 Thank you for all coming. Our panel today is going to be discussing when did it change for you. We're going to be discussing the question of when do these problems that we're here to solve go from us, our story, to a more global and widespread impact. My name is Sarah Biani. I'm CEO of Soulworks Innovations. I just finished my PhD in mechanical engineering from UC Berkeley. I grew up in Lebanon, where we get electricity every six hours on a good day. So we can't heat water when we need it. Instead, there are many times where I would heat up a barrel of water on the gas stove and take a shower by pouring cups of water over my head instead of enjoying a nice hot shower that we all experience here. The most gratifying bucket showers I had were the ones when I could fill up that barrel from the hot water sitting in the hose out in the sun. No gas, no electricity, just free sun. I wanted to bring solar water heating and make it affordable and available to middle income households. My team at Soulworks Innovations has developed an affordable solar water heater that can retail for $200, targeting middle income households in countries like Mexico and Brazil. With my story, that's what led me to, with my experience growing up and my passion for environmental and social causes, that's what took me down this path, lead to where it's Soulworks. And my question today to the panel is how do we go from these personal stories that all of us have attached to our ventures to making it a global story? We're trying to scale this impact, but we want it to be everyone's story and not just a personal motivation or commitment. That's where our energy is invested in. And with that, I hand it over to Jared. Thanks, Sarah, an easy question, which we'll have plenty of answers for in a matter of minutes, right? Good afternoon. My name is Jared Chappelle. You might have seen a change to this panel in your program. I was initially going to be moderated by Jane Shaw, who is the dean of Grace Cathedral here in San Francisco. And unfortunately, her mother passed away about a week ago. And so she is with them. So any energy and thoughts and prayers that you would offer her at this time, that would be great. But I am honored to be here today and think that this conversation and this panel is a practical one for me as well. A bit of my story, in high school, I was a musician in a band, rock and roll, and was doing that and was thinking about life on the road as a touring musician. And then began to think that that's not actually how I could make the most difference in the world. And so I decided to go to business school. And so I went to business school because that's where a thing, that's real change, right? It happens in business, as all of us know. And I went to business school and graduated, got a job with a professional sports team right out of my undergrad. And after just a short year there, decided that sports and business was maybe not for me either because I wanted to think about the higher things. I wanted to think about spiritual things and real world changing things. So I went to seminary because that's a place that you enact change in 2000 year old traditions, right? That's all kinds of change can happen there. So I went to seminary and then graduated and became a pastor. And after a number of years of being a pastor, realized that that wasn't exactly what I wanted to do either. And so in addition to answering, when did it change for you all today? You'll also be answering, what should Jared do with his life? If that's fair, spend some time thinking about that today. But something changed for me a couple of years ago where I began to see that these two worlds that I'd spent a lot of my time in, this world of business and this world of making meaning and really getting into the lives and into the hearts of people that the two could coexist. And it was actually by working in the hub and being a part of the SoCAP community that that change, that world you began to change for me, that there was not this false dichotomy of money and meaning and that I could work in different ways doing both at the same time. And so our conversation today is about when did it change for you? Maybe you're sitting here in the audience and clearly something comes to mind. There was a moment in time where your world view changed and you began to see things differently but then just as Sarah said in our conversation today, we're gonna talk about not only when it changed for us personally, but how we invite others to see the world the way that we do and then how do we create organizations and products and missions and investments and funds that go and create that change. So that's the conversation we're gonna have here today. As a means of introducing themselves and then beginning our conversation today, we'll start with Lane, but the question is what changed for you and when did it change? And can you tell us a little bit about that story? Sure. I think we wanna just enter ourselves really quickly and why on earth I'm up on the stage. My name is Lane Wood. I wasn't in your program. I was a late edition, but excited to be here with the team up here. But I work at Warby Parker, we're a eyeglass company. We sell eyeglasses and sunglasses had a fraction of the cost of what you can normally get them at and I'm the director of social innovation so all the do good, feel good inspiring stuff that the company's doing, sort of under my umbrella. I really enjoy it, but I grew up in the middle of nowhere, Oklahoma and I love that about my story. A town of 1,300 people with no surrounding towns. It was really, really isolated and the ideas and the fact that I'd even have a title with the word innovation in it is really sort of a funny idea that someone coming from where I came from would be able to progress to the point where I am. I think where did it change and when did it change? I feel like, I don't know, I hope that a bit of things are changing still and sort of in the same way you're alluding to but I don't think we meant to have a couple of former pastors up here but we do. I actually started off sort of in the religious space as a college pastor and trying to trying to change the world in that space and I went from there into realizing that the world was much bigger and I got into music and music production and so got to do some really fun things. It brought me to New York from a small town in Oklahoma and sort of watched my life continue to evolve to understand what was going on around the world that there was much more than I was seeing and that was sort of this consistent just itch in my life that I know a fraction of what there is to know about what's going on around the world and issues and I really want to find a way to plug my life into it and so went from music industry a roundabout way to end up helping to form and start a nonprofit called Charity Water and it's early days and working several years there in the nonprofit side of things and I think the biggest change that I've seen so far is working for a nonprofit and being a fundraiser and asking everybody I know for money and I don't know there's probably a few of us in here and people listening on the internet that do that for a living you just ask and you ask and you ask and you ask and it's exhausting. So I think one of the biggest shifts for me was to understand that the markets have a role to play in solving a lot of the problems and that's sort of the baseline statement for this crowd it's not a revelation but understanding that and understanding that I didn't have to go broke twice a month working for a nonprofit just asking everyone I knew for money and that there was solutions behind coming around to the other side of the table and having a product and building a business and having money to invest really smartly so I feel like I'm living in the change that's happening for me is understanding the role that the markets play and what happens when you build a really great business and what sort of investments can you make? Thanks, Lane. I'm Morgan Simon, I'm not a pastor but also a musician. It sounds like we'll have the jam session afterwards. I hope you're clapping for the musician not for the non-master, Rosa. And I'm also the CEO of Tonic so we're a network of 45 social investors collectively looking to place 100 million into social enterprise. We've done about 25 investments over the past two years and this for me has been a buildup of the last 10 years of working in the impact investment field and having been a lifelong activist so I don't really have a turning point of when I started to care because that was sort of in my genetic makeup. Two shifts that I'm gonna talk about is really transformations and how I viewed what made an impact. And the first was really a crisis that I had over a can of tuna. And I was, gosh, I was 20 years old working in Sierra Leone a year after the Civil War had ended so at the time the country was at the bottom of the HDI index literally the poorest country in the world if my mother is listening out there on the webcam she says it's the job that she most hated that I took. And I was going through a market in a tiny town in Sierra Leone and for the equivalent of a US dollar was able to buy a can of tuna, stamped on the side, world food program, gift from Japan, do not sell, right? And with that dollar that I gave this woman she could go to the next dollar over and buy six plates of rice and fish and some spinach or other greens to be able to feed an entire family compared to that one can of tuna. So it made perfect sense in this context that if someone's trying to find a way to eat that your most rational choice is not to eat the can of tuna, right, to sell it. And the reason that can of tuna was there was because of subsidies in Japan that encourage production and then overload in the market which then means that you have Japanese tuna or you have American rice or corn or wheat or what not going to these countries. And I had to take a moment there of boy what am I really doing here? Do I want to be another American telling people what to do and sort of having the classic client agent problem of I want to help this family but my client is really that funder, you know, whoever's right in the paycheck and how do I correct that client agent problem? So that was sort of shift number one for me of how do I really find ways to work that are appropriate for my cultural background for ways that I can engage effectively. The second shift within that and that's how I started doing impact investment and started and ran the Responsible Endowments Coalition looking at the 400 billion managed by colleges and universities nationally of how to move that money towards impact investment and started, I guess, three years ago was asked to start tonic. There's five of us that are co-founders and essentially got to dive really deeply into social enterprise in the early stage world and pretty quickly was getting disappointed seeing that as a community most of what we were doing was providing products and services to poor people which is a great thing to do but typically were models where the poor folk on the ground might save $3 a month and reduce firewood while the entrepreneur is making six figures and the investor is making 20%. I'm oversimplifying here but seeing that ultimately we were extracting more value than we were adding and while we might be providing incremental value in the short term we're not really leading to that long-term transformation and started to really reflect on two principles of how do we make sure we add more value than we extract through impact investment and how do we balance returns to investors, entrepreneurs and communities and those are the two principles that I really try to live by in my work and have been trying to get more examples and figure out more ways to engage to make sure that it's really a balanced conversation between investors, entrepreneurs and communities so I'll stop there. Well said. Wow, these people seem really together. I'm a little bit more screwed up than that. David Batstone, I run a social innovation agency called Not For Sale and you've heard of bipolar people where I felt like a tripolar personality for most of my life. I was very involved and engaged in human rights and working in poor communities, particularly in Latin America. But at the same time, I really had a fascination with investment and started an investment banking firm and started running my own fund. And then the third piece of my disparate personality was to be a professor at a university that actually thought that what happens at a university had any relevance to the rest of the world so I teach in the School of Management at the University of San Francisco. And I really must be honest but those three tracks were very distinct and independent and I followed them for nearly two decades. In their own activities, people in one world wouldn't know me in another world unless they were a very close personal friend. I kept them separate and they didn't have much overlap. So it wasn't as if I went out looking for a change but it found me here in the Bay Area in a local restaurant. It was a restaurant I would visit regularly. I love the tandoori chicken and all the papadoms but I never really quite could have the grid to see that the kids that were working in that restaurant, teenagers, had been trafficked from the country of India into the United States for the purpose of forced labor. First in the restaurant, out to fruit and vegetable fields, brothels and construction crews and the like. It was just a shock to me. So I began to investigate where else this could be happening and I found that in the United States it was quite prolific and it was not my own backyard but then stretched around the globe. So I took a year off, I took a break from my university, my investment bank and I went on a discovery search for a year and the first woman I met that really then took me to another moment of epiphany or transformation was a artist, a painter in the north of Thailand who herself began understanding that the kids that were in the north of Thailand came from all over Asia and had been trafficked there for either the purpose of begging slumdog millionaire or to be in child brothels or to be in factories. So she began rescuing kids. Now when I went on my tour, my discovery tour she had rescued 27 kids and was living on a piece of land in the middle of Thailand. Now I promise you I had no aspiration to start an agency that would deal with human trafficking but when you meet someone like this woman, Krunam, what can you do? You can't walk away. And so the sole promise I made to her is that I would build her a home for her 27 kids. Well, I got back to San Francisco and I get a call from Krunam and said, you know, there's 27 kids, now there's 53. And I'm like, okay, two homes. I'll build two homes. And before I could even raise the first dollar there's 88 kids. And so I know I need to start an agency and it's called not for sale. No one should be for sale. And the last kind of moment of epiphany or transformation that brought those worlds together was that, you know, very much in my mind it was a traditional philanthropy activity. I was gonna raise funds, build a village, send the kids to school, and it was very, you know, very compassion oriented being at the end of a river pulling bodies out of the stream. So one of the first major public events I went to was at a large festival, a music festival in the Northeast in New Hampshire. And there I was sitting at a table pictures of the village I was gonna build and Kru Nam and people were supposed to come by and you know, give me big checks for philanthropy. This woman came up to me and grilled me for 35 minutes at least on what was I really gonna do with money that I got given? How could I really prove I was gonna use it that way? What kind of accreditation did I have? And on and on she grilled me finally after 35 minutes she gave me $20. So I took it, gratefully said thank you. About five minutes later I see her walk by with two huge coaks, a tub of popcorn, cotton candy, she got about $35 worth of junk food. And it hit me, you know what? She probably didn't ask that person where that popcorn come from. What are you gonna do with that coat? What are you gonna do with the profits? How did you actually make that cotton candy? And it hit me that I needed to change the way I thought about philanthropy. I had to change the way that people connect their values, their consumption, and their production. And that's why I do what I do today. Thanks, Tim. Some great stories up here on stage and I could relate to what you said about change finding you, I've described my path that way too sometimes because it's been more of a process. For me then some fundamental things just being very black and white. It's been more of an ongoing process. After graduating from college, I started working with my family's brokerage business. I did that for 17 years. It was great. It gave me an opportunity to spend time and build a very different relationship with my father. I also worked with my sister during that time period. And during that period, I just had a growing feeling of disconnect and also feeling of looking for a deeper purpose, not even knowing what that meant and thought that I had to reach out to find what that deeper purpose was. I got to a fortunate point in 2007 when I was able to step away from the business but not really knowing where I was gonna be headed. And I took some personal, did a fair amount of personal development and a lot of things around sustainability started registering with me and I started looking out for mentors in a lot of different areas. I started attending conferences. One of the first big conferences that I went to was a slow money conference in 2010. And that really helped inspire me and my awareness around a lot of, to see how connected everything was, not just from a renewable energy, energy conservation living systems but begin to understand the connection that our money has to all these issues around sustainability. And from during the past two years, I spent a lot of time getting involved in community and impact investing from a personal standpoint and then beginning to share that experience with other people and feeling that it's been very gratifying and looking to challenge people to begin to help them connect the dots and see things differently that it's not just about making money here and donating it there which is something I come into conversation majority of the time about. And so that's why I really like the impact investing space of really thinking about things differently and it's not in either war, it's not a dichotomy, it's really an integration process. And so that's been part of my evolution into the space. Cool. Thank you guys for sharing those things. David, you said something that stuck out to me. You said when you see something like that, you can't help but engage it. I would disagree with you. I think there are a lot of times and a lot of ways many of us see things and are resistant to change. And so you mentioned the word epiphany. I think in order to have an epiphany or an aha moment, a lot of times we have to have a different posture about ourselves. I think we can kind of go through life and miss those moments and opportunities for communication. So in all of your stories, some of what I heard was like an availability or a willingness to hear something, see something. You could have heard that it's adding $3 of value and said, that's good enough for us. Our business model works and continued on your way. But so I'm interested in all four of your stories or four yourselves. These epiphanies, these aha moments, these changes in world view or narratives that you have, how do you maintain a presence or a receptivity that allows for you to actually change the way that you see the world? Easy one. Yeah, that's right. You know, I think it just takes, it really is an openness and there's a cultural value that we talk about in our agency. We call it aggressive humility. Aggressive in the sense that it's always moving proactive, moving forward, but humility in the sense that you're always aware that the direction you're moving or the method you're using might be a skew or you're not seeing things that might help you improve your, the efficiency, production, results or sensitivity to what you're doing. And so it's a really important value for us and we need to call that on each other. You don't talk about that in many enterprises, humility, certainly not corporate environment, but it's such a key part I think of learning and being open. Activity, there's also a piece, for myself I tend to think about in terms of accountability. That if my purpose is to try to serve that I need to be accountable to the communities that I serve and to really take leadership in that way. And for me, I know some people will refer to this sometimes as the personal board of advisors. I sort of have my personal accountability board which is a list of seven or so people. Some of them may not even know it. Majora Carter, who's gonna be on this same stage tomorrow who's been a mentor for me for years. Roberta Lovato, writer with the nation. Certain thought leaders that I've looked to over time and who've come to me and said, if we see you get out of line, we're gonna tell you. And that I think sometimes when you find people where you trust their values to really have a collective moral compass, I've found to be a very positive thing. And that I have to be receptive to taking that feedback and also to recognize that that feedback is a sign of their love and appreciation for me. For them to be willing to give that feedback to keep me accountable to what I've said my ideals are and that my actions may or may not correspond with. One of the interesting things about the culture at Warby Parker, we have about a hundred employees now and one of our core values is that we don't take ourselves too seriously although we take our work very seriously. So we're very quirky in the way that we operate, the way we message, the way that we interact with each other. And so I think one of the ways to find aha moments is to not take yourself overly seriously, to be able to have fun, to laugh, to be goofy, to have friends, to have a social life. Epiphanies rarely, maybe they do, for me they rarely happen when I'm in the sort of routine of things that happens when you break it up. So that's one of the things that we try to encourage from a foundational level at the company is just don't take yourself too seriously. And then we have a way to report innovation ideas up the chain to their supervisors and up to the founders to really understand collectively what are some of the aha moments happening around us. And just because it might have happened in the head of one of our customer experience that was just an entry level position doesn't mean that it can't have profound effects for the company. And so I think those are two of the things that I find are working currently in my context. Oh well said. For me it's been, there are two grounding aspects of my life. One is just an involving personal practice whether it be mindfulness, meditation, yoga, various activities that help keep me grounded, welcoming in breaks of silence and space really helped me stay grounded. And then on the other side is having three boys, a family, my wife, and find that very challenging in my face, loving, trying to figure out ways of being inspiring and motivating to three boys. So those aspects, two different aspects that keep me grounded. Three month old, so I'm pretty undone. Everything's an aha moment at this point. No sleep, so everything's an epiphany. I heard the words collective and moral compass a couple times. I think that a lot of times when we're talking, it's some of Sarah's question, when there's an individual change, whether you're a founder or you're on the ground level or something you're starting or it's a new direction for yourself and for your family. When it's your changed world view, I think it can often be really difficult to get other people to see the world the way that you see it. So I'm wondering within your organizations or within your work or even just interpersonally, you and a team member, you and a new hire, you and a friend out for a drink. What does it look like for you? What is a best practice or a story that you have from your own leadership about a time when you were able to communicate your new way of seeing the world to someone else as an invitation for them to see it that way? I'll take a stab at it. I don't know if this is exactly right on track with where you're going, but one of the challenges and one of the exciting things about my job is that as a company become more successful, we have an interesting platform to share with other entrepreneurs. And one of the challenges that I give myself is to always be the most generous brand or the most generous person in the room, which invites a lot of interesting conversation, a lot of interesting divulging of personal ideas and brainstorming. And I think one of the things that helps me as I'm trying to bring people on board with an idea that I might have, it starts way before the idea happens and sort of earning the right to be able to lead somebody along. And so I think that's been a real thing that I've taken away from the last, maybe eight months of my life is sort of waking up and thinking that even though I might feel groggy or not excited about going in, but it's, how can I be the most generous brand, the most generous person in the room in these meetings? And you'll find, I found that as I find ideas that are exciting that I get behind those people that I've been interacting with are much more receptive. For me, it's not about convincing people, it's about having trust that the most compelling notion will win at the end of the day and that the truth will set you free in that way. And in terms of another shifting story for me around that, I am, it's funny, I have done things after the age of 20, but I guess most of my transformation was pre-20. When I was 19, I was at Swarthmore College in middle of Pennsylvania and filed a shareholder resolution with Lockheed Martin using their endowment. And it was to get the company to add sexual orientation to their statement of we do not discriminate based on race, gender, nationality, et cetera, and to start giving domestic partner benefits. And it was the first time since the apartheid era that a school had filed a resolution and it got a lot of national attention. And all of a sudden I'm sitting at little Swarthmore College in the middle of Pennsylvania getting hate mail from people. You know, I don't, not really worthy of repeating, but you can imagine all sorts of lovely things. And some of the letters were these really gracious, Morgan, you sound like a lovely girl, you clearly have a good head on your shoulders, but I would hate for you to go to hell, let me help you, right? Let me help save your soul. And there's something that you really have to honor of, wow, these are people who are equally passionate about this issue as I am. They are working equally hard every day to push their viewpoint even to the point where they want to help save me, right? And in their worldview, what a beautiful thing, right? I don't mind people not wanting me to go to hell, that's a lovely thought. But, yeah, I'm Jewish, I'm Fargon. We don't even have hell, it's perfect. But within that, I've learned that as an activist have an understanding that all of my work is technically advancing my viewpoint. And there are always gonna be people that think differently. I have to have some faith in the way that I'm coming to that viewpoint, and that ultimately, hopefully the highest truth is gonna prevail in terms of what's a just course of action for society, but it's not my job to figure that out for someone else. And I wanna pick up on the idea of generosity. I do believe that such a gift or a skill set should say that a lot of entrepreneurs, whether they're in the nonprofit space or the for-profit space really don't understand very well the power of generosity. I know probably like many of you, I go to conferences and some of those like the Clinton Global Initiative and Davos are very, it's like plumage of feathers and man, big pronouncements. But I got so frustrated that nothing happened afterwards to see something really take place. So I decided I was gonna bring together my own forum and I live a little town in California called the Monterra, it's right near Hapam Bay. So the Monterra Forum, the Monterra Circle, and I got the 50 most influential people I know, they probably have the most 50 most influential people in the world, but they're okay. Got them together and what they love about it is that they get to meet each other, they get to circulate together. In over 24 hours, they get to compare ideas and I give them 65% of a solution for an area in the world like the Amazon. Help me come up with a, you guys know people, you know things, you've done things, you've achieved things, you've got connections. Help me figure out the other 35%. After that 24 hours, everyone walks away with three or four great new contacts they're gonna do business with. They come up with new ideas that's gonna help their own business. Meanwhile, they've really helped me. The reason they keep coming back is because of all of the above. So generosity, the giving of that, the sharing of that, it's not setting an agenda, it has my way, that's what we need to do, but you create an environment where everyone wins. I know that's hard to do, but I find NGOs particularly are terrible at that. Partnering means what can you give me? Rather than what is it that's of mutual grace benefit and celebration? Creating a space, an opportunity for people to connect and network, that's some of the things I've experienced in the New York area, being involved with slow money and creating events and opportunities to connect and people giving people opportunity to exchange stories. I think has been really powerful and gets people to start thinking differently. And another aspect that I really enjoy is I do, the more I know the person, the more interested I am in having a deeper conversation with them and applying what I know is a very strong moral compass in them and asking them to expand that moral compass to think broader than areas that are in their particular view site, especially when it comes to things around money and investing. Nothing greater than seeing somebody passionate about one topic and then getting them to really see how connected it is and in need to broaden our awareness about it while maintaining focus on their passionate topic. I tell you Morgan, Brian, if you can take slow money in New York, man, turning water into wine ain't nothing on that. I mean, slow money in New York, I'm really impressed. Well, our insight joke is we need to do slow money fast, but... I spoke with somebody after the first session today as they were walking out and they said, I've never found so many people that I agreed with in one opening session. But what I heard in some of the conversation about how leading others into a different world view, you know, you were talking about the relationship and the trust that needed to be there. Some of what I'm wondering, though, is does it ever feel difficult or does it ever feel lonely or does it ever feel hopeless to be creating things, to have such a refined, clear moral compass or organizational mission or way of funding that you're staying true to and not finding that your peers or the typical people in your social circles understand and see the world in the same way that you do? Is that ever a difficult thing? And then also, if you do experience it that way, what do you do with that? And what do you say? How do you deal with the internal tension of that reality? That occurs, happened to me probably on a daily basis, you know, just going through the thought process, challenging myself, questioning myself, and it's a good thing because it motivates me to move on, to work harder, to connect with more people, to come to events like SoCAP where you understand that there's a variety of other people that are working on similar fronts. It's just motivating. Go back and helps you refocus and you got some new collaborators to welcome into your personal conversation. But it's, for me, it's on a daily basis. I feel you have, majority of people seem to be thinking, looking in a different direction and you're going in a much, in a path much less traveled, it seems. So fill your schedules with conferences. Most of us do that anyways, right? You know, most people here in the social enterprise space, whatever, social innovation, social enterprise. And I don't know if you can identify with the loneliness or the challenge of that path, is it a very high mark or a high bar to set? Because you're saying that, look, with this we're going to be profitable, which is a good thing, and we're also going to have a social impact, which is another good thing, and also we're gonna be distinctive and say how we go about making a product or delivering a service. That's a high order and everyone will make sure that your constituency or your clients that you hold true to all of those. I have a friend in New York, I was just visiting him, he started at Tequila Company. All he does, he makes Tequila, people think he's wonderful, what a genius, he made it to Tequila, and everybody loves it. Meanwhile, I've got a beverage called Rebel that's coming out this week. Everybody wants to know where do you source it, are you sure that there's the impact that we want to have? There's no such thing as patient capital and social enterprise. No one's patient because everyone wants to see the results right away. So you do set a very high bar, so where do you find the people who support you, the people who are on your side, and how do you go about saying proper expectations around the delivery of that project? I think that's really important, and those are all challenging things I could dig into, but. Yeah, that's good. When you initially ask the question, it makes my heart heavy because it's sort of a constant struggle of how do you make sure that your work is actually effective and of the million ways that you can spend the day, and if I take an hour off, how many children could I have saved? These sorts of calculations you draw on your head that are really harmful. And I'm trying to really embrace the positive element of it, and this is where I think there's some really positive generational shift. And I know I live in the Bay Area, so there's some exceptionality, but if I go to a cocktail party and people are saying what they do, if it's someone who is working in something that is without purpose, and that they had a choice, because I know for many people working is the way that you support your family and that you may have only certain options within that. But for people who are college educated who have a choice around how they make their career, if it's that they are doing banking or corporate lawyer or whatnot, my response is, oh, that's boring. Move on, right, to the next person. And I think more and more it's becoming more socially acceptable, desirable, the idea that well, of course your work is gonna have meaning, or why would you do it? And that really changes the conversation, there's a reason why Harvard Business School now, the social enterprise club, has more members than any other club, right? Not the finance club anymore, post-crisis. So I do think that the conversation is changing. I don't feel anymore that it's a, oh, you're weird because you do social things. It's more that's, and I don't want it to be a paradigm of look at the sacrifice you made, you went into the social sector, I have had such a fulfilling life, I've been to 42 countries and all this amazing work, and I would not for a minute trade it in for three times the paycheck. So I also want to get past the sacrifice of the social entrepreneur, we get to do things we love, like what a greater gift you could have. Yeah, we say around the office a lot that meaning is the new black. I think at least in San Francisco, I mean, it can be a bit of a bubble, but there's a lot of, I mean, we can talk about this too, but there's a lot of people that are after that and then the same way that maybe you were trying to maximize profit before or what you could accumulate, the extrinsic value of your work. There's a sense that the intrinsic value that we want with how we're spending 45 plus hours of our week, we want that to be meaningful and to give us something else as well. So yeah, I do agree that increasingly is not as isolating a thing to pursue. And yeah, I wonder then, and maybe this is a question for all of us too, I wonder if that too can become its own, we can be greedy for the intrinsic value as well. And I'm wondering if any of you have experienced that in your work or with colleagues or maybe in your own organization. How do you walk that fine line of intrinsic value and meaning, but then also being profitable, finding investors that agree with your moral compass and are willing to be patient and collaborative about meeting your goals so that one is not far outweighing the other. Does that make sense? I feel the paradigm in that question kind of goes back a bit to what Brian was talking about before, which we affectionately refer to as steel plate in the head phenomena, which is either I make my money over here and I give it away over here or impact happens here and sustainability happens there. So I think ideally, and I'd say as an investor that had on that, you ideally want business models where that's so integrated that every additional product or service I provide, you have increased the impact proportionally, right? So I don't think that you have to, ideally it's so integrated and that's the power of and, right? Agreed. Anybody else on that on the intrinsic and extrinsic tension? Well, you know, I think about it more in terms of when I go out and recruit talent, because it's all about talent. And I'll go to a Stanford or I'll go to, you know, Berkeley, whatever. Harvard, even though there's more inferior schools. But, you know, typically you'll say, listen, you know, I have this great social enterprise, you know, I'll pitch one of my companies and then a student will come to me and say, you know what, if I can't get a job at Goldman Sachs or Google or Apple or whatever it might be, then I would love to work for your enterprise. It's like a default. I'm like, you kidding me? I want you losers. I want the best and the brightest. But if I want the best and the brightest, then I have to provide opportunities that are fulfilling, exciting, and scaling in terms of their skill set and their leadership. I have to provide commensurate salaries. I have to find ways, you know, obviously at some level I can't compete. But on the other hand, I can't then be a default. And I guess that's moving to another level where our anticipation is, of course you couldn't go where Goldman Sachs but why would you want to do that? I'd rather work for your bank. I think there's a really interesting phenomenon, at least sort of in the generation that I represent of those of us that got involved in causes or really like want the job that has meaning and meaning is so tied into identity. And you can get really, really wrapped up in my identity is this thing that I'm doing and I feel better about myself when I'm successful and I feel awful about myself when the work that I'm doing isn't succeeding because my identity is so wrapped up in this meeting. It's all, it's interesting. So on the extrinsic side, if you're all about money, you feel bad when you don't make enough of it. And on the other side of the intrinsic extreme is if I'm not helping enough people, if the work that I'm doing isn't having enough impact, it's just my identity is sort of crushed by it. And I run into a lot of my friends that sort of hit this crossroads of feel bad about themselves if the work that they're doing isn't having enough impact. So I think there is this fun intersection of where meeting is something that's sort of like a benefit for your job. It's like, but it's not your identity and it's, you can find a way that your identity doesn't get wrapped up in this complex of what I'm doing is meaningful and important and it's helping people. I find that to be, I don't know if a lot of people do but I've found that personally to be a challenge working in a place like Charity Water where you've got your pitches about getting people access to clean water and you go to a party and you've got a great story to tell about how cool you are about what you're doing and how many people you're helping. And I think there's a shift that happens if you go to the intrinsic side of the extreme to where your identity gets wrapped up into your job and then something goes south that gets ugly in a hurry. Well, let me put you on the spot then since you said it's difficult for you personally. What have you found as somebody that worked into what I would call sexy, both nonprofit and in the social enterprise space, you can articulate kind of your value add proposition pretty well and there's lots of pitch and lots of story, great media, great brand. What do you personally do to kind of make sure that you stay, your identity doesn't get as wrapped up in that? I have to have friends that don't give a shit about what I do, that know me for who I am and remind myself that there's things that I want in life like to be a good husband or to be a good dad or to be a good friend or things that aren't wrapped up in my job that those are things that I'm happy to wrap up a little identity into and to measure myself and but it really is, I think it's a challenge for people that work in the cost space and the meeting space to really find this other side of themselves that's not wrapped up in their job to have community with people that they don't have to talk about work and they don't have to pitch and you don't have to be around some celebrity that supports your cause or have to talk about some cocktail party you went to or some VIP access you got. I have to have people around me that, well it's sort of the accountability board of people that know me for who I am and can see like what aren't the fake wins and especially, I'm talking too much but I will say one last thing on this. For those of us that are overly connected on the online space as well, one of my friends, Andy Elwood, is really great about he has a folder on his iPhone, it's called fake wins and it's Facebook, Twitter, Path, like all the things that you can post and get like quick feedback about how cool you are and how great the work that you're doing and how excited, it's just reminding yourself that these aren't real things and my identity is gonna be wrapped up in things that actually are tangible and people that love me. I was just gonna add, I think I maybe frame it a little bit differently. I do want my identity wrapped up in that to some degree. I should be disappointed in myself if I'm not having strong impacts. Maybe that's the different for me. What I don't want cut up in that is my ego. I think that those are two very different things that I actually think separating it too much from your identity can create sometimes in social enterprise a bit of a nine to five mentality of got my social change done for the day, let me go to my four dollar latte and not really thinking about the full life project of a very strong part of my identity is trying to be conscious about decisions and where I put my energy and it does mean that if I fail and I'm not having the right impact at the right moment that I have to have some degree of forgiveness for myself and not have that be an ego project around there for I'm not good enough. You know, I think the biggest challenge the extrinsic side is that, you know, be careful what you wish for. Let's say your brand and your activity is really meaningful, sexy was the word you used is engaging, then you can't get away from it. I mean, my big challenge is that if I go to a party in my neighborhood, everybody wants to talk to me about what I do. I don't want to talk about what I do. I'm there for a party or even my family comes over. So then my own like children, my wife, they say, oh, God, we're going to talk about not for sale again. You know, it's just like they feel absorbed by it. So that extrinsic piece is difficult. I could only imagine if you're like you too or something, right, but I'm just saying that that extrinsic piece of being able to have some space for those you love and for yourself, that's the difficult part I find. I love full life product is, I don't know if you say that. God, did I use that phrase? You did. I hope I didn't. No, I like it. I was talking to a president of a company that's represented here at SoCAP this weekend and she was telling me about what her business does and we talked about all of that. We were having a drink and towards the end of our conversation, she said, but I've got to be honest with you. I personally don't have any impact investments. I personally have not moved my money from this bank to another one. I personally am not a conscious consumer. I drive an SUV, all of these personal things that felt like a bit of a confessional, but I think you pointed out something there to me that is interesting is that when the mind shift changed, there's still so many other behaviors in our lives aside from our work that have to come along with it, which is some of what you were saying as well. So this full life product, I kind of like, I'm wondering just kind of for our last question, if you wouldn't mind sharing from your personal lives or maybe on behalf of your organization or your work, what is something that now that your mind has been changed, you feel like you can articulate what your true north is? What are some behaviors or practices or things that you feel like still need to change to align with that bigger change that you've already made? I think a lot about my mind and my family's day to day activities, whether it's getting, how long the showers are people taking in my house, getting the kids to walk to the bus more than being dropped off by a car. So it's a lot of day to day activities that I drive everybody in my family crazy about and drive myself constantly saying, I wish our next big project would be really start composting at home, because for me, my personal journey, it's been a lot by experiencing and doing that's been a large part of the transformation. Attending conferences, hearing other people's stories, reading, I need to integrate it and make it very personal for myself. And then I constantly thinking about other ways that I could evolve it, but being comfortable that we'll get to it, it's gonna happen. The most important part is having awareness around what you're doing, not doing, might wanna be doing. That woman that you talked about, I think it's great that at least she's aware of other things that she can be changing. She's probably doing wonderful work. And it's great that she's already thinking about it because she knows that she's not doing it at least. Anybody else yourself for your organizations? I would give an answer that's a little bit the opposite of Ryan's, which is great, which is that I over the years have started to have clarity around, sometimes people would call it the personal mission statement of what is it that you're trying to do? And for me, it was around a recognition of poverty being a matter of choice. Do you get to choose the way that you wanna live your life and that that's gonna have a range of different outcomes in different people, communities over time? And that my role within that has been how do I transfer resources to communities in a way that encourages their autonomy? And that by extension being the way of lifting people out of poverty. And I feel that most of my activities are either aligned to that or to creating joy. I think it's Evie White, the famous quote of, I wake up in the morning torn between this desire to enjoy all the beauty of the world and to save it. It makes it really hard to plan the day. So I feel like constantly in that, still in that trap, but it does give me the freedom to lighten up a little bit on the day-to-day behavioral things because even if I will occasionally buy that $4 latte or worse, but it gives me some sense of for the most part I'm driving towards that purpose that I feel I'm in a great position in my role at Tonic to fulfill of really moving money towards impact investment as broadly, quickly, effectively as possible. What a privilege to get to work on that. And if some other things slide by the wayside, if I have to take more planes that I like or I know the carbon impact's not so awesome of that, but I'm able to draw overall some logical consistency to the outcomes of my life. I think we fool ourselves that it's arguments and ideas that change people. And I really do believe it's more about attraction rather than manipulation or persuasion. I think it's about living a way that you believe is aligned with your values and whether it's your children on the one hand who watch everything you do or perhaps parents who come from another place, another generation, you don't win arguments that way, but I guess over time there's appreciation, mutual appreciation, there's respect, there's grace. And that's how change happens. Change is over time. It doesn't happen typically overnight or should we expect it to happen over a debate over dinner? Debates can be fun, but when they turn into something that's my ego against your ego. So I guess I find that as I get older, I hope I'm becoming a little more humble and understanding that, gee, all that truth I thought I had, it's a little bit fuzzier. But nonetheless, I'm willing to stake my energy on the truth I see today. My answer would be pretty similar to the story that you're referring to. It's just most of the personal, well, a lot of the personal change that I'd like to see in myself to match up to a lot of the work that I'm able to participate in is around personal finance. And as a single guy in New York City, like my money gets spent pretty selfishly. And unapologetically, a lot of times, if you go back and look at the, sorry, make it count and go, man, there's a lot of things that I could be smarter with this and actually bring, so at Warby Parker, we look at ourselves being a very stakeholder-centric business and you're always making decisions based on who we're bringing along with us. And so I don't know who my personal stakeholders are, but I'm trying to help understand that is does the environment represent one of my personal stakeholders so that I'm spending better and I'm spending my money at better places. Are there communities that I live in that I'm around that could use some of the investment that I have personally? So I think the change that I'm trying to figure out hired a CPA for the first time in my life and trying to understand what's coming in, what's going on. It's just basic stuff that you're supposed to know when you're in high school. But yeah, I think at the end of the year, at the end of 12 months from now, that I have a better understanding of where my dollars are going and who's benefiting from the way that I'm spending them. Yeah, thanks for sharing, all deeply personal. We'd love to open it up with the last five minutes or so that we have to any questions that the audience might have. Bjorn, the handsome man in the bow tie right here in the middle, let's carry. Hi, I'm Carrie Hayden. I thank all of you for sharing your stories. Each one of you has a personal attributes that make you unique to the organization you're working for. And it's been great to hear what changed for you to get to where you are now. What will it take for you to make the decision to leave where you are and to move on and let the organization move on without you? And that, do you have an exit plan? Do you have goals that you're trying to reach and then it's time for you to do the next project? Good question. Are any of your coworkers in the room? I guess, hopefully, succinct response to that because I co-founded the responsible endowments coalition and after seven years stepped down as executive director and moved on with my life. And the organization is about to have its 10 year anniversary, it's doing amazing, really proud of it. And the big thing for me, and I think with any organization is the, do I need to be the person doing this right now? And it's not from an ego perspective, it's from knowing what my mission statement is and how I'm driving towards that. If someone else could be doing my job, then that means that I should be doing something else. Because then the infrastructure has been set for that person and I think that's part of being an entrepreneur. And I think given what Tonic is doing globally, the connections that we're building, some of the perspectives that I bring to it, I'm the right person to do this right now. And if at some point that changes, then that means it's time for me to start my next venture. I think 40%, choose your number of leadership should be about mentoring and scaling among those who are in your agency, in your organization, so that you become redundant, that you can take on other roles perhaps. I find it really challenging in a hybrid social innovation company to mix, say younger, entrepreneurial, bright, I'm gonna go all risk and run for things. And then people more experienced, people who've been around. And how do you find that right mix? Because I do find people of my generation get threatened by folks in their 20s who are just like Lane, smarter than we are. But on the other hand, there's something to be gained from, I've been through that, I know that problem. But I find it really difficult to mix that. And in our organization then we've tended to go younger and then build leadership rather than hope that say leadership who, I meet a lot of corporates say, senior VP say, I just wanna do something meaningful. I'd love to come to your organization. They find it more difficult than they thought because it requires a kind of a gorilla style of innovation that perhaps is not what they're used to. And it sounds like it's been working for you. We were actually talking as we were grabbing lunch and you being able to, because there is leadership, being not as involved in the day to day in the operations. I love the fact that I spend very little of my time on operational issues now. I do more business development and financing. That's a terrific moment. That's the work that needs to be done right now. To buy you. Yeah, yeah, that's great. Lane or Brian? I didn't start a company. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. Another question? Hi, I'm Alex Hoffman. I just, I wanna invite everybody in the room here to tomorrow at 5.30, also in this meeting track, session called Disruptive Spirituality, Putting Practice into Action. And to that end, I'm really interested in, Brian, you mentioned a few things about your personal spiritual practice, how it keeps you grounded. I wondered if any of the others of you would be willing to share something about spiritual practice. And beyond just individual, are there ways in which that practice is manifesting itself within your organization that will feed into our conversation tomorrow? It's interesting. I think the hesitation to start is often in the context of spirituality. It's the, am I doing it right? And is it enough? And sort of there's some, sometimes level of judgmentalism around it. And I'm not saying that's implied in your question, but I think that can sometimes be a thing in the social enterprise space and part of what makes it feel accessible to some people and not to others. I've definitely had a personal, some meditation practice, some pieces of Jewish cultural tradition that are very justice-oriented that are a strong part of my life. And then I think there's sort of the daily meditation of right speech, right thought, right action and just how I try to carry that through my day and keep that self-reflectiveness that I think is very conscious and it not being about ego and then that translating into how we interact from an organizational context. We just did an investor retreat where we ended with a group meditation of positivity towards the future. And as I sort of asked one of the members to facilitate it, I had a moment of, ooh, are people gonna think this is too wooey? Is this the right thing? And it was absolutely the right energy setter. But I think in the context of an organization, you really have to know the people there and is this a comfortable framework for them? Is it something they'll relate to so that it doesn't feel artificial or forced but really comes out of a collective positive intention? I think it'd be difficult to sustain yourself if you didn't have some form of spiritual discipline, spiritual practice, spiritual connection. I think it's probably a product of your own background and generation of what you came out of. I came out of a, I grew up in the buckle of the Bible Belt in the Midwest and a lot of words were used in prayer and tradition. So I guess in maybe a response to that, I find a lot more connection and sustenance and silence. I have a mountain just outside my house, Monterra Mountain, if you know the highway one south. That's my sanctuary, if I could call it that. And it's, to me, it's a place of silence, a place of, but I know I have friends and at my agency, not for sale, their connection is through shared collective word prayer. And that's a wonderful thing. I don't think it's something you can legislate as you're saying or you're doing it right. Thanks for the question, Alex. Talk more about that tomorrow. Thank you guys for coming today and a round of applause for these panelists. And I think you got a break for a little bit. So enjoy yourselves. Thanks.