Three and one-half years before the birth of our pre-recorded webinar, I happened to be reading the news releases of a company I follow on the stock market. The company was a direct marketing company, that sold nutraceuticals like vitamins and nutritional products. It was founded by a man who happens to be my friend, and who I have always paid close attention to, I’ve always considered him a brilliant businessman. I’ve been an entrepreneur all my life, and because I like to discuss and evaluate entrepreneurial ideas, I’ve always listened close when he spoke.
Well this news release announced his resignation from the company he founded. To me that was notable. I’ll tell you why. Lying in bed that night while I read that news release on my smartphone made me think, something is about to break and I need to know about it. I decided I would get in touch with him. A man who had founded a company some twenty years previous and had expanded that very company to 29 countries of the world besides.
And he resigns.
So, I’m on the road traveling and I found a moment to give him a phone call. This resignation thing had created a great deal of curiosity in me. I wanted to know what’s up. And that is exactly what I asked him first thing when I called.
He said he wanted to transform his former company’s business into a social business (a new term to add to my vocabulary, which I hopefully added to yours by your coming to this website). He wanted to rescue children’s lives by providing effective nutrition for the most vulnerable children around the world through a for-profit business and pay participants to help get the job done.
I was soon to discover that is what a social business idea is: It’s mobilizing a for-profit business in the marketplace to generate profits for the cause of what might be considered a social outreach initiative, and provide a compensation incentive to promoters that keeps the social cause sustained into the future. In this case, he wanted to eradicate childhood malnutrition. He pointed out to me many things about this social concern not the least of which was the millions who die and are sick and diseased all because of malnutrition.
More on my next blog post…
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