Awarepreneurs

Wendy Gonzales is the CEO of Sama, a global leader in data annotation, supervised fine-tuning, and model evaluation for computer vision and generative AI applications. Driven by a mission to expand opportunities through the digital economy, their social business model has helped over 65,000 people lift themselves out of poverty. Sama has worked with companies like Google, Ford, eBay, and Microsoft.

This episode is sponsored by the coaching company of the host, Paul Zelizer. Consider a Strategy Session if you can use support growing your impact business.

Resources mentioned in this episode include:

• Sama site

• Wendy Gonzalez on LinkedIn

• Era92 site

• Paul's Strategy Sessions

• Pitch an Awarepreneurs episode

Carlos Parea is the CEO & Co-founder of Terra Vera, a company dedicated to making it easier for farmers to grow valuable crops without the use of synthetic pesticides that are often linked to major environmental damage and health issues in your food. Their solutions are people, plant, pollinator and planet friendly and can unlock significant profitability. Carlos is particularly excited about the work they are doing to help save honeybees.

This episode is sponsored by the coaching company of the host, Paul Zelizer. Consider a Strategy Session if you can use support growing your impact business.

Resources mentioned in this episode include:

• Terra Vera site

• Carlos Parea on LinkedIn

• MIOX Water Technologies

• The Ground Beneath Us book

• Paul's Strategy Sessions

• Pitch an Awarepreneurs episode

Levar Jackson is the Founder and CEO of the Yogh Group, a sustainable and impactful hotel development and management group. Yogh Group is making great strides to be the vanguard of hospitality and sustainability as society transitions to an interconnected, intelligent, and low carbon world.

This episode is sponsored by the coaching company of the host, Paul Zelizer. Consider a Strategy Session if you can use support growing your impact business.

Resources mentioned in this episode include:

• The Yogh Group site

• Levar Jackson on LinkedIn

• Paul's Strategy Sessions

• Pitch an Awarepreneurs episode

David Gaines is the CEO and Chief Visionary for La Terza Coffee and the author of the newly released book Radical Business, The Root of Your Work and How It Can Change the World. I'm also honored to say David interviewed me in October of last year for the Social Enterprise Alliance podcast where he has just recently stepped down from being Board Chair after a long term there, and we also got to connect in person when David was recently here in Albuquerque for an event called Creating a Community of Business for Good, which David was the key speaker and organizer and helped us connect with each other in just a beautiful way. This episode is sponsored by the coaching company of the host, Paul Zelizer. Consider a Strategy Session if you can use support growing your impact business.

Resources mentioned in this episode include:

• La Terza Coffee site

• Radical Business book

• Social Enterprise Alliance

• Social Enterprise Alliance Podcast

• New Mexico for Good site

• Paul’s Social Enterprise Alliance Podcast episode

• Paul's Strategy Sessions

• Pitch an Awarepreneurs episode

This week on the pod is our monthly solo episode with Paul Zelizer.  Paul is one of the first business coaches to specialize in working with social entrepreneurs and the host of the popular Awarepreneurs podcast.  This episode explores 4 topics to consider about sustainably pacing the the growth of your social enterprise as well as factors to pay attention to if you find yourself needing to make a pivot to attain more social enterprise growth. The 4 key strategies for this episode:

1. Understanding Your Customer and Market

2. Knowing When to Scale—and When Not To

3. The Role of Funding on Pace of Growth

4. When to Reevaluate or Pivot

Ward Hendon is an investor, teacher and entrepreneur. His career has included a legal practice, starting and exiting a legal tech company, teaching MBA, legal, and incarcerated individuals, and impact investing. He is currently a General Partner in Dangerous Ventures, a VC firm that backs companies building a more sustainable and resilient feature. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

This episode is sponsored by the coaching company of the host, Paul Zelizer. Consider a Strategy Session if you can use support growing your impact business.

Resources mentioned in this episode include:

• Dangerous Ventures site

• Enchanted Mushrooms site

• New Mexico State Investment Council

• For Batteries and Beer Meetup, reach out Gridflow

• New Mexico Leep Program (Sandia and Los Alamos Labs)

• Raven Indigenous Capital Awarepreneurs Episode

• Paul's Strategy Sessions

• Pitch an Awarepreneurs episode

Megan Young Gamble is a Is a packaging and product management consultant with over 10 years of experience turning ideas into standout consumer products for top beauty, wellness, and personal care brands,. Known as The Project ExecutionHER, Megan transform your company's pain points into custom solutions, manages your project from start to finish and brings a 360-degree perspective on packaging and product development.

Daniel Smith is the founder of Keepingly, a platform that helps homeowners maintain manage and grow their property value with over 20 years of experience in digital marketing and consulting. Daniel has transformed how organizations in the Caribbean and the US position their products online. At Keepingly, Daniel uses his personal experience as a homeowner to create innovative solutions for the housing industry.

His work earned him recognition as a RIS Media real estate newsmaker in 2023. As a futurist, Daniel is dedicated to leveraging technology to address the key issues in the housing market focusing on homeowner sustainability, equity and fairness. His recent Fast Company article outlines policy changes needed to make home ownership more equitable - from addressing appraisal biases to enhancing credit programs.

This episode is sponsored by the coaching company of the host, Paul Zelizer. Consider a Strategy Session if you can use support growing your impact business.

Resources mentioned in this episode include:

• Keepingly site

• Black Chamber of New Mexico episode

• Daniel’s Fast Company article

• Daniel on LinkedIn

• Paul's Strategy Sessions

• Pitch an Awarepreneurs episode

After 6.5 years and 337 episodes, we're taking a break for June & July.   We will return to our regular weekly schedule on August 6th.

Megan Bott is the Community & Business Impact Manager at Positive Energy Solar, a Certified B Corp in New Mexico. Today, Positive Energy employs over 120 people including 75 employee owners and has completed over 5000 solar installations throughout New Mexico with very high customer satisfaction (at the time of this interview, they had 73 Google reviews with an average of 4.9/5 rating).

This episode is sponsored by the coaching company of the host, Paul Zelizer. Consider a Strategy Session if you can use support growing your impact business.

Resources mentioned in this episode include:

• Positive Energy Solar site

• B Corp site

• Awarepreneurs episode on Intrapreneurship

• Awarepreneurs core values

• What is community solar?

• Amicus Solar Cooperative site

• CNM College

• Paul's Strategy Sessions

• Pitch an Awarepreneurs episode