BLS Interview with Devin Thorpe, Part 2

Derek continues his interview with Devin Thorpe about his travels and his advice for entrepreneurs. Read Part 1 here, about Devin’s work and motivation. Listen to the podcast here.

Derek: So Devin you have lived on three continents; you visit over 30 countries on six continents. You are on the road a lot aren’t you?

Devin: Yes. I have the great pleasure and opportunity and privilege to travel around the world and to see the amazing things that people are doing to make the world a better place.

It really is inspiring to see it.

Derek: So I have had the opportunity recently to speak on servant leadership and talk about what that means.

I wondered what does servant leadership mean to you?

Devin: I think it is one of the great and true principals of life that a servant leader is one who is willing to serve and help along with the people he or she leads.

So that she may be a leader not riding the beautiful horse or commanding from the rear but instead being right in the thick of the work and sharing alike.

I think those are principals that are important now. A leader can’t always be shoveling muck and mud or she can’t lead-but by the same token a leader that never grabs a shovel may well lose touch with the principals that drive the organization she is trying to lead.

Derek: Wow. That is really good. So Devin, what is your greatest need right now?

Devin: For me I am always trying to grow my audience. There are two or three ways that I am trying to do that and of course I am eager to have people watch my show www.Youtube.com/DevinThorpe or you can follow me on Forbes and just search for Devin Thorpe on Forbes.

I also love to share my message as a speaker and I don’t get many opportunities to do that but I have been invited to speak in Nepal and Russia and around the country.

I am certainly willing when people invite me to come, I am happy to come speak. My fees for that are pretty reasonable ones.

I think those are win win opportunities for us. When I can share my message it does me a great good and allows me to advance the causes I am excited about and hopefully it adds value to the people I get to speak to.

Derek: Devin many of our listeners and myself included are at that stage of life that you talked about at the beginning of your podcast. We are deep into our careers, we are growing.

What recommendations do you have for us? You talked earlier about wishing you had not waited to start getting more involved in social entrepreneurialism and giving back and meaningful causes.

Talk to us a little bit about that part of your journey. What you recommend to us now?

Devin: I just recently finished writing a book that I hope will be released here in the next 30 to 60 days called, “Adding profit by adding purpose” and the thesis of this book is that corporate social responsibility programs or purpose programs in corporations not only can be profitable, they should be profitable as a principal.

And we should seek that. Not only because companies are more likely to start them if they are profitable but because the good that they can do will be almost infinite if they are profitable.

That is, no company that is making money from doing good would quit doing the good, if that’s how they make their money.

So it should lead to much greater impact in the world and so to those executives that are listening and tuned in I would encourage you to be thinking about how your organization can do more good and make it profitable so it will be something that you can do forever.

And scale your impact as you grow your business.

Derek: We look forward to reading that book.

Devin you are a very successful author. You’ve got four other books in a series on social responsibility and making an impact on the world and your books have been read, downloaded over a million times.

You have got several best sellers. Tell us about some of your other books that might be relevant to our audience.

Devin: My book 925 Ideas to Help You Save Money, Get Out of Debt and Retire a Millionaire so You Can Leave Your Mark on the World is a handy little book that has now been downloaded nearly a million times itself.

A very, very popular book, its available for free on Amazon also on www.barnesandnoble.com and iTunes so it is easy to find if you have any sort of digital device.

My other books include www.yourmarkontheworld.com which is also a financial planning guide for people who want to do good with their money.

Finally, I wrote a book called Crowdfunding for Social Good which is about essentially how to use other people’s money for doing good.

All of these books fall into this theme of how to use money for good. That is what I hope people will figure out how to do.

I have a saying that “Money’s only real value is the good you can do with it”.

Derek: That’s great advice. Wow. I am looking on Amazon right now – you have got thousands of positive reviews on each of these books. So I would encourage everybody to check these out. He has the free download book and then some other great materials as well.

Devin: Thank you.

Derek: Devin talk to us more about some new things happening with crowdfunding. We manage these types of campaigns for several clients.

Tell me how crowdfunding is being used for social good. What have you seen and what does the landscape look like? What are some new things that are happening?

Devin:  It’s very exciting. It is just exploding and I had a favorite aspect of that and there are a couple of crowdfunding sites that are less well known that are hugely important and I hope they will continue to grow.

One is called Global Giving the other one is called Universal Giving. They were both launched before we started calling this things crowdfunding.

So they were launched long before Kickstarter or Indiegogo at least five years earlier.

These companies help international non-profits raise money in the US. So they are doing a lot of bidding and stewardship and coaching and helping.

So you find a little non-profit in Kenya that is helping to educate girls. That organization in the olden days would have no way to really tap in to resources in the United States.

And donors in the United States would have no way to find an effective on the ground resource that didn’t require expensive Americans as intermediaries to do that.

So these organizations are providing that issuant conduit to charities that they have vetted on the ground in the developing world.

So it is really exciting to see how they are able to really make impact possible with modest dollars in the most far flung regions of the world.

I think that is a great example of the power of crowdfunding. Of course we are all familiar with other aspects of crowdfunding and I just get very excited about all aspects.

But that is really my favorite.

Derek: Devin thank you for being our guest today. I want to encourage our listeners to learn more about you at www.yourmarkontheworld.com Devin is a great writer for Forbes magazine. You can check him out at www.forbes.com he writes about social entrepreneurship and impact investing.

Check out his books on Amazon they are very popular.

Devin I have been following you for a while and I love reading your content and I look forward to seeing the next great things that you do.

Devin: Well thank you Derek and I look forward to following you.