24 TEENFINCA®: Teenage Financial Capability www.thewealthacademy.com.au

as possible. A common question we found ourselves asking was, “What's the smallest way that we can do this to maximise the impact that we want to create?”

We deliberately restricted our fi rst conference to a Brisbane audience, and capped the number of attendees at a modest 120. We wanted to nail it at a small scale fi rst, rather than bite o�f too much and only do an average job. That way, we could learn how to do things, build a team around us and a movement behind us, before embarking on some more ambitious goals. But at the back of our minds, we were always dreaming big: “What's next? Where can we take this?”

No one starts o�f as an expert… they're just good at asking for help.

When we were starting IMPACT, there were so many new things to learn that we constantly felt like novices. Sometimes it was fun – we used to laugh at how ‘legit’ some people thought we were, by the seriousness and formality in the emails we received. But sometimes it was scary – what if we failed? Soon, we realised a reassuring secret: no one else knows what they're doing either — at least, not when they start. They're just really good at asking for help, and they just keep trying things until they fi nd a way that works. As long as you learn from it, nothing's a failure.

So what does it mean to be good at asking for help? It means being able to precisely identify what you need, but don't know or have, and how you can get it. And it means making sure that when you ask someone for help, that they get value out of it too. We quickly realised that there was a lot of know-how on social enterprise that

Start: /stärt/ verb To begin a movement, activity, or undertaking.

Start. It sounds so simple on paper, but to actually start something – a group, an organisation, an event — can suddenly seem so much more daunting. Cara Nolan, co-founder of IMPACT Social Enterprise, discusses the steps she and her friends took to ‘accidentally’ start up a national non-profi t organisation, what she's learnt about leadership along the way, and how really… it's not that di�fi cult.

But fi rst, what is IMPACT Social Enterprise?

IMPACT is an Australian non-profi t organisation run by youth, for youth. We started it in 2014 to provide young people with the skills, knowledge and resources they need to create real change in their communities. We run programs that support and upskill young entrepreneurs as they enter the social enterprise space. These include a national conference, workshops for high school students, events, and mentoring for university students.

“What's a social enterprise?” A social enterprise uses business and innovation to address a social problem in the community. Social enterprises can be organisations or companies that intend to maximise improvement for people and the planet, rather than make a profi t. Look at Thankyou, a social enterprise started six years ago by Dan Flynn, a 19-year-old Melbournian. Thankyou funds safe water projects and provides food aid for those in need around the world, using profi ts generated from selling everyday products like water and muesli bars across Australia. Another great example is SEED, a Brisbane-based parks and property maintenance business that provides supportive employment for the long-term unemployed. IMPACT brings together the incredible people who started social enterprises like these to share their stories and learnings, and gives young people the chance to develop their skills so that they can also start up social enterprises or become involved.

So what did we learn along the way, as we started up IMPACT?

Start small… but don't be afraid to dream bigI would have laughed if you had told me, 18 months ago, that the little idea I'd had a with a couple of friends on a long aeroplane �light would have turned into a national non-profi t organisation with 28 ‘employees’ (in reality, all of our sta�f are student volunteers), an active Facebook following of well over 1000, a packed calendar of schools workshops, university mentoring programs, public speaking gigs and national events. Our idea was tiny: get together a group of students from around Brisbane and some interesting speakers, and have a weekend of idea-sharing about social entrepreneurship. Everything we did was as ‘lean’, and as simple,

Start your own enterprise

Lucille and Cara: cofounders of Impact

25

we didn't have, and so we made it our mission to connect with as many social entrepreneurs as we could. Our value for them: access to the network we were creating of other social entrepreneurs and enthusiastic young people who could become future customers, interns, or sta�f. We also needed to brush up on how to actually run a conference. Over the space of a few months, I found myself having one or two — sometimes three — co�fee meetings in a day, learning and gathering feedback on our idea, and forging an invaluable network around social enterprise in Brisbane. In a particularly memorable meeting, I spent over half an hour discussing table cloths. Who would have thought it was such a crucial aspect of conference management?

Find the gapThe idea for IMPACT was born out of frustration. As young people, we were facing a huge gap: social problems desperately need solutions, and young people are deeply passionate about building a better world, but so o�ten we don't know how to create the change we seek.

We believe that social enterprise education is one tool that can help to bridge this gap. This is for two reasons. First, social enterprise itself is a powerful solution to many of the world's problems: scalable, fi nancially sustainable, and innovative. The world needs more social enterprises.

Second, engaging in social enterprise equips young people with the skills that they need to make a meaningful impact both now, and down the track. Social entrepreneurs have a unique approach to problem-solving, a pragmatic inclination for doing rather than talking, and a passion to change the status quo. If young people think and act like social entrepreneurs, they're much more able to create the change in the world that they're so desperate to make.

The problem? So few young people know about social enterprise, and so few have the opportunity to develop the skills of a social entrepreneur. This is the gap that my friends and I saw, and we created IMPACT to fi ll that gap: to create a platform for young people to learn about and become involved in social enterprise. I believe that the most successful ideas that start up are the ones that emerge to fi ll those gaps and needs in the system.

Surround yourself with awesome people… and give them a reason to stay.

One of the biggest learnings I've had from IMPACT is that success fundamentally depends upon building up an awesome team. An awesome team will drive everyone forward with collective energy, defi ne new and powerful ways of doing things, and ultimately get the work done. The purpose of you, the leader, is to give them a reason to stay.

This starts with selling the vision. As leadership expert Simon Sinek famously says, “People don't buy what you do; they buy why you

do it”. A team will work tirelessly towards a goal if they truly believe in why they're doing it. With IMPACT, it really took the fi rst conference for the team to fully understand and internalise the vision. A�ter the conference, team morale sky-rocketed and IMPACT's reach exploded, as our team's energy drove it to expand to new cities and begin o�fering more activities, such as schools workshops. Once you're onto something good, it attracts great people – and IMPACT's team grew to welcome some truly incredible young people.

Next, you have to make them want to stay. One of the distinguishing features of IMPACT is that it is driven to create exceptional value for the people who are involved. Everyone who works for IMPACT does so for free, but IMPACT invests heavily in their skill development. In March, IMPACT �lew its leadership team to Melbourne for four days, to meet with some of Australia's leading social entrepreneurs, learn from top social enterprise education bodies, and engage in intensive strategic planning for the organisation.

We ensure that every Fellow at IMPACT has a mentor who is an industry leader in their fi eld, to o�fer support and advice. And of course, we stay at IMPACT because it's fun. From dodgeball competitions to weekend brunches at social enterprise cafes, we're sure to have an awesome time. This investment in our team raises the quality of our work, and I'm sure can be credited with IMPACT's ongoing success.

Most importantly, you have to build up the team to lead into the future. One of our biggest considerations in starting up IMPACT was the desire to enable IMPACT to continue on into the future, long a�ter the founders had le�t. We were concerned with the track record of so many youth-run organisations collapsing with the exit of their founder. It does seem a bit weird to start an organisation by planning for your departure, but nevertheless this became a focus of how we defi ned IMPACT's organisational structure. This was part of the reason for creating a mentoring and fellowship model. I'm now living in Vietnam, and I'm happy to report that IMPACT is doing so much better than it ever was when I was around. As Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg says, “Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence, and making sure that impact lasts in your absence."

Be gutsyMy fi nal words: “Be gutsy”. Just give it a go. Starting something up is not as hard as it may seem, and I can guarantee you that the rewards are immense. I have learnt so much about leadership, developed so many skills, and landed myself some incredible opportunities (such as this job in Vietnam), directly as a result of being involved in IMPACT. It's never too soon, or too late, to start. Good luck! T

Find out more about Impact by visiting their web sitehttp://www.impactsocialenterprise.com/