If I could turn back time; starting a Social Enterprise edition…

Admit it, you’ve got Cher in your head now haven’t you? Anyway, this article isn’t about Cher, nor any other type of 80’s music (thankfully) but I thought I’d write some thoughts about what I’d do differently knowing what I know now having been part of BRIX for 7 years, and running it for 3. Hopefully it can help some of you who are at the start of the social enterprise journey, or if you’re a charity thinking about starting your own trading subsidiary.

Before we start it’s worth mentioning I’m still learning as I go, and there are loads of other areas which we haven’t got the time to go in to in this post, but my hope is that it can at least start a conversation about setting sustainable foundations for these enterprises. I’m always happy to chat to people directly about any of these areas to go into more detail as well. But anyway, here’s what I’d do differently (in no particular order!)…

Understand the numbers

I’m not naturally a numbers person. To put this into perspective, I failed GCSE maths and had to re-take the exam. The first question on my re-take paper was “measure this line”. That starts to help you understand that my educational level maths is dreadful, and I was worried that would translate into business. We have a fantastic accountant (shoutout to Lisa) who has spent so many years explaining to me terms like “deferring”, “capitalising” and “accruing” and helping me understand why getting on top of the numbers is so important. I didn’t have a problem with pricing our services or completing budget sheets but looking back on it, it was only because of the time that was invested in helping me understand it that I feel that way now.

The truth is, I couldn’t answer many questions about the health of our business in financial terms in the early days and it led to more stress because I didn’t know what was going on. If I could go back I would ensure I had a clear understanding of the targets I needed to hit and the accounting approach we were going to take. I’d also take much more notice of every aspect of our P&L’s! It may sound boring, but once you have that basis and an understanding of what money you have available (or not in some cases) it makes such a difference to your sales approach.

Take more risks in the early stages

I’m naturally a risk averse person, and I bring that into how I run the business. It has its downsides but despite what people tell you, it also has its upsides too! However, I think the early days are a great place to try a few ideas and plans. Often when something works you stick with it and try to develop it, and that’s the right thing to do. In the early days when NOTHING seems to work is a great time to try a few ideas and just go for it though. Now, don’t get me wrong these ideas should have some level of logic underpinning them but creativity can go a long way in starting to generate initial income and get your service off the ground. Perhaps it won’t work, but it may get press support (free marketing can often be good) or perhaps you’ll just realise it’s something that you should never do again. In any case, it’s not a bad idea to try things out…

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Don’t be so bland!

Admittedly, I’m still working on this as a leader in certain scenarios. In short, don’t be so boring and unopinionated when starting out. I didn’t really want to upset anyone or disagree with people in case it meant our business would never be popular, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. I’m not saying go and insult people or say controversial things for the sake of getting clicks, this isn’t Twitter – but I often wanted our business to look exactly the same as others or describe it “almost” the same as others. We’re still working on that, but there’s always room for personality within any social enterprise or organisation. People buy into personalities, especially in social enterprise. We’re not robots but we often talk like them on LinkedIn or within our business. So I’d show more personality, I’d be more honest, I’d not be so worried about what other people think or “sounding right”, I’d focus on the vision we have.

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Plan for 3-5 Years

Plans are there for changing, but having one can be the difference between twiddling your thumbs and having real success. When you have a strategic plan and a few targets which can be measured you can quickly start to work out what’s working and what isn’t. We didn’t really have a plan to begin with (other than to try and make money) but being clear on our offering, our market and our key audience has made all the difference in being able to reach people who we are here to support. Without that clarity and without having those plans in place, we’d probably still just be trying whatever we could in order to make it work. That’s good, but having a plan means you can still have some boundaries and guidelines to keep you moving in the right direction.

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Understand your niche and value proposition

You can never serve everyone and, as I’ve already hinted at above, in the early days we did try to, but it never works. What experience and solutions do you have, and who would they serve best? Often we think trying to just find any customer is the best route and that can work in some cases, but if you can narrow it down you can market to them better and work to solve the challenges they have. If you’re trying to serve everyone, you’ll never solve any challenge as you’ll be so caught up in trying to fit them all into one bracket. Be specific on your offer; who it’s for and the value you bring to the sector or segment that you’re focusing on. You’ll be surprised at how quickly that can start to level things up!

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Work smarter, not harder

The old cliché, but it still stands… it’s easy to get sucked into working as many hours as you can and use the excuse of “I can’t have a break as I need to get this working” when starting a social enterprise or any business. It’s a bit like a drug in many ways. I’m not saying things aren’t going to be difficult or unsociable hours aren’t sometimes needed but the truth is, the organisation will suffer if you don’t take good breaks and ensure there are boundaries to your work. That’s the first thing; set those boundaries early, otherwise you’ll resent it.

The second thing is create some automations! There are fantastic tools like Zapier which can help you automate certain processes and tasks which will not only save you time but also make your enterprise more efficient. Cool things to automate are: welcome emails for your email newsletter, notifications about signed contracts, accounting tasks and improving your team communication – to name just a few.

Finally, avoid pointless meetings! Connecting with people is great but don’t fill all of your days with back to back meetings talking about the work you should instead be doing unless absolutely necessary. Schedule certain days for calls, or certain times of the day where you don’t feel as productive. It’ll work as a good break but you also won’t use up all your creative or hyper-productive time that’s vital to building a successful enterprise.

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Partner with a Charity

I recommend this to almost every new social enterprise I speak to now as without it, I don’t think BRIX would be having the small success it is. I’d recommend to anyone starting a social enterprise to partner with a charity from the beginning, if you’re not directly associated with one already. There are so many amazing organisations who are more than likely working to solve a similar problem to the one you’re aiming to address with your enterprise, so why not join forces?

What you’d aim to do in an ideal world is ensure there’s joint investment in the project from the beginning. That could be shared as actual cash, time or sharing of resources so that not only can the enterprise have a foundation to build from, but that it can also start to generate income or a model for supporting the charity as well. Not only is this pertinent in the current economic situation, but it will also allow for better decisions to be made.

It took a couple of years before we were breaking even, so teaming up with a charity can mean you have that bit of extra time than if you were going alone. Just because you have this foundation doesn’t mean you can exploit the advantage of it, but it does mean you can start to reach the people who you’re aiming to serve by developing these strategic partnerships. Start to think through who you could partner with that could be of mutual benefit.

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Don’t rely too much on your social mission, but focus on quality

That might sound like a clickbait title, but it’s not meant to. What I mean is: get the business fundamentals right first alongside developing your social impact through your business. There’s often a tendency to rely on the social impact side in the early days and then not deliver as well on quality. The truth is, that approach won’t work. However, if you focus on building a quality business alongside the social mission, that’s where you get a superpower business. How could anyone argue with that?! So focus on doing great work, building great products or developing an amazing model alongside your social mission as a matter of urgency. That’ll stand you in good stead.

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So anyway, those were the core areas I’d have changed if I could go back in time. We’ll all make mistakes along the way and there’s plenty more to come I’m sure but perhaps these areas could help you or someone you know as they develop their social enterprise. Keep going, it’s one of the best journey’s you’ll go on!