Podcast: How to Social Enterprise – Skills

Find out what it takes to set up and run a social enterprise in the second episode of our three-part podcast series.

In the first episode of How to Social Enterprise, Motivations, we looked at the why of the social enterprise model and who should consider going down that pathway.

In Skills we ask whether combining a business brain with a charity heart requires a unique skill set to get started.

Will Dayble is the founder of Fitzroy Academy, a startup-style accelerator for “non-tech peeps, with a social impact focus”.

He said he’s asked all the time: How do I start a social enterprise?

“[It] sounds like a really innocuous question, but it’s often said with a lot of baggage,” Dayble said.

“‘How do I start?’ comes with this undertone of: ‘Give me a checklist of things to do so that when I have done them I’m a social enterprise founder.’

“And it’s a really difficult question because the answer is: ‘You won’t know if you are or you are not until you try, so just go and damn well give it a go.’”

Although there’s no checklist, he said there were still must-have skills needed to run a social enterprise. 

With that in mind, Not for Podcast spoke to social entrepreneurs about what they learnt along their social enterprise journey, what worked, what didn’t and what would they change if they could do it all again.

Featured in this episode:

• Will Dayble, founder of Fitzroy Academy
• Alastair Pryor, founder of Totes Making a Diff and Compact Shelters
• Simon Griffiths, co-founder of Ripple, Shebeen and Who Gives a Crap
• Ben Robb, finance and strategy volunteer at ASRC Catering and ASRC Cleaning
• Adrian Watts, CEO of National Health Co-op.

Stay tuned for episode three, How to Social Enterprise: Scale – to find out how ultra-successful entrepreneurs grew their business and social impact.

Produced by Ellie Cooper and Wendy Williams, brought to you by Social Ventures Australia.