Ten Tips for Social Entrepreneurs
Books to read for inspiration, practical tips, and framing of our work as social entrepreneurs.
I was invited to give a talk at CSU Los Angeles’s Sexuality and Sexual Health course on innovation and entrepreneurship in public health. I shared 10 tips as lessons learned from my two-plus decades of creating change in social care and public health.
Be generous.
Being generous is free. Find places to volunteer, look for a partnership to join, join a web, be in a practice of collaboration. Through these experiences, we not only learn tactical skills and grow our network, we also build our empathy muscle and understanding of the why behind people’s behavior and priorities. Being generous is a foundational value behind LoveYou2.
Your life experience is a PhD.
Value your life experience and what you bring to a conversation, project, or role. My solo-parenting DIY budget skills and keen ability to manage cash flow in the face of changing circumstances has served as the basis for writing budget for proposals and managing budgets for teams. My skills honed as the oldest of fourteen children are at the heart of my infrastructure development and community building practices.
Wild cards FTW.
When I plan a party, I always leave space for a wild card - a last-minute or extra invite. When I am registering for events and organizing coffee dates, I prioritize a wild card experience at least once a quarter. The point is, seek out information and relationships outside your algorithm, what is fed to you, Our worldviews are very small. Drink from a fire hose of information. Stamp your passport.
Begin with empathy.
The dictionary of obscure sorrows defines the word sonder as:
For a beautiful visual depiction watch Sonder: The realization that everyone has a story. Empathy and our ability to leave our own worldview and experience life as another is invaluable to creating change, to building a movement, to doing things that matter. Begin with, and return often to, empathy.
5. Notice everything.
Beyond noticing what works and what does not work, notice the details. Why does something work? When does something not work? (Who is not engaged in prenatal care. Who is reported to CPS? What do people want? Noticing and noticing some more the answers to these questions led to the creation of a novel service - a team of prenatal care providers responsive to pregnant people, meeting them at the location of their choice. What we estimated would be about 20 patients a year was 100 served in the pilot year. Noticing and creating from a place of empathy illuminated a need beyond what we had imagined.
6. Start small.
Create an MVP (minimum viable product) for your smallest viable audience. Pilot this MVP: buy a domain name, start a google group, make an Instagram account, create the spreadsheet, map it on the whiteboard, sew it if you have to, trade skills with people online, network TF out of your world to make it happen. It is in the MVP, in the smallest creation of our big idea, that we can sort out the kinks and flow, where we can iterate, into a program or service that will actually work. Everything I have created I have started for free, from scratch, and small. It was with this pilot information that I could then formulate the plan, the pitch, the ask for the idea at scale. It is in this phase that lots of things will “fail”. Though, I can see the seeds of my failures as lessons learned in all the successful launches that came after.
7. Ship before you are ready.
I have early painted love notes that look like a child’s art project, my MVP for what became PleasePrEPMe was a PDF of a table, I’ve shipped with no logos and bad tag lines. I believe it was the founder of LinkedIn who said something like by the time you ship you should be ashamed of the product as you are already working on the next iteration. When I was writing my book, my editor told me at some point, “You need to choose a date and stop editing. You need to publish.” We are never going to have the perfect product, never going to be fully ready. So growing our capacity to ship before we are ready allows us the practice of making and putting something out into the world so that we can get feedback, and return to our process of creating. So we can ship again. Shipping is a way of life.
8. Eat feedback for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
People who give feedback on you, your project, your ideas are GENEROUS. People who reach out to give are invested. Information is a gift. Cultivate a relationship with feedback. Pay for feedback. Build feedback into how you think and grow. I often reflect that the people made PleasePrEPMe. We just listened.
9. You’ll need a disco ball.
I have a huge disco ball at my desk. I pull it out often to celebrate and for impromptu dance parties. I once tied the disco ball to the end of our kitchen broom to take the disco ball into the streets for a dance party after the 2020 elections. Find your version of a disco ball and celebrate yourself and others OFTEN. I cape people to celebrate the revolution that is underway. You’ll want to make your own rituals for honoring milestones and the people who contribute. Part of starting up and creating things that matter means we need to recognize how far we’ve come even before we make it out the door. And we want to celebrate the people along with us on the journey. Make your own award. Have your own parties. Often.
10. Don’t stop.
The instant success stories, or at least how they are framed when the story is told, are just not true. If you look behind almost anyone you admire (and someone who is making substantial change) you’ll see 10+ years of experience or investment before the “overnight success”. We have to train ourselves, set up the guardrails so we don’t stop. I love the story of Prince who performed at the 2007 Superbowl halftime. It had never rained during the Superbowl in 40 years. Reports say the day of the 2007 Superbowl looked like a scene from Moby Dick. Prince’s manager called Prince and said, “It’s raining terribly” and expected a cancelation. Prince replied, “Can you make it rain harder?” Prince then showed up in the torrential rain in stiletto heels on a tile stage, with four electric guitars, and made the weather a special effect in one of his most epic shows. It’s going to rain. You will be at it for ten or more years. Put on your stilettos and don’t stop.