Start Something That Matters Read online

  I’d set 10,000 shoes as the milestone number when we’d go back to Argentina and give away the promised shoes to the children in need. When we hit that number I decided to take my parents, my brother and sister, Jonathan the intern, and several good friends who had been supporting TOMS by spreading the word around Los Angeles.

  The studio apartment in Venice where it all began. From left to right: Jonathan, Garett, me, Liza, Hajime, and Allie. This whole crew is still with TOMS today.

  Once in Argentina, I rejoined the crew—Alejo and the shoemakers—and together we rented a large sleeper bus with a spacious storage area for our hundreds of containers of shoes. We started in the greater Buenos Aires area and then drove eighteen hours to the northeastern part of the country, going from village to village, some nights sleeping on the bus, other nights renting rooms in small motels. We spent ten days traveling through Argentina, driving from clinic to school to soup kitchen to community center, hand-placing 10,000 pairs of shoes on kids’ feet.

  The children had been told we were coming, and our local organizers had informed us of the needed shoe sizes. The kids, anticipating a new pair—or their first pair—of shoes were so eager for our arrival that they would start clapping with joy when they spotted the bus rolling into town. I broke down in tears many times. Oh, my God, I thought, this is actually working. At each stop I was so overcome with emotion that I could barely slip the first pair of shoes on a child without crying with love and happiness. Just nine months ago, this started with a sketch in my journal and now we were about to provide 10,000 pairs of new shoes to children in need. This is when it really hit me that a simple idea could have real impact, and that a pair of shoes could create so much joy.

  When distributing the shoes, we tried to be very organized, asking the kids to line up according to their shoe size. If they didn’t know it, they could step on a foot-measuring scale drawn on the back of a cardboard box (my mom came up with that idea). But the whole time we were all so overcome with emotion it was almost impossible to be businesslike.

  I remember one village that looked like a trash dump. Everything was broken down: The houses were barely standing, the streets filled with broken glass and garbage. But the kids were joyful, swarming around us, laughing and playing and thanking us with such sincerity that, once again, we were all overcome with so many emotions. I remember looking at my mom and dad and seeing them in tears, and that just made me cry more, which, when they saw me crying, made them cry again. I’d never really understood the expression “tears of joy” before. Now we all did.

  On this page is what I wrote in my journal that day.

  When I returned from that first Shoe Drop, I was a different person. I also realized that TOMS wasn’t going to be just another business for me. It was going to be my life, in the best sense. Each of the four other businesses I’d started were satisfying in different ways, but this one provided me with a sense of fulfillment unlike anything I’d ever felt before. All at once it made a living for me and everyone who worked at TOMS, it brought me closer to the people and places I loved, and it offered me a way to contribute something to people in need. I didn’t have to compartmentalize any of my life’s ambitions: personal, professional, or philanthropic. They all converged in a single mission.

  Once I realized this, I had to tell my partners in my driver-education business that I wanted to be bought out, and they soon obliged me. The sale gave me some capital with which to hire people who really understood the shoe business. Now, with a few industry veterans on board, we were ready to scale up operations.

  Of course, while making plans to ramp up the business, I also started thinking about the next Shoe Drop, and the next, and the one after that. I’d always been determined in my business ventures, hungry to succeed and challenge myself to new levels. But I’m more hungry than ever now, because the work I’m doing isn’t only for myself and the TOMS family but also for the millions of children around the world whose feet sorely need shoes.

  There is something different in the air these days: I feel it when I talk to business leaders, give speeches at high school and college campuses, and engage in conversation with fellow patrons at coffee shops. People are hungry for success—that’s nothing new. What’s changed is the definition of that success. Increasingly, the quest for success is not the same as the quest for status and money. The definition has broadened to include contributing something to the world and living and working on one’s own terms.

  Putting shoes on children’s feet is the heart of what we do at TOMS—here I am with designer and good friend John Whitledge.

  When I started TOMS, people thought I was crazy. In particular, longtime veterans of the footwear industry (shoe dogs, as they’re called) argued that the model was unsustainable or at least untested—that combining a for-profit company with a social mission would complicate and undermine both. What we’ve found is that TOMS has succeeded precisely because we have created a new model. The giving component of TOMS makes our shoes more than a product. They’re part of a story, a mission, and a movement anyone can join.

  TOMS is only one example of a new breed of companies that are succeeding at this volatile moment in capitalism. The tremendous growth of TOMS would never have been possible during my parents’ generation or even when I was first getting started in business in the not-so-distant past. In this fast-paced and constantly mutating world, it is easier than ever to seize the day, but in order to do so, you must play by a new set of rules—because, increasingly, the tried-and-true tenets of success are just tried, not true.

  What you now hold in your hands is a guide to help you and anyone who is interested start something that matters. In this book, I describe some of the counterintuitive principles that have helped TOMS grow from an interesting idea to a company that in five years has given more than a million pairs of shoes to children in need. And I will show how you, too, can create something that will make a difference, whether it’s a nonprofit organization, your own social enterprise, a new business you create on the side while still working in the mainstream, or perhaps even a new division of your current company. You will also read the stories of other people who started something that matters and learn their tips on how to make a difference in business and how to make a business out of making a difference. We all come at that goal from different angles, but what all of us have in common is a foundation on at least one, if not all, of six key traits: These six traits form the guidelines I believe everyone should follow to start and sustain something that matters. This book shows you how to apply them.

  Together, these six elements offer lessons that will challenge you to look at your business and your life from a different perspective: They teach that having a story may be the most important part of your new venture; that fear can be useful; that having vast resources is not as critical as you might think; that simplicity is a core goal in successful enterprises; that trust is the most important quality you bring to your company; and, finally, that giving may be the best investment you’ll ever make.

  If you’re like me and most of the people I know, you yearn for something more than just business success. You’re searching for meaning. You want to have the time and freedom to do the things you love and contribute to making the world a better place.

  The stories that follow will show that you can earn money, achieve personal fulfillment, and make a positive impact on the world all at the same time. If this sounds like the way you want to do business and live your life, this book can help get you started.

  Here’s a story I like about two young men, Adam Lowry and Eric Ryan, who had been friends since high school. As young adults, they lived with five other roommates in a San Francisco apartment they described as “the dirtiest in the city.” Adam, tall and thin, was a chemical engineer and environmental scientist who once studied climate change. Eric, short and thin, was a marketing professional for brands like Gap and Saturn.

  Very occasionally the two would attempt to clean their ap
artment, and when they did, they would puzzle over the scary warnings on the package labels of cleaning products, which seldom even listed the ingredients. Using the products would make their skin burn and eyes water and it made them wonder whether the cleansers were safe at all, for themselves or for the environment. One day the two friends did a Google search on the items to see if other people shared their anxieties. They found that a surprisingly large number of people had been irritated using them.

  So they decided that they would make a better product themselves, one that was kinder to both the environment and to the people using it. Given that Adam was temporarily unemployed, and gifted at mixing chemicals, the duo turned their kitchen into a laboratory, cooking up concoctions like mad scientists. Soon the apartment was filled with plastic beer pitchers brimming with mysterious brews and covered with “Do Not Drink!” warnings written on masking tape. They slowly started to develop functional cleaning products from nontoxic ingredients.

  Eric then found a nearby business that made cleaning products for other companies and an expert in the field who was willing to work with two inexperienced guys who wanted to create an environmentally friendly alternative.

  In 2000 they launched their line under the name “method” (intentionally lowercased), and their first creation was a hand soap that they packaged in a beautiful teardrop container. Eric was skilled at packaging, and from the start method’s products were distinguished by excellent design, an important signal to the consumer about the care taken with the production of the contents. But as good as their environmental pitch and design were, Eric and Adam had trouble getting their merchandise into stores. Of course, they were also wildly understaffed, understocked, and underfunded; at one point they had only sixteen dollars left in their bank account.

  When they finally did get a local store to carry their brand, they didn’t have enough of their shower cleaner on hand to satisfy the store’s orders. They had to think quickly: Remembering that they’d given samples to many of their friends, they called them up, hunted them down, collected their house keys, ran to their apartments, gathered whatever cleaner they could find, ran back to their own place, poured the contents into new bottles, and then dashed to the store with the order. They arrived just moments before the customer was ready to give up on them.

  But because the two had a compelling story to tell about who they were, why they wanted to create this product line, and how environmentally safe it was, they were eventually able to attract attention from the press, including coverage in Vogue, Time, and other publications, which caught the attention of store buyers. Along the way, they were also creating a loyal cadre of customers who not only found the product useful but felt connected to a story that moved them and a movement that became part of their story.

  To keep things simple and transparent, the company also created what they called the Dirty List. If they discover that any commonly used ingredient is unhealthy for homes or for the planet, that ingredient is banished from ever being used by method. For instance, beef fat is commonly used as a softening agent in dryer sheets across the industry, but beef fat is a “dirty” ingredient: Many people would be horrified to know that their clothes get a little softer in the dryer because cattle were slaughtered. Beef fat is banned from method products. Instead, method dryer sheets are embedded with plant-based oilseed. The story of method is also one of their favorite slogans: “People Against Dirty.”

  Today, method is one of the world’s largest eco-friendly cleaning brands, selling its merchandise in national stores including Whole Foods, Target, Costco, Duane Reade, and Staples. It has been featured on the Home Shopping Network, and its liquid hand soap is number three in the category in sales. Fast Company magazine ranked method as the sixteenth-most-innovative company in the world; in 2006, Inc. magazine ranked it the seventh-fastest-growing company in the United States: Sales rose from less than $90,000 in 2001 to around $100 million in 2010.

  Not only that, but Eric and Adam were named PETA’s “Persons of the Year” in 2006 and were featured in Time magazine’s 2006 “Who’s Who Eco Guide.”

  All this happened because Eric and Adam had an idea, a story to tell, and, eventually, a product to sell. From their very first sale, they led with their story—the personal story of two guys worried about the toxicity of the products they cleaned with, and the professional story of a company that approached cleaning in an environmentally friendly way. These stories allowed them to funnel excitement about the brand to consumers, who otherwise don’t spend much time thinking about cleansers—and for good reason. Method gave them a reason to make a previously thoughtless decision into a meaningful one.

  Stories are the most primitive and purest form of communication. The most enduring and galvanizing ideas and values of our civilization are embedded in our stories, from those of Homer, whose preliterate epic poems united the Greeks’ national spirit, and Virgil, whose poems did the same for the Romans, to those told by Jesus, who used parables to teach his disciples. It seems to be in our genetic makeup to capture our best ideas in stories, to enjoy them, to learn from them, and to pass them on to others.

  According to renowned storyteller and author Kendall Haven (author of Super Simple Storytelling), “Human minds rely on stories and story architecture as the primary road map for understanding, making sense of, remembering, and planning our lives—as well as the countless experiences and narratives we encounter along the way.” Smart, future-oriented companies use this ancient impulse in new ways, by telling stories that people can watch on YouTube and share on Facebook.

  When you have a memorable story about who you are and what your mission is, your success no longer depends on how experienced you are or how many degrees you have or who you know. A good story transcends boundaries, breaks barriers, and opens doors. It is a key not only to starting a business but also to clarifying your own personal identity and choices.

  A story evokes emotion, and emotion forges a connection. This is why the way companies introduce themselves to customers has changed. They can no longer rely on simple, straightforward ad campaigns, the kind portrayed on the television show Mad Men. The Mad Men style of advertising was effective during an era when there were only three channels on your television. Back then, major brands controlled the conversation by bombarding consumers with pitches such as: Ford trucks are the toughest; Crest toothpaste makes teeth their whitest; Coca-Cola is the most refreshing soft drink.

  I don’t believe those work today. The media are much more fragmented and the attention of consumers more divided.

  People are no longer all listening to or watching the same few radio or TV stations each week—they’re following their own carefully curated Twitter feeds, commenting on and creating blogs, channel surfing among more than 500 TV stations, watching Hulu on laptops, clicking on YouTube, reading Kindles and Nooks, and surfing on iPads. Sometimes all at the same time.

  It may seem counterintuitive, but because so many product claims and consumer opinions are a click away, it’s actually more, not less, difficult to base purchasing decisions on this information. Not only is there too much to sift through, but much of it is contradictory: Chevrolet is the best car—or the worst—depending on which you follow. Crest cleans teeth their whitest—or does Colgate? An article on the Web says one thing, but the stream of comments under it says something different.

  And unless this information is presented in an emotionally compelling fashion in the first place, you’ll probably forget most of it almost immediately. Business consultant Annette Simmons explained this phenomenon: “Facts are neutral until human beings add their own meaning to those facts. People make their decisions based on what the facts mean to them, not on the facts themselves. The meaning they add to facts depends on their current story … facts are not terribly useful to influencing others. People don’t need new facts—they need a new story.”

  A barrage of facts is simply not as powerful as a simple, well-told story—and science offers proof. I
n 2009, Carnegie Mellon University researchers compared how our behavior is affected by abstract facts versus a concrete story. The team offered students five dollars to complete a survey about various technological gadgets. Unknown to the students was that the questions had nothing to do with the study. Instead, the research focused on what happened when they got paid for their participation. At the end of the “study,” students received five one-dollar bills and one of two letters asking them to donate some of their newly earned money to Save the Children, a well-known international charity.

  One of the letters was studded with facts about food shortages in Malawi and statistics correlating severe rainfall deficits with fewer crops. The other told the riveting story of a desperately poor seven-year-old Malawian girl named Rokia.

  The students who received the letter filled with statistics contributed an average of $1.14. The students who read the story of Rokia contributed $2.38. That’s more than twice as much!

  The researchers then gave a third group of people both letters—one full of statistics and one with the story of Rokia. These students gave almost a dollar less than the people who saw only the story about Rokia.

  Facts are important, but the story matters. Poorly presented facts can even get in the way of the story’s impact.

  Seth Godin is one of my favorite business gurus and is especially astute in describing the value of storytelling in business: “People just aren’t that good at remembering facts,” he wrote in his book Meatball Sundae. “When people do remember facts, it’s almost always in context. Patagonia makes warm coats. So do many other companies, almost all of which sell their coats for less money, do less volume, and turn a lower profit. Is it because Patagonia coats are more beautiful or warmer? Not at all. It’s because the company has created (and lives) a story that has less to do with clothing and more to do with the environment. Their mission statement is: Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis. And the company absolutely adheres to that mission.”