Life Ensemble

See Full Show Notes Here: https://growensemble.com/better-practices-01

On this episode of The Social Entrepreneurship & Innovation Podcast, we will be introducing a completely new segment, titled, “Better Practices.” With these segments we hope to share habits, thoughts, resources, and whatever else to help you, our community of social entrepreneurs to make your work more impactful. 

Don’t forget to let us know what you think, and, if you have any Better Practices you’d like to share with the Grow Ensemble community — we may give you a shout out on future shows! Just send an email to cory {at} growensemble.com. 

In our first go with this new episode format, Cory dives into a few different topics, spanning time tracking, to achieving personal and professional goals, as well as getting better sleep. Tune into this episode to hear all five of the Better Episodes Cory shares.

See Full Show Notes here: https://growensemble.com/michèlesoregaroli

Michèle Soregaroli is the founder and CEO of Transformation Catalyst. Her company coaches and consults with entrepreneurs and business founders who want their business to embody deeper value, more meaning, and sustained impact. She coaches her clients to identify and emphasize the principles and values that are embedded in the core of their companies. 

In this episode, Michèle starts by explaining what a differentiator is and why it’s important in a business strategy. She gives us some tips on how to find the language to describe your differentiator and what that process looks like. With all of this and much more, have a listen to learn what steps you can take to build a character of integrity in your company.

See Full Show Notes here: https://growensemble.com/amylooper.

Amy Looper is co-founder and COO of One Seventeen Media, an AI tech ed. company that is making waves (or maybe calming them…) in the mental health space.  Amy, along with her business partner Bath Carls, has built a life-changing product: Rethink It- an app that helps kids process difficult emotions in real time. 

Rethink It has been wildly successful using technology to support kids from pre-k through 12th grade. The app has literally saved lives as it has preventing a school shooting, and has saved schools hundreds of thousands of dollars as it boosts attendance for kids who are more likely to miss school due to personal challenges. And their 19 years of data-collecting continues to propel them into more and more progress.

See full show notes here: https://growensemble.com/mark-cuddigan-ellas-kitchen/

Mark Cuddigan is the CEO of the number one baby food company in the UK, Ella's Kitchen. After reading an article  He had a full professional life before joining the Ella’s Kitchen team, but the company transformed his life as it opened up his perception of how business can best run for itself, its employees, and the world all at the same time.

Ella’s Kitchen is not only the number one baby food company in the UK (and growing). The company has become a leader in social business and an advocate in B Corp certification. As the head of sustainability for the Hain Celestial Group, Mark’s practices around learning, leading, and working for society’s benefit extend far beyond his role as CEO.

In our episode, Mark talks about the epiphany that brought him into the world of socially-conscious business and explains why he strongly encourages others to join the community. He shares perspective on the unlimited potential (and responsibility) business has to create solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems and the importance of creating a supportive work environment for employees to set the foundation to expand your mission.

We at Grow Ensemble are focused on getting more eyes on better businesses and better business people. How do we do that? In addition to walking clients through the Grow Ensemble Framework and providing courses like our accelerator, we like to share tips with people looking to introduce themselves to the SEO space and get them started improving their search engine performance on their own.

Search engine optimization is the practice of making your company’s website the most easily discoverable for Google. Why is this important? Well, of course we want our company to come up as the top search result when someone searches our company name—if they’re looking for us explicitly, we don’t want to miss that opportunity for them to engage with us. But we also want our company to come up as a top search result when someone searches keywords relevant to our services and products, or the issues our company solves. If our company may be able to provide what a searcher is looking for, we want to make it to the top of that list.

In this episode I go through the three principles of SEO that we at Grow Ensemble focus on with our clients. These are the most basic principles of SEO that you can start looking into for your own website to get an idea of how your company is doing in terms of search engine performance, and even start to take some next steps for improving your current Google results. I am more than happy to answer questions and give a deeper explanation to anything I talk about in this episode: just shoot me an email at [email protected]

For full show notes go to: https://growensemble.com/social-enterprise-seo/

After traveling and studying yoga and meditation in the East, Bernie Geiss returned to work in North Vancouver. Transitioning back to Western life, he entered the insurance field, where he eventually founded his own financial services company. But Bernie found himself yearning for a company that truly reflected his values and principles, which led to his company’s transition to becoming an impact-driven business.

Cove Continuity Advisors focuses on honesty and accountability, interacting with clients with complete transparency. They are now B-Corp certified, members of 1% for the Planet, and Bernie has become increasingly involved in First Nation reconcili-action projects and even nationwide legislation on the issue.

See the full show notes here: https://growensemble.com/cove-continuity-advisors-bernie-geiss/

Sarah Woolsey is the founder of the Impact Guild—a co-working, event, and community organizing space based in San Antonio, Texas. Sarah’s journey started in the nonprofit world, which piqued her interested in whether there may be more a financially sustainable way to make the impact she wanted. Following that curiosity, Sarah was given the Impact Guild building for a whopping $1/year rent where she has built a strong community of impact-driven companies and social entrepreneurs.

Sarah and the Impact Guild host budding social enterprises in their space where idea sharing and community problem-solving is at the center of the space’s culture. They are deeply involved in the community hosting local events, highlighting social businesses and business people, and investing in social entrepreneurs around the world.

This episode is full to the brim of tips on the process of getting an idea out of your head and into the world. Sarah shares her experience getting the Impact Guild building (for $1/year!), her advice on balancing mission and business, and how to utilize your community as you build your business.

Peter Dering—founder and owner of Peak Design—quit his job in construction in pursuit of professional autonomy and, by scratching his own itch so to speak, he was able to create just that. Peak Design creates cutting edge bag and camera equipment to simplify taking your passion into your adventure. As the creator of some of the highest grossing Kickstarter campaigns ever, Peak Design remains a customer-focused company, with a steadfast mission of sustainability.

Peter and Peak Design are committed to offsetting their environmental impact and pushing for other companies to do the same. Peak Design donates 1% of their revenue to environmental nonprofits and guarantees their products for life—keeping them in the hands of enthusiasts and out of landfills. With the prospect of selling over $100 million in products this year, Peak Design continues to create amazing products for the adventurers among us, all while leaving the world a better, cleaner place than they found it.

In this episode, Peter shares his experience with the immediate boom Peak Design experienced after it’s first Kickstarter launch. He also provides a very tangible roadmap for how companies can take steps to structure their company to make sure they are doing their part in environmental conservation.

A few takeaways from our conversation:

• Have confidence in your abilities and take chances to create the life you want.
• Use the modern tools that exist to help young or beginning entrepreneurs.
• “There are a lot of small players out there who are willing to help companies out with a lot of the tricky aspects of design.”
• All companies making a profit could be (and should be) giving a reasonable effort to offset their environmental impact.

For full show notes, go to growensemble.com/peak-design-peter-dering.

After graduating from college, facing a less than promising job market, Hannah Davis—founder and president of BANGS Shoes—ditched her plans to go to law school and went to teach in China. During her travels, she discovered a pair of shoes that would completely change her trajectory.

Two years later she shipped her first pair of BANGS Shoes, beginning her journey through personal and professional development in the business world. BANGS Shoes directs 20% of their net profits to helping entrepreneurs around the world get their businesses started. To date, they have invested in an impressive 2,000 entrepreneurs across 70 countries.

In our episode, Hannah and I talk about her process accepting the business world as an avenue for change, and her experience learning how to use it in a way that is impactful for the world and for herself. Hannah shares the challenges she faced getting BANGS off the ground. She provides very honest advice for social entrepreneurs about the benefits of finding and keeping balance in your life.

A few takeaways from our conversation:

• Hidden in seemingly bleak circumstances, there can still be a great opportunity to flourish.
• Finding balance between your work and your personal and mental health is good, not only for you but also for your business.
• Don’t reinvent the wheel! Find and use the resources that are available to you. Google it.
• Most problems can be solved: try not to react through emotion. Instead, stay calm, look at your options, and problem solve.

In this episode of the Grow Ensemble Podcast, Grow Ensemble Founder, Cory Ames, makes a few announcements regarding Grow Ensemble's changing role in the social business community. 

As well, he offers up an AWESOME bonus for listeners of the podcast. 

Tune in to make sure you don't miss it!