Social Entrepreneurship Orangeville ON

There are lots of great reasons to become an entrepreneur. Perhaps you’ve hit on a particularly sublime reason: You want your enterprise to make a difference in the world. As long as you’re piloting your own ship, you figure, you should make it count for some higher purpose – as well as the bottom line.

Fortunately for all of us, social entrepreneurship is alive and well. The ranks of entrepreneurial do-gooders are growing every day.

“It’s much easier to market if people feel like they’re bettering the world in some small way by giving you business,” says Shel Horowitz, a marketing consultant in Hadley, Mass., and founder of an ethics-networking effort.

Here’s how you can go about creating a better life for everyone else as your company makes a better living for you:

• Figure out what you mean.
• Have confidence that you can do it.
• Follow your values to unoccupied niches.
• Build it on values, and people will come.
• Prosper first, and then start to give back.
• Don’t worry about generating hostility.
• Get a helping hand.

Figure out what you mean

“Values” run the gamut from right to left politically, from spiritual to secular, from practical to ethereal. And the ethical framework – or specific cause – that you adopt reflects your values.

If you’re going to incorporate your values and causes into your startup, first you’ve got to figure out how they will look in the guise of a company. And will these values drive your company.

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