Joel Solomon on Becoming a Billionaire of Good Deeds

Posted on October 21, 2013 by institute B

OK. We admit it. Joel Solomon is one of our heroes. A legend in the social venture scene, Joel shares his wisdom on becoming a billionaire of good deeds and how true success is measured in the currency of love.

Renewal Funds is a Vancouver-based social venture capital company that invests in early growth stage companies in organic and natural food, green products, and environmental innovations. They support entrepreneurs in Canada and the USA who create financially successful businesses rooted in mission and purpose.

institute B: In 1983, your first investment was $25,000 in Stonyfield Farms, an organic dairy in New Hampshire. What inspired you to invest in them?

Joel Solomon: I wanted my money invested for financial gain rooted in positive social and environmental products and companies.

Stonyfield was determined to bring organic standards into the yoghurt field. Dairy products are among the most sensitive of all foods to toxic chemicals and are often central in the diet of young women and their children.

Founders Gary Hirshberg and Samuel Kaymen had proven values integrity commitments to long term sustainability and safe food for all.

Stonyfield Farm went on to lose money for ten years before “striking it rich”. As an investor, what compelled you continue to support them all that time? Wasn’t your investor confidence soured by their financial performance?

There is an old fashioned view that some of the most important businesses take time to ripen and become financially successful. They are usually undercapitalized in the beginning, especially when they are forging new territory and innovation in their sectors.

I had a lot of confidence in the entrepreneurs, their tenaciousness, the quality and importance of their product and intentions, and saw the trends towards cleaner food changing rapidly, alongside the growth of the company.

As in most investing success, we got lucky.

Every investment or purchase we make affects the world. How has the interpretation of this message changed in the past 10 years?

Over the past 10 years, the information age, accessibility of technology, transparency, and generational shift of values, have accelerated concerns about the effect of where our dollars come from, how they represent our spirit and ethics, and what they do when we invest, give, or spend them with others.

People are clearer that our money is a direct representation of who we are, what we believe, and how we act.

This growing consciousness is steadily changing how goods and services are produced, how we interact through financial transactions, and our legacy as people alive in these times.

Are you seeing progress in the way politicians, business leaders and mainstream investors view social venture investing?

We are still in the early years of major systems grasping the need to align money with values. A more utilitarian and mechanistic viewpoint is still dominant, where the only purpose of money is to win and to accumulate the maximum possible money for yourselves.

Early adopters are showing up. Change is underway across the economy and strongly visible in local communities.

Politicians like Mayor Gregor Robertson in Vancouver, who is in public service to empower the creative new economy, carbon friendly building, energy, and manufacturing, along with lower impact transportation, urban food production, and a strong social support system is an example.

More and more business leaders and investors are changing the way they account for externalities, triple bottom line, and how their enterprise serves their communities and future generations.

It’s not fast enough, but there are promising signs everywhere. The key is whether larger institutions wake up soon enough to think long term and to create opportunity for everyone.

Your journey began by supporting businesses run by entrepreneurs who truly care about preserving the environment and human rights. As an investor, can you provide a business case for entrepreneurs who want to incorporate generosity into the DNA of their companies?

There are two major business reasons why entrepreneurs should incorporate generosity into the DNA of their companies.

First is that the consumer awareness and demand is growing for cleaner, more authentic, less damaging, goods and services is now rapid, with no end in sight.

Second is that a vast generational transfer of wealth and power is underway. Younger people have vast access to information and transparency about how business is done, where products come from, who they help and hurt, and this will dramatically effect investment and wealth management decisions. Investment money will increasingly ask about externalities, social and environmental metrics, and what the meaning and purpose of a business is.

People want their dollars aligned with what they believe in. In the not too distant future, how dollars are used should become one of our most sacred acts as people.

It’s good to be out front and ahead in that major trend shift.

You coined the term “organic money”. How is organic money grown? How does it affect us and how we use it?

Ideally we understand and acknowledge how our money was earned, and who and what was helped or hurt in that process. We care about the people whose lives were involved in creating our money, and how the creation of it damaged the planet.

“Organic money”, like organic food, is generally an imperfect science, but a vastly cleaner and more authentic product. How we make, accumulate, and deploy money will likewise never be perfect.

Like organic food, organic money is healthier nutrition for our spirit, our family, and even our mental, emotional and physical health.

What does success look like to you?

True success is measured in the currency of love. We want financial security and enough to look after our families and be good citizens in our communities. Becoming billionaires of good deeds, of looking out for the interests of future generations we will never meet, and helping enhance the “garden of Eden” like paradise the planet gifts us with.

I want to be a wise elder, surrounded by love, supporting youngers to be smarter, do better, and live more generationally, than early industrial society has been informed and strong enough to do.

What has been your most profound wake-up call as a leader or entrepreneur?

Fortunately for all of us, wake up calls are evident every day. Personal adversity often has more impact on us than global tragedy, which is easier to intellectualize. I feel blessed to have had some degree of both.

My early diagnosis with a degenerative fatal kidney disease helped me to think about the purpose of my life, as well as deep global issues.

When my friend gave me her kidney in 2007, it clarified my passion to align with the purpose of my life. That means work life integration. Building a social venture capital firm with my colleagues, moving the bar on making money while making positive change, and spending my days with both entrepreneurs and investors who care deeply is very satisfying and nourishing work.

Purpose breathes life into all roles in an organization. What is the bigger contribution Renewal is making to the world? What will be your legacy?

Renewal is proving that financial success and making money is compatible with creating a more conscious capitalism, and supporting solutions to longer term societal challenges. It’s only a beginning, as the current economic system took centuries to evolve. Change doesn’t usually come overnight.

Renewal Funds, with my Partner Paul Richardson and our excellent team, hopes to be a catalytic model that inspires others to align money and values even better and with more positive impact.

My core legacy will be about authentic inquiry and action, applied into the complex world of my lifetime. I hope it encourages and supports those smarter and more effective than me, to do all they can on behalf of their future generations.

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