#plugintodevin - Your Mark on the World with Devin Thorpe

Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1QXKiMC.

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In the past, I have observed that the best entrepreneurs are not the ones who see the glass as half full, but instead are the ones who see it as “almost full.”

Vanessa Bartram is that sort of entrepreneur. One who quiets her doubts and charges ahead. And she does it with an eye toward changing the world.

In 2008, Vanessa launched what has become a $2 million per year staffing firm, focusing on paying fair wages and alleviating poverty.

She says, “I was interested in social change from the time I was 12 years old. But having two entrepreneurs as parents made business my natural ‘toolkit’ for working on those issues. We absorb and embrace what we hear about around the dinner table. I tried several different avenues to social change – non-profits, development agencies, foreign service – but ultimately business is the road that most suits and energizes me.”

Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1QXKiMC.

Please consider whether a friend or colleague might benefit from this piece and, if so, share it.

Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1NQyviZ.

Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher.

CNN Hero Chad Bernstein is a career musician, professor and founder of Guitars Over Guns, a nonprofit that helps at-risk youth connect to adult mentors through the arts.

Drawing on his decades of work with kids, offers these three key insights for being an effective mentor to a child.

Be the adult in a child’s life. The single most important factor in a child’s success is a relationship with a caring adult. Finding an avenue through which we can connect with youth. The arts are a great potential avenue, but meeting a student at their point of interest and respecting that is the key.

Show up and listen. There are two keys to building trust between a mentor and a student: First, show up and be present. There is no replacement for time and consistency is key. If you continue to come back, even after a kid has done something to push you away, you are building trust. The second is the to understand the importance of creating a safe place, free of judgement. Vulnerability is paramount to creating trust and it goes both ways.

Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1NQyviZ.

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Read the full GoodCrowdinfo article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/240Ctmb.

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Patch of Land is a sponsor of the Your Mark on the World Center and GoodCrowd.info.

Crowdfunding always looks easier than it is. Very few–if any–of the crowdfunding campaigns famous for raising millions of dollars got there without tremendous planning and hard work. Many people still cling to the “if you build it, they will come” model that has been proven to fail.

Patch of Land provides financing for people wishing to acquire a home to refurbish and sell. Here are some tips provided by the co-founder and Executive Chairman, Jason Fritton:

Explore the FAQs and Resource Center — real estate crowdfunding and marketplace lending are new to many people, so we provide a ton of information for investors, borrowers and the general, curious public. Everything is available on our resources page.

If you’re a borrower, fill out the 5 minute application and have your documents ready. It only takes a few minutes to fill out an application with basic information about the loan you need here. Our system issues an LOI within minutes, and you’ll receive a follow-up call from one of our associates that same day. With a complete document package, we can close and fund a loan in as little as 7 business days (and we’ve done it in 4!)

Read the full GoodCrowdinfo article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/240Ctmb.

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Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1SCEoCK.

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Mark Eaton spent 12 years in the NBA, renowned for his defensive play at center. After retiring from the Utah Jazz, Eaton became an entrepreneur, opening a successful restaurant and becoming a nationally recognized corporate speaker. He offers four keys for successful teams that are as relevant for social entrepreneurs and their teams as for any other organization.

At seven feet four inches, Eaton dominated opponents in the NBA, was twice named NBA Defensive Player of the Year and broke the league record for most blocked shots in a single season. He was also selected to play in the 1989 All-Star Game.

After his playing days were over, he became a radio and talk show host and opened Tuscany, a highly-regarded restaurant in Salt Lake City. More recently, he launched 7ft4.com, his training and speaking business. In 2014, he was recognized by the National Speakers Association as a Certified Speaking Professional.

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1SCEoCK.

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Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1pIjkCm.

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Jacob Allen is the partner with Cicero Group who manages the social impact practice, Cicero Social Impact. The firm, with 70 consultants and nearly 200 analysts, seeks to compete with Bain and McKinsey. The impact practice serves national and international impact organizations, including the George W. Bush Institute and the Clinton Foundation, along with the Prudential Foundation, United Way and Mary’s Meals.

[Jump to page 2 to watch the live interview.]

Allen shared three tips for having greater impact with me. First, he notes, “To change the world, good intentions and lots of activity are not enough.”

Allen’s insights come from 15 years of impact experience, including work with Goldman Sachs, the Alzheimer’s Association and the Nature Conservancy, among others.

Tip 1: Do your homework:

Allen explains why preparation and strategy are so important as starting points. “Before launching a new social service or program, do more homework than you think you’ll need. Do research to understand what your clients or communities really need and value. Be deliberate about specifying the change in their lives or in society that you’ll hold yourself accountable for. Identify all the things that are required for that change to occur. Then step back and ask what role you’ll play and whether it will be enough to truly make a difference.”

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1pIjkCm.

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Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1S7SvQ8.

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Can you imagine how it would feel to be so far behind your grade level in reading that you don’t dare pick up a book? What if every book you did touch were about people you couldn’t relate to, people with life experiences so foreign you might as well be reading about martians?

D. Lacy Asbill, the co-founder of the B-corp Moving Forward Education, discovered that there are millions of kids like this in public schools in the United States and did something about it.

She summarizes the problem, “There is no question that the public education system is struggling to support students, and particularly low-income students of color. Schools need radically updated strategies to engage, motivate, and empower students who face the challenges of systematic poverty and racism.”

Lacy created a program to help kids learn to read and find books that are actually relevant to their lives.

“We’ve spent the last dozen years tutoring thousands of the most at-risk students in Oakland,” she says.

Our students, who are usually years behind in their academic skills and unlikely to pick up a book, suddenly find themselves motivated to read—they relate to the strong, culturally-relevant, and resilient characters featured in our reading selections, and they value the opportunity to connect what they’ve read to their own lives. We call this Reading with Relevance!

Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1S7SvQ8.

Please consider whether a friend or colleague might benefit from this piece and, if so, share it.

Read the full GoodCrowdinfo article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1WrZtVs.

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Seed Equity Ventures, one of the sponsors of the Your Mark on the World Center and GoodCrowd.info, has noted exciting progress with two of its portfolio companies. The crowdfunding type investment bank for startups reported this week that two companies, DemoChimp and Micro Benefits, in which its investors had participated in seed rounds last year received large follow-on investments already this year.

Utah-based Consensus, formerly DemoChimp, announced on April 5, 2016 that it had received a $4.2 million Series A funding round from Peak Ventures and super angel Nobutaka Mutaguchi.

In a statement, Consensus explained:

CONSENSUS makes it possible for sales and marketing professionals to create interactive customized demo videos that give each buyer an overview of a product’s value proposition. Buyers then rate the relative importance of video segments that explain different aspects of the offering’s value proposition according to their unique interests, revealing both the identity and motivation of each stakeholder. The CONSENSUS platform plays the videos in a personalized sequence, and at a level of detail tailored to each buyer’s interests. CONSENSUS’ proprietary Demolytics™ dashboard shows customers when a buyer watches their demo, what’s important to them and who they shared it with — so salespeople can tailor their messages to the buying group’s shared priorities.

Read the full GoodCrowdinfo article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1WrZtVs.

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Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1SmbUAh.

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Chris Grandpre, Chairman and CEO of Outdoor Living Brands, has a few words of advice for social entrepreneurs.

Grandpre earned his chops in consulting and investment banking before leading the formation of Outdoor Living Brands in 2008 with its four franchise concepts, including Mosquito Squad, an outdoor pest control business.

For years, Mosquito Squad has partnered with Malaria No More, a 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit working to eradicate malaria.

Martin Edlund is co-founder and CEO of the $14.4 million 2014 revenue nonprofit, Malaria No More. With just 35 people in half a dozen offices scattered around the world, he says, ”Despite our small size, we help to mobilize billions of dollars in global financing for malaria from the US, UK, other global donors, and endemic country sources.”

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1SmbUAh.

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Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1RP3dLi.

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Janice Schacter Lintz is the woman behind the successful effort to get effective accommodation for deaf and hard-of-hearing people in all of New York City’s new Taxi’s of Tomorrow, a feature that had been in London cabs since 1988.

Janice, founder of Hearing Access & Innovations, is a “won’t take no for an answer” kind of activist who offers up her three point plan for changing the world here:

First, Don’t Be Afraid To Ask For What You Need

Many places will tell you that you are the first dissatisfied person in order to discourage you. They are just trying to get you to go away, so don’t let them deter you. Be persistent.

Be fearless. No one can fire you as an advocate so you have nothing to lose as long as you are accurate and do not lie or distort the truth. Getting over your embarrassment is critical. Many people know what they need but won’t ask for it because it makes them uncomfortable to assert themselves. What is the worst thing that can happen? All they can say is say, “No.” You already start with a no so it can only turn into a yes.

Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1RP3dLi.

Please consider whether a friend or colleague might benefit from this piece and, if so, share it.

Read the full GoodCrowdinfo article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1q7DR40.

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Anyone who has launched a crowdfunding campaign wishes there were a way to make it easier to get attention. Setting up the page is the easy part. Making a video is the fun part. Getting people to watch the video on the page and then make a pledge is the challenge. Josef Holm, an entrepreneur who thrives in the crowdfunding space, last year launched Krowdster to address the big challenge.

Josef empathizes with entrepreneurs trying to raise money via crowdfunding. “While crowdfunding democratizes the access to capital, the sheer cost to hire a professional crowdfunding consultant, buy facebook ads and do all the things campaigns need to do to stand out from the hundreds of campaigns that are launched every day is simply too high for most crowdfunders.”

Josef created Krowdster for the people who can’t afford expensive, professional marketing resources. “We make access to professional grade crowdfunding marketing solutions available to all crowdfunders. Our clients are the 99 percent of crowdfunders who do not have thousands of dollars to hire a campaign manger or consultant.”

Read the full GoodCrowdinfo article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1q7DR40.

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