It’s really hard to protect them once they’ve made a few key bad decisions, because you can actually contract out of some different types of protective legislation. If you’ve actually signed something without knowing what you’ve signed, that can be really bad for you.

Great insight there Katie, and certainly a lot that we can really be doing as founders. Particularly, I can relate to your comment there about cashflow and also the problem part, or not solving a problem, that’s something I’ve seen a lot too. What steps would you recommend then to any impact-led entrepreneur, who’s at the early stages of starting their enterprise?

I think it’s really important that they think about what problem they’re actually solving first, whether they’re a social enterprise or a charity, and how you can actually somehow monetise that so that they can be sustainable.

One of the things that I got to understand a lot better, especially when we were going through your accelerator Tom, is understanding how people get really passionate about a cause. Then as an afterthought, they think about how they would need to monetise that.

It was a real privilege being able to work with people who are so passionate about something and then helping them find a way to become successful, but not everyone has the benefit of coming through an accelerator like yours, Tom. We have to try and find a way to catch them in the early stages before they make some decisions around what they’re doing without thinking about what that would do to their cashflow long-term, because generally that’s their life savings they’re chewing up.

Also, a lot of businesses think that they need to reinvent the wheel. You can actually get into partnerships with one another a lot of the time and go and tap into the customers that another social enterprise or business already has. That’s a good way to leverage each other’s expertise and make an even bigger impact with what you’re looking to do. That’s a really great way to think at the very beginning of their enterprise, not just what they can do to make an impact, but who else they can collaborate with. Another thing is they should be looking at grants and programs that can help them develop, like your accelerator.

Your accelerator was fantastic because it went through all the critical elements that we needed to know between marketing, structures, finance, budgeting, bookkeeping, all those things, and really thinking about who is the end person that’s using this service or goods that we’re generating and what do they want, what are they looking for?

Really, just thinking through all those processes at the beginning, but then not just stopping there. It’s reassessing that every month and saying, “how did we go with these? Where do we need to go next? Is the market changing?” You need to keep doing research constantly, [checking] are there going to be any government regulations or changes that are coming up that would stop me from being able to work in this manner? Or say do I need to go and check the awards for my employees pay rates?

It’s all those little things that can make people come unstuck in their really early phase of social enterprise or even business in general. They don’t know until sometimes it’s a bit too late, so one of the things we’re going to try and do on top of having the learning centre in Law On Earth is we’re going to start doing little building blocks of business next year.

That’ll be from a legal perspective, of what people can watch out for and just learning through a little E-Course what they need to watch out for. When those issues pop up, they already know to look out for it. It’s just raising a few red flags for them earlier on.

You’ve worked with a lot of different businesses, so what inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently which are creating really positive social change?

Tom, there’s just so many of them! Look, I love the ones obviously that are environmentally focused. I’m an outdoors kind of girl, but then there’s so many people that are helping those that would ordinarily struggle in the job market as well, I’ve always been impressed around those social enterprises. I saw one recently that was regenerating stem cells so that people who have been in wheelchairs for the last 10-20 years can actually start walking again. It’s just incredible some of the businesses and the social enterprises that you’re seeing in Australia.

I think in many ways, [Australia] is actually leading the chase in pioneering new and inventive ways of helping the community. Then I think also generally speaking Australia actually seems to be a little more community focused than some other countries.

Everyone gets behind each of these incredible social enterprises and charities and just really backs them, including the government. I think that’s what’s going to drive everyone to having greater impact in the future years, especially after COVID. Although there’s been a lot of damage that’s been done to a lot of the businesses who had to stop trading, it’s a really good opportunity for everyone to say, “okay, we’ve learned how to run lean now, what do we need to do to still have the same impact for people who really are struggling a lot more now, and make sure that we’re sustainable in the future?”

I think there’s some fantastic momentum in this space in Australia and certainly some more work to do too, but we’re on it. Katie, to finish off then, what books and resources would you recommend to our listeners?

My goodness, there’s probably a hundred books I’d recommend, but the most recent ones that I’ve actually been listening to were around hacking growth. Just learning innovative ways of not just doing the standard marketing, but learning, working with your operations people and tech team to just try and find ways to get the company to have massive growth.