Podcast: Play in new window | Download

When you transition from a past career to the life of a social entrepreneur you bring a lot of baggage with you — some good and some bad.

You will have great working habits and mindsets that you want to carry with you into your new venture, and you will have really negative working habits and mindsets that you need to get rid of if you are going to be successful in the entrepreneur space.

After all, working in the corporate world or in the nonprofit sector where you are not the founder and CEO requires a totally different way of thinking than launching and running your own company.

Today, I am joined by Lindsey McCoy the co-founder of Plaine Products. She has a master’s degree in nonprofit management and spent 10 years working on environmental education in the Bahamas, before her and her sister co-founded a company, Plaine Products, that offers premium personal care products in aluminum bottles that can be returned, refilled and reused.

Lindsey and I are going to talk all about traditional nonprofit mindsets — both good and bad — and how those mindsets need to be applied to social enterprises in order to make us more effective (and which ones need to be ditched and done away with altogether).

This conversation is jam-packed with practical information about how to build a great product and loyal customer following using the customer relationship and is full of “aha” moments for anyone who has worked in the nonprofit sector and has transitioned to life as an entrepreneur.

But, it’s also really helpful for all of us, because it helps us to see the baggage that we might have taken from our past careers and the mindset shifts that we need to make.

In Today’s podcast episode, you’ll learn:

-The good nonprofit mindsets that all purpose-driven entrepreneurs should adopt to grow their business bottom-lines
-How to use the customer “donor” relationship to increase feedback, loyalty and sales
-The most common negative mindsets that nonprofits have, which hold social entrepreneurs back from success.
-How to replace poor nonprofit mindsets with better mindsets and habits

Important links from this episode:

Plaine Products
5 Things You Don’t Want in Your Shampoo — by Lindsey McCoy
How Nonprofit Mindsets Have Hurt and Helped Me As a Purpose-Driven Entrepreneur by Lindsey McCoy — Co-Founder of Plaine Products — Rank & File Issue #14
You Are Good Enough: Empower Your Brand with Authentic Story — Lindsey McCoy on the Rank & File Blog