This will likely be a multi part post because it’s more than can fit in one newsletter, but it’s something I’ve been wanting to explore for awhile. I’ve opted for shorter blogs lately as that’s what time permits, but I want to deep dive into this topic, as there’s a lot here - is good good enough in business, as a mom, as an ally, in the church, as an athlete, as a steward of the earth, as a human? How do even define good?
I’ve been asking myself the question of why I’m here since I was a little girl, and I only remember that because I asked a babysitter, “do you ever wonder why you’re here?” assuming everyone was perplexed by this. I was probably 8 or 9. She said, “that’s a really deep thing for someone of your age to be thinking.” She never told me whether she thought about it or not. Do you?
I’ve gone back and forth on what impact and purpose and making a difference means and I’ve gone from being very rigid about it - you’re only good if you compost and know exactly where every one of your pennies goes - to more generous in my judgement - if you give a person struggling with homelessness money even if they use it to buy something “not good,” at least you care - to ambivalent - you didn’t recycle? Oh well. No one else cares so why should I?
I’m still pretty much a pile of spaghetti about it. So as I examine the philosophical debates going on in my head every day a bit more than a quick morning blog, look forward to more in the next coming weeks.
Is Good Good Enough: Social Enterprise
So much my need to understand what purpose and goodness meant that I left the country to be a volunteer for the US Peace Corps, and because I didn’t find an answer there, I pursued a Master’s degree in Social Entrepreneurship at USC. I thought I found some answers there, but 7 years after graduating, I have more questions.
In my academic interpretation of the concept, a social enterprise can be defined as a business that actively pursues a double (people and profit) or triple (people, planet, profit) bottom line. It cares about making money but is in business to do good. To me, giving 1% to the planet doesn’t fit into this definition because the other 99% of the business is about making money. At least that’s how I used to understand it. I have also said (can’t remember to whom) that we’re studying the concept of social enterprise as a novel idea, but in 20-30 years it won’t be a field of study anymore because the consumer now demands good business. Social enterprise will just be called enterprise and will be the norm for any business, because if you’re not doing good, you won’t make money. A bit naive perhaps, because there will always be pharmaceutical companies that are not exactly in business to keep people healthy, and arms manufacturers that make money off of fear instead of hope, but the truth is the consumer is far more aware now than ever before and we do shop with our dollars. Businesses have to care.
I’m reading Radical Business by my new friend and fellow social entrepreneur, David Gaines. It’s an extremely refreshing approach to doing good business. He makes it accessible for anyone to do good in business and counters my belief about the 1% for the planet by basically saying 1% is better than 0%, and then explores other ways businesses can improve incrementally. Imagine if everyone was able to make a tiny tiny impact. He breaks it down with ants and elephants.
Let’s think of small businesses as the ants and huge corporations as the elephants. At first glance, it may seem obvious that the elephants are significantly stronger, smarter, and more powerful than the ants. But when added together, the ants actually weigh a lot more. As of 2020, there are about 450,000 elephants in the world. An average adult elephant weighs about 8,800 to 14,000 pounds, depending on the species. So, if we use 11,500 pounds as the median, all the elephants in the world weigh somewhere around 2,587,500 tons.
The average ant weighs 2.5 milligrams, and scientists conservatively estimate that there are 20 quadrillion ants on Earth. That means the weight of all the ants on this planet is somewhere around 50 quadrillion milligrams. That’s 55,115,565 tons. That means that all the ants added together weigh over 50 million tons more than all of the elephants! Needless to say, that’s quite a significant difference.
The point is this: When we join forces as entrepreneurs, small business owners, managers, and team members, we can actually compete with the giant corporations to usher in this new economy. Together, we hold an incredible amount of power to move the needle toward a more positive, equitable, and sustainable future.
I started Knit Marketing to do good. We hire high school students, train them in all things digital, and run social media and web campaigns for clients in the education industry. I’ve hired around 30 young people over the years, which to me feels like a lot but what’s more encouraging to think about is the lasting impact this job experience will have on their lives. We’re definitely ants, but we can carry a heavy load!
And while Tiny Topanga is not the definition of a social enterprise, I am inspired by how determined Israel is to take care of our people; something that is absolutely not the norm in Mexico. The minimum wage in Mexico is only 250 pesos, or $15 USD per day, and there are no requirements to offer health insurance or pay for sick time and it’s generally expected that if employees slack off or show up late, you can send them packing with no pay for the day. I’d like to think that I’m the little good angel on Israel’s shoulder because of all my social enterprise experience, but in reality the benefits we’re giving our team were all his ideas - and not because he’s trying to wear a title of “social entrepreneur” or because he’s trying to use it for marketing or self gain. In fact doing good is good for business. We’ve been able to provide interest-free loans for motorcycles to our employees - good for them and good for us, because it makes getting to work easier. We offer heath insurance, which is obviously important for us because if they ever get hurt on the job, they’re taken care of and we’re covered. And while we should probably have a heavier hand when it comes to missing a day or showing up late, we offer a lot of grace. We have a good team, and want them to know we have their backs. At the end of the day, being in a place to take care of our team allows them to take care of us.
This is all I have time for today, so I’ll leave with this: doing at least a little bit of good in your business is good. I wrote mainly about doing good for your team today, but there are plenty of other ways to do good in business such as in your product, your service, for your customers or other stakeholders. I may or may not expand in these areas, but the point is that incremental change is better than no change at all. In any way you can find to do even a little bit of good, I encourage you to go for it.