How to use the social business model of the Hope Movement to save lives and earn an income besides.
I’m going to help you understand the same thing my friend helped me understand, the one who had resigned from his own company. He helped me know that because the social cause of childhood malnutrition is so huge and because the largest non-profit organizations are simply not getting the job done, then the Social Business model that exists to provide a solution has to have a capacity big enough to address it legitimately. Otherwise, we are easily satisfied with throwing money and good wishes at a social problem and engaging in mutual back-patting with nothing more accomplished than babysitting the status quo. Simply put, I don’t play that game. I want something that works. Don’t you?
As I listened to my friend. He helped me discover three basic features to Social Business. The first he called Social Business 1.0. This would be likened to the early work of Blake Mycoskie, founder of Toms Shoes. If you are not familiar with Toms Shoes let me update you. Blake started a social business shoe company out of his apartment via the Internet and gave a pair of his shoes to needy children every time he sold a pair. In five years, he sold and gave away 2 million pairs of shoes. Then Blake took his next step. We call this Social Business 2.0. What Blake did was find a distribution channel that would increase his impact, so he went to the retail market (think the anchor stores at the shopping mall) and in the next two short years, imagine this, he sold and gave away 50 million pairs of shows. Incredible progress.
Now, I’m about to transition to Social Business 3.0, but first is it okay if I ask you a question? What if I wanted to make profits from this social business idea brought to market by Toms Shoes, what would I have to do? I would have to own a retail shoe store. Right? This idea, though, leaves me and 99.9% of the general public out of the potential profits. I could still go buy Toms Shoes to generate shoes for needy children, but my personal impact, though important to the big picture, always feels small. Plus, my incentive over time grows somewhat fragile.
But Social Business 3.0 can take us to new levels of accomplishment and the business model invites ALL people to get involved.
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