The E-commerce Leader

[00:00:00] Jason: if we don’t make a difference in other people’s lives, what are we doing? I think that’s the thing that I would encourage everybody to think about
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[00:01:08] Intro: Hey folks. Welcome back to the eCommerce leader today. We’re talking about a different subject to the usual purely business and profit focused ones, something very close to Jason’s hearts, Jason and cinnamon. And that is about combining and integrating indeed charity and business in your life, which I think has resonance for all of us.
[00:01:27] Even if you. Particularly as Jason cinema are on such a mission to, help the world. So do stay tuned and you’ll learn a few interesting things about how you integrate life and business generally. I think so enjoy this rather different episode of the eCommerce leader.
[00:01:43] Michael: Nice. Yeah. It’s a good little, little phrase to remember. Yeah. And talking of Tom’s shoes then without, we could talk about that as a, so specialist case study, happy to hear your summary of it, but just more broadly, what are the pitfalls and downsides of venting into this, you’ve mentioned theory of change, which implies you think, what the problem is, which you may not, and you think, what the solution was?
[00:02:02] I’m sure. May often be wrong. So how do we, yeah, what are the downsides first of all?
[00:02:08] Jason: Yeah, if you’re not familiar with the story of Tom’s shoes, it was insanely popular, buy one, give one model, and, Blake McKowski started it and pioneered that concept. It became super trendy. He was super good at earned media.
[00:02:22] In LA, he was connected and it just blew up as a brand and on the ground in places like, central America or south America or Africa, the shoes, you’d buy a pair of shoes and another pair would be given to, to a child in need that kind of thing. The problem was implementation and, and the distribution of shoes broadly, the question is the distribution of shoes.
[00:02:45] On the ground, in a place like no bay compound, where we were, helpful to the local context. I never will forget sitting in the, principal’s office of a school in no bay compound. And the principal be principal being quite agitated that she had gotten boxes and boxes of Tom’s shoes.
[00:03:03] The problem was it was a primary school. So first through sixth grade, seventh grade, whatever, and all the shoes that she got were. large sizes. Men’s nine to 12, women’s whatever large size women’s shoes are. None of the sizes were for the kids than her school. And so I asked her what had happened and as it happened, she was a sub grantee, which is a phrase.
[00:03:28] So she, she was a down line beneficiary from another charity. And the charity had obviously creamed the crop of what they wanted. They took the shoes sizes they wanted and they gave. all the ones that made no logical sense. So then she had all these huge boxes. She still had kids that didn’t have adequate shoes.
[00:03:47] It was just a, it was just a poorly executed idea. And, and then besides the fact that what about the local shoe merchants in that community? , it’s no, all the shoes have been given away. And those are challenging implementation problems. and so bombass approach to work directly with, with homeless shelters, seems like a little bit more elegant, implementation.
[00:04:10] And, so anyway, so that’s the idea, the theory of change goes directly to, what are you doing and really theory of change. If you wanna geek out over it, go read the goal by Eliyahu gold rate, who in his famous book, which is about, the. Theory of constraints, ask three questions.
[00:04:27] What do you change? What do you change? Two and how do you make the change? And those three questions are perfect. Precursors to the idea of a nonprofit formulating their theory of change, working in, as they work in a community or with people.
[00:04:46] Michael: By the way. Yeah, I re-listened to this book recently on the back of a conversation with a mastermind member, cuz it occurred to me, that it was the answer to the question he was asking me and I haven’t gone back to him, talked about it yet, cuz it’s quite hard to grasp in some ways, but it’s a fantastic book.
[00:04:59] I’m just, I would totally endorse reading that for everyone in business as well, actually. Yeah. So coming back to the mistakes then I Tom’s shoe sounds. Like a CRAs era on one hand and a more subtle error on the other. So the CRAs era is just a distribution problem. You’re giving men’s shoes to children.
[00:05:17] That’s obviously a bit like Amazon delivering the wrong size shoes. It’s a bit silly, obvious. Yeah. But yeah, but the other thing, the effect on the local shoe making community is more subtle one. So that really brings me to. the other question, which I guess you’ve been doing this for 20, 30 years.
[00:05:31] I guess you’ve seen some big mistakes that people make when they try and interfere into the lives of, or intervene, shall we say yes. Slash interfere in, in the lives of people who have what they perceive as a need. So what mistakes have you seen that are the worst ones?
[00:05:45] Jason: There’s a whole body of professional work around the idea of international relief and development and how to do it.
[00:05:50] And I think the good work I’ll frame it positively and then mention a few negative components. But the good work is done as really co-creation work with a community. And like when I started in 2009 and no bay compound with those eight moms, I didn’t know what they needed. I didn’t know how to help them.
[00:06:07] I didn’t know how their community worked. I knew they were making Beed necklaces to try to sell, to try to raise money for a school they wanted. You can comprehend all that stuff pretty quickly. And so over the course of six or nine months, we, worked together and then we ultimately started making school uniforms.
[00:06:24] And for six years, all they did was made school uniforms. The parents or guardians would make micro installment payments. And, the schools were, benefiting by having a uniform school. It’s a British, a follow on colonial system. So they follow in the British. Form of all having their school uniforms and, so that was important for the school for school pride and stuff.
[00:06:45] And so it was co-created, the, it was a back and forth for nine months to figure out whether that made sense or not. And I think part of the, mistake that can be made with many charitable efforts as a rush to action and a rush to a presumptive, Decisions and logic that are grounded in the American’s mind or the, the Westerners, mind or point of view, oh, we know what the problem is.
[00:07:10] There’s no water here. Let’s drill a well, okay. That’s simple. Okay. The well breaks down nine months later, but you’re not there anymore. Then the. Then the well is, I totem to the Americans who came and went and the people still go to the streams, to fetch water and, many things like that happen.
[00:07:27] Africa in particular is full of, broken Wells bikes that don’t work, buildings that are, hobbles now that just a lot of failed concept. And I think a lot of it is because we wanna, we want to make quick decisions, quick action. And we’re not really sadly many times invested for the long term in people’s lives and in relationships.
[00:07:52] And, and I think that’s part of it. We also have a absolute control need as Westerners. They call it the golden rule in charity. He, who has the gold, makes the rules. and, it’s just sad. You see a lot of control freaks in the implementing charitable efforts and it’s really subjugation of people, and if you’re working with a community that’s struggling, the last thing they need is some.
[00:08:17] White guy bossing him around from America. Honestly, it’s like on top of everything else. Now we have the supposed experts from the west who are now telling us things. It’s really? That’s the, that’s what we need on top of a misery and, desperation we’re in. And you just have to be really thoughtful about what you’re doing and, and not, and not go in blindly to your own.
[00:08:40] Interest in motivations. And there’s issues like poor governance, poor organizational structure, bad theories of change. We’ve talked about already, coming in arrogantly, coming in with a noit adultism, that’s just distasteful, and wrong yeah, not only is it wrong, but it’s also dis distasteful, so you know, that those are the hard, those are hard, things to see and observe over.
[00:09:05] Michael: It’s again, reflect on intended generalization. I can reflect on my own experience, that these sounds like the habits of bad corporate workers as well, need to be control. Everyone hates your boss, who, makes you stay in late to do a, I D know, create a presentation or something that you know, is unnecessary or poor governments for organization arrogance.
[00:09:25] And yeah, that just sounds, in other words, it’s just humans being humans, allowing their weaknesses to come through. Yeah,
[00:09:30] Jason: go. Yeah, many parts of the nonprofit operations are business functions. It is a business adventure in many ways once. once you scale from one to one caring and, trying to help someone personally, to trying to help a community of people or trying to help, a group, some group of people you’re really operationalizing something.
[00:09:51] That’s very similar to business. I’ve lived in both worlds now for a long time, and it’s just different thinking sometimes and different terminology, but the underpinnings of much of the work is very similar.
[00:10:03] Michael: yeah. Which to the point, of what we are partly talking about today, which is if you’ve got a, if you wanna scratch the itch of having your own charitable giving sort of activity, then it sounds like a lot of the skills and some of the mindset at least will, would transfer well from the business world to the charitable world with some yeah.
[00:10:20] Areas that really need careful thought and change really. Yeah. Yeah. It’s very encouraging. To me. First of all, I admire the fact that you do this. Cause you don’t have to it’s, there’s nothing forcing you to do except your conscience. And I think that’s, yeah, that speaks very well of anyone who does that.
[00:10:35] But also I know that it’s very encouraging to think that it can be done well because you hear those dark stories and you’ve articulated yourself about how it can go wrong. But, also it sounds like you, you are very respectful and careful about how you’ve done it. So it’s very encouraging stories that are coming from you.
[00:10:48] So any final takeaways or words of encouragement to those who are wanting to make a difference?
[00:10:54] Jason: Yeah. I think it’s the most vital, work of our lives, Cinamon and I will look back on our charitable work and say it was the mission and purpose of our life. We won’t look back on our e-commerce efforts and say that with the same clarity, we are, we feel like we’re funding our charity work, with eCommerce.
[00:11:14] And, we want both to go well, but we’re really at the end of the day, convicted that, if we don’t make a difference in other people’s lives, what are we doing? I think that’s the thing that I would encourage everybody to think about our world is growing increasingly divisive and polarized and ugly.
[00:11:34] Just, I don’t know, man. I don’t know how you feel in London, but. That just sounds weird to me, but things were a lot better in the eighties and nineties than they’re now. And I look back and I think to myself, yes, maybe we all have more money and better cars and bigger houses maybe, but maybe that’s not even true.
[00:11:56] Maybe that’s just true of my, my family, my context, maybe ish. But, but the truth is, I think we all would agree that we need. People and as individuals to really contemplate how we can be better in service to people in our communities and, and do a better job caring. And, it, it seems as if from my point of view, we become less caring as a culture in the west, at least in the us at.
[00:12:28] Over the last 10, 15, 20 years. And that’s, that’s something for all of us to ask ourselves, how do we correct. Course, and how do we demonstrate personally, not a virtue signaling status. Creating, Facebook version of something I supposedly say I care about, but actually just shut up and do something meaningful and don’t even talk about it.
[00:12:49] Just do it, and do it, is that
[00:12:51] Michael: allowed in the internet world? I know you allowed to do something without doing Instagram post I’m just as guilty. I was just thinking that last time I. Have I done anything at all for charities because I was running, for half marathon. And that was for my health.
[00:13:03] And I set myself the challenge. So I’m not pretending to be virtuous really, but I’ve gotta, yeah. If I’m gonna raise money for the charity, I’ve gotta talk about it on Facebook cuz otherwise how do I raise awareness of it? Yeah. So there is an intrinsic kind of virtue signaling kind of component, which I agree is very kind dista for.
[00:13:17] And I always look at it and to guard God, not another Facebook group for me. Yeah. Facebook posts, people get enough. Facebook posts for me in their feed. Yeah. And yet, I do believe in the chances I’ve supported. Yeah. So yeah, it depends, I suppose why you’re doing things it’s not the same BA behaviors, maybe motivated by different things.
[00:13:35] And then a lot of us, myself included have to examine the truth of why you’re doing stuff.
[00:13:39] Jason: But you’re in a very interesting space too, because I know how musical how deep your musical, work and professionalism runs, with you and your wife. You’ve gotta be doing a lot of stuff that is actually for nonprofits or charities.
[00:13:53] Yeah. When you do use yeah.
[00:13:54] Michael: Most of the work I do. Yeah. And I guess that pretty much all the, musical organizations I’ve ever worked for are constituted is nonprofits. That’s probably true. Yeah.
[00:14:01] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. I think there’s something there that’s I think for a lot of people, this isn’t far a field, we just maybe sometimes don’t, or we don’t orient ourself to actually have close.
[00:14:12] To the charitable work we really are. And then just be intentional more about that. I, I’ll never forget traveling one time we were going to Ukraine actually, as it happens in 1993. And, and I never forget, we stopped in Helsinki, Finland, and we were over the like two nights or overnight.
[00:14:31] And I walked into this big, it’s like a glass dome. Church, I think, or whatever, but I never forget the music. They were rehearsing for the next day’s thing. We sat in that and listened to those people. And I just, to me, that was one of the most striking musical experiences of my life. I don’t remember what they were doing, cuz it was, it was not in English, but but I’ll just never forget how powerful that experience was.
[00:14:56] And music changes people’s lives in many ways. There’s tons of opportunity to use music as service and, so anyway, so there you go. Yeah,
[00:15:04] Michael: Just as my little personal example, I suppose that the most charitable work I do is, I’m getting paid as a worker for the charity, but helping choirs of mostly aging choirs because the entire demographics of.
[00:15:16] Of the world, but particularly of Europe, including UK is aging. Yeah. And a lot of lonely people who come out of the house once a week in order to sing in their local choir. So I try and make it a good evening for them as they’re conductors. So yeah. I guess we all have our ways of giving and, yeah, that’s
[00:15:29] Jason: point.
[00:15:29] That’s really awesome, man. Honestly, it’s
[00:15:31] Michael: really impactful and I see your point, I guess there’s nothing wrong with having a structure and it’s second, be a few years to allow myself this thought that you articulated so well, which is that I’m allowed to be. Good at business and to help people with business and to run my own businesses.
[00:15:46] And also admit that the thing that I will look back on and get is those concerts that I put on for the, the aging choirs, rather than the eCommerce wins, just as you said, that you’re gonna look back on your charitable workers, your main life’s work, which is. It’s good to give yourself permission to do that.
[00:16:01] It feels like a weird sort of dichotomy in the world. Sometimes talking to buy provisions between that’s right. That kind of eCommerce, traditional pitch, live the good life, go and spend all your time in Hawaii surfing or whatever it is that you’re supposed to be doing or buying Teslas, nothing wrong with that, but that just feels a bit empty.
[00:16:18] I’m like, okay, that sounds great. But what am I actually gonna try and achieve with my life, with the energy I’ve got, how am I gonna have an impact that I care about? And so you are really helping to square that circle today. So I think this has been a. A really, fruitful conversation somehow.
[00:16:30] I think it’s something that’s not talked about enough, good
[00:16:33] Jason: conversation. I know there are a lot of people who, a lot of people who listen to the podcast who are, people of faith, Christians and I would just say, go read acts chapter 20, and really the person in the new Testament who pioneered business to run your life and doing different, charitable worker ministry was the apostle Paul.
[00:16:52] He was a tent maker. That phrase is from him making tents in the marketplace in acts chapter 17. He first uses the phrase, the marketplace and the, and that whole journey that he was on take apart the theology, but just as is like a business operator for a moment. And the journey he was on was he wanted to fund his own way.
[00:17:17] In his work. And he made tens with Aquila and Priscilla, these two people who are Italian leather makers and that whole journey he was on was so that he could say, I can raise money for, the poor and for the mission’s work. And no one can accuse me that I’m taking any, a do even a dollar from it because I fund my own way.
[00:17:39] And that is just so not popular right now. it’s cinnamon and I feel like that’s, that is the model that we follow. We consider ourselves tent makers, and that’s just not, that is so far out of Vogue. You have to explain it to people before you can even have them have an opinion about it, but their opinion is, yeah, that doesn’t sound fun at all.
[00:17:58] It’s like I’d rather work for a charity full time and get a, get paid by the charity. Or I’d rather be in business and just do business and then give, on the side. But that whole train of thinking that’s not new and it’s certainly not. It is, there’s a lot of logic there.
[00:18:14] There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of, wisdom in that approach where you can say, Hey, our charity, our overhead rate, like this is for real, for our overhead rate. Last year was four. The year before it was 2.9%. It was 4% cuz we had to write a check to set up a legal entity in Zambia. But, and so it was up, compared to the prior year, but the biggest expense in most charities is staffing.
[00:18:40] Yeah. And then the second biggest expense is marketing. If you know how to take both of those out of a charity, you will have an insanely efficient charity. And these things are, they’re not new idea. But they’re forgotten and, they’re worth exploring. I think, in my way of thinking, especially for people who are motivated by, if the apostle Paul is somebody who you looked fuck to, that, if that resonates with you, then go study his work.
[00:19:04] And really think through what he wrote and said about all this stuff. And I think it will be instructive,
[00:19:09] Michael: Absolutely. I vaguely remember my teachings around Paul, but that was educational for me. Certainly the tent making, story. Very interesting. And I’m sure that in the interest of balance, I would say that other religions, I have some, Muslim friends.
[00:19:21] There are many Muslims in, in London that are perhaps some Muslims. Yeah. Have, as I understand it in my very dim way, similar kind of figures. And I like most of the main charities of the world, I’m sorry, the major religions of the world, I would say seem to have a lot of injunctions around kind.
[00:19:36] And giving and that sort of thing. Yeah, I don’t think it’s a uniquely Christian, but as you say, it doesn’t drive very well with a lot of the messages that we’ve. Absorbed in American culture, they say on America sneeze as Britain catches a cold. So it’s very similar, the divisiveness in Britain.
[00:19:49] Yeah. As you said, the eighties and nineties probably were better. I’m just about old enough to have been born into the three day week when there were massive strikes and we’re back on strikes. Again, we had rail and turbo underground trains or subway strikes over the last week. It’s been almost impossible to move in London.
[00:20:03] Yes in a divided world, , we could do with more thinking about helping other people. For sure. So I guess we’ve better wrap this one up, but interesting discussion, man. Thank you so much for sharing, something and it’s really close to your heart and it’s really refreshing to have a message on a commercial channel about eCommerce that is not purely about just making a buck, but the reason why you bother making a buck in the first place, right?
[00:20:23] What it all matters. So coming back to the more conventional wrap up, I guess we better. The usual thing, which is to say, first of all, thank you so much. If you’ve been listening, hope you found this a different episode. I’ve certainly found it very educational and. Proof that you doesn’t have to be either or, but both and Jason and Cinamon living proof of that, I think.
[00:20:41] And, if you’ve enjoyed today, don’t forget, of course, to subscribe to the show on Spotify, join the ever growing set of people. Who’ve joined us there and apple podcast, if you’re on apple or Spotify de Vista rating out of five stars. And, final thing is, yeah, go and be inspired. Go and listen to this again.
[00:20:57] If you’ve been inspired and go take some action and following Jason and Cinamon’s footstep.
[00:21:02] Jason: Thanks man. One final commentary on my side, you can go see what we do on our charitable side at sopowerful.org, , or thethreeesthersfarm.org. So our feeding and food related programming work is Three Esthers Farm.
[00:21:16] And our sewing related work is so powerful. S E w powerful and, feel free to check those out.
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