Hierarchy of Social Impact - Brant Cooper of Moves the Needle

As the CEO and founder of Moves the Needle, as a New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Entrepreneur, and as one of the pioneers of the lean startup movement, Brant Cooper shares his advice and lessons learned from his decades of experience helping entrepreneurs digitally transform their businesses.

Brant shares what propelled him to go from the corporate world to the startup environment in the early years of his career, how to go from talking about solving the world’s biggest problems to actually turning those ideas into a reality, and how to become successful in doing so. 

He talks about the importance of understanding your audience and translating your mission into a purpose that is also meaningful for them as well as how charities or businesses and governments can not only learn from entrepreneurs but also work hand in hand so that impact-driven businesses, whether it’s small businesses or the huge corporate companies, thrive. And of course, Brant paints a beautiful picture of how he hopes to see the world in 10 years.

Brant’s key lessons and quotes from this episode were:

• “I didn't want to do what other people wanted me to do. I wanted to do what I thought was best, so that sort of mindset kind of belongs more in a startup environment than it does in traditional companies.” (5:18)
• “People are inspired by, whether they realize it or not, they're inspired by needs that they see out in the world that they want solved.” (8:11)
• “If you're asking for investment or you're talking about startup investment, you don't say, ‘You're investing in the business,’ or, ‘You're investing in me, the founder.’ You're investing in the mission.” (17:18)
• “Foundations and people that are giving money to the foundations need to demand the impact reports, and they need to demand a higher impact for their dollar spent, and maybe that starts creating the culture of improving the practices.” (28:40)
• “As long as we have choices as consumers, there's pressure on the companies to actually do the right thing… I do think that individuals actually have more power than they think, both as shareholders and as consumers.” (33:22)

In this episode, we also talked about:

• The beginning of Brant’s career (2:13)
• Changes that need to happen in the startup ecosystem (7:43)
• Brant’s advice to entrepreneurs and startup founders (16:48)
• Common mistakes made my impact entrepreneurs (23:24)
• How charities and governments could learn from entrepreneurs (27:14)
• How digital transformation can turn corporations into positively impactful businesses (31:21)
• Brant Cooper’s view of the world in 10 years (37:42)