From $0 to 2M with Social Enterprise with Quilen Blackwell
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In this episode of The Small Nonprofit Podcast, Maria sits down with Quilen Blackwell, President and co-founder of Chicago Eco House and Southside Blooms. Quilen shares his remarkable journey of founding and growing a nonprofit with a thriving $2 million social enterprise. With a focus on sustainability, community development, and economic resilience, Quilen offers invaluable tips for nonprofits looking to scale effectively.
Key Episode Highlights:
Social enterprise success: from zero to $2 million
Challenges of scaling a nonprofit and a business
How Southside Blooms converts customers into donors
The pros and cons of business-to-business (B2B) versus business-to-consumer (B2C) social enterprise models
Quotable Moments:
“As a nonprofit, we didn’t want to be dependent on a few big donors telling us what to do. Running it like a serious business gave us the freedom to stay true to our mission.”
“Focus on the foundation of the business, not just the money. If you’re not ready to handle growth, it can quickly turn from a blessing into a burden.”
“Our flowers are our ambassadors. They go into spaces we can’t, and they open doors we never expected.”
Actionable Tips:
➜ Start Small: Focus on building a solid foundation before scaling. Test your ideas on a smaller scale to work out any kinks and ensure your model is sustainable.
➜ Invest in Technology: Use technology to streamline operations and customer service, especially when managing a social enterprise. Tools like Routific for route optimization can be game changers in last-mile delivery
➜ Leverage Customer Relationships: Turn customers into donors by integrating donation opportunities into your sales process and engaging them through events like farm tours.
➜ Do B2B and B2C: Diversify your income streams by engaging in both B2B and B2C models. This approach not only stabilizes revenue but also opens unexpected doors for media coverage and large grants.
➜ Prepare for Growth: As your organization scales, be ready to tackle complex challenges, including human resources, compliance, and maintaining quality across a growing operation.
Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Us:
Connect with Maria
Connect with Quilen: Personal Instagram, Southside Blooms, Chicago Eco House
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Next Episode Teaser:
Don’t forget to tune into next week’s episode where we chat about the pros and cons of hiring a Fractional Fundraiser with Nina Horvath!
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Maria: Hello, hello. Welcome back to the Small Nonprofit Podcast. Today I'm here with Quilen, who's going to talk about all things scaling your nonprofit. So getting your first 100, 000, your first 500, 000, your first 2 million. Quilen is here to tell us how you can go from zero to hero in scaling your nonprofit.
[00:00:18] Maria: Hi, Quilen.
[00:00:19] Quilen: Hey, how are you doing Maria? Happy to be here.
[00:00:22] Maria: I'm so happy to have you. I really like what you've been able to do. So I'm excited for you to come on and share, share your story with our audience, for those that don't know you yet, who are you? What do you do? Tell us about you.
[00:00:35] Quilen: Yeah. So, I'm in Chicago.
[00:00:37] Quilen: I start this organization called Chicago Eco House. We also have a social enterprise called Southside Blooms. It's where a. 501c3 nonprofit based in Inglewood on the south side of Chicago with the mission of using sustainability to alleviate inner city poverty. we do that by take over vacant lots. We turn 'em into solar power flower farms, and then we put at-risk youth in Chicago, in the floral industry.
[00:00:59] my [00:01:00] journey really started in 2011 when I was attending ministry school here in Chicago in the western suburbs. during that time I started tutoring at a high school in Inglewood. and for me, like, that was my first time coming face to face with hardcore inner city poverty.
[00:01:14] Quilen: I'm originally from Madison, Wisconsin. I grew up in a middle to upper middle class family. So, most of my life, I was shielded from a lot of those, harsh realities of inner city poverty. when I was tutoring, I began to build relationships with the youth and their families and really began to hear their stories.
[00:01:30] Quilen: And one of the common themes was, this desire for not just jobs, but like community based jobs, community-based careers because for those of you aren't familiar with, the South side of Chicago and places like Inglewood, in the neighborhood I live in, we have a poverty rate of about.
[00:01:45] Quilen: 50%, the unemployment rates about 22%. so there's just not a lot of jobs here and the jobs that are here, it's more like corner stores or, fast food places or like, shopping or retail. so, it became very apparent that one of the things we really needed was to try to [00:02:00] figure out a way, how to establish an anchor industry.
[00:02:02] Quilen: Right. cause like one of the things, when you think about more successful communities, more prosperous communities. they generally have some sort of industry that's supplying them, right? So if you think of like Silicon Valley, there's tech, right? You think about Napa Valley, you've got vineyards and the wine grapes, right?
[00:02:17] Quilen: So when you think about inner city America, there really isn't those jobs. Now, back in the day, we had, we had more blue collar manufacturing jobs, but a lot of those jobs have been outsourced overseas, which really stripped the economic base of the Black community in a lot of these neighborhoods. So. we started the organization formally in 2014.
[00:02:36] Quilen: and we wanted to do it in a way that would be like environmentally friendly. So that's why sustainability is a big part of our mission.
[00:02:43] Maria: One of the things that makes your story really interesting is how quickly you've been able to get off the ground and how much you've been able to raise, since you started.
[00:02:53] Maria: Maybe you can walk our audience a little bit through how much money you're raising now and how that's all been [00:03:00] going.
[00:03:01] Quilen: Yeah, so I guess we can start, with today. So today our organization, we have nearly 60 people on staff our budget is about 2 million a year.
[00:03:11] Quilen: we farm about 10 acres of vacant land. we are, we have one flower shop in the south side, we're actually in the process of opening up a second flower shop on the west side of Chicago. we ship our flowers nationally across the country. We also are full service event florists, but we specialize in high-end floristry.
[00:03:28] Quilen: So we're in some of the most exclusive venues in Chicago, the Field Museum, McCormick Place, the Hilton, Hyatt, you name it, we've been there. so yeah, today it's a very, dynamic, 2 million dollars, midsize, a larger nonprofit.
[00:03:42] Quilen: but, that's not the way it started, of course.
[00:03:44] Maria: So how, how did you get started with the, with the financial side of it? Did you start your social enterprise at the same time? how much of your money comes from fundraising versus social enterprise? What does that look like?
[00:03:58] Quilen: Yeah. So, I guess it's kind of take [00:04:00] everyone back in 2014, we started with zero dollars, its literally me, my wife, Hannah, who's the co-founder of the organization and, a bunch of, young adult volunteers, actually our first fundraiser to raise, the money we needed to pay for our 501c3 filing.
[00:04:15] Quilen: We took pies in the face across Chicago and public places, for 100 dollars a pie. that was like our first formal fundraiser. And we raised about, 1, 100 doing that. and yeah, like the first like six to seven years is pretty. Pretty lean. we're very grassroots.
[00:04:29] so, in the beginning, like we weren't necessarily thinking that we would do flowers, like flowers, we actually didn't get into until 2017, before that we were looking at
[00:04:38] Quilen: you know growing food or like looking at like switchgrass like biofields like where we have all sorts of other things besides flowers but we came upon flowers because, we're just, doing a lot of research at that time. We're doing a lot of small scale testing. and one of the things that would piqued our interest about the floral industry is that, it's a, about 35 billion a year industry, but about 80 percent of the [00:05:00] flowers you see
[00:05:01] Quilen: in the United States come from overseas. so for us, we just immediately thought, well, why couldn't we grow those flowers here? We have all this vacant land on the southwest side of Chicago. So it just seemed like it would make sense that we could grow flowers in the market where they're being consumed.
[00:05:14] Quilen: we had a lot of naysayers. So we have a lot of people who, were like, well, why are you, growing flowers in a food desert? You should be growing food, like people felt insulted and, basically had to, try to cast a little bit of a vision and tell people like, Hey, look at like, we think there's something to this.
[00:05:28] Quilen: We think it's to put money in your pockets, just keep the faith a little bit. Right.so, like part of our story is we had to, kind of, pivot and,do something that everyone else wasn't doing at the time, even though really, it wasn't popular.
[00:05:40] Quilen: 2017 was when we actually got our first, big grant for us is a 25, 000 grant from UL. and they just sort of saw the promise in our model. and they took a flyer on us,so. that's our first, like, I guess, institutional funding. and then from there we just began to slowly,build our donation base and our grant base, because once we have that UL [00:06:00] grant, that kind of gave us some brand recognition, and we parlayed that to some other grants.
[00:06:04] Quilen: but you know, like our big break actually didn't hit until the pandemic. so between 2014. 2020, we went from 0 to 100, 000 a year organization. and then, the pandemic hit and then that's when we really just, began to grow. So, like one of the things that happened was, all the events shut down because of COVID.
[00:06:24] Quilen: and people are postponing their weddings and that kind of stuff. so, we were like, Oh shoot, we have, we have a decision to make. We have these farms, we're growing these flowers, like, what are we going to do? so. we pivoted to a delivery service and in 2020 is actually when we opened up our in house flower shop, Southside Blooms, our social enterprise, because we're like, you know what, we just have to get these flowers to market ourselves, because before we're trying to wholesale them through florists, and we're like, you know what, we just got to do it ourselves, everyone else is shutting down, the business is drying up, and it turned out that there was actually a lot of demand in 2020 for flowers to be delivered.
[00:06:56] Quilen: People were stuffed in at home. They wanted something green, kind of [00:07:00] like, you got your house plants and stuff there, Maria, like people wanted something green and fresh and colorful. so, that first summer, we sold a 450 CSA subscriptions and that really just got us, going, we, got some my national press, we were featured on,the Today Show like that really helped to like boost us.
[00:07:17] Quilen: and then from there, we really just kind of, capitalized on, the interest in, our model and, being a nonprofit florist. And then between 2020, 2024, that's when we went from a hundred thousand dollars to $2 million dollars and much of that growth was
[00:07:32] Quilen: driven by our flower sells. So today our flower sells make up between 45 to 50 percent of our budget. and it's definitely by far the fastest growing part of our budget.
[00:07:42] Maria: You're so humble for everything that you've been doing. That is huge. You should be incredibly proud. And something that I see a lot of nonprofits do is they kind of shy away from something that might be not exactly mission aligned when it comes to fundraising. So I love [00:08:00] this idea of like getting pies thrown in the face, like putting yourself out there.
[00:08:03] Maria: I think that's hilarious. but the idea of flowers, like when you were saying, why not grow food? It's a food desert. For me, like, I've done a lot of work in food insecurity and just hearing that it's like, well, that's not how you solve food insecurity. That's never going to solve food insecurity.
[00:08:17] Maria: Food insecurity is an economic issue. It's because you don't have enough money. So by pivoting, even though there was naysayers and choosing the strategy that made the most sense for your community. You've been able to do something quite incredible and flowers. I never would have imagined. So you said you're one of the only, if not, you were the first, nonprofit florist in Chicago.
[00:08:42] Maria: Are there other ones popping up?
[00:08:45] Quilen: I mean, so in Chicago, we're still the only nonprofit florist. I've seen like other nonprofits like dabble in flowers, but they're not like a full time florist. so, Southside blooms is the only like full service. sort of professional [00:09:00] scale,nonprofit florist, which is another lesson too for a lot of, nonprofits,that's one of the things we learned early on is if we're going to do this, we needed to run this like a real business, like a lot of times you get nonprofits who will do these programs and they run it like a program and it's mainly
[00:09:14] Quilen: aimed to just get donors or funders and that kind of thing. but you know, for us, like this is, I mean, honestly, it's also just about economic resilience for our organization and for our community. so, we don't have like our, our board, for example, is made up of community members, right?
[00:09:29] Quilen: So our board contributes like next to nothing to our budget. and that's by design, right. And that's because like, we didn't. Want to have a situation where you have like, you know, a few big money people funding everything who don't live in your community. And now they're the ones telling you what to do.
[00:09:42] Quilen: And you, they say jump and you got to say, they say how high that kind of deal. We don't want to have to play a whole game. Right? so the only way we're going to be able to like break through that is if we ran it like a serious. business. and we're competing with, the top florists in Chicago, right?
[00:09:57] Quilen: So, yeah, it's definitely something that I think like, [00:10:00] nonprofits can embrace. I think sometimes we think, Oh, well, you're not profit. That means you have to have like this program mindset and, like business is bad and, at the day, like business, just a tool, right?
[00:10:09] Quilen: It's just another tool in the toolkit., like frankly, when, you're in a situation like us where we have kids dying all the it's high crime rates, we don't really feel like we got the, privilege to exclude certain tools. what I mean? so if something works we're gonna do it, it just so happened that business is a great Method and a great tool that resonates with, people in our community.
[00:10:28] Quilen: and it's something that we decided to just go all in on. and one of the, I guess, hidden benefits that we've kind of learned is a lot of foundations actually like when you run a very strong business, right. As a nonprofit, like, we get a lot of foundations who give us, money and we'll ask why you decided to support us . And when the top answers is like, well, I love your business model. Like it makes sense. Like I, I love the fact that it's a business. I love the fact that I can understand it. I love the fact that there's like an end game. I love the fact that it's like self supporting, that the jobs you're creating are like real jobs that have a real foundation [00:11:00] to it.
[00:11:00] Quilen: There's a sustainable economic model, so I can see how this can become careers,and, like, at first it was kind of surprising because I didn't really, expect that us running a business as a nonprofit would help us with philanthropy, But then, as you kind of get to know these donors, you start realizing most of them are business people, right?
[00:11:15] Quilen: So it speaks their language, right? It's just a human thing, right? you relate to people who are like you. You relate to people who speak your language where you feel like, you got stuff in common. so it just really helped to bridge that gap.
[00:11:26] Maria: I can see why donors would be so interested in it because they don't want to fund you into perpetuity. They don't want to be giving you money forever.
[00:11:33] Maria: They want to know that you have a plan. And this is a very, very clear, self sustaining plan that actually brings wealth into the community and empowers the community in a very long lasting, sustainable way. So I can see why donors would be very into this idea.I want to talk a little bit about. You did touch on this before some of the challenges that you faced.
[00:11:55] Maria: So COVID, of course, is a huge challenge. Of [00:12:00] course. I don't know if there's more that you want to say on that specific one or other challenges that you face when it came to scaling.
[00:12:07] Quilen: Yeah, I mean, there's challenges every day we face. I would say like the biggest, Well, there's a couple of the biggest challenge I'll say that I think is relevant to all nonprofits.
[00:12:15] Quilen: It's human resources. I really, really, really underestimated human resources when,we really started hitting that growth curve because, when you're like a grassroots volunteer based organization, you really don't got to think about these things. You know what I mean? Like, you don't got to think about. Yeah, so I'll definitely say number one challenge has been,the human resources front and trying to find, high quality staff who fit within our culture, because that's the thing, I will say, like, what's made it really hard
[00:12:39] Quilen: is as a nonprofit trying to run a high level business. It's kind of like, okay are you going after the nonprofit type of people? Are you going after the business people right if you bring a nonprofit person
[00:12:48] Quilen: Who has been a career social worker, but, they're not used to say working in a fast paced environment where you have to maintain high standards. they're way more relational. like we had this one employee,we hired, we had [00:13:00] more of a nonprofit background and all she wanted to do was just like, had these conversations with the kids.
[00:13:04] Quilen: But this isn't that kind of program. there are real event customers. So, you gotta be about your business. This isn't just, some after school program and you're building relationships all day, right?
[00:13:13] Quilen: But then if you hire someone who's just too business oriented, they totally neglect, their relational piece you need to have that flexibility and that compassion. So it's really hard to try and find people who have both, right? We were so focused on building our model those first six years. It actually sets up to be very nimble and flexible during COVID, right?
[00:13:31] Quilen: because like having a social enterprise during COVID as a nonprofit was huge.
[00:13:34] Quilen: Like during 2020, like that was what brought the money because we lost so much, philanthropy dollars, due to COVID response. but it's also just like a wake up call of, Hey, you know what? Like you can never get too comfortable in the nonprofit world.
[00:13:45] Quilen: And, we really learned like a hard lesson that,you can't put all your eggs into the donation basket because, donors can be very fickle, and, at the day, if they feel like there's a need out there that's more pressing than what you're working on, they got no problem, like, [00:14:00] switching, which pot they're gonna put their money in, and, there is no recourse for you.
[00:14:03] Quilen: So, that really, like, affirmed our, our business approach because we're like, look at, like, if we're not selling a high quality product, In the marketplace when that's actually solving a problem for people and people see value in it You know, then we could basically be wiped out at any time Because you just never know like, what's going to change in the future, right?
[00:14:22] Quilen: So, yeah, there's like many other lessons too, but I was like those are the two Biggest ones I really want your, the listeners here, the nonprofit world to kind of take from that is, number one, do not underestimate human resources and being an employer and building a strong culture
[00:14:36] Quilen: number two, really, just being nimble and flexible and being aware that. Things will change. The landscape is constantly changing. You don't know when it will change. So, take that into account when you're building out your strategic plans. You're building out your model that there is a certain level of resiliency, for those kinds of things.
[00:14:54] Maria: I think those are really, really great tips. and I actually wanted to ask a little bit more [00:15:00] about the actual management of Southside Blooms . So, When someone purchases something, do they go into a donor journey as well, or is it strictly a customer? That's a good
[00:15:09] Quilen: question. Yes, that's yeah, that's a great question.
[00:15:11] Quilen: I'm really asking you glad you asked that. Yes, we double dip. So yeah Yes, yeah, that's yeah, that's actually a really great point because like a lot of customers are potential donors, right? so for example, when someone checks out, they buy a a flower subscription bouquet They have an option there to donate And we actually, get a lot of people putting an extra $5, an extra $10
[00:15:33] but it adds up, if you're doing hundreds of transactions every month, and if like 20 or 30% of them are giving you five to 10 bucks, like it becomes a nice little stream of money that you're not really having to like work for. Right.
[00:15:44] Quilen: So yes, we do, we double dip. a customer will immediately go into the donor journey. So yes, like, yeah, like that's, I'm really glad you brought that. Maria, that's a, that's a, that's also been a great way to do donor engagement.
[00:15:56] We like to say our flowers get in to spaces that we can't, right?
[00:15:59] Maria: [00:16:00] Oh, man, there's so many like fun ideas that you could do with with flowers, because it's so tangible, right? So it's like, you're courting a foundation that you just sell them flowers.
[00:16:08] Maria: And this is what the programming looks like. Right? Yes. Yes. And I don't know if you know how, MailChimp got started, but they always have that thing at the bottom that's like, sent by MailChimp. And that just like sells the next person on MailChimp. So same thing with the flowers, like, oh, sent by Southside Blooms, like it sells the next person.
[00:16:27] Maria: Like, what is that? Right? So I think that's really interesting. I want talk about the shift between business to business, so B2B to business to customer and B2C. Was that an easy shift to make? Was there any pros and cons of one side specifically? Obviously, B2C was what worked best for you, but I'm just wondering if there was any other thoughts around that.
[00:16:47] Quilen: So we started B2B Then we went B2C and now we're both. So we actually are on about 60 preferred vendor lists around, Chicago, and then we have our B2C business with our retail bouquets and [00:17:00] subscriptions or CSAs.
[00:17:01] Quilen: so in terms of pros and cons, The cons of business to consumer is someone's buying a 25 bouquet, but, they expect the same level of service as someone, as a bride, who's,paying like 2, 000 for a wedding, right?
[00:17:13] Quilen: So customer service by far is the biggest challenge doing business to consumer. because like, we're not Amazon, we're not Google, like, we're not like these behemoths, right?
[00:17:22] Quilen: But the reality is like, that's what people expect, So, and this is something that people need to know. If you're in the nonprofit world, you're trying to, you're thinking about doing a social enterprise, like, that's the consumer expectation. The consumer expectation is you're given the same level of service as Amazon.
[00:17:35] Quilen: The same level of service as DoorDash. They're going to treat you like that. So you got to be ready for that. It just became like a ton to manage from a logistics standpoint.
[00:17:43] Quilen: the advantage obviously with. business to consumer is like we're talking about, right? you're able to appeal to the public and you never know who's gonna buy from you. So you get a lot of hidden opportunities. It's not just on the foundation side, but a lot of our media stuff has come because of our bouquets
[00:17:59] Quilen: and because of our [00:18:00] business to consumer model, we've had editors of major publications who bought our flowers and they're like, we wanted to do an article on you, like whether it's Chicago Tribune, or it's the Red Eye, or, it's national news, I mean.
[00:18:11] Quilen: So that's, that's the plus of doing business consumer is you just never know who's going to buy your flowers. You just never know what they're, who they're connected to.
[00:18:18] Quilen: You never know what type of doors they're going to open up. And one of the things that's beautiful about flowers is it's very visual, right? So, like from a media standpoint, that's one of the reasons why, like, we get a lot of media coverage because it's very easy to show. Like, I mean, who doesn't want to see, youth, like making a bridal bouquet, you know what I mean?
[00:18:34] Quilen: So anyway, now with, business to business, the advantage is there's more money in it. Yeah, that's by far the best part about it, right?
[00:18:40] the moment you get on, like, a preferred vendor list at, say, the Field Museum, and now you become the exclusive, vendor for anyone who wants to have an event at the Field Museum,last year we did,a 25, 000 wedding, at the, at the Field Museum.
[00:18:54] Quilen: This year we're actually doing three events, for the Democratic National Convention. because, we're on these preferred vendor lists, [00:19:00] so there's way more money, when you're doing B2B, which is nice, because I mean, when, a guy like me who's taking pies in the face for a hundred bucks, now all of a sudden it's like you're doing 25,000 transaction for flowers, I mean, there's a lot of nonprofits who would love to be in that situation, right? so we definitely don't take that for granted. But yeah, the downside with like B to B is they're very, very exclusive. They're very, very discerning, very particular,but like, that's the game you're playing, right? So, yeah, but I would definitely say, it's the mix of both of them that really makes it so powerful.
[00:19:31] Quilen: Because, having more diverse streams of income, more diversity of business helps to make more resilient COVID is a great example because, if the event business gets shut down because of some national emergency, you still got your consumer business, you can lean on.
[00:19:44] Quilen: If there's some issues with the consumer business, then you got your event business, you can lean on. If they're both doing well, then Hey, you're off to the races. So, like, yeah, there's definitely the pros and cons, but overall. I really love the, the mix of them and having both of them work together.
[00:19:59] Maria: I feel like [00:20:00] I could ask you like a hundred more questions about this. can you tell us a little bit about the profitability of the business? So how much are you spending to make how much?
[00:20:09] Quilen: Yeah. So, it's been very profitable. so, we're, we're at 2 million a year.
[00:20:15] Quilen: our reserves are close to 14 to 15 months for those who don't know what those are, basically that means like if we never made one. Extra dollar and we have enough in our bank account today to pay our current operating expenses for the next 14 months which is absolutely amazing our overall, profitability With the flowers is about 30 percent, most of that's driven by events the big advantage that we have is that we're growing our own flowers So, you know for most flower shops, that's actually the most expensive item For them is the cost of flowers.
[00:20:44] Quilen: So since we're vertically integrated, we save on all those costs. So it's more money that's being driven, to the actual mission of, putting money in the kids pockets, hiring the youth, right? Every pay period is about 10, 000 coming out of our account just to pay the kids, right? so, that's, it's serious money, right? That's going [00:21:00] to where it needs to go. Financially, we're in a very, very fortunate position where,we're starting to hit on all cylinders but just saying there is a world out there where you start having bigger headaches and having more, Complex problems than just like how can I get that next check? You know what i'm saying? so yeah, like that's kind of where we're at.
[00:21:18] Quilen: It's like it's more just trying to figure out how we're going to scale this thing nationally, how we're going to be able to do it in a way where, we're growing responsibly, we're serving our mission, we're not compromising on our values, we're maintaining the quality, like, these are all very real challenges that there are no easy answers to,because, like, maybe you discover that It's only good when me and Hannah are the ones running it, right?
[00:21:40] Quilen: And, when you're trying to train somebody else, it loses a little quality. I mean, I hope that's not the case, but you don't know, right? Like, those are the kind of things that kind of keep me up at night is, can we really train up other people? And can we really trust the systems that we have in place to maintain this quality across, like, 100 locations one day, right? I mean, I'm gonna be honest with you, like there's days [00:22:00] where if I didn't feel this calling to, really reach every hood that I can, the ideal situation for me, would it be.
[00:22:07] Quilen: You keep the organization between like 750 to 1, 000, 000 a year. Like that's, that's comfortable. You know what I mean? Like, just from like a founder leader standpoint, because it's small enough where you can still control everything,you're not too big where people are starting to take their big shots at you and you have to start worrying about, sophisticated accounting and, legal issues and, more sophisticated strategic issues and that kind of stuff.
[00:22:31] Maria: Yeah. You go from having all the fires and problems of being an ED to all the. Fires and problems of being an ED and an entrepreneur.
[00:22:42] Maria: That's great.
[00:22:44] Quilen: Exactly. Right.
[00:22:48] Maria: I do think that it's so smart to own the labor, the distribution and the production of the products. Where I see nonprofits really successfully do this, it's a very similar, they own the labor [00:23:00] distribution and production of the product, or they're looking to do that because they're losing money
[00:23:05] Maria: one of those parts, right? Right. Okay. So let's say there's someone out there who could maybe have a social enterprise. They have a good business case. What are their first few steps? What would you advise them to do?
[00:23:20] Quilen: Yeah. So I would start small. like in the Bible, it says, do not despise the day of small beginnings.
[00:23:24] Quilen: there's a lot of value in being small. So I would say like for us, like, when, when you're small, it's very easy. It's a very safe. cocoon, if you will, to make mistakes, right? because the reality is you don't know what you don't know. And, you don't want to make big mistakes.
[00:23:38] Quilen: In our case, we just started on one vacant lot. We just started growing, a few different types of flowers there. And we really got a lot of the kinks out on that one vacant lot.
[00:23:47] Quilen: Focus on the foundation right because the foundation is what's ultimately going to sustain whatever growth you end up having. The economy is moving towards this socially responsible way of doing business, right? Like, that's the future, right? [00:24:00] So.if you screw up,because you try to go too fast and you try to get too big before you're ready.
[00:24:06] Quilen: now all of a sudden your, your brand is tainted and the moment your reputation gets tainted, it's very hard for you to recover. you gotta be very patient, like, I know, I know what I'm saying, a lot of people are like, they don't wanna hear this, but like, this is the reality, I'm in farming, so you, you have to respect the dirt, right, you gotta respect doing the dirt work, you have to get down there in the worms, make sure your soil's good, make sure you got a lot of,microbes and, healthy biology in there, because everybody wants like that beautiful sunflower.
[00:24:32] Quilen: But the reality is what's sustaining that beautiful sunflower is what's beneath your feet, right? And it's the same thing for your organization, your social enterprise, like, most of the work needs to go into the dirt. It needs to go into making sure that foundation is high quality, if one day I were to get 10, 000 customers, do I have the capacity in the systems of people, the processes in the product to be able to deliver on each one of those transactions at a very high level?
[00:24:59] Quilen: If the answer is [00:25:00] no, then you got more dirt work to do, so like that's what I would,encourage people
[00:25:04] Maria: Quilen, I think a lot of people will get a lot out of this conversation. So if they want to, continue the conversation with you, how can they connect?
[00:25:13] Quilen: yes, you could follow, me on social media. So, my account is. Quilen _ Hannah _ Blackwell. that's the Instagram. you can also follow our organizational account at Southside Blooms or at Chicago Eco House.
[00:25:26] Quilen: you can also go to our websites, send us emails at southsideblooms.com or chicago house.org,
[00:25:33] Maria: I'll put those websites in the description, in show notes below in case you are interested in checking them out and seeing what's outside. Blooms is up to, what Quilen's up to, because I feel like
[00:25:43] Maria: this is a nonprofit to look at for the next few three years on. So thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us. It's been a really lovely chat.
[00:25:52] Quilen: Oh, yeah. I enjoyed it. Yeah. Thanks, Maria. Yeah. Appreciate it.
[00:25:55] Maria: And thank you all for listening for this episode of The Small Nonprofit. As [00:26:00] always, if you want to see our lovely faces, you can see this episode on YouTube as well.
[00:26:05] Maria: But if you're interested in starting a social enterprise please let us know. We'd love to hear what you're doing, how you're doing it. And if you already have started one, how's it going? Until next time. Bye for now.
