Using Business For Social Impact and Ditching Your Corporate Job With Adrienne Dorison

The Fail On Podcast with Rob Nunnery - Fail Your Way To An Inspired Life

Adrienne Dorison is a business consultant, podcast host and the founder of Good Businesses Do Good and The School of Self- Mastery.

Through her work, Adrienne helps entrepreneurs and businesses get profitable while maintaining a commitment to helping others.

After paying off a $48,000 student loan in just six months, Adrienne quit her corporate job to pursue her business full-time. A brave choice, but one she feels she had to make.

She’ll discuss the pivotal moments in her journey along with the ups and downs she’s faced.

Apart from her business life, we hear all about her beloved dog Church, and how home and family life connects to her professional ambitions.

Through the episode we’ll get a first-hand glimpse at what motivates, inspires and keeps her working. And how you can model her approach for your own life.

Key Points From This Episode:

• How different cities have different business energy.
• Brick and mortar business versus online business.
• Balancing working from home and getting out and about.
• The practice of self-definition and introduction.
• Exactly what Adrienne’s job entails.
• Growing businesses with “baked-in giving”.
• Intentions of publicly giving versus anonymous donations.
• Just how important her dog, Church, is to Adrienne.
• Fulfillment and freedom through business.
• Matching income with expenses rather replacing salary.
• How Adrienne paid off her loan so quickly.
• The familial side of business.
• Pursuing and helping the causes that you personally care about.
• The School of Self- Mastery and switching it outward.
• Possibility of a show or a book in the future.
• The ripple effect of earning more to give more.
• And much more!

Tweetables:

“I help business earn more so that they can give more.” — @adriennedorison

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“I think as entrepreneurs right now, we have this really incredible opportunity to change the world very quickly.” — @adriennedorison

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“I usually go in and provide different ideas for how they could give and incorporate it into their business.” — @adriennedorison

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“I don’t think there’s a right or wrong in terms of baking giving into your business model.” — @adriennedorison

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Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Adrienne Dorison http://adriennedorison.com/

Good Businesses Do Good http://adriennedorison.com/dogood/

Unbound Morino – https://unboundmerino.com/

BNI https://www.bni.com/

EO https://www.eonetwork.org/

Stella –http://www.stellaartois.com/en/home.html

Adoption America – http://www.americanadoptions.com/

Jordan Axani – http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/jordan-axani-the-traveller-who-finally-met-his-ms-right-a6779326.html

Transcript Below:

Read Full Transcript

EPISODE 039

“AD: But for now I don’t know that it’s worth it for me to turn that into, like, higher end consulting service because it does take a lot of time if I were to go in and like – “Here’s the all the selections, here’s how we do that”, so it’s really just typically right now gets tacked on to, like, growing the business because if we can help them grow the business then we can show them, like, you can be giving back right now because I think that’s a big barrier to entry for a lot of people.”

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:28.9] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Fail On Podcast where we explore the hardships and obstacles today’s industry leaders face on their journey to the top of their fields, through careful insight and thoughtful conversation. By embracing failure, we’ll show you how to build momentum without being consumed by the result.

Now please welcome your host, Rob Nunnery.

[INTRO]

[0:00:54.8] RN: Hello there and welcome to the show that believes leveraging failure is not only the fastest way to learn but is also the fastest way to grow your business and live a life of absolute freedom. In a world that only shares successes, we dissect the struggle by talking to honest and vulnerable entrepreneurs and this is a platform for their stories.

Today’s story is of Adrienne Dorison. Adrienne is a business consultant, podcast host and the founder of Good Businesses Do Good. She teaches high achieving entrepreneurs to create the habit of success so that they can achieve their goals and find their personal freedom and fulfillment. We will be discussing how Adrienne helps businesses define their most important social causes and designs a business plan to grow, profit and support these causes at the same time.

Very impactful business that she runs, she shares how she paid off $48,000 of debt in just six months through her side hustle, while still in the corporate job and finally, she goes into how a blog post was finally the driving force, the final push that she needed to leave her secure job to work on her own business full time.

But first, luckily, nowadays, all I travel with is a backpack for one reason only, it’s clothing form an innovative Toronto apparel company called Unbound Merino, they have clothes made out of merino wool that you can wear for months on end without ever needing to have it washed.

This means I can travel with less clothes since the clothes, literally, if you just hang them out at night, they clean themselves because bacteria doesn’t build up, it’s crazy but it’s true. Checkout the show notes page for an exclusive Fail On discount that you won’t be able to get anywhere else and of course, if you’d like to stay up to date on all The Fail On Podcast interviews and key takeaways from each guest, simply go to failon.com and signup for our newsletter at the bottom of the page. That’s failon.com.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:02:54.4] RN: We’re in New York right now, what are you doing here?

[0:02:56.2] AD: I am here for a mastermind. Here meeting with some peers and mentors and just connecting with people. I live in Florida but being in the city, there’s nothing like being here and taking advantage of where you are and the energy here as well as just like so many amazing people to meet.

I’m here for like, three days of nonstop pouring into my business and connecting with other people.

[0:03:23.0] RN: Tampa doesn’t have this energy?

[0:03:25.1] AD: It’s a little slower.

[0:03:26.2] RN: Yeah, I know, totally.

[0:03:27.2] AD: We do have very small local business community in saint Pete which I like. Very different though, yeah.

[0:03:32.8] RN: Are you pretty involved? Like EO or anything like that.

[0:03:35.9] AD: I’m in BNI which is like business networking international and we meet every week. We just moved there about a year ago but trying to get more involved in my local community because I love working with local businesses and brick and mortars and I find that when I market myself online, I do get a lot more online businesses.

I don’t know if that’s just the nature of being online that online businesses are attracted to you so when I market myself locally or connect with people locally, I usually end up working with more brick and mortars and those types of businesses and just kind of like being immersed in the local community so I’m trying to do even more of that since we moved there relatively recently.

But BNI for me has been like even just the practice of getting out of my house because I work from home.

[0:04:21.9] RN: Yeah, no.

[0:04:25.2] AD: Meeting people, yeah, like getting dressed, I usually try to get dressed anyways, at least from the waist up because that’s what people are going to see but I come back from a meeting and my husband’s like, “My god, you’re like full of energy, what happened?”

“Well I met with people and I had a latte from…” – those are both amazing things that usually don’t happen on a daily basis but you know, practicing introducing yourself, you know, before we started recording, we were talking about that. Introducing yourself in the introductions and now that I’m here in New York, I do that, I don’t know, 150 times in the next three days but as someone who works from home and kind of can be in a little silo or a vacuum, I think it is important to practice that in a pretty low stakes environment, right?
Like these people see me every week, get to practice with them. Hey, does this click? Right? If I introduce myself like this or this.

That’s been huge in and of itself, you know?

[0:05:24.4] RN: Totally. Just in terms of we were talking about Clay Herbert here, he does this six word intro, let’s hear what you’ve got so far.

[0:05:32.0] AD: Want to hear my intro? I’ll give you one and then 10 more. No.

[0:05:37.7] RN: You probably have them.

[0:05:40.2] AD: Well, he says, there is no perfect intro, there are only perfect intros, right?

[0:05:45.6] RN: Each for appropriate times with who you’re talking to, that kind of thing.

[0:05:49.1] AD: Yes, which is so helpful. So I help business earn more so that they can give more.

[0:05:53.7] RN: Awesome. What does that mean? Tell me more.

[0:05:56.6] AD: Tell me more, what does that mean? How do you do that, right? These are all the questions that are going to happen.

[0:06:02.8] RN: It’s good because it’s intriguing and I’m like, well, that sounds cool.

[0:06:08.2] AD: Yeah, I have a background in efficiency and performance improvement so I work with small businesses to help them get better results in way less time so that they can ripple and impact the world in even bigger ways.

I want to work with people and businesses who really want to create a social impact so the “give more” is all about what are we then doing with all this money that we’re earning because I’m happy to show you how to earn a lot more money in your business regardless of what that business is.

There’s some fine tuning that we can do and create massive improvements but I also want to know that you’re going to do something really amazing with it. Yeah, they care about people and the world because I think as entrepreneurs right now, we have this really incredible opportunity to change the world very quickly with limitless income, with these – the global economy that we’re in, the technology space that we’re in.

Where we could reach anyone anywhere and sell them our product or service. But then, what are you going to do with it, right?

[0:07:07.6] RN: Totally.

[0:07:07.8] AD: Well, also not like martyring yourself. I think that that’s important, right? I think a lot of people are like, I just have to give everything away? No, I think you should absolutely have your desires and needs met and then there should still be a lot more to give away. I think that people think that they’ll do that once they start earning a lot more money.

You really need to start right away because it’s really building that habit, you know? I guarantee you, if you’re like, I’ll wait till I’m earning a million dollars, it’s going to be really hard to give away $100,000 of your million.

Start when you make $10 and just give away one, see how that goes.

[0:07:42.5] RN: Do you help businesses like actually implement like the plan of how to give?

[0:07:46.9] AD: Yes. Every business is going to be very different and some businesses like, already have give-back models. Some are you know, fine to do that on their own and they don’t ask for a consulting on that piece of their business but others are like, I don’t really –

The most common thing is, it’s like, I don’t have the profit margins to do that yet or I don’t really see how that’s going to work for me in my business model. I’m like, okay, let’s get creative, right? Let’s brainstorm. Typically if I go into a business and consult on what I see are areas of potential improvement for their performance then I already know the structure and the model of their business and I can see what’s going to be an opportunity.

I usually go in and like, here’s like three ideas for how you could give. Here’s a – I also want to make sure that it aligns what they care about, right? There’s a lot of things that I care about but there’s only a few things that I care enough about to do something about.

Right? I think that that’s really important for everyone to know, you don’t have to also judge yourself around what you care about because I think that’s huge for people there. But I don’t care about the same thing or I don’t care about – I’m sure they care, not enough to do something about.

You know, this specific thing in a third world country.

[0:09:07.4] RN: Totally.

[0:09:08.2] AD: I spoke with someone, one of my clients who was like, I feel bad or selfish that I care about adoption in The United States and I’m like, “That’s amazing, there’s nothing wrong with that”, right? You don’t have to judge yourself about what it is you care about because I think that we all – just like we all have like unique gifts in our businesses.

We all have something that for some reason or another in our life, we care about that thing more than other things.

[0:09:37.9] RN: It’s okay, right?

[0:09:38.4] AD: We need that diversity because that’s how we’re going to help all of these things rise. That’s part of what we do too, is like understanding what do you care enough about to do something about, how is it going to be baked into your business model while also keeping you profitable because long term sustainability of the business is also very important for me because you can’t just give away all your money and then not going to be in business anymore.

[0:10:00.6] RN: And you can’t give anymore.

[0:10:02.1] AD: Exactly, you can’t give anymore money which is not our goal, right? Making sure that it’s sustainable inside the business and then making sure that you know how to position it for your market, right?

Because a lot of people are like, “But this has nothing to do with my clients or what my clients care about”. Okay, there are certain things that we could work into that to communicate that message, right?

[0:10:22.0] RN: Do you mind sharing like a real life example?

[0:10:23.6] AD: Example? Yeah, one of my clients, she really cares about Rhinoceroses.

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