Making Money and Making Glad

Hello, I'm Dick Foth, and I'd like to welcome you to known stories to make sense of it all. These stories are what I call walking books, real-life people, different places, different ages, different cultures, and I want to have some conversations with them across disciplines and generations and cultures in order to encourage a kind of knowing fresh lenses through which to see the world. One of those lenses will be Scripture, or more specifically, Jesus of Nazareth, whose life I believe changed the course of the history of the world. So thanks for listening in. Great to have you with us. My guest today is Mike Messner, a friend of many years who travels the world and works with folks in a variety of missions and causes around the world. So, Mike, great to have you here with me this morning. Thanks. Great to be here. I want to ask you a question that has some multicyllable words in it. Why is social entrepreneurship becoming so popular among younger folks around the world? First of all, to find that form of what I just shared. Well, let's start with just entrepreneurship. That's a word and a concept that's been around for as long as any of us can remember. Entrepreneurship is just simply the idea going out, starting businesses or starting enterprises and running those to accomplish some purpose. Most of the time it's all done around profit. But what's becoming very popular with both large corporations, publicly traded companies as well as small startups is having some blend between creating shareholder wealth and a higher purpose. That's where the social part comes in. Entrepreneurship is that startup of a new business. Social, that part of it means we're helping someone or some group of people in a way that betters their life, but we're doing it through a business. So, would it be fair to synthesize it or make a synoptic statement about it that we want to both do well and do good at the same time? Well, that's exactly spot on. That's exactly what it's about. You're doing well. That's shareholder wealth development and you're doing good to others. That's the higher purpose part. So, higher purpose, at least in our circles, is often thought about faith-based stuff. But higher purpose in the business context is helping people in any number of ways. It could be creating jobs. It could be helping the environment. It could be any way that you can bring value to and kind of raise the bar that betters people's lives in a given setting. So, where do you, you know, you and I are both Jesus followers, right? Exactly. And I say that simply but not in an off-hand way. How does the way he thinks or the way you read him in scriptures shape that or fit what you are just talking about? Well, one of the hallmarks of Jesus teaching and the way he dealt with people, at least for me, the way I read the gospels and about Jesus is Jesus never shied away from dealing with hard issues in people's lives. But he always did it in a way that preserved the dignity of the individual. And so, that nugget of teaching of how Jesus went about dealing with people you see in social entrepreneurship. So, for instance, I have a friend that runs a coffee shop in Greece. No, the economy of Greece is probably one of the toughest in the world arguably today. And so, what you find in small businesses, small and medium enterprises, SEMs, is that you'll have people that say that again. I mean SMEs, excuse me. SME is a small medium enterprise. So, most of the economies of the world, in fact I would say all the economies of the world are driven not by the multinational corporations, but they're driven by the mom and pop small companies, small medium enterprise. So, the small and medium enterprise in Greece, you'll have employees come and they work and they don't get paid because there's no money. You'll have vendors that will provide goods and services and won't get paid. You'll have taxes that are due that don't get paid. That's the norm in Greece. So, when a social entrepreneur comes in and forms a company and has a value proposition like a coffee shop, so you've got money coming in, you've got employees, you've got the exchange of goods and services, but they pay their employees, they operate their company in such a way that they're conservative and they pay their vendors and they pay their taxes and they do it following the teachings of Jesus. Every time they pay that employee and don't cheat them out of work, I mean out of their pay for their work, they're treating them with dignity. And they're giving them a decent wage for a good day's work and it helps the individual, it helps the economy, it creates jobs, it does all those kinds of things. So, thus it's a social enterprise that they're doing well and they're doing good at the same time. How did you get involved in this? Where did that start for you? Well, I've been fascinated with business my entire life. So, I like the idea of creating an idea, having a dream and then pursuing it and creating an organization that brings that about. So, later in life, I've had several decades of working with nonprofit organizations and so forth. I just felt like the world is changing and I need to stay up with it. So, in my mid-50s, I went back to school, went to Washington University and got an MBA in St. Louis and the reason I did that wasn't so that I could further my career. I was too old, too far along, but I wanted the long into tooth as we say. Exactly. Too many gray hairs or too many hairs have turned loose. What are the other? So, I did that not for career advancement. I did it so number one, I could understand the language of business and number two, I would have the tools to be able to help others because that's been a life mission of mine is to come alongside visionary leaders and help them to operationalize their vision. Well, if I don't understand the language of the marketplace as much as I should or want to and I don't have the tools, then I can only help them so much. So, having gone back and gone through that process and earning an MBA and going through the academic rigors, it just invigorated me in the idea that the marketplace can be one of the most effective platforms to show people who Jesus is and the teachings of Jesus because when you come into the marketplace and you're competing in the marketplace, you have access to everybody. You have access to the customers, to fellow entrepreneurs, to the people that you're serving the people you're competing with and what better platform can you find to demonstrate how Jesus interacted with people. So, let's wrap this up. Let me see if I can synthesize or capture what I hear you saying. Social entrepreneurship essentially is creating an enterprise that both does well, provides profit and does good, provides value at the same time and most often, or it's easiest to see this in SMEs which are small to medium enterprises. Small, medium enterprise. Mom and pop operations, things that many of us have been involved in or might be involved in as we see, driving through any town in America, any town around the world, you see this. Entrepreneurship is something a lot of folks talk about and a lot of folks try and fail so getting to the how is big. Let's see what Mike has to say about that. We talked about social entrepreneurship, which in a phrase is creating an enterprise that both does well on the one hand, i.e. makes a profit and does good on the other hand, that is adds value to somebody's life out there. We talked about the why of that and we talked about the why of it, but let's talk a little bit about the how. Where do we, how, if I wanted to do this, if I wanted to create a small to medium enterprise, and I assume the smallest filter toward the medium that I don't want to stay small. How do we go there and talk to me about what is the bottom line of that look like? Sure. Well, let's start at that point talking out the bottom line because in social entrepreneurship, there are multiple bottom lines. So you reference one, one is profit, that's the most obvious. If you have a sustainable business, you have to have profit. The old adage goes, if you don't have profit, you don't have tomorrow, if you don't have cash, you don't have today. So you've got to be generating cash and you have to ultimately be generating profit from the business. So that's the, let's call that the economic bottom line. Then there's the social bottom line and that bottom line is the value proposition and that's just a simple little phrase that says, I have this idea, that's the proposition, that is a value, that's what helps other people. So you create a value proposition by looking around, most great ideas on products and services, great companies are built because somebody has a need or they have a job that needs to get done and they have an idea, hey, this idea, this value proposition would help meet that need. So with the original value proposition for say, Tom Shoes, which has become internationally famous, where I buy a pair of shoes here and Tom's gives a pair to someone in a developing nation that needs shoes. Would that be your value proposition? Yeah, I can think immediately of three different types of value propositions there. Number one, you have the value proposition that you offer to the customer that buys the shoes. They need a new pair of shoes that are stylish for today. Number two value proposition is the person that is going to receive the free pair, they have a need and that is they need shoes and most often I've been in India, I've worked with a client of mine that distributed a million pairs of those Tom Shoes and most of those go to children and so these children are out there, many times literally barefoot or in old shoes or shoes that don't fit. So the value proposition for them is they get a new pair of shoes that fits while the child's growing up. Value proposition number three is back to the person that buys the shoes, they have a need and this would be kind of the social part of it. They have a need to help other people and they don't necessarily know how to do it. So Tom's provides a vehicle for them to not only buy a pair of shoes but to help somebody that's in need by doing it. So it's a great example of having layers in this case of value proposition. So I don't know somebody in Coimbatore South India and I only know that name because I grew up there as a kid in that part of the world but Tom Shoes then becomes sort of a social broker for my need to help somebody that I don't know and I can always help people I do know but for those I don't know but they have a need that's a way for me to engage in the larger planet if you will. Exactly. So bringing it back to home if your listener is listening to this let's say in the United States right and they're in a place where they look around them and they may see here are some young people that are you know let's say that you know they they have a lot of time on their hands they don't have a lot to do they're out on the street maybe they're into mischief one kind or another and that person wants to help them so they could go directly and you know talk to them and try to convince them you know this that or another and and change them that way or maybe they start a business and that business is built around the idea of I'm going to deliver let's say that they start you know a pizza business right I'm going to make the best pizza in town and and we're going to build our business on delivery we deliver the quickest and the best of anybody at town but I'm going to hire young people that are unemployed on the street and so now you're connecting a profit business to a need that you see right around the corner from you you know that's that's kind of a weak example but but the the elements are there right so if you you start looking around at what could be done so let's say you go to the to the wide open spaces of Wyoming and you say you know I'm going to I'm going to start a business of taking care of horses for people that travel a lot and I'm going to hire young people to be my employees and so again it's the same concept but in a completely different environment sure different value proposition so value propositions are as is creative as the person that is creating them there is no limit to how innovative you can get in creating a value proposition and then building an enterprise around it so this this shows my ignorance which and I have plenty to show because most of the things there are to know in the world I don't know yeah I'm loving this conversation is a value proposition the same as multiple bottom lines well that's the equivalent well the multiple bottom lines I when I talk about that I'm talking about the business overall okay but so you have profit that yeah you have profit you have social you have environmental let's say well environmental in many places around the world and this is probably very observable in third world countries right let's say they take the garbage from their coffee shop and they throw it out the back window right you know it hurts the environment well if everybody does it and they're and you and I both know there's places that everybody does that sure now you're a business and when you have garbage you bag it up or you go you burn it or you take care of it or you bury it and so it now becomes a value to the environment you're helping or let's say you you process your waste water and rather than dumping sewage out in the street you put in a water processing element of your business and you help the environment and there are people that are very motivated to do that kind of stuff so again these are these are very simple examples but you have bottom multiple bottom lines there so that is about the company itself every company that has a product or a service has to have a value proposition that attracts customers to come so a cake company their value proposition might be good cake and a great environment Starbucks the value proposition of Starbucks is beyond coffee it's when you go in there it's a social environment you go and you sit and you you know you interact with people so those are those are related but those are those are two different ideas the multiple back to the multiple bottom line if you look around and you say how can I help people and how can I make a profit then think about what you can do to create profit create a business that has something of value you're offering to a customer and you get them to pay you money for it sure is there is there a difference and and maybe there is none is there a difference in which part of that question or which of those questions I asked first that is if I say it how do I make a profit and how do I help people is that different in terms of either motivation or intensity generally is that different than saying how do I help people and at the same time make a profit okay given the idea that we're talking about social entrepreneurship right the answer to your question is let me answer it with a question which is more important to an airplane the left wing or the right wing sure they're both are yeah so if if the idea here is social entrepreneurship not just entrepreneurship right then you've got two wings of an airplane that need to be present so you can address either one of them first but you have to have them both because if you've got a great idea to help people and let's say you're going to just give away water to people that doesn't have water well if you don't have a economic engine to your business that creates money you can only give away a certain amount of water and you're done you're finished thus if you don't have profit you don't have tomorrow okay so for our listeners why do if if you could think of one or two pictures or snapshots of businesses we've talked about Tom Shoes before but just in in places you're working around the world today without naming names but talking about models of what you're talking of what you're describing here what one or two models come to mind and you you talked about a coffee shop in Greece do you have one or two others that sure let me give you two of them one is CrossFit I've got several friends that live in the Arab world and throughout Eurasia that have CrossFit gyms and the if you know anything about CrossFit gyms the people that go and work out on a regular basis create community and that community grows and they they intertwine their lives and they take care of each other and it becomes a community where they're they're helping each other well the owners of that business they are creating profit but they're also helping people because they come in contact with people that they wouldn't have access to otherwise so that could be done that kind of athletic enterprise can be done on a very small scale CrossFit is a branded gym because and I use it because everybody knows what that is but it's also a style of training it's a style of training it can literally be done one-on-one or in small groups or whatever another I have I have a couple of friends a merry couple Mike and Cindy that have lived in Uzbekistan for 20 years and they run a small farm and the farm creates honey and they have some cows and they they do the milk products and all of that but in Uzbekistan a person who is special needs and who is an orphan has no standing with the government so they have been there for 20 years to to take in these special needs people and train them with a skill and prepare them for life because the average special needs orphan that goes out of an orphanage the government will put them into an orphanage when they go out at the age of 18 on average they die by 21 because they have no coping skills right so what they do Mike and Cindy they use their small farm and the skills of not only animal husbandry and the honey and all of that they they will create certain small items and but they teach these people skills and their track record over the 20 years is these people come out at age 18 they go into society and they have enough coping skills for life that they can survive and so you talk about a social enterprise that has a higher purpose and shareholder wealth development the money that comes in honey sells for a lot of money in that part of the world so they use that money to help fund the work that they do right so those are two examples Michael thank you for taking the time to be with me I is I'm listening to you I'm I'm hearing a phrase come back that's ancient wisdom it's an old biblical phrase from way back in the book of Genesis that is it is not good that man should be alone and what happens when you do social entrepreneurial activities it allows the recipient whether it's the worker or the recipient of the gift of whatever it is to understand that someone cares to in some cases be involved in community i.e. the CrossFit or the the beekeepers farm which is a which is a fascinating thing it's it's all of us know what alone feels like and to be able to to solve that challenge so that we can be together using the skills that are found in a social entrepreneurial environment is a powerful thing thank you for sharing your wisdom appreciate it glad to be with you