Scaling Side Hustles

011 - Building Businesses for Social Impact [ALT]

• Hill & Val • Season 1 • Episode 11

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0:00 | 18:50

How can you use entrepreneurship to create a business that makes a positive impact on society? On this ALT episode of Scaling Side Hustles, Joshua, Val, and Hill discuss how to build a business with social impact and solve some of today's most pressing issues. From the homelessness crisis to environmental disasters, they share personal experiences and practical tips for turning passion projects into successful businesses that make a difference. Discover how to identify the customer, solve the problem, and use AI tools like ChatGPT to speed up research and innovation. Tune in and learn how you can create a business that not only generates revenue but also solves a systemic issue in society.

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Valery Aguirre:

Hey, business. They welcome back to scaling side hustles. I'm Val and I'm here with Hill. Hey, guys. And we're also here with Joshua.

Joshua Aguirre:

Hey, everybody, glad to be here once again.

Unknown:

So we're here for another awesome episode where we're gonna keep it short, but full of practical info. And we're going to cover the topic of how your business can have a social impact, whether that's building a business with a social impact Initiative, or creating a business to solve a specific problem. Yeah.

Valery Aguirre:

And so the way we're going to be talking about that is sharing what we've actually done personally, in our lives, Josh, and I created a nonprofit, because we were passionate about helping the homeless population, where we were at in Florida at the time. So we created something which I'm going to actually let Josh talk about a little bit

Joshua Aguirre:

more. Sure. Yeah, I think we're going to talk about like, the trending problems that we're seeing in society right now. And, you know, from the east Palestine toxic chemical spill to now we're learning about the Philadelphia chemical spill, and the the water bottle alert that was put out. So like, I think there's just a lot of stress on society and the citizens in the United States right now. And they don't know how they can help how they can step up and fix things. And so one of the things that's really close to my heart is the homeless population and how we can solve for that. And so I want to teach our listeners like how to take a problem that's in society that's current and make it into a successful business.

Unknown:

When you say make it into a successful business, that to me sounds like, profiting off of the problems. I just, I feel like we should rephrase. That's what it sounded like to me.

Joshua Aguirre:

Sure. Yeah, I think I think there's like a lot of pent up energy of people realizing like, there's these problems that are huge, and I'm just little old me, and I can't solve it. And the reality is that you can solve it. And the way to solve that is through capitalism, not through slow government bureaucracy. So if you start to think of this problem in society, whether it's a chemical spill, or something completely different, and say, like, how do I fix this problem? And how do I build a business model around that you can not only work towards solving a systemic issue in society, but you can actually build a successful business out of it.

Valery Aguirre:

And I know that back in the day, we're trying to solve that homeless population issue. So what we did is just kind of just relied on Google and Google stuff search thing, how to start it how to what we needed to do all the red tape. But nowadays, there's a lot more tools that you can actually utilize.

Joshua Aguirre:

Right? Yeah. So I think one of the best tools that we have nowadays at our fingertips is chat, GVT, or Bard or any one of these other AI tools. And we can use that to ramp up the speed at which we solve these problems in society.

Valery Aguirre:

Oh, I wish we had that a few years ago, because that would have been so much faster. It's right.

Unknown:

Now how See, now I'm gonna I'm gonna jump in here and be like, how the heck is an AI robot? Going to know how to solve for a social, a human issue? I mean, I'm just playing devil's advocate. Yeah, I think it's a great tool. But But what do you mean? Like how? And also, you just you said that you mentioned that capitalism is our tool. Now, you just mean, like, our ability here in the US to be able to build businesses and scalar? side hustles? And,

Valery Aguirre:

yeah, that means actually creating a business to actually solve an issue. Right. So you're right.

Unknown:

So what could that look like? What does that look like for you all?

Joshua Aguirre:

Yeah. So for, for me, like, identifying who's the customer and how you're solving the problem. So if we look at the Philadelphia chemical spill, right now, the problem in there is not my water is tainted. My problem is I don't have access to clean water. And that's a huge problem. And how do we solve that using any type of partnership or whatever. So it's a very big problem that we can assume a lot of people are on top of. But if this isn't hitting major news, and you're just finding about it, and finding out about it now, and Philadelphia is right around the corner for you, you might be fired up and fueled up to actually tackle this problem and try to find a solution. And we can use chat GBT or any of these other AI tools to do loads of research research for us much faster than we were able to do it. And that can help go ahead.

Valery Aguirre:

Well, I was gonna say on a side note, we learned about it not through the news like you're saying but through tick tock. That's why totally for keeping tick tock. Hopefully it doesn't get banned here in the US, or anywhere. But yeah, that little plug there. Yeah,

Joshua Aguirre:

tick tock is great for learning about new skills, news and a lot of other things on there that are not often seen anywhere else. So highly.

Unknown:

Disclaimer, I mean, you have to know make sure you have good sources too. I mean, there's everyone could post everything on Tik Tok, but I get what you're saying. I just just

Joshua Aguirre:

That's true. No, it's a great point like, there's a lot of misinformation. And you want to follow the influencers that are showing the sources as they're reporting on the news.

Valery Aguirre:

Yeah, yeah. The more you use it, the quicker you're able to identify who's giving actual facts and who's just giving an opinion. But that goes without saying, because it's like saying everything on the internet is true. No, got it of just source and be smart about your research. But thanks for mentioning that hill. So anyways, maybe we could do a little exercise. Or we could actually use chat GPT to figure out how to solve certain issues. Should we do that guys? Or should we just share? Yeah,

Joshua Aguirre:

I mean, I think we could go like really briefly through how I would solve this Philadelphia issue right now using chat up. So I just found this article on NBC News, that Philadelphia rescinded the bottle of water alert after the chemical spill in the Delaware River. And they are claiming that the testing has been done and confirmed that the water is now clean to and safe to drink. But the problem is that they've already alerted the public. And so the supermarkets are empty of water right now. So we might look at this issue and say, Okay, well, Philadelphia might be the problem might be getting solved there. But how do we prevent issues like this in the future? So you might tackle like water at a at a larger level? Or is access to clean water at a larger level?

Valery Aguirre:

Oh, what are you even with these chat to do to ask? Like, what are all the ways to access clean water? At a drop of a hat?

Joshua Aguirre:

Yeah, exactly. So if if I'm going to open up chat GPT and go through this process, you know, I might say something like, you are a business strategist. And I need you to help me solve a water sorting shortage, but yeah, water, solve a business problem. And then I'll explain the business problem. That is, you know, people in certain cities after, you know, catastrophic events don't have access to clean water. And so just identifying the problem, and making it very clear for myself, will help the program to better solve it for me, and I have to keep feeding the program, what, what it needs to solve, but it doesn't need access to public information. That's the beauty of using these AI tools. It's scraping the public databases for that information to help me find solutions. So if I were to say, you know, I don't have any clue about testing water or water suppliers, I can tell it to search for water suppliers in a specific area, geographic region, and it will come up with those names and links, and then I can start validating that research. Right. Can we do a real life example? Yeah, sure. So I told Chechik t, you are a business strategist. And I needed to help me solve a business problem, and it responds charismatically Sure, I'd be happy to help, what's the business problem you're facing? And I'll say, you know, people in certain cities across the US don't have access to clean drinking water, potable water, potable water after catastrophic events. So it's now telling me a step by step plan of how to fix this problem, develop an emergency response plan, increase infrastructure, resilience, implement water conservation practices, increased public awareness, invest in new technologies.

Valery Aguirre:

And mind you this list, it's like in great detail. Yeah, it's

Joshua Aguirre:

very expensive. Yeah. So you know, I don't need to take all of this and build it into my plan. I need to use chatty PT as a tool, just as I would use Google as a tool and say, Okay, this is going to be part of my business model.

Valery Aguirre:

It's kind of a, it's using the slipper ideation, I should try to figure out a solution. There's issues in the world people are Get, get very passionate about it. Like, there's ways to find solutions utilize this, right?

Unknown:

How do you get AI to be more nuanced like to because you develop an emergency plan all these things? How do you how do you utilize the tool to, to figure out like, what is my role? I'm not going to solve like, sorry to be the I'm not going to solve water shortages around the world with my business. How do I figure out my role in it? Like, are we talking about building a business because I think there's a difference between building a business that the main purpose is to solve this problem like about water or a nonprofit, let's say or having a business and it's completely unrelated. This social initiative like I have a business, selling things on Etsy But I'm concerned about this water issue. What can my role be? I don't know. I'm just I just kind of want to bring it down. I feel like we're really like at a 10,000 feet and how do you make it more?

Valery Aguirre:

Sure. keep reiterating questions. When I've used chat govt in the past for any type of problem, it always starts out with the general scope. You then keep refining your question and asking more questions based on the answers. It's given us. So it's sure it's saying water conservation and emergency plan and alert Super General, super not. It's we need to so you just reiterate what part of that speaks to you. But we can go into that those specifics. But I know Josh wanted to say something along Yeah.

Joshua Aguirre:

I completely empathize with your question is like, you know, we're staying broad on purpose, because it is a very large problem in society. And whether you have some sort of Etsy business, or you're coming in this blind and saying, like, Hey, this is the problem that I want to solve, how do I build a business from it? You can you can tackle the problem the same way using chat, GBT. So, you know, when you come on our podcast, and you apply to be on a live consultation with us, like, what we're going to do is walk you through that, you know, who is the customer? How are we solving a problem? Who else is doing this in the industry? And all of those questions we're going to be programming chat up to answer for us. And that's where we gain a competitive advantage, because our competition is really with the people that are currently solving the issues. And how do we partner with them? So now we remove them from competitors, and we become partners with them? How do we partner with them to impact change in society and to fix these systemic issues? Because there's a lot of people working on these things right now. You're asking what your role is, we just need to know kind of that big picture of what the business model looks like. And then how do we plug in with different nonprofits or social impact companies to accomplish that initiative, and then the role will become more clear of like, okay, this is how I can use my business to fix that issue. You know, it might be as simple as like, oh, just donating 10% of my proceeds to this company that's doing it the right way. Or it might be like, actually building a new system that doesn't exist in society.

Unknown:

Cool. Yeah. I just wanted to bring it down to earth, because I didn't want to turn people off that were like, Oh, God, like, I can't build a business to solve the conservation issue. But like, but you're not saying that you're you're saying that how to use business and capitalism to participate in the solution. And whether that's partnering with someone who's already doing it, or coming up with your own system, or, or right or solution? So yeah, I wanted to, like, bring it down to my level. Sure, sure. Yeah. Cool. Did you guys want to get into thirst for change at all, like, I know, you have a practical way that you're using chat GBT to, to help solve, not solve homelessness, but well being to the solution.

Joshua Aguirre:

Sure what well, actually, we're trying to solve panhandling, which is a huge systemic issue. And there's there's multiple perspectives on this. And as Valerie mentioned, like, we started our nonprofit back in 2014, almost 10 years ago, but we went into this

Unknown:

nonprofit was is what's it called?

Joshua Aguirre:

This nonprofit is called the Joshua wave, you can follow us on Tik Tok at the Joshua wave.

Unknown:

And that Joshua because of your name, right? That's right. Like everyone's gonna assume that. That's right, Joshua from the Bible.

Joshua Aguirre:

And we we knew going into starting a nonprofit that there were already a lot of other nonprofits tackling homelessness, we didn't know what we didn't know. And we needed to gain knowledge. So we spent, you know, a good bit of time seven or eight years just trying to investigating the issue. And once we figured out like, okay, there's systemic issues here, with Pan handling, we developed a business model not using chat GPT. This was before chatting T, to find a way to build a, what we call an ecosystem business model that solves the problem from more than one customer segment at the same time. So in our case, like we're looking at how do we solve the problem for donors that won't donate any longer to pain handlers because of the stigma. And then from the pain handlers perspective, like how do we solve it from their perspective where they will actually have upward mobility and make change and not just use the money for drugs and alcohol and continuing to perpetuate the panhandling problem?

Valery Aguirre:

Yeah, for those that are, you know, whether they're chronically homeless or not, that are just hit a rough patch that they truly do want to get out of it or trying to do just accumulate a little bit of income. Yeah, handle it like there's, there's got to be a solution. Right?

Joshua Aguirre:

Right, right. So so our approach to solving this problem was multifaceted. And I think that's important for people to recognize. When you're solving a problem, especially like a social impact problem, you want to look at the problem from multiple customers or multiple stakeholders perspectives, and try to solve that problem for that person or people individually. Because as you start to solve that, you'll see some pieces fitting together. For example, if we're talking back with a water problem, you know, people that drink drink the water, or one customer, people that supply the water are another customer. And both sides of that customer equation have problems to solve for. And if you can solve for that, you've you've accomplished the objective of fixing the systemic issue in society,

Valery Aguirre:

your business. But anyways, let's, why don't we go into like what that object says she has about thirst for change what that is real quick.

Joshua Aguirre:

So we basically take an intersection. And that intersection will have pan handlers that we use social workers or medical social workers to approach and recruit into a program where they can wear branded T shirts that have our nonprofit name, and the QR code to scan in donate to, and the donors now seeing the Panhandle errors in in clothes that are branded, have more trust and transparency to donate, or give their money to this initiative. But that doesn't show any upward mobility for the individual, because they're still asking for money. So to change that we're changing the psychology of the individual by teaching them about commerce or vendor entrepreneurship. And so the idea here is that, hey, pin handling is a dying revenue generator for people experiencing homelessness. So in order for you to continue to make money this way you can you can access the same amount of money or more by becoming a vendor street vendor, and you can sell popsicles, or ice cream or water bottles at intersections,

Valery Aguirre:

and for exchange of that money is going to be all electronically. So for those that are donating, they won't have that questioning thought of like, oh, man, I just give up money, and they're gonna go use it the wrong way or a way that I wouldn't be supportive. Typically, you don't have to that goes out the window. Because

Unknown:

the money go, does any money go to the Joshua way? Or does it all go to the individuals?

Joshua Aguirre:

Yeah, so the brand, so it doesn't have to be the Joshua wave. It's an open source business model. So any nonprofit could take up this initiative and fix the problem in their city. The brand will actually take the money in, transparently report how much money is taken in and then pay the pan handlers or former pan handlers a fair wage, an hourly wage, and now Yeah, and that way, they can still earn an income, but they can see the approach of trading value for value instead of just receiving donations,

Valery Aguirre:

instead of just begging. That sounds great. Thanks for sharing that, Josh. So to our listeners, we want to just encourage you to submit an idea of problem, something that you feel passionately about, even to the degree come on to our show, so that we can help solve that issue that you feel strongly about.

Joshua Aguirre:

Yeah, I think one of the main problems is I'm seeing so much energy on tick tock of people that are frustrated with the systems that are not being fixed in society. And it's like, take up those problems as your own, and try to fix those problems through our platform. Because what we're doing here is trying to accomplish social change, and systemic change. And to do that we need partners, we need people who are championing these projects and saying that these problems need to be fixed in my city or my country or my state. And we need to move forward on these problems on solving these problems together.

Valery Aguirre:

So submit your idea at scaling side hustles.com. We'd love to hear from you.

Joshua Aguirre:

Thanks, guys. Bye