Social media is a powerful force and opportunity if you use it well. To be able to do that, you need a solid social media strategy, a sense of what your goals are, and some consistency in your posting. In this conversation, Alyson Shane joins Matthew Rempel to talk about social media, how to use it, and how things change between when you're just starting, and when you're more established. Thank you Alyson for the conversation! Links: Starling.social https://www.alysonshane.com/blog Out on the Wi...
Sep 13, 2024•1 hr 29 min
In this episode of the Strategy Made Simple podcast Beth Cougler Blom explains how we can make better learning experiences by taking a learning design approach. She explains how her experience in learning design roles contribute to making better trainings and facilitating well with groups. We discuss how meeting ground rules and setting out the objectives for the learning experience. She also explains her experience in starting up her business and how her path led from helping with post-secondar...
Feb 28, 2024•48 min
Lauren Lee is the social enterprise manager at Resource Assistance for Youth. The main social enterprise at RaY is a moving operation called RaY Works, where they help nonprofits move between office spaces, as well as helping people in residential support programs move between homes. Because RaY Works is a program within the larger nonprofit, there are various benefits to both the nonprofit and the social enterprise. RaY Works gets to take advantage of extensive administration support and suppor...
Apr 05, 2023•41 min
Lucas Stewart has many titles. Presently he is the Executive Director of The WRENCH in Winnipeg. Previously he has been involved in the founding and development of a variety of social enterprises including Purpose Construction (Previously Manitoba Green Retrofit), and Senior Partner with Encompass Coop. His driving goal has been to help reunite families through providing good stable work while building sustainable social enterprises. In this interview, we talk about his current work with The WRE...
Feb 22, 2023•1 hr 31 min
Robin Bryan was the General Manager of Compost Winnipeg at the time of recording (Jan 2022), and continues working with the team in a consulting and advisory role. Compost Winnipeg works to take food and other organic waste that would end up in the landfill and instead use it to make compost. Through this work, they have needed to work through some critical parts of the business including how they keep compost from freezing to truck beds in the middle of winter, and dealing with the growth of th...
Oct 05, 2022•31 min
Jessica Floresco is the General Manager at Mother Earth Recycling (MER). Mother Earth Recycling does a variety of electronic and mattress recycling which reduces waste in the Winnipeg area. In addition, they are a work integration social enterprise, providing good jobs to people who have otherwise been excluded from the workforce, and MER gives their employees the skills and experience for them to build confidence and self direction. Beyond these social enterprise elements, Mother Earth Recyclin...
Nov 17, 2021•42 min
Hazel Corcoran is the Executive Director of the Canadian Worker Co-op Federation. The Federation acts as a bridge and advocate for the various worker cooperatives across Canada that form it's membership. They also manage some investment options for cooperatives so they can receive investment through RRSPs and TFSAs. Hazel also describes her transition from a student attending a conference, to providing legal support, to becoming the executive director, along with some of the difficulties and tur...
Oct 20, 2021•43 min
Nancy Neamtan has been working on developing community economic development and the social economy ecosystem in Quebec for decades. Throughout that body of experience, she has been able to work on the challenges that come with building up a sector. In addition, she was one of the founders and builders of the Chantier de l’économie sociale, a major network of networks for the social economy in Quebec. In this conversation with Nancy we discuss some of the challenges of building organizations in t...
Aug 11, 2021•46 min
Sandra Allen is a Member, Co-Owner, Board Member and People Team Lead for Shift Delivery Co-op. Shift Delivery is a last mile carrier based in Vancouver, Canada that uses e-assist trikes instead of motor vehicles for their deliveries. Sandra describes the value that Shift has in it's people, how they onboard new staff and help them prepare and transition into becoming members, and how Shift has been able to maintain their company culture. One intentional decision that contributes to their cultur...
Jul 28, 2021•31 min
Chris Nichols is a Worker, Co-Founder, Director and Operations Coordinator for Wood Shop Workers' Cooperative. Wood Shop is focused on creating wood furniture out of reclaimed wood for customers in the Vancouver area. They are working towards creating a more circular economy through their work. They started by using reclaimed pallet wood to create their furniture, but now they take materials from places such as residential deconstruction sites. The point of a circular economy is that what would ...
Jul 21, 2021•31 min
David Thuss is the current Director at the London Brewing Cooperative, and one of the founding worker owners of the Co-op. He has experience in many of the areas of the brewing business, but now works in a supporting role for the other workers in the Co-op. London Brewing follows a triple bottom line approach to running a social enterprise, and also emphasises partnerships with other values aligned organizations including an organic food delivery company, and a Café. Through these partnerships, ...
Jul 14, 2021•26 min
Joey Pittoello is the General Manager at Just Us! Coffee Roasters Co-op, and has worked in many different roles within the company. Just Us! is a worker Co-op, where each worker has the option to join as a member with a stake in the organization, and the opportunity to influence it's overall direction. One of the significant challenges that has been present throughout the history of Just Us! Coffee Roasters Co-op is ensuring that every worker member understands the added responsibilities that co...
Jul 07, 2021•42 min
Susan Holt is the Chief Growth Officer for Plato Testing, a software testing service that hires and trains people with indigenous backgrounds. She also acts in the same role for their sister company PQA. She has been part of Plato Testing's growth from a single office to five offices across Canada over the past five years. Throughout the growth of the company, there have been decisions that have contributed to Plato's ability to provide quality software testing, and build up the skills of their ...
May 26, 2021•40 min•Ep. 60
Olowo-n'djo Tchala is the founder and CEO of Alaffia, an international fair trade hair and body product company based in the USA. He was able to take this company from the garage, to supplying large national grocery store chains with their products. Throughout the growth of the company, he has put the mission first, and ensured that the workers in West Africa continue to get fair wages for their work, and that the products that Alaffia produces have natural ingredients made with traditional meth...
Feb 10, 2021•29 min
The purpose of B Corp is to certify and demonstrate businesses that are doing social good through their operations. Built into the system is an incentive to improve the impact that is being done by the business. ACU received their B Corp certification in February of 2020, and received the highest score in Canada and the 6th highest score in the world. I had the opportunity to sit down with Brendan Reimer to discuss what being a B Corp means for ACU, why it joined the movement, and why it’s a foc...
Feb 03, 2021•31 min
Meg Ronson is the Project Manager for Legacy Leadership Lab, a team based out of the University of Waterloo. They are working on using social innovation labs to build up a network and tools to facilitate social acquisitions. Social acquisitions are a form of succession planning so that business owners can exit, and the businesses can be converted to co-ops or community owned businesses with social goals. --- You can continue the conversation by joining SocialEconomyConnect.com. Social Economy Co...
Jan 25, 2021•38 min
Erinch Sahan is the Chief Executive of the World Fair Trade Organization. The WFTO is a combination social enterprise and fair trade certifier, with offices around the world. The WFTO is a member led organization working towards improving the situation for workers around the world using the 10 Principles of Fair Trade. --- You can continue the conversation by joining SocialEconomyConnect.com. Social Economy Connect is a free mutual support platform for practitioners, social entrepreneurs, co-op ...
Dec 01, 2020•43 min
The business model canvas is a powerful tool to get a quick sense of how a business works. It can also be used to show how businesses can create social good. In this episode, we will be examining what kind of relationships you social enterprises can have with their customers and stakeholders, what qualities go into defining those relationships, and looking at a case study of how Fairphone's business model is affected by their relationships. 00:00 - Intro 00:58 – 6 Types of Relationships 05:06 – ...
Oct 21, 2020•13 min
Social enterprise describes many different kinds of businesses, and it needs to have a clear definition. In this episode of Strategy Made Simple, we go through several key elements to define social enterprise. Featuring content based on interviews with: Sophie Short: https://www.socialenterprisemark.org.uk/ Elizabeth Chick: https://www.buysocialcanada.com/ Rebecca Dray: https://www.buysocialusa.org/ Amanda Kiessel: https://www.goodmarket.global/ Social Enterprise World Forum (SEWF) characteristi...
Oct 07, 2020•9 min
The business model canvas is a powerful tool to get a quick sense of how a business works. It can also be used to show how businesses can create social good. In this episode, we will be examining how different forms of resources can be used by businesses to create interesting models. Specifically, we will be looking at Toast Ale, and how they have been able to take a waste product from another industry and turn it into one of their key resources. 00:00 - Intro 00:15 – 4 Categories of Resources 0...
Aug 25, 2020•11 min
The business model canvas is a powerful tool to get a quick sense of how a business works. It can also be used to show how businesses can create social good. Without customers, you don't have a business. Finding the right customers can be the difference between a successful business and one that struggles. In this episode of Strategy Made Simple, we go through a few tools you can use to describe your ideal customers, from demographics and psychographics and branding matrices to innovation adopti...
Aug 12, 2020•12 min
The business model canvas is a powerful tool to get a quick sense of how a business works. It can also be used to show how businesses can create social good. Value propositions form part of the foundation of a business. By clarifying your value proposition, you can focus your business in on the things that amplify that value. We also go over how to create value using the UN Sustainable Development Goals as a foundation, and use Grameen Bank as a case study in how to model a social business. 00:0...
Jul 29, 2020•12 min
The business model canvas is a powerful tool to get a quick sense of how a business works. It can also be used to show how businesses can create social good. This is the introduction to a broader series on how to use a social business model canvas to create purpose driven businesses, also known as social enterprises. Watch this episode on Youtube. Transcript available on the Strategy Made Simple Blog . Continue the conversation by joining: social-economy-connect.mn.co --- Marketing Social Enterp...
Jul 14, 2020•8 min
For this episode of Marketing Social Enterprise, I was joined by Marty Donkervoort and Judith Harris to talk about how various models of ownership change the way a business is operated. We speak about some of the benefits and weaknesses of employee ownership and community ownership in social enterprise and co-ops. Continue the conversation by joining: social-economy-connect.mn.co --- Marketing Social Enterprise is a project of Strategy Made Simple - StrategyMadeSimple.ca Please visit our website...
May 14, 2020•52 min
Principles of minimum viable audiences focus the efforts of business managers down to their core supporters and early adopters. They force attention on the specific people that the operation can help, and enables connection to happen with those people. It encourages conversation with those people and maintains the passion for the project. Most social enterprises don't need any help focusing on the social mission. What would happen if we put just as much care and attention into the products and s...
Mar 25, 2020•9 min
Uyen Pham is the Executive Director at Artbeat studios, a mental health recovery non-profit in Winnipeg. They host artists for their Artists In Residence program to help them with their journeys of mental health recovery. Once they have completed the program, their work is shown in the gallery and they are invited to contribute work to the Upbeat Artworks, a social enterprise that sells alumni artwork. When a sale is made at Upbeat Artworks, the artist retains a majority of the earnings, and don...
Feb 26, 2020•35 min
The systems that we use to design our products, services, and programs influence their final versions. In this episode of Marketing Social Enterprise, Matthew Rempel will take you through three systems of understanding how you can design products and services to better serve your customers and social beneficiaries. 1. Human-Centred Design 2. Lean Startup principles 3. Nudge theory --- Marketing Social Enterprise is a project of Strategy Made Simple - StrategyMadeSimple.ca Please visit our websit...
Feb 12, 2020•17 min
What kind of risks exist within your social enterprise? What risks are you willing to take, and what risks are you taking by avoiding decisive action? In social enterprise, we make things more difficult when compared to business as usual because of our social goals. Adding social goals makes things more complicated, and complications usually cost more money. Knowing when to add more impact and when to focus on business fundamentals is essential when developing a social enterprise. Join the webin...
Jan 27, 2020•9 min
How do you think of value? How do you value what you produce? What have you subconsciously tied to the price or value of what you sell? Value is subjective. Understanding how the people you will be interacting with see value is key to building a successful business, and a successful social enterprise. To make the most of this concept: Take 10 minutes and write out the main point of value for your social enterprise, list the elements that feed into the mission, list the ways in which you can pres...
Jan 08, 2020•7 min
Siloam Mission has turned a large expense into a social enterprise opportunity. Charles Enns is the Building Futures program manager at Siloam Mission in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Part of his duties involve managing a small commercial grade laundry social enterprise that is currently serving the internal needs of the Siloam shelter. The Siloam Laundry shifted approximately $150,000 in laundry expenses from an external provider, into an internal opportunity for their community members to build up emplo...
Dec 13, 2019•30 min
