What’s a Social Purpose Business?
How do you address a major need without insulting the profession it’s associated with?
In fact, how do you elevate the profession to attract the next generation of great leaders AND get support without making them feel like a charity case?
This week on GaFB, Alpaca Packs founder, Karen Borchert joins Ben in the studio to talk about how the brand is doing just that: making it easy to support educators while attracting, engaging, and retaining more great educators.
Alpaca Packs helps school leaders and community members celebrate teachers; providing the support, empowerment, and respect they need to thrive. From writing thank you notes, to sending monthly surprise supply packs loaded with the exact items teachers need, teachers who get support can do their best work.
Branding and messaging for nonprofit and social impact organizations
Borchert started Alpaca Packs because too many teachers are scrambling for the resources they need to do their job. Borchert wanted to understand how teachers felt about the profession of teaching and create a solution where everyone feels like they win, creating a community of support for teachers.
As Borchert discusses in the episode, branding and messaging for a social purpose organization has many challenges. Creating a brand that doesn’t insult or degrade the very people it’s trying to support is only one of them, let alone trying to retain and attract future educators.
Check out our interview with the amazing Karen Borchert on YouTube and where you get your podcasts.
You can support educators in your city by sending a free school staff survey to find out what kind of support they need the most.
You can find Borchert and the Alpaca crew at alpacapacks.com
Ep. 42:
What’s a Social Purpose Business?
Automated Transcript
Ben Lueders:
What's the difference between a nonprofit and a social purpose business? Hey, welcome to Growing a Fruitful Brand where we discuss how to create and grow a brand that makes the world a better place for you, your customers, and your employees. I'm Ben Lueders, founder and art director of Fruitful, design and strategy.
Today we're talking about social purpose businesses with Omaha's very own Karen Borchert. Believe it or not, Karen actually used to run this place when it belonged to Flywheel because she was their VP of operations and then their Chief operating Officer. But now Karen helps run Alpaca, a very fun and unique social purpose business that focuses on teachers. I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Today, we're talking about social purpose businesses with Karen Borchert. Karen actually used to run this place a bit, where we're at, when it was Flywheel. You started out as the VP of-
Karen Borchert:
Operations.
Ben Lueders:
Operations. And then became the COO, right?
Karen Borchert:
Yeah. That's right.
Ben Lueders:
Very cool. And so this place probably more intimately than even I do. But we're so honored to have you on the podcast today.
Karen Borchert:
Thanks.
Ben Lueders:
And today we're going to get into what is a social purpose business. She's doing a new thing called Alpaca that we're going to get into in a minute. But first, let's get to know you a little bit. I have a little icebreaker type question for you.
Karen Borchert:
Okay. I'm ready.
Ben Lueders:
I don't usually do this, but I'm really curious. Maybe it's because Alpaca deals with teachers and stuff like that and people who are educating kids. But when you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Karen Borchert:
Oh, that's a good question. Well, for a long time I wanted to be a teacher, and then I decided I wanted to be a doctor. But when I was a kid, kid, my favorite people in my entire world were my teachers. And so I always wanted to be a teacher. So it was a softball question. That's an easy one, and it's true.
Ben Lueders:
My follow-up question was, is there anything from what you wanted to be as a kid that carries over to what you're doing now? But it's like a direct correlation.
Karen Borchert:
And actually, I went to college to be a teacher. That's what my degree is in.
Ben Lueders:
That's interesting.
Karen Borchert:
But then I ended up getting kind of pulled down an entrepreneurial path really early on.
Ben Lueders:
Well, take us down that entrepreneurial path a little bit. How did you get from there to where you are today?
Karen Borchert:
Yeah. So I was, like I said, I went to college and got my degree in teaching high school English, and student taught and everything. Got asked for my hall pass by other teachers all the time because I looked like a kid. And that was fun. But at the same time, I got really involved in a nonprofit organization that I helped start on my college campus. And with it, I ended up taking it into a national model right out of college. So it was a program to pick up unserved food on college campuses from cafeterias and then turn it into meals and then deliver those meals out to community organizations and agencies in our community. And that's what we did. My friend and I did that on our college campus at Wake Forest and way back a long time ago.
Ben Lueders:
That's so awesome.
Karen Borchert:
And then when we left, she went to the Peace Corps and I moved to Washington, DC and I ended up getting a job with a nonprofit organization that wanted to take that model and make it a national model. So that's what I did for the next 10 years.
So I was in kind of this entrepreneurial nonprofit space building and scaling this organization on college campuses. So we were at about 50 college campuses overall nationwide, which was really fun, learned it like it was a crash course in all of business. So it was like all of this... was do all of this stuff and I'd be like, "Okay, what is that?" And they were like, "That's marketing." I was like, I like, "Oh, okay."
Ben Lueders:
Oh, that's what that is.
Karen Borchert:
And they'd be like, "That's finance," my board of directors. So I finally went to business school because I felt like that seemed like a path I was enjoying and that kind of thing, I had never thought about going to business school, but did that and then started a small company in the video and accessibility space right out of business school with some friends from business school.
And that one kind of crashed and burned because it was right at the very beginning of, it was sort of right at the beginning of streaming video. And it was at a time where it was kind of supposed to be video in cultural places, like in museums and monuments and outdoor places. And that was a time where you couldn't just stream video on your phone. There was not enough bandwidth for that at the time. So that idea was a good idea that was at the wrong time. But I got so excited about technology at that point that I went to work for a big digital agency out of DC and got to work with some really, really big brands on their. Entire digital footprint. So got to see how web systems were built and how brands change with a complete digital transformation.
So got to see that, really got a front seat for that, and also learned a bunch about sales and all kinds of stuff at that time. And then moved back home to Nebraska having been in DC and Austin for a little while, moved back.
Ben Lueders:
So you're from here originally?
Karen Borchert:
I'm from Lincoln, yeah.
Ben Lueders:
From Lincoln.
Karen Borchert:
I'm from Lincoln. And then was gone for about 15 years and then came back about 10 years ago. I spent a year working on a data project for the election system.
Ben Lueders:
I saw that on LinkedIn.
Karen Borchert:
Which was fascinating and a totally interesting project. And then I came to Flywheel. So I actually moved to Omaha the same exact day that Flywheel was started, but we didn't know each other at that time. And then I joined a few years later when it was about 50 people and got to be there all the way through to it becoming WP Engine and moving over to the Ashton Building and then got to come here. So here I am.
Ben Lueders:
And here you are. Well, I think it's so cool. You couldn't have teed it up any better. It is very clear that even at the very beginning of your career or professional life, you had purpose right there before, you even knew what a social purpose business was or before maybe they even existed. You were wanting to do things that really mattered to you and make a difference beyond just money. And so maybe this would be a good time to talk about Alpaca. What is it? It's a cool name.
Karen Borchert:
Yeah, it's a great name.
Ben Lueders:
A fun brand. So what is it and why?
Karen Borchert:
So Alpaca is a company born just a year ago. We're pretty new. And our goal is to make it easy to support teachers. We think that teaching's a really, really critical profession for our future workforces, for business, for our communities, for just strong families. All of those things are really centered on having great teachers in our schools. And I'm a parent of school aged kids, so it's really important to me. It was a profession I was on a path towards. So I care about it a lot as a profession, but I also think that there's a really big challenge in education right now, specifically around teachers and teacher wellbeing. And so I could see that as a mom, as a person whose kids are with their teachers all day. Honestly, our kids are with our teachers more than they're at home.
Ben Lueders:
There's a lot of influence there.
Karen Borchert:
It's a big thing. And I didn't know how to support our teachers in a better way. And honestly, I was sitting around a P T O me, a parent teacher organization meeting. I was the treasurer. And I said, "It would be so awesome if there were better, easier technology solutions to helping our teachers. Wouldn't it be awesome if we could just subscribe to our school and just be able to throw in five bucks a month? And then we could pool all that money and then survey all the teachers and say, Hey, what do you need this month? What can we get you? What would be the biggest help? And then we could just use that pool of money and we would know we would have it because we would all just subscribe to it." And they all just looked at me and they were like, "Yeah, that sounds great. Who's going to build it?"
Ben Lueders:
And then they all looked at you.
Karen Borchert:
I was like, "Okay." I honestly wanted it for myself. I wanted an easy way to support teachers. So that's what we do. We make it really easy. You can subscribe to... all of our Alpaca schools are schools that have signed up with us. We have a pretty simple technology platform that allows parents, community members, alumni, grandparents, local businesses to subscribe directly to their kids' school. And at really easy levels, 5, 10 or $20 a month, it all really actually makes a huge impact. And then all of the dollars from your school go towards a pack of supplies and teacher appreciation that we deliver to every teacher in this school, every month. So we call it, it's like Stitch Fix for teachers, but paid for by parents is kind of how it works.
Ben Lueders:
That's nice.
Karen Borchert:
So the teachers get this surprise pack of all of these things that they have told us that they want, brands that they love.
Ben Lueders:
So it's tailored. It's stuff that it's not just like they're getting the same-
Karen Borchert:
Yeah. All of our packs are curated and designed by real teachers using the data from the teachers themselves.
Ben Lueders:
Awesome.
Karen Borchert:
And then they're kind of thematic. So they are right at the moment where it's parent teacher conference time. We make sure that teachers have a little extra caffeine for those later days and those kinds of things. So they're always a surprise. They're really delightful and they're fun to get. Principals love handing them out. They call it Alpaca Day, and they get to give this wonderful gift to all the teachers in their school. Every month teachers feel really supported. It's not a big dumb box of Amazon supplies. It's not crappy brands. It's not stuff that they have to beg for through a whole bunch of fundraisers and all kinds of stuff. Teachers don't want to beg for school supplies any more than we want to beg for office supplies. Right?
Ben Lueders:
Yeah, no kidding.
Karen Borchert:
And so it's a really wonderful way to invest in the profession of education in a new way and in a delightful way.
Ben Lueders:
It's really fun way.
Karen Borchert:
It's really fun.
Ben Lueders:
When you said Stitch Fix for teachers, I'm thinking there's all these kind curated box subscriptions that you can get. There's some tailored to men that get advertised to me all the time. It's like, man, I want that. That's so cool. And just as something that just brings a little delight, unexpected surprise and delight to your day. But imagine for teachers who are often undervalued, underpaid. So I'm curious with Alpaca, is it just here in Nebraska? Are you expanding to other states? Tell us more about your reach right now and your goals.
Karen Borchert:
Yeah, yeah. Well, we started, like I said, about a year ago at my kids' school because they were a willing pilot. So we started there and four other schools and then that was great. It was super popular right off the bat. We got lots of calls from other principals and teachers saying, "Hey, what are you doing over there? We want that at our school." And so word spread really quickly. And then for this last school year that we just finished up, we grew to 80 schools and about 3,000 teachers. So supporting about 3,000 teachers around and all around here, around the city, and then in some kind of smaller communities around here. But yes, all in Nebraska so far. And then we are now in the process of adding on all of our schools for the. '23/'24 school year. So we're just about to kick off that school year. And our goal is to be expand first regionally and then nationally after that. So we want to make a pretty big splash.
Ben Lueders:
Well it sounds like you already... in one year, that's really, really impressive.
Karen Borchert:
Oh, it's been really fun.
Ben Lueders:
And so we've already kind of gave it away in the beginning that Alpaca is a social purpose business. What does that mean? When you mentioned that in our little email exchanges, I didn't even really know what that is. I know what a nonprofit is. And to me, this sounds like this could be a nonprofit. How is that different than a nonprofit or just a traditional business?
Karen Borchert:
So a social purpose business is you might hear them called different things to impact businesses or those kinds of things. They're businesses that want to take a market driven or business approach to a problem, but it's a problem that has a high social impact. So every business is here to solve a problem. Every single business is here to solve a problem. We're here to solve a problem too at Alpaca. It just happens to be a problem that has a greater social impact than anything else or than perhaps any other kind of business.
Ben Lueders:
Just selling a widget or something.
Karen Borchert:
Than like a bakery.
Ben Lueders:
Solves a problem.
Karen Borchert:
Although, that actually has a very high impact on me personally, a bakery does.
Ben Lueders:
There may be baked goods in some of these packs.
Karen Borchert:
That's true. So if you think about companies like TOMS Shoes or Cotopaxi is one of our very aspirational social purpose brands and companies right now at Alpaca, we love, not just because we have a similar mascot, but also because-
Ben Lueders:
That was the first thing that came to my mind.
Karen Borchert:
I'm like, we really need an Alpaca branded Cotopaxi bag. And then I was like, it's going to be two. A llama and an alpaca can't just be on the same bag together. But those brands and those companies we're doing the same. They have something to sell, they have a problem to solve, and they have a purpose behind that problem. So if you look at a company like TOMS Shoes, most of us probably wouldn't think real hard about whether kids in Africa that don't have shoes can't go to school. You and I wouldn't talk about that over coffee probably. But when we purchased TOMS shoes, when you bought those shoes and you knew that a pair was going to, and they did send them to Africa and they did get them to kids that would otherwise not be able to go to school because you can't go to school without shoes, then all of a sudden I know that story.
I know that story of that impact, and I know the story of that problem. And I was more than willing to buy a pair of shoes because it benefited me in some way. But it also creates this great impact somewhere else. And so Cotopaxi is the same way. Cotopaxi wants to support people in lower income countries to create a living for themselves. So almost all of their bags and all of those things are made honestly of scrap materials and are sewn and built by groups of people that they employ in really smart and really ethical ways. And they are making a huge impact on honestly, entrepreneurship and poverty alleviation in those countries. And I'm more than willing to buy a bag that... I've got one over here.
Ben Lueders:
Bags are like my weakness too. I am willing to put a lot of money into bags. It's like one of the few things.
Karen Borchert:
It's so many. There's bags within bags in my life everywhere. It is never just one bag. There's so many. That's bad. That's really, really bad.
Ben Lueders:
Bellroy is the company for me. I have so many Bellroy bags and wallets and stuff. I'm like, oh my goodness. But yeah, we could go on.
Karen Borchert:
Oh gosh, I know, bags. So when the market, when there's a market for something, people are willing to pay for something that benefits them in some way or make something easier for them in some way, but it then ends up benefiting somebody else, that's a social purpose business.
Ben Lueders:
So just hearing you explain that, the thing that pops into my mind, the difference that I see with Alpaca is it's not so much that a consumer is buying a good for themselves. And hey, isn't it nice to know that this helps someone else? It is just impacting... the person purchasing, they're not buying anything for themselves, they're buying something for someone else. It's a little different in that way.
Karen Borchert:
It's a little different. Although part of our goal is that I think you've mentioned you're parents...
Ben Lueders:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got like five kids.
Karen Borchert:
Oh, okay. That's right. That's right.
Ben Lueders:
A whole hoard.
Karen Borchert:
I've got three. All right. So you know that it's a lot to keep track of. It's very, very difficult to keep track of all of the school things and all of the fundraisers and all of the bake sales. I'm super bad at bake sales. Second time baked goods have come up in this conversation. But I'm really bad at all that goods up in here. And it's hard to keep track. And you want to be a great school parent. You want to be doing all the right things, but it's hard to keep track of. And so part of what we are offering is that convenience and to make it very, very easy to just be able to check it off your list, to not have to worry about some of that stuff, to not have to participate necessarily if you don't want to, in the wrapping paper sales and the different fundraiser kinds of things that come home. This is one way that you can just say, you know what? Just put me on a subscription for it and I'm done for the year on this stuff.
So I personally find it valuable to myself, from a convenience perspective. But you're right that it's not getting a good, it's not an item that you purchase, but yes.
Ben Lueders:
Yes, exactly. No, that makes a lot more sense when you explain it that way because when you think of all the different things, that's the hardest part about being I think a parent. And so I'm just keeping track of all the different activities and things you feel like you should be doing. But just like everything else in our lives these days, put this on a subscription thing and you know it's probably going to be even better than if we had done all these other things. And so that is really, really cool to me. Very awesome.
Karen Borchert:
It's really fun. I enjoy being a customer of it, honestly, for my own kids' school.
Ben Lueders:
That's awesome. So when we were just chatting before, before we started rolling here, you started telling me a little bit about the core values of Alpaca. I'd love for you to kind, unpack those a little bit for us here. No pun intended.
Karen Borchert:
I like that. That was good.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah, if you could, because I thought they were really interesting. If you could just explain some of them to us.
Karen Borchert:
Sure. Yeah. So we have five core values at Alpaca. Every week, we have a value of the week that we figure out cool new ways to do something with. The first one is write thank you notes, which is a strange for value.
Ben Lueders:
It's very specific.
Karen Borchert:
Yeah, it is.
Ben Lueders:
And that's number one too.
Karen Borchert:
Yeah, it's number one. It is. It's number one.
Ben Lueders:
Explain this.
Karen Borchert:
Okay. So part of why we built this and how we're building this is with the idea that actually, reaching out and creating personal connection is one of the things that drives teacher wellbeing the most. So when I was first starting Alpaca, I went and just took coffee to 100 teachers after school. Every day, I was like, well, I came back to Starbucks, and then over to school, over to a school anywhere. And then I would talk to teachers, I would ask them to show me their classroom. I'd ask them to show me what stuff in it they bought out of pocket. I would ask them to let me know how they were feeling.
And we had amazing conversations. But one of the things that I kept hearing. I said, "What makes the biggest impact? What actually makes you feel good during the day? Is it like if somebody brings donuts in? What is it?" And they said, "A handwritten note is the thing. It's the whole thing." And I said, "Why?" And they said, "Because it means that somebody took that much time to sit down and think about me and the impact I've had on their kid and write a note and send it to me." And I heard it over and over and over. And so we made our very first pack. I said, we won't do these without a handwritten note in them. And there was only 27 in our first month.
Ben Lueders:
So that's more attainable.
Karen Borchert:
So that was easy.
Ben Lueders:
I remember some of the numbers you gave a minute ago. So how does this go?
Karen Borchert:
It goes great. It goes great. So we actually have this awesome little thing called the thank you crew. And it is when you sign up for it, if you are a person that wants to help teachers, but you don't really know how, we send you a box of thank you notes and we send you a really cool pen because we're kind of into that.
Ben Lueders:
Also into cool pens. I love this.
Karen Borchert:
I'm going to ask you your favorite pen in just a minute. And then you write thank you notes to teachers and they just go on these little cards and people send them back to us. And so we get all of this happy, joyful mail all the time that are all of these handwritten notes to teachers, and we put a handwritten thank you note in every single pack. So we did exactly 23,000 packs in the '22/'23 school year. It was so weird. We were adding it all up.
Ben Lueders:
It was like what?
Karen Borchert:
I hit equal and I was like 23,000 exactly on the nose. So we wrote 23,000 thank you notes last year. It was the number one thing that people were like, that is not going to scale. And I'm like, I'll let you know. But we have retired teachers who write thank you notes to teachers. We have actually lots of retirees do it, but we also have a lot of young professionals. We have a couple and they each have a box of thank you notes and they go on a date once a month and they hang out and drink wine.
Ben Lueders:
And that's what they do.
Karen Borchert:
And write thank you notes. And they love it and they bring them to us and it's amazing. It's a really fun thing to do. But it's the thing we get commented on the most in the pack. So we survey after every pack and the handwritten thank you note is a really, really big deal. We have lots of teachers who pin all of their thank you notes from every month by their desk. It is just a really big deal. And also, it's a good way to run a business. If you write thank you notes, as a business leader, if you take time to write a handwritten thank you note to an investor, to a customer, there's nobody in the world that's like, "Well, that's a terrible use of your time. Get out of here."
Ben Lueders:
[inaudible 00:23:06] that crap.
Karen Borchert:
And it's because of personal connection, right?
Ben Lueders:
You are totally right. And I feel like this is the thing that people are going to remember from this podcast too. It's so memorable. I don't know why. It just stands out to me that you made that be your first core value. You stuck to it. And then you had to figure out a complicated way of accomplishing that goal as you scale, what you said that others have said, that they said initially that's not going to scale. That's immediately where my mind went. It's like no. Instead of like, okay, we thought we were going to be all about thank you notes, but now we've gotten to a point, we need to not do that. Instead, it's like, no, we're going to actually go in a little bit deeper.
Karen Borchert:
We're doubling down on thank you notes.
Ben Lueders:
We're going to double down and we will create a system. And then that very thing is a thing that you're getting more people involved on. And I don't know, it's just really cool how you built this community that someone would spend their date night regularly doing that. It's compelling.
Karen Borchert:
Imagine if we are building a community of teachers who are supported by this and we're building a community of people, young professionals, retirees, kids, parents, everyone who is rallying around this profession, think about what happens when a potential teacher comes to town and sees the community of educators and the community of support for educators in this town. That's a big deal. That attracts teachers to the city and to each of our cities. That makes teaching a profession that we would all consider.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah. It elevates it a bit. It just makes you feel like instead of this thing that yeah, you feel like you should do or have to just, it's like this is I'm being acknowledged and I'm being... yeah, that's so cool.
Karen Borchert:
When I was at Flywheel, I was involved with a lot of the hiring team growth and people's career paths and things like that. And when you work in a startup company or you work in most companies, nobody ever thinks to themselves, "Well, this has been a really excellent run, I'm going to go teach the sixth grade now."
Ben Lueders:
Yeah, you don't see that as often, that's for sure.
Karen Borchert:
You don't see people. But what if you did? What if you did? What if people who were building awesome companies and doing extraordinary things in the world found teaching to be a viable valuable career path. What if that was a thing? That's huge. That would change everything. That would change how our business is run. It would change a lot of things. And so I don't know, you figure if you can start getting people to go out on a date night and write thank you notes to teachers, then maybe they think a little bit differently, even if they don't have kids, even if it's not their pain point right now. And again, sort of to the social purpose business, that's why a whole market approach to a problem, it's not just a problem that like, oh, I feel this pain point acutely, so I'm going to give to or donate to a teacher in a way that makes that teacher feel like a charity case. This is a community rallying around to invest in a profession that is a vital profession.
Ben Lueders:
Unbelievable.
Karen Borchert:
That's what we're after with it.
Ben Lueders:
And so we've only gone through one of these values. We got four more.
Karen Borchert:
We got four more.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah. I don't know if they're going to top that first one.
Karen Borchert:
We should have saved that one for less.
Ben Lueders:
No, no, no, it's the most important.
Karen Borchert:
It is. It's our most important one. And we actually, when we get to work every morning, we're all in an office together and we all sit around one big table. And when we get to work in the morning, the first thing we all do is write thank you notes. So whether it's to a customer or person that we have talked to that we had a meeting with or just to teachers directly, that's what we do and that's how we start our day every day. It's an amazing way to start your day.
Ben Lueders:
I love it. I'm inspired by this.
Karen Borchert:
Extraordinary way to start your day.
Ben Lueders:
You might get a handwritten note.
Karen Borchert:
Yes.
Ben Lueders:
Thank you for being on the podcast, and this might be a thing we have to do.
Karen Borchert:
You might get a handwritten note from me.
Ben Lueders:
I'm actually kind of expecting one. If I don't-
Karen Borchert:
That's going to be kind of offensive.
Ben Lueders:
That's your thing. I think I'll know what you're trying to say if I don't get one. But no, I think it's so cool. We had someone working with us a couple years back and we were talking about ways that you feel fulfilled and whatnot, and handwritten note was his thing. And I remember writing a couple and it meant so much to him. And some people are just that way. And by some people, I mean probably everybody. Like you said, I've never seen someone was like, "When am I going to read this?" Even we're looking at, we want to move this year, and our realtor is like-
Karen Borchert:
You got to write a letter.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah, a lot of people are going to be bidding on this house. You got to write that letter. It's funny that that should you think like, oh, that's not going to really sway someone. It's like people like that personal touch.
Karen Borchert:
You'd be surprised.
Ben Lueders:
They want to know who might be living in this house that they built all their memories and stuff in. So anyways, all right, that's number one.
Karen Borchert:
That's number one.
Ben Lueders:
Number two.
Karen Borchert:
Number two is listen to teachers. That is core to who we are. It's not about us deciding what we think teachers want and need or what we think teachers are experiencing, but to really, really listen all the time. So we've built systems and mechanisms for doing that through personal interviews and discussions, but also through surveys every month, through activations. We did a huge activation for teachers just a couple of weeks ago at the end of the school year for teachers to be able to come together and hang out because if you teach fifth grade all day, you mostly see 10-year olds in your life. That's pretty much who you see. It's not like you hang out with all your other coworker teachers all day. They're in their classrooms.
Ben Lueders:
10 year olds are great, but you might want to talk to some other people that hang out with 10 year olds.
Karen Borchert:
So we've done some of things like that. But listening to teachers is really core to who we are. And then our third one is tell stories, which is to say, lots of people, especially if you don't have kids in school, don't really know actually exactly what's going on in that world and in that profession. And they don't know. Most people when they hear that will say, "Oh yeah, they're having a really hard time." And it's like, no, no, no. What I'm saying is most people don't know how ingenious teachers are and how extraordinary they are as professionals. You don't read a lot of stories in popular media about the extraordinary and inventive and innovative things that teachers do.
Ben Lueders:
It's true. It does tend to be more negative. I don't know if it's a clickbait thing.
Karen Borchert:
Well, and it's also because it's like this profession that has been seen as this kind of... it's not upheld as this really highly regarded profession sometimes. And so you don't hear some of these stories. But the stories of how teachers do things, I mean, they are extraordinary managers. They're extraordinary marketers.
Ben Lueders:
Oh yeah, you have to be.
Karen Borchert:
Extraordinary marketers, great communicators, great organizers, operations people. They are amazing. They're amazing stories of teachers doing extraordinary professional things. And so that was one of our values is to tell those stories, make that heard. So we love telling stories, that's the core of how we do what we do.
The fourth one is elevate every educator. So one of the very first things we didn't want to happen was for Alpaca to be a product and a service that would be available to schools that have a lot of parent support. So we built matching programs and some programs with the nonprofit community to create funds for schools that have less parent financial support and... a lot of the schools where lots of parents at the school are working two or three jobs, they don't have time for a PTO meeting on a Tuesday evening. And that's really understandable. But a lot of times those teachers actually have the least amount of resources that are offered to them in the least amount of support. So we wanted to make sure that Alpaca was a place for every educator to feel like they belong and for every educator to get support they need. So that's the fourth one.
And then our fifth one is bring out the best. Bring out the best is both true for teachers. It is also true honestly for our communities.
Kind of like we were just saying that we can be extraordinary communities for the profession of education if we have ways to do it. You and I can do amazing things for teachers if there are simple, easy, honestly technology driven ways to make it really easy to do that. And so we want to bring out the best in our communities that we're in. And then we also want to do things that bring out the best in teachers. And as a company, one of our values for our employees is to bring out the best in every employee so that each of our team members feels like they are bringing their best to work every day and that they're becoming better at their craft and at what they do just by being at Alpaca. So that's what we're after. Those are our five.
Ben Lueders:
That sounds awesome. Are you guys hiring this?
Karen Borchert:
Yeah. We are. We're growing fast.
Ben Lueders:
I love when you were talking about, I think the storytelling part, just that idea of sharing these more positive inspirational things about the teachers, really lifting them up. And I think of a lot of nonprofits and even some that I've supported that just tend to tell sob stories because there are problems in the world. And even in this, is coming out of trying to solve a problem. But when you just focus on that problem too much, it's a different vibe than really inspiring people about, hey, you could be a part of this. Focus on the solution, focus on the people you're serving. And I liked how you said, not just like a charity case. But you're giving them this really cool stuff, you're taking feedback from actual teachers. And I don't know, I think the whole thing is so cool. I'm curious, some of the things that you're saying here remind me of things that like Flywheel embodied too. I'm just curious-
Karen Borchert:
I learned a lot there.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah. I'm curious of did you learn some of these things in your other places that you've worked along the way?
Karen Borchert:
Yeah, for sure. I think one of the things was, and it kind of goes back to the thank you note story, but one of the things that we said or was told to me at Flywheel when I first started, because I got there and I was like, "Oh, well this isn't efficient over here." I thought I was all smart. And they were like, "Oh, no, no, that's on purpose. We're doing that and we know it doesn't scale. It's an experiment. We're trying something. It's important that we do things that don't scale." I was like, "Why would we do things that don't scale?" It's a Paul Graham quote, actually. Do Things that Don't Scale, it's actually a great article by him. It is about testing things that are really hard and that don't feel possible and they don't feel like they scale to figure out are they important enough that maybe you find a way to scale them or you figure out how to do something or it gives you enough momentum to then build the thing that is a more scalable version of that.
So thank you notes for us a thing that everybody was like, "That's cute. How are you going to do that when you have 3000 teachers and 10,000 teachers and 20,000 teachers?" I don't know. But right now I didn't think we could do it past 100 teachers. And we do it for 3000 teachers every month right now. And so we'll continue to do it. But what it taught us, handwritten thank you notes taught us how important connection is and how important it is for teachers to feel like there are people that are in the rest of their communities that actually understand and believe in what they're doing and care about what they're doing. And so it was, now we have to figure out how to scale it because I'm not doing it. It's happening.
Ben Lueders:
This is going down.
Karen Borchert:
Yeah, thank you crew is a real thing. So that's an example. But yeah, I mean so many lessons and you've had some great Flywheelers on your podcast. I think a lot of things around how we create alignment in teams, how we really stay focused on making sure that all of our teams are running in the same direction as fast as we can, but altogether all the time is really core to who Alpaca is and the team we're building there. I feel like I daily steal things from the founders of Flywheel that I learned there. They're really, really smart. So yeah, there's a lot of things in the way that we operate our teams, but also a lot of things in the way that we are thinking about the business and scaling the business and what we want to do that come from that ethos.
Ben Lueders:
So back to the social purpose business thing or theme. So you're a business.
Karen Borchert:
We're a business.
Ben Lueders:
So how do you make money? Is a percentage of each donation kind of a thing? I'm assuming.
Karen Borchert:
Yeah. So all the subscriptions are not donations, you're buying something just like you go, but money goes a lot further. So if you go to Target and get your teacher a Target gift card for $20, this is something we do often. We all do this. We're like, okay, your teacher will take that card to Target and like we all do when we go to Target, we will spend quite a bit more than the gift card says.
Ben Lueders:
That's true. Especially if it's $20.
Karen Borchert:
And that teacher will pay full retail price for Expo markers and post-it notes and things that they might want or need. And that's fine. That's good. There's good in that. But what Alpaca can do is quite a bit more. So we have excellent partners with Crayola and with some really big brands that are teachers' favorite brands, which we learned by listening to them.
Ben Lueders:
There you go.
Karen Borchert:
And we also know which brands not to give teachers. There's some no thank you brands.
Ben Lueders:
We'll not mention them on this podcast.
Karen Borchert:
We'll podcast mention them on this podcast, but if you want to know DM me, I'll tell you which ones not to. So we know those and we built partnerships with some of those brands that are our teachers' favorite things. And we get those things at really excellent prices as a vendor with those bigger suppliers. And so your dollars go really far. So basically what we tell teachers and what we explain to everybody is that for every dollar that comes in subscriptions, we're able to deliver about $2 out to teachers worth of in retail value out to because of those relationships, those partnerships.
And then we make money by scaling a subscription business just like we make money the same exact way that Stitch Fix or any of those subscription boxes does. We have partnerships with districts and we have partnerships with schools and with parents, but we make sure what we want is for it to be kind of a double win. So we want the parent to win that if they're giving $20 to their school every month, their teachers are getting $40 worth of stuff. We want them to feel that way. And obviously, we need to keep the lights on and keep the team paid, but then we win. So we want to make sure that parents feel like they are getting even more than their value than if they would just give those dollars directly to school by working with us. And then obviously we work to be a viable business as well.
Ben Lueders:
I think one of the things I love about this and was intrigued by this whole idea of the social purpose business is that you're not ashamed just to call yourself a business. That there's nothing wrong with that. And our listeners are business leaders. A lot of them are business owners and they believe that too, to make a difference in the world. There's nothing wrong with... you have to keep the lights on, all that stuff.
Karen Borchert:
Well, you look at a business like Scholastic, right? We've all had a book order before, right? Book fair, book order.
Ben Lueders:
Book fairs, yes.
Karen Borchert:
Oh man, the book order. So Scholastic is a business.
Ben Lueders:
Of course.
Karen Borchert:
And Scholastic is helping so many kids learn to read and they do a lot of amazing work for the schools that they're in. They give back to the schools that they're in, they're supporting it, and they make money by selling books to parents like us whose kids come home with a book order and say, "Please can I have this book." But that's okay. There's nothing wrong with being a business that has a social purpose. We're not profiting on the backs of teachers, anything like that really. We're here to solve a problem. And there are people who want to help solve that problem and they're willing to buy things to help solve that problem. And so we're here to do that.
Ben Lueders:
There's no shame in that.
Karen Borchert:
And there's no way. No way. Absolutely not.
Ben Lueders:
I love that.
Karen Borchert:
Honestly, teachers aren't charity cases.
Ben Lueders:
Absolutely.
Karen Borchert:
We won't be in a realm where we... the way that we operate today is very efficient. And if we are good at what we do, we will be able to help more teachers. And if we're bad at what we do because this is how businesses work, we won't, right? And that's the efficiency of the market. That's the efficiency of markets and businesses. In a nonprofit, you're not necessarily getting that constant feedback of whether you're doing a fantastic job, because if you write a big grant and then you're not as good at helping teachers as you want. Or you may be at the whim of funding cycles and you may be at the whim of grant cycles and funding that shuts down and all of a sudden you can't help as many teachers as you were before, even if you're really good at it. And that sucks.
That's not the way that we want to run. We want to run in a way where if we are great at what we do and we move fast and we do things in smart new ways, more and more people will say, "Yeah, I want to be a part of that. I want to buy that. And I want people to benefit from it that are deserving of being invested in." It's a way to invest in a profession. It's all of us putting a couple of dollars together to say, "Hey, actually those teachers are pretty important to our future workforce. I'm putting some dollars towards this." It's an investment, it's not a donation.
Ben Lueders:
I love that. An investment, not a donation.
So for those listening, let's say think of someone who maybe is working at a soul crushing job or you're just not feeling fulfilled in their work and they have an idea, maybe it's solving a problem, kind of like you have and they're listening to this and, "Man, that would be a lot of fun." What would you suggest? What are some maybe first steps for someone who's interested in starting their own social purpose business?
Karen Borchert:
Yeah. Well, I think understanding the problem you're trying to solve is number one, that's certainly something I learned at Flywheel also. So what problem are we trying to solve here really? And what's the solution that we have? Because I want to be clear, I wasn't trying to dog on nonprofit organizations before. There are some problems where a nonprofit is the right solution.
Ben Lueders:
Absolutely.
Karen Borchert:
And there are some problems where a business, a for-profit business is the right solution, and there are some problems where there might be a mix of those things. And so really understanding the problem that you want to solve, I think is A, number one. And understanding it really clearly and honestly making sure that you don't think that you know what problem you're trying to solve or you think you have the right solution. But to actually talk to people. My number one thing I would say is if you have a problem you want to solve, if you care about what is happening with what's going on with immigrants, what's going on with teachers, what's going on with any group of people, go talk to people.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah. Don't just assume you know how to solve their problem.
Karen Borchert:
Go listen to their stories and let them just talk about what they're experiencing because it might actually not be what you think. It might actually not be the exact same problem that you thought you were solving. I set out, because I saw so much statistics on teachers and out-of-pocket spend, and because I watched this video on Twitter that is burned on my brain for eternity of teachers at a hockey game. There's a hockey game. It kind of went crazy on the internet a couple years ago. And at the halftime of the hockey game... do hockey games have halftime? Anyway.
Ben Lueders:
You are asking the wrong person.
Karen Borchert:
Okay. Good. All right.
Ben Lueders:
I'll fact check that before this goes-
Karen Borchert:
Anyway, at some sort of intermission or something, I'm not a sporty girl, at the hockey game, the program or the thing was they put a huge thing out on the ice, like a big blanket, and they dumped like $5,000 in $1 bills in the middle of the blanket. And then they had teachers from that community, four of them all around it, and then they blew the whistle and they had to stuff as many dollars in their coveralls as fast as they could. And so these teachers were scrambling on the ice, shoving dollars into coveralls, and they said it was like this fun sideshow. It was entertainment. And it just broke me was it was horrified.
Ben Lueders:
That is horrifying. What an image.
Karen Borchert:
What an image. And it was about, they said, "This is for these teachers to buy things for their classrooms." And I was like, imagine if we had to scramble on the ice for office supplies. Absolutely not.
Ben Lueders:
It's just degrading. I was going to say, we need to link this in the show notes, but I don't even know if I want people to see this, it'll stick with them.
Karen Borchert:
It's a terrible story. But it is also was eyeopening that it wasn't actually just about teachers spending money out of pocket. It wasn't about the fact that teachers are going to buy their own supplies. To me, I was like, I need to understand what teachers are experiencing in their worlds, how they're feeling, how they feel about their profession of teaching. Because that video was like, if this is where we are, that it is entertainment for a hockey game to watch teachers scramble on the ice for resources to do their jobs that we would never ever ask of any other profession.
Ben Lueders:
Oh yeah. Can you imagine other profession doing that? Lawyers?
Karen Borchert:
Yeah. It just doesn't make sense.
Ben Lueders:
Maybe graphic designers.
Karen Borchert:
And so that's why I started taking coffee to teachers, honestly, and asking them about things and listening and listening. Because what I really wanted to hear about is how you feel about your job and what do you need? Why is it so hard? What are you paying for out of pocket. What'd you buy in this classroom? And that really takes one-on-one listening and really spending the time. And so it's the number one thing I would say to anyone who's looking to solve a problem with a potentially social purpose business or that kind of problem, is to start with listening as much as you can to understand the actual experience of the people that you believe that you are trying to help.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah, yeah. No, I love that. And I think you're onto something there. So obviously listening, asking the questions, really getting to know the problem. Then after you did that, you talked about taking them Starbucks and whatnot. Did you then go back and try to show them, "Hey, how does this"... trying out solutions with them or pitching, how does this feel kind of a thing to get feedback?
Karen Borchert:
I did. I spent a lot of time with parents and a lot of time with teachers and a lot of time with principals with the kind of idea. I was like, "All right, all right, here's this idea. What if, imagine this, what if you could subscribe to your school and what if it looked like this?" And I got a lot of like, "Well, it's not going to work if this," and "It's not going to work if that." And so when I finally said, all right, it's time to just write this plan and get it out of my brain completely, and if it is a working plan that I believe is viable, I'm going to go for it. And if it's not, I won't. And what I did is I wrote on a piece of paper in Sharpie, unsaynoable. I wrote the words unsaynoable. Just that word, and I put it right in front of me on the desk. And my goal was this has to be unsaynoable for parents. It has to be unsaynoable for principals and school administrators, and it has to be unsaynoable for teachers.
Ben Lueders:
Unsaynoable. Love that.
Karen Borchert:
Unsaynoable. And so I said, "Okay"-
Ben Lueders:
That's the name of this episode.
Karen Borchert:
Unsaynoable. It is. And so I kind of went through and said, what makes a solution that everyone feels like they won?
Ben Lueders:
Like unanimously.
Karen Borchert:
Yeah, like we all feel like we won/ because like I said, parents aren't going to support this, honestly, you're not going to buy something that you don't get any value from personally. That would be dumb. I don't do that. That's dumb. So I was like, what's going to actually give parents value. Has to be super simple. You have to be able to subscribe to this thing on your phone in two minutes or less. It has to be cheaper than Netflix. It has to be easier than the bake sale. It has to be all of those things. It has to actually save me time as a parent. Unsaynoable.
For teachers, it has to be stuff I actually want and need. It has to not make me feel like charity case. It has to make me feel better about my job. It has to do that unsaynoable. And then for principals, it has to not mess with school budgets. It has to not be just for favorite teachers in the school. It has to be equitable. It has to go to all of our... that was one thing I heard from principals over and over and over is, "We're not doing it if every teacher doesn't get it." So it's not like-
Ben Lueders:
You don't have favoritism.
Karen Borchert:
Oh, yeah. Like, this teacher has poor parents in her class that are subscribing and this brand new teacher has zero and that sucks. So that's why it pools at the school level. So as soon as I started writing all of those things down, and then of course, it had to be unsaynoable from a viable business perspective as well. And so it just worked like a jigsaw puzzle, honestly. I wrote that word out. I started writing down all the things that would make it that way. And then I just looked at it to say, okay, well can all of those things live together? Can all those things fit together? And it did. So we went after it.
Ben Lueders:
Well, and that's so wise of you too, to not just be like, you're obviously very focused on the teachers, but you realize it's bigger than that. What are the parents going to say? What are the principals... there's all these different kind of entities that they all need to be okay with this thing for it to actually work instead of just, I think that would be, I could see that being a tendency for some people to be like, "There's this real problem out in the world. I think I know how to solve it." Maybe even just talking to one of those groups and then later you find these roadblocks. And it's like, "Oh, forgot to talk to the principals. And I didn't even think that there might be favoritism," or all these. And it sounds like you really did your due diligence. Instead of rushing out to just, I need to solve this acute problem, really taking that time if you can.
Karen Borchert:
Yeah. And it doesn't actually take, so, so... it's not overwhelmingly in the amount of time it is. It's really more of the intention of asking... I bought a $5 Pinterest ad for, I don't know, a month, and it linked to a survey that I made on Typeform or something free. And it was just like, tell me a little bit about being a teacher and tell me about-
Ben Lueders:
How did that do?
Karen Borchert:
It did great. I mean, I got-
Ben Lueders:
Think about Pinterest ads, but I mean teachers-
Karen Borchert:
Teachers are on Pinterest. So I was like, well, let's just see what happens. And so I sent them $5 Starbucks gift cards because I couldn't bring them coffee. But that was easy and I got a hundred interviews out of it. It was so easy. And so it doesn't have to be a ton. It doesn't have to be really expensive, it doesn't have to take you all year. It doesn't have to stop you. And when we were making it unsaynoable, we were kind of prototyping things. We were like, make a pack. I brought it to a teacher. We were like, "Do you like this? Does this actually help you?"
Ben Lueders:
How would it feel if you have this?
Karen Borchert:
"How does it feel?" And we went to principals and we were like, "Tell us all of the things that make your life difficult." And they were like, "How long do you have?" That's a hard job.
And so we heard all about that. It doesn't actually take too much. It doesn't require a McKinsey study. It's just about listening and you just keep doing it. We keep saying there's new nos all the time. Somebody will say no for something. And as we move to new markets and as we move to new things, there will always be people who are going to say, "That doesn't work for us." And then it's a question of, okay, why does it not work for you? And do we need it to? Do we want it to? Because we can't make everything work for everyone. It can't be unsaynoable for the entire world forever. Then you're trying to be all things to all people. But at that core moment, when we were starting, we needed it to be unsaynoable and to the core audience we were serving at that moment. And then from there, we just keep listening. That's why it's one of our values.
Ben Lueders:
Well, that makes sense. I could see as you break into other states and other regions, I'm sure you'll come into the way that their schools are set up or-
Karen Borchert:
Oh, for sure.
Ben Lueders:
I'm sure you've already found new hurdles and stuff like that. But I think it sounds like you guys are pretty just aware of that and you're going to tackle those as they come.
Karen Borchert:
Yeah.
Ben Lueders:
So as we close here, can you just, if someone wants to support teachers through Alpaca, get involved with that. How can people learn more about Alpaca?
Karen Borchert:
Yeah. Well, you can come to our website at alpacapacks.com. And that's a great way to learn a little bit more, read up some of the stories that we're telling about teachers on our blog.
Ben Lueders:
Link in the show notes.
Karen Borchert:
Yeah. Oh, sweet. And then you can join our thank you crew and help us write thank you notes. Go on a date night with your significant other and write some notes. We are doing a bunch of stuff around back to school and getting folks involved. We do events for corporate groups that want to come be part of their community together. So we do some really fun events over at Millwork Commons, where our offices here in Omaha, to help put our packs together and then have a happy hour over cross train. So we do a lot of that. That's really fun. That's a great way to come, it's kind of a networking event and team building event for companies that want to support, but also it's just really fun. And yeah, website's the best place. Yeah.
Ben Lueders:
Awesome. Alpacapacks.com. Thank you Karen, so much for being on the podcast today.
Karen Borchert:
Thank you. This is so fun.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah. And I hope you've inspired a whole new generation of social purpose businesses and we've gotten a lot of great tips today. So thank you so much.
Karen Borchert:
Yeah. Great. Thank you. Thanks.
Ben Lueders:
Thanks for joining us today on Growing Your Fruitful Brand. If you found today's show helpful, don't forget to subscribe and consider sharing it with someone who might also enjoy it. And if you'd like to work with Fruitful on a branding, website or messaging project of your own, you can always reach out on our website Fruitful.Design.
Speaker 3:
Until next time, don't forget to grow something good.
Ben Lueders:
Grow something good.
