Welcome to Elevate+

Setting Ourselves Up For Success.

In this module, you’ll gain a clear understanding of the program, fundamental traits of successful entrepreneurs and useful strategies to practice throughout Elevate+ as we work to scale your enterprise and impact.

Contents

INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS SOCIAL ENTERPRISE?

WHAT DOES SUCCESS MEAN FOR YOU?

OPPORTUNITY & LUCK CREATION

COVEY’S TIME MANAGEMENT MATRIX

COVER STORY VISION CANVAS

FUNDAMENTAL TRAITS

TRUE GRIT

MISSION STATEMENTS

TAKING CARE OF YOURSELF

RECOMMENDED BOOKS 

You’re positioned to be one of Australia’s leading social entrepreneurs.

Picture yourself on December 6th at the Elevate+ Showcase event at Homebase, sharing your impact-led enterprise with a sold out crowd.

Where you take your organisation and the depth of impact you create is up to you. We’ve seen huge potential in YOU, as a purpose-led person, passionate about change. We see enormous potential in your business model and are here to support you on your journey.

Introduction

Welcome to Module One of Elevate+.

Well done on getting this far with your social enterprise! It’s not easy work, and for many of you it can be very lonely. One of the most important components of Elevate+ will be the community and friends you make. A few years down the track, most probably, it’ll be the community that you look back on as one of the highlights.

In the first Module we’ll go through a range of factors to help you on your entrepreneurship journey. We’ll begin to look at what success means for you, discuss fundamental traits of successful entrepreneurs, dig deeper into what social enterprise is and set ourselves up for what we hope will be an intensively rewarding few months.

How can you get maximum value from Elevate+?

Like any program, we have a limited number of face-to-face contact hours and how much you gain from the program will really depend on how much you put in. 

We’d make the following suggestions:

- We believe some of the greatest value will come from the new network this creates for you. Take time to get to know other participants and their projects, engage, ask presenters/mentors questions and take the initiative to meet with others in your own time. Being an entrepreneur just got less lonely.

- Set aside a weekly time/s in your schedule to sit down and focus on your project. Complete the exercises and when you feel lost, search for answers online or ask for help.

- Engage with the online Facebook group. Share your ups & downs, ask questions, post about your progress and wins & help others where possible. We’re stronger together.

- Celebrate the small wins. Stay positive, look after yourself. We’ll help you as best as we can.

- Communicate opening and honestly with us and other participants. Where do you need help? What can we improve upon to help you on your journey?

What is social enterprise?

Let’s get on the same page. Whilst interest in social enterprise has grown massively over the last 10 years, there are still multiple understandings of exactly what it is. 

HERE’S HOW A COUPLE OF LEADING ORGANISATIONS DEFINE IT: 

Social Enterprise UK

“Social enterprises are businesses which are set up to change the world. Like traditional businesses they aim to make a profit but it’s what they do with their profit that sets them apart – reinvesting or donating it to create positive social change.  Social enterprises exist in nearly every sector from consumer goods to healthcare, community energy to creative agencies, restaurants to facilities management. Well known examples include The Big Issue, Divine Chocolate and the Eden Project but there are over 70,000 social enterprises throughout the country contributing £24 billion to the economy and employing nearly a million people.

They’re creating jobs and opportunities for those most marginalised from the workforce, transforming the communities they work in and making the Sustainable Development Goals a reality. They:

• Have a clear social and/or environmental mission set out in their governing documents

• Generate the majority of their income through trade

• Reinvest the majority of their profits

• Are autonomous of the state

• Are majority controlled in the interests of the social mission

• Are accountable and transparent.”

Find full insights from SEUK CEO, Peter Holbrook on our interview with him here.

These couple of videos describe similar social enterprise definitions from the British Council and Common Good SOlutions.

What is not-for-profit?

The Australian Tax Office states: “A not-for-profit organisation is an organisation that is operating for its purpose and not for the profit or gain (either direct or indirect) of its individual members. NFP organisations fall within two broad categories: charities, and other NFP organisations that are not charities.”

“NFP organisations (including charities) operate in many areas of society. They can include:

• church schools

• churches

• community child care centres

• cultural organisations

• environmental protection organisations

• neighbourhood associations

• public museums and libraries

• scholarship funds

• scientific organisations

• scouts

• sports clubs

• surf lifesaving clubs

• traditional service clubs.”

Further information and guidance on setting up an NFP can be found on the ATO website.

The Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission also provides guidance on the requirements of NFPs. It confirms that “A not-for-profit can make a profit, but any profit made must be used for its purposes”; and that “to be registered with the ACNC, you need to show that your organisation meets the requirement of being a not-for-profit”.

It can get confusing when some terminology is used across different types of organisations. This Grad Australia article provides an easy to read rundown on the key elements of NFPs, charities, non-government organisations and social enterprise.

What does success mean for you?

When was the last time you jumped in the car and started driving without knowing where you wanted to go? (Ok ok... maybe you were on holidays, had time and money to spare and just wanted to enjoy the ride and views...).

Being present and enjoying the journey can be a challenge, but is made easier when we have a sense of direction, right? Without plans, goals, reflection, commitment and measurables, success can feel like a far away dream. 

So what does success look like for you both personally and as a social enterprise? 

Success

Images adapted from this source.

Opportunity & luck creation

“Opportunities do not float like clouds in the sky. They’re attached to people. If you’re looking for an opportunity (including one that has a financial payoff, you’re looking for a person.” Reid Hoffman (Founder of LinkedIn).

Much of the Elevate+ Program will focus on developing your ‘soft’ skills; AKA ‘21st Century Skills’ or ‘Enterprise Skills’.

The Foundation for Young Australians rank them as the necessary skills to see Australian youth succeed, now and into the future. There’s no doubt they are essential for your success. You can find a bunch of FYA’s reports here.

Somewhat connected (although not entirely!) is Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast & Slow which describes how human intuition works.

Covey’s Time Management Matrix

Stephen Covey’s highly recommended book, ‘The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People’, provides fantastic insights into living and working effectively. Here’s an extract:

“The two factors that define an activity are urgent and important. Urgent means it requires immediate attention. It’s “NOW!” Urgent things act upon us. A ringing phone is urgent. Importance, on the other hand, has to do with results. If something is important, it contributes to your mission, your values, your high priority goals.

We react to urgent matters. Important matters that are not urgent require more initiative, more proactivity.

We must act to seize opportunity to make things happen. If we don’t have a clear idea of what is important, of the results we desire in our lives, we are easily diverted into responding to the urgent.

Quadrant I is both urgent and important. It deals with significant results that require immediate attention. We usually call the activities in Quadrant I ‘crises’ or ‘problems’. We all have these activities in our lives, but Quadrant I consumes many people. They are crises managers. As long as you focus on Quadrant I, it keeps getting bigger and bigger until it dominates you. It’s like the pounding surf. Some people are literally beaten up by problems all day every day. The only relief they have is in escaping to the not important, not urgent activities of Quadrant IV. So when you look at their total matrix, 90% of their time is in Quadrant I and most of the remaining 10% is in Quadrant IV. That’s how people who manage their lives by crises live.

There are other people who spend a great deal of time in ‘urgent, but not important’ Quadrant III, thinking they are Quadrant I. They spend most of their time reacting to things that are urgent, assuming that they are important. But the reality is that the urgency of these matters is often based on the priorities and expectations of others.

People who spend time almost exclusively in Quadrants III and IV basically lead irresponsible lives.

Effective people stay out of Quadrants III and IV because, urgent or not, they aren’t important. They also shrink Quadrant I down in size by spending more time in Quadrant II.

Quadrant II is the heart of effective personal management. It deals with things like building relationships, writing a personal mission statement, long-range planning, exercising, preventive maintenance, preparation - all those things we know we need to do but somehow seldom get around to doing, because they aren’t urgent.

To paraphrase Peter Drucker, effective people are not problem-minded; they’re opportunity-minded. They feed opportunities and starve problems. They have genuine Quadrant I crises and emergencies that require their immediate attention, but the number is comparatively small. They keep ‘production’ and ‘production-capability’ in balance by focussing on the important, but not urgent, high leverage capacity-building activities of Quadrant II.”

Focus

Make a conscious effort to list your most common daily/weekly tasks.

Which activities fall under which quadrant? How might you re-prioritise activities in order to boost your effectiveness and find the right ‘production’ vs ‘production capability’ balance? 

What small commitments can you make to yourself and your team now about the way you perceive and tackle priorities?

Cover story vision canvas

What is the most amazing future you see for your social enterprise (and yourself)? Who has the boldest vision? Imagine how you will appear on magazine covers. What’s the word on the street? Creating a cover story will help you get into a future state of mind. The Cover Story Canvas was created by David Sibbet, of the Grove International. Find a copy and instructions to complete it here.

Redraw the canvas and get creative filling it out. You may like to complete this as a team with post its and place a copy on your office wall to keep you inspired and on track.

Fundamental traits

What are the fundamental traits of successful social entrepreneurs? 

What sets apart those that create true impact from those that start work on an idea but find it’s not going anywhere? Let’s reflect on the stories and journeys from some other entrepreneurs, define our goals and begin acting like an entrepreneur. According to Seth Godin, arguably one of the world’s leading marketers, here’s what Seth believes are four things people do when they act like an entrepreneur:

1. They make decisions.

2. They invest in activities and assets that aren’t a sure thing.

3. They persuade others to support a mission with a non-guaranteed outcome.

4. This one is the most amorphous, the most difficult to pin down and thus the juiciest: They embrace (instead of run from) the work of doing things that might not work.

In other words, social entrepreneurs commit to working on projects which may not work out, they take risks and they embrace failure... because each failure brings them closer to success.

LISTEN

Check out the ‘Fundamental Ingredients Of Successful Social Entrepreneurs’ podcast.

Summarise 5 key ingredients in your notebook. Which ones do you have and which will you work on?

RESPOND TO THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS

What scares you most about growing and scaling your project?

What tasks do you typically run from?

What’s the worst thing that could happen if you take this risk?

What decisions do you need to make?

How will you approach difficult decisions that you come up against on your journey?

Who are 5 people you can reach out to when you’re under the pump & need support?

True grit

How easily are you discouraged when you come up against a barrier?

Do you push on or do you start a new project?

Do you persevere with long term goals, obsessed about making them a reality?

True entrepreneurs have grit. How gritty are you?

Mission statements

Full ‘Mission Statement’ definition here:

“A sentence describing a company’s function, markets and competitive advantages; a short written statement of your business goals and philosophies .

A mission statement defines what an organisation is, why it exists, its reason for being. At a minimum, your mission statement should define who your primary customers are, identify the products and services you produce, and describe the geographical location in which you operate.

If you don’t have a mission statement, create one by writing down in one sentence what the purpose of your business is. Ask two or three of the key people in your company to do the same thing. Then discuss the statements and come up with one sentence everyone agrees with. Once you have finalised your mission statement, communicate it to everyone in the company.

It’s more important to communicate the mission statement to employees than to customers. Your mission statement doesn’t have to be clever or catchy - just accurate.”

Paired mentoring

“The American Society of Training and Development found that people are 65 percent likely to meet a goal after committing to another person. Their chances of success increase to 95 percent when they build in ongoing meetings with their partners to check in on their progress.”

We’ll be in touch in September to line you up with your paired mentor who will help you tackle challenges and hold you accountable.

Recommended books

Good luck!

We’ll look forward to seeing the progress you have made next week.

The information contained within this Elevate+ Module is intended solely for you and we kindly ask that you do not email, distribute, copy, modify or print this document.

You retain sole responsibility for actions and decisions, regardless of whether they are based on options or suggestions provided by Impact Boom. Any information contained should not be construed as legal advice.

Thank you for the fantastic energy you bring to the Elevate+ cohort.