Finding a Social Entrepreneur Coach: 3 Things to Look For
This past week I’ve had a wave of new inquiries of folks looking for a social entrepreneur coach. These entrepreneurs are dedicated, impact motivated people who want support to do 3 things:
Increase the positive impact they are having.
Grow their revenue.
Develop robust systems so their businesses can run smoothly and efficiently.
In talking with these prospective clients, what they wanted is someone who understands the specific factors that contribute to a social entrepreneur’s success. The majority had experiences with business resources and mentors of various stripes and flavors that seemed to know a lot about business in general, but didn’t seem to understand the specifics of the social impact space.
What makes for an effective social entrepreneur coach?
In my opinion, there’s a variety of factors that contribute to a social entrepreneur coach providing great value to their clients. But to make it a bit easier, I would suggest there’s 3 key areas I would encourage any social entrepreneur who’s considering hiring a coach to ask about:
Does this person have a similar definition of social impact as you do? Walmart, Facebook, Chick-fil-a have social impact programs. In fact, over the past 10 years there’s been an explosion of such initiatives in corporations around the world. While it’s beyond the scope of this blog post to go into too much detail here, let me state bluntly that my vision of impact and Walmart’s are quite different. If you want to know what kind of social ventures I respect and amplify, take a look at the guests we have on the Awarepreneurs podcast. I would strongly encourage you to understand what a social entrepreneur coach means by positive impact before you hire them.
Does this person have a robust network in the space you play or want to play in? There is a recent article in Forbes magazine titled: Research Finds Conventional Accelerators Aren’t a Good Fit for Social Entrepreneurs. The key finding of the researchers is that much of the advice that one would find in a typical accelerator actual gets in the way of impact leaders achieving our goals. I would suggest that the same is true with many business mentors and coaches. Social entrepreneurship is quite different than business done in a more traditional manner and someone who doesn’t understand the nuances of this space can unintentionally do harm to the goals you’re working to achieve. What you want is someone who has deep familiarity with and, ideally, can open opportunities for you in the impact area you’re passionate about.
Is this person familiar with the level of scale you want to operate at? Not long ago I had the honor of interviewing the CEO of Homeboy Industries, Tom Vozzo (here’s the episode). They are one of the world’s most highly regarded social enterprises focused on supporting formerly incarcerated and gang involved individuals getting into the work force in sustainable ways. Each year, they work with over 10,000 clients in their own programs plus they lead a global network of organizations doing this work. There’s a huge difference between being a solo consultant and running a global enterprise of this scale. Now I’m 100% in support of any scale you want to run your impact business at. That said, if you’re looking to build towards a significant degree of scale in your impact business, I encourage you to hire a social entrepreneur coach with relevant experience.
What are your questions or tips about finding a social entrepreneur coach?
I hope these tips are helpful on your journey to finding a social entrepreneur coach who’s a good fit for your needs and goals. And, there’s no way I could possibly cover all the issues on this important topic in one short blog post. What are your biggest questions about finding a social entrepreneur coach? What tips do you have that I haven’t covered here?
I’d love to hear your thoughts! Please head over to my contact page and share away.