Cullen Schwarz is the Co-Founder of Done Good, Chief of Good Thoughts, & a man who traded the political suit for a startup t-shirt. After a decade of fighting the good fight serving as a senior communications adviser to members of Congress and in the Obama Administration, he decided to start driving some of the $130 trillion in consumer spending to what Forbes has called the Amazon for Social Good. Since starting from inside the Harvard Innovation Lab in 2015, they have partnered with over 200 brands including names like Patagonia and Warby Parker, tripled their community to over 100,000 members, and diverted over one million dollars to companies dedicated to making the world a better place.

Full show notes and worksheets can be found here: evolvethe.world/episodes/cullen-schwarz

What You Will Learn In This Episode:

• What Cullen learned about conscientious consumerism when he became the leader of United Students Against Sweatshops
• Why Politics is too slow to make change and deliver the solutions we need
• Why consumer spending is the number one driver for positive change
• Why our hope for humanity is found in business
• What Cullen and his cofounder learned inside the Harvard Innovation Lab about startups
• Why Cullen's first app iteration of DoneGood turned out to be a terrible idea
• How Cullen pivoted his business model online by creating a chrome plugin & affiliate marketplace
• Why online shopping creates less behavior change for customers than brick and mortar
• Why online shopping is more sustainable than physical retail
• How Cullen got his first brands and customers to the marketplace and which side he built first
• Why Cullen decided to make a fully functioning marketplace and control the entire customer experience
• How DoneGood's business model creates a win-win for everyone
• How DoneGood competes against Amazon
• The dark side of Amazon's business practices
• Why socially conscious brands must be as good or better than regular brands
• Why Cullen believes sales and discounts are equally as important for socially conscious brands
• How to market and speak to conscious consumers
• Cullen's unique strategies to compete with Amazon, Better Days and Shop For Good Sunday
• How Cullen launched a new business model during COVID
• Where the most opportunity is in conscious capitalism in the coming decade
• Cullen's number one advice for social entrepreneurs just starting out

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