In Episode 69 of the Charity Charge Show, Stephen talks with Daniella Genas, Founder of She’s The Boss, a business advisory service that equips ambitious entrepreneurs with the tools, guidance and accountability to build profitable, sustainable, systems driven businesses. Daniella and Stephen discuss how social enterprises and nonprofits can benefit from strategic planning and thinking like a start-up.
Daniella launched her first successful business in 2007 and her second business in 2014. She sold both businesses in 2015. In addition to her entrepreneurial endeavors, Daniella lists University Lecturer, Charity Trustee and Visiting Industrial Fellow as roles in her portfolio career. She has an MBA (Advance Strategy & Innovation) and Masters in Enterprise, in addition to her entrepreneurial experience and formal business training.
In this excerpt, Daniella gives an example of how one social enterprise company was able to grow:
One of my favorite examples is an organization coordinator enterprise. When they initially came to me, they were doing pretty good work, but the business was not generating the amount of revenue that they needed. They didn’t really have a clear strategy or plan of what they wanted to do. They didn’t really have any proper systems and processes. What we were able to do was to have an innovation process and look at developing new revenue streams, one of them being quite a significant project: the development of an app. They created an Managing Vice President for that. Through the project that we developed, they were also able to secure some quite significant contracts, which has now pushed them into the six-figure turnover mark. The growth of the business has been quite significant. We’ve just finished the “build my business” process, where we’ve looked at automation and we’ve looked at the key members of staff that they need to bring in. We’re also looking at key areas that need to be focused on in the future for continual, sustainable growth. When they initially came, they had a specific focus on helping women and that focus has continued. What they’ve started to think about now is, in order to help more women, they need to be able to generate more income. They need to be looking at innovation and strategies for doing that. They also need to make sure that the foundations of the business are strong, so that they’re able to employ more women to help continue to grow the business. So that’s been quite an exciting process to go through. Two young women run the business, and just seeing the growth of them as individuals and as social entrepreneurs, has been phenomenal. They’ve received quite a lot of press over here in the UK for the projects that they’ve been developing. And I’m really proud of their development,
Interested in listening to the full episode and hearing more from other nonprofits? Check out more episodes here Charity Charge Show
