3 Tips for your Social Entrepreneurship Journey that can be implemented Today!

Are you an entrepreneur that also wants to do good in the world, rather than just get rich? Many people might say that you should start a non-profit or NGO. But what if you don’t want to run on donations? What if you want to have a business that is profitable on its own and helps those in need??

The answer is a social business, which aims to help solve social, environmental, or economic problems all while being self-sustaining. Sound too good to be true? Professor of economics Muhammad Yunis founded the extremely successful Grameen Bank in Bangladesh that gives small loans to the poor.?

Social Business is the new kind of Capitalism that serves Humanity’s most pressing needs.

You too can run a business that gives back to the community, a business that will change the world by benefiting everyone instead of just a few.

Here are 3 valuable tips for Social Entrepreneurs:

1. Owning a social business isn’t about gaining tons of wealth, it’s about solving social issues.?
2. Start your social business by finding a problem you think you can fix in society and construct a sound business plan.?
3. Capitalism is good, but it’s not the end-all because it has left many people very poor while others are very wealthy.?

Get ready to change the world for the better, because you’re about to learn how to do it!

Social Business is more about solving problems of today than becoming rich.

The biggest distinction between a social business and a normal one is that it isn’t about getting as rich as possible. Normally, a company will pay investors as it becomes very profitable. But instead, a social business will pay back investors only what they put in and the rest of the extra profit goes back into the company, helping it reach its social goal.

Make sure to separate it from some other types of business, like non-profits and NGOs. While they do a lot of good in the world, neither are self-sustaining because non-profits need grants and NGOs run by philanthropic donation.

The goal of social business is to still provide a valuable product or service that will make a profit, but give that profit to a cause instead of investors.?

Let's classify them into two types..

In type I, a company makes a profit and does not hand dividends back to investors on a regular basis. Type II is also like a typical for-profit company, but instead of being owned by executives, it is owned by poor people. Doing this allows the profits of the company to go toward achieving the goal of helping poverty.?

An example of this is Grameen Bank of Bangladesh. It is run by the poor people and helps them by providing a job, and it helps the poor in the community also by allowing them to take out loans and start their own small businesses that they wouldn’t be able to before.

To start your own social business, find a problem in society and make a good business plan.

What most people will tell you to do when you start a business is to find a problem and seek to fix it with your product or service. Your social business should do the same, but it should be looking to solve a social issue in the world today.?

You can ask yourself about what is needed in your community or what bothers you most about the world today. Then ask yourself if the skills and talents you have can help solve this problem.

Start Simple!

You may have many things in the world you want to fix but pick one that you have the best shot at helping in, based on your experience.?Once you have an idea, it’s time to get investors. Come up with a reasonable and detailed plan for the next five years of the company, including plans for normal ups and downs.

Your budget should show revenue that covers all costs and a rainy day. The bottom line is that your company should be modeled after your average successful for-profit company because you want it to be self-sustaining.

Capitalism the way we have it is incomplete because it leaves people behind.

After the emergence of new capitalism following World War II, people were much better off financially.?

But improvement has not been evenly spread across the world. In Europe and North America, millions saw a significant improvement in their quality of life and wealth. Unfortunately, more people were left behind and impoverished.?

To address the gap in wealth, the United Nations came up with the Millennium Development Goals, which had a goal to end world poverty (Now replaced with Sustainable Development Goals - SDGs). There have been great improvements from this, but the numbers of those in poverty around the world are just too high.?

This is where social businesses are so essential. They don’t discard the importance of capitalism and try to replace it. They simply provide room to improve upon it and fill in the gaps.?

See the great untapped potential at the bottom of the pyramid.. Like CK Prahlad said.

Doing business with the world’s 4 billion poorest people — two-thirds of the world’s population — will require radical innovations in technology and business models. It will require MNCs to reevaluate price–performance relationships for products and services. It will demand a new level of capital efficiency and new ways of measuring financial success.

Companies will be forced to transform their understanding of scale, from a “bigger is better” ideal to an ideal of highly distributed small-scale operations married to world-scale capabilities.

In short, the poorest populations raise a prodigious new managerial challenge for the world’s wealthiest companies: selling to the poor and helping them improve their lives by producing and distributing products and services in culturally sensitive, environmentally sustainable, and economically profitable ways.

If we can help those stuck at the bottom, the world will become a better place for everyone..

It is tragic that as Capitalists we have implicitly assumed that the rich will be served by the corporate sector, while governments and NGOs will protect the poor and the environment. This implicit divide is stronger than most realize. Managers in MNCs, public policymakers, and NGO activists all suffer from this historical division of roles.

A huge opportunity lies in breaking this code — linking the poor and the rich across the world in a seamless market organized around the concept of sustainable growth and development.

Collectively, we have only begun to scratch the surface of what is the biggest potential market opportunity in the history of commerce. Those in the private sector who commit their companies to a more inclusive capitalism have the opportunity to prosper and share their prosperity with those who are less fortunate. In a very real sense, the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid represents the loftiest of our global goals.