Lisa and I were recently traveling the South Island of New Zealand for two glorious weeks. It was absolutely amazing – New Zealand is indeed adventure-land. On several occasions when chatting with folks in NZ we found ourselves telling the tale of what Common Soles is up to. For the most part, everyone responds quite well to our story (or at least we tend to meet very nice people!). They can get into the Common Soles story quite easily, as most everyone appreciates businesses that take on a social bent.

What’s interesting though is where the conversation typically goes after the initial back-and-forth on what Common Soles is and what we are up to.  9 times out of 10 we hear stories of other small social ventures the individual knows of, either through a personal connection, or something they heard about via the media that resonated with them. Folks get incredibly excited to share the stories of these socially responsible organizations. It’s really neat experiencing the energy that is generated during conversations on social ventures. People get really excited about them regardless of their association with the organization, and regardless of whether or not they have even conducted a transaction with that organization!

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Creating Community Through Food - right on Bi-Rite! We spotted this while in San Francisco. Bi-Rite is an institution in the city and I sure have eaten my fair share of ice-cream from them! While enjoying my latest cone in the corner of the busy shop I flipped through the Bi-Rite brochure. On the back page was one of the best statements of how an organization views it's business ecosystem. Here it is, enjoy!

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Common Soles is an act of entrepreneurialism. We identified an opportunity and assembled needed resources to get this venture up and going. For us, that was the easy part. The hard part is now sustaining the venture!  In our journey to build the organization we have come across and met up with several other entrepreneurs, as well as taken calls and meetings with budding entrepreneurs all over. Often the topic is “how did you get started?”, or “what are the basic tools I need to get this thing up and going?” What has come out of all these interactions is what I’m calling the Entrepreneur’s Tool Box, or basically the tools that are nice to have at hand to anyone starting a business, regardless of industry or type.

Note: I recently saw an interesting slide show that Inc. did on this topic. It’s worth checking out as well.

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We’ve sparked a bit of dialogue from our last post on our Top 10 Favorite Social Ventures. Since that time we’ve discovered or have been introduced to several new ventures worth sharing.   What gets us so excited about discovering these ventures isn’t just that they necessarily make a cool product or offer a new service. It’s that they do it all within a socially conscious context. That’s what’s so energizing about social ventures. They are businesses that seek profit, but do so by considering and improving on the impact of that profit making process.  So here they are, again in no particular order.

ONNO www.onnotextiles.com
T shirts made from sustainable fibers such as Bamboo, Hemp, and Organic Cotton. Boulder, CO

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Last Friday Rao and I attended a workshop led by Dr. Ralph Z. Sorenson on the topic of Conscious Capitalism. Ralph is an uber accomplished businessman with professorships at Babson, Univ. of Colorado and Harvard Business School under his belt, as well as working for several multinationals, serving as President of Babson College, managing a private investment firm, and a board member on over 30 boards both public and private. One board he currently sits on is that of Whole Foods.

So as you can imagine, Whole foods was a focal point of discussion for the day. Whole Foods is really an amazing organization, I always knew the company stood for good business, and that CEO and Founder John Mackey was a good guy, I just didn’t ever analyze the company the way you can when a discussion is being led by a long time board member of the company!

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Since we first came up with the concept of Common Soles earlier this year we've been chugging along quite quickly and smoothly. Fueled by passion we were able to come to market with our first flip-flop more rapidly than what others thought possible. Now we are a few weeks away from having our next few styles available which will go to funding new initiatives. Thus, we've proven our model is scalable which is a critical step in building Common Soles as a brand, and as a business. Without the business aspect the social aspect doesn't get the necessary funding and the whole model doesn't work. So happily it is all working out great thus far!

Rao and I are busy working on the new products and initiatives, but to the above point we are just as busy working on building a stable platform for Common Soles. Necessary components of that platform include such functions as: Distribution, Marketing, Accounting, and Finance. The two big ones for us at the moment being Marketing and Finance.  Without people knowing about what we are doing nobody can become a supporter or purchase a pair of flip-flops from us, and without the necessary finance, we won't have enough capital to invest in growing the organization.  This is our challenge - our solution? Communication.

Last Friday Rao and I pitched Common Soles at Babson (I know, we mention Babson quite frequently). We participated in Rocket Pitch which is a really cool event where presenters are given 3 minutes to present 3 slides to an audience comprised of business school students, attorneys, CPAs, investors, and other interested folks, a business or product idea in hopes that some of the attendees can and decide to provide value to the presenter in the form of investment, connections, advice, etc. It's an incredible experience and we got A LOT of positive reaction from our audience.

So this is us communicating. Reaching out to the world and asking how we can be the organization we have planned on building. It takes time, it takes a plan, and it takes help.  Thanks all for everything you've given us thus far.

-Dave

Some folks have been kind enough to tell us that they really like out company name and logo. Common Soles.  Well, thanks!  We like it as well.  It's the play on the word "sole" that means the most. The "sole"-"soul" thing is more about getting excited about your passions than anything else.  I've heard a lot lately about how things no longer have soul.  "Music these days has no soul" or "Skiers have lost all soul in the sport".  That's ridiculous.  As long as you're putting in 100% and loving what you're doing then whatever it is has soul!  Soul is about sharing excitement and passion. When passion is infused in an act then that act has got soul.

This is where the "soles-souls" part of Common Soles comes in.  We're passionate about effecting change in the footwear industry.  We're passionate about providing our fans with quality product, and we're passionate about the people we surround ourselves with on this incredible planet.  

It's sole time!
-Dave

Whenever I go to Babson I get a boost of inspiration! Yesterday was the Forum on Entrepreneurship and I got the opportunity to listen to a handful of incredibly inspiring individuals from companies such as Facebook, Deckers, iRobot, and mzinga on what's on their minds as far as how we foster an environment of innovation and entrepreneurship. A hot topic of the day was social entrepreneurship and as you can imagine I was all ears at that panel discussion.  Here are a few of my takeaways from the day.

1)  Define your organizations "Dogma" (or often unspoken established belief). I heard a very compelling argument by Anand Vengurlekar on how organizations with Dogma's centered around fostering innovation often times were the winners in their markets. (duh..) But it was the concept of Dogma that got me going. What is your Dogma?

2)  Social Entrepreneurship is innovative at its core. An organization must be innovative in order to succeed at delivering not only profits but on its social mission as well. Being innovative as a social venture requires the ability to constantly inspire all those we touch. I hope we are inspiring! Thank you Mark Albion (one of the founders of Net Impact) for reminding me of this simple statement. Our organization certainly has its work cut out for us.. so far so good! Thank you all for the support!

3) Patience. Gary Vaynerchuk (hysterical guy) again beat into the audience the virtue of patience. Building an organization of sustainable value does not happen overnight. On that note we are jumping up and down with excitement over our new flip-flops which we will be introducing later this fall!

Enjoy the weekend,
-Dave

I love learning. I didn't until I graduated from college, I then realized how wonderful the gift of education is.  How could I appreciate it? I didn't know any other life until then.  So when I decided to go back to grad school in 2006 it was with great respect for the educational system, and drive to once again - learn. 

One of the greatest things I took away from business school was a deeper understanding of organizations role in society. Recently, Leonard Schlesinger, Babson's new President articulated this learning I took away very succinctly in the school's new strategy. 

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