Weekend Briefing No. 31
Welcome to the weekend! On Thursday night, we had a pre-launch party for Profit & Purpose in Brooklyn. It was amazing to see my friends, family and subscribers there to support the book. It was also great to make a bunch of new friends. Profit & Purpose officially launches on Monday. I would love your help making it a big splash, so I’m asking for your help. But, I’m doing something special just for subscribers to the Weekend Briefing. Here’s the deal…
BUY // Buy the book. It's available for preorder now. BUY ON AMAZON now… like seriously, stop reading and click that link.
RATE // Please take a second to give a (hopefully) positive rating and a sentence or two… that actually helps more than you know.
SHARE // Last night I kicked off the #profitandpurpose selfie campaign by taking a picture of me with the book in front of the audience. I’m asking you to join me. Take a selfie of you with the book and share it on Instagram / Twitter / Facebook. Use the hashtag #profitandpurpose. Get creative!
FOLLOW UP // Shoot me an email and tell me what you liked or didn’t like about the book… or maybe how it changed the way you operate your business. I’ll be featuring the best stories in future weekend briefings.
SPECIAL TREAT // The first 50 people that send me proof of their #profitandpurpose selfie (a screen shot will do) will get a personalized signature insert from me to put in your book. These inserts will be sequentially numbered (first come first serve), so you can prove to your friends that you were an early adopter of Profit & Purpose.
WEEKEND BRIEFING //
5 questions to ask yourself before leaving your corporate job to launch a startup. Entrepreneurship is sexy. There are fantasies that most people have about the startup life. Most of it’s not true. Profit & Purpose gives readers a glimpse of how hard running a startup actually is. This piece features five questions one entrepreneur wish he would have asked himself before quitting his corporate job. Find out what those questions are here.
G20 economies have to cut carbon 500% quicker than we are. According to a recent PriceWaterhouse Coopers survey, G20 countries will have to reduce carbon emissions in the energy sector 6.2 percent for every dollar of GDP — every year from now to 2100 — in order to keep global warming within the 2 degrees Celsius. That’s a five fold increase in the pace of carbon emissions cuts. This seems nearly impossible. However, there is some room for optimism. Developing countries are cutting emissions faster than developed countries. Read more on the report here.
A non-profit calls it quits because it doesn’t want to have to rely on donor support forever. Vitanna, a microfinance organization for student loans, is closing up shop. One of the founding beliefs was that once they reached scale, they could do their work without financial support from donors. In Profit & Purpose, I tell the story of DonorsChoose.org — which has been able to successfully execute that strategy. After trying a number of approaches, they haven’t found a robust business model to wean off donor support. “We want to be true to our original promises that we would not be philanthropically funded forever.” So they are shutting down. Bold move, and I like it. Read more here.
Will Twitter’s BUY button work? Facebook and now Twitter are starting to experiment with facilitating transactions on their network — transforming social media into e-commerce. Will the strategy work? Social media has always been about consuming and sharing information. Will users want to do commerce on these platforms? Read this Inc. article to see the pros and cons.
Impact evaluation simplified. In social entrepreneurship measuring impact is essential, but it can be burdensome on the organization and the beneficiaries. Acumen’s Lean Data Initiative is focused on making data collection more simple. This case study showed that a simple 10 question survey can effectively measure impact without being overly burdensome. Read more at Acumen.
A THING I LIKE //
Overture. Overture is a NYC-based tech company that creates simple, compelling, punchy video bios. It’s like about.me for video. I just did one this week and had a blast with Jared and Erwin… Here’s my video for the book. Check them out!
You are super smart, so I’m interested in your thoughts. If you have friends that would like the Weekend Briefing, please forward it along. They can sign up for free here. Follow me on twitter for updates throughout the week.
Have a restful & thoughtful weekend.