and finding product market fit. Those are the kinds of things I often address with people in the Strategy Session package. We do information gathering through email to really get me up to speed. And we meet for 90 minutes and do a deep dive on your situation help you see what your options are. See how you can work on increasing product market fit. Think about your runway in terms of your finances and maintaining a good quality of life while you're working on things like community of trust and put it all together into a customized plan for your situation. You can find out more a Paul zelizer.com services, put a link in the show notes. And I'd love to hear from you. I love working with social entrepreneurs on these more nuanced conversations where there is no one size like here's the right answer, but rather what's the right answer for you. So for now, I just want to say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care and these intense time and thank you for all the positive impact that you’re working towards in our world.