I owe Blake Mycoskie, Founder of TOMS, an apology
I don’t know much. A quick skimming of the main page of Wikipedia reveals that. But what I do know, I sometimes make the mistake of miscalculating just how much I know about that thing. Let me explain.
In 2013, I had just returned to Utah after living in Pennsylvania for two years, serving an LDS mission. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up (operating on a pretty lofty assumption that I ever would grow up.) One of the methods I hoped to discover my destiny was through a variety of clubs. One such club was the “BYU Changemaker Club.”
I attended, and we talked about homelessness. I met two people that I specifically recall this being the first time I ever met them; Jace McLaws (who would later help me get a job at Amazon), and Austin Jensen (with whom I would start a solar company in Uganda). In that meeting, we discussed homelessness, and what it’s root causes were, and what did we propose to do about it. I was hooked. It was my first exposure to social entrepreneurship. I felt so empowered. I had spent two years inviting people to change their lives for the better, and now I was being offered the channel by which I could continue to do that.
From that experience, I got involved in the BYU Ballard Center for Economic Self-Reliance. I learned a life-changing amount of things through that experience, many of which continue to inspire me. I can without a doubt, whole-heartedly say that my exposure there changed the way I see the world in a powerful way. But one common experience came to stick out very distinctly in my mind this morning.
As we learned about social innovation, and measuring social impact, we often talked about TOMS shoes. We talked about how TOMS was an example of miscalculated, and sometimes negative impact. By giving away a pair of shoes in developing countries, TOMS was making it harder for folks in those countries trying to make a living selling shoes, or it was creating a dependency on free things, etc. I accepted this whole-heartedly, and frequently used it as an example of what not to do when innovating socially.
Well, this morning, I was listening to the phenomenal podcast “How I Built This” by Guy Raz. This specific episode was an interview with TOMS Founder, Blake Mycoskie.
In the interview, Raz asks Mycoskie the question I should have been wondering all along. “Some people say, ‘TOMS isn’t actually helping alleviate poverty. Some of those criticisms, there’s merit to them, right?”
“You go Guy,” I thought to myself, “stick it to the man.”
But Mycoskie responded:
“People say, ‘if TOMS really wanted to help, they wouldn’t just focus on aid, they would focus on job creation.’ And that criticism was really difficult to hear at first, because frankly I just didn’t know how to address it. I agreed with it. Of course it would be amazing to create a bunch of jobs in Kenya, for example, but how in the world am I going to figure that out?”
I’ll let you listen to the podcast for the rest of the amazing TOMS story, as well as Mycoskie’s generally.
But the key point for me was this: why had I been raining on this guy’s hustle? Here he was, trying to make the world a different place. A better place. And for the 4 years I had been learning about, and engaging with, social innovation, I had been dismissing it without a second thought.
We shouldn’t look at the things in the world, and think “that will never work.” We should look and think, here are the goods. Here are the bads. Let’s work together to make things better.”
So Blake. I’m sorry. You keep on keepin’ on my friend. I’ll do my best to help in whatever way I can.
Step 1: Buy a pair of TOMS.
…maybe. They’re a bit pricey for a starving young millenial with a new baby. I’ll ask my wife when she wakes up if it’s okay.
