Conclusion Tell your story

At a Social Venture Institute one year, a young entrepreneur was providing a case study about the challenges of her company. In a thoughtful and thorough presentation, she told us how just a few years ago she started Knotty Boy Dread Stuff, a company that distributes products to take care of dreadlocks. Knotty Boy Dread Stuff was going through some of the same trials and tribulations that we address in this book. As the respondents were getting ready to give their feedback, we could see how nervous the entrepreneur had become. The first words Lisa said to her were, “You are doing everything right, and given where your business is, these are all the right problems to have.” The woman gave a very visible sigh of relief. Later, at this same conference, Lisa saw something that has always stuck with her: Margot Fraser and this same young woman were sitting at a picnic table with their heads together. Margot was following up on her case study and talking intently to her about her financial statements. That’s how this book began.

As seasoned business entrepreneurs, we can’t go back in time and tell our younger selves that these are good problems to have, every leap looks like the biggest leap until the next one comes along, we all screw up, every business owner is playing a role, learning to trust yourself goes back to your core values, Goliaths’ shadows are big until you build the multi-legged stool, owning your numbers is usually more effective than burying your head in the sand, creating an advisory board can save your company, and you can still think of yourself as a success even if you have to close your doors. We can’t offer our younger selves practical tips and self-care strategies so that we won’t take the road to burnout. But we can tell the truth to other entrepreneurs. We can share our stories and perhaps help others who are trying to make a living while also making a better world. And so we wrote this book.

The intent of this book is not to address all the tough stuff we have ever had to face while running values-based businesses. We could have written much, much more about legal battles, difficult employees, the economy, federal agencies, natural disasters, and on and on. Our goal was simple: to offer stories, ideas, and tips that reflect the truth about creating healthy ecosystems within our companies. On these pages, we tried to acknowledge the balancing act inherent in staying integrated with our core values: respect for one another and ourselves; a profitable, sustainable company with positive cash flow; livable wages to stakeholders; and a low impact on the environment. Using business as a tool to positively impact our world is a radical act, and it isn’t always easy. Sometimes when we are wrestling with the tough stuff, it can be hard to find stories that reflect what we are going through. We read about the successful hero entrepreneur who made it and has lived to tell the tale about how grand it was. We find how-to books that explain what we should be doing (as though we had never thought of those ideas ourselves). It is rare to find truthful stories about how hard things can be, even in the best companies. This can make us feel alone—we feel like we are the only ones having these problems, and we are the only ones who can’t figure out how to make them work.

Even though your story, your issues, your company, your product, or your service might not be exactly like the ones in this book, we hope these pages provide a reflecting pond where you can witness yourself and your company. Join us in trying to see clearly, hold lightly, laugh loudly, take the next step, and offer or welcome that helping hand. And then tell your story— all of it. It’s important!