🔀 Zach Weismann: The Convergence of Impact & Gig Economies

How to make a career in social impact and what the future holds for the impact and gig economies

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Zach is the founder & CEO of MAG Impact Collective. MAG is a collective that brings together leaders, freelancers, and consultants in the areas of branding, strategy, and design to work with clients around the world. For the last 15 years, Zach has worked at the intersection of social impact and branding collaborating with global businesses. He has worked on projects that touch climate change, innovation, and healthcare with companies like Google, Virgin, IKEA, MD Anderson, Sabin Vaccine Institute, GreenWave, the NBA, and many more.

Zach also serves as an Executive Board Member on the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) who work with med schools and med students to protect the public’s health through assessment, credentialing, and testing. In his spare time, Zach spends a lot of time playing hide and seek, “daddy be a horsey”, twirlee’s, spooky ghost, and tickles with his 3-year-old and 1-year-old sons. He is a big advocate of horizontal parenting and is married to fellow CMC Alum, Kevyn Klein.

Like many CMC graduates, you went straight into accounting/finance after college, yet ultimately have now made a switch to social impact and media. Give us the backstory — how did this happen?

After majoring in accounting & economics at CMC, I went on to get my Masters in Professional Accounting (MPA) from the University of Texas in Austin and took a job with PwC in Dallas. A year into the job, I wasn’t feeling fulfilled at all. To be honest, I was miserable. I quit on the exact day of my one-year anniversary so I didn’t have to pay any of my signing bonus back, ha!

I had always been passionate about the environment but hadn’t done much in the field. I knew I needed to get some hands-on experience. So, I took some time off to go volunteer in Peru with a health & sanitation NGO founded by a Pomona Professor, Dr. Heather Williams. This was a trip and experience that changed my life.

From there, it became a question of how can I leverage my skills and experience to work in the social/environmental sectors. I knew you could do good work and get paid for it, and I wanted to disprove his notion that to make a positive social change you had to make all these sacrifices (including not making a good living).

Finding my first job at a wildlife media & documentary nonprofit wasn’t easy, but it enabled me to fully switch sectors, and then it was off to the races. Shortly thereafter, I found myself on a commercial set with Jackie Chan and a very real 6,000 pound rhinoceros, but more on that soon.

Continuing on the social impact thread, what’s the inside story of MAG Collective? What prompted you to found the collective and what is it all about?

My career took on different roles over the last decade, but there was a constant theme of working with large brands and organizations on social change. I worked with creative and marketing agencies of all shapes and sizes, but it wasn’t until I went to work for a traditional creative agency myself that I realized how dysfunctional and limiting the business model was. I wanted to go out on my own and run my own company, but I knew I didn’t want to take on huge amounts of debt or wait 5 years to grow to a team of 3 people.

So, we created the MAG Impact Collective quite literally to bridge the gap between the Upwork /freelancer sites and the huge, fancy, overpriced agencies of the world. And while working out how the business model could work, we discovered that there were amazing creatives, freelancers, leaders doing good work that we could in turn support through the lens of social impact. And thus, MAG was born!

We are an innovative working model supporting the gig and solopreneur economy while providing businesses with an affordable, nimble, experienced, and flexible fee-for-service model. All centered around doing work that helps address real, tangible issues.

As someone with years of expertise now on the convergence of impact and the gig economy, where do you see this trending? What does the future hold for the next generation of workers who are interested in impact?

When you look at almost every economic metric, it’s hard to not conclude that the gig economy, the side-hustle economy, will only continue to grow. The cost of living continues to skyrocket, more Americans are dying in debt than at any point in modern history, wages aren’t keeping up with the cost of living, social security is a mess, and people are just generally tired. (see: the great exodus we are currently in the midst of). Covid has only highlighted the challenges our current working model in the US puts on families, single-parent families, grandparents, and entire generations — and these challenges are only continuing to mount at staggering rates.

Therefore, the ability to diversify one’s income, to create flexible working structures, to be able to pick up and move (quite literally due to displacement) and keep working, and to not be dependent on a single source of employment, has and will only continue to rise. With that, comes the flexible and nimble working models needed to support the gig and creator economies, MAG just being one of many that have surfaced in recent years.

And not to mention the internet! The internet has made earning multiple income streams and moving from full-time employment to self-employment easier than ever before (most just don’t realize it yet). But, the internet also means millennials and subsequent generations won’t actually retire in the traditional sense. We’ll always be cooking up something — for better or worse, lol. Thanks, internet! (“I quit my 9–5 job to work 24–7”)

And lastly, this all ties to impact in the sense that the opportunity to be part of the solution is now actually more fruitful than being part of the problem. It is easier than at any point in history to work and make a good living in areas of impact such as climate tech, edtech, renewable energy, ESGs, and working in any one of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goal areas.

In summary, the impact economy offers you the ability to be part of driving real, systemic change, diversify your income, and make a good living. That’s quite the offer… I know right?!

Putting my spin on the famous adage, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. The third best time is when you stop overthinking it and just do it.”

Many folks in our community, inclusive of both students and alumni, may find themselves curious about careers in social impact work but are unsure how to make a career out of the industry and may have concerns about financial security. What advice or perspective would you want to share with them?

The important thing to note is we, as a species, have in the last decade or so, finally begun to understand how interconnected everything is. Covid is (an awful) but prime example of this connected web of life we all live in (some call it a planet, or ecosystem, or “world”). But we are seeing the interconnectedness of health, of how we treat the environment, of our financial systems, of racial injustice, and environmental inequality; and that means there are even more opportunities to be part of the solution because the problems are intensifying.

It also means that so many sectors are undergoing radical changes to help usher in a sustainable, profitable, and safe future. A sector that maybe once felt like it could avoid the negative effects of climate change can no longer escape these realities. Governments are committing to goals of Net Zero by 2050, VCs are backing climate tech ventures at record numbers, financial firms are embracing and investing in ESGs as not just a standard metric but a requirement, and new businesses and start-ups are being created every day to help solve the climate and planetary crisis.

There has never been a better (and more urgent) time to find work in the areas of social impact while also making a good living. And to me, the opportunity to be a part of creating positive change that can help the world a more sustainable, safer, and equitable place is perhaps not just an opportunity but a responsibility (And WAY more exciting and important than working at a tech company primarily aimed at confusing convenience with progress…. )

We had a quick chat before I put together these interview questions and…did I hear correctly that you spent some time hanging out on wildlife conservations with celebrities? Could you expound a bit so we can all attempt to live vicariously?

Haha, yes yes. It was my 6 minutes (?) of fame. I got to spend the day with Richard Branson and (for our older readers) Bo Derek. We did a press conference, a fundraising dinner, and a guest appearance on a Canadian late-night tv show. Followed by a party, of course. Richard Branson asking me where the bathroom was and Bo Derek texting me after the event were two of my highlights.

I also got to be on a commercial set with Jackie Chan and a very real rhinoceros. We put a live rhino in a steel box and drove him on the 405. Thankfully, I was not in that truck! We then brought him on set to shoot a commercial aimed at reducing rhino horn consumption, primarily to be aired in Asia. I, of course, don’t normally hang out with Jackie Chan, but he strikes me as the type of guy who doesn’t get nervous easily. Watching him on set (about the size of a living room) touching a real rhino — I’d say he was as nervous as we all were! In addition to helping coordinate and oversee the entire shoot, my job was also to hold a fake fence to make Spike feel more “at home” haha.

“Gosh, I am really putting my CMC accounting degree to good use,” I said under my nervous breath while holding a fake fence on a commercial studio lot in Burbank, CA with a rhinoceros huffing and puffing around.

What are the best ways readers of BTL can reach out, follow your work, or get involved?

I’d love anyone to reach out who either works in areas of social impact or is interested in working in areas of social impact. We have tons to offer!

We offer two communities that are available for anyone to join/apply:

The MAG Impact Collective is for solopreneurs, freelancers, and creatives who are doing freelance work either part-time or full time and want to collaborate with wonderful people and help do good work for some great organizations. We accept applications on a rolling basis! More info here.

The other community is Make Dents. This is our supportive community where we share job opportunities, networking opportunities, courses, resources, and more in all areas of social impact. If you want to meet other folks, feel more supported in your work, come join us!

And lastly, I offer a 4-week email course directly with myself where I’ll help you align your purpose, work, and impact. If you aren’t sure where to start or are feeling like you could use an assessment, let’s do it! The course is only $15 and can be found here.

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